How i can select opposite part of object in blender I have a question. How i can select opposite part of object in blender. Like if i want to make object with symmetric parts. I Hope you understood it.

The quickest and most comfortable way to do this is with a Mirror Modifier. See the images below for reference.

Where to find the modifier:

you can find it in the properties panel, just click in the little blue wrench symbol, then click on "Add Modifier" and select it from the list that appears

Properties:

now you have to make sure you select the correct axis in which you want to mirror the object (you can select more than one if you need to), In the image below the Y axis is selected so the object is mirrored alongside that (the green one just to be clear). Another important property you want to select is clipping which prevents part of the object to go "through the mirror" and therefore intersect its mirrored half. In the example below the right part is the original object and the left part is the mirrored one; each vertex of the original one can never go on a position with a negative value for Y because clipping is enabled.

Mirror Plane

Another important thing to keep in mind is the so called Mirror Plane: it is a plane perpendicular to the axis you select to mirror the object (hence, it is formed by the other two axes) and it is located in the same spot where the object origin is. So you have to make sure that the origin is placed where you want the mirroring to happen. As an example, in the image below the two object are mirrored alongside the same axis but the origin (= the yellow dot) is placed in different places (and so is the mirror plane), risulting in different kinds of mirroring.

Every modification is automatically mirrored on the other side!

Final advice:

remember to apply your modifier only after you are done modeling your object, as clicking on Apply will add the mirrored part to the mesh data of the object. In that case if you want to keep modeling symmetrically you'd have to delete half of your object and use another mirror modifier.
Remember also that you must be in object mode in order to apply a modifier.


How to let game users modify 3D image during the game? I am a complete newbie to Blender and need advice, so please, bear with me.

This is my requirement: To make an object shape modifiable by game users. I.e. in a limited way, users should be able to change shape of the object and save the new object's state. What concerns me is that assets used in BGE at runtime are read-only and this seems to be a work that happens at design time. I would appreciate high level description how this can done in a standalone game using BGE.

Thanks a lot!

change shape of the object

The question is "how do you change the shape of the object"?

Store the steps how to do that and do them again later.

For example:

You want to change the width of a wall. To do that you play a "width-changing" animation. To be more specific you play a specific pose of such an animation. This results in a wall with a different width.

The steps to get that shape are: Play pose x of the width.changing animation.

So you store this information (name of animation and frame of the pose).

On restore you can play this pose again.

Without further information on the how you want to change shape I can't provide further details.

I hope you get the idea.


In the Multiresolution Modifier there is a way to save the mutliresolution information, but how do I import and apply the saved *.btx file? The title says it all really. In the Multiresolution Modifier there is a way to save the multiresolution information. Once I have saved the .btx file what is it for? How do I import and apply the saved *.btx file once I have created it?

The way I know it works is by saving displacements into one .btx file, creating another .btx file on another model and substituting the latter with the former.

Save needed sculpt and name the .btx file appropiately ("useful-sculpt.btx").
Open new file (or create another model in the same one). On another model add Multires modifier and set it to the same level of subdivision.
While this isn't necessary in order the method to work it's best to keep the same subdivision level so not to lose any details from the original sculpt.
Save sculpt of second model with Save External button to a temporary .btx file (note: do not overwrite the first one).
The step is present only to make accessible button for opening a file.
Press small folder icon next to the file name in Multires modfiier's properties of the second model to open file browser and choose there file with original sculpt ("useful-sculpt.btx").


How to recreate this kind of line animation in Blender? I'd like to create a line animation like this one :

(Jupiter Ascending UI for info)

The question has been asked here and the person who created this animation replied, but with indications for Cinema 4d's Thinking Particles along with a file :

https://forums.creativecow.net/docs/forums/post.php?forumid=2&postid=1110256&univpostid=1110256&pview=t

Can this be replicated in Blender ?

I tried with particles & forces but i cannot get near that. For example, one of the problems is that particles are going in all directions, intersecting paths of each others.

You'll probably want to use curves but they can be hard to make without using Animation Nodes or some other addon.
I have used particles with motion blur.

I made a curve and fit an object array along it. I applied a wind>curve force filed to the curve, while I applied a force>surface force field to the array object.


How to make an original image texture with transparency in Blender Render? can anyone help me in figuring out a problem that I've been having regarding applying transparency for the image textures that comprise of my model's eye(s)?

You see, the eye(s) of my character is made up of three separate layers: the pupils, the eyelid(s) & the sclera, overlaid over one another to create the eye(s) in their entirety.  In order for this to work properly, it would require the pupil & eyelid(s) textures to have transparency (the sclera is painted onto the main body) applied, but unfortunately I had trouble trying to find tutorials online on how to create a original texture image with transparency.  Pretty much all the tutorials I found were for how to get transparency from a preexisting asset, rather than how to make one from scratch.

Eventually, I was able get transparency on the image textures I created by using Erase Alpha from Brush Blending Model options in Texture Paint mode.  However, the transparency isn't quite working as I intended, as pupils appear to faded rather than pitch black like their suppose to.

There's also other visible issues as well, as highlighted in the screenshot below, such as how the pink area covered by the pupil & eyelid(s) layers appears darker than the areas not covered:

If no one can directly identify what is wrong with the way that the transparency is applied on my model, I was then hoping that someone could instead tell me what the proper way is of applying transparency to a self-made image texture in Blender Render.  If I have to redo the textures again from the beginning, that's fine since the textures I've made were hastily made with the intent of cleaning them up later.

There's also another issue that I believe is connected, although I can't say for certain that it is, but that I would, nevertheless, like answered anyhow.  This other issue, came about when I decided to try and test rendering an image and I ended up with this result:

The strange thing is that this result only happens when I choose to render an image, it doesn't occur in Rendered mode or any other Viewport Shading setting.  Even weirder is that the visible geometry conforms exclusively to the shape of the eye(s) despite the fact that the mesh for both the pupil & eyelid(s) textures consists of a rectangular-shaped "mask".  At one point I was going to make the various parts of the eye(s) into overlaid polygonal meshes, but I changed my mind and decided to deleted them.  Just to be on the safe side, I looked through every component making up my model to see if I perhaps had forgotten to delete the old mesh, but I couldn't find anything like that, so there should be no reason for this to be happening. And even weirder still, the visible Quads making up the eye mesh appear to have been cut in half into Tris, which was not something I did myself.

Any help with either of these matters would be greatly appreciated!

Okay, it would appear I've managed fix the transparency issue on my own with the aid of this video tutorial enter link description here that was included on my YouTube Recommendations this morning.  While following along with the video, I discovered that the reason for the faded look of the pupil texture was that the Diffuse Influence of the Alpha wasn't enabled in the Texture tab.  Once the Alpha was enabled, the pupil looked the way that it was supposed to.
As for the eyelid(s) texture, I didn't actually find out what was wrong with it.  Instead, I created a completely blank image texture in Gimp and imported onto my model.  I then repainted the eyelid(s) onto the new blank image texture, and as a result, the new eyelid texture now has looks the way that is was intended without any apparent issues that were found in the old version.
However, rendering an image still results in the same problem as before, with a weird visible mesh around the eyes that only appears when a image is rendered and not in any other mode in Blender.  I have no idea if this a serious issue or not, I guess I would have to import the model & its textures into Unreal Engine 4 to see if there is any visible problems whatsoever.


How to make this cube texture node programmatically Can someone give me some ideas or pictures,thanks

If you mean a procedural texture, here goes...
This tree is based on 2 node-groups:
A 'Hexagonal Grid', as discussed here:

Which produces a hexagonal grid of cells, each with their own UV coordinates, on the left, below:

And a 'Distance to Hexagon' group:

which takes the maximum of the shading-point's local X and its projection onto a diagonal edge, all reflected in X and Y. When put through a threshold, it produces the edges in the middle image, above. If you use the whole set-up twice, once offset by sqrt(3)/3 in Y, then you get the cube-illusion on the right.
For the hatching, the same cell-UV coordinates are used to place a Gradient > Radial texture in each cell of one of the overlapping hex grids, and it is stepped off into thirds with a Snap node, into sections valued 0, 1/3, and 2/3. (Left, below).

The values in those regions can be used to rotate a thresholded Wave > Bands texture, to produce the directional hatching (middle, above), and combined with the outlines to give the result (above right):
The whole tree is a bit big to show conveniently, sorry:

The result:


Computing scene luminance I have a scene with materials and a light source with known luminous emittance. (for example, an interior scene, and clear day sunlight). I am looking to compute a physically accurate value for scene luminance (such as in this image from wikipedia).

Does anyone know how to set the scene, camera, and lighting up in such a way that the rendered pixel value is correlated to a real luminance value? The image can be processed in software outside of blender, but I must ensure that the pixel values make sense as they are being rendered.
Thanks!

I think what you want is "linear light" and a linear colour model.
Setting either "Displace Device" to "None" or "View Transform" to "Raw" under "Color Management" in "Render Properties" seems to do the trick:

Also pay attention to "Save As Render" in the image save dialog box.
A render with four concentric and equally spaced rings with maximum roughness and zero specularity around a point light source produces peak colour values of around [1.0, 0.29, 0.14, 0.09]— Mostly what you'd expect from physically correct inverse-square behaviour, with some margin from clipping and sampling noise:

I saved the result as a 16-bit PNG, which should give you plenty of bit depth to play with. You may also want to try EXR or RGBE, depending on your use case— My image viewer for those formats seemed to apply an sRGB transform by default on display, but the data itself seems to be intact.

Notes on interpreting the data:
As the output data is in the form of dimensionless RGB values, if you want physical units then you'll have to calculate a conversion ratio based off of a known lamp power output, surface albedo, and distance.
In my example file, the innermost ring has an RGB peak of 1.0 with an albedo of 0.8 at a distance of 1m from a point light source with 50W of power output.
The 50W of radiation at a distance of 1m will be spread across a spherical shell of 4π(1m)²=12.57m², so incoming irradiance at that distance should be 50W/(12.57m²)=3.98W/m². Outgoing surface radiosity accounting for the 0.8 albedo should then be 3.98W/m²*0.8=3.18W/m². So that means RGB(1.0)=3.18W/m², which in turn means that the radiosity at the other rings can be figured out by RGB(0.29)=(0.29/1.0)*3.18W/m²=0.92W/m², etc.
It may be more sensible to establish a conversion ratio using a Sun lamp shining perpendicularly on a full-albedo, full-roughness, zero-fresnel dielectric (non-metallic) surface than a point lamp. The tooltip says that "Strength" maps directly to W/m².
You can probably also put that ratios or its multiple and/or reciprocal into the "Exposure" setting under Colour Management in order to havea 1:1 ratio between the RGB values and your physical unit of choice. Note that if RGB goes above 1.0, then you'll probably want to use either EXR or RGBE as your output file format.
Always sample parts of your data by hand and check your numbers manually to see whether they make any sense, both based on your scene and relative to each other. Digital colour management is frankly a mess, and there's a lot that can go wrong at pretty much any stage of the pipeline when you're trying to pull physical measurements out of artistic software.
Further caveats:
Note that this also still technically isn't the luminance, as it's just the radiosity. Luminance is a measure of perceived light as detected by human retinal cells, so you'd need to apply a luminosity function to calculate it. You'll also need to make sure your render engine, file format, image viewer, etc aren't already accounting for the effects of the luminosity function.
From the fact that RGB(1,1,1) is white, we can also reason that even if interpreted as radiosity, the data is scaled against sunlight's spectrum rather than having a spectrally uniform power distribution.
Also note that Cycles and EEVEE run entirely in RGB, AFAIK, and not with continuous spectra. So if the spectra of your light sources and albedoes have a lot of spikes or valleys, the result will end up being further from physical accuracy.


Creating an emission texture image from a "normal" image I have a New York skyline image that I want to use as a background texture image.

Here is the .blend:

I currently can not control the emission value for the individual "lights" in the picture, so is there a way that I can? Using an image for the emission factor would be optimal.

In rendered view with emission node setup for image:

Here's one possible way to do what you want, if I understand your request properly.

The mix shader on the lower left is just the one that comes from the Images as Planes addon. That could just as easily be the direct Color out of the Image node. What I'm doing here is crushing the darker areas so that the image is mostly just the lights and the skyline. This goes into an Emission shader which, by use of the Is Camera Ray output as the Mix Shader factor, lights the scene but doesn't change the appearance of the image.

If this isn't what you're looking for, please update your question to give more information.


how to do custom animation in a mhx file made using Makehuman I have a human model made using Makehuman tool. I have exported it to Blender. As a beginner I found it very confusing. Could see lots of details.

Looking for some simple tutorial that helps learning animation from this file. I need to do animation of hand,face.

This is for academic research.

You should read or watch a few of the available tutorials or 100 'best', the mhx addon adds buttons for the rig-layers where you can select which manipulators are shown in the viewport.
The following animation was recorded in Pose Mode. You should read about the difference between IK/FK.
After that just record your animation by keyframing the poses setup by the controls.


How to deselect using box select? How do I deselect using the box select tool? I have read about middle mouse button and some other shortcuts but they don't work for me.

If using v2.68 (revision 57577+), you can do the following:

Press B,
Use LMB and drag to form the (de)selection rectangle,
hold down Shift while releasing LMB.


object has two materials at once? Why? This isn't my mesh, but, I downloaded it off the internet to animate and screw with the materials. Either I'm a complete noob, the mesh wasn't formatted correctly, or both, but, after changing the material of a few of the gun barrels, strange things happen when I try to render an animation.

Here are a few sample frames and a link to the file. What is going on and how the hell do I fix it?
(pay close attention to the minigun cylinders on the left

LINK TO BLENDER FILE
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxf7lERLL3TlRjV3YkJCSHRKN1U/view?usp=sharing

Your object is cloned.
You have a complete mesh (MECH_MESH) and the same but in 195 separate objects (MECH_MESH.001,MECH_MESH.002, ..., MECH_MESH.195). This could be for easy damage or something like that (?) but destroys the surface whan rendering (faces overlapping).

Anyway, just select MECH_MESH (right click until you select the good one or use outliner) and move it to another layer (with M, 3 or number of your layer) to get a good render. Setting the objects on different layers will allow easy selection (and then deletion, hidding, toggle renderablity,...).


problem with extrude tool My skill are very limited with blender, however I need to print a tool but can't seem to make it properly on blender
This is my initial object, but I need to add a additional layer (finer) on the top so it look a bit like the second pictures :

I tried to select the edge and extrude them which seems fine and then select the faces that I just extruded and extrude them in X so it can be a few mm thick (for printing)

but that doesn't work and it make something like this

I also tried to created a duplicate of the first object and change the dimension on X/Y but it's change complete the angle of the object
Blender file

If I understand correctly what you want (?), you can:

Create an new edge loop:

Select the faces:

Extrude up:


Camera Perspective in Layout mode broken - Blender 2.81 I am following the trusty old donut tutorial by Blender Guru, and I have run into an issue.

I am up to part 6, first render. The camera perspective in layout mode does not represent the render output. When I view the camera perspective in any other modes, e.g. Sculpting, the render does in fact represent the camera perspective.

What have I tried?
1. Restarting Blender
2. Load Factory Settings
3. Deleted the camera and created a new one

When I alter the camera angle, the camera angle changes in the layout mode (and all other modes), but the camera perspective in the layout mode is still different to the render output.

What is going on within layout? I am so confused.

You appear zoomed-in. Even though you have selected the camera view, it will retain the last zoom selected. Each workspace will retain it's own zoom levels. Just zoom out and hopefully that will resolve it. Oh and turn off Lock Camera To View as this sometimes confuses things. Once re-orientated, you can turn it back on.


How to remove lines from UV Map image? I have made a model and filled it with colour using colour from the material tab. I then unwrapped the model and exported it. The colours were there (perfect). However the edges had really annoying black lines which shows in my game. So how do I export the UV Map without the edge lines. Even better how to export a UV Map with the material colours

Thanks in advance

I am assuming you used the export UV layout operation to get the color information.

Instead,you can bake the diffuse texture to get the color in formation without edges,and make sure you have high margin :


Remove vertices based on texture Is there a way to apply a black and white texture to a object and remove all vertices mapped to a point where the texture is black?

I want to build a hollow earth globe and remove all vertices where there is land.

Create a Vertex Group.
Add a Vertex Weight Mix modifier.

Set Vertex Group A to the one created in the previous step.
Set Default Weight B to 1.
Set Mix Set to All.
Add your texture to Texture Mask and set Textue Coordinates.

Add a Mask modifier and set the Vertex Group.
Apply modifiers (optional).


compositing without auto render option I am making an image sequence . in compositing I don't have auto render checkbox.
how can I bring up that check box?


Scaling A Newly Made Cube So I've very new to Blender coding. Here's what I'm trying to do:

cubeobject = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add
cubeobject.scale = (-2.2,0,0)

I can't get this to work. I've tried SizeX settings and other translate functions, but nothing seems to work. I'm sure that reference method is wrong, but I've combed the forums for 20 mins with no progress.

What to do

You need to play around with the python console for this stuff.

Here is probably what you want (sets the value directly in the properties panel, absolute method):

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add()
bpy.context.scene.objects.active.scale = (-2.2, 0, 0)

You may also want to scale like this (scales object the same way as pressing S in the 3D view, relative method):

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add()
bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(-2.2, 0, 0))

When an object is created, it is selected and set active so my examples will work in a simple case like this without a reference to the object.

Why your script won't work

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add doesn't do anything useful (it won't create an object)
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add() only returns {'FINISHED'} not a reference to the new object.


Making model and animation for Unity using MakeHuman and Blender I'm learning Unity and trying to make a scene which need a model and some animations. I came up with using MakeHuman 1.1.1 and Blender 2.79b. I exported model from MakeHuman to .mhx file and import to Blender. But someone said that mhx rig wasn't compatible with Unity (i don't know if he were right). So i'm stucking. I want to know which is the best workflow to make animations of MakeHuman model in Blender for Unity.

MakeHuman ships with the "Game Engine Rig", which is compatible with the mecanim unity functionality. The appropriate work flow is:

Enable the game engine rig in makehuman (under pose -> skeleton)
Export using mhx2
In blender, either import without overrides or make sure to leave the rig as it is upon import

You only get the MHX rig if you explicitly ask for it when importing an MHX file in blender. Otherwise, the rig exported from MakeHuman will be used.

As an alternative to using MHX2, there is also a new pipeline for integrating MakeHuman and blender, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAwfR-G813g


Unwrapping curved Object The title is a bit general but I'll give all the details in the post.

My problem is that I can't unwrap the part of the conveyor belt "straight" shown in this pic.

Can I really do it or I should stick to these UVs and find another way for just the texture?

Tried about everything I could find and nothing really worked.
The reason I want them straight is because the texture is going to be animated.

Select the left edge and press S, x, 0.
Repeat with the right edge.

This scales both edges to 0 in the horizontal direction, so they will become straight. They will be of different lenghts, so scale them up vertically to create a set of squares. (Look at this duplicate post for pictures)

One thing to mention: since in the UV editor the faces are rectangular and in the actual mesh they are trapezoids, the texture will result a bit distorted. It's not a problem if your camera is far away, but if it's close it will be quite ugly, and in that case i'm afraid the only way is to UV unwrap every single face in the belt in order to preserve their shape while being able to control their orientation (and since a conveyor belt is made of separated panels, I don't think that the seam between them would be so bad)


Set wireframe only view In this tutorial, the author says to set the view to wireframe at 10:08.

In blender 2.7, the menu looks slightly different. When I set to 'wireframe' I do not see the same results.

How can I accomplish what the author is trying to do here?

That panel was shuffled around a bit since the tutorial was made. The option you want is now called Maximum draw type:

Also make sure Optimal display is enabled on the subsurf modifier.


how to install bprojection addon here is the link for the addon:

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/bprojection

But I don't understand how to install this, apart from installing zip files as I've done that before.

Follow these steps:

Open this link
Select all text and open any text editor then paste it in it.
Save it with this name space_view3d_paint_bprojection.py in Blender's add-ons folder:
Example for Linux:

/home/userA/.blender/2.78/scripts/addons/

Example for Windows:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\scripts\addons

Example for macOS:

/Users/%username%/blender/blender.app/Contents/Resources/2.78/scripts/addons

Open User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U) and under Add-ons, click Install from File. Then navigate to the file you downloaded and select it.

It should now appear in the window and you can tick the checkbox in the upper right to enable it.

If you would like to have the add-on enabled every time you start Blender, click Save User Settings at the bottom.


How to set a lamp as camera? I'm trying to set my lamp as camera, but every time I press Ctrl +0 it says: Modifier cannot be added to the object area.

Ctrl + 0 (or 1,2,3, and so) is to add a Subdivision Modifier, but Ctrl + Numpad 0 is to use an object as camera


How can I get a vertex count for an edge loop in Python for Blender 2.8? I have an object that consists of two polygons. I'm trying to get a vertices count for the first polygon so I can select it's last two vertexes by index. I know that it starts at Index 1.
I can use
bm.verts[firstindex].select = True

bm.verts[secondindex].select = True

and then bpy.ops.mesh.loop_multi_select(ring=False) to select the edge loop, but is there any way I can get a vertex count only for the vertices in the edge loop? Thanks.

Or you could also do:

import bpy
import bmesh

selected_verts = [v for v in bpy.context.active_object.data.vertices if v.select]
count = len(selected_verts)
print(count)
```


Can the base dublivert object be hidden? Is it possible to hide (in the viewport) the base duplivert object, without also hiding all of its duplicates?

Yes it's possible. You have to give it a material with transparency. Set the Alpha to 0 and enable Transparency in Display settings, like this:


Rounding a spinner on a British Spitfire Hi, I am attempting to make a British Spitfire to the best of my ability, but I have encountered a problem. I have used a Cone Mesh to try and replicate the spinner of a British spitfire, but I cannot get the round shape that I need for it to look realistic. I will provide a picture below.

Once I am finished with the base shape of the spinner, what would be modeling steps to making it look more detailed? Below is a picture of a British Spitfire spinner.

Here are the steps I would take to model that:

1: construct a base set of vertices from one side of the rounded top, like so:

Add a screw modifier: (make sure it is lined up to the axis for this part).

Then finally add a subidivision surface modifier to make it higher poly:

I hope that is what you are looking for. You can just adjust the vertices (or line them up to your image) to get the curve you want. When you are done, you can apply the modifiers and put it on your plane.


Symmetrize bone generates flipped X axis I used W -> Symmetrize to create the bones on the other side. I noticed that the axis was flipped. Is this how it supposed to be? Because now my bone constraint cannot be copy-paste easily. (e.g. Limit X 0,0 on the left side is equivalent to Limit X -90,-90 on the right side)

Yes this is how it is supposed to be. And you are right, you cannot easily copy over your limit constraints, if they are defined in world space. Since the "world axis" are not mirrored.

But if you set them to local space, they should copy just fine. And local space is what you want anyway in most rig constraints. Otherwise depending on rotation your bend axis would change and a bend forward in t-pose would become a painful bend in any other pose ;)


The character does not follow the path I want the character to follow the path, but its doesnt work...When i click the armature in object mode and add object constraint follow path, the character will move away and doesnt animated as desire.Seek for help

Actually it does follow the path, except that you’re supposed to place the armature at the exact same point as the beginning of the path, to do so just press AltG, it resets the location at 0/0/0 but as the armature is constrained by the Follow Path its new 0/0/0 is the beginning of the curve.

Now second problem, once you’ve reset the location, the armature still goes away. The reason is that you’ve given it an animation as you can see if you open the NLA Editor, and this animation contains location datas that moves it away from the 0/0/0. So either delete this NLA strip or delete the location infos of this action.

To delete the location datas of this action: In the 3D View select the armature, in the NLA select the first NLA strip of the top track (the one that plays), press Tab to display the action of this strip in the Dopesheet. Go in the Dopesheet, click on the arrow icon button to only see the actions of the selected object, in the left panel unfold the action datas, double click on the X Location track and press X to delete this row, same thing with Y Location and Z Location tracks.


Blender wont import fbx animations correctly (Mixamo) Made a character and threw it into Mixamo for some basic animations. Trying to edit/add to those animations now before importing into UE4. When I import the fbx to blender, it imports a tpose which is the root position of the armature. No keyframes. I can import the animation into UE4 and see that keyframes do exist and that it is an actual animation, just blender isnt importing properly. Tried in 2.8 and 2.79.

I found that importing the FBX with skin fixes the problem. I hope this helps.

If you export a binary FBX from Blender to Mixamo and get the expected results next thing is to download the FBX with animation and skin. What is usually done is to import all other animations without any skin. There is where I found the problem if The animation is downloaded without skin It wont re-target correctly.


Positioning object to the center of camera view in 3D scene? How to position an object to the centre of camera’s viewport in the scene (for example position camera wherever you want and toggle preview of it by pressing NUMPAD 0). So basically position object to the centre relative to the preview camera viewport. Thanks.

This method centers the object's origin in the camera viewport. If you want to center the geometry position its origin at the center of mass first.⎈ Ctrl⇧ Shift⎇ AltS

The green circle indicates the desired position. The plane (perpendicular to the camera) indicates where the object is supposed to move.

Add a helper object (an empty) at the objects position. RMBselect the object. ⇧ ShiftS > Cursor to selected.  ⇧ ShiftA > Empty.

 RMB select the camera. ⇧ Shift RMB select the empty. Add a Copy Rotation constraint to the empty by pressing ⎈ Ctrl⇧ ShiftC > Copy Rotation.

Snap the cursor to the camera.

Set the Pivot Point to 3D Cursor.

 RMB select the empty and scale it to zero along its local XY plane.
S > ⇧ ShiftZ > ⇧ ShiftZ > 0

Snap the cursor the the empty, then the object to the cursor.


Fire Simulation completely disappears from scene (2.8) Im making an Iron Man flying over city sort of clip, and i had perfectly good fire sim yesterday. I woke up today and came back to the project and there is no sim in my renders, viewport, nothing. I looked at my domain material and it looked right. But it's just not existing anymore. maybe I have too much in my scene? Here's some pics to see:

You need to bake the simulation in Smoke > Cache otherwise it won't be saved to disk. If you don't, the simulation will be recalculated the next time you open the file and play the animation. This can be time consuming, since it would need to be done every time you open the file again. If you already have a cached animation from hitting play, you can also press Current Cache to Bake which will stored the cached animation, but not calculate it for the following frames that haven't been simulated yet.


How to undo  in Object Mode? Green color selection I'm an absolute beginner in Blender. Now I've accidentally pressed Ctrl+G in Object Mode, the selection color turned into Green selection. How could I make it back to Yellow / Orange color please?

I've been through this Blender Hotkey Wiki:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_HotKeys/3D_View/Object_Mode and it says here:

  Ctrl+G brings up menu for performing group operations on selected objects.

But I din't see any menu. Any helpful answer would be appreciated. Thanks.

Ctrl+G adds selected objects to a new Group

Objects belonging to a group show up in green.

Shift+Alt+G removes active objects from a group.

If more than one object is selected and when you press Shift+Alt+G but only one of them is removed from all groups, then afterwards press Ctrl+L > Groups to remove all selected objects from all groups.


Image Sequence to Movie - How to Get Desired Frame Rate? I rendered 250 frames to png for an animation.
I opened these images as Image Sequence in QuickTime (10.5), and set the frame rate to 25 per second. This should give me a movie of 10 seconds.
I got a 10 second movie, BUT all 250 images play within the first 4 seconds, and the remaining 6 seconds are just a still frame of my 250th image!
When I enter other frame rates, like 60 / second, I get a 4 second movie, but all the movement is in the first 40%, then only a still frame.
How can I create a movie from my 250 png images that actually plays at 25 fps?
I don't have to stick to QT, it just seemed the easiest option. Anything on macOS would be ok. I had the same problem in Compressor though.
EDIT in response to Allen Simpson's easy-to-follow reply (thank you!)
Unfortunately same result as described above.
Sequence of 250 images:

start-frame, end-frame, 25 fps:

Result: a 10s movie clip with all the movement in the first 4 seconds and a still frame for 6 seconds... Ouch! Can't get my head around this.
Any suggestions?

I can't say for sure but the first thing I'd do is just render it out as an mp4 from Blender.
Here's a complete breakdown of the steps:
When you first open Blender hit the Video Editing preset.

Go to Add -> Image/Sequence.

Go to the folder containing your images and sort them by name so that they are in order going down the folder.  Hit A to select all and add them to the timeline.

You should see the timeline something like this, now, and be able to play back your sequence with the controls at the bottom.
Note:  Playback will stutter because Blender does not prefetch the frames by default.  If you play it through a couple of times everything will be loaded in RAM, provided you do not run low, and it will play normally.

Now head over to the top right panel and make sure your resolution, frame start and end, and frame rate are what they should be.

Finally, scroll down to the Output section.  Pick a directory and change the file format to ffmpeg (or your choice).
And set the container and codec you want to use.


Matcap & smooth shading in Blender 2.71 very blocky v. 2.69 In B2.69, with Shading Smooth & Multitexture + Matcap and 3D view selected as solid, my model looks fine while running animation.

I upgraded to 2.71 and with those same settings my model looks very blocky. I tried tweaking the edge/face/vert shading settings and everything else I could think of but got no where, the model in animation view looked really blocky like all the edges were very hard.  This is not just Flat v Smooth shader, I toggled those but even in Smooth it was pretty bad.

I uninstalled and re-installed B2.69 and it's good again, so I'm dropping by to ask if this is a possible bug or some setting in the B2.71 I missed.

edit: B269 pic uploaded; Windows 7 pro

In your case this is caused by having Auto Smooth enabled.

From the wiki:

  Angles on the model that are smaller than the angle specified in the Angle button will be smoothed

The Angle slider is used to control how rounded a surface may be before it is split by a hard edge. Edges with an angle greater than this value have their vertex normals split, causing it to appear as a sharp edge instead of a smooth one.

From top-left to bottom-right: Auto Smooth off; On with 180 degree angle; 20 degrees; 10 degrees.

Note that Auto Smooth has no effect on flat-shaded geometry.

Another cause for this could have been the Edge Split modifier. It works similarly to Auto Smooth, except that it does not modify the vertex normals, instead it physically splits the sharp edges into two separate edges.

There is no visual difference between Auto Smooth and the Edge Split modifier, but the modifier affects the rest of the modifier stack and also may be applied.

In your case this is an undesired effect, but if you did want to use this function it's worth noting that Auto Smooth will give you much faster viewport and render performance, since the modifier is physically changing geometry and working with the rest of the stack as opposed to simply adjusting the vertex normals.


Using an opacity map with the Principled BDSF? I have baked a set of maps in Substance (making trim sheets) and would like to plug them back in in Blender, incl roughness, metal, normals etc. I would like to have those, my base colour map as well as an opacity map. Base colour map and opacity maps are below.

I have seen some solutions (link to other thread) for having a node setup that does not include BDSF, but the outcome is missing all detail from the other maps, see below two image examples.

I am wanting to achieve the opacity whilst not compromising on the other maps, below is the node set up atm. I have blend mode set to Alpha Blend.

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Ali

If you plug the opacity texture into the alpha socket of the Principled BSDF you should get the desired look.


How do I fix my upside down video, and make it so it is not compressed and choppy I am making a small documentary on blender 2.9 (I think) for history class. While doing this I did not encounter any problems until I added a video from my phone to the script.
Now the video is upside down, and it is extremely compressed and choppy. It doesn't even match the audio because it is so compressed, and I don't know how to fix it.

(I blurred my face for privacy reasons)

It’s not “compressed,” that is a storage term. The video is “playing at the wrong speed.” This may have to do with frame rates. The video being upside down has more than one explanation since it was from a phone, but you can thankfully fix that quite easily. Check out the clip settings on the right to transform it and flip it over, or use a transform strip to do it. Note that you may have to flip it sideways as well to avoid mirror image effect. Look at those same settings for adjusting the video frame rate, or if all else fails use a speed adjuster strip.


How to evenly space vertices? I have a edge loop that has vertices on it. Is there a way I can separate the vertices on the the edge evenly without moving the end points? I would also like for the vertices to maintain the current shape.

There is an add-on bundled with Blender called Loop Tools which has an option for this.

Enable it in CtrlAltU > Preferences > Addons:

The operator you want is accessible through W > Loop Tools > Space:

In Edge Select Mode (CtrlTab > Edge), select the edges which you want to equalize:

Before/After:


Set GPU as render device when using Net Render I have setup my master and slave blender servers following steps 1 through 16 on this link.

I can send jobs to the networked system and it renders but I can not, despite trying a great many things, get the network system with a GTX 970 to render the job using CUDA compute.

If someone with experience in this could give some insight and/or suggestions I would appreciate it.

Currently it's not possible. There was a 3rd party fork of the network renderer plugin that did it although it's been abandoned now.


Mesh Deform not working in render TL;DR: Mesh deform doesn't work when i render my animation, but it does in viewport (Blender 2.82)

I was looking for a quick way to animate the ponytail hair of my character and came across this video. I followed the tutorial and managed to make the low-poly-hair react to the movement of the character. The animation is not perfect, but it is close enough. Sadly, when i render the scene the ponytail doesn't move at all. The softbody-container used as a reference for the mesh deform modifier works just fine if made visible, but the hair are still stuck mid-air. I tried to move up and down the modifiers but the result is always the same. The ponytail has, in this order, Mirror, MeshDeform, Armature, Subdivision and Collision modifiers.

Thank you in advance if anyone could help me with this, cause i couldn't figure it out by myself.

Link to download the blend file.

Viewport:

Render:

Another Blender user on Reddit helped me figure this out.
To solve this i had to apply the scale on the soft body target for the Mesh Deform.


How to fix non-utf8 names when loading old blend files? When loading old files, it's possible the names aren't utf-8 compliant.
Meaning Python won't be able to modify them. See: T23197

Besides using a hex editor, is there a way to fix names from very old blend files so they are utf-8 compliant?

It's possible to get strings in Python as bytes, which allows to re-encode them into utf-8:

Eg:

import bpy
for m in bpy.data.materials:
    name_as_bytes = m.path_resolve("name", False).as_bytes()
    name_as_utf8 = name_as_bytes.decode('utf8', 'surrogateescape')
    m.name = name_as_utf8

To run this on your entire file:

import bpy

def id_iter():
    type_iter = type(bpy.data.objects)

    for attr in dir(bpy.data):
        data_iter = getattr(bpy.data, attr, None)
        if type(data_iter) == type_iter:
            for id_data in data_iter:
                if id_data.library is None:
                    yield id_data

def wash_name(id_data)
    name_as_bytes = id_data.path_resolve("name", False).as_bytes()
    name_as_utf8 = name_as_bytes.decode('utf8', 'surrogateescape')
    id_data.name = name_as_utf8

for id_data in id_iter():
    wash_name(id_data)

Ideally loading old files will always work. In this case it's not done because its a big change for a relatively rare problem.


Object in Render that I did not add so my problem is a little bit weird.
If I try to render my "town of the future" (my geography project) then there is a plane I did not add. In the normal editing mode etc there is no plane but as soon as I start to render, the plane appears.
Any ideas?

Look at the Outliner if the visibility of this plane isn't hide If you find one simply delete it and hit render to see if it's oki.


Paste bones from one armature into another? Is it possible to copy and paste bones from one armature to another in edit mode? Joining the two armatures with Ctrl J is not an option in this case since it breaks a lot of other stuff.

Shift D to duplicate the bones, P to separate them into a new armature and Ctrl J to join to the target armature is the way, so you have to understand what is breaking and why.
The target final armature has to be last selected, so it will retain its name, loc, rot, scale, and so on.
Both armature should start with everything applied (loc, rot and scale, Ctrl A).
All bones should have their own unique name before joining.
If theese conditions are respected, nothing breaks with joining.


Viewport only shows part of the scaled cube I created a cube and scaled it to dimension 1m x 1m. I can't see the entire cube and only see part of cube. Can anybody help me how to fix it?

In the Viewport hit "N" to show the Properties panel.

Then, under "View", change the clipping "End" value to fit your cube.

(Note: 1km is the default value.)


Gummy Bear and Gummy Worm materials i tried to make realistic material of gummy (jelly ?) but somehow it doesn't look real as i want, I research all over forums and google, like material of Doki on the forums (https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?350580-Gummy-Worms-and-Gumdrop).

Here is what i got:

What I want to make:

Here is my blend file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzM1zdTMJ5omZVM4alpDLVJRdWs

1Here is something that looks close.

Please excuse my gummy model, The first picture uses the new Principled shader and the second image uses just a glass shader. If you use the glass shader make sure you use a fresnel and glossy node mixed in.

*be aware using the new Blender 2.7(9) may be unstable and is not a final version (although I have had no issues yet).

Use the Principled shader with transmission to 1 for glass.
In the base color slot connect a color ramp with "constant" selected and choose any colors you would like (this is optional). Also You will need to change from the "constant" to something else for the Gummy Worm, so it has a nice fall off.

3.Add the "object info" node so the computer randomly picks a color.

4.Pick any rough looking texture and plug in into a "color ramp" node (so you can control how much you want by sliding the flags). Make sure on the texture image you set it to "non color data" and either unwrap your model or connect the other two mapping nodes so Blender knows where to put the grunge texture.

Just use a texture to have clear and "foggy" sections of the model, and plug it into the roughness socket.

I didn't do it here, but you can grab another texture with divits in it and plug that into the normal socket to add more realism.

Hope this helps a little.

This is the grunge texture I used.

[]


started making character with his pose, now mirror doesn't work properly So I made a character without using mirror and placed him in a certain pose. Now I want to sculpt it with a mirror, but the mirror itself is mirroring something else.
On the screenshot you can see that the single blue dot should be on the other side of the head, but it's not. That's because at the start I deformed the head.

Reset your scale and rotation with hotkey Ctrl + A  before you start sculpting.


Object wobbles during rotation newbie here - I'm trying to rotate an object - I can rotate it no problem in object mode, but when I set the keyframes and play the animation it wobbles. I tried uploading the file but it's over 200MB :(

I think you are rotating using the local axis in the top one, and the global axis in the bottom one.

To solve your problem, use the local axis when keyframing

So in order to rotate around say, the x aixs, instead of RXmove mouse, use RXXmove mouse


How to make assemblies from multiple objects? I am working on a project were I need to render a product with multiple parts.
Each part is a separate object generate in Fusion 360 and imported in Blender as a .obj file

Now, I need to assemble all these components into a product but I don't know how to do it. Working with rotation and translation is a way but quite messy and complicated. There is no way to be sure of the right orientation or placement.

Here is a more detailed explanation on my problem.
I need to insert the part on the right (called shaft) onto the part on the left (called hole).
There is not need to have mouvment between them, only a static position.

What I did so far is the following:

set the origin of the shaft (by selecting the vertex of the surface that would be in contact, then snap cursor to selection, then origin to cursor)
place the cursor onto the hole (by selecting the vertex of the hole and snap to selection)
snap the shaft to the cursor

That is almost working. The shaft moves, locates well at the cursor position but...the orientation is not correct.

I am sure this process is the simplest and the most convenient to archive what I need but I don't get why the shaft doesn't get the proper alignment.

Let's start with the hole object and the shaft object (shown below). I've taken the opportunity to rotate the hole from the global XYZ axes just in case that's what you're dealing with.

The first thing you want to do is to add an empty axis along the desired rotational axis of the shaft. If the shaft is symmetrical and aligned with the global axes, select the shaft, use Shift+S > Cursor to Selected to move the 3D Cursor to the shaft origin, and add Shift+A > Empty > Plain Axis. You'll then want to parent the shaft to the Plain Axis.

That step is to allow you to rotate the shaft about its local X, Y or Z-axis. Long story short, if you try to spin an object around an axis that's not the global axis, things get messy. In the case of your shaft not being aligned to any of the XYZ axes, you'll have to first rotate the shaft so that the rotational axis does align with one of them, then press Ctrl+A > Apply Rotation. Then you can add the empty as I showed above.

Next, go to the hole. Select all the vertices/edges that make up the hole, press F to fill it in, then press Ctrl+F > Poke Faces. What this step will do is create a face with a normal that matches the desired rotational axis, and adds a vertex in the middle of it that we can use to snap the Plain Axis to.

Next, enable Vertex Snapping making sure you enable Align Rotation to Target. Grab the Plain Axis, and snap it to the vertex we made in the hole earlier.

Now you can delete the vertex from the hole, and rotate the shaft by rotating the shaft object, leave the Plain Axis alone.

EDIT: from additional info

If you don't need to rotate the shaft, you don't need to use the Plain Axis. Fill in the hole face, and poke it as I showed above. Then, if you grab the shaft using Vertex Snapping, Snap with Active Element and Align Rotation to Target, you can move it onto the hole and it will automatically align itself for you. Then you can delete the extra vertex from poking the face.

From there, if you need the shaft to be further in/out of the whole, use G+Z+Z to slide it in/out.


Fill Tool ignores Grease Pencil Lines? I am using the 2D Animation function of blender. I have Grease Pencil lines drawn on a number of layers and I am trying to fill the area inside these lines using the Fill Tool on a new layer. However the fill tool seems to ignore the lines and fills the whole visible screen. What is strange is if I zoom out the window the fill tool will work sometimes, and other times it fills the whole screen again. This is seemingly at random.
For the life of me I can't figure this out. I have tried "construction" lines, drawing on the same layer as the grease pencil lines, using shift-click with the fill tool, changing the Leak size, the material thickness, watched tutorials. The strangest thing is the tool worked completely fine in another project, but this is the second project I have created that has this problem. I even updated from 2.9.01 to 2.91.
I am sure I am messing something up in the settings. I am still new to blender. But this is driving me crazy! Please help!
https://streamable.com/zqixi5

This Sounds like you have a gap and hence filling the screen. This depends allot on your line and Fill thickness/leakage thickness. The reason it's filling from a distance is the fill resolution/ thickness/ leakage is relative so a tiny gap when zoomed in disappears when you zoom out.
The gap might be tiny but heres some options for you;

turn up the fill resolution (in advanced drop down). I keep mine at 3 or the fill shape sucks.
increase your fill tool leakage size
Join your strokes to remove gaps. Select the strokes and use ctrl J.
If you only have 1 stroke use F to auto close it.

One of those should sort your issue.
Good luck with it.


How to pick up object? So imagine a scene. A character of mine is bending down grabbing a ball from the floor then standing up and throwing the ball.

I have the character rigged and ready with the action but how do i make the ball move with the character? Im hoping keyframing it in position isnt the way to do it as thats a nightmare?

In general im asking the best way for an character to pick up/throw/interact with an object... whats the best way to do this? (Once the character is created and rigged)

You add a "Child of" constraint to the ball, and select the armature and bone of the character you want to pick it up with.  You can then animate the influence of the constraint to change when the ball is influenced by the character.

hope this helps.


How to use modifiers on a metaball animation I know that if I want to use modifiers on metaballs, I first have to convert them to a mesh. However I'd like to use modifiers on a metaball animation, and the only way I know of is to repeat the steps of [convert to mesh, use modifiers, render image] for every single frame of the animation.

Is there a way around that, for example, converting the whole animation to an animated mesh, or an addon that automates the process?

The Animation Nodes add-on works on metaballs using the Mesh nodes. So you can do all kinds of things with them. Most of the things the modifiers do, if not all (but much more for sure).
The latest version is here.
There's plenty of resource on Youtube to learn how to use this big and powerful add-on. Even the developer Jacques Lucke has a Youtube channel full of it. The documentation is also very useful.

Actually, even Sverchok works on metaballs, so I guess you're pretty much covered. Sverchok is similar to Animation Nodes but offers other possibilities. And the resources are even more extensive. There's a Documentation too and Jimmy Gunawan made so many videos, any effect you can think of, he's certainly got one for it. Heck, he's got a whole series with Metaballs !

There's a bit of a learning curve for both of these add-ons, but every minute spent on them is worth it. They're arguably among the best free add-ons for Blender and we won't have a built-in "Everything Nodes" anytime soon.

If you're stuck on how to do a specific effect with any of these add-ons you can ask in another question and give a link in a comment below. But first learn the basics.

Good luck !


How to fix Non-Manifold elements? I've made a High to Low poly model, and after using the ctrl+alt+shift+m command to find non-manifold elements, I've found several as shown in the .png which is edges and vertexes across the model as well as the uv wrapping. How do I fix these non-manifold elements? I appreciate anybody's time and effort in helping solve this issue!

As far as fixing nonmanifold issues are concerned, you don't need to worry about the UV unwrapping at all (except for possibly having to unwrap it again when you change your vertices around).

The problem you have in the middle probably happened after you applied your mirror modifier, but it's an easy fix. Make sure just that section is selected, then scale it to 0 on the x axis. LEAVE IT SELECTED. Next you're going to go to your search bar (space in 2.79) and start typing in 'remove'. A few options should pop up, but what you want is remove doubles. You can also access it from the 'W' menu, but sometimes it just doesn't show up for me, so that's an alternative method.

Your other manifold problem looks like you might have internal faces. To check, go to face mode and see if you see any of those floating dots inside your model. If you do, move back into edge select and only select the edges on the inside (so you won't make holes in your model) and delete them.

I hope this helps!


Bevel curves without fattening? How can I bevel a curve without fattening it?

For example, beveling a mesh object will not increase the size, but beveling a curve will:

The obvious solution is simply to use the Offset to counter the fattening cause by bevel:

However, using offset results in artifacts at sharp corners:

How can I bevel a curve without increasing it's size?

Use a bevel object. You can enter the name in the Bevel Object field in the Geometry panel of your main curve object.

A bevel object is a second curve object that is extruded along the main curve. This gives you great flexibility to choose how the cross section of your main object should look like since you are not limited to rounding the edges. In that example however, I just imitated the original bevel.

I set the bevel bezier curve to Vector with the V menu. That produces straight lines. Alternatively you could use a nurbs curve with Order set to 2. I also put the object origin of the bevel curve on the curve. The origin of the bevelling curve is the reference point for the bevelled main curve.

In the picture below, you can see(from left to right):

The original size of the curve
The larger diameter, caused by an ordinary bevel.
The bevel object with it's object origin in the right place.
The resulting bevelled curve object with exactly the same diameter as the unbevelled curve.

A simple example of what a bevel object can do (the curve on top of the bevelled curve is a duplicate to illustrate the size of the unbevelled curve):

The artifacts at sharp corners can (so far) only be countered by altering the main curve or by doing a boolean surgery. Even converting into a mesh and bevelling that produces unwanted results. That seems to be the main reason behind the bevelled curve growing in size.


Exporting only one animation to gltf from multiple objects each with an action I want to do an animated gltf file that shows how a set of molecules move.  Using python, I created an object for each atom, 1558 atoms in total and then I added keyframes  for updating the locations each frame.  Then I exported to gltf and I can see the molecules moving alright in the online viewer.  The problem is that there is an animation per each atom and I want only one animation in the file that includes all the atoms.

I tried putting all the actions in a single NLA strip but when I export the file I don't even see the strip in the viewer, not sure why (I do select the option for exporting NLA strips) and I still see the 1558 different animations.
Any help would be appreciated.
Update
If I create a few spheres and add keyframes manually, then everything is exported to a single animation as I want.  When I compare this to the file generated with python, I see that the F curves created for the objects actions are grouped into an ActionGroup called 'object tranfroms' but that group is not generated when I insert the keyframes by scripting.  I don't know if that grouping makes the GLTF have a single animation as I want.
How can I insert a keyframe programmatically  that exactly replicates what happens when you manually press I over the object to insert it?  I already tried adding an ActionGroup to the object but it is a read-only type and I think you can't add a F Curve to it.

Not sure why but I got it to work by grouping the channels using this code:
for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    new_group=obj.animation_data.action.groups.new("ChGroup")
    for fc in obj.animation_data.action.fcurves:
        fc.group=new_group

And then exporting to gltf without selecting NLA Track:
bpy.ops.export_scene.gltf(export_format='GLB', filepath=filepath, export_nla_strips =False )

Now there is only one animation in the gltf (the color is different too but that's unrelated):


How can I create a diffuse texture for stylized models? How can I create a diffuse texture for my rendered models or game assets ? If possible with a single node setup and no compositing needed.

Download the node setup
Generate an Asset automatically

Base color and blood color

We start with the base color and the Sub-Surface Scattering to add blood to the model.
For the SSS, add an Input > Ambient Occlusion node, you can reduce the Samples for it to 8, you can reduce it even more if the amount of blood visible is subtle. Check Inside to invert it and Only Local. For the Distance use 0.4, it varies depending on the model, this is the size I will use with the Monkey mesh.
Connect the AO output to a Color Mix RGB and connect it to the Factor. Set Color1 to R; 0.7 GB: 0.1.
The Color2 will be the Base Color, add an Input > RGB and connect it.

Connect the Mix node to the Color1 of another Mix node set to Value. For the Color2 plug the RGB node of the base color. This will allow to have the blood with the same value of the base color, if you make the base color brighter the blood will be more visible.

Now add another Mix node for the amount of blood visible. In Color1 plug the RGB node, in Color2 plug the previous Value node. Set the Factor to 0 to have no blood by default.

Here is what our node setup looks like:

Ambient Occlusion

We then add an Ambient Occlusion node, you can enable Only Local if you want. To make it more realistic you can connect it to a mix node to add bluish shadows to fake ambient lighting, for that connect the AO output to the Factor of a Mix node. Set the Color1 to RG: 0 B: 0.1. Set the Color2 to white.

Add a Mix node and connect in the Color1 the node for the amount of blood and in Color2 the Ambient Occlusion effect. Set the node to Multiply and the Factor to 0.8.

The node setup:

Vertical Gradient

The vertical gradient will darker the bottom part of your model to focus the attention at the top of your model.
To create it add an Input > Texture Coordinate, connect the Generated output to a Converter > Separate RGB and use the Blue channel, that's all you have to do for this effect.
Connect the gradient to a multiply node, in Color1 plug the AO amount and in Color2 the Vertical gradient, set the Factor to 0.5.

Here is the result you should get in the viewport (connect it to an Output > Material Output to see it):

Top Lighting

For the fake top lighting effect add an Input > Texture Coordinate (or use the previous node), connect the Normal output to a Converter > Separate RGB, connect the Blue channel in the first Input of a Mix node set to Screen mode, for the second Input keep the grey color (RGB: 0.5), we do that to avoid to have completely dark areas. Then connect it again to a screen node in the first Input with the RGB 0.5 grey in the second color to make the image a bit brighter. Connect the vertical gradient and top lighting to a Soft Light node and set it to 0.8.

Here is the node setup:

And the current result:

For now it is too bright but we will correct the gamma later.

Curvature

The curvature will add an hand painted effect to your texture.
Add an Input > Geometry and connect the Pointiness output to a Converter > ColorRamp. Move the left cursor at 0.45 and the right at 0.55. Connect the fake lighting and curvature on an Overlay node and set it to 1.

Gamma Correction

The texture is too bright, by default Blender works in sRGB, it brighten everything, this was ideal for older screens. We need to fix this to have the middle grey displayed with half the luminosity.
For that set the RGB node used for the base color to a value of 0.5 in HSV mode or type this Hexadecimal code: 7F7F7F.

The base grey color is now in Linear instead of sRGB, but in order to make it blend correctly with the other effects we need to add a node to set it to sRGB temporarly, for that add a Converter > Gamma, in Color connect the SSS node and in Gamma connect a Converter Math in Divide mode with Value 1: 0.5, Value 2: 2.2.

After the last node add a Converter > Gamma and set it to 2.2:

Here is the final result with the gamma corrected:

Here is the result I can get by changing the color and adding a bit of SSS:

Notes

You can now tweak the different factor if you want to add more curvature, more lighting effect, etc. Change the amount of blood on organic models and the Inverted AO distance.

To make the Vertical Gradient and Top Lighting effect work correctly, apply the rotation with Ctrl + A.
You can now directly bake your game texture in Emit mode. If you connect it to the base color input of a shader you must bake in Diffuse mode and disable Direct and Indirect lighting in the baking settings.
You can create a node group, I suggest to replace the Input RGB by the Input of the node and to allow to change the amount of blood. The Blood color and the factor of the other settings aren't necessary.

You can add a slider to switch between a version with no lighting information (PBR) and with the lighting. For that add a mix node between the Top Lighting node and the Curvature, in the first slot plug the Top Lighting in the second plug the first gamma node for the color. You can then add the setting in your node group.

The PBR version looks like this, you will need to bake your AO map separately:


I pressed P and I don't know what happened Yesterday I was making a model. There was something that I needed to put on another layer. I forgot the layer shortcut, so I was pressing random letters until I pressed (Ctrl +?) P and it changed the lighting and completely froze. I left it on for a while to see if it would unfreeze, no luck. Today I opened my PC and all I can see in the blender window is my viewport surrounded by black. I really don't wanna close blender since I didn't save my model.

P.S. It is still responding but I can't do anything with it.

P used to be the key to start game mode.  I think they unbound it in recent versions to prevent people from having this problem.  (yes, I also fell victim to that once; and the Shift+Space toggle).

I agree with all the comments suggesting the Esc key as a possible remedy.  (although it won't get you back from Shift+Space; another Shift+Space does).


Blender doesn't render the cloth-simulation Blender doesn't render the cloth-simulation from the umbrella.
.blend-file

It is caused by previous cache baking. You can press Free All Bakes in the Cloth Cache panel, then give it a try.


How to change the Camera mesh? Is it possible to change the camera in the 3d-viewport to something a little more camera-ish. For example in maya the camera looks like this:

Can this be done with python scripting?

You can overlay the 3D Viewport using a draw handler.

Use 'PRE_VIEW' to have it in world space behind everything else, 'POST_VIEW' for world space like a real object (depth test). 'POST_PIXEL' is screen-space on top of everything else, but requires 2D coordinates.

You would need to hide the real camera however, which is drawn by C code - maybe put it on another layer or simply hide it? Note that you can't move the camera while it's hidden.

Proof of concept:

import bpy
import bgl
import blf
from mathutils import Vector

bbox_normal = ((-1.0, -1.0, -1.0), (-1.0, -1.0, 1.0), (-1.0, 1.0, 1.0), (-1.0, 1.0, -1.0), (1.0, -1.0, -1.0), (1.0, -1.0, 1.0), (1.0, 1.0, 1.0), (1.0, 1.0, -1.0))

def draw_callback_px(self, context):
    if context.scene.camera is None:
        return

    font_id = 0  # XXX, need to find out how best to get this.

    # 50% alpha, 2 pixel width line
    bgl.glEnable(bgl.GL_BLEND)
    bgl.glColor4f(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.5)
    bgl.glLineWidth(2)

    bbox = [context.scene.camera.matrix_world * Vector(x) for x in bbox_normal]

    bgl.glBegin(bgl.GL_LINE_STRIP)
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[0])
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[1])
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[2])
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[3])
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[0])
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[4])
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[5])
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[6])
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[7])
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[4])
    bgl.glEnd()

    bgl.glBegin(bgl.GL_LINES)
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[1])
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[5])
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[2])
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[6])
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[3])
    bgl.glVertex3f(*bbox[7])
    bgl.glEnd()

    # restore opengl defaults
    bgl.glLineWidth(1)
    bgl.glDisable(bgl.GL_BLEND)
    bgl.glColor4f(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0)

class ModalDrawOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Draw a line with the mouse"""
    bl_idname = "view3d.modal_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Modal View3D Operator"

    def modal(self, context, event):
        context.area.tag_redraw()

        if event.type == 'ESC':
            bpy.types.SpaceView3D.draw_handler_remove(self._handle, 'WINDOW')
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        if context.area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
            # the arguments we pass the the callback
            args = (self, context)
            # Add the region OpenGL drawing callback
            # draw in view space with 'POST_VIEW' and 'PRE_VIEW'
            self._handle = bpy.types.SpaceView3D.draw_handler_add(draw_callback_px, args, 'WINDOW', 'PRE_VIEW')
            if context.scene.camera:
                context.scene.camera.hide = True
            context.window_manager.modal_handler_add(self)
            return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}
        else:
            self.report({'WARNING'}, "View3D not found, cannot run operator")
            return {'CANCELLED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(ModalDrawOperator)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ModalDrawOperator)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
        if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
            ctx = bpy.context.copy()
            ctx['area'] = area
            bpy.ops.view3d.modal_operator(ctx, 'INVOKE_DEFAULT')
            break

To draw the box on top of everything else (like X-ray):

from bpy_extras.view3d_utils import location_3d_to_region_2d

# ...

    bbox = []
    region = context.region
    rv3d = context.space_data.region_3d
    for x in bbox_normal:
        coord = context.scene.camera.matrix_world * Vector(x)
        bbox.append(tuple(map(round, location_3d_to_region_2d(region, rv3d, coord))))

    bgl.glBegin(bgl.GL_LINE_STRIP)
    bgl.glVertex2i(*bbox[0]) # must be 2i for 2D integer values!

    # ...


How do I use an ambient occlusion map in the BGE? There is probably a really simple answer, but I can't figure it out. I usually add them to the albedo maps, but when I'm just testing to see how they look this isn't very efficient and it doesn't allow me to change them around easily. Is there a way to blend just the dark colors of the AO map into the texture?

If you don't care much for physical accuracy then you can just multiply the AO map over your albedo texture. Quick and easy.

(I like using nodes but the UI can also be used)

If you do care, though, it gets slightly more complex.

This is the formula we will follow:

Diffuse = (Direct + Indirect) * Color

Direct means material node

Indirect is what is often called Ambient term
It can be approximated as follows:

Indirect = AmbientColor * AO

If you want something a bit better to represent the AmbientColor you could make yourself a pre-convolved environment map (A.K.A. very blurred HDRI)

You might also want to have a UV channel that is used just for AO, separate from the albedo texture. If you do end up using one please, do not use the light-map unwrapping method, it will lower the performance of your game significantly.


Why is my Subdivision Surface modifier acting up? I'm new, great to be here!

I'm currently following this tutorial on how to model a cup in Blender, and I've run into a bit of a problem.

I get to the point when I have to use the Subdivision modifier [4:15 in the video], and a minor, yet very annoying detail pops up. Namely, this top edge right here:

Obviously, it's not supposed to be there.

The problem doesn't occur when I use the simple Subdivision modifier, only with the Catmull-Clark one. I followed the tutorial to the T, and still get a fugly-ass cup.

Help!

Tried to recreate your problem and i think you might have 1 extra loop cut there. Try to tab into edit mode, select all and then "remove doubles".


Dope sheet and graph editor are kind of "dark" This strange thing happens when some books falls on my keyboard. It doesn't affect to my workflow at all but it's really annoying.

As you can see, it's seems like i have switch off a bright option or something. I can't explain this very good and neither know how to search for a solution.
This only happens on that project. I've tried reseting blender and opening other projects but they looks cool.

Anyone knows the shortcut or the key i missclick or it's other kind of problem?
Thank you


How to reflect individual bone axis? I don't want to change the bone roll, that doesn't accomplish anything.

When I have a bone, I want the Y and Z axis to stay the same, but I want the X axis to reflect across the local Y axis. If I try and change the bone roll, it always changes both the Z and X at the same time, even though all I want to do is flip the X axis of the bone in edit mode. "Switch Direction" almost accomplishes this, except then it reverse the head and tail location.

I haven't got a full picture of what you want to accomplish with this but:

What you can do is to have an armature that is scaled to -1 on one axis. That will give you an inverted coordinate system inside that. You could then drive bones on the deforming armature with those bones.

AFAIK bones will end up as matrices that deforms the mesh. Having a negatively  scaled matrix on one bone will also scale the deformation accordingly. By using a controlling bone that exist in another coordinate system, this problem will be limited to a non deforming armature, and this is fine.


Why do I get weird shadows on my baked normal map? I baked a normal map,
however, there's weird shadow.. what is the problem?

The first picture is when I bake the normal map options:

I think you're seeing z fighting which is when you have two nearly identical meshes on top of each other.  You have both dragons visible in the outliner, you should hide one of them.


What was the first printed documentation for Blender? I remember buying a printed documentation from NaN a long time ago. Perhaps it was this one:

2000 "official" documentation for Blender 2.0, source

In my memory the book was more in the shades of pink, but I may be wrong. Anybody can confirm this was the first book sold by NaN? (I'm not talking about books written by independent writers, though at this time I doubt there was many authors).

I believe this one is way older and Ton signed it.


How do you Adjust the number of vertices when creating a circle? The new blender 2.8 is different. When I create a circle there is no longer an option to adjust the number of verticies in the circle. Even when I press F6 av

At the bottom-left and above the time line, you may need to deploy the panel (small arrow).


Measureit Measurements Inconsistent After Export I’ve been using the measureit tool to get the proper dimensions for a 3D printing project I’m working on. The only problem is that after exporting the file and then uploading the STL into my printing software, the model is ridiculously small and out of scale. Suggestions?

Few things come in mind:

Set units to real world units (screenshot)
Make sure scale is equal 1 (Object -> Apply -> Scale)
Make sure your dimensions in real world units match what you'd want to print out.
After all that, double-check your scale is equal to 1, if no, apply scale again.


How can one add a new blank scene to the blender game engine I am attempting to add a new scene to the blender game engine while the engine is running.

I am not attempting to add an existing scene that is in the file or an imported library, as with bge.logic.addScene() but rather create a new empty scene.

How can this be implemented?

You can't.

Scenes are always loaded from a blend file.


How to move the 3D manipulator widget itself I've uploaded an obj file and the widget is waaaayy far from the object I've inserted.
Again, I'm not trying to move the object, but the widget itself.

Is there a way to reposition it?

Most likely the origin of your object is off. To recenter it, select the object and press ⎈ Ctrl⎇ Alt⇧ ShiftC> Origin to geometry.

If you want to move it to a more customized location, you can move the 3D cursor where you want it to go, either by clicking with  LMB or by snapping the cursor with ⇧ ShiftS, then pressing ⎈ Ctrl⎇ Alt⇧ ShiftC> Origin to 3D cursor.

Note that the manipulator widget is located at the pivot point, which is set in the header of the 3D view:

It's also possible that the pivot point is set to 3D cursor (.), in which case the manipulator will be position at the cursor. To switch it back to the default setting of median point, either select it in the drop down or press ⎈ Ctrl, (comma).


I´m getting something weird with my fluid sim everyone!

Im testing for the first time with fluid simulations and i was trying something very simple but im getting a really odd result:

I dont know why but my fluid is placing above 0 in Z axis. All my objects, including the Domain object are perfectly snapped to 0 in Z but i´m still getting this result.

It has something to do with resolution or preview display or what?

Thanks!

That danged Fluid Simulator. I don't know how many hours I spent trying to patch holes that didn't even exist in vessels that seemed to just want to ooze fluids, and trying to force the fluid down a hole, instead of all over the sides of the object.

The two biggest factors I found are Solidify and Air Bubbles.

It appears you already have done the Solidify to your vessel, but if not, it's in the Modifiers tab.

Even with that, fluid wants to avoid the vessel opening, and leak out of places when it does go in.
So, the other factor is in the Boundary section of the Fluid Domain's Physics tab. This seems totally counter-intuitive to me, but it seems by UN-checking the "Remove Air Bubbles" check box, it works better ... still not perfect.

For this test, I didn't really do it right, and did not want to spend a lot of time on it. I apologize. This is at mostly the basic, default parameters, except I set it for 96 frames, and set the "Inflow" to -3m/s on the Z axis, (and, of course, set the "faucet" Fluid Physics type to Inflow as a Shell), but hopefully you can see the difference in how much fluid fell out of the vessel and into the Fluid Domain box here ...

... and here where I UN-checked Remove Air Bubbles.

Here is the wire frame view, so you can see the crazy shape of the vessel better. As I said, I rushed through this a bit too much. I didn't even do the Solidify, as I suggest.

I would think the air bubbles would displace the fluid, and, without them, draw more fluid into the vessel, but the complete opposite seems to be true, (which is why it took me so long to try unchecking that box).

For this test, I should have made the opening a bit larger, but wanted to make sure it failed, and it did. Had I tuned it, I think I could have gotten it all to flow into the vessel, as I've had some success in the past by unchecking that box and solidifying my vessel object.

Both of the renders above were at the exact same frame of the simulation ... um, frame 27, I believe. I just picked one at random, and left it there before the second Bake and Render, after only unchecking that box.

Besides leaving all the rendering parameters at their default, low resolution, I also left everything in the Physics at the default Partial Slip parameters, but you can also try changing the "Amount" of "Partial Slip".

No matter what, we are still going to be finding issues with the Fluid Simulator ... if not keeping it in vessels, the viscosity thing. Just keep plucking at it.

Now, about that danged Fire and Smoke Simulator ...


Blender 2.92, Show gizmo move Keybind I'm unable to find the show gizmo move keybind. So what I specifically want is to see the XYZ-arrows when I press G to move, just like they show up when I press Move on the toolbar to the left.
Apparently it was shift+space+g in Blender 2.8.
When I try it, shift+space starts some animation frame instead.
I searched in the keymaps but theres nothing relevant on "gizmo", so that leaves me overwhelmed.
I found this thread but its not the answer Gizmo missing in version 2.90.1

If you only want to turn on and off the move tool, by default is by Holding down Shift + Spacebar , G.
If you don't see anything, hover your mouse over the move tool and you will see the shortcut appear


Moving linked groups to another file Anybody knows how to move linked groups to another files keeping it linked?
If i am appending the scene to another file all linked groups became a real objects which increased size of the scene dramatically!

When appending, uncheck "Localize All" in the lower left hand corner of the screen.


Deselect all objects (also on hidden layers) How can I deselect all object on all layers? Key A only works for current layer.

I have 20 layers, with different game buildings and before exporting I need to select what to export. If I forgot to deselect on different layer it will get exported too.

You can press ` which is usually found immediately to the left of the 1 and directly above TAB.

This will make every layer visible so now using a will function as you would like it to.

Or you could just select something using a mouse/pen click, this will also release any hidden layer selections.


Where is Remove Double Vertices blender 2.9 Alpha The First image is mine, The Second image is Teacher of Tutorial. I tried find out "Remove Double Vertices" But I can't find it out anywhere. Where is it in Blender 2.9 Alpha?

The Remove double vertices operator has been move into the "Mesh" menu and is now executed by going Merge > By Distance. Note that you can access it by right clicking while in edit mode and vertex select mode.


Volumes with space-dependent light intensity I would like to use Blender to render pictures of atomic orbitals like in the following picture

or like in this video. This seems to need some light-emitting volume whose intensity is described by some formulas.

Which would be the smartest approach for this problem?

You can use an Emission shader for the Volume socket of your Material output node, and give it a volumetric texture.

It's pretty easy for a 1s orbital, (n,l,m) = (1,0,0). (spherical symmetry, monotonic decay: it's not actually exponential in my example below):

Create a sphere, and assign a material to it like the one in the picture.

The first three nodes to the left (Geometry, Object Info and Vector Math>Subtract) will output a vector (x-x₀, y-y₀, z-z₀) for each x,y,z point in the sphere's volume, where x₀,y₀,z₀ is the pivot point of the sphere. The following node Vector Mapping can be used to scale the texture. These are the cartesian coordinates that will be used to define a scalar function, like a wavefunction.
The last four nodes to the right ("Math>Absolute, Color Ramp, Emission, Material output) will take the output of your scalar function and assign it to the volumetric emission, colored according to a color map (I've taken the absolute value, you might want to take the 2nd power, or to have different colors for the positive and negative values).
In the middle, you will need your actual scalar function. It can be any node, or group of nodes, that takes a Vector (blue socket) as input, and outputs a scalar (grey socket). In my example, I've used a Gradient texture node. Unfortunately, complex functions are not built-in in blender. You can, however, create a Script node that implements the wavefunctions (you will probably need numpy.polynomial.legendre)*

* I've never done this before, so I can't guarantee it's possible to just make python do the math. If it's possible, I think this wiki page is a good starting point.


Is there any way to change viewport preview pass through script? I have mastering blender, but i'm absolutely beginner in python or blender script.
i just can use the script trough copy from the "Info" area then paste to "Text Editor"
then Run it.
but i get confused to change preview passes trough script
the line from the "Info" (when i switch the passes) is
bpy.data.screens["Scripting"].(null) = 'NORMAL'

i copy and paste to the editor, so like this
import bpy
bpy.data.screens["Scripting"].(null) = 'NORMAL'

and the script won't run, its get invalid syntax
any help will be appreciated
thank you

Developer Extras
Relying on the info area to write scripts is IMO not the way to go.
Some posts explaining how to find what the property is.
Changing the shading type in Python
Blender python : How to set object appearance in viewport?
With developer extras turned on mousing over the property

Telling us the type and its property of interest View3DShading.render_pass  For a 3D viewport, will find any property setting belongs to the space.   Scrolling to References at bottom of page confirms this ie SpaceView3D.shading is an instance of View3DShading
To the python console:
>>> for i, a in enumerate(C.screen.areas):
...     i, a.type
...
(0, 'PROPERTIES')
(1, 'CONSOLE')
(2, 'VIEW_3D')
(3, 'TEXT_EDITOR')

Area 2 is a view 3d, its active space
>>> space = C.screen.areas[2].spaces.active

The render pass property of shading group
>>> space.shading.render_pass
'COMBINED'

Set to something else.
>>> space.shading.render_pass = 'MIST'
>>>

Note in a script to run from the context of a view3d, then use
space = context.space_data


Help the lighting doesnt work and some part of the object is black So i try to learn to create the chair just like blender guru tutorial, and when i try to render the model to finish the lighting lesson, it turn out like this (as shown in the picture), like the lighting doesnt work on some part of the object. Does anybody know how to fix this? thanks a lot

Check your normal image, switch the Image Texture node to Non-Color, maybe lower down the Strength of the Normal Map node.


How can I paint on a model to create embossed details? I need help to understand what this video is showing.

In this video I want to understand what it's showing when he is drawing a line or some shape on the model surface and later it is converted to an embossed, extruded shape. Does it only work with cylinder shape or any shape? Can anyone please explain to me with an example how it is working?

In the video he is painting to a texture that is then used to control a Displace Modifier which changes the mesh. This method will work on any mesh provided you have a good even UV unwrap and enough face density on your mesh. You will also need to add a subdivision modifier above the displace on the modifier stack to make sure there is enough detail to displace. If your painted strokes do not match the topology of the mesh very well, you may get some jagged edges/artifacts, but these can be solved by retopologising at the end (which you should do anyway).

Towards the end of the video there are subtitles explaining a lot of what he is doing.


How to cut grooves in a rectangle I need to cut some grooves into a flat surface. I have watched tutorials with cylinders, where they extruded faces inward to create the required effect, but rectangles only have six faces, so extruding one of them would accomplish just as much as simply resizing the object. How do you divide a rectangle's face into a grid of extrude-able squares?

Select the face where you want to add the groove. Press I to inset a new face. Then scale it with S and constrain to a axis (for me it was the X axis), press E to extrude the groove.

Or if you want the groove running all the way across the side, add two loop cuts with CtrlR. Then push them closer, by scaling same as above. After you have it the size you want, select the two outside faces and E extrude them out.


audio track and video track are not the same length Given that av sync is on and the correct fps is set, why would the audio track and the video track not be of the same length. When the video file is played in a media player, no such problems occur, but when placed into blender's video editor, the total length of the video is longer than that of the audio. this varies from a short 8 second video with a 1 frame difference to a 2 hour long video with several thousand frames of difference. Also the audio does lag behind the video accordingly, but it takes a minute or so to really notice it desyncronising.

When you import a video with audio into the sequencer, the following happens:

The video and audio are split into individual tracks, so they become effectively separate entities.
The audio track is imported into the sequencer while respecting the total play-length of the audio, So there is no pitch shift. (Basically, the audio is never sped up or slowed down, it will always sound right)
The video is imported frame-for-frame at the Frame Rate set in Blender's render panel, this means there is no frame interpolation or frame dropping going on.(Basically, the video will always play frame-by-frame, so it will be sped up or slowed down if the source video does not match the Frame Rate setting in Blender)

This has the unpleasant effect that if you import a 10 second video that is 24fps into Blender's 25fps timeline, the audio will last 10 seconds, but the video track (which has 240frames) will be squeezed into 240/25 = 9.6 seconds, hence the mismatch.

So, if all your source videos are the same FPS, then just set the Blender fps to that number, and you should be fine. If you have source videos of different FPS, then you can use the Speed Control strip to adjust the timing of each.


How to convert Raw image texture baked from Blender to sRGB color space I know that to convert from linear to sRGB (or the other way around) you have to apply a gamma correction of 2.2, but how do you convert from RAW to sRGB? I have a whole project using RAW color management because it's much easier to get the right colors when you are doing product texturing, and all of a sudden I'm asked to bake everything for real time. So here I am with all my RAW diffuse textures baked down, and Photoshop opened wondering how to convert them to sRGB space for some final touches in Substance Painter later on.

So the difference between Linear, Non-Color and RAW Image Texture node's Color Space options seems to be subtle:

Linear option is for linear color space. This means it is color information and will be treated accordingly if color space conversions are needed.
RAW is still color information, however it is color information that will not be managed in any way and will be as is. It will not go through any color transforms so in Blender's context it will be linear, because that's what Blender uses internally for rendering and calculations.
Non-Color is information that is not color and will also not be managed as color by color management at all. It will not go through any color transforms and will also remain linear.

You can see that Non-Color and RAW is exactly the same thing in all practical aspects except meaning, while Linear and Non-Color differs in the way Blender should treat the data.

So if you know how to work with Linear color space, the same should work for you with RAW. If you apply gamma of 2.2 to it you will get an approximation of sRGB color space. sRGB is not exactly the same as gamma 2.2 though, but this does not seem important in this context. See https://www.nayuki.io/page/srgb-transform-library for example if you want to know more about it for some reason.


When I right click while in edit mode, the context menu doesn't appear Just to clarify, my select is set to left mouse button.
All keybinds are default.
Does anyone know how to fix this?

go to Edit>Preferences>Keymap
In the searchbox type: Call menu
Then have a look in the search results for "Mesh Call Menu". And check what key you have assigned for it. Should be "Right Mouse" if you want it like this.


Any way to avoid fcurves in scripting animations? I am trying to use blender to animate spheres I am controlling with a python script. I already have the position data I want for each sphere at each frame of the animation. I don't need keyframes with their interpolation curves and all that overhead. Is there any way to just update the position of objects at each frame without a keyframe and fcurve between every frame?

fcurves are how blender stores animation data. That is what it is for and you should just use it. If you are defining the animated values every frame then the interpolation will be of no concern. If your values only change on some frames then set the interpolation to be constant.

For creating the animation by script that would be

obj.location.x = 12.23
obj.keyframe_insert('location', index=0, frame=1)

If you really want to manually animate something without animation data, you should be able to use handlers to run a function every frame.

def myframe_change(scene):
    if scene.frame_current == 1:
        scene.objects['Cube'].location.x = 12.23

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(myframe_change)

If you are concerned about overhead, I think you will find running a python script every frame will add more overhead than using native animation data.


How to draw curved symmetric lines within a shape So, what I have drawn in the grease pencil above is generally what I want to create with lines inside the rectangle. I want them symmetric about the Y axis (and the pattern around the x axis inside the shape as well), so obviously a lot nicer than what I've drawn, but that's the basic pattern.

I will also be taking these lines and thickening them inside the shape after I've drawn the pattern and making them into meshes.

Any ideas on the best way to do this? I've been experimenting with curves and linking them and whatnot, seems a little rough when I do it. Any ideas appreciated!

***I tried uploading the .blend to pasteall.org but it said error repeatedly - definitely not too big, so don't know :(

Curves can be a little different from editing meshes but with a little practice can be easy to work with. The array and mirror modifiers also work with curves to help you get the symmetry you are after.

Here I have one small curve with an array and a mirror. You can see the red handles on the real curve piece. To get some thickness to the curve you only need to turn up the bevel depth. You can also use another curve as a bevel object to get a unique shape extruded along the length of the curve.

If you have a bad join between the array pieces like this

you can enable merge in the array modifier and increase the merge distance if needed. You should also adjust the handles on the curve so that the start and end of the curve are pointing straight at each other for a clean merge.

And if you have a non-circular bevel shape you may want to twist the points using CtrlT. With a square bevel you can get the twisted look you get on iron gates.

You can easily convert the curve to a mesh object with AltC


Why is light showing through a solid mesh object? I'm creating an animation showing a wok with fire beneath it.  The wok is a simple model--a mesh circle that I formed into a bowl (wok) shape.  I used the quick smoke effect to create a nice fire right beneath the bowl, like the bowl/wok is on a stove top.

The problem is that the rendered image shows some of the light from the fire penetrating through the bottom of the wok.  It's not bright but, looking down at the wok, it is glowing in the area closest to the fire emitter beneath it.

How do I make the wok completely impenetrable to the the light from the fire?  Why is it allowing the light to glow through to begin with?

Thank you!

You need to make the bowl a collision object for the fire. With the bowl active, in the Physics tab click Smoke, then Collision. The collision type should be set according to what you do with the bowl. Static if remains still, Animated if you animate it using keyframes or drivers and Rigid if it has rigid body physics enabled.

You may also need to increase the Subframes setting for the emitter, to get higher accuracy to prevent flames to pass through the bowl between frames.

Here the bowl has collision enabled.

And here is doesn't.


blenderplayer.app won't open I just downloaded Blender, and when I try to open blenderplayer.app it bounces in the dock (I'm on a MacBook Pro using Yosemite) and doesn't open. Can anyone advise me as to what to do? Thanks.

You don't run blenderplayer.app by itself like that by default, you would launch this from the command line if you wanted to tweak how the game is run (see the arguments it takes here). It is used to execute games that you exported. To launch the actual application use blender.app.


Why can my NLA strip only be 10 000 frames long? I have NLA strip with path animation, But it seems like I can only do animation for about 10 000 frames if I'm using NLA strips?

Really?

Am I doing something wrong?

So I clicked the button called "NOW" right beyond the red rectangle on the screen, and it helped so great. ;D

Working with Blender is so emotional <3