How can I blend two textures together using Cycles? I am trying to put dirty material over a concrete material in  cycles. Now I am trying to do this using a color ramp and a mix shader, but I don't know if this is the only way or best way to do this. How can I mix these two textures together?

My first way:

The concrete texture and the grunge texture:

From your nodes setup, it looks like you're trying to mix the original shader with nothing. While this is technically possible it is not the cleanest way to do things.

You don't actually have to create a new shader and use the mix shader to mix two textures. There is a node called MixRGB which can mix two textures, without creating a new shader each time.

There are a few ways to mix a dirty texture onto another texture. Here are a few:

The most basic setup is just a basic mix:

If you change the mix type you can get a few different effects:

Overlay

Multiply

Darken

However, it looks like you want more control over what values are being effected (you're using a color ramp). So you can use the texture as the color ramp and as the texture itself (ignore the MixRGB on the bottom. That just makes it blue so it's easier to see):


Older Version of Blender for ARM processors? I have been going at this for some time now,  I cant seem to compile blender from source due to some deprecated directives in cmake and jpeg_library, although there may be a way to do this that I am just unaware, following the guides on making from source did not work.  I am trying to simply install version 2.79, the newest version that will run, (for ARM) on Ubuntu Mate...the apt-get install seems to be set to the 2.82 package which cannot run on my hardware due to 2.8 and up using OpenGL 3.3 (Running Raspberry Pi 4b).. Does anyone know where I can download a prebuilt version for ARM processors?  Unfortunately it is not included in the repository...If anyone knows how I can install the older package via apt-get or some other way I would be appreciative?
Tried Stuff like:
sudo apt-get install blender= 2.79.b+dfsg0-7
to no avail, just
apt-cache policy blender
blender:
Installed: (none)
Candidate: 2.82.a+dfsg-1
Version table:
2.82.a+dfsg-1 500
500 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports focal/universe arm64 Packages

You can run blender 2.82 on the Pi, with the following command:
sudo apt install blender
then:
MESA_OPENGL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.3 blender
But that's a hack, it's slow, and lighting doesn't work correctly.
On the plus side, you can compile blender 2.79 by running a modified version of the setup script and disabling cycles embree. To edit the setup script successfully, remove all mentions of sse, and replace all -march=i386 flags with -march=native.


AMD Radeon Pro 460 not showing up in sys pref I'm trying to set up my AMD Radeon Pro 460 for Blender 2.8 but I'm not seeing the Device show up in the system preferences. Is this a bug or not currently supported & if so why?

I guess youre on Macbook? Opencl gpu rendering is not supported and abandoned by Apple. Try to use Radeon ProRender instead for gpu support.
https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-prorender


How do you bake ambient occlusion for a model? I have a model and I need to bake ambient occlusion for it. How do I bake an AO texture?

First you need to UV unwrap the model so the texture can be baked

You should do this manually if you plan to need to create a real texture and you want a clean unwrapping. If you only need an AO map, Blender can do it for you automatically.

First, split the viewport by clicking and dragging the grip found in the top right corner of the 3D viewport out from the left to the center of the window. Set the new viewport to the UV/Image Editor:

Now Hit Tab to enter Edit Mode.

With your cursor over the 3D Viewport, hit A once or twice so that the whole model is selected (orange).

With your cursor still over the 3D Viewport, hit U and click Lightmap Pack. Enable New Image and set the resolution to a power of two that you want the lightmap's image to be.

You should now have a UV unwrapping in the UV/Image Editor viewport.

Next, set the material to pure white if desired

If you plan to use this ambient occlusion map as an overlay in an actual diffuse texture that you create, you want the flat parts of the surface to appear pure white so that they are pure transparent when overlaid with a multiply blend mode. By default, the ambient occlusion texture bake will include the color of the surface which is the default gray. To fix this, go to the Material tab and drag the color up to pure white and the intensity up to 1.000.

Upper box: drag the circle all the way up to pure white
Lower box: drag the intensity box to the right until it reaches 1.000

Now you can set up the actual texture baking

Under the World tab, enable Ambient Occlusion and then set the Samples under the Gather section to a number that you like. The higher the number, the higher the lightmap quality but consequently the higher the bake time. You may want to set it to something lower such as 20 for test bakes before you create a final bake at a higher setting such as 128.

Next, go to the Render tab and under the Bake section, set the Bake Mode to Ambient Occlusion. Then hit the Bake button and wait as the ambient occlusion map is baked for you.

You can watch the progress as the texture is created in the UV/Image Editor and the progress bar at the top of Blender.

When it is done baking, leave Edit Mode by hitting Tab and setting the Viewport Shading to Texture.

You can now see your model with ambient occlusion!

Note the gray: this will occur if you do not set the material to white prior to baking as described above

You can now export this texture from the UV/Image Editor by clicking Image > Save As Image.

Then just name the file, choose a format, select a file location, and hit Save As Image.


Need smoke to pour out of a container I have an container from which a lid comes off; I want smoke to pour out of the container on to the floor like some cryo chamber stuff. I've modeled the domain to do this artificially but the smoke evaporates when it hits the top of the domain. How would I go about doing this?

Change the Border Collisions setting to Collide All. And to make the smoke fall naturally, change the Temp Diff to a negative value, the lower the value (i.e. farther below 0), the faster the smoke will fall. The Density value also affects this, but I honestly don't really understand that; I assumed a higher (i.e. higher above 0) density would make it heavier, but it seems a negative value actually makes it fall faster. In the image I've also enabled Dissolve, to prevent the smoke from completely filling up the domain, but I've set a high enough value to still have time to come out of the box and fall to the floor. I've also used very low values for density and temperature difference, just to see what happened. The exact values you'll need, depend on your setup.

And here's the test animation, as promised. A bit grainy, a little jumpy and very "vanilla", but I tried to get it done fast rather than with high quality.


Can all textures embedded at once? Is there any function which allows to embed all used textures at once in the .blend file?

I have multiple .blend files with dozens of textures and would prefer not to do this one by one.

The function you want is located in Info > File > External Data:


trouble with smooth shading 2.8 hey guys so i got my model to the point where i am trying to shade smooth ive got no modifiers or anything just a model i put together. on the bridge of the nose and the back of the lower head there is some weird shading happening. heres some pictures of what im doing, does anyone know whats causing this?

.

You may have face normals facing the wrong way in that stripe along the front of the face. Try recalculating them outside and it might go away.

You can show normals in blender 2.8 by clicking on the overlays menu in the 3d viewport

You can recalculate the normals on the outside of the mesh with Shift+N if that truly is your issue.

Note that you can only recalculate normals on geometry that you have selected, so go to face mode, then select all with A before you use the shortcut.


How to set a specific value for multiple shape keys? I have about 300 shapekeys and want set all of them to value 0.5 or 1. Is there a fast way to do it?

small script to set them all to a new_value except the basic shapekey :

select the object
copy paste and run the script

import bpy

new_value = 0.5

for shape in bpy.context.object.data.shape_keys.key_blocks:
    if shape.name != 'Basic' :
        shape.value = new_value


How to organize bookmarks in the file browser? Is it possible to control the order of the bookmarks in the file browser, without resetting and re-adding them all?

How can I do this?

You must edit a file called bookmarks.txt with your favorite text editor (e.g. notepad).
This file appears on your configuration folder of blender, which varies in location depending on your OS. As bookmarks are user specific, it will be in the user configuration path for your operating system. See the wiki.
Windows:
For Windows it is usually in %appdata%\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.69\config where 2.69 is the version of blender which you are using, and %appdata% is the AppData directory of your user folder).
Linux:
It will be in ~/.config/blender/2.69/config/, where ~ is your home directory.
OSX:
According to the wiki page about file paths, it should be in /Users/{user}/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.69/config/
Portable:
If you create a directory called config inside the 2.69 directory (where 2.69 is your version) this file will appear there the next time you run blender and add a bookmark.


How to distort (in this case) letters, patterns etc underneath a water drop? I’m interested on how to distort typography, patterns etc. which partially lie underneath a drop of liquid. See example below.

How would you approach this?

It's as simple as you wrote about it. Create a drop of fluid and place it on your textured mesh or just mesh with modeled pattern.

You can create drop of fluid with box modeling, sculpting, fluid simulation or even soft body. It's completely up to you.

Scene setup:

Nothing more than a plane and fluid drop - in this case sculpted with mouse from a sphere.

Node setup:

Even simpler - Principled shader with Transmission set to 1, IOR: 1.33 and Roughness: 0.


Edge connect like in 3dsmax Is there something simmiliar in Blender to the "Connect Edges" feature in 3dsmax?

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-57E3DDC9-50D2-4467-93E9-B1B103CEA30D-htm.html

You can achieve a similar result with the Subdivide operator

Just select the desired edges, press W > Subdivide. In the operator panel options choose the number of cuts.

Have in mind that this is most likely to create lots of NGons at the ends which are largely considered a bad modelling practice, and prone to problems with topology, animation, and texturing.


Acheiving Slit-Scan in Blender's Compositor Is there a way to make a slit-scan technique effect in the Compositor?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BV3G1tYF5Q-/

You can use textures as vectors to distort your image. May be a simplier node setup exists but this works.


Connect edges crease problem I am very begginer with blender, as you see when I press F to create faces it creates automaticly creases in that place only, in the upper part that I made before it made everything smooth, what am I doing wrong?

I just found the problem) !!
It was some faces inverted.


How can I render Volume Scattering on all my layers? I have an interior scene in witch I want to have atmospheric falloff (dust effect).
I've created an object that contains my room and I gave it a volume scatter shader (I'm working in Cycles).

The problem that I have is that my scene is very big and I need to render seperate layers. How do I deal with my volume in such a case ? I can't add it to each layer because when I combine them the volume will be to dense. I tried adding it only to the lights layer but it doesn't work.
As I said, it's a very big scene and I need to light it with a sun (can't use a spot light) so world volumetrics can't help.

I can do that in the compositor with my Z pass but this is not the answer I'm looking for.

I hope you understand the question.

You should use the render layers mask feature.  First divide up your solid objects between render layers however you would like.  Then, place your volume object on its own separate layer.

With the volume layer active, select the squares that correspond to the solid object layers using the "Mask Layer" selector.

Here is a sample result I put together.  Each cube is in its own render layer.

And this is what the volume layer looks like by itself.  You should combine the layers using the alpha over node.


Uneven UV-unwrapping Recently got back to trying to learn 3D-modeling, last time i gave up because of the UVs never working, or never working as i expected them to anyway.

So, whats the problem here? why are the UVs uneven? Why not like in the 2nd picture?

You should choose another unwraping method(just after unwrap operation at the bottom left corner of the 3d View). 'Conformal' seems to work fine.

Also, you should not use 2.80 version. It is not released yet. Bugs are still very much expected in the beta version so it will most likely cause various problems for you especially while you are learning and might not understand what should be happening and what might be happening because of bugs. At least keep this in mind because some things are going to work in ways you are not even supposed to expect in this version because it is still experimental.


Use of gizmo exits Lock Camera to View Whenever I Lock Camera to View and then attempt to navigate using the 3D gizmo, the view is immediately no longer locked to the camera.
Is there a way to allow the use of the gizmo while keeping the view locked to the camera?
Sorry if, as usual, I am unclear...
In response to Answer 1 below:
The first image shows that in Lock Camera to View mode, I can see the gizmo.
The second image shows the view after clicking the gizmo, which reflects the view no longer being locked to camera view.
If I am able to manipulate the view "inside the camera view", why can't I use the gizmo to do so?
Also, I am not trying to navigate the camera. I am trying to use the gizmo to navigate the model view, while maintaining the Locked Camera to View.

What exactly do you mean? You can't navigate the camera with gizmos if you are viewing through that camera. The Gizmo wouldn't even be visible. Could you show us a screenshot?
Update: You must be hitting the heads or the axis. You are supposed to grab around them. Clicking on the axes will send you to that view and out of camera mode
If you want to use those with the camera you would have to move the camera each time to those new locations. There is a shortcut where the camera moves to see what you are seeing in the viewport. Hold CTRL and ALT and Zero on the number pad.


unable to edit hair with brush in particle edit mode I created an object with a particle system (hair).But after a moment,the hair becomes impossible to edit,they still look grey in particle edit mode.I cannot use any brush or select the hair.Where does this problem come from and how can I fix it?

The problem is solved by going to Options and setting Editing Type to Particles


Does the Vector Math Normalize operation use the second input? The Vector Math node has an operation called Normalize.  I have always presumed that this is a monadic operator which ignores the second input and returns a unit vector in the direction of the input vector.  This is also what poor said in this answer.

However, I was recently reading the manual and noticed that it says:

  Normalize
  Normalizing input 1 and 2.

Which is super-duper unhelpful.  I have never known of a binary "normalize" operation (and couldn't find one in a quick Google search), so I don't know what "Normalizing input 1 and 2" means.

So what is going on here?  Does it use the second input, if so how?  Or is the manual just plain wrong?

Input 2 is not used, manual is wrong, I guess. Links to the source code for the node are below, you can clearly see input 2 is never called when in normalize mode.

SVM: https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/B/browse/master/intern/cycles/kernel/svm/svm_math_util.h

OSL: https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/B/browse/master/intern/cycles/kernel/shaders/node_vector_math.osl


process of combining 2 meshes into one not in object mode but in edit mode? I made a mistake of creating another mesh in edit mode so when I use ctrl + J to combine mesh it doesn't work. What would be a good way to combine 2 meshes together in edit mode since they are already considered as one mesh object? As you can see I would like to merge both the cone and the cylinder together into one single mesh. The cylinder is just a extrusion of the ball object. For now I'm going to re-add the cone in object mode then ctrl + j to merge.

What are you trying to do? Deleting the cone, adding it in object mode, and then using ctrl + j just gets you back to where you started. Its the same as adding it in edit mode.

Assuming you want to join them to one flowing mesh.

Select the edge loops with alt + rightclick
Search in the space search menu for bridge edge loops
Select it from the search

Before:

After:


How can I convert the locations of a group of objects into the vertices of an object? I have a bunch of locations from a group of objects and I want to turn it into the vertices of a new objects with no edge connections.

In the .gif I invoke the Pie Menu with the W key.

The important part in this setup is the small loop that takes a list of objects and returns their locations in a new list. This basic setup is pretty common all kinds of animation nodes trees.

Extra notes:

The python equivalent to this loop would be:

# Long Version
locations = []
for object in objectList:
    location = object.location
    locations.append(location)

# More Pythonic Version
locations = [object.location for object in objectList]

The core of the addon translates for your node tree into python code that looks like this:

 def main(loop_iterator_0):
     global _frame_9pg, _enabled_jfa
     loop_generator_output_0 = []
     loop_zipped_list = list(zip(loop_iterator_0))
     loop_iterations = len(loop_zipped_list)
     for current_loop_index, (loop_iterator_element_0, ) in enumerate(loop_zipped_list):
         # Node: 'NodeTree' - 'Object Transforms Input'
         try:
             _location_9pg = loop_iterator_element_0.location
         except:
             _location_9pg = mathutils.Vector((0, 0, 0))
             _rotation_9pg = mathutils.Euler((0, 0, 0))
             _scale_9pg = mathutils.Vector((0, 0, 0))
             _quaternion_9pg = mathutils.Quaternion((1, 0, 0, 0))
         if _enabled_jfa:
             loop_generator_output_0.append(_location_9pg)
         pass
     return loop_generator_output_0


Weight paint (for particles) not working my first post here.
I'm using beta of Blender 2.8 and am a beginner here.
So my problem is during Blender Guru's beginner tutorial on particles, he is able to use the weight paint easily, but when I tried clicking, it still remained blue.

Is it something Blender 2.8 does differently than on his videos? Any ideas? Thanks

You are using a 0 weight brush with add setting. Nothing will change for + 0 operation

Change your weight and try it again. There are many options(not that much compare with Photoshop) in the Tool panel, you should check it out.


Is there a way to create an executable of a game not version specific? It's quite inconvenient that Yo Frankie! makes you start the game from inside Blender (and there appears to be no other way to boot it)

Beyond that, it also requires a specific version of Blender, 2.49, which may confuse people who try to run it with the latest version and see the game crash (why is that anyway?)

1.) Is there perhaps a way to create an executable packed with Blender so you can start the game as you would any other without having to start it through Blender?

2.) Why is Yo Frankie! Not compatible with the latest version of blender?

The standard copies of blender that you download include both blender and blenderplayer which is a game engine only runtime. Blender includes the "Save As Game Engine Runtime" addon that gives you an export to runtime option. There is an explanation of creating a standalone runtime in the manual. There is also a "Game Engine Publishing" addon to help export for multiple platforms.

YoFrankie was released 9th December 2008 with blender 2.48a. When blender 2.50 was released a year later the python API was changed dramatically and has no compatibility with previous versions. YoFrankie contains many python scripts that would need to be re-written to work in anything newer than 2.49. Some of the character rigs and animations would also need some adjustment to work in newer versions. As all of the scripts and data files are available someone could update the game to a newer version but so far no-one has made the effort.


How to lock to desired axis permanently in edit mode Is there a way in edit mode to lock tweaks to the desired axis permanently? I'd like to tweak a couple of vertices consecutively without pressing "y" or whatever all the time invoking the tweak (grab, or simple grab after selecting the vert).

Thank you,

Mihály

If you're using hotkeys to translate your vertices, the fastest way to work is to use the middle-click shortcut:

Press G to begin your grab operation and begin moving your selection roughly along the axis you want to lock to.
Now, middle-click and you'll be locked to that axis.

Alternatively, you can hold the middle mouse button down (again, while still in the Grab operation) and you'll see lock guides in the 3D View. While still holding the middle mouse button, you can drag your selection to lock to one of these axes. When you release the middle mouse button, the lock remains in place.

Both methods also work with the right-click-and-drag "tweak mode" way of initiating the Grab operator.


How to get rid of materials showing in the viewport when in solid mode I modeled a mesh and gave it materials. But material colors get in the way; I'd like to go on modeling and just seeing a well-contrasted, solid-light object.

I find this setup uncomfortable and I'd like it to be just solid color, for instance:

I know this is the normal, default Blender behaviour; my question is not "Why my materials doesn't show in viewport", but:

Is there a way to get rid of materials showing in viewport when in solid mode, without removing them?

EDIT: I can use matcaps, I'm using BI. Same problem with Cycles. Apparently shading is ok. I'm trying to post the blend...

blend file

EDIT2: Cycles shows the same behavior. This has been tested with an untamed Blender 2.79a just downloaded.

I'm having a bit of difficulty recreating your problem, but it's possible you have a type of viewport shading activated. Check the menu to the right inside your viewport (press 'n' if you don't see it) and look under the 'Shading' option. It should be located just beneath 'Display'. See if you have something like 'Textured Solids' checked. If you don't, an alternate way to address this problem is to apply a matcap, which you will find in shading, as well. Simply click on the picture after you tick the matcap box, and select the material you want.


Blender Installation 2.79b problems Using Windows 8.1 64 bit, blender version 2.79b

When I go to the download page it makes me download an msi file. After I extract it, it just takes various CM_Unspecified files out. I've tried clicking on CM_FP_Blender.blender.exe in order to run the program, but it gives the error: The program can't start because python35.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

And so I followed that, but did nothing, still the same error. I've tried downloading blender several times now and it never has worked. I really want to start using blender, so this is quite frustrating! I could use any help I could get, thanks

If you go to https://www.blender.org/download/ and click on "macOS, Linux, and other versions" you get a choice to download the zip version as well that only needs to be extracted to run:

If you download .msi Windows installer file, you should never attempt to extract it. You should simply run it to install software from it.

You can also download any previous versions from http://download.blender.org/release/


how to turn off jumping by parts when moving (snapping) I accidently somehow enabled jumping when moving objects (when you move an object it moves by short and precise steps) and I don't know how to disable it.

click on the magnet (looks like a horseshoe) in the 3D view


How to display mirror reflection in viewport? How can I display the amount of reflection an object has in the viewport?

The viewport has several ways of displaying your scene.

During modelling you might use Solid Shading, Material Shading,  Wireframe, or even GLSL (matcap) shading can be useful.

Reflectivity can only be seen (June 2015) in Rendered Viewport mode, this works for Cycles and Blender Internal engines, these options can give you a quick approximation of what the final render will look like.


Smoke Simulation does not appear in Eevee viewport I was learning how to do smoke simulations today, but when I applied object -> quick smoke, and pressed play, no smoke could be seen coming out. I then tried baking the simulation, and it finally showed up, but only for a few frames. Now I want to remove the bake, and the manual tells me there is a button in the cache settings of the fluid simulation, called "free bake" which is not there.
If anyone could please tell me how I could:

Remove the bake of the smoke simulation and
see the smoke in the Eevee realtime viewport.

Just found out through some extra searching that a new change was made in Blender 2.82 that removes the "live" smoke simulation in rendered view. We now have to bake the simulation everytime we want to see something different.

I found another thread about this problem:
Quick Liquid and Smoke doesn't work in viewport


How to Align/Straighten/make Coplanar Non-planar edge between adjacent edges? I've just started learning Blender and I have a situation where I have 2 non-vertical faces (not parallel to any axis) with a common edge which is currently not coplanar to other 2 vertical edges.

I am trying to move this edge along the Y-axis until both faces become coplanar but I don't know how to go about it. It's probably really simple but I've been using MicroStation for 20 years and how I would do it in that is likely different to how it should be done in Blender.

Apart rebuilding faces, as I said in comments above, here you find a possible way or sort of inspiration for a more "elegant" method, involving the "magic" Knife tool:

here is a similar setup to your situation:

we're going to use the knife tool to add a "guide" vertex to which we'll snap later, making the two selected faces planar again.

after activating the knife tool, it will show a green square when it "snaps" to a starting vertex: click here.

then, drag until it snaps the end vertex: click here too, then "confirm" pressing enter

note: the knife tool will "cut through" your mesh and create an intermediate vertex just where you need it (you see a preview before "confirming")

now you simply need to activate snap on vertixes, and drag your shared edge (locking Z in this case) until it snaps perfectly to the vertex just created by the knife tool

and now you just need to use "remove doubles" to remove the "guide vertex" we added before, and you're done!

Hth.


Duplication vertex lighting/color I'm wondering if it is possible to copy vertex lighting from one object to another, similar but different from default one. Here is screen showing what I really want to do ( https://i.imgur.com/STm85Gl.png ) - make every selected place the same dark. I can't do it manually with vertex painting and brush tools because any change is very visible, I want to avoid it. So is it possible and if is how can I apply it?

Thank you in advance for response!

Try using data transfer modifier. Vertex Color is in Face Corner Data. If Your objects have same topology, the best setting of matching vertex is Topology, otherwise try nearest corner and best matching normal:


Why are keyframes occurring when adjustments are made with transform? Im making adjustments to with transform over an image in the video sequence and the nothing would perceivably happen until i scrub through and its as if random keyframes have been positioned
its very irritating what is happening?

Many thanks,

J

Check to make sure Automatic Keyframe is disabled in the timeline as shown below as the red circle.

When enabled, a keyframe will be added for anything you move, rotate, or scale.


My camera turned invisible It might be a dumb question but I didn't find the answer anywhere on the internet.

I really don't understand why my camera is all of a sudden invisible in my scene. I know it is there when I push Numpad 0 it goes to the cameras view but when I push it again and go back into the scene its gone along with the center point. So far I have only tried Alt + H.

The camera is selected here but I cant see the black outlining

In the 3D View properties region N key, to the right of the screen, you ticked the option Only Render (visible in your screenshot).

This makes only visible objects with actual renderable geometry visible in the viewport. The camera object, being an abstraction of a virtual object not visible in a final image, becomes hidden away.


Alpha in the mist channel Its possible to render an object with transparency on (to don't see the background) and also to get the mist channel with the  transparency applied to?
I would like the part marked in blue on the picture to be transparent, but the mist channel take it as white (I imagine that it considers that far away)

In order to set pixels of the mist transparent where the original render is transparent, you can multiply the alpha pass with the mist pass.
The full steps to achieve this result are:

Enable film transparency (Render Properties > Film > Transparent)
Enable the mist pass (View Layer Properties > Passes > Data > Mist)
Switch to the Compositing workspace or open the compositor and enable Use Nodes
Add a Math node (Add > Converter > Math), set the mode to Multiply and use the Alpha of the render layer and the Mist as inputs. Alternatively this should also work with the Mix node set to Multiply and the factor set to 1. The effect is that the alpha is used to mask the mist. When the alpha is zero the result of the math node is zero as well, thus the result is transparent in exactly the same places as the alpha channel.
Use the result from the previous step for further compositing.

Below is a visualization of the intermediate steps of the compositing node tree.
Image pass

Alpha pass

Mist pass

Mist pass multiplied with alpha pass (masked mist pass)

Image pass mixed with masked mist pass (final result)

Compositing nodes


simulated cloth doesnt show through glass in Evee What I did
I made like this desk with mat by using cloth simulation

Problem
When I use cycles, looks like that through glass

And Evee looks like that. Desk mat doesnt show, and I realized under tap is not shown as well just now(it's image texture).

This is glass shader

Somebody knows how fix it??
*add 1
I changed material settings of desk mat like this pic ↓

and result is like that, as you can see desk mat appears!
(I still doubt its proper setting cuz according to your sources which pasted, alpha blend is proper setting)
so I changed material settings of place under tap as well, the same as desk mat.
but unfortunately it shows only frame.

change material settings
blend mode: opaque
shadow mode: opaque
screen space refraction: no


Why do fractured parts act like an explosion? In the following we are testing cell fracturing applied to a UV-sphere (remeshed to blocks, BTW). We then apply rigidbody physics to the generated parts.

When we start simulation as you can see below it looks like an explosion! Why? Secondly parts are continuing to bounce for long time even though their bouncing property is zero. To avoid parts going out of camera we put a passive rigidbody (big sphere). It's bouncing property is also zero. Why they act like that and how to solve this? For all parts and big sphere the collision-shape is mesh and friction value is 0.5.

Update:
Convex-hull collision, all shards are convex

Convex-hull collision, NOT all shards are convex

Mesh collision, all shards are convex

Mesh collision, NOT all shards are convex

For the above simulations:
Split Impulse is checked, Steps Per Second=120, Solver Iterations=50.

As can be seen from the above simulation results:

if all shards are convex, convex-hull collision results in the best.
if not all shards are convex, mesh collision results in the best.

Not sure why it is like this, after all!

Update:
We incorporated all the suggestions below you can find in the answer and comments, but it seems there are lots of difficulties that are not solved yet, after all! Look at the following simulations where an spherical shelf is fractured. None of convex-hull or mesh collision-shape works correctly. Check the animation in the right, it looks it is not a shard but a airplane!! This is because of use of convex-hull for shards. Check the middle one (mesh collision-shape for shards) they don't act like shard but like spring! :(

Basically it happens because when it simulates, the solver thinks meshes are intersecting with each other and it tries to separate them asap, giving the shards (sometimes) big speeds. Already mentioned Split Impulse might work and should in most cases, but there are couple more things you could try:

In Scene -> Rigid Body World increase Steps Per Second and Solver Iterations for more accurate simulation.
Try changing between Convex Hull and Mesh in Physics -> Rigid Body (for each simulated object) and adjust the Collision Margin parameter; it is not said which works better for any scene, Convex Hull simplifies the simulation so it may speed up the process, but mess the simulation even more,
Increase Margin when performing cell fracturing - this adds some space between the shards and may help a bit with simulation,
Scale whole scene up and apply scale for all objects - usually simulation performs much better for bigger objects; if you use this method, you might want to increase simulation speed in Scene -> Rigid Body World.

To copy parameters for all rigid bodies use Rigid Body Tools, select all objects you want to set parameters (like Margin for example) and copy from active Rigid body object (the one you have selected last).


Smoke Simulation Render Issue I was trying to render a rocket takeoff, but where I have my domain set is just a gray box on the final render?

You will need to add color emission to your object by using an Attribute node with the property flame spelled exactly like that.

Then connect that node to a ColorRamp. Adjust the color ramp settings to be the color of the flame, and then attach that to an Emission shader.

Set the power of the Emission shader to 5, then connect that to the Add shader in the Cycles node setup for the smoke domain.


imprint plane with boolean modifier I'm wondering if it's possible to "imprint" a cube shape into a flat plane.
if i use the boolean modifier to set a cube inside a larger cube it imprints the  cube shape into the mesh. But, if I intersect a cube with a flat plane it cuts a square shape into the plane. How do I imprint the cube into a plane?

I see 2 solutions for your problem:
If you want to apply your modifiers, you can extrude your plane to a big cube (bigger than the cube you want to imprint). Apply the boolean modifier, and delete the extruded faces.

If you want to keep your modifiers, you will have to create some thickness.
Start with a slightly bigger cube you will add (modifier -> boolean -> union operation), then difference boolean with a  modified cube (with larger part over your plane to cut the upper part of the initial cube, and dig in your plane).


Extrude with exact measurements I want to build this thing, exactly.

I've created a cylinder and extrude it.

How can I extrude the ring outwards exactly 7mm?
Or Is this the complete wrong way to do this?

place a plane or other object exactly 7mm away from your cylinder
extrude your ring of faces then scale them in the X/Y plane only with Snap to Vertex enabled and snap them to the object created in 1. Make sure the vertex is what's exactly 7mm away from the cylinder.


Viewport Artifacts when working with big scales Has anyone encountered those lines which look like z-fighting already?
They only occur when the scale that is being worked on is relatively big.
When switching to orthographic this problem does not occur.

My island is 320x320m in size with metric as Unit and 1 as Unit Scale.
Any ideas how to fix this?

Changing the clipping to:
Start: 1m and End: 1km
as suggested by @user1853 worked!


Deform Mesh Subtly, randomly across many Objects There are lots of good Q/A on the Blender Stack exchange about this stuff, but none of it has so far informed my decisions on the best way to do this, so apologies for any redundancy (I did look through all the recommended existing questions before posting!

I'm fairly new to Blender and pushing myself to learn by taking a simple subject and layering on complexity as I slowly begin to grasp Blender's capabilities.  My first project to push through was to try to make photo-realistic M&Ms.  It's been really fun and SO MANY lights have come on for me!  Ok on to it...

My M&Ms start as cubes, get subsurf mod 3x, subsurf is APPLIED, then "Transfrom > To Sphere".  After this textures are applied, etc.  (This step is probably not the most efficient but I'll work on that eventually).

I then duplicate the Object 5x, apply the five different M&M colors, then duplicate the Objects to create my composition on a plane.

All the M&M mesh objects are perfect squished spheres with no irregularities.  This is CLOSE to what I want but real M&Ms have subtle irregularities in shape.

I don't know how to approach:

What would be the best way to apply a defomration to a small mesh object with a heavily subdivided topology?
If my composition has many of these objects (with many of them having different textures applied) is there a way to apply the subtle deformation to ALL of them?
If there is a way to choose a subtle deformation method, then apply to all of them, how then could I randomize it so all the mesh objects don't have the same subtle deformation?

TL;DR

I have a bunch of small heavily subdivided mesh objects with different materials applied.  How can I subtly deform each one to give photo-realism?

Here's the latest version of the image I'm practicing on and the .Blend file.  Thanks to a few of you who have already helped me get where I am!  Thanks in advance to anyone who knows how I can tackle the next steps.

If anything I've done so far is a "rookie" way to do it and there's a better way, I am open and eager to learning the better way and changing my composition (or even starting over for practice)

My practice .Blend File

A few side comments.

You don't need very high subdivisions for such a simple shape.
You don't need to apply the subdivision
You don't need to Transform > To Sphere, you can use a Cast modifier.

To address you main question, if you want to add subtle variations to your objects your answer lies in a Displace modifier.
Now if you just add one to your M&Ms and duplicate them they will all have the same deformation and remain identical.
The trick here is to change the Texture Coordinates for your displace texture to Global so the texture is mapped using scenes world coordinate space, giving the impression of randomness across several objects.
Have in mind that this method is unsuited if you want to animate the objects, since the shape would wiggle around as you move them. You also cannot link as group/collection libraries since the coordinate considered for displacement is always read from the same static point in space the original was defined, not where each individual instance is placed at.


How do I use the "Setup Tracking Scene" feature with Cycles? I'm trying to use the Setup Tracking Scene button(in the Movie Clip Editor) with Cycles. While it works fine in Blender Internal, when I switch it to Cycles, I don't get shading or shadows. Is the setup for compositing in Cycles different from Blender Internal?

Yes it is different. I believe that for cycles you don't have directly a "shadow only" material. You have to do some tricks in material settings(with the node editor).


Rotation throws object out of collision box blender game engine Whenever I create a rotating condition in my game, my mesh gets thrown out of the collision box and sort of orbits the box which causes it to look very odd and not function. Any Ideas how I can fix this?

PIC 1 (Croc not rotated at all, stays in collision box)
PIC 2 (Croc rotated a small amount, flies out)

Mostlikely you have an inhomogene scaling at one of the parent objects.

I suggest to apply ctrl+a Scale to ensure it is (1,1,1) at all parents.


Why is the middle dot of the face outside the face itself? The middle dot of the mesh is outside the mesh itself as you can see in the shot below. Please let me know if I can recenter it or is there a workaround for this?

The ‘dot’ representing the face is positioned at the “centre” of all the vertices of that face - calculated as the average over all vertices. In your case you have a large ngon with many more than 4 vertices and the ‘average’ happens to be outside your mesh (drawn away due to all the vertices along the curve).

It isn’t a problem that the ‘centre’ of the face is outside the face itself but it might be a problem that the face is an ngon (more than 4 vertices) as it can cause problems further down the line (eg, when trying to animate or subdivide the mesh). It would be best to delete the face (X, Faces Only) and re-create it with better geometry (quads/tris).


How to replace / swap frames in Blender VSE? Is there a way to replace / swap frames in Blender VSE?

My workflow has three stages, I generate three sets of frames for each project. Each frame folder has subfolder for each scene/shot.

preview frames - first set of frames, low sampling 50% resolution for the client to review
revised frames - second set with requested changes implemented, low sampling, 50% resolution, for the client's final approval
final frames - high sampling, 100% resolution for final production

Very often, there are minor or no changes in VSE, so all I need is to have preview/review frames swapped with final frames. Deleting old frames and adding new ones is inefficient option, since I have to re-do all the effects and transitions. Is there a way to swap the frames or point Blender VSE to look for updated frames in a different folder without disrupting the VSE layout?

I did this only a day ago.  I'd changed the path where the videos were stored, and the strip after that went blank.  I pressed "N" from the VSE window, went to the right where the strip's properties showed up and clicked on the source folder, browsed for the new path, and bingo, that video came back with fading settings, keyframes etc, intact!

Hope this is all you need to do.  Just re-browse to the desired video.  If they all have the same number of frames you might get away with this.

An alternative might be to produce just the best quality video and convert/copy that to lower settings for preview etc.


adding scenes into blender video duplicates soundtrack from original video When I tried to add text to blender in a very specific font, I tried using the method of creating a text object in a scene and then added the scene to the video. Since I was creating a music video, I needed to copy that first scene and create more. However, all of a sudden, whatever the first scene was on in the song, the song at that part of the first scene ended up being duplicated into that scene and played awkardly for the following copied scenes of text. This got annoying, but I couldn't figure out a way to silence the imported scenes. What should I do?

Laying text on top of a video strip in the VSE:

The VSE's built in Text tool?  That gave me no joy either so I do it this way...

In Blender's 3D window, press SHIFT-C to center the 3D cursor.

Add text for one of the subtitles and if there's no camera, add one of those also.  Ensure it is pointing straight down by pressing ALT-R.

View through the camera with Numpad-Zero key.

In the 3D window press N to bring up the window's properties and open the "View" tab and tick "lock camera to view".  Close with N again and zoom the camera in and out so you can see all of the text.  (the "Home" key will automatically fit the view to the available space.
(You can alternatively scale the text)

Various fonts aren't hard to setup, but we'll get to that below.

When you get the text looking right, make a save of this Blender setup and use it as a template for future text image creation.

Render what's in the camera viewport and save it as an alpha layered image in .png format.

To do this go to the render properties at right, (ALT-SPACE) open up it's "Output" tab and nominate the folder for the image and set it to the png format.  Make sure to press the RGBA button at extreme right in order to add an alpha layer.

Whilst in the rendering properties, go to the "shading" tab  and set it's 'alpha' setting slot at right, from 'Sky' to 'Transparent'.

Render using OpenGL or with Blender's internal render.  I prefer OpenGL for this job.
Goto upper left of window and click on "Render-->OpenGL Render Animation"

By choice I'd be creating the text images in one Blender file and using another to produce the final mixed movie in the VSE to keep things straight forward and predictable.

Once the text images have been rendered, lay them over the main movie in the VSE where they're supposed to show.

You'll need to set each text strip as an "Alpha Over" in it's properties panel but read on beforehand....
(Highlite the strip & press N)

The image strips can also be faded in and out by keyframing their opacity.

Because you'll most likely have to position and scale the text, add an effects strip for each text image.
Select the text strip, press SHIFT-A and select "Effects strip-->Transform."

When you use Effects strips, it's best to leave the text properties alone and set Location, Scale, and Opacity settings in the Effects-strip properties instead. (at right when you press N)

The movie along with subtitles can now be rendered.  The VSE will render this arrangement up quite rapidly compared to the method you have been using.

Fonts:

You can use most fonts that Windows does.  Simply goto the C:\Windows\Fonts folder and copy those you like into Blender's Fonts folder.  That's found in -

C:\Blender277\blender-2.77a-windows64\2.77\datafiles\fonts\

Once you've got a selection of fonts -

Select the text properties at right (F icon) and open the Font tab, click on the "Regular" folder, and select from those you've copied across.

Saving Blender in various setup configurations, will retain all your settings and likes, ready to be used at any time.

Colours and/or textures for added text objects can be set up as with any object.


Enabling Dynotopo turns my sculpted mesh into a cube When I enabled the dyntopo as said in the video below , the sculpted face turns into a cube but in the video he is able to sculpt on the face after enabling dynpotopo.
https://youtu.be/WMEXEh5r0G4

I kinda solved it by applying modifier in object mode too I know it's kind of silly but I am new to blender


How to change color of the currently active window in Blender? I would love to change the highlight color of the window being used when working in Blender. Now, when I hover over it, it highlights just a tiny bit. Is it possible to highlight it with different color or at lest more of the white highlight that it currently uses? I wasnt able to find the proper setting for it in Settings - Themes..

Thank you!
Martin

You can edit your theme using Edit > Preferences > Themes.  From there, go to each panel, then open the Theme space dropdown, and set the Header colour:

You'll have to do this for each menu, I don't think there's a setting for all the menus.
Theme docs: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/preferences/themes.html


Is there a better way to rotate the order of vertices of currently selected faces in edit mode? I've been playing with duplifaces and it turns out the orientation of the copied geometry depends on the order of the vertices in the face (https://developer.blender.org/T30547).  Since I'm unhappy with the orientation of some of my duplicated geometry, clearly I need to "rotate" the vertex order of some of the faces.

I've come up with this little python snippet, but it has one drawback I can think of.

# rotate selected face

import bpy
import bmesh

mesh = bpy.context.active_object.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(mesh)

for face in bm.faces:
    if (face.select):
        vs = face.verts[:]
        vs2 = vs[1:]+vs[:1]
        # face.verts =vs2 # fails because verts is read-only
        bm.faces.remove(face)
        f2 = bm.faces.new(vs2)
        f2.select = True

# trigger UI update
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(mesh)

The drawback is that it destroys the old face and creates a new one.  I suspect that there will be some cases where information on the old face will be lost.

Just for some flavor, here's an illustration of a situation where you might want manual control over the orientation:

The UI isn't updating because the script does not call

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(mesh)

(I got this from how to use BMesh to add verts, faces, and edges to existing geometry )


How to prevent textures (a png file) to repeat in a grid pattern? To whomever it may  concern,

I'm looking to get a singular logo onto my bullet train. It seems every time I go through the process, I end up with the logo repeating itself on a grid pattern. How do I fix this? All I'd like is to be able to add 1 logo, as a png.

Thank you.

https://gyazo.com/3338f4671a248bdd589a88a0558a2e5b

In your image texture node change Repeat to Clip.
This will show the image only once and rest will be transparent instead of tilting in the case of repeat


Problem with baking normal map I've been trying to figure out how to get a normal map from my highpoly mesh to a low poly mesh (which is just the high poly decimated a few times.)
I've followed a few different tutorials and I keep getting the same results so I thought I'd ask for some help.
I smart uv project the low poly mesh, then I add a normal map and image texture node  and set it to non colour data and make sure thats still selected. I select the high poly, then the low poly and go into the cycles settings and make sure 'Selected to Active' is ticked then press bake. I'm left with this:

I'm not sure it's an unwrapping issue, topology issue. Some help would be appreciated if you can!
Thanks

Put the 2 pumpkins at the exact same position, unwrap the low-poly (for example with Smart UV Project method), give it a material with an Image Texture (not plugged for the moment), create the image (make sure that you create a 32-bit Float), select the high-poly, shift select the low-poly, choose Bake Type > Normal, Selected to Active, Extrusion > 0.2. Then bake. Then plug the Image Texture into a Normal Map node that you plug into the Normal socket of the Principled BSDF or of the Diffuse.


Why are my sprinkles floating and not sticking to the mesh? Can somebody help me on why my sprinkles are floating when i do a hair particle thingy. I did the particle properties and I'm trying to add some sprinkles. When I tried adding them as an objects, they all started floating. The scale, instead of changing the size of the sprinkles, they also change the distances of each sprinkle. What can I do so the sprinkles stay on the surface so they don't float around and so that they don't go further apart?

The problem was that the origin of your sprinkle object was very far away from the actual mesh.  That is why your sprinkles are all floating above the doughnut.
All you need to do is select your sprinkle object, right click, go to Set Origin and then click Origin to Geometry.

After that, your sprinkles should show up on the surface of your doughnut.


How to bind the channel of rotation of the object to the position channel of another object? It is imperative for me to use the rotation channel along the x axis to smoothly change the position of the Empty object along the z axis. I tried to do this by using Object Constraint Transformation, but failed in its settings. The empty does not act as wanted.

Can someone help me with an example?
Thank you in advance!

This can rather easily be achieved by using simple drivers.
I'd recommend watching this video series. The first video explains pretty good how it works.

Here is a quick recording i did, showing how to do what you're asking.

Steps:

Select Empty, on transforms add a driver on Z Location.
In the input variables select the cube as input.
Change the type to X Rotation. Your Empty should now move along it's Z-axis when the cube is rotating around its X-axis
If you want to inverse the input, you can simply change the Expression from "var + 1" to "var * -1". (Multiplying something by negative 1 simply inverts its value)

Edit: And if you want to do it with a constraint, this setup seems to work for me:

Gifycat showing it.

Don't know too much about how the Transformation constraint works, so can't really explain well why this work but it works. If you want to invert the axis just swap around the 90 and -90 on X rotation.


Does blender drain battery life when I'm not using it? I used Avid Media Composer for a few weeks on my laptop, but it drained a lot of battery without me using it. Will blender do the same?
Thanks in advance.

Unless you are rendering or have an active process (like generating a simulation), blender won't run in the Background on your Computer, so it shouldn't drain any Battery


Lattice for vertices? I recently watched a gun modelling tutorial in 3ds max and the instructor often used a tool called "FFD modifier".

The way he used it was by selecting a few vertices/edges, click the ffd modifier and then he could transform only those vertices

Is there something similar in Blender?

You can use a normal lattice deform modifier but specify a vertex group that has only those faces.

Select the faces and add them to a vertex group:

select both objects with the lattice active and press ctrl + P ,Lattice deform.

select the object and select the vertex group in the modifier.

Now you can only edit those faces.


Limit Rotation Local Space Not Working I am creating an airplane 3d model and I am rigging the wing flaps.
I am using Object Constraints to rig the flaps. I have added an empty as the Rig Controller, and have rotated the Empty so that it rotates the flap on the correct angle.
If I rotate the empty on the Local X, it rotates alright. But I want to make it so that the empty has limited rotation so you can only rotate it a certain amount before it stops. I have the flaps object parented to the empty, so that it moves along with the empty. I added a Limit Rotation to the Empty, but when I do so, the flap seems to flip upside down. When I change the Owner Space to, Local Space, it fixes that problem. But when I do that, the Limit rotation seems to completely stop working.
I also want to rig the entire airplane to a Master Controller, so that I can animate the airplane as a hole. But when I parent the Flaps Rig to the entire airplane controller, the flaps and empty change shape and get all stretched out, and move to another place.
This topic is a little bit hard to explain in words, so I have added Photos, as well as a Link to a video I created, showing the problem as well. Please See Below.
If anyone can help me out, I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks!
Here is the video, so that you can better understand the Problem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpsD-PSk24Q

About your second problem, I could not reproduce it with the file you’ve shared, but maybe apply the scale (even though it should not scale the child when you parent)?
About your flap :
First thing, you were animating the rotation of the empty, but as it is not aligned with the global orientation anymore you may have bad rotation results : Rotations, once keyframed, do not consider the object’s own local orientation but the global orientation. So when you are supposed to animate an object that is not aligned with the global axis, the solution, before desaligning the object from the world orientation, is to parent it to an empty (or any other object), then orientate the empty the way you want in your scene, then animate the object, not the empty. As the object is parented to an empty, its new global orientation is not the world anymore, it is the parent local space, so any keyframed rotation will happen on the parent's local axis, if the parent is orientated the way you want in the 3D scene, the child object will rotate the way you want relatively to the world space.
This is also why your Limit Rotation constraint on local space didn’t work: Local Space will consider the object’s parent local space, but the empty has no parent, so the constraint won’t affect it. You need to give the constraint to the flap.
So, to fix the problem:

In Edit mode align the flap with the global orientation, and put its origin on its axis position:

Parent it to an empty:

Move and rotate the empty until it fits to the wing:

Give a Limit Rotation/Local Space to the flap (not to the empty):

Open the N panel, animate the flap on the X axis:


Join overlapping objects/meshes into one surface in Blender I have a lot of spheres imported from the pdb-import plugin, which make up a molecule. I chose the radii of the spheres large enough, that all individual spheres overlap somewhere with others and this should form one closed object.

I cannot find a single tool to merge/weld/join/whatever the faces where they overlap to form just one uniform mesh surface without hidden faces on the "inside" of other objects.

The Mesh > Faces > Intersect and a simple Object > Join do not seem to do what I want to achieve.

For reference concerning the pdb-plugin, I have done Apply > Make Dupliverts Real and Object > Convert > Mesh as suggested.

I would use the boolean modifier to union them together.

Lets say I have 3 overlapping spheres i want to make into one, connected object.

Select one sphere, and create two boolean modifiers, both set to Union, with the other spheres as the objects:

Hit apply, and you can now delete the original two spheres. the third sphere with the boolean modifiers should now be one mesh that makes up all 3 spheres:


Total length of a complex curve I have a complex curve which is a series of vertices and I would like to find the total length of all the vertices. MeasureIT can show me the length of each segment in the curve but does not seem to offer a total length. Is there any tool that can do this?

MeasureIt addon also gives the total sum of values.
It's displayed under the measurements list.

Select all the edges you want to measure
Select a "measure group" like 'A' (or it won't work)
Click the Segment button to calculate


How do I make something like this in Blender? Is it possible to set a boundary for the model for certain frames then remove the boundary afterward?
See the image, first the model is set within a smaller canvas(the laptop), then remove the boundary so model will show in entire scene. Meanwhile laptop canvas will act like a portal hiding part of the model, kinda similar to cutting a section with a plane surface in Vred.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSlA-EREDr8
@6:45-6:53)

Sort of. You can animate a mix mask with transparency for both models and keyframe the mix factor so they appear and disappear exactly when you want them to. Alternately, you can simply make two completely different scenes and composite them.


Blender renders circles instead of squares Hi and thanks for any help that I can get in advance.

I'm rendering my first file and for some reason blender is rendering squares as circles. Please help!

What I'm trying to render:

What's being rendered:

Turn Off Subsurface Modifier completely.


How to place a texture? I was continuing further on the project while I assigned different materials to the face of the cube i was stuck on assigning the the texture to highlighted face how do i do it?

Pretty simple. Start off by taking a look at the below screenshot:

Add a mix node and two diffuse node.
Put your texture (MUST have a transparent background) into one of the diffuse nodes and plug both into the mix node. (Don't mind my texture, it was the first one I found with a transparent background)
Make sure the diffuse node with your texture is at the bottom, you'll see why if you don't.

Thats really all there is to it. If you want to do the same thing on glass just replace the diffuse node without the texture with a glass node. Hope this helps!

If you want to have a glossy material on both the text and the background part you can't just use a glossy material, you will need to go a little bit deeper to get a realistic material. Have a look at this setup (to see it in full size just click the image, or right click it and choose open in new tab):


How to access tools from the tools panel in blender 2.8 One of the first changes I noticed in blender 2.8 was that this panel:

was gone, along with all of the tools that where in it, some of the most useful of which for me where the physics tools. Is there any way to bring it back, or if not, where did all of the tools on it go (ex. I still can't find the copy physics from active)? I'm not really expecting someone to tell me about every single tool, but just generally if they were relocated to somewhere specific or just thrown all over the new interface.

I think this is what you are looking for

Good Luck


Can I create pbr textures from blender and export it to Unreal or Unity? I would like to experiment with pbr on blender, using the pbr feature, I know people who export from substance painter  as albedo map, normal map, specular ,etc from substance to another engine such as unity or even unreal, I noticed that "whatever happens in cycles dies in cycles", but can my luck change ?
if I create Pbr maps and export in from blender cycles-Pbr to an engine?
pd : Cycles nodes does not exist in another engine! ,but pbr is an exception?

"PBR" is a buzzword that refers to some shader design conventions, such as respecting energy conservation, using fresnel reflections, and such. "PBR Textures" are merely textures intended for some shader that follows these conventions. As Cycles is a render engine itself and not a texture authoring tool, it won't be helpful in authoring textures. You can certainly paint textures using Blender's texture painting function that target a PBR shader, but as Blender doesn't have a PBR viewport shader you will won't have the instant viewport feedback of how your textures are looking. You have to export them out to your game engine, doing some "guess and check" with the values.


Rendering a semi transparent object on a transparent background I have a problem rendering a sphere with a semi-transparent material on a transparent background.
When rendered in preview mode, the result is correct, the invisible parts of the sphere don't show up :

But when I calculate the final render, I only get a totally transparent image.
When the transparency box in the Render Properties is unchecked, it works fine : the problem only occurs when the background transparency is enabled.
For the material, I used a noise texture linked to an emission shader which I added to a transparent one :

Would you have any idea where it comes from ?

Your problem is that you are adding the shaders instead of mixing them. Therefore, the material is interpreted by Cycles as being 100% transparent, regardless of what else it is.

You can fix this by swapping out your Add Shader for a Mix Shader and plugging in your texture to the Fac value instead of the Strength of the Emission node.


Can I make mesh curvy? I have this basic circle extruded and I want to know if, with the selected mesh, is there a way to make this mesh a smooth continuous curve, Not this jagged angle?

So how I ended up doing it was, I extruded the circle straight out and then added a whole bunch of loop cuts to the ectruded circle. I then selected the desired circle of vertices and then moved the circle up using proportional editing. It worked beautifully!!


How to make an object contain water until desired time I have a simple fluid simulation set up and I'm trying to throw a cube of water at a wall (with the cube's flow behavior set to "Geometry" of course). But of course when I have the cube as geometry, even though I've animated it flying through the air, the fluid drops to the ground at the first frame. I want it to be thrown against the wall and I'm guessing I just have to keyframe a certain property to do this. How do I achieve throwing a geometry of liquid?

There are (at least) two ways of achieving this, depending on the effect you are looking for.
The simplest case is to animate the geometry towards the 'wall' and to switch to fluid at the last moment. The key here is to use the Initial Velocity of the fluid 'Flow' object to give the liquid the same velocity as the moving mesh.

Ideally you would be able to simply use the 'Source' velocity (set to '1') to derive the velocity from the current velocity of the mesh. However, testing has shown that there seems to be a bug where under some circumstances the first frame of the fluid does not pickup the correct velocity (I've filed a bug report at Fluid Initial Velocity 'Source' incorrect when enabling Inflow) but it's fairly trivial to set the Initial X,Y,Z manually.
In order to achieve this, select your mesh on the frame before the impact and determine its coordinates in World Space. If you have animated your mesh using keyframes you can determine the location simply from the object's coordinates in the properties panel (N). However, if you're using, say, a Rigid Body simulation, you can determine the coordinates by first snapping the 3D cursor to the location of the mesh (select the object, press Shift+S, select Cursor to Selected) and view the 3D cursor coordinates from the 'View' properties panel :

Similarly determine the coordinates of the mesh at the point of impact and subtract the previous frame's position from it - the result is the X,Y,Z velocity of the mesh at the point of impact - use those to set the Initial X,Y,Z of the liquid.

Now either set the Flow Behaviour to Geometry and set the simulation to start from that frame or set the Flow Behaviour to Inflow and keyframe the Use Flow to switch on the inflow on the frame of impact and off again afterwards. Note that using the Geometry method is slightly better as it will give you a precise volume of liquid but the Inflo method is better if you need the fluid simulation to begin before the impact (note that fast moving objects will create more fluid as the simulation will create enough fluid to 'fill in' the motion between one frame and the next).
By now switching visibility of objects and the fluid at the relevant points in your animation you should now be able to animate the mesh turning to fluid on the point of impact :

Blend file included :

The more complicated solution is to have the mesh behave as liquid before the impact, staying together as that shape until the point of impact. The reason this is more complicated is that there is no simple method of keeping the fluid within the mesh until released by the impact - so we need to fool Blender into producing the effect using other means.
To achieve this, we'll use an Inflow (instead of Geometry) to generate the fluid as before - and also use the Initial Velocity to set it's velocity (in this case we can use 'Source' to set the velocity based on our object since it is a continuous Inflow so doesn't seem to suffer from the same bug).
In order to keep the fluid within the mesh we need to use an Outflow to remove everything that is outside of the 'inflow' geometry (the Inflow continuously adds fluid while the Outflow removes anything that isn't within an Inflow). This can be easily achieved by duplicating the Fluid Domain object and changing the type to Flow and Outflow. The Outflow should be 'enabled' until the point of impact.
Then, at the point of impact, we simply 'switch off' the Outflow and, a frame later, 'switch off' the Inflow - by animating the 'Use Flow' property. The resulting liquid should be moving at approximately the same speed as the mesh (there will be some difference as the fluid only takes on the Initial Velocity where it is new fluid added into the Inflow mesh - existing fluid is not affected by the Initial Velocity).

Blend file included :


Shadow-catcher stays noisy even with Denoising - also very dark I am facing some issues with the shadow-catcher and denoiser in Blender 2.79.
Denoising doesn't seem to have any effect on shadow catcher shadow. If I turn off shadow catcher on ground plane the desnoising works well. But if it's turned on - the shadow stays noisy.

Also the shadow become much darker with shadow catcher turned on.

Am I doing something wrong?
How do I get noise free contact shadow and lighter shadow like the left render?

Here is the .blend file of the scene in case someone wants to inspect it:
http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=48592

Will really appreciate any help.

It's because denoising works only with RGB-channels, not alpha-channel.
You can try to denoise it in compose nodes.

I use Bilateral Blur to denoise alpha channel in render, then set it in result picture by Set Alpha node. Extract ground plane by object ID mask:


How add hdri image on sphere? I want to make a mobile game with Unity.
My project would be an space game so for that I need a sphere to make the sky.
Can someone explain what I have to do, to have a sphere with an hdri picture mapped to it?
I watched dozen of tutorial to do that but either it is on the previous version of Blender or not the tutorial don't show what I want.

It's simple. Just use an Image Texture (your HDRI) for the object's material and connect it through an emission Shader so it emits light instead of being prone to shadows:

From inside the sphere, you can see the HDRI as you would as if it was connected through a World Shader:


Blender 2.8 Eevee transparent BSDF leaving extruded text unfaced I'm trying an animation in Blender 2.8 (most current release as of 20 Jun 19, although the last couple of releases also do this) which fades up pre-extruded text part way through; I'm running Transparent BSDF and Principled BSDF* nodes through a Mixer node and keyframing the Mixer fac setting to adjust transparency. The text is extruded using the Text Geometry Extrude setting.

Using Eevee, I'm finding that, while the extruded sides of the text are fine, the front face is missing; when viewed from the reverse, the rear face is missing, however Fill Mode is set to Both.
The effect is not present in Cycles. (No, I don't want to wait for 160-odd frames to render under Cycles!)

Any ideas, please, if this is a 2.8/Eevee problem and/or if there is a way to get around the difficulty? (Apart from rendering in Cycles, of course).

*Diffuse BSDF also has the same problem.

To get a transparent material in EVEE we need to set the materials blend mode to alpha blend. When this is enabled the same time as show backface, the alpha of each face gets multiplied and makes the backfaces appear more prominent.

You need to turn off Show Backfaces in the material settings.

You also get a similar result with show backfaces when the blend mode is set to additive.


Encoding Vertex Position into Vertex Colors I got a model in -1 to 1 space and I want to encode each vertex position into the the vertex color for future use. There seems to be nothing by default to do that so I will have to use a custom script for that. I have never used scripting in Blender so I am a bit lost on how to access its data etc. and could use some help.

The pseudo code would be something like this:

foreach vertex in mesh.vertices
    vertex.color = (vertex.pos * 0.5) + 1

After quickly scraping together some knowledge about Python and Blender I managed to create a very basic script to do what I want (looks horrible but does its job).

import bpy
from mathutils import Color, Vector

my_object = bpy.context.active_object.data
vert_list = my_object.vertices
color_map = my_object.vertex_colors.new()

i = 0
for poly in my_object.polygons:
    for idx in poly.loop_indices:
        loop = my_object.loops[idx]
        v = loop.vertex_index
        x = (vert_list[v].co.x + 1) / 2
        y = (vert_list[v].co.y + 1) / 2
        z = (vert_list[v].co.z + 1) / 2

        color_map.data[i].color = Color((x, y, z))
        i += 1


Best strategy for rigging and modelling tongue in face We are working on a cute monster with a big tongue:

We want the tongue to have a different material and texture than the rest of the body. We also want to rig the tongue so it elastically stretch from the soft palate when the mouth opens.

We are discussing two strategies concerning the tongue:

The tongue is a part of the main body mesh. We control how the bone flexes the body using weight paint. Applying the textures requires careful separation between the body and the mouth.
The tongue is a separate object from the body. This strategy seems more logical, as the tongue is indeed something different like the leg is different from the torso. Applying the textures and sculpting will be easier, but we have doubts about how to animate opening the mouth, which involves both flexing the body and stretching the tongue out.
The tongue and the lower soft palate is a separate object. Upper soft palate is a part of the body, because it needs to move and stretch when the jaw opens. It seems like a compromise, but it may well be the most difficult to achieve and tune.

Questions:

Are those options equally feasible, or is one more manageable than the other?
If option 2 has some merits, how to reliably parent the soft palate and tongue to the body, so it stays connected when the upper jaw (part of the body) opens? Comment below the answer this question suggests that it may not be possible:character made with multiple objects one armature or different armatures

All the options are equivalent in terms of animation comfort (user interacts with armature only), how they deform (separate or not, the weight painting of vertices can be the same) and materials (you can assign materials to individual faces).

A reason to split your mesh in rigging is to be able to interactively hide parts of it (but this can be also done with mask modifiers on the mesh), or to be able to split it (dismember body parts,..). None apply here.

There are no issues with one armature driving multiple meshes. You can even pack everything up into a group and link it as a single entity with a proxy rig that drives that.

In terms of setting the rig up, having the mesh in one piece is the most convenient, because you have the ability to blend weigh-painting well between bones.


Translate manipulator switched to blocks and does not work I think I accidentally hit a weird shortcut to make it like this but still can not find the shortcut, now instead of translating it transforms. I can not move anything around unless I just drag it. Does anyone know what to do to fix this?

You've set the transformation manipulator type to Scale.

Change it to Translate. Remember you can enable all the types by clicking on the icons with Shift.


Normal maps gives me a weird shade Hi! So today I've been working on a hair mesh that is part of my personal project to my character that I've made. When I was checking on it's normal maps, I've noticed that some part of the NM have been darkened or even flipped and it all had to do with the normal maps I've created in Zbrush. For when I've looked into the hair with the highest subdivion and some points/vertices of it were raised on the other side, thus causing an unsymmetrical mesh. So what I've attemted to do was to smooth out those wrong incorporated vertices and tried to symmetrize them by using "Smart Resymmetrize" button. The Hair was perfectly symmetrized, I've created new normal maps with perfect symmetry and imported them to Blender. And here's where the problems kicks in:

When I've inserted the new normal maps for the hair, It gives of this weird and unbalanced shadow on one side, while the other was brighter. And I've mure that the point light was facing towards the frontal part of the hair (which is where the human face is located). I couldn't for the life of me figure out what's causing this problem. So If there's anyone who knows this, let me know. And here's the fixed normal maps:

I know some of you will be confused by this of what I'm talking about, because I've been working on the mesh and writing this post almost at 12 pm. So i was kinda tired. But hopefully some of you will understand this to what I'm saying.

I recently experienced a similar issue. I found that, by default, images textures are set to sRGB;

Setting the normal map's image texture's color space to "Non-Color" should correct the issue;


Changing colors via button clicks Well I want to change colors of the blender models by button clicks in the web app I am making. Kind of like the html color picker. Any idea how to do it?

This can be done using a combo of Blend4Web's Switch Select and Set Shader Node Param logic nodes.

Feel free to ask for an example blend file on the B4W forums.


Python 2.8 - why does linking the image texture node throw an error? In Blender/Python 2.8, I am trying to create an image texture node for an object.  The last line of the code below throws this error:

AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'inputs'

I tried replacing 'Diffuse BSDF' with 'ShaderNodeTexImage' and it still threw the same error.

Your suggestions would be much appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

material = bpy.data.materials.get(material_name)
if material is None:
    material = bpy.data.materials.new(material_name)
material.use_nodes=True
nodes = material.node_tree.nodes
material_output = nodes.get("Material Output")
path=TextureFolder+TextureFilenamePost
imgTex = bpy.data.images.load(path)
node_texture = nodes.new(type='ShaderNodeTexImage')
node_texture.image = imgTex
node_texture.location = 0,200
links = material.node_tree.links
link = links.new(node_texture.outputs[0], nodes.get("Diffuse BSDF").inputs[0])

This happens because there is no Diffuse BSDF in your material. If you create a new material with bpy.data.materials.new() it will contain only as Principle BSDF and Material Output Node. You need to create the Diffuse BSDF node first.

nodes.get("Diffuse BSDF") returns None because it can't find a node with that name. The error occurs when you try to access input[0], which as the errors says, is no attribute of NoneType.


Segfault when going back to Object Mode, on unrelated data I am writing an Addon.  I have a list of Vectors:

centers = [p.center for p in obj.data.polygons]

In a later section of code, I do the following to a different object:

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='DESELECT')
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

After this return to Object Mode, the earlier list of centers no longer points to anything, and any reference to it causes a segfault.

This is not the only mode change in the code, but the segfault happens only at this one location.
The segfault remains even if I operate on centers_copy = centers.copy().
The segfault goes away if I inelegantly cast the Vectors to lists and back:

centers_list = [list(elt) for elt in centers]
centers = [Vector(elt) for elt in centers_list]

What, precisely, is causing this segfault?

Thanks in advance.

Use a copy

centers = [p.center.copy() for p in obj.data.polygons]

Similarly for obj.location

>>> C.object.location
Vector((3.3187315464019775, 1.0073195695877075, 7.229274749755859))

>>> v = C.object.location
>>> vc = C.object.location.copy()
>>> C.object.location = (0, 0, 0)
>>> v
Vector((0.0, 0.0, 0.0))

>>> vc
Vector((3.3187315464019775, 1.0073195695877075, 7.229274749755859))

v is a reference to the object location. It is bound to the object. Removing the object and trying to reference v again will lead to a seg fault.

Use v = C.object.location.copy() for an unbound "snapshot" copy.  (casting to list and back was doing this too)

Note centers.copy() was still a copy of a list whose items were references to a polygon and hence the mesh.

As pointed out by @MartinZ you can also set the select values in object mode. The foreach_set(prop, values) method is faster than iterating and setting, eg for polygons

>>> me = C.object.data
>>> me.polygons.foreach_set("select", [False] * len(me.polygons))
>>>


Object does not cast shadow In my scene I have a person imported for makeHuman software. A camera installed in the ceiling [0,0,2.5m] and oriented to view the floor (parallel to z axis) and a point light source installed in [2m,2m,2.5m]. In the the light source configuration, i check the Ray shadow option. When i render, the person does not cast shadow. I change the light source location but it does not change the situation!

Solved in comments:

A shadow needs to hit something, in order to be seen. Add a plane or another object where you expect the shadow to be seen.


What units are the hair particles' diameter are measured in? I'm creating characters in Blender and using the hair particle system for the hair. When I use the particles, the strands sometimes render too thin or too thick. I saw some tutorials on YouTube and understand some the basics. I done some research online and not all hair share the same the diameter. The real world units for hair diameter measured by micrometers, something that is not clearly shown in the particle settings. I want to know what units of measurement that the hair particle system uses or would that be overkill to get such a measurement?

Cycles hair particle size units, like most other settings in Blender are expressed in Blender scene units.

The Scaling parameter is the actual width of the hair in scene units. The confusion might stem from the fact that on top there are scaling factors applied that may induce doubt.

Setting a Scaling value to $1$ and leaving the Root at $1$ and Tip at $0$ will yield a hair particle of length $N$ (set in the length property at the top) that is exactly $1$ Blender unit wide at the root, and progress to zero width at the tip.

Tip and Root are scaling factors applied to the base Scaling property, having a root value of $0.5$ over a Scaling of $1$ will lead to a root of $0.5$ Blender units. Likewise having Tip at $0.2$ will yield a hair particle with $0.2$ BU at the end.

The Shape property will control how the width shape progresses from root to the tip.

Here we se a single hair particle with $1$ unit of lenghth applied over a $1\text{ x }1$ plane, and starting with a Scaling of $1$, Root of $1$ and Tip at $0$.


How to make just 1 object render backface culling and the others not? I want to render 2 spheres cut in half one I want backface culling so you only see its normals side and the other I want to see both sides of the faces in the same render.

How do I set render to no backface culling and apply an exception to 1 material?

As mentioned in this Question, if you use the Cycles renderer, you should be able to use the backface output from a geometry node to mix between a diffuse and a translucent shader.

This simulates backface culling.


Very low heat weight of my model after auto weight I am using Blender 2.90 version, and I am in the part of adding armature. I create a "Human (Meta-rig)" than I use "armature deform with automatic weights". But when I making the pose, it seems that the auto weight doesn't work... please tell me how do I fix it?

If a bone doesn't have full control over part of your mesh, another bone is partially influencing it. Make sure the beginning and end of each bone are touching the mesh, so the automatic weighting works better.

In your screenshot it looks like bones from the left leg are influencing the right leg and vice versa. To get rid of this effect select the left leg in Edit Mode (e.g. go to wireframe, Box select the vertices from the left leg) and then remove the weight from any bone in the right leg or assign it a value of 0. Then repeat the other way around. (I recommend using "Remove")


Can cycles render motionblur and dof at the same time in 2.80? I'm trying to wrap my head around this. I've got a simple scene with some falling cubes which I'd like to render in cycles. When I activate motion-blur, it renders with motion-blur without a problem. However, I'd like some nice DoF in there as well. As soon as I turn that on. DoF renders, but motion-blur is gone. I know there are tricks to do it all in comp, although imho, there's not a proper solution to really nail motion-blur and DoF in comp. (motionvectors can't have dof and z-depth can't have motionblur..)
Is cycles capable of rendering motionblur and dof at the same time in 2.8?

Thanks!!!

Yes, Cycles is capable of rendering both at the same time. Make sure that the DoF doesn't mask the motion blur though. If the object is out of focus you may not see the motion blur. The strength of the motion blur depends on the shutter speed and how fast the movement is.

The following link has a small example project that shows both effects in action. It was created and tested using the official release of Blender 2.8.


How to slide and extrude I’ve been trying to slide and extrude a hexagon, but I can’t get past this simple problem. I tried to extrude an edge, but it extrudes without following the hexagon’s angle. So far, I’ve managed to do a vertex slide using C to clamp, but I cannot get this to work with extrude.
Here is a sketch of what I want to achieve.

EDIT:
As asked, I’m posting the result of the solution Marty Fouts suggested. I enabled shadows and perspective so you can understand what happens. What I did here was simply move the original hexagon edge up. Now you can see it unfortunately doesn’t intersect the shape, as intended.

The trick is to use some supporting geometry. Rather than extruding, add a face and use the knife tool to make an additional edge:

If you use 'c' with the knife tool you'll get a perpendicular edge.
Now loop slide your new edge with 'C':

If you don't want to add and then remove faces, you can select the two edges that are adjacent to the edge you want to extend and subdivide them:

then use 'f' to connect the two new vertices:

and do the loop slide:

Also, start the edge slide with 'gg' and then move the edge slightly before entering 'C' so that Blender knows which direction you want to extend in.


What does the simplify AO bounces value do? I recently discovered that turning on Simplify in the Scene panel, and setting "AO Bounces" to 2, reduced my render times from 30 minutes to 10 minutes. A three times speed improvement! But... I still don't know what it actually does, and there appears to be no documentation for it.

Besides looking darker, there's not much noticeable difference.

Someone on twitter told me that it limits the light bounces in the scene to the value you set, then uses AO (with color set to the world color) in it's place.

But I'm confused by this, because
1. AO isn't even turned on
2. I changed the AO dist from 1 to 6 and it made no difference

But yes, it is using the world color somewhere (set to black in the above example) because I did a test setting it to purple, and the scene looked purple.

So does anyone know what it actually does?

TL;DR:

To put it simply, after n light bounces, Cycles switches the material shader to a simplified diffuse material (i.e. AO), instead of evaluating the full material node tree.

This Simplify to AO feature can be replicated with this node setup:

Note that because the math node is set to 'greater than 1', the AO node will only kick in at ray depth 2.

Why?

This often give a significant speed up because we author the materials to look good to the camera, all those normal maps, fresnel effects and fancy edge shaders don't really change how the light behaves after a few bounces. For bounced light, all that matters is how reflective the material is(i.e. its albedo), does it bounce back 10% of the light, or 99% of the light?

Here is a more elaborate example of the optimization at work.

We can easily cut the render time in half by falling back to a diffuse BSDF after 1 bounce instead of whatever megashader we are using. This test is an outdoor scene with bounced limited to 3. The rendertime improvement will only get better if there is more bounced light, as with most interior scene.

AO distance setting definitely plays a role in the output image. But it is unclear how other ambient occlusion settings (factor and world color) affects the AO pass.

Effect on perfectly specular surfaces

A question was raised about how this will affect perfectly glossy surfaces. To answer that we can assemble a test scene with 2 parallel mirrors with a subject in the middle:
This is with the bounce turned all the way up to 8. We can see precisely 8 monkeys before the mirror turns black.

If we turn on Simplify to AO to 2, it seems the shader returns the environment color after 2 bounces instead of returning black, which is arguable more energy conserving and correct.

A final comparison: this is with the global bounce setting turned down to 2. Notice all reflection rays after 2 bounces are black.

This is an extreme example, with normal world scenes, it's unlikely we'll need anything with more than 2 bounces.

Take Away:
Always set AO Simplify to 2, or just limit your global bounces to 2 or 3.

If you have a complex shader network, create a diffuse shader for all the non-camera rays. This can be faster and more accurate than the AO simplify option.


Blender 2.8 Front and Back Background Images I have two reference images, one for the front and one for the back. I want the images to be slightly transparent, but then I will see both images which will be confusing. How would I make it so that an image only shows up when I'm in front view, and the other only shows up when I'm in the back view?

In Blender 2.8, background is an object.

select one of viewpoint (if you skip this step, the background is always visible regardless of viewport angle)
type Shift-A, and select Image → Background
select an image file

Then, you'll get an object with image. The object has settings for transparency and side, which you want.

So, add two background objects that way, and set the side to Front for one, and to Back for the other.


How to find out the size of a face Ok, I downloaded a 3ds model from a videogame and I was asking how to find out the size of a face:

Here the model:

Here the face that I want to find the size:

I barely know how to use the program... sorry :/

Ok, but i have other issue...

This tell me that the face is 120 of tall:

But this box that is way bigger than the other model tell me that is 16 of tall:

So, i know the box is 16 of tall but its imposible that the other thing that is way smaller can be 120, maybe its 0.120 or something, can you explain me that?

Select the object and enter EDIT MODE (Tab). You will find the settings if you scroll down in the right viewport panel. There are various options you can enable concerning mesh display, such as edge length, face area etc.


How do I randomize the start of animation when in use with particle system I have animated an object which I'm emitting as a particle from a plane, however the animation start is shared among every particle and I would like to randomize the start frame to create an intresting effect.

How do I do that?

Edit:
This is my current solution by creating multiple objects and offsetting the animation start then group them together and using them in the particle system.

It works, but it's not very good as not every particle will show the animation as it depends in what object it picks and if the current frame corresponds to any animation that object has. If you increase the particle count it works good enought.

Create a group of your objects with different animations timeframes.  Particles can operate on groups of objects.  Easy examples without animations might be a red sphere, blue cube, and orange cone in a group.

Python might help to create many objects with animation variation.  Cycles modifiers may help for particles created later in the particles system lifetimes. Cycles Modifier can repeat your keyframe animation 888 times or just 8 times.

If the object is a single entity and not a group you can can create a group of your objects.  Then animate each object object efficiently by changing the keyframes or [Action constraint] or other relevant settings.

NLA editor can shift animations and repeat animations.  I cannot research that at this moment.

You can use textures to determines things such as start time of emission.  You must also have a frame range long enough to show such variation.

With Python or BAN (Blender Animation Nodes) there are other options to coordinate animated objects with the locations of particles.

These are high level ideas and not a tutorial because that might be a quicker start for you.


Texture Node in the cycle render I am working  on cycle render using MakeHuman model. On MakeHuman , model has some texture images.  I remark for example when I do a person with t-shirt that there is two images shirt_normals.png and shirt_texture.png. In the Node mode, I rely these images as mentioned in the below image. What is the difference between these images? And is my work is correct? Because, I could not remark any effect of the shirt_normals.png  image.

The texture (usually called a diffuse map) simply affects the color of the object.  The normal map affects the normals to create a bump-mapping effect.  This works by converting the red and green channels of the normal map to x and y (or y and x, I forget which) rotation of the surface normals (0.5 being straight up, or no change) to simulate small bumps and surface details for added realism.  (The blue channel is actually ignored, though it is usually set at 0.5 as well which makes for the distinctive pinkish/bluish color of a normal map.)

As for your setup, you have two problems:

You need to send the normal map through the color input of a vector > normal map node and the normal output of that to the normal input of the shaders.
You are giving the normal map normals as mapping coordinates, all texture maps should have the same mapping coordinates.  In this case it looks like you are using generated for the diffuse so you should use generated coordinates for the normal map as well.

Credit to @Vladimir for image, this is a croped version of his screenshot as I don't have Blender available at the moment.


How to show missing edges with Freestyle edge mode? Are there any settings to make edge marks appear at all angles when rendered? I edge marked part of Suzanne's head but when certain angles are rendered parts of the edge marks are invisible.

For example:

Edge Marks working ok at certain angles

Edge Marks are invisible at certain angles

Yes.

The edge disappears because it is no longer visible. This is more obvious on a shaded model:

If you want freestyle edges to be visible at all times, disable selection by visibility:


Blender runnning slow in weight paint mode I have modeled a pretty complex object in blender and I wanted to rig it but then I noticed that in weight paint mode the viewport is painfully slow I checked if the CPU or GPU was bottlenecking the program but no the Ram, CPU and GPU were around 50 percent and the temp was around 50 Celsius and blender was still running very slow I could not even move the object without it lagging
I have every modifier applied and I have merged some verticies (about 10000)
I can not figure out the problem
I am running Windows 10

blender 2.8 when I change the engine nothing changes
There are about 800 000 faces

I have Intel(R) Core(TM) i3´-6100 CPU 3.7 GHz
8GB Ram
and a Radeon 570 GPU (when I bought it cost around 250)

The lag is probably an indicator that Blender is trying to recalculate and redisplay one or more procedural modifiers while you're trying to weight paint.

Try temporarily disabling any rigs (which would cause Blender to recalculate mesh deformations to match the rig pose), particle emitters (recalculating position of all the emitted children), modifiers etc. that are using the weight paint.

Edit

If it's still lagging, your system may actually be the bottleneck. Many of the processes Blender must go through are single-thread processes that can't be spread out over multiple cores. Since 100% usage of a single thread/core is less than the total capacity of your CPU/GPU, it doesn't display as 100% usage.

You can confirm this by checking the individual core utilization in Task Manager. Look for single cores that are approaching max utilization.

Edit 2

You could also try using local view by pressing / to hide everything else in the scene.

Your power settings in Win10 could be the issue. Open the start menu, type Edit power plan, go to Change advanced power settings, and check the Processor power management > Maximum processor state.


Stacking two textures with alpha on top of each other [2.81, Eevee] So I've been trying to stack two textures with alpha on top of each other and while  I can remove the Alpha on each with enabling alpha blend the problem is the textures bleed into them.

From what I gather it has to do with the FAC value the alpha is plugged in or set manually, which might be expected from a mix note...

While I followed
How to stack/layer two textures with alpha over each other with Material nodes? down to a t (other than the texture mapping), I tried other methods and end up still with a mix of the two textures than them being properly stacked. Maybe someone can help.

For Eevee, you might have to go the extra mile of creating 2 shaders and mix them together instead of doing it just for the textures. See here: