Is there a way to lock bones property from getting keyed. In Auto Key mode? If lock the property right now it just prevents me from manipulating it but when i key it keys all the location rotation and position channels.

In the Blender User Preferences there are options under the Editing tab for Keyframing. Have you tried the Only Insert Needed toggle or the Only Insert Available toggle? That should solve your issue.


Rig a pre-bent curve to smoothly unbend I have a curve. I need to somehow rig it so that I can smoothly "unbend" it at its "elbows"; I need it rigged so that I can bend it bag and forth at will.

I haven't been able to figure out a way to bend it open so that the "elbow" becomes completely vertically straight curve when "unbent"; it seems that no matter what I try it always has a nasty weird V-ish shape at the elbow even when unbent. Of course, part of the difficulty is the fact that the curve has quite a few points. Unfortunately due to the nature of the project, I have to have the curve be as smooth as it is around the elbows (it's used for array duplication of zipper teeth).

Also, due to the nature of the project, the curve's initial position is important--so I can't start with it unbent and rig it to become bent, for example.

I've included an image showing the the starting shape and the desired end shape.

Rigging it so that it can smoothly bend at the "elbows" seems like it should be so simple, but I can't seem to accomplish it. Any ideas?

The problem is that you have too many control points on the curve, which makes it hard to control.

Would be best if you could fit a bezier or bspline curve to the shape of your curve with less control points.

You can control curve(s) with vertex hooks modifiers pointing to bones. Add an armature and make a bone in every curve's control vertex location. Select bone in posemode, shift-select curve, enter edit mode, select control vertex at bone's location (or multiple points if there are many in line), Ctrl+H+Make Hook to Pose Bone.

Then pose the bones so they are straight. You can parent them into a chain and position them by rotating the parents, so the curve points move naturally in an arch.

The more control points the more tedious it is. This process can be however scripted easily.


Appending an Object Without A Link What:

I am trying to append an object in a .blend file using.

How:

TheObject="SINGLEBATTWIRE"
Thepath="B:/........../SINGLEBATTWIRE.blend/Object/SINGLEBATTWIRE"
Thedirectory="B:/........../SINGLEBATTWIRE.blend/Object/"

bpy.ops.wm.link_append(link=False, filepath=Thepath,
directory=Thedirectory, filename=TheObject)

Problem:

The import works fine, but it is linked and can’t be moved.
This is the result I get.

Current Resolutions:

If I click the button beside the objects name it fixes the problem, but I need to append many objects and this would take forever.
If I go to File-Append and find the object, it works great and I have this result.

The bpy.ops.wm.link_append() function has been replaced by the two link() and append() functions and they can be used the same way :
Example :

import bpy

directory = "C:/folder/myfile.blend/Object/"
objname ='Cube'

bpy.ops.wm.append(directory=directory, filename=objname, link=False)


how make a Pathfinding with obstacles? how to make the Ai consider obstacles that are created in game (like walls) when making their paths,this can be done with navegation mesh and steering actuator?

Walls are no obstacles. They should be not part of the walkable area (navigation mesh).

When using the build-in navigation generator walls and holes are excluded from the navigation mesh automatically. The navigation mesh will leave gaps that ensure the character will not touch the walls.

The path finding will take place on the navigation mesh only. Any other area will not be considered. Therefore any target to move to has to be placed above the navigation mesh. Otherwise it is not reachable.


How To Resize a Node Using Python script I have created a node group 'test_group' using Python and now I want to resize my the node as it has much less width than I want that it to have.

Can anyone tell me how to do that using a Python script?

According to the API, there is Node.height as well as Node.width. Assign whatever float you like:

  Type:  float in [-inf, inf], default 0.0

API link: https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.types.Node.html


What is the technical reason that Blender cannot use OpenCL on AMD graphics cards? I have an AMD graphics card, and I want to accelerate Blender using OpenCL.  However, Blender does not support the use of OpenCL acceleration with AMD cards.  What is the technical explanation for this, and will there be a fix?

NVidia hardware and compilers support true function calls, which is important for complex kernels. It seems that AMD hardware or compilers do not support them, or not to the same extent.

To see why this is a problem, consider this example. There are 5 places where the shading nodes are executed, and there are 20 places in the shading nodes where perlin noise is used. Because no true function calls are supported, the compiler must copy the perlin noise code 100x. You can see how this would make the final code size blow up and cause issues for the compiler.

Note that V-Ray RT at this time also does not support running their full OpenCL kernel on AMD (only an older and simpler version), and Luxrender with OpenCL is also running into kernel size issues when adding more features. So that's a good indication kernel size is the main issue here.


Bone is lost in pose mode In Object mode, all of finger rigs are visible, but in pose mode,
I can not see a single finger rig.
Even if I press ALT + H, I can not see bone.
If you do not have an easy solution,
is there a way to create a temporary skeleton?

Here is a .blender file(98mb, download it from Chrome): https://drive.google.com/open?id=12gr2WdT6wYQw2TzCG8IAh1M1zN6jndMp

You need to select your bone in Edit mode, then switch to Pose mode and reactivate the Wireframe option in the Properties panel > Bone > Display


How To NOT extend selection with Box Select? I'm new to Blender and am having a few hitches.

Each time I use box select on a group of vertices it extends the selection from what was previously selected.

I can avoid this by hitting A to deselect all before using Box Select but I was hoping there was a way to have this happen by default.

Isn't it the desired workflow to select groups of objects and move them independently and only extend the select with Shift?

I must be doing it wrong.

Your assumption is understandable, yet you're approach is impractical in Blender.

Think of it this way.

When you hit B, you are executing an action: border select. This action can be aborted with Esc and you can choose mouseactions for deselect or select.

You are not using a tool. Once you completed the border select action, you are still using your previously selected tool (e.g. selection context). You will have to press B again to enter the border select action.

What you can do is setting the border select with extension to Shift + B and setting the border select without extension to B.

Press Ctrl + Alt + U to open the Blender User Preferences. Go to the Input rider. You can edit the hotkeys in this context. Expand the 3D View > 3D View (Global) area.

Locate the entry Border Select, expand it and uncheck Extend. Now the hotkey B will not extend the selection with the border selection, but replace it.

Locate the entry, which is assigned to Shift + B. In the default case this will be Zoom to Border and Set Render Boder. Disable it by unchecking the box at the start of the row. If we don't do this, the Shift + B will call this function first and ignore other assigned actions.

At the end of the 3D View (Global) List, press the button Add New. Enter view3D.select_border as the command. Set the hotkey to Shift B by clicking on the hotkey assigning area and pressing Shift + B.

You will now have a B and Shift + B border select action, which will work as you explained. Note that this is set only in the 3D area. In other contexts you will have to change the hotkeys as well. If you want to keep these hotkeys for the next time starting Blender, click the Save User Settings button on the bottom left of the Blender User Preferences window.


Python convert curve to object I'm trying to visualize assembly of flat pack furniture, out of 2D SVG curves. I can successfully import and extrude the separate SVG paths in Python, conveniently using the path's id to reference the bpy.data.curves[id]:

bpy.ops.import_curve.svg("/path/to/barkruk.svg")
bpy.data.curves["left"].dimensions = "2D"
bpy.data.curves["left"].extrude = 0.003
bpy.data.curves["centert"].dimensions = "2D"
bpy.data.curves["centert"].extrude = 0.003
bpy.data.curves["right"].dimensions = "2D"
bpy.data.curves["right"].extrude = 0.003

(You can find the example SVG at stretchsketch)

I was hoping I could transform (rotate, move) the curves via the rotate_euler properties but these are only present at bpy.data.objects which are not as nice and intuitive reference-able as curves:

>>> bpy.data.objects[3].rotation_euler=(radians(90),0,radians(90))
>>> bpy.data.objects[3].name
'Curve.002'

What is the best approach to rotate a curve in blender 2.77 with Python?

Test script to import the blender.svg file.
As pointed out here  the newly added curves are not selected after the import.  For convenience added an empty parent.

import bpy
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')
bpy.ops.import_curve.svg(filepath = bpy.app.binary_path.replace(".exe", "") + ".svg")
newcurves = [c for c in context.scene.objects if not c.select]
# deselect all
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
# create an empty make it the active  object
empty = bpy.data.objects.new("Holder", None) # use filename maybe
scene.objects.link(empty)
scene.objects.active = empty
empty.select = True
# loop thru the curve objects
for c in newcurves:
    print("Curve: %s", c.name)
    # make it selected
    c.select = True
    # make the parent the empty if not already set
    if not c.parent:
        c.parent = empty
    # change some curve details
    curve = c.data
    curve.dimensions = '2D'
    curve.extrude = 0.003
    # sane object names
    c.name = curve.name
    # location
    #c.location.x += 0.332

empty.scale *= 200

Test on svg

If you are going to move and rotate append a call to geometry to origin operator.

bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='GEOMETRY_ORIGIN', center='BOUNDS')


Massive Frame Rate after rendering I'm rendering using 720p, with 2000 FPS. After rendering, I'm getting a huge file with 244 frames/second. The source files are only 29.97 frames/second so why is the render going up almost 10 times???

Check your render settings. To get 29.97 fps you should have a framerate of 30 with a framerate base of 1.001. If you change the base to 0.123 then you will get 243.9 fps


Cannot find SMD export buttons I go into Blender, and under File > User preferences > Addons > Install from file and select io_smd_tools-1.8.5. Then I'm trying to find an Import/Export menu item but I can't find it. Please help.

According to this screenshot, the export buttons are located in the scene settings, not in the import/export menu.

Also, you should keep in mind that after installing the addon, you still have to activate it in the addons tab (check the button on the right).


Texture mirror in paint mode i'm wondering is it posible to mirror texture in paint mode after i apply mirror modifier and unwrap uv's, like symmetries model in sculpt mode but in paint with texture? Also i have turned on X Mirror and Topology Mirror in Options i'm wondering is there any option after i select one side to "one click" select mirrored side as well?

Note: For both questions Mirror Modifier are applied and model is already unvwraped.

You can paint in Texture Paint mode and toggle symmetry in the Symmetry panel for X, Y and Z axis.

If you want to just mirror the texture, you can delete one half of the model and use a mirror modifier, unwrap the mesh to align with your intended texture and then apply the mirror modifier to get the mesh UVs to align on both sides.

edit: To use the mirror modifier to align both sides to a single side of paint image, I first delete and add a mirror modifier. I unwrap and arrange my UVs to get the most pixels in the image bounds. I set a new image with a grid to check the density and see if it is even, also still looking for stretching. I apply the mirror and set up a new image at the resolution I want to paint from the Slots tab in the texture toolbar. The painting then is all mirrored across the x axis here.


Glass pane not acting the way it should Hello guys,

thanks for clicking this post,

I am trying to make a basic cableway but unfortunately I got stuck at one point. I was trying to put there windows but the glass panes don´t seem to work properly. They are not solid, just regular planes with a material which I´ll put a screenshot of. It looks as if they had different behavior on each side but I don´t understand why. Can you help me find the solution?

One side of the cableway (this one looks good)

and the other side... (Same lighting and everything, just different camera position)

... And this is the material I use for the glass panes.

Thanks for your time, Daniel!

Your 'Fake Glass' using a single plane instead of a solid works as expected when the plane is viewed from the 'front' side (the side that the normal is facing) but the Fresnel node produces different results when viewed from the 'back'. In order to correct for this you need to adjust the IOR to 1/IOR when viewing the surface from the 'back' and this can be achieved as follows :

Here the Backfacing geometry node controls the Mix between IOR and 1/IOR so that when viewed from the 'back' of the surface it still behaves the same as from the 'front'.

Replace the Fresnel node in your example with the above nodes and this should resolve your problem.


How to rotate object axis, leaving the object intact? I need to adjust/rotate the axis of the object, not affecting the object rotation. Only rotate the axis. Is it possible, and how?

Explanation: As you can see on the image. I have a network of balls and connectors. I duplicated these elements using Shift+D and then rotated and adjusted so it all creates this network shape. Now I want to continue duplicating and adding more to the network, but now the axis are all messed up already. As drawn on the image, I can't rotate the one connector down anymore (marked in red). The axis are messed up. So I need to adjust the axis, so I can rotate around one of the axis, doesn't matter which one. I know about the Transform Orientation tools in the N panel. But I can't find any element which would produce the correct axis rotation.

Side note: The build up of the network is animated. In fact the connector has to build up along a correct axis. I do it using shape keys.

I propose another approach, trying to simplify your issue.

It uses curves and hook:

How to set it up:

Create a segment (starting from a plane)
Place each extremity to the center of spheres
Turn it to curve AltC
Hook CtrlH each to the corresponding sphere

The hook works like this:

Select the object to hook to
Shift select the object to hook
Enter edit mode
Select the vertex to hook
Hook CtrlH
And choose "to selected object"

After that, depending on your needs, you can turn the curves back to meshes or keep them and animate using "start" or "end" bevel options in the curve properties panel (that can replace the shape key animation you talked about).


What's the best way to deal with zero-area faces that break normals I run into this issue all the time and it's really frustrating to fix especially on high poly meshes. Either there's no face joining some edges ("zero-area hole"?) or there is a zero-area face. Either way it messes with the normals making ugly black spots all over the mesh. Here's an example:

To fix the normals I'd quite like to either...

split the upper face, as the dashed line shows,
or merge the two lower faces by dissolving the edge, as the cross shows.

How can I do this automatically to the entire mesh?

Manual methods aren't acceptable as there's a lot of this kind of geometry. I'd prefer to change the mesh as little as possible, or at least not lose any information by collapsing huge areas.

Sometimes is's hard to actually select the face and I resort to selecting an adjacent one, growing the selection with Ctrl Numpad+ and deselecting the others. Once selected, others can be selected with Select->Select Similar->Area. Adjusting the threshold is often necessary to avoid numerical inaccuracies. It also helps if the model is not too small, so maybe scale it up first.

Below is an example of a zero-area hole, although I've moved the vertex up so you can see it.

You can get the zero-area faces back with Mesh->Clean up->Fill Holes.

Even if I do manage to manage to get rid of the zero-area face, leaving a quad as shown below, I've found triangulating it splits the wrong way and just gives a zero-area face again (this really seems like a bug in blender's triangulation).

There is a tool specifically for this.

First select all faces (typically selecting the entire mesh is fine).
Access this menu item from the 3D View: Mesh -> Cleanup -> Degenerate Dissolve to remove zero area faces, zero length edges.

Using dissolve is useful because it won't make holes where the faces used to be, it simply removes the face and merges surrounding edges.

you can change the threshold as a tool option.


weird artifacts with render in cycles this is what happens when i render in cycles, this is the only part in the whole render that does this. i tried increasing the samples and it did nothing

That appears to be artifacts from the denoiser. Try disabling the denoiser or tweaking the denoiser settings to reduce the artifacts (reducing Radius and/or Strength can help).
Alternatively, such artifacts can be caused by saving the image in a 'lossy' format (such as JPG) with too low a quality - check your Output format settings.


Python panel source code I saw a tutorial where the guy right clicked on any object in the GUI (he chose Transform->Translate) and he got the Python source code for that panel with an indicator for the line where the operator is. That quite a neat trick. Unfortunately it doesn't work for me. I use Blender 2.9 and the video was from 2013.

Enable "Developper Extras" in the preferences, so that you can "Edit source".


Getting rid of colours in textures So continuing from my many Earth posts, I've now come to the dilemma of my night side. I'm currently using a texture that's around 52000x32000 which is perfect, can't go lower than that, and it was pre stitched together, however, the land is dark blue. I want this to be completely gone with just the lights showing. I remember seeing someone post on Blenderguru's Earth tutorial that they managed to do it but they couldn't remember the process.

Is there any chance anyone out there would know how? Rule out photoshop or finding a new texture as I've tried both. Other textures online are either of a lower pixel density or need stitching which my computer can't handle. I've tried removing the darkness and keeping the lights in photoshop with the already stitched image but my computer can't run it with such a high amount of pixels.

I've also tried messing with the image adjustments within Blender but have had no luck.

The RGB Curves node sounds like what you are looking for. It functions almost exactly the same way Photoshop's curves command does, so it is very useful for pushing light and/or dark values.
See the image below for a quick example, where I left lighter colors (on the right) more or less unchanged, but drastically darkened anything below about the halfway threshold.

The RGB Curves node is also handy for tweaking the exposure levels of a background photo/HDRI without having to modify the original file.


Create Topography map lines I'm curious if there is a better way to draw topography than what I'm currently doing. My process seems really convoluted and long as seen below. is there a better / easier way to achieve this?

as an additional note, lets say I animate some terrain movement and want to watch the topo-lines change/adapt to it, how would i do that? it's impossible with my current method..

subdivide plane and create (mountain or whatever)
add a new plane, attach array modifier (z-axiz), attach boolean(/w select mountain).

apply array
apply boolean.
select all, delete "only faces". (and manually delete any stray edges)

add a material, and use "wire" render
(extra stuff, like lights ortho camera, etc)

You can achieve this effect using the compositor by extracting the world position, splitting out the 'Z' coordinate and detecting where it crosses a repeating threshold.

First, we need to capture the world coordinate at every point in the scene. For this you can use the following material :

This takes the Object coordinate and converts it into World coordinates, returning the RGB color of the coordinate in world space. This will be used to extract the Height of any point in the scene.

If you need to render the scene normally as well as capture the contours you can use the Render Layer 'Material Override' setting to add a render layer specificaly for this.

In the compositor we now need to extract the 'height' information (the 'B' channel corresponding to 'Z'), split it into bands, and detect the edges. This can be achieved as follows :

The Modulo function is used to split the height into bands (the following Divide re-scales the result so it still spans the 0.0 to 1.0 range). This then passes to a simple edge-detection stage where the image is offset and compared (via Subtract) with a neighboring pixel. If the result of this indicate a large difference then it is deemed to be an 'edge'. By performing this comparison in each direction (once in X direction, once in Y direction, and both doubled up with Absolute) and combining the result we can detect the edge where the modulo jumps from Low to High.

Adjusting the Band, Thickness, Threshold Value nodes allows you to fine tune the banding.

This can produce the following result :

Blend file included

A similar setup can produce the same result from Blender Render. Here are the required material nodes :

Note the use of a Mapping node to shift the values in the Z direction. This is due to the limitation of Blender Render to not render values less than 0.0 - the negative values all become limited at 0.0. In my case, adding 500 moves all the coordinates in the scene to above 0.0.

Additional...

As for the dark areas shown in your supplementary image :

The issue is in how the edge detection is working with the values you have chosen for Threshold and Thickness. Try increasing the Thickness and/or lowering the Threshold until the banding disappears. The edge detection is very simplistic - it only looks for a single contrasting pixel in each direction, excluding diagonals. If the edge is very narrow it's easy for the edge detection to miss the edge - adjusting the settings should help... or a more capable edge detection algorithm - or even render at a higher resolution.

To answer your query regarding the Absolute maths node missing socket, the missing node is simply hidden for clarity since it is not used for Absolute operations. Unused sockets can be hidden by selecting the node and hitting Ctrl+H. The same action can be used to re-show hidden sockets.


Where can I change the settings for UV unwrap? Angle based and Conformal for Blender 2.69? Are these still there?

When you unwrap, at the bottom of the Tool Shelf accessed by pressing T or press F6 to bring up the popup.


How do I exit a node group? I selected a bunch of nodes that I wasn't using and that weren't connected and thought that I would see if I could group them.

Well, Blender let me group them alright, but now there is a green background over the rest of my nodes and I cannot select any of them anymore. I deleted the nodes in the group because I couldn't figure out how to "ungroup" them and undo would not undo the grouping operation.

Does anyone have any idea how I can get things back to normal or do I need to start all over again?

You can press ↹ Tab to switch in and out of a node group, or you can press the arrow button in the header to go to the parent node tree:

To ungroup nodes:

Go to the parent node tree
Select the group node
Press ⎇ AltG


Soft Body Object deforming too much Basically, I was trying to apply physics to a tail so it would behave and collide with objects by itself without me having to do too much input. And I thought softbody would be perfect for this, but for some reason, my tail keeps "folding up" and breaking in strange ways. I've tried all the settings but I can't seem to find the cause.

This is how it looks:

Anyone knows why it's doing that?

Are you using "Soft body self collision" in the physics tab of your tail object?

I tried to emulate your work. Here is an example of how the simulation looks with and withouth self collision:

Without self collision

With self collision

To simply explain this, self collision adds balls to every vertex of your object. This allows the vertexes to not collide with themselves and keep a structure.

Here is the old documentation, here the new one.

Also, a really important option is stiffness. A high stiffness will make your vertexes more resistant to deformation, while a low stiffness will make your object deform more.

Here is the file with self collisions ON. Remember to change the settings of the balls on your file, as I did it in some seconds, and the balls would not be accurate with your setup. Just try and try again to change the size of the balls, until you get the result you want.


How to view vertex' colors? I'm a beginner.

Is it possible (and if so, how) to select a single vertex and change its color? I tried the "Vertex paint" mode, but couldn't find a way to select a single vertex and view its color.

Thanks.

Edit:

What I'm trying to do is to encode data with the vertex color so that my game engine will be able to act on that vertex differently, while the actual in-game color of that vertex will be determined by the UV coords and texture I apply. I'm using FBX as binary format.

IMHO this is a very basic functionality which should be exposed from GUI, so if someone here can open a feature request, that would be great.

A single vertex can have multiple colors at the same time, because it can belong to multiple faces (with different colors). The vertex colors are stored per face loops and not in vertices themselves:

Vertex colors can be viewed in Vertex Paint mode. In this mode individual vertices can also be edited with brushes:

The drawing can be constrained to selected faces, but not selected vertices. Blender doesn't allow this from the UI like other software you mentioned (Max).

You can set the colors to individual face-loop vertices with python like this:

for ipoly in range(len(ob.data.polygons)):
    for ivertex in ob.data.polygons[ipoly].loop_indices:
        ob.data.vertex_colors["col"].data[ivertex].color = (R,G,B)

Here is a script that when run in Text editor will add panel to properties (N) so you can assign vertex colors to vertices in edit-mode:

The viewing of vertex colors is still best in vertex paint mode, having this in panel would clutter it.

Code:

import bpy
import bmesh

class VertexColEditPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Vertex Colors"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"

    @classmethod
    def poll(self, context):
        ob = context.active_object
        try:
            return ob and ob.type == 'MESH' and ob.mode == 'EDIT'
        except (AttributeError, KeyError, TypeError):
            return False

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(context.active_object.data)
        if bm.select_mode != {'VERT'}:
            layout.label("Vertex select only", icon = 'INFO')
            return
        selected = [vert.index for vert in bm.verts if vert.select]
        if not selected:
            layout.label("Nothing selected", icon = 'INFO')
        else:
            layout.template_list("MESH_UL_uvmaps_vcols", "vcols", context.active_object.data, "vertex_colors", context.active_object.data.vertex_colors, "active_index", rows=1)
            row = layout.row(align=True)
            row.prop(context.scene, 'color_picker', text="")
            row.operator("vertex_col.apply")

class ApplyVertCol(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "vertex_col.apply"
    bl_label = "Assign"
    bl_description = "Assign color to selected vertices for selected vertex color layer"

    def execute(self, context):
        me = context.active_object.data
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
        selected = [vert.index for vert in bm.verts if vert.select]
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT', toggle=True)
        for face in me.polygons:
            for vert_idx, loop_idx in zip(face.vertices, face.loop_indices):
                if vert_idx in selected:
                    me.vertex_colors[me.vertex_colors.active_index].data[loop_idx].color = context.scene.color_picker
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT', toggle=True)
        return{'FINISHED'}

bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)
bpy.types.Scene.color_picker = bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(subtype='COLOR_GAMMA', default=(1,1,1), min=0.0, max=1.0, description="Color Picker")


Rendered object color different from viewport color, set in Python I'm using Blender 2.80. Start in a new scene with no objects. Add a sphere, then go to the Properties panel, Material tab, and set the Base color to pure red in the Principled BSDF. Next, run this script:

    import bpy

    # Get current active object
    ob = bpy.context.active_object

    # Set the material diffuse color
    ob.material_slots[0].material.diffuse_color = (0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0)

When I do this, the color of the sphere changes to blue in the viewport. However if I do a render with F12, the color of the sphere is still red. How can I set the material color for rendered images?

You are changing the viewport setting instead of node value.

NodeSocketColor

Use ob.material_slots[0].material.node_tree.nodes[1].inputs['Base Color'].default_value = (0,0,0,0)


Origin is not in the horizontal middle for a model which I "overlaid" I'm trying to set the origin of a mesh to the center.

Originally the rocket and the launcher were stacked over each other:

I have "put" the rocket into the launcher.

I have used Object -> Set Origin -> Origin to Center of Mass (Volume), and it resulted in this origin:

The arrows that I have added in GIMP reveal that there's a problem, as they don't have the same length.

What might be the problem here?

I have uploaded my Blend file here.

Thank you so much!!

Edit: Here is a screenshot of where the 3D Cursor is for me after I have clicked "Cursor to Selected":

The 3D is not centered vertically. What might go wrong here for me?

Further to @cegaton's answer.. the behavior of Shift S Cursor to Selected respects the current Pivot point.

in Edit Mode with all selected:

if the Pivot is set to 'Median', the cursor goes to the location of
the smaller empty in the illustration, at an average position of of
Suzanne's selected vertices, giving them all equal weight. Since she
has more vertices in her face than at the back of her head, that
drags the location towards the front.
If the Pivot is set to 'Bounding Box' the cursor is sent to location
of the larger empty, at the center of Suzanne's bounding box.

I'm not sure if this is what you want, but illustrated below is the result of Shift S Cursor to Selected in Edit Mode, with all vertices selected, and the Pivot set to Bounding Box Center, followed by  Shift Alt O in Object Mode > Origin to 3D Cursor

The cursor and origin are at the center of the object's bounding box.

The "Bounding Box Center" option is located here:


Is it possible to copy a dope sheet summary to another project? So I have 2 characters. I made a basic walking cycle animation for the first one and I want to do the same thing for the second character as well. Is it possible do this just by copying the dope sheet?

My characters are not exactly the same but pretty similar.

If you have saved your animations as Actions (Press the F button to save them), you can then import them into another project by pressing Shift+F1.


Blender using sculp mode change show in sculp and object not showing in edit I am playing with adding eyebrows. I used the sculp tool and drew a eyebrow, but when I go to edit mode to move the eyebrows the  image is flat.

Sculpt mode;

Object mode

Edit mode ( no eyebrow , image flat

You are using a Multires modifier, it fakes a higher resolution mesh, and if you sculpt it won't affect the mesh itself.

If you need to change the mesh for real, disable Multires and activate Dyntopo.

If you want to keep a low-resolution mesh and just want to bake the normals of the sculpt you've made, you can keep the Multires, and at the end bake on the same object, or you can duplicate your object, use Dyntopo on one version, then bake this Dyntopo version on the other one.

But maybe you can simply create another mesh for the eyebrows?


Can't select objects anymore I seem to be stuck moving a '3d cursor' and can't find the way to return to the default object selection mode. Every time I click in the view, the cursor (picture down below) moves around and I can't select what I want.

Is there a button to reset the view? If I reload my file, it remembers what I did before.

Press T in 3d view for T-panel. Selection tool is first.


Fracture Modifier 2.79 Problem When I click "Execute Fracture" and then Alt+Z to see how it looks this happens.
It seems to break itself apart and disorient the broken pieces.

Looks like there are 2 problems:

1) the object seems to be non-manifold, that means Voronoi + Boolean might fail there, resulting in those unwanted white shards at the element boundaries. You could try Voronoi+Bisect+Fill instead, but note the filling algorithm isnt reliable there. Means it could look odd in some places. (like missing inner faces).

2) the textured shading with blender internal might be buggy with FM as well. You could try to check the material view instead. And... due to the unwanted extra shards, the internal shard order of the FM object might get messed up (just a guess) and thus the texture assignment goes wrong then too. But if possible, could you share the blend file so I can take a look ?


Generated texture coordinates with shape key I'm having difficulty using generated texture coordinates with shape keys.

Consider a surface like this (from Wikipedia):

I'm using a material that sets the color of the surface by its z-height (i.e. the z-component of the generated texture coordinates).

I'd like to animate the field with a shape key, however it seems that the generated texture coordinates are always derived from the basis mesh, rather than the result of applying the shape keys.

Is there a way to get the generated texture coordinates to update when the shape key weights change?

Try using the Object texture coordinate input instead of Generated. Works for me.


Point and Edges based on Armature Hierarchy Someone asked me if we can do what the Skin Modifier does, but in reverse. For example, you started with some Edges and then create an Armature based on those Edges.

If I started with Human Meta Rig or my own bone hierarchy, I would like to be able to traverse down using Python script and draw edges.

I am trying to write script that does this. Can someone point out a way to get me started? Cheers.

On the face of it (no pun intended), this should be reasonably simple to do. Your script would basically go through the following steps:

Create an empty mesh object
Loop through every bone in the armature. For each bone:

Place a vertex at the bone tip and one at the bone root
Connect an edge between those two vertices

Execute a Remove Doubles operator to remove any vertices that are in the same location as one another (thereby also chaining your edges together.

Wrap that process in its own operator and you're good to go. That's pretty much it. Is there a specific part of that process that you're having difficulty with?


Make material looks less 'shiny'? I'm making a model on Blender, and i'm adding texture for it on Cycles, i added a Diffuse BSDF material, on a curves i made but with the lighting (it does need to be with that kind of light) the color seems too shiny/bright, how can i make it look not too bright and maybe even with a little shadow?

A mix shader with a dark ambient occlusion node, colored to fit your object, factored mostly toward the diffuse might help depending on what results you're looking for.

Otherwise I would suggest moving the light farther away, that will at least soften out the white highlights


Action Actuactor interrupting Motion Actuator I have a character thats move forward by Motion Actuator but I need to make an accurate jump, so I made the jump movement by animation. In the "Jump" Action I've deleted the X and Y curves so only the Z curve will affect the character. I put it on a Action actuator and enabled the "Add" and the "Local" modes. but when my character jumps it cuts all the other movements, even the gravity, it don't affect the rotations thought, but I imagine if I put a Action whith rotation curves, will happen.
I'm going to need make a lot of objects movements based in animation. Help?

I guess you're using an armature rig for your character. In Blender it is possible to play different animations at the same time, if they don't requier the same bone of your armature. So for example doing an action with the arms while walking shouldn't be a problem.
Therefore you need to move one of your animations to another animation layer.

I'm not sure how you've set up your character, but I hope it helps!


I need to be able to walk someone through a 3d model in real time I am about 4 months into learning blender and I'm still very much new to everything it has to offer.

So, the company that I work for (a real estate remodeling and custom furniture fabrication company) would like to be able to walk out clients through 3D models of the spaces that we have designed for their upcoming real estate projects IN REAL TIME.

The problem that I've run into (I use Blender 2.81 and the Cycles render engine) is that the CPU I'm using takes a very long time to render the screen in real time while using Cycles. Every time I move the viewport the screen has to re-render and takes quite a long time during which it looks just very pixelated. I can render still-frames that look quite realistic, but what my company wants is a 360 degree space that we can essentially walk clients through in real time.

Am I using the wrong render engine? The wrong render options? Is there a solution to this or am I wasting my time? Thanks in advance for the help!

Walking through real time, with near-render quality, would be possible with eevee rendering engine added with blender 2.8. Depending on your computer, this might be enough.

More viable way would be model everything in blender, export it to a gaming engine - Unity for instance. Unity has a pre-made scrips that will not require you to program, to enable basic walk functionality, however it will take some work to move project between Blender and Unity, depending on how complex it is (screenshot would be helpful for better estimate).

If I was you, I would model the entire scene, including materials while making sure my objects have uvmapping configured. I would then bake all the textures for every object to keep as much information as possible.

After that, I would re-create the scene in Unity by importing objects, applying textures and re-creating materials (materials do not move between modeling software and game engines, they are almost always exclusive to only one software and whenever you move something you have to re-create it). Unity has different material capabilities than blender so it will probably be impossible to make it 100% identical, but with baking (which enables you to save a lot of info as textures - stuff like shadows, ambient occlusion, emission, colours, lotsa stuff) it should be relatively close.

Using game engine has a added benefit of being able to generate the application that client can take home - it can be exe file, phone app (with a bit of work) or even a webapp.

Skillset you'd need would require: Modeling, UVMapping, Baking, basic Unity3d usage.


My Blender animation was rendering and stopped suddenly by 14 frames? This is my First time rendering an animation in blender, and while my animation was rendering, it suddenly stopped at the 14th frame.

I don't know why, since I put the end frame at the place I wanted it to be, and I'm not sure where I would adjust thy frame rendering position.

If you're wanting any more addition information: I set my file formats/rendering images to be PNG, my render samples are 25, I set all of my images to a separate file. This is just information that I think would correlate to my problem, maybe.

check the start frame and end frame in the render settings if they are set correctly.
also check the frame step if it's set to something other than 1.
You don't have to re-render from the beginning, just set the start frame to 15 to continue rendering from where you left off.


Where is the samples setting for the Cycles render Where can I adjust the amount of samples Cycles uses?

You can change the number of samples for Cycles under the Sampling rollout of the Render Properties panel.  The Render spinner adjusts the number of samples used for the final render, and the Preview spinner adjusts the number of samples used for viewport rendered mode.


How can I know where the normal ring is convex and where is concave? Normals to understand - How can I know where the normal ring is convex and where it is concave?

This is a Tangent Space normal map.
That is to say, blue (Z) represents the interpolated normal of the underlying geometry, red (X) represents a tilt towards the tangent direction, which is positive X in the UV, (texture,) space, as mapped onto the surface, and green represents a tilt towards the bitangent direction, which is positive Y in the UV space, again, as mapped onto the surface of the geometry.
To quote directly from the Wikipedia page on normal mapping - 'How it Works':

A normal pointing directly towards the viewer (0,0,-1) is mapped to
(128,128,255). Hence the parts of object directly facing the viewer
are light blue. The most common color in a normal map.
A normal pointing to top right corner of the texture (1,1,0) is mapped to
(255,255,128). Hence the top-right corner of an object is usually
light yellow. The brightest part of a color map.
A normal pointing to
right of the texture (1,0,0) is mapped to (255,128,128). Hence the
right edge of an object is usually light red.
A normal pointing to top
of the texture (0,1,0) is mapped to (128,255,128). Hence the top edge
of an object is usually light green.
A normal pointing to left of the
texture (-1,0,0) is mapped to (0,128,128). Hence the left edge of an
object is usually dark cyan.
A normal pointing to bottom of the
texture (0,-1,0) is mapped to (128,0,128). Hence the bottom edge of an
object is usually dark magenta.
A normal pointing to bottom left
corner of the texture (-1,-1,0) is mapped to (0,0,128). Hence the
bottom-left corner of an object is usually dark blue. The darkest part
of a color map.

By Julian Herzog, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25512888
From this, you can see the top disc is convex, and the bottom disc concave.


how to make a group of Objects I have this problem.. i want to combine the objects into a group so that it becomes one object and when i move it (the group of objects), it moves as a single object/model. I know that we need to press ctrl + J to join the objects but this is not i want to do. I want to keep the materials separate. when i press ctrl + J everything becomes one and shares one material.

It might be a very basic thing for some but for me, i have never needed to do it before. so.. kindly guide!

You can parent objects:

In 3D view, select the objects you want to group. The first objects will be "children" and the last object will be "parent" (the active one).
So in 3D view header go to Object > Parent > Object (Ctrl+P) to unite them.
Done! (just move the parent)

Note that:

a. Child objects will be sub items of the parent in Outliner.

b. You can move/rotate/scale the children independently, but when you do the same with the parent, all children will follow along.

c. To view links in the viewport, enable ~ Relationship Lines ~ in Overlays (2.8).


How to create realistic stainless steel gloss in Blender? I'm trying to create a tin can.
I need to know how to create a light gray metal look.
I have tried mixing a Diffuse and Glossy BSDF, but it isn't quite what I am looking for. I need some light falloff to help get that "extra touch", but I don't know how to do that.

Similar to this effect

Here is the setup I used.

To start I added a cylinder (Shift + A), the edit mode and using Ctrl+R to put 24 cuts into the cylinder. The Selecting alternating circles (Alt-Click) and then scaling them (S+Y+.989) then (S+X+.989) Then I used the Bevelr addon to first bevel the smaller circles and then the Larger ones to create a smooth ridged can shape. (Bevelr will automatically create the vertex groups and add the Modifiers.) And edge split will also help as soon as Smooth shading has been enabled. The material set up is quite simple so not much to explain on that. Just make sure you have the colours right and the lighting will always be key.
Here is the final render at 256 samples.


How can I export FBX with physics? I'm trying to export a project in .fbx but I'm not sure how to export physics. How do I do this?

Depends on what you mean by 'physics'…

If it’s advanced things like particles, soft bodies etc., then answer is quite simple - you cannot export those. Only thing that is supported to some extent are object/group instances over a particle system.
If it’s exporting real time (rigidbody & co) physics settings (weight, bounciness, collision shells, etc.), you cannot really do that either (though you could define required parameters as custom properties, and use those custom props when you import your FBX, but nothing working “out of the box”).
If it’s exporting the results of some rigidbody physical simulation, then you have nothing to do, it will be baked as part of the scene's animation during FBX export.


How can I separate a single object file into multiple objects based on closed geometry? Let's say you have a single obj with a number of separate closed 3D geometries in it. For example's sake, imagine you have an obj called neighborhoodfirehydrants.obj that includes the model for all of the fire hydrants on a street, which themselves are closed, but as I said above, are all within the same obj file.

Now let's say you wanted to be able to process each of those fire hydrants one at a time, separately. To the user, it's very obvious to see visually that these faces can be subgrouped into separate "objects" but in the Blender world, it sees them all as one.

I'm looking for a way (script would be ideal) to iterate through a blender obj neighborhoodfirehydrants.obj and find each of the "objects" (fire hydrants) that make it up. I've been looking into using the looping tools, but that's not making sense in this context.

You could use Separate P (in Edit Mode) and select By loose parts.

The reverse operation would be Join Ctrl-J (in Object Mode) this would require all objects selected that you need to join to a single object.

In a script you could select the object by name and invoke the operator:

import bpy
object = bpy.data.objects['ObjectsName']
object.select = True
bpy.ops.mesh.separate(type='LOOSE')

After this you could set an individual origin to each separated object.

This can be accessed from the toolbar or from the menu:

Object -> Transform -> Origin to Geometry

To set the origin in a script you can select all objects and run:

bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='GEOMETRY_ORIGIN', center='MEDIAN')


Why is my Bevel lopsided? When I bevel this edge the bevel heads up to the right, instead of heading straight up the Z axis.  What am I missing here?

Project file:
lopsided_bevel.blend

If you turn on Face Orientation in Overlays, you will see that some of your faces are pointing in different directions. Recalculate your Normals to fix it:


Mesh won't bevel (2nd time) I have two objects (from a Collada import), one can be beveled, the other not. I cannot see any differences in the mesh. I checked for non-manifold edges, I checked for the orientation of the normals, I checked for sharp edges, ... What am I missing?

The .blend file (version 2.81) can be downloaded here: https://www.dropbox.com/transfer/AAAAAP6OKinOxeC5PAGGCIZJp6WsqX2sHdYds-C1aVJGl63GLkFIH_g

Thanks in advance for any help!

Chris

There are many duplicate vertices.

In edit mode, select all (A), then Right click > Merge > By distance.


Volume scatter shader causes black spots I am following Andrew price's video on making clouds but my clouds are rendering with black spots on them. I have tried turning up the maximum transparency value under light paths but there is no difference between 50 and 200.

What could be causing this?

These are caused by self-intersecting bits of the cloud particles showing the backsides of faces to the outside world:

Rays going through the back of a face don't count as going into the volume, and so appear mostly transparent.
To fix this you have a couple options:

Lighten up on the displacement to avoid such intersections:

Or add a remesh modifier (and optionally a decimate modifier to keep the vertex count down)


AO shadows ind Cycles I was wondering if it's possible to get AO shadows on a model using the material node editor without baked textures or vertex colors (or the compositor). I've tried finicking around with the AO material but it always results in the model becoming much brighter and less blended with the environment. If anyone knows if it's possible I'd love to know.

The Ambient Occlusion shader can look unrealistic because unlike most other cycles shaders, it is not based on how light interacts with materials in the real world.

Instead, the lightness of shadows depends on how far other objects are. If it "sees" an object close by, it assumes that part of the mesh should bee in complete darkness. Otherwise, it produces a lighter color. If the ray tracer reaches no objects at all and reaches the sky, it produces very bright colors.

While unrealistic, AO has it's uses. It will usually give you less noise than the diffuse shader, whose behavior it very loosely imitates. This means that you can sometimes get away with fewer samples (and hence a smaller render time) by using AO.

However, this will not give you a realistic rendering. If you are willing to use more samples and want a photorealistic picture, use the Diffuse shader instead.

You can compensate between realism and quick rendering by mixing AO and Diffuse using the Mix node:

AO only

50% AO, 50% Diffuse

Diffuse only

Notice that mixing the AO with diffuse, you can reduce some of the unnatural brightness resulting from AO.


Object movement unit Can I set the unit to move when I press the G key and move the object? For example, can the box be set to move in a fixed unit by 5mm increments?

You can change the snapping unit by changing the grid scale:

Though, this is relative to the zoom level (relative to the grid).
To use it, make sure that snapping is set to "increment":

While grabbing, use Ctrl key to snap one unit and CtrlShift keys to snap 1/10 units.


Is it possible to access an array in a custom property in a driver? In a new project I've add a custom property to the default cube:

bpy.data.objects["Cube"]["positions"] = [4,3,2,1]

Is it possible to access this array from a driver, so that on every frame a different value is used?

If I add a driver it is possible to access a value from a fixed position:

But I'm not able to use frame to specify the index, Blender complains about the syntax:

I've also tried to use a frame handler to set a new property with the value to be used with the following Python script:

import bpy

def frame_handler(scene):
    currentposition = bpy.data.objects["Cube"]["positions"][scene.frame_current % 4]
    bpy.data.objects["Cube"]["currentposition"] = currentposition
    print(currentposition)

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.clear()
bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(frame_handler)

The code is executed every time the frame position is changed and the value is set to the custom property successfully. I'm also able to use this value in a driver - but when the value is changed the driver isn't :-( It looks like this is a bug: https://developer.blender.org/T66392

Is there some other way to solve this? I could work around these limitations but changing objects directly in my frame handler, but I'm would prefer to use a driver.

I've using Blender 2.80 RC3.

Use self.

Assuming the driver is on the same object as property

Have set a custom property on the object

>>> C.object["xxxx"] = [4, 3, 2, 1]
>>>

Scene current frame is known to the driver namespace as "frame", and can be used in expression without setting up a scene.frame_current driver variable for it.

Set use self of the driver to true, and self is the driven object in expression.

self["xxxx"][int(frame) % 4]

Driver variables by default are floats, hence the need to typecast frame

Getting Fancy

Can add pretty much anything to the driver namespace.

A simple wrapper class with a move method using the "xxxx" custom property if defined else use a default.

import bpy

class Mover:
    def move(self, frame):
        l = self.ob.get("xxxx", [0])
        #print("debug...", ob.name, frame)
        return l[int(frame % (len(l)))]

    def __init__(self, ob):
        self.ob = ob

bpy.app.driver_namespace["Mover"] = Mover

Can now add the driver to any object

Mover(self).move(frame)

or since frame is in namespace could grab its value, with a default juuuuust in case

frame = int(bpy.app.driver_namespace.get("frame", 0))

and the driver can become

Mover(self).move()

The possibilities are endless.

Note when using self in drivers the slow expression warning is reported, for what are the simplest of expressions.

Use self and the slow python expression


Faster playback in VSE When I edit videos in the VSE, I would like to have a fast preview (e.g. sped up 1.5 times). Is it possible to adjust the speed of the playhead?

If you want to speed up the overall frames pr. sec. you can do this in the Properties - Output - Frame Rate.
If you just want faster search through the video, two add-ons support this: Power Sequencer(included in Blender, but needs to be enabled in Preferences) or VSEQF: https://github.com/snuq/VSEQF
If you want to only speed up one strip, this can be done by adding a Speed Effect Strip.


Changing the radius of a point light When creating a point light, there is a "radius" value in the properties panel.  This works perfectly.  However, I can't find any way to change this afterwards, in the properties panel or search bar.

https://youtu.be/oRRpTdY5g0U

In this video, I create a couple of lights with different radiuses and test that they work as expected, but cannot see a way to change those radiuses.  Can anyone please tell me how to do this?

Adjust the falloff distance in the point light properties. A radius of 1 create a fallout distance of 25 and it is directly proportional to that. So a radius of 2 has a fallout distance of 50.


Procedural Noise Texture with Image I saw a tutorial about Procedural Noise texture, but I want to add an image on the surface of the texture.
I set up the Nodes but cant figure the correct order to get my image showing.
Thank you.

You need to plug the Bump node in the Normal socket of the Principled BSDF.


Height-map low resolution displacement Hi I am trying to import a height-map and create a 3d model of it, but when I import it the resolution of it is very low. I've seen it done in youtube videos and it seems I am doing the exact same, but their image imports at a much higher resolution and therefore they get much more detail in their model. My heightmap is 2017x2017 pixels. Anyone knows why this is happening?

I am very new to blender. I added a plane, a subdivision surface and a displace modifier

You need more vertices in the original plane.

The number of subdivisions in the mesh will be directly proportional with the level of detail for your displacement.


Intel denoiser is denosing every frame differently I was creating an animation with PNG sequences and using Intel denoiser.
My problem is that looks that every frame is denoised in a different way, which means that when you play the animation texture on my character shaking or moving for the lighting probably (Tried to add some more lights but having the same effect).
I'm currently using 256 samples probably have to push it to 500 or 1000? (Pc specs doesn't allow me much samples crazy time takes to render)
Anyway somebody has any idea how could I resolve this problem?
Thanks a lot

It seems that the Open Image Denoiser currently does not support temporal coherence. That means it only considers one image at a time, not the surrounding frames. However, according to this issue at their repository, this feature is planned for a future release.
Same problem with the Blender denoiser (denoising option in the render layers tab):

For animation denoising can be used, however it still requires high
sample counts for good results. With low sample counts, low frequency
(blurry) noise can be visible in animation frames, even if it not
becomes immediately apparent in still images. (Blender Documentation)

Conclusion: It seems that your best option is to use more samples if possible (and search for tips to reduce render times). Maybe some of the tricks to reduce noise mentioned in the Blender Documentation can help you as well.


Environment lighting(Blender internal) I recently created a simple scene and worked with environment lighting checked on so now that I have completed it, I unchecked the environment lighting but the lighting isn't going away. What should I do?

Tip: Start from a pitch-black scene:

Set all World colors (Horizon, Zenith, Ambient) to Black (hex 000000)
Turn off all other forms of Lighting (ambient, environment, sky, indirect)
Turn off all lamps (or move them to another 3d-viewport) layer

So that your scene now becomes totally blacked out.

Then start adding various light sources from the TOP -> Down:

Global lighting first:

World (sky, horizon, zenith)
Ambient occlusion
Environment lighting
Indirect lighting

then add Local light sources:

Lamps (sun, area, hemi, spot, point)
Turn on any material emission (which bring light into the scene)

En voila... now you know and understand which light source effects what in kind of lighting effect inside your lovely scene.


Is the "always" sensor really always? Upon running, my character immediately does its assigned task but when I press something for another object (that is my building shaking) my characters get pushed by the walls and will stop walking.

Why does it stop when it's sensor is "always?"

An always sensor in it's default state sends one pulse at the beginning. If you want a continual pulse, activate pulse mode on the sensor.


create a new face based on a edge I want to achieve the bases of arches (like at the foreground).
I linked vertices with edges (in red)  but I don't kwow how to create new faces based on the edges (before  extruding...)

Finally I found an answer.

I used Edit Mode > Face select > Mesh > Bisect.


My video file won't open After reading this other question I tried to render a video from an animation. I added the images to the filmstrip and rendered the video. But the file cannot be opened (The operation couldn’t be completed. OSStatus error -50.)

When I open the images in Photoshop and render a MP4 movie everything works. What is my error?

You will have to delete the strips in the Video Sequence editor windows.
Rendering to windows will work after you removed them.

What happened?

Basically the creator of the blend file have already rendered out the sequence of frames on his computer. He has also imported them as sequence strips into the video sequence editor for editing and then planned to output them into a movie file. When you downloaded the file, those film strips are targeted to render out when you hit the render button. Since those sequence file are not pack within the blend file ... you would get transparent frames.

Note what cegaton said below in the comment would also work.


2d animation export only keyframes How to render only those 4 keyframes (just an example real test has more keyframes)
Sketch_0001.png; Sketch_0014.png; Sketch_0022.png; Sketch_0030.png;

Thanks for suggestions. Workflow that sorts of work for me is as follow:

Once You have the grease pencil animation that You like:

Loom Addon
Sadly it does not detect grease pencil keyframes. Thus it is needed to create object level keyframes. Empty will do fine. Create one and paste them on frames where Grease pencil keyframes are.

Select all keyframes (in Dope Sheet) You want and choose "Render Selected Keyframes"

It then creates the keyframes list:

And finally it creates animation from keyframes only:


Weird Black Spot with Glossy Material Why am I getting a black spot in the cylinder. The scene is nothing special consists of few objects with no materials except for the cylinder, and lighting comes from the environment map.

The cylinder is smooth shaded and simply using a glossy material with the default settings.

Could this possibly have to do with render settings. I have tried re-adding the cylinder and creating a new glossy material but with the same results.

The problem is caused by the smooth shading that you hve applied to the cylinder.
So you can try just adding a loop cut all the way to one end and then another loopcut all the way to another end.


Animated robot without bones behaves strangely when exported to Unity I am trying to export an animated robot for use in Unity. In blender the animation looks fine, but when I open it up in Unity it gets really loose and weird. First I thougt the problem was caused by me not applying the rotation and scale. However, when I did apply it, the copied and mirrored leg and arm of the robot get their normals flipped. When I flipped the normals again it looked fine, but when I went to the next frame of the animation, the mesh suddenly turned very small.

I don't know what is causing this, and I hope some will be able to help me.

Blender does export object transform animations as .fbx, without using armatures, but you need to export them as a .fbx explicity. Those animations should be done in a NLA window instead of an Action window, and then select the object and export only selected as fbx. The animation will have the length of the scene timeline and will run just fine once inside unity.


how to place video inside of an image Very new to blender so be gentle. I am more looking for a direction to follow then an exact how to but obviously that would be useful as well.

Problem:
I am creating a YouTube intro sequence for my gaming community and one of the idea I have is to make the camera pull back from our clan logo.

While its doing this I'd like to have small sequences of recorded gameplay appearing within or almost reflecting off logo until the entire logo is revealed, something like this GoW clip (3:46-3:51)

Is this possible, and if so what area should I be researching to make it happen?

Thank you in advance for your time

You can use video or image sequence exactly the same way like texture.

In Node editor:
"Shift + A" -> "Texture" -> "Image sequence" (select all images "image.000" - "image.xxx").

Or you can choose "Texture" and open video file exactly like image.

Now you can setup video texture offset and start frame.
Start frame: when video start playing (timeline frames)
Offset: set first frame where video start play (video texture frames)

Example:
You need start playing video texture on frame 1250 of your animation and you want to jump on 10th second in your video texture. (remove first 10 second from video texture)

Set Start frame to 1250
Set offset to 240 (for 24FPS: 24 x 10 second)

There are also "Frames" - you can use it for stop play video texture. Frames = video texture frames, not your animation frames on timeline.

Second option is using Material ID for creating mask and add video to object using this mask in Video Sequence Editor or in Compositor.

Personally I thing the 1st option is easiest way how to do it, just play with setup to achieve what you need. :-)


How to make a walk cycle loop? I've made a walk cycle that I would like to repeat a certain number of times. When I tried to "Make Cyclical" the entire armature animation I realized that the Graph Editor's modifiers only appear to work on an individual bone basis. Is it necessary to make and manage separate cyclical modifiers for each bone, or is there a better way? Thanks.

If the walk cycle is the only thing you want in your animation, you could just make the timeline the same length as the walk cycle. It'll loop automatically.

Otherwise, if the walk cycle is in your timeline, you can go to the NLA editor with the rig selected (in object mode), and click on the double-down-arrow icon, which will save the walk cycle as an action.

Then you can use the N key properties window to change the amount of times the action is repeated.

This is, IMHO, the best solution as it gives you more flexibility to work with animations.


How to attach a Bump Node to a Node setup containing many shaders in Cycles? Link to my file in question
File info :File consists of a mesh shaped like a shield that is undergoing a softbody sim. Uses 4 individual materials.
My aim : I need to use Bump on the entire mesh to apply light surface imperfections through a Musgrave texture + Bump node
I saw various tutorials on Youtube involving bump mapping using a noise texture connected to a Bump node connected to a shader's/Principled BSDF's normal input.
Basically, these node setups contain a single shader, so there is a single noise + bump plugged into a shader's normal input.
However, in my file's material I downloaded off the Internet, there are various many shaders, connected to each other through Mix Shaders, etc
How do I use a bump node on the mesh if there are innumerable shaders in my setup, rather than 1?

The shaders for which a normal input makes sense usually do have a normal input.
You can plug the output of a node into any number of node inputs.
Example :

Or you can simply use a displacement node and connect it into the displacement input of the "Material Output" node :

It's hard to get exactly the same result using these two methods. The benefit of the first one is that you can define different bump maps for each type of shader.


Add materials to copied object I'm very new to Blender and I'm watching Grant Abbitt's tutorial and it's so good but I got 1 bug. When I need to add a material to an object, this material goes to every object which i copied from the original!
I already tried to click on the object and set a custom material but still the same, i can't get two objects (copied) with a different material. Anyone can help?
This is the video i followed Complete Beginners Guide to Blender 2.8 | Free Course | Part 4 | Materials, but it does not work for me.

Possibly, you've copied the object using altD (duplicate linked), you should use shiftD (duplicate object) instead so that the new object will have its own data.
"duplicate linked"

is called a deep link. This will create a new object with all of its
data linked to the original object.

See the documentation here.


How can I make my tail animation smoother? Lately, I've been trying animating on blender, at this point I'm not even sure if I've mastered the basics but in an excited hurry to utilise blender's animation editor I created this choppy, inconsistent mess with a tail model I rigged and a few other unrefined works just like it:

It doesn't take a second glance at it to realise how awful it is. I'd like to make the animation more smooth and I'd greatly appreciate any tips/advice that would help me in doing so.

This is the dope sheet for the animation:

Thank you

A smooth effect is extremely easy to create, utilizing interpolation in 3D animation. Make sure your bone chain is fully forward kinematic.

Set a key for both extreme position and copy the first extreme and insert it at the end again. This results in the two keyframes A > B > A'. I created the pose by switching to Individual origins so that I could rotate all of the bones at once. I created the inverse keyframe by ⎈ Ctrl⇧ ShiftV pasting the pose.

Make the animation repeat by pressing ⇧ ShiftE in the dope sheet and selecting Make Cyclic.

The child joints of a chain would move after their parent joints. This is what the overlapping action principle of animation embodies. Grab the keyframes of the child bones and offset them one by one.

If you want more overlap (resulting in a snake-like action) increase the offset of the keys.
If you want less overlap (resulting in a more stiff / rigid action, e.g. a dinosaurs tail) decrease the offset of the keys.
If you want more movement in general, go to the graph editor and scale the curves along their Y axis.
If some joints are shorter than other, their animation would likely have a smaller magnitude. This can be respected while setting the keys in the beginning.
Adjacent shorter joints would also have less offset in timing than adjacent larger joints.


How to keyframe_insert without moving the object I tried the following code:

import bpy

obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='location', frame=0)
obj.location.z += 5
obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='location', frame=100)

Then, after executing the code, the Cube position moves in the Z direction.

But, I want to insert keyframe and not move the object on the screen.

How can I insert keyframes without moving objects on the screen?

You can surround your code with something like:

current_frame = bpy.context.scene.frame_current

obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='location', frame=0)
obj.location.z += 5
obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='location', frame=100)

s.frame_set(current_frame)

So that the current (or the frame you want) is restored once the key frames are inserted.

Though, that does not guaranty that the object will not move, as its movement is dependent on the key frames you have set.


Is there a way to keep the shadow but turn off the light in EEVEE render I've set up an animation with a object rotating. I've added one point light which is casting a shadow. I like the softness of the shadow, but it's also making my object more brighter. My Scene has environmental HDRI to it, where my object is already getting the reflections when it's rotating. Is there a way to turn off the light from hitting my object?
Thank you.

I think the only way to do this is using passes, in the passes menu you can enable the shadow pass and some others, then compositing them together. Do an initial render, enter the Compostiting workspace, and you'll see the different inputs for different values.


Is there any way to bake texture from world space to UV? Hi I have a material with environment texture mapped with object space (like environment), and would like to bake it into the object UVs.

Now everything looks good in editor, I just make it look the same in Unity preferably with baked texture to improve the quality and so on. The problem is that I cannot find the way of bakeing it with the object's UVs

To be specific.
- I have an object with its own UVs
- Assigned a material with object space (environment texture mapping), which is
  nothing to do with object UVs
- I would like to bake the material texture as it looks but onto the object UVs

Is there any way to do this?
I don't mind bake the texture into vertex color and then bake it to texture whatever again. just want to avoid to doing arrange the rendered texture to fit into UVs as it is tedious and does not always fit well. Any ideas? Thx in advance!

Well I just figured it out. You can just bake it. super easy

What I did

Assign a material with HDRI environment texture based on object space mapping to your object.
Unwrap your object
go with bake and make sure bake the map you used in your shader i.e used diffuse node then bake diffuse, Emission then emit etc.

Baked image is perfectly projected on your UVs :)


Why is my rotation reversed in 2.91? For some reason, now that I've installed 2.91, all of my rotations are reversed. If I press R and type a number, it goes counter-clockwise. The angles in the Properties Panel N are also flipped. When I try to rotate and snap to a vertex, it's like the part I'm rotating gets mirrored. I've tried to show all of thse problems in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFd6MtIycpE

Because, to be blunt, the devs frigging broke the behaviour of the rotate operator AGAIN. A fix has been committed so it should be reverted in the next hot fix. https://developer.blender.org/rBf9e994d0f463abb87761591e30c47a9613be6cca


Does anyone know how to fix the eyes while soft body effect is applyed? Thank you for your time.

A problem has occurred  with the eyes of my character, after I apply a SoftBody effect sometimes the eyes go out of his head.

While the normal walk animation the eyes do what they should be doing.
After a few tinkering and playing around with the soft body settings they all make the eyes go wonkey at times.

The eyes are there own objects, and boned to the mesh.
I hope someone knows how to fix this, I am new to blender and mostly of the time I don't know what I am doing ^^;

For everyone stuck with this problem.

The main issue is the Mass, Blender extends the vertex group so the jiggle effect affects the head which causes the head to also have this slight jiggle.
While the eyes are locked in place by the bones.
The Speed, should be on 1.000 it makes the belly jiggle slower but also the affected head.

By changing my soft body settings like in the picture below I have solved this issue, and turned off the soft body edges.

I hope this answer will help for those who have this issue.


Components of animation flicker and disappear/reappear I am having an issue with a rendered animation not showing all the parts of all the components. Some parts of some of the objects flicker in and out of existence. The animation video can be found here: http://youtu.be/R0ohe7N5rmQ I have made this with 2.71 and cycles. How do I stop the flickering issue? The blend file can be downloaded here: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/32356

I have made an animation of objects (carbon nanotubes) being ejected from a tube. I want to the tubes to land on the substrate through shadow mask, and stick there. Then I pull of the mask to reveal some rectangular collections of tubes.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Edit: Removed second question: "Also, if anyone has a good idea of how to speed up the animation, especially concerning the treatment of the particle object."

EDIT 2: The expanded camera limits did not fix my problem, as I have now figured out. I have changed the animation around a bit with the new blend file here: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/32448 For example, in frame 100, if I have the "emission circle" visible in the render, I can see only half of some of my other objects and some of the objects disappear completely. If I turn off the visibility of the "emission circle" I can see those objects again. I tried reducing the number of particles being emitted. I show here two screenshots with and without the particle emitting object visible. Doe anyone have a recommendation?

The objects appearing and disappearing is a problem with the clipping distance of the camera. Select the camera and make the clipping start distance much smaller.


Cut faces where they intersect with the mesh I exported an object from a game and I am working to clean it up so I can 3d print it. I am almost finished, however I have a small issue with the gun barrel, where I created some new faces to close a gap but ended up with them passing through the barrel tube.

I believe a boolean is necessary but I am very inexperienced with Blender as a whole, leaving me stumped on how to proceed. What can I do to cut these selected faces out of the inner barrel?

In Edit Mode (Use TAB to toggle), Loop select the front inner ring of edges of the barrel by placing your cursor over one of the edges that goes around the circle and hitting Alt+Shift.
Separate this from your mesh by hitting P >> S.
Use TAB to Toggle back into object mode.
RMB over the inner ring to select it.
Hold Shift and select the mesh that you need to cut.
Now go into front view Numpad 1.
Make sure that your toolshelf is open at the left - T to toggle.
Use TAB to toggle back into edit mode.
Select all (Verts / Faces).
On the toolshelf use "Knife Project" - There is a checkbox on the bottom left hand side of the toolshelf that says "Cut Through", make sure you check it.
Now just delete the edges and faces that you don't want.


Is it possible to copy this bevel over to another edge? Okay, so I made this beveled detail here and I can't CTRL+Z to undo it. I have yet to save the file at all, can this bevel be copied over to the other corners somehow? or would it be better to revert it to the original shape somehow?

I think you should apply the mirror modifier on both the x and y axis. Then if you change anything on that edge it will apply to the others also.


Render Engine For Low Poly Game Assets What render engine should I use to create low poly game assets with basic diffuse color for unity, blender render or cycles render?

I was trying to create a simple shape with two materials having basic diffuse color only, but the second material don't export with the color I set in the cycles render.

So, does the blender render is the standard way to create low poly game asset like this?

source: https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/plant/leaf/low-poly-forest-assets

If you're not using textures and you want the diffuse material to be transferred "as is" to Unity from Blender, use basic Blender Internal materials (no nodes). Cycles materials are not being transferred to Unity at all. If you're using textures, there is no such limitation, you can create the textures in any render engine of your liking.


Why does the saturation get stronger in darker areas of a cycles render? I'm rendering a cube with a single light-source with the standard white/grey diffuse-shader and therefore getting a picture with values-only and then multiplying a color on the image, the color on the different surfaces just changes its brightness.

But when I'm giving the diffuse material the color I have multiplied on the first render, in the new image the color just doesn't change its brightness, but also its saturation.

Why? Is there just a simple difference I didn't recognize?
1st picture: Values multiplied with color.
2nd picture: Used the color as material for the diffuse-shader.

EDIT: I found out that monochromatic colors dont change their saturarion.

The answer for this issue is "albedo", a very important aspect to keep in mind when creating shaders.

Albedo is the reflectance of a material, which in layman terms means how much of the light received is bounced (it's a percentage) and therefore how much is absorbed.

Real world materials don't reflect all the light received nor absorb all the light received (materials you'd call "black" in real world always reflect a little light, while the brightest material you'd call "white" bounces less than a 90% of the light received).

That's the main reason why the default cube is 0.8 RGB gray and not 1.0: albedo is somewhat encoded in the RGB values you feed to shaders as base colour, so if you gave your material a 1,1,1 as base colour, it would bounce back 100% of the light received, which is physically incorrect.

So when you render your materials a part of the light is being absorbed, and the resulting pixel is the light hitting the surface scaled by that albedo (present in the base colour).

I suspect you're trying to reproduce what passes do (multiplying shading by base colour as we discussed in your other question), but it can't work that way because you're multiplying the base colour to the already rendered surface.
Your rendered gray cube has an albedo of 0.8, so it reflected an 80% of the light it received. When you render the brown cube, colour affects the albedo too, and the bounced light is different than 80%, and that's the reason why you get a difference when you multiply.

In other words, your rendered gray cube isn't exactly the same as a pure shading pass, so multiplying colour to produce the same result than rendering a colored cube won't work.


Can you unlink action for multiple objects at once? I know you can right click object and select unlink action to do so.
Or do it inside action editor.
The question is this is too slow. There are so many actions there for different objects, what if you want to switch animation from one to the other. That would be a nightmare.
Is there anything I can look into? Thanks.

If you got actions objects spread in an object hierarchy. (but they use same action)
Yes, you can modify action of them all at once by script.

for loop that object hierarchy and see if object got action element. save them in list or something like that
hard coded script or make a panel to pick the action name.
assign the action you pick to those action objects you found.


How can I seamlessly switch between IK/FK? How can I switch between IK/FK without having bones changing their transformation?
 I have forearm bone with IK constrained. Now I want to disable IK and rotate forearm.

 The problem is whenever I disable the IK constraint, the forearm moves to the side.
 How can I disable IK without losing position ?

Under the Rig Main Properties you have the IK/FK slider. Below that you have two options to snap the pose to either the IK or FK position.

p.s. I notice you are using the MetaRig to animate. Generally the MetaRig is used to generate a new rig with all the bells and whistles like IK/FK organised for you.

The 'generation' also creates the Rig Layers which makes switching and controlling easier...


How can I remove doubles without creating intersections? I've got a mesh of a terrain. I'd like to create a simpler version that follows roughly the same shape. I've been using Remove Doubles to do this (which gives me a better result than the Decimate modifier), but have noticed that it can create intersections in the mesh, which causes me problems later on, particularly when using the Boolean modifier.

Original mesh:

When removing doubles (red areas are intersecting faces):

What's the best way to remove these intersections after removing the doubles (or preventing them from happening)? I'm scripting this process, so would love to hear of any solution that doesn't involve manually selecting visible/invisible faces. Thanks!

Edit: Here's the Blend file in case anyone is interested.

The mesh cleanup tools can help with this, especially limited dissolve.

Select all mesh elements in edit mode, then go to the Mesh --> Cleanup --> Limited Dissolve tool. Then triangulate all faces with CtrlT.

The larger the angle, the stronger the effect.


Rag doll in game engine? I've seen some videos on a working rag doll in the game-engine, and I've always wondered on how to make one. Also, if I a rag doll effect is created, I need it to not be affected by animations (i.e. animations wont be playing anymore). I have some more to add to this, but I want to keep this as simple as possible so I will ask those in the future.

Create two rigid body armatures, one with animations, and one without animations. Constrain the bones of the rag doll to the rigid objects. switch between the both of them at the moment you want to let it fall. You should probably create a python script where you copy the location and orientation of the animated armature to the rigid objects. After that you just set the animated armature to invisible, and the other to visible.


Boolean not working not sure why I can't figure this out. My geometry is about as simple as it gets, a solidified cube with some extrusions to make a building. I have no doubles, my normals are all facing outward, I have no nonmanifold geometry. I placed the boolean modifier on a cube to have it cut through the building but it still isn't working, any help would be appreciated. Below is my file.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ni3dds2R7q9e4eNVVJBpxgr0tjf7Rck8/view?usp=sharing

The geometry of "Destructor Rrrr Cube" object is not cube, the bounds box is just displayed. Select Textured in the Display As pull down menu instead of Bounds.


Getting interstitial compositor frames when using frame step I'm trying for a really jittery stop-motion like effect by using frame step to render on the twos (or threes, or fours). Rendering this normally and getting a video file out makes the frames happen at the expected speed.

However, I'd also like to get some render passes out of the compositor. I currently have a File Output node set to get the mist, emission, and cryptomatte mask/image passes and make them image sequences. These are named appropriate to the frame step (animating on the fours gets me Mist_0001, Mist_0005, Mist_0009, etc), but since they're single images, importing them as an image sequence into another video editor doesn't get me the intermediate frames. I essentially have one render that's at the correct, jerky speed, and four image sequences that are going twice as fast.

And since I'm using Resolve, they won't even import normally - Resolve likes image sequences to be labeled sequentially. An 0001, 0005, and 0009 would get imported as separate images, rather than a clip.

So: is there a good way, in or out of Blender, to (I'm assuming) copy the intermediate frames, with correct numbering?

This does it, though it uses a separate python script instead of something automated in Blender. Use it with python3 script.py [subfoldername] [framecount].

This is based on my setup, where each render pass has its own subfolder. This will search through all the files in a subfolder, determine their frame step, and generate duplicate frames based on the gaps. None of the pass files have special names, so everything's 001.png, etc.

import shutil
import sys
import os

# figure out the frame difference
def getFrameStep(list):
    step = int(list[1][:-4]) - int(list[0][:-4])
    return step

# how many 0's should precede the number
def getFrameFilename(index):
    maximum = 4
    l = len(str(index))
    return '0' * (maximum - l) + str(index)

# generate frames based on missing steps
def framesFromParent(path, parent, step):
    starter = int(parent[:-4]) + 1
    for f in range(step-1):
        if (starter + f > int(FRAMECOUNT) and (FRAMECOUNT) != -1):
            return

        name = path + "/" + getFrameFilename(starter + f) + ".png"
        shutil.copy(path + "/" + parent, name)

# ignore OSX DS_Store files
def cleanDSStore(list):
    s = ".DS_Store"
    index = list.index(s) if s in list else None
    if index == None:
        return list

    list.pop(index)

    return list

# check if command line args exist
def checkArg(index, default):
    if len(sys.argv) > index:
        if isinstance(sys.argv[index], int):
            return int(sys.argv[index])
        return sys.argv[index]
    else:
        return default

########

# the subfolder containing the shot you want
SHOTFOLDER = checkArg(1, "1-entering")

"""
using frame step means sometimes your animation won't divide
evenly, and if you try to replace frames exclusively by the
frame step, you'll wind up with more frames than the original
animation. Set the frame count if you want to limit the total
number of files generated to 50 frames.
"""
FRAMECOUNT = checkArg(2, -1)

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(SHOTFOLDER, topdown=False):
    for name in dirs:
        for r, d, f in os.walk(os.path.join(root, name)):
            folder = os.path.join(root, name)
            files = os.listdir(r)
            files = cleanDSStore(files)
            step = getFrameStep(files)

            for f in files:
                framesFromParent(folder, f, step)

("Why don't you just use OpenEXR?" "It's a huge pain to work with in Resolve.")


Adjacent planes rendered in very different colors? I defined some glossy (Glossy BSDF shader) planes by specifying the four vertices and vertex order for each. They are separate meshes, and there are small cylinders separating them.

I rendered them in Cycles under an outdoor HDRI lighting.

Strangely, some adjacent planes are rendered in very different brightness, giving me this unpleasant discontinuity.

I checked the two surface normals -- they are very close.

 vs.

Why do I still have this shading difference? How may I fix it?

I think this is due only to the HDRI lighting. I tried with a different, more uniform world lighting and all planes are shaded in a more "uniform" way.

I'm not an expert, but even if the two plane's normal are close, or identical, the planes position is not the same (and cannot be the same) respect to every HDRI pixel lighting the scene.

Since this is not a uniform light color, and because a single flat plane can "reflect" just one shade, this is to be taken into account. Probably a real object like that would appear the same.

As said, normals smoothing can't help you here, because all square meshes are separate: if you can join them to appear as a single plane (although with those separating "cylinders" all above them) maybe, but I'm not sure it would give desired results anyway.

Btw, you have some plane with inverted normals, here and there...


How to use different offset for each duplicate created with array modifier? I would like to generate several copies of an object, but place them at specific locations. One way I thought I could do that was to use the array modifier, but have it use different relative offset for each iteration (eg. the first clone is created with relative offset {1, 0, 0}, second with offset {0, 1, 0} and third again with offset {1, 0, 0} to create sort of S shape).

I tried to use the array modifier multiple times on one object with different offsets, but it always duplicated all the objects previously created by previous array modifiers instead of creating just one new copy.

I understood that using array modifier is probably not the way to go. How could I accomplish what I want?

You can use duplication (instancing) on the faces of a different mesh

Create a mesh, with one face per each intended duplication location

Select the object to duplicate, then Shift + Select the newly created mesh. Do CtrlP, then Parent to Object.

(optional) make the origins of the two meshes coincide

On the "S" shaped mesh, under Duplication in the Object panel, choose Faces

(btw, the "S" mesh won't be rendered: only your object's instances)


How to animate fire without the fire freezing I want to animate my fire effect and for some reason when i get it clipped into the scene it just freezes and does not flow like a fire should.

I apparently needed to adjust the start and end frame of the fire from thedomains smoke cache


Particle Emission Rate? By default in Blender, you set the emission of particles by specifying a starting frame, an ending frame, how many particles you want to spawn during this time, and how long you want each particle to live for.

This is fine and all, but it would be incredibly useful if instead you could simply state how many particles per frame you would like to spawn, and to have that carry on for as long as you want without having to constantly adjust the start/end frame and particle density.

Is this currently possible in Blender? If so, how is it accomplished?

with the new particle system in blender 2.9 alpha this solves my problem


How to Stop Edges from Rounding themselves I'm modeling a car via a tutorial, and for some reason, the mesh is doing this:

Notice how the mesh is not touching the tips of angle -- instead bending in. This is happening all over my model. What have I pressed, and how can I stop it from happening?
(Currently using Blender 2.79b)

Solution
Looks like you accidentally added a Subdivision surface modifier. You can remove it by going to the Modifiers tab (the blue wrench) and clicking the x button in the upper-right hand corner of the modifier.

If you don't remember adding the modifier, I'm not surprised -- you probably pressed the keyboard shortcut for it by accident:
From the Blender Reference Manual:

To quickly add a subsurf modifier to one or more objects, select it/them and press Ctrl+1. That will add a subsurf modifier with View Subdivisions on 1.
You can use other numbers too, such as Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3, etc, to add a subsurf with that number of subdivisions. The Render Subdivisions will always be on 2 when added like this.

Benefits of Subdivision Surface
Although it may be annoying now, the Subdivision surface modifier generally proves to be one of the most useful tools in any hard-surface modeler's toolkit. Combined with Loop subdivide, you can make edges more rounded (and therefore more natural -- nothing is a perfect angle in the real world) without all of the shortcomings of the Bevel modifier.


UV unwrapping problem with image mapping I am doing this Blender Guru tutorial on camera mapping. In the first half hour he shows how you can map a 2D image on a cube. When doing this at about 31:00 minutes he encounters a problem. The floor and left wall are not fitting together. I have also that kind of an issue but I don't like the way he solves this. The problem is that the Project from View of this Left Wall does not fit with the image. How to solve that in the UV image editor ?

You can see that the image and the project view don't match. I don't really understand what is causing this problem and how to solve that

Hmmm .... There is a perspective problem (the perspective of the image and the Projected View don't match) and I think I should solve that problem in Photoshop. When I export the UV layout after UV unwrapping I can correct the perspective of the image in Photoshop (with the WARP tool) so that the image fits with the UV layout.

I think Cegaton is right with his comment (camera perspective in Blender and image perspective don't match) but correcting the perspective of the image in Photoshop does the job pretty good.

There seems to be a Blender Addon named BLAM that helps to solve this kind of challenges (thanks Cegaton).


Creating a sphere with glowing circle on it I'm trying to create a sphere with a glowing 'donut' flattened on his front face, this donut is something like a central eye.
I'm completely new to blender.
What i need is to have 2 different meshes, one for the sphere and one for the 'eye', because i then have to add the object in unity and set 2 different materials for the eye and te body.
So here is an image of how the final sphere should look.
Again, i need to be able to use different materials inside unity for the eye and the body.

To do that:

Simply use two spheres:

One for the body ShiftA then mesh>UV sphere
Then create a second one at the same place, and keep only the edges that make the ring

Select the other one and delete them.
Delete this:

And scale it a bit S to avoid the two spheres to overlap.


Would a 16-bit image for a bump map have any advantage? I had watched a tutorial about micro displacement and it talks about the limits of using jpg images as a displacement map and saving them as 16-bit tiff images. I know that it has an advantage in this particular case but the main disadvantage is the increased file size, which can be significant. I want to know would there be improvement by using 16-bit  tiff images for other maps as well.

8 bit images normally store 2^8=256 different shades of grey. In theory, you could encode more information in it, but most displacement textures you use wont. This means, that if your displaced model is 8 Blender units high, the smallest height difference you will get is 8/256=1/8th Blender unit. This doesn't seem like much, but can create visible steps between two heights.

Using a 16 bit image can store 2^16=65536 different height levels. No matter how you use your bump texture, you won't notice any artifacts here.


How to group objects? I have selected several objects and pressed Ctrl+G. Or I have selected several objects, then click Object -> Group -> Create new group.

It doesn't matter what I do. The only thing that happens is the Create New Group panel appears and I am able to enter a name for the group.

It's nice but I need group to appear in scene graph and I be able to manipulate with multiple objects as a whole.

Is it possible in Blender?

On the top of the outliner, there is a drop down that says all scenes, click it, and set it to Groups.

If you are trying to manipulate all of the individual meshes at one time (as in Edit Mode), then you should use Join (Highlight all desired objects to Join & Ctrl + J