Texture shows up with bg I have a metal pyramid which I'm trying to make slightly covered with sand dust.
But I don't need it everywhere, so I decided to use a mask. I've never used masks before.
I'm using a texture for this dust as shown in the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmrCoGj9m2Y) BUT:
I have base metal material with normal displacement from a noise texture,
I have a dust img,
I have a mask.
When everything is set up and I paint the texture I also paint black background. In the video he has clean dust only show up on the model. He has nodes to make it appear only in sertain places (I use paint for that) but he doesn't have anything that makes it show dust without black bg
So how do I make it so when I paint only dust shows up and between it is my base metal material and not black bg of the texture?

Your node setup is basically correct, however, I think the "Black background" that you are seeing is because the nodes that define your dust are a mix between a diffuse shader and... nothing!

I will call the mix shader node on the left of the image the "first mix shader node", and the mix shader node on the right of the image the "second mix shader node".

So you are successfully mixing between the nodes that make up your base metal (second slot, on the second mix shader node) and the nodes that make up your dust (first slot, on the second mix shader node). But your dust is itself a mix between an Orange colour and no shader at all (which shows on the render as blackness). So your dust is coming out as orange mixed with black.

To fix - plug another diffuse shader into the second socket on the first mix shader node. Give it a slightly different orange colour. You should get results more like what you wanted.


Texture Paint behaviour in regard to a Texture If I have texture paint working, and add a new Texture then it stops working. Or it behaves weird.
It's a bit tough to explain in textual format for me so I made a video about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltLqniomK6U
To explain in short, when I add a texture here, then texture paint stops working or behaves weird:

Can someone explain why this is?

Yes atomicbezierslinger is correct, you can do this by pressing the
Browse material to be linked button, then from the drop down menu, select your UV image you unwrapped from your object.

Similar to how you assign textures from a texture node in the Shader editor.


How to make a curved Cone? I'm making a model for a thing (don't really know how to describe it) and i'm trying to make some curved cones so as to replicate the shape of the floating horns on the character.
anyone have any ideas?

i'm also using 2.8 and am extremely new, so please try to dumb it down.

Start by adding a cone to your scene: Shift + A and select Mesh ► Cone. Next press TAB to go into Edit Mode then press NUM PAD 5 for top view.

Note the three buttons in the red box in the screenshot. These are the three mesh selection modes in blender. The left one is Vertex Select, the center one (highlighted in green) is Edge Select, and the right one is Face Select.

Here is a better view.

Now you will want to click on Edge Mode (the center one). Press Alt + A to deselect all and then C to enter brush select mode and click on the top (center) of the cone. Press Esc to leave brush select mode and right click to bring up the Edge Context Menu.

Click on Subdivide. Now open the box in the lower right hand corner that says 'Subdivide' if it is not already open. Your project should look like this:

Set the Number of Cuts to 12, then click on Vertex Select Mode as discussed above. Press NUM PAD 1 to enter front view and click on the highest point of the cone.

Now enable Proportional Editing by clicking the button below the pop-up menu in the screenshot that looks like a target. Click the button to the right of the target and select Sharp from the pop-up menu (you can experiment with other modes later for different effects). Now press the following keys in order: G, X, -, 1, Enter. Now at this point the cone looks silly I know, but we'll fix that.

In the lower right corner the box is now labeled Move. Increase the Proportional Size value till the cone has a nice curve. I used a value of 2.23. At this point you can play with the Proportional Falloff to see what the other effects do. Below to the left is linear falloff and to the right is inverse square falloff. The center one is sharp falloff as we just made.

I hope this tutorial helps.


How to recache a simulation What is the proper way to re-cache a simulation? I got the problem during Cloth and Fluid simulations that the cache is ignoring my new adjustments in the parameters. I'd like to just switch off 'cache mode' so I can freely experiment with some parameters without constantly punch myself to the head why there are no changes noticeable in my simulation.

For Fluids:
Select the domain object -> Physics tab -> Fluid -> Settings -> Free Data
Then don't forget to re-bake the Mesh and Particles.
For Cloth:
Select a cloth object -> Physics tab -> Cloth -> Cache -> Delete All Bakes
Then Bake again.


How to render a world position pass that includes volumetrics? I've found the 'how to render a world position pass' Q&A on here, but I'm stuck at how to render one that includes volumetric objects (smoke in a domain object), it does not show in the render layer I setup as per the above answer.
Obviously, as there would need to be a separate shader feeding into the 'volume' input of the material output node, my question is how do you create a WPP shader for volumes? Or more to the point can you create one?

Edit- It looks like you can almost do it, but the smoke gets incorrect / different XYZ-RGB data compared to the meshes. If you look at this video, you can see that in Fusion you can pick 3D/XYZ position from the 2D render, but the smoke isn't in the same 'world' position wise.
https://youtu.be/Ne9J2vyGOS4

The shaders are as follows-

Any ideas? How to get the smoke WPP shader to match the mesh WPP shader position wise?

Looks like (with the help of @iponoo @zeauro & @ kologe from blender artists & blenderchat), it is possible.
Here's the smoke shader, that works with the mesh shader to produce a WPP for both smoke and meshes-

It works well enough for me to do a bit of 'deep' type comping-
https://youtu.be/xgCA-D4ukJk

In the video the smoke seems to be respecting the same XYZ-RGB space as the meshes.
So divide the vectors by 100 in the smoke shader seems to make things all work together.

And certainly work well enough with the 'volume mask' tool in Fusion for me.

Cheers!


Removing Tabs from Tool Shelf ("T" key) I'm trying to remove unwanted tabs in the left-hand toolshelf, such as "Grease Pencil" and others I never use. I saw an answer here from 2014 that suggested you edit the "space_view3d_toolbar.py" file in C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.xx\scripts\startup\bl_ui, and comment out the class(es) that pertain to the tab you want to remove using """ at the start and end of the class.

However, I tried that for the Physics and Relations tabs, and it also removes a bunch of other tabs as well as the top menu. Also, this file doesn't seem to include the "Grease Pencil" or "Layers" tab info. I've done significant C# programming, so I doubt I messed up the commenting...

I'm wondering if something has changed in recent years. Is there a different file, or maybe I'm missing an easier tweak or add-on somewhere?

Thanks !!

Unregister the classes.

Rather than mess with the UI code, you can unregister the classes.  When a class is registered it is added to bpy.types  Using autocomplete in python console, dir(bpy.types) or looking at bl_ui.space_view3d_toolbar we can find the classes we wish to unregister.

Let's take the grease pencil tool bar panels as an example. The naming convention shows the panels we wish to remove start with VIEW3D_PT_tools_grease_pencil  Similarly for animation.

Test script to remove grease pencil and animation 3d view toolbar.

import bpy
from bpy.utils import unregister_class

gpclasses = [c for c in dir(bpy.types)
        if c.startswith("VIEW3D_PT_tools_grease_pencil")
        or c.startswith("VIEW3D_PT_tools_animation")]

for c in gpclasses:
    cls = getattr(bpy.types, c)
    unregister_class(cls)

Change above script to suit.

Hit F8 to reinstate the panels.


Translate/Scale/Rotate along single axis using MMB jumps around erratically I know I can constrain a translate/rotate/scale operation along an axis by holding  MMB and also holding X Y  Z
But when I do that, the selected element jumps around erratically (along and outside the selected axis) when I drag the mouse.
Here is a gif of the problem

MMB is a shortcut to pushing X,Y,Z, don't hold any X,Y,Z key at the same time, just use MMB until the constraint is active, then let go of MMB. This should keep the movement constrained to the axis your mouse move along.


Weird Shading glitches with models I'm having some weird results when I try to render. Here is the preview, but it looks the same in final. These spheres suddenly won't smooth shade anymore, the tops are glitching, and some results are insane. See the attached images.

Thank you for recommending checking the materials. The normal map was causing a glitch when I packed it into the blend. When I unpacked it and relinked it, it worked. The viewport glitch was due to the viewport clipping distance being turned too high, I lowered the range and it fixed it.


Use Object Mode and Edit Mode in the 3D View Is there a way in Blender to use a windowed 3D View with Object Mode and one with Edit Mode? Currently I can multiply the 3D View and use 2 windows, however they both switch whenever choose either Object Mode or Edit Mode. I would like to have just one window open in Object Mode and one in Edit Mode.
How can I achieve this?

Thanks for reply

No, there isn't currently. If you create two 3D Views, they will still be linked. When you enter into Edit Mode in one of them, the other one wil also.

Multiple 3D Views are mainly used for viewing diffirent angles at the same time.


Batch renderer stops after one render I am trying to batch render few sequence like 1 to 10 and then 30 to 50 but rendering stops after completing one sequence.

def execute(self, context):
    batcher = bpy.context.scene.batch_render
    sce = bpy.context.scene
    rd = sce.render
    batch_count = 0
    for it in batcher.frame_ranges:
        batch_count += 1
        print("***********")
        if (it.end_frame < it.start_frame):
            print("Skipped batch " + str(it.start_frame) + " - " + str(it.end_frame) + ": Start frame greater than end frame")
            continue
        sce.frame_start = it.start_frame
        sce.frame_end = it.end_frame

        sce.render.filepath = it.filepath

        bpy.ops.render.render('INVOKE_DEFAULT',animation = True)

    sum = 0
    for it in batcher.frame_ranges:
        if (it.end_frame >= it.start_frame):
            sum += (it.end_frame - it.start_frame)
    print("Rendered " + str(len(batcher.frame_ranges)) + " batches containing " + str(sum) + " frames")
    return {'FINISHED'}

if I put this line:

bpy.ops.render.render('INVOKE_DEFAULT',animation = True)

then it renders only one batch

if I put this line :

bpy.ops.render.render(animation = True)

it renders all batch without any issue .. but it freeze blender and doesn't show render progress bar.

I want to see progress bar and do batch rendering.

I'd suggest using handlers for this task.  Below is a script that adds a full set of render handlers, and prints the name of the handler when that event happens.

import bpy

frame_handlers = [name for name in dir(bpy.app.handlers)
                  if name.startswith("render")]

def handler_function(name):
    def handler(scene):
        print(name)

    return handler

for name in frame_handlers:
    handler = getattr(bpy.app.handlers, name, None)
    if handler is not None:
        handler.append(handler_function(name))

Experiment and see the order the handers are called firing  "render_init"... etc until, "render_compete"

Setting it up

In Operator execute, set the scene settings to first batch, call the render op and add the render_complete handler.

# add the handler.
   bpy.app.handlers.render_complete.append(render_complete)

The render complete handler

change scene settings to the next batch item and call render op again

You will need to keep tabs on which batch is rendered with an active_index property (or similar), (also handy for displaying the items in a UIList widget)  Please note this is just code typed into answer and not tested.

def render_complete(scene):
    batches = scene.frame_ranges
    i = batches.active_index
    if i < len(batches) - 1:
        batch = batches(i+1)
        # set up scene
        bpy.ops.render.render('INVOKE_DEFAUT', animation=True)
    else:
        #clear this hander
        bpy.app.handers.render_complete.remove(render_complete)

Experiment...


Strange Glass Reflectivity in Wine Bottle Scene I am testing out some materials and put together a simple wine scene from some downloaded assets.
This is the render:

Anyway, there are parts of the render that look pretty unnatural. I've pointed them out here:

The wine glass bottoms are unnaturally reflective. They almost look like metal.
There is some weirdness happening with the wine glass on the left.
There is a lot of noise only in the wine bottle side where it is reflecting the wine glasses.

Example of the noisy reflections I'm talking about (this is even after Optix):

Here's the glass shader I'm using for the glasses:

Here is my render setup and light paths:

I've deliberately cranked the Gloss, Transparency, and Transmission values to 32 after watching a talk about rendering glass accurately here. I've deliberately disabled caustics because well, cycles sucks at them.
Anyway, my questions:

How can I fix the unnatural reflections in the bottom of the wine glasses?
How can I denoise the reflections on the sides of the wine bottles?

Thanks for reading and for any assistance!
Edit:
Here is the blend file. I had to go with Dropbox because the file was too big for Blend-Exchange. Feel free to tinker with it and optimize anything.

A few comments:

The bottom of the glass is flat, making a horrible thick mass of glass. Most glasses are concave like this:

Use more samples for the render and less for the preview (to keep the interface more responsive and get better quality renders)

Use more light bounces

Turn Off ambient occlusion. In cycles you don't need it.

To have less fireflies bring down the indirect light clamping. Most fireflies come from indirect sources.

In my opinion the shader you are using doesn't improve the results of a regular glass shader.

Don't use overlapping geometry, it will only yield problems, like Z-figthing, where the depth buffer will have a hard time differentiating faces that are close together.

Same thing with the labels, for very thin paper it is easier to work the materials part of the bottle and not as separate objects.
As for the lighting:
It is hard (I would dare to say that is impossible) that you will find an HDR environment that suits the scene perfectly, as lighting glass and highly reflective objects is an advanced task that requires careful planing of the reflected objects on the scene. Remember that you are not lighting the scene, but creating the reflections that will bring out the qualities of the objects depicted (reflectivity, opacity, transparency, shape, volume, roundness, etc).
How can I render objects with very shiny surfaces?
Take the advice from that link, and you disconnect the environment and start trying a single light source at the time. Make a single very big area light and play with it so that you understand what it does, how it is reflected on the objects and how the shapes are revealed,

Once you find a suitable placement for it, and only then, add a second one and evaluate the results until you are happy. Bring in only as many lights as you need for the effect you are after.  The more sources you bring in the more shadows and reflections you will have to control, so be judicious and spartan when it comes to lights.

Use also black elements to create dark reflections among the bright sources.
There are countless articles on the internet on how to light and photograph wine, glass and shiny objects. Do your homework and learn from those who charge a fortune to do that (and don't forget to have fun doing it).


Fit timeline to first/last frame via python I'm trying to setup a scene in Blender 2.8 and I'm having problems "fitting" the timeline to the first/last frame.

There's no problem to set the frame-range of the scene via python, but the actual timeline still shows frames 1-250 even if my start/end is 50-100.

In the timeline it seems like you can press View/View All to fit the timeline to only show the scenes actual frame-range. But how do I do this with python? In the tooltip I see a command, but if I execute that command it tells me the context is wrong. So do I change the context to the timeline somehow, or is there another way?

scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.frame_start = 50
scene.frame_end = 100

# Does not work
bpy.ops.action.view_all()

You have to set a custom context, because the operator requires a specific context in which it can be executed. Otherwise the check implemented in its .poll() function will return false and execution fails.

You can accomplish this by iterating through the areas to find the timeline (which is now called DOPESHEET_EDITOR instead of TIMELINE in Blender 2.8). Then you also need the correct region with the type WINDOW. Once you have both you can create a custom context.

This script requires that you have the timeline open as an area somewhere in the UI.

import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.frame_start = 50
scene.frame_end = 100

for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'DOPESHEET_EDITOR':
        for region in area.regions:
            if region.type == 'WINDOW':
                ctx = bpy.context.copy()
                ctx['area'] = area
                ctx['region'] = region
                bpy.ops.action.view_all(ctx)
                break
        break


Is there a way to make a project directory for all the external files, including textures and render saves? I have been using blender for several years but I have never figured out if blender has a way to pack all the files from a scene, including blend files, textures, and render save files, in one folder like in Maya and other software?

I know what you mean and not quite. While Maya has these files on disk, blend files are like an archive and have an internal folder-like structure where it organizes scene data/resources etc. Blender has a feature to pack external resources into your file such as textures/images (useful for appending/linking things later and creating reusable libraries).

I would argue that this is superior to how Maya or Max does it as you can simply pack a blend file and it will locate all external resources and group them into a single file. At anytime, you can always unpack the files to the current directory (usually just creates a textures folder).

Anyway, to answer your question, no it's not possible out of the box to automatically generate folders and have resources or renders to these predefined locations, if you want to mimic such behaviour, you can always create the folders and ensure that your file paths are relative.


can you rotate two edges symetrically without mirror modifier? For example, if I have two edges like these:

and when I rotate them, I want them to rotate in opposite directions, like when you use the mirror modifier so that it looks ike this:

I was wondering if there's a way to do this without the mirror modifier because sometimes I just want to select two edges or faces in a mesh and either translate or rotate them symmetrically.

At the top bar, use your mouse to scroll over , far right.. your top bar will show XYZ buttons near the end. Depending on the object's origin, select X while you're on edit mode. You should get desired results.


Low poly curve to a high poly curve ? i want to make this set of faces more polished , more round , just having more faces forming a more defined curve

normally i do a subdivision with the modifier and crease the faces from top and below but the model is too complex for that

how am i supposed to do ?

temporary file link:
https://we.tl/t-r7BXMT7Vxd

thanks

Your topology is not good, therefore it limits the improvements you can make. But you can make that corner much rounder with bevels:

Go in Edit mode > Edge select mode.
Select the edges of your corner.
Press ctrl B and drag your mouse.
Press + or - or scrollwheel to increase or decrease the amount of edges of your bevel.
Your corner is rounder.


Make the IK bone only rotate on the x-axis Not sure what I messed up on here, but both the IK and the center bones have the Limit Rotation constraint, with the same values. Now, I want the mesh to only rotate on the x-axis. But right now, it's more like free-for-all. Before I've made a minecraft rig and it works all right. What do I need to fix this?

EDIT: I figured out, that it may be because the shoulder is frozen in on eposition and won't rotate when you use the IK. Not sure what's up. I tried following this tutorial: Blender tutorial

You cannot use other constraints in conjunction with IK. You need to use the built-in IK limits. They are in the Bone Data buttons, in the section marked Inverse Kinematics in The Inverse Kinematics section in the properties > Bone panel

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Do...#Bone_IK_Panel


What is causing the window coordinate vector to not project properly? I'm trying to project a frame onto an object so it would look like a hatch is in the ground of my tracked video. Seems like the frame is a bit disproportionate.

Scale of the object is applied.

If anyone has the same issue, I found the answer. So this was filmed with a phone and it could be that the dimensions weren't quite right so my camera cropped a bit of the video. So that was pretty much it.


My keypad numbers shortcuts doesn't work! Help! Hey so I just started using blender! I'm on a macbook pro, using the latest Sierra update. I know you can use the numbers on the keypad for different rotation and orthogrhapic views. I do have checked the box "Emulate Keypad" in the preferences, which should allow me to use the numbers on my macbook, yet absolutely nothing happens. I've tried pressing fn and everything, but nothing works... Any idea on how to solve this?

Thanks!
Marco

You can anyway access to these functions in the view menu, until you will be able to find how to make the numbers work.

Try also the "file - load factory settings" option, then check the  "emulate Keypad" button and don't forget to save your preferences settings.

Hope it helps.


Blender error - Incorrect armature for type 'base_generate' I'm new to rigging characters in Blender and I am getting this error.

CONFLICT: bone ORG-cheek.T.L owned by rig ORG-face has different parent rig from ORG-face

Incorrect armature for type 'base_generate'

I'm not sure what it means.  I'll attach pictures to show the specific bones that I'm talking about.  Any help is greatly appreciated.  Thank you.

I think I have the solution, although I'm fairly new to this. If you find the bone referenced in the error message, in your case cheek.T.L, and then click on the bone up from that in the chain (so travel towards the head of cheek.T.L and click on the next bone) to check its parent. When I got this message I noticed that the parent attribute for this next bone was blank. I changed it to "face" and that error disappeared. Keep on attempting to generate your rig and every bone in the face that has this problem will be highlighted one after another.


How can I make particles not rotate after lay on the surface? I want to make the falling autumn leaves.
I did a system of particles that rotate in flight.

How can I make them not rotate after lay on the surface?

You could possibly make the Particles die on contact (by checking the option in the collision tab) and display dead Particles (In Particle Settings)


Accidentally disabled transformation keys? I was working in Edit mode, merging a series of vertices, when I accidentally hit an unintended key combination which I now, unfortunately, don't remember. Nothing obvious happened, so I carried on.

However, now I can't use the keyboard transformation commands R and S. The transformation handles are greyed out, and though the transformation values are reflected in the Rotate (or Scale) status panel, there is no effect on the object and no change in the Object Data panel.

What have I done? And how do I reverse it?

I've spent some time googling, but I'm lost in a huge mass of hotkey information, and not knowing just what I've done makes it difficult to form a useful query.

You probably inadvertently hit Alt+, (comma), this turns on Manipulate Center Points, also found near the middle of the 3D view footer.

This makes all transformations only manipulate the origins of the selected objects, so scaling and rotating only do anything if more than one object is selected.  To disable it just hit Alt+, again or click the button in the footer.


Smoke Domain casts grayish box First of all, I'm new to the forum so please forgive me any mistakes (also in my english).

Setup: I'm currently rendering a Smoke simulation in Cycles, for which I've also setup a ground and wall plane as a collision object, and more importantly, a shadow catcher.

The smoke domain material is the default setup created by the "Quick Smoke" effect.

The issue: When rendering the image, theres a grayish Box at the intersecting point between the ground plane and the smoke domain (which is set to adaptive, the box lines up with the edge of the adaptive domain).

(low sample demo render, also background color is set to white for clearer visibility of the gray box)

What I've tried so far:

moving the ground plane
changing the light in the scene
checking AO
Disabling "Shadow" Ray Visibility in the Cycles Settings of both the domain and the ground plane

It looks like I'm not the first one to experience this problem, but I've not discovered an answer that worked for me yet.

Any help is highly appreciated.

Cheers

This appears to be a form of z-fighting - where two faces exactly coincide. Presumably the bottom face of the Smoke Domain rests exactly on the plane. This causes Blender to have trouble in determining exactly which surface has been hit by a ray and, despite the edge of the Smoke Domain being 100% transparent, this can result in the shadow.

In order to demonstrate this effect, here's the default cube, moved 1 blender-unit up so that it's bottom face rests on the Z=0 plane with a plane added also at Z=0. The Cube has been assigned a 100% transparent shader.

And here is the render - note the square shadow of the face of the cube that should not be present :

The solution is to slightly move the Cube or the Plane so as to separate those faces - only a very slight movement is required - moving the cube only 0.00001BU up was sufficient to avoid the issue.


Why can't I create a new face connecting the selected vertices? As shown in the picture, I've switched on X-ray，selected all vertices and pressed F, but no new face is created.
After that, I switch off X-ray ,selected the vertices again and pressed F, it works.
what is going on?
（Blender Version 2.91.0）

Most likely there are overlapping duplicated vertices. The first image indicates a selection of 48 vertices, the second one 12.
So you should select all A then M to merge and "by distance".


How to find the Python equivalent operation for tools, settings & menu? When you press a button or change a setting, this is an operation which you can also do in Python, how do you find the Python equivalent to accessing these user interface elements.

Settings (text, numbers, colors... etc)
Buttons (tools you access via key bindings, menu items etc)
Menus (accessed via headers, other menus or key-bindings)

Edit Source

If you wanted to find out the python code for some of the user interface and panels you could right-click on parts of the UI (such as buttons or properties within the panel you wanted to know about) and choose 'Edit Source'.

For example, if I wanted to know about the render panel:

I could right-click on the 'Render' button and choose 'Edit Source':

A notification will then appear in the Info header at the top of the screen (in a default layout) informing you that a text file had been created for viewing in the text editor:

You can check this file and view the python code that makes up the panel:

In this example you can see information which might be useful such as: The panel class name which can be used to append new UI elements into existing parts of the UI (RENDER_PT_render), the operator names and categories (render.render for example) and general UI code for creating rows (row = layout.row(align=True)).

Autocomplete

Sometimes, if you are searching for the python equivalent of a property, it might be useful to use the autocomplete feature (CTRL+Space) of the 'Python Console' to explore the api.

Autocomplete will show you all the possible options branching off the current one. For example, using autocomplete on bpy.data.objects['Cube'] would result in showing me all the available python properties for that object:

Online API documentation

You can also browse the online 'Python API Reference' (that link always redirects to the latest version) which can be found via the help menu:

This documentation includes several pages serving as an introduction to the API as well as a full reference to all the python commands and properties available to use in blender. While this doesn't provide the python command to an exact tool/panel instantly, a simple generic search of "panel" using the search box would provide results relating to existing panels in blender and examples of how to create a new one.

Hotkey Preferences

If you wanted to find out the python name of a menu that appears when you press a hotkey, you can search for that hotkey in the preferences. For example, if I wanted to know the python name of the menu that appears when I press Ctrl+H in edit mode (the hook menu), I can search using the shortcut (when search type is 'key binding') in File> User Preferences> Input:

This provides several results, one of which is a 'Call Menu' item in the 'Mesh' category which reveals the name of the menu being called:

Here we can see the menu being called with that shortcut is VIEW3D_MT_hook, which you can then call in your own scripts.


Symmetry and Alignment I'm creating a snowman while watching a tutorial
so I got these 2 eyeballs on him
how do I make sure that they are on symetrical spots on the huge snowball of the head, and how do I make sure that all three body parts (big snow balls) are aligned properly, (none of them has to be a lil left or a lil right, or a lil more up, or a lil more down), you get what I mean?

You can always position things by typing in there exact coordinates numeric input. Also snapping to an axis or the grid can help you align things. For symetry the mirror modifier is often the goto thing.

More precision tools


Plugin to add several video clips with cross fades between them all? Is there a plugin or an automated way to add a whole directory of videos and have a cross fade added between each of them in Blender?

I have finished the script. The script can be found on GitHub here: https://github.com/MrSprite/VSEC

I have not added sorting by file size or date yet, but all other features should be there!
Let me know if it works!


Mirror modifier, but not quite. Is there a phantom modifier? I need help, tried to google and seems I do not google the right keywords.

I need the thing like mirror, but not quite.

I want to mirror specific mesh object few exact places and edit the source mesh and see it reflected 3 other places.

Mirror modifier makes one copy - I need two, and each of them placed somewhere in space. I need that I can change position of each of the "phantom" meshes.

Is there such modifier or approach?

Any ideas much appreciated,

We'll start with this mesh (I extruded a face so it isn't symmetric):

Go to the object tab and add the object to a group:

Now, create an empty. Go to the object tab and set the duplication to the group you just created:

Now, to mirror the object, simply make the x-scale of the empty negative. It will become flipped. Since Blender is smart enough, the normals will be alright.

Now, you have a flipped copy of the object that will change if you change the original. You can repeat this if you need more copies, and you can position them as you wish:


How do I include depth when selecting vertices in a specific area? I just did a bunch of loop cuts. Now i want to select only the vertices in a specific area, but it only selects the vertices I can "see", like it's 2D. Do I have to rotate the image and slowly select each vertices I want, or is there a shortcut key to select the vertices in front and behind without having to rotate around an object?

Switch to wireframe mode (Press Z and select wireframe from the pie menu). Can also be toggled from the top of the Viewport. Alternatively, you can also toggle X-ray mode from the same area of the viewport:


How to move bones and amature in edit mode altogether? I need to move the armature and the bones that's in T pose to the center of the world.
But I can only grab the bones. How to move the mesh also altogether?

Parent the mesh to the bones, and then move the bones in pose mode


Problem with reference image - Changes to alpha does not change transparency I need to decrease the  reference image opacity, but when I decrease the      alpha in colour in Image tab (in properties), the image does not become transparent.

Image tab displaying the change in alpha

The reference image (a bowling pin), which is opaque, not transparent

Change opacity in the data properties panel transparency subpanel

Change from object properties to data properties, set opacity

The other answer popped up while making gif.  Thought I'd post as it is from a build of 2.83 and has a slightly different location for opacity setting.


Mesh doesn't move with armature? I have a problem with an armature. When I put only one bone in one mesh it works, but I want to put a few bones in one mesh. Is that even possible?
It works in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0VspDUOErE) but it doesn't work for me. Sorry for my English.

you have to parent the armature to the mesh, in order for the mesh to follow the bones.

set the 3D view in wireframe mode (Z key): it makes easier to see more than one object in the viewport
create the mesh (start with something simple, but the more vertices and subdivisions it has, the better will deform), leave it object mode
create the armature with all bones needed, leave it object mode
select the mesh and then shift-select the armature: you should then
have the mesh selected with a dark orange outline and the armature
with a lighter orange outline
press ctrl+P key and the armature parent menu shows up
for now, select armature deform -> with automatic weights
now select only the armature, and go to pose mode
select the last bone (the last in the chain) and try rotating it,
the mesh should follow. If you rotate the first bone in the chain all
other bones will follow, and so all the mesh will follow, too.
if ALL the mesh follows the single last bone, maybe the mesh
wasn't subdivided enough when you parented it. no problem:
to restart the parenting, select only the mesh (object mode) and
 press alt+P key, and choose "clear parent". then, subdivide more
 the mesh to make it more easy to deform following the single bones.
 When done, go back to point 4)

Using a multi-bone armature, each bone can be parented to specific mesh vertices, so that each bone influences the movement of the related vertices. The video you linked shows this at this point: https://youtu.be/n0VspDUOErE?t=421

The relation between a bone and mesh vertices is not exclusive of that bone, though. Other bones could influence at least part of the same vertices, if you decide so. Each bone can be set to influence a set of vertices with a variable degree of "weight". When more than one bone moves, all the influenced vertices are moved following the overall weights attributed to all parented bones of the armature.

This is a process usually known as "skinning", you can learn how here: http://www.blender.org/manual/rigging/skinning/obdata.html


Constant repeating errors in console Was just about to start learning Python in Blender, turned on the console and found the following message being constantly printed:

p_cache.gamepath_valid = os.path.exists(os.path.join(getGamePath(),"gameinf o
.txt"))
File "E:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.71\python\lib\ntpath.py",
line 108, in join
result_drive, result_path = splitdrive(path)
File "E:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.71\python\lib\ntpath.py",
line 159, in splitdrive
if len(p) > 1:
TypeError: object of type 'NoneType' has no len()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\Reverend Speed\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.71\
scripts\addons\io_scene_valvesource\__init__.py", line 105, in scene_load_post
game_path_changed(s,bpy.context)
File "C:\Users\Reverend Speed\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.71\
scripts\addons\io_scene_valvesource\__init__.py", line 139, in game_path_changed

Any clues? Had a problem with my E drive a while back, and while waiting for a solution I installed Blender (one of the 2.72 release candidates) to my C drive. When the final version of 2.72 came out, I installed that to C also.

Looking to fix this asap - was really anticipating getting stuck into Python and Blender tonight, but I won't be able to see any prints to console with this spamming constantly.

All the best,

--Rev

Although it's a drastic measure, you could erase the %APPDATA%\Blender Foundation\Blender directory. That'll make you loose all your settings (and possibly extra addons you installed), but also should reset any lingering references to the old installation directory.

Make sure you create a backup copy before doing this, though.


Unable to Unwrap 3D object I imported an SVG, extruded it and now it's a 3D object, and I want to add a texture from a JPG.  I have a photo of some glasses that I'd like to recreate as a 3D model.

I followed all the instructions on Unwrapping and UV Editing, but I can't get the Unwrap menu / options to appear.

I have my object in Edit mode, I press A to select all, and when I press U, nothing happens.  I've been searching everywhere for an answer but have come up short.

I know it's a super basic thing, but it's driving me nuts!  (I'm new here).  Please help.  Thanks!

As impresso says, you need to convert your curve to mesh: Select your object in Object mode and go into the Object menu > Convert to > Mesh from Curve.


Compositor connection lines Sometimes curved or fluid connector lines are tiring to work with in a complex node setup. Is there a way to change the shape to a more straight line?

Yes, open up your User Preferences > Themes > Node Editor and set the Noodle curving to 0.

If you want to reset it, default value is 6.


Unwanted pentagon in unwrap I'm fairly new to blender, and I created a gun I would like to texture. I am using online videos to help me UV unwrap my gun, but when I try to unwrap the seamed pieces individually, this pentagon shows up. I don't really like it. Any help on how to get rid of it would be appreciated. I think it came from me clicking "Follow Active Quads" in the unwrap menu, but I'm not entirely sure.

The first thing would be to see if the mesh has a non-square face (ie, with 5 vertices) and fix it if it does. If it does and you want do be lazy, simply add one vertex in the middle and use that to make triangles.

(Faces that are made of more than four vertices are known to cause problems in weird places, so making a habit of removing them and keeping a good topology will make things easier. I think blender for the most part doesn't have a problem with it except for edges and faces that do have the same location.)

The best way to fix the uv map is probably to make a new one. I would recommend you first use it with a checker texture to find any weirdness first, so you might discover any other problems you might have missed.


Knife Project not available 2.8 (trying to cut two shapes out of one) For some reason my knife project is not available when I search it, the only thing that comes up is knife, I am trying to cut one shape out of another shape but keep both shapes in tact so I would essentially have two new shapes. Is there another way I could do this?

You need to select the first object, then the second, then go in Edit mode, then header menu > Mesh > Knife Project. Note that it will take your view angle into account.

If you want to project the inner edges of a mesh (like the rays of the circle on the image below) you need to delete its faces.


Glossy node isn't reflecting On the neck label of my Jack Daniels bottle I have the glossy node plugged in but as can be seen in the image -- it's not reflecting.

I tried adding another glossy to 'double' the glossiness but that didn't work either.

How can I make it glossy?

Essentially what's happening is the transparency is being turned into black which will just absorb all light. So it won't reflect.
How you should go about doing this, is make a material for your decal, should be a mix of diffuse and glossy, then, using the alpha from the texture as the factor, mix that with the material for the rest of the cap.

There's just a quick example I put together. The transparent parts of the texture use "Main Material", and the opaque parts use "Decal".


Why is this displacement not creating a perfectly square cube? I'm attempting to use micropolygon displacement to displace a cube into a larger cube, in an attempt to wrap my head around this feature. As near as I can tell, the following should work. Take a cube with each face having UVs in the range -1 to 1, so that 0 is in the center of the face. Calculate the length of the UV, which should be in the range 0 to sqrt(2), and map that to 1 to sqrt(3). Use that as the displacement height. The cube is of course set to smooth shading.
The result is close to a cube, but off.

I would like to point out :

I think your math is off
You can get the length of a vector with a Vector Math node set to "Length"
The UV map vector Z coordinate is 0 (I think)

The resulting node tree would be :

But since the "Displacement" node pushes geometry along the normals, you can get rid of your UV map setup like so :


UV Mapping: Skewed Tile Image I have a .jpg image that I want to used as a tiled texture for blender.
So I unwrapped my object (a cuboid with beveled edges) and added the image to the UV/Image editor. I clicked "Coordinates: Repeat" so that the image gets tiled.

Since I use Cycles Render, I added a node (image texture) and added the color output to the input of the Diffuse BSDF.
Unfortunately, the image is display skewed on the real object, though it is displayed corretly in the UV/image editor.

Here is a screenshot (skewed image left on the object, correct image right bottom in the UV editor):

How can the image be display correctly (unskewed) on the object? Thanks!

I'm not quite sure, but I believe that you mean "rotated 90°" by "skewed."

You can use a Mapping node in a setup similar to the one below.

Note that this is both an older version of Blender, and gandalf3's image from this BSE question.

From here, I would suggest feeding 90° and -90° values into the Rotation: sockets until your cubeoid  looks right. Do note that the X, Y, and Z values are not related, so what you do to one of them will not affect the others.


Cannot build blender from source on ubuntu 16.04 (Error at CMake Compile) I'm asking the same question at https://blenderartists.org/t/cannot-build-blender-from-source-on-ubuntu-16-04-error-at-cmake-compile/1111985

What I tried to do

I'm trying to build blender for the first time and ran into some errors during compiling. I use ubuntu 16.04.

Following the manual, I've ran:

mkdir /media/allosteric/Data/PF/BlenderBuild
cd /media/allosteric/Data//-git
git clone https://git.blender.org/blender.git
cd blender
git submodule update --init --recursive
git submodule foreach git checkout master
git submodule foreach git pull --rebase origin master
make update
sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install git build-essential
cd ..
./blender/build_files/build_environment/install_deps.sh
cd blender
make

However, this raises errors. Logs are described below. (I ran make clean;make for the second and later runs.)

Logs

Every time the log started with:

Configuring Blender in "/media/allosteric/Data/PF/BlenderBuild/build_linux" ...
-- Could NOT find Spacenav (missing:  SPACENAV_LIBRARY SPACENAV_INCLUDE_DIR)
-- Boost version: 1.58.0
-- Found the following Boost libraries:
--   filesystem
--   regex
--   thread
--   date_time
--   locale
--   system
--   chrono
--   atomic
-- Unsupported CFLAG: -Wrestrict
-- Unsupported CXXFLAG: -Wrestrict
-- Blender Skipping: (bf_alembic;bf_collada;bf_intern_ctr;bf_intern_opencl;bf_intern_utfconv;extern_sdlew)
-- Disabling Cycles tests because tests folder does not exist

after so, the compile halts raising errors with some varieties. The followings are some examples.

[ 42%] Building C object source/blender/blenkernel/CMakeFiles/bf_blenkernel.dir/intern/navmesh_conversion.c.o
[ 42%] Linking C static library ../../../lib/libbf_blenkernel.a
[ 42%] Built target bf_blenkernel
Makefile:160: recipe for target 'all' failed
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
GNUmakefile:128: recipe for target 'all' failed
make: *** [all] Error 2

or

[ 35%] Building C object source/blender/windowmanager/CMakeFiles/bf_windowmanager.dir/intern/wm_stereo.c.o
[ 35%] Linking C static library ../../../lib/libbf_windowmanager.a
[ 35%] Built target bf_windowmanager
Makefile:160: recipe for target 'all' failed
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2

or

[ 35%] Building C object source/blender/windowmanager/CMakeFiles/bf_windowmanager.dir/intern/wm_stereo.c.o
[ 35%] Linking C static library ../../../lib/libbf_windowmanager.a
[ 35%] Built target bf_windowmanager
Makefile:160: recipe for target 'all' failed
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
GNUmakefile:128: recipe for target 'all' failed
make: *** [all] Error 2

and others that I haven't kept track of.

About my PC

The OS I currently use is ubuntu 16.04 LTS. However, this is a dual-boot with a Windows 10.

The /media/allosteric/Data/PF/BlenderBuild, which is the directory I'm currently tring to build blender, is a mount of a Data Driver originally for the Windows.

My CPU is an Intel® Core™ i5-4210H CPU @ 2.90GHz × 4, which is 64-bit and GPU is GeForce GTX 950M.
Thanks.

I ran sudo apt install libpng16-dev and sudo apt install libjpeg9-dev and blend was successfully compiled.


How to remove the default cube? How do you remove the default cube that appears in the scene upon opening the software? I wish to start with a blank scene when opening Blender.

Delete the cube:
Starting with the unchanged default scene, select the cube (RMB click on the cube) then hit X or DELETE and RMB click the following popup. You may also repeat this step on the camera and light if you wish to start with a completely blank scene.

Save the startup file:
Click File > Save Startup File or hit CtrlU and click to confirm. The scene is now saved as the default startup scene and you no longer have the default cube!


Is it better for your character model to be filled or hollow inside? I'm making a character model that will be rigged and used for a 3D animation I'm making for class. In tutorials I see, they keep their models hollow. Is it better to keep your model hollow? Will my model still be ok if it's filled inside while rigging or will there be problems I'll encounter?

Hollow and if I'm correct you can not fill your model it's just not possible.
And even if you fill your model it will be very expensive as it will drastically increase poly count making you animation worse and also punish your hardware.


Cut a mesh based on path on svg file Hi and thanks in advance for contrubitions.
I have a cylinder like mesh in blender. I want to create a patterned cut on its surface based on a .svg file.
I will work on it based on this cut so texturing it and setting it as alpha doesn't work for me.

I found an answer here: Wrap curve around sphere. 1- Bend .svg into cylinder. 2- Add shrinkwrap modifier. 3- Use Boolean to cut it.


Only part one part of the model is being rendered I’m trying to do is a very simple animation: a mesh, a moving 3D–animation of a mouth. It has two layers: one is the lips (red), the other is the inside of the mouth which is black. Consequently I have 2 materials under the material slot. Under the mesh slot, I’ve connected the two parts of the mouth as a vertex group. I’ve created 2 shape keys: one for closed and one for open. These values are keyframed and will eventually be baked to a sound file, making the mouth move in sync. Everything looks fine and dandy when I play the animation. But when I tried to render it, all my previous problems seem very light indeed. First I couldn’t render anything at all. Finally I found a post saying and should uncheck the compositing and the sequencer. That made the trick. Almost. Problem is, it only renders the red part of the image. Can someone please help me out. Please?

I'm attaching one image, it seems that it is the limit here? I can supply more if needed

All what you need to do is move black part a little bit higher, because you have two faces on exact same level - overlaped. Blender can't know which one is on top.

Anyway: I recommend you search for some tutorials about topology and animations.


How to stop viewing controls to be too sensitive to mouse movements? The camera sometimes in the 3D view becomes hyper sensitive to mouse motion.

eg: Initially rolling the middle mouse wheel would advance .5 grid square per notch. After moving the view around to edit, now one notch of the mouse wheel is 20 squares distance and any slight mouse motion sends the view flying off wildly.

All I know what to do about it is save my work close Blender and reopen the file and it works correctly again.

Why does it do that?
Is there a reset for that?

Maybe focusing on your object does what you want?

Select a object and press the . on your numeric pad, if you have one.

If you like that feature and want it to be always active, you can in the preferences menu set it up:


How do i remove images that are dragged onto an object? at the moment i am modeling a Honda s2000 and setting up a render for it. However, i have accidentally dragged a blueprint of the car onto one of the pieces of the car and i don't know how to remove it. I cannot find it in the node editor or in the uv/image editor. Thank you to anyone who helps :D. This is the picture of my car's handle piece and you can see the blueprint printed over my carbon fibre material:

Don't worry guys i found it, if anyone has the same issue just go over to the textures tab and delete the dragged image!


Why, despite matching FPS, does the audio not match the video in the rendered file? Currently working through Match Track Blend (version 01) with my shiny newish computer w/16 GB Ram on Windows 7. Have set my Sequencer / Clip Editor Memory Cache Limit to 8192.A

On rendering the first lesson (this one - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3E3zRQSpcI - as found on my DVD), I found that upon playing the output .avi in VLC, the audio in the .avi file was out of sync with the video.

(I'm aware of the AV-Sync feature in the VSE, but this is a feature to help the editor while in the VSE and should have no bearing on the final .avi file)

Investigating, I found that when importing the original footage (from DVD, file 'tracking_intro.mov', with Render Properties Frame Rate set to 25FPS) and then exporting as HDTV 720p at 25FPS, the resulting render (with no changes to content) has the audio rushing the video by about half a second.

The audio and video strips perfectly match each other's position in the VSE. Everything indicates that it should output a video roughly equivalent to the video it imported.

In short, what in hell? Does anybody have a solution? Really wanted to get into some video editing, but it seems pointless unless I can solve this audio problem.

The source file is tracking_intro.mov from the Match Track Blend DVD.

--Rev

PS: Had this problem years ago when I first got the DVD, but figured the problem was down to my hardware. Now I know there has to be some settings somewhere that'll solve this issue...

==== EDIT ====

Have since experimented with time stamps and image tracks. The image tracks seem to work just perfectly - outputting a video file perfectly in sync with the audio. However, in examining the video file in VSE, I've discovered that the original video track appears to have several frames at the start of the video which do not show up in the VLC file, nor in the exported image files, nor in the reimported image track.

In these frames, Sebastien raises his head and opens his eyes before he begins to speak. In addition, VLC's statistics for the file seem to show some lost frames...

I'm not looking for any trouble here - I'm just trying to understand the situation for my own satisfaction. As pointed out below, Sebastian suggests that we work with image files, which makes sense. But in case I encounter this problem again - is this a case of a slightly borked file?

Many thanks to all who've looked in at this!

--Rev

At the very beggining of the tutorial, he tells us that it may be problematic to work directly with the .mov file, depending on the FFMPEG version in use within your system.

So you should try to convert the movie source file into an images sequence, and import it in VSE. Then, import the audio of the the original .mov file, and sync it with the images sequence strip.


Why does my cloth simulation bounce for a moment before settling down? Whenever I play/try to render an animation with cloth simulation active it bounces for a second before settling down. Is there a way to effectively start rendering the animation from a point where it has settled and reacts to the models movement normally? The only thing I can think of is to add a couple of seconds to the animation before it starts to give it time to settle but that would increase the render time significantly.

You are right with the idea of starting the simulation before the start of the animation so that the first rendered frame uses a stationary version of the cloth.

Note that this will have no effect on your render times, the simulation only needs to be baked once before you start rendering and the cached results are then used during render.


Metaballs and particles I’m following a tutorial to create a paint splatter effect. I’ve got I’ve got a particle system and I’ve created a metaball to create a mesh from the particle system under parent in render. When I go to the particle system and try to make the metaball a mesh it just moves the particles on top of the metaball. It doesn’t create a mesh. Anyone know why?

Here is the tutorial I was watching: enter link description here

Here is an example of whats happening when I try to parent the particle system to the metaball in the render section of the particle system. IT won't create a mesh. It just moves the particles on top of the metaball.

You don't need to parent the Particles to the Metaball.
You want the particles to become metaballs. you achieve this by changing the rendering object of the Particle system. In your screenshot the particles are set to "halo". Go to the Render-Section of your particle system and change that to "object" (yellow rectangle) and select your metaball. The particles themselves are now metaballs and can interact with each other.


Why does video load unpredictably? I'm having trouble trying to motion track a video, because it loads a frame ahead or behind depending on whether I play or seek through it.

As an example: I load my .blend and then seek to frame 70. Then I open it again, but this time, I play the animation until it reaches frame 70, then seek there. All of the trackers are now off.

This sort of error isn't good when I'm seeking and playing a lot, as it causes my tracking to look early or late. Is there a way to fix or work around it?

It turns out that this isn't a bug. I found that I have to check "Proxy/timecode" in the movie clip editor and set "Use timecode index" to "Record run." Now it works fine.


control curves with bones Is there a way to control curves with bones? I already know the AnimAll addon and the Hook modifier, but I'd like to have IK-FK control on some 2D curves objects.

For each curve control point create a bone (separate not parented) and hook those vertexes to bones.
Now you can totally control the curve with armature.
Next you want to connect the bones with Child_Ofs constraints to link them into a chain.
When the Child_Ofs influences are at 1.0 you have FK control, when they are at 0.0 you have IK control (this setup is called FIK - forward inverse kinematic).
You can drive the influences with custom properties so it is accessible from the Properties panel.


What is the best tutorial or method to model a head? There used to be a really good tutorial on creating a human head model (Natalie Portman) on Youtube. It’s gone now.

I want to model my own head to then add rigging and lip sync. All the ones I’ve found now on YouTube aren’t as good as the Natalie Portman one I found.

Can anyone recommend another tutorial (video or site) that can help me achieve my goal of animating myself?

Thanks. I’m stlll a total noob!

You might want to check this dude Alimayo Arango out he has a lot of (Hyper-Detailed) character modeling tutorials (including other stuff!)

P.S His models/designs are Not AAA but i think they're enough to get you started.


Face making and Loop Cutting I have a problem making faces while modeling. When I make a face in Blender and try to put loop cut I just can't .... Anybody knows another way to connect/make faces ? Please answer me..

I suspect that the problem is that you are trying to make a loop cut through a face which does not have four edges [a "quad", short for "quadrilateral"]. When a face has fewer than, or more than four sides, the intelligence in the loop cut does not know where you want the loop cut routed.

Sometimes, the loop cut will form partway around the faces. When this occurs, at the point where the loop cut fails to complete, you can manually continue the loop cut by selecting the edge, or vertex through which you want the loop cut to continue, and manually delete the fact, and add new faces using the conventional methods.


Gradient glowing object - how to? I need to create a sphere, which emits lights, which affect to other objects.
But the problem is: i need sphere to look like on the picture - center is always with one color and edges are glowing with another.
And this should not affect color of light.

I'm very new to Blender. I understood how to emit light that affects other objects. But it's white.

The important note is: it must be fully exportable, because i'm going to use it in another engine.

Sorry for any mistakes in sentences, please.

Where exactly are you trying to export to and through which exchange format?
As stated above materials are very tied to the rendering system they were created for, you can't really export them as you can with a 3D model.

If you are using Cycles render you need to

Create a new material
Add two emission shaders (one with the desired color, the other white)
Use a Mix Shader node to mix them
Add a layer weight node as mixing factor
You may use either Fresnel or Facing as output
Optionally you can fine tune the color grading with a Vector Curve Node
To get the material to emit light only in one color add a new Mix Shader node
Connect the original shader to the bottom socket
Connect the uniform emission color to the top socket
To control that mix shader add a Light Path node
Connected the Is camera socket to the mix factor

This should work in Cycles, but as stated above it is very much tied to the way Blender works and how Cycles builds it's shaders, I very much doubt you will be able to export this anywhere useful, much less to a real time rendering system like a game engine or something.


Easiest Way to Join Meshes Here is a common situation I run in to:

I have two meshes in the same object that end up near each other and I would like to join them so that the two disparate geometries are linked and manifold. I don't have a common set of vertices between the two objects that I can use remove doubles on. I think I would usually try to extrude the cube into the larger shape and then use intersect (knife) with self intersection to get a common set of vertices that I can try to join. However, this is inexact and can yield messy results after the knife, along with leaving extraneous pieces that need to be removed.

So my question is: is there an EASY way to join these together? In the exact situation above, the face of the larger object that faces the cube would be split into 3 faces - one on each side of the cube and the one face shared between the two geometries.

EDIT:
I made the mistake of not showing an example that is similar enough to what I actually run into. Consider the following:

There are two answers concerning loop cutting (and extruding) but that doesn't work in the above situation because the work eventually joins back to itself and it's not always a nice square situation when it does.

Since you are asking about the "easiest way"...

In my opinion, the easiest way to deal with those situations is by not creating them in the first place (unfortunately minecraft and other apps seem to have created unnecessary problems when it comes to modeling, by thinking in boxes that get added and somehow have to be connected. You have to think outside the box...).

If you know that those parts have to be connected, create them as connected elements from the start.

In this case create a base mesh, scale, add a couple of loop cuts and extrude.

The shape of your object is the result of it's topology. Topology shouldn't be an afterthought


How to fix this physics problem? Hello everyone,
How to fix this physics problem, the objects pass trough to wall.
I increased the Steps per second and Solver iterations in scene settings > Rigid body world. Also, I set the shape to Mesh in rigid body settings, but nothing happen...

Many thanks!

When building a physics simulation it's important to ensure it fits with 'real world' proportions and properties in order to achieve a realistic simulation.

Firstly, ensure your surface Normals are pointing in the right direction. You can view your normals in Edit mode (Tab), opening the Properties side-bar (N), scroll down to Mesh Display and enable 'Display face normals as lines'. This will display short blue lines at the centre of each face to indicate the face 'direction'. For physics collisions to correctly detect 'inside' and 'outside' you should ensure your normals are all pointing 'out'. If you need to adjust the normals there is an option to 'Flip Normals' (change the selected faces to point the other direction).

Ensure your objects are all at a 'realistic' scale in the real world - if you haven't set a specific scale on your scene (eg, Metres, Millimetres, etc.) then you can assume 1 Blender Unit (the units that your dimensions of objects are measured in) will represent 1 metre. Note that the scale is important for the physics simulation - the forces resultant from a falling 0.01m x 0.01m x 0.1m block (eg, similar size to a Jenga block) will be considerably different to a 1m x 1m x 10m wooden beam - even though the proportions are similar.

If your objects have had their 'scale' adjusted (using the Scale tool) you should ensure you 'Apply Scale' to have their new scale affect the simulation. This can be acheived by selecting the mesh in Object mode, pressing Ctrl+A and select Scale.

Finally, set the object's Mass to a realistic value for the behaviour of that object you desire. This is available in the Physics panel of the toolbar panel on the left-hand side (T) by clicking Calculate Mass. This allows you to select the material of that mesh to use in the physics simulation, such as Cork, Iron, Brass, Concrete, etc. - or set a Custom density if none of the preset ones are suitable.

Note that it can be beneficial to increase the Steps Per Second and Solver Iterations settings above their defaults (60 steps per second and 10 iterations) but care must be taken when increasing them too high as higher values result in shorter "timeslices" each time Blender evaluates a "step" in the simulation. Shorter timeslices result in much smaller forces and motions and the precision can result in rounding errors, adversely affecting the accuracy and realism of the simulation.


Is it Possible to Create an Opalescence Shader in Cycles? Is it possible to make an Opalescent shader in cycles?

From Wikipedia:

  Opalescence is a type of dichroism seen in highly dispersed systems
  with little opacity. The material appears yellowish-red in transmitted
  light and blue in the scattered light perpendicular to the transmitted
  light. The phenomenon is named after the appearance of opals.

I attempted to do something similar by mixing to glass shaders with IsCamera ray as the factor:

However, the color of each glass shader is getting mixed, so the color of the object is not separate from the color of the caustics:

How can I make a shader with separate color inputs for the caustics and the object itself? Or if it's possible, make a more physically based opalescence shader?

Update: I managed to separate the caustics from the object with this node setup:

However, I can't seem to mix them. Here are results with the Factor of the last mix node at 0, .5 and 1:

I did not expect setting the factor to .5 to work, though I'm not sure why using an Add node blows it out:

I could composite these together, but I would prefer to have it work in one material if possible.

How can I accomplish this?

The Problem here is that you have to use two different shaders that both use refraction rays. That makes it difficult to find a separation that lets the one shader cast rays on other objects after doing refraction and the other rays casting rays into the camera after refraction but not cast rays onto other objects.

I found this node setup to work:

Result:

Of course this is not physically correct and somewhat a hack. But with a little extra work you should be able to simulate a rather good looking opalescent shader.


Does Blender 2.8 work with Nvidia 1050 Ti graphics? Having tried for weeks to get 2.8 to render on a Nvidia 1050 Ti, I'm stumped.
I have used many different versions of Nvidia driver, several builds of Blender 2.8.
I don't see where anyone else has got this card to be recognized either. It is supported in the documantation, & the card works great on other software.
But every time in 2.8 I get  "No CUDA compatible card recognized.
Is this card supported really? - It is recognized & works on Blender 7.9.

Yes, that's what I get - no card shows in preferences. But, on exactly the same machine, The 1050 shows for Blender 2.79, & renders very well. I tried the latest drivers, & several others, but it does not show.

Windows 7 (Home) 64 bit. All Windows updates. Device manager shows everything working.

Is this what your preferences looks like?

If there is a card showing up there, then you need to check the checkbox next to it. If not then I am quite lost, since there isn't really a reason a gtx 1050 ti wouldn't work with blender, except if you have an outdated driver or something. As far as I know all of the 10th gen Nvidia cards work in blender 2.8 (I personally had a gt 1030 work fine).

P.S. If this doesn't work, please clarify what OS you are using.


Translate an object local in Animation Nodes I try to translate objects local the following way:

The problem is it resets all other things like scale and rotation (that are set not using a matrix).
I have seen this topic:

How to move object in its local transform orientation in Animation nodes?

But that does not work in my case. (It's like all previous non matrix editing gets undone).

Here is the file, I hope someone can take a look:

Here is the data it loads:
https://pastebin.com/raw/Lu7Cj8SH

Edit:

I tried isolating the problem and I already have hit a wall.
Why does this not work?

The thing is the matrix translation node is basically a compose matrix node but with no control about rotation and scale. This means whatever you do with the translation matrix node it is always going to output a matrix with a 0, 0, 0 rotation and a 1, 1, 1 scale. If the objects you are looping through had a rotation and scale, they are going to "lose" them by going through this kind of loop. One way to solve this is in the following setup:

Here all the objects in the 3D view are going through the loop but are not loosing their initial loc, rot and scale. From there if you add a compose matrix node in the free input (which is going to input a loc: 0, 0, 0 rot: 0, 0, 0 scale: 1, 1, 1), you can controle all the objects realtive to their intial position, instead of overwriting it.
I don't know if this is also valid in the master branch of AN, but their is a handy thing added to the object matrix output node, which is dealing with object and matrix lists. The latest version of an can be found here. You don't have to loop anymore. The thing is there still is no matrix list math node (at least I've not found one), so you will still have to loop but this is useful for making a grid (if you are not playing with indices).

This is only an answer to the first part of the question, indeed animation nodes seems to have problems dealing with matrices. You can find the bug report here in order to solve matrices problem.
I don't know why this happens but somewhere your node setup you are trying to get elements from a list but this list is empty so it shows an error. I hope this was kind of helpful


Where is the BSurfaces project living now? It would appear that www.BSurfaces.info the web site for the retopologizing tool has gone down and was gobbled up by a dentistry practice. Where is the project living now? Has someone put the code on Github? I can't seem to find it.

Even though the site is gone we still have the addon. In fact it comes with the default blender. Just search in the addons for bsurfaces. Or if you are looking for the code go to the addon folder in the blender directory 2.71\scripts\addons\mesh_bsurfaces.py.

There are still a few places to get info about Bsurfaces.

The blender wiki
Blenderartists
A great PDF linked from the blender wiki
A few videos from the creator of Bsurfaces on vimeo
Blender cookie tutorial on BSurfaces here.


Finding Vertices, Edges, Faces, and Tris using Python I am trying to access the triangle count of an object with Python. All other python code displays itself when I hover my mouse over the corresponding button in the interface. When I go to the info bar and hover my mouse over the triangle count, nothing appears. When looking in the documentation around data, there doesn't appear to be any clear function to call to get this info.

You can access the polygons of a mesh, then calculate the triangles from the number of vertices per polygon.

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.scene.objects.active
data = obj.data

# FACES, TRIANGLES
total_triangles = 0

for face in data.polygons:
    vertices = face.vertices
    triangles = len(vertices) - 2
    total_triangles += triangles

print(total_triangles)

# VERTICES
vertices = []
for vertex in data.vertices:
    pos = [vertex.co[0], vertex.co[1], vertex.co[2]]
    vertices.append(pos)

print(vertices)

# EDGES
edges = []
for edge in data.edges:
    edges.append([edge.vertices[0], edge.vertices[1]])

print(edges)


Can't get Graphics Chipset AMD Radeon R7 200 Series to work with GPU rendering I can not for the life of me setup GPU computing with my R7 200. It is listed as supported, but I can not even see it as an option in the system tab.

All I get is "Oland" as the computing device unde Open CL

Please help!

Oland is the name of the GPU. AMD cards show as the codename for the chipset.

Select it as your OpenCL device and then enable GPU compute for the scene.

Keep in mind that not all render features are available when using AMD cards.


Blender animatons not working properly in unity 3d Its my first game and im working on blender for the first time, so please answer in brief.

I made an animation using four objects in blender, one hand, one gun, and two curved plates. Everything looked fine in blender but when i imported it in unity, the objects were placed in wrong locations. Though the animations were working!

I'm attaching side view pictures of the animation that i get to see in unity and blender

Please help me!
I'm stuck here
Thanks in advance!

Please don't take a photo of your screen, it's not quite readable. More infos here.

Your issue could come from several things. But considering you're just starting and didn't provided enough informations to let us work fast and precisely, I would start with the more classic issues. You will have to check through, I'll try to be clear and concise.

1) Location / Rotation / Scale not initialized / applied.
If you made your rig (and so on) while your object were not placed nicely, were rotated or had a scale different of 1 (or wore, not the same scale on each axis), it will cause troubles. Always check that when done modeling, before doing anything else (including rigging).
Solution : Use the "Apply transforms" menu (ShiftA) to apply the current object's state (be aware that applying location basically means to set the object's origin to the scene's center, it's not always what you want).

2) Bad origin placement
If your object's don't have their origin at the same place, they can't possibly be imported in the same place in another software.
Solutions: Make their origins be in the same place (i.e. : scene's center)(you can use the apply location with ShiftA, or manage the origin with Ctrl Alt Shift C, or use a parent (the armature is a parent, you can also use an empty object which you set as parent of everything else and select last before exporting so that he is used as the selection's origin).

3) Skinning/weights issues
As mentioned above, it might be some issues with how you assigned your meshes to your armature. Make sure you assigned those meshes to at least one of the bones.
Solution: Use weight paint for that, it will show you the weights with colors. If its missing, either paint, or use the edit mode to select the mesh parts you want to assign, and use those widgets to do so :

Hope it helped.


How can I make a texture follow the shape of the mesh? I consider myself a newbie Blender user (and still use 2.79). I am having trouble applying a texture to a floor that's an 'S' type shape, so that the texture follows that shape. Following a couple previously answered questions, I am currently trying texture coordinate>mapping and a checkered texture to test, but I clearly don't know what I am doing. I marked the seams around the outside, I unwrapped, and I am still lost. Could someone give me any tips please?
This is my inspiration and the desired result:

This is what I am dealing with right now:

You can unwrap your floor with the Follow Active Quads mode (in Edit mode, switch to Face mode, select all the faces, make one active, unwrap), it will square the UVs:

Give your object the material you want, use the UV output socket of the Texture Coordinate:

Here is what it gives (I've given a Subdivision Surface modifier to the object):


Procedural chain links not working with blender curves I'm trying to make a procedural chain link (by following this tutorial).
One of the steps required is to add a curve (path) and connect the chain link's curve modifier to that newly added curve.
However, the chain link is instead attaching itself to the very end of the curve. As a result, the curve does not affect the chain link unless you grab the point at the end, in which case the chain link will move very stiffly with the position of that particular point. I feel as though I'm properly following the directions, so I don't understand what my issue could be. Any and all help is very much appreciated.
The first picture is the result I'm getting, and the second picture is the expected result shown in the tutorial video:

Curve Modifier
With origins of both objects at the same place it seems to be working properly.


How to remove self intersecting parts of model after Bridge Edge loops? I want to create a tight bend, i foutn that i can use Bridge Edge Loops to do so. But this creaates some self intersection. How can i remove the selfintersecting part and make the mesh cleaner?
Image illustrates the issue.

Rather than trying to do it yourself, Blender (2.8+) comes with an addon built in for producing extra mesh objects including pipe joints.
Search 'extra' in the Addons section under Preferences and check 'Add Mesh: Extra objects'

You'll then see an extra section on the 'Add menu' with a Pipe Joints section:

Add an Pipe Elbow and change the settings to what you need:
Then add a Solidify modifer, adjust its thicknes and apply it to give you the final object:


Which version of Blender can I use with an i3 and Windows 7? I wanted to know which version of blender I can use with an Intel i3 and a standard visual graphics card of intel. The laptop is from 2013 with Windows 7 and I can't get a newer one.

Start always with the latest version.
If that doesn't work then downgrade to an older one.
2.79 will work with most old and humble computers.
2.8 needs a bit more robust hardware (specially a good GPU).B
But the best way to know is to try it out.


How to create and change the color of a Node based material with a script I want to do an animation of a blender object which changes the color over time, in dependence of the temperature. Therefore zeffi already wrote a script which transforms different colormaps into blender. (Set color of Blender object based on external data (e. g. temperature) using a colormap)

Now I would like to create a node based material with a script, set the colormap to jet and when the temperature changes, I would like to change also the color.

Can someone post a little piece of script, how I can achieve this?

Thanks

I can answer one of your questions but you will need to download and install the add-on again if you haven't yet. The add-on now lets you access functionality via the script shown below.

This assumes a recent version of the octave_gradients add-on is available locally.

code for using the add-on inside a script:

import bpy
import addon_utils

addon_utils.enable("octave_gradients")

# add material, or reuse existing one
mymat = bpy.data.materials.get('lazy_cube')
if not mymat:
    mymat = bpy.data.materials.new('lazy_cube')
    mymat.use_nodes = True

nodes = mymat.node_tree.nodes

if not 'ColorRamp' in nodes:
    nodes.new(type="ShaderNodeValToRGB")
ColorRamp = nodes['ColorRamp']

# reuse the Octave Gradient maker code, when calling from this context,
# it will add a function called 'external_octave' to the driver_namespace
# this function doesn't care what context you are in, all it wants
# is a reference to the ColorRamp node, and a number between 0..13
bpy.ops.scene.gradient_pusher()
external_octave = bpy.app.driver_namespace['external_octave']

# force ramp theme
external_octave(ColorRamp, 12)  # jet=12

# hook the ColorRamp up to the DiffuseBSDF node.
DiffuseBSDF = nodes.get("Diffuse BSDF")
mymat.node_tree.links.new(ColorRamp.outputs[0], DiffuseBSDF.inputs[0])

What you should be able to solve on your own is how to get temperatures into a range of 0 to 1, so the color ramp can map them.


I'm not able to leave a certain selection tool I did, somehow (think I pressed a hotkey), end up with this circle around the mouse cursor, which could select multiple vertices. I do not know how to leave this mode/tool, and I'm not able to do anything but to use this certain tool. I can't use shortcuts, for example cmd+S to save. I cant open any menu, I cant rotate the view, I cant do anything but to change the size of the circle (using the scroll wheel on the mouse) and to select vertices using it. No view hotkeys works (1-9)

This is what the tool looks like:

Would love to at least get to know the name of the tool I'm stuck with, so that I could ask a more accurate question. Since I can't save the file, I don't want to close it. Therefore, if I could get some help soon, that would be very appreciated.

Try pressing "W", it will change the pointer type from select circle to select box, hope that helps.

i accidentally pressed it and had the same issue, pressing it again fixed it for me.


Is there a way to make emission shader not looking flat? Glow is justice, but-but emission shader looks flat! I believe we can do a greater justice by making it not looking flat. Is there a way to make emission not look flat? I wonder? ><

As Jachym says, you can get a good result with the Principled BSDF (choose a color for Emission, a Strength value will be implemented in the next Blender):

You could also mix the Emission with a Diffuse, but it looks like it needs some subtle tweakings to keep the bloom and prevent the color to be burnt:


Problem with boolean operator, operation "Difference" bettwen two simple objects Good day, dear advanced users of Blender!
I am starting to work with Blender and have such occasion.
There two objects:
-the lighthouse and
-the cube.
I am trying to create the window in the lighthouse by using
Boolean Modifier-> Operation Difference -> Object Cube
and immediately I have a message:
"Can't execute boolean operation"

The *.blend file is accessible by the link
http://wikisend.com/download/612580/lighthouse.bool-error.blend

Please clarify me, how can I create the window due to this operator and
why this error appeared?

The problem with the model is it has created double vertices

Go in the edit mode
Press A twice to select all
Press W to bring special key and click remove double
come out of the edit mode and make boolean operation


Get texture to never distort or change scale without manual unwrapping To clarify things, as most of the firsts answers suggest I need a better wording:

I'm looking for something like the "smart UV Project" unwrapping method but real time (like a node or mix of node in the material or a projection mode in the texture property or a modifier, whatever adapt to changing meshes)
Why real time and not through unwrapping ? Because most of our objects are parametric, most of the geometry comes from modifiers for ease of management, memory efficiency and many other reason which makes applying those modifier impossible without involving 10x time the workload for the project. So we sometime have only 2D meshes, the rest is an animated modifier stack. As our objects are mostly not organic, stretching is not wanted. Another reason are big meshes (more than a million polygons, really hard to unwrap).

Original Version:

I would like my texture to always keep a scale and be orthogonally projected following the ngon's normal it's projected on, without unwrapping, so that textures never get distorted, whatever modifications are made to the mesh in edit or object mode. (so if you look at an ngon with orthogonal view mode, facing the ngon, the texture looks exactly like in the image editor)

I Tried "box" projection mode in texture panel. It works to some extent on a plane with "texture coordinates" set to "object". I can move edges and scale, but if I rotate the mesh on the x or y axis, it starts to distort because the projection is in object coordinate instead of following the ngon normal.

The solution should work on complex meshes.

If you don't want to unwrap, the only way I know how to achieve what you are asking for is by using 3D procedural texture shaders. You can achieve some very impressive results if you learn how to work with them and or code them yourself. Blender has some built in that you can layer up on top of each other, though it will likely take you a lot longer than unwrapping UVs and painting to make look nice.

Note that with procedural textures, you will lose a lot of control. With procedural textures you are trying to emulate a texture using math. So getting a dent or scratch right where you want it is difficult, getting an image like a decal is nearly impossible - or will still require unwrapping UVs and a good ol' fashioned texture. So basically procedural textures are really good if you have a repeating natural pattern such as landscapes, dirt, rock, metal, wood, cement, but not for highly controlled images/decals.

If you need your model to deform, you need to use refP or whatever the Blender equivalent is (relatively new to Blender myself.) Essentially, because you are using vertex positions as the coordinates (world space or object space) instead of UVs, if the vertex positions change or morph, your texture will swim unless you are using a static reference position/frame as your texture coordinate.

So moral of the story, if you have a deforming object or an object which needs a high amount of control and or decals/images, you are stuck with UV unwrapping. Honestly UV mapping is relatively painless in Blender with their seams. I prefer this method to all other solutions I have seen.

I know Disney came up with some form of mapping which made it so you don't have to unwrap or mess with UVs called Ptex, you just paint directly on the faces and each face stores its own image map of sorts (texels). But Blender obviously does not have that in their toolset. Here's the reference on that:
http://ptex.us/


How do you add a fog effect or make certain things seem farther away? Like here in the background you can see the mountains fade out how do i do that?

There are at list 2 easy ways to accomplish that, one is while rendering, other is post-process the render. If you want to do it while rendering (will get slower render) you have to create a volumetric object, with volume absortion nodes (under material). To do on post process (will be faster) you have to activate while rendering the option "mist pass". After rendering, in the compositer, you can link the mist pass to your rendered images and set density, color, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxNeMMZs_sM


Baked Cloth Sim Lost Between Closing and Opening File I'm running Blender 2.90.1 on a Windows 10 PC. I've created a relatively simple cloth sim of vinyl banners on the side of a tent in a breeze. In order - I've saved my project -> Checked the boxes for Disk Cache and Use Library Path for the Cloth Sim -> Bake. I let it do its thing, save again and see the subfolder with the cached frames for the sim next to the project on my hard drive. All good.
However, after closing and re-opening the project or opening it on another computer (mapped network drives are the same), the bake is gone. The files are still there, and in fact the Cache section of the Physics tab states that "231 frames on disk" but there is clearly no sim happening, either in the render or the preview window. I'm forced to run the sim again each time I open the file which, as one can imagine, is extremely frustrating. Cloth sims don't have the External options to specify a location for the cache like particle or fluid sims do, so that doesn't apply here.
Settings look like this:

And a freshly baked sim SHOULD look like this:

But when reopening the file or on a different system for rendering, despite the sim's Cache settings being untouched, I get this:

What gives? Did I do something wrong or is this a bug perhaps? I suppose the alternative is to bake it in the .blend file but that's not very optimized and can slow things down.

I don't know why that is happening specifically. I found this thread because I was experiencing the same issue, so technically this is not an answer so much as a work-around that will allow you to do what you want.
Check the option to cache the cloth to disk as you have already done, and then bake all dynamics.  Immediately after finishing the bake, export the scene as Alembic. This file format will create cached version of fluid simulations and cloth dynamics.
Import that file into a blank blender scene. Select all of your dynamic Objects, then select inverse and delete all the other objects in the scene to leave only the baked dynamic objects and re-export as Alembic again.
Now you can load that Alembic file into your original file and new copies of the dynamic objects will be loaded in with a modifier attached to play the cached dynamics. This is totally stable and will play quickly during scrubbing playing or rendering.
Obviously, you only want to do this after you are happy with the simulation, and you have to go back the to original objects and repeat the process if you need to make a change, but this is a way to get a persistent and reliable cache on disk for cloth and fluid sims.


How do I make a round cornered rectangular box with a domed top - for 3D printing The item I am finding impossible to model is a rectangular box with rounded vertical corners, and a top which is convex in the short direction, flat in the long direction, and which transitions in a smooth round curve to meet the vertical sides. I would really appreciate some assistance.

A quick, destructive approach:

Starting in the flat, a plane subdivided along the convex dimension
O proportional editing, spherical profile,  G Z raise the central edge / face.
Subdivide in the other direction
E Z extrude the perimeter edges downward, and  S Z0 flatten them
Ctrl B with  a few segments, bevel the sharp edges.
Maybe scale some edge loops inwards, to ease the curvature in the vicinity of the bevel

Solidify and Subdivision Surface modifiers,  for thickness, and smoothed high-resolution, for printing.


Jump to Previous Strip fails I'm working in the Video Sequence Editor on an hour-long project incorporating hundreds of strips. I recently added a speed control strip and, after doing so, found that PgDn no longer jumps to the previous strip. It now jumps to frame -2147387044, which does not exist in my project! More specifically, Blender only jumps to that frame when using "Jump to Previous Strip" at points on the timeline after where I added the speed control strip.

I tried removing the speed control strip from the project, but the problem continues.

This problem only happens in the specific project file, and not in other projects!

"Jump to Previous Strip (Center)" continues to work correctly.

I'm using Blender 2.78a, but the problem remains if I try version 2.79.

Any help correcting this would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Derek

Solved! Here's what happened:

In order to apply the speed control transform strip, I had imported a new video file to that location on the time line. I had then built a 25% proxy for that file. The video didn't work quite how I wanted, so I deleted the strip and created a new video file with the same name as the deleted one. When I dropped the new file onto the timeline, however, only the audio strip was visible. So I tried deleting the proxy file that had been generated for that file name, and then I imported the new file again. It worked! But the audio strip had actually imported on the previous try: it was hidden behind other strips on the timeline. Clicking nearby strips eventually exposed it, and for some reason that badly imported strip was labeled with a length of 2147483647 frames! Finding and deleting that video strip restored my ability to use the "Jump to Previous Strip" shortcut. Hooray!


How do I move animations? I just made an animation that looks like this:

It's just an unmoving shaft with an object falling through. I used a physics simulation for the object and then baked it. My problem is that the placement for this animation isn't right compared to another simulation also going on in the scene, so I need to move one of them (preferably this one). How can I do this?

Parent the related objects to an empty, move the empty.

To parent,  RMB select the child (the animated object), then ⇧ Shift RMB select the parent object (the created empty) making it the active object. Then press ⎈ CtrlP.


Exporting modular objects to Substance Painter for baking I do want to create modular assets within Blender which I use to assemble the full model. I want to bake the high poly version onto the low poly version. It does work for the modular assets alone like this in substance painter:

But I do enjoy seeing the fully assembled asset in Substance Paitner, as it makes painting much easier. But if I export a copy (or several) of the modular assets (*as fbx), baking does not work any more. Here with a simple wall out of the stone.
Blender:

Result in Substance Painter:

I can bake the modular assets first and then import the modular assets with the assembled version. This does work, but it feels like it's a kinda hacky workflow. This is the result (with my baking information):

How can I export my modular assets together with the finished asset and bake it in Substance Painter?

It did work, when I moved all the UVs of the assembled asset by 1 to the right.


Repeating an image texture I am fairly new to Blender and I am wondering how you would go about filling a space with a texture, which is repeating over and over.
For example if you are modelling a kitchen and have a texture of a floor tile, but obviously the kitchen has more tiles than just one. How do you tell Blender to repeat image textures to be able to fill surfaces which are from the same material?

Let say you have this tile picture:

You can either scale up the floor UV map in the UV Editor:

... or plug a Mapping node in the Image Texture node and play with the scale values:


Using Bilateral blur to reduce noise on already rendered result So I rendered some 1000 frames. It took a while. The noise is a bit too high and now I want to reduce it with bilateral blur node ,but it is not working correctly.

The frame sequence works as an image input, but the Render Layers node doesn't change anything a bit.

Tried all sorts of things, but the Determinant value does not react. No result changes.

I am probably doing something wrong. Any ideas?

Thanks!

The Sequencer overrides all

Your main problem here is that you have the rendered image sequence in the Sequencer.

The Sequencer overrides the Compositor, and the Compositor overrides the 3D scene. So, if you have a camera into the 3D scene, it won't render if you haven't a Render Layer in the Compositor. Likewise, if you haven't a Scene strip in your Sequencer, it won't render the 3D scene, neither the composition nodes you have.

In this case you only have the image sequence, so Blender is going to just render that strip, overriding the Compositor.

How to proceed

If you want to apply a Bilateral Blur on your rendered sequence, you only need the Compositor. So delete the elements in your Sequencer Editor.

Your composition is OK, just added the rendered sequence and applied the Bilateral Blur to it with the Z-Depth and Normal outputs as Determinator.

If you press F12 you'll see that the Bilateral Blur is working now.

Speeding up the process

When reducing noise after rendering, you can low your render settings, as you only need the Z-Depth and Normal passes.

To do this, you can decrease the render samples. Also I recommend deleting all the lights and disabling Use Environment checkbox under Render Layers tab. If you have emitter materials, put a simple grey diffuse as material override.

Doing this, you are rendering without lights, so Cycles works much faster.

Note that if you low the samples too much the contour of the objects in the Normal pass can be a little aliased. So keep the render at a minimum of 100 samples.

For this reason and for speeding up the render you can render in Blender Internal.

Concerns about Bilateral Blur after rendering

There is a last thing to have in mind, if you use the Bilateral Blur after rendering, you are going to blur the textures too. As you could see in the tutorials about noise removing, the Bilateral Blur is applied before Diffuse Color and Glossy Color passes which have textures on them.


How do I paint a texture onto an already textured object? How do I paint a texture onto an already textured object? How do I do that? I have human with a skin texture and I want to paint a lip texture on his lips.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2ZiQtohl3tmdUc0cnhuTmpqYjQ/view?usp=sharing

Heres the blend file.

Repeated Image Mapping

The slot named Textures near the cursor in the Tool Tab is relative to the Brush

The slot in where you can choose which is the acticve texture to paint onto can be found in the Slot Tab in the Slot panel. The active texture is the one highlited with blue color.

As you can see on the right you are probably painting a texture with a brush that paint other textures, maybe sometime the same, and may be one of the causes you have repeating features spreading all around.

But the main cause of that relies on the Repeating settings of your Skin texture.

Those values alter how the texture is placed and sized on the UV space. You must set them to 1 an 1 to get the UV unwrapped island to stay in place.

If you want to paint just plain colors, remove Brush Texture by hitting the X button. If you want to paint texture from an image, be sure to use diffrent textures.


What is a good file type for campatibility with blender I have written a program for segmenting fluorescent microscopy images in java. The result are triangulated meshes. I would like to export the meshes to a filetype that is compatible with blender.

My main criteria is an open API or file structure that I can use.

How can I save mesh data for multiple meshes into a file that blender can read?

I think Wavefront .obj is what you're looking for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavefront_.obj_file

As far as I know, Blender imports an obj file as one single object, so you may have to separate them later.


index number by vertices? in animation nodes.. is it possible? any way to give at this node a not unique index?

I mean.. can't figure out how to assign to It more than a value.. I'd like to align group's objects to vertexes of a grid. It actually works if using a instancer but this duplicate an object many times... not a group of individual objects.

Setting the index was not necessary, solved by adding an object list I/O to the loop node :)