Unresponsive black screen; does not close When I was editing a model in solid mode, the properties window refused to adjust correctly; every time I pulled it closer to the edge of the blender window it would take up more space, the opposite of what it had done before.

While I was trying to adjust the size of the properties window, an unresponsive black screen appeared. The screen took up more than half of the window.No matter how many times I close and reopen the model I was working on when the error occurred, the screen remains unresponsive. Before closing the file for the first time after the black screen opened, I saved my progress.

The screen seems to show the image of the last blender file loaded after opening that particular blender window.

All other blender files work just fine; this is the only one that has this issue.

Open a new instance of Blender without opening any file, go to File > Open search for your file but before you open it untick the Load UI box at the bottom left of the File Browser editor.

Then open your Blend file, see if that works.

After successfully opening it Save As with a different file name.

You should probably submit your original corrupt blender file as a bug report in the bugtracker with a complete description like the one provided in your question, because it sounds like an issue that can produce corrupt .blend files that fail to open causing potential data loss.

In the future if you want to prevent this from happening you can make Blender never load the UI from other files bu unticking the Load UI option in File > User preferences > File > Save & Load > Load UI


Edit mode circle selected P does not show any options for separation I am new to blender and trying to use edit mode and circle selection in order to separate parts of a mesh so the separate parts are small for import into Roblox.
I have my mesh cantered and edit mode activated and pressed C and selected a section from the centre of the mesh which showed up as selected but when I then press P for separation nothing shows.
I took a screenshot.

Until a tool has 'finished', you can't start a new one. In the case of the Circle Select tool this means either pressing Enter to 'Confirm' the tool, or Esc or Right-Click to 'Cancel' the tool (though in this case cancelling doesn't actually 'undo' the selection you made, it just ends it).


Bones moving some vertex groups wrong I have a rigged character as you can see below

It seems ok in T-Pose, but when I try to move his feet, I get into something odd:

All of the vertexes are in the same object, the shoes and the ropes ARE moving, but not enough. What's the problem?

There's probably one or more other vertex groups applying influence to the shoes and laces, go through all the vertex groups in weight paint mode and see if anything other than the feet bones are painting the feet.


Result not visible when using Blender Render I have such object (based on this tutorial):

When I use Cycles Render I see correct result as expected:

But when I switch to Blender Render I see gray screen:

Does anybody know what is going on here?

Blender Cycles expects Cycles Materials.
Blender Render expects Blender Materials.
They are not shareable across render engines.

If you replace your materials with Blender Materials then you can use Blender Render.  You can try a test by replacing one or two materials.  You might want to archive your file or create a different scene to keep the original intact.


Exr data window in compositing I try to make image compositing with Blender and my sequence images layers are EXR coming from another software ( Houdini ). Many software use a feature of openEXR call "data window". It's make a crop in the full image where you have data. This informations is probably embedded in the exr metadata. Most software are be able to read this cropping informations and get you image back to it's resolution ( for example 1920 x 1080 ). But in Blender compositing module , it's not to be the case and I just don't know if a option exist for that. If I render a image where all my 3D geometry take the place in the screen is not a problem but rendering a layer for a small object taking just some space in the full 1920 x 1080 resolution , Blender show it as cropped around this object. If it's a animated sequence , the crop just fellow the object frame by frame.

Any options or workaround for that ?

Display and data windows are not implemented in Blender.

For those wondering about them, read page 5 of the OpenEXR introduction.


Blender Guru Tutorial part 5: coffee cup bottom gets deformed After selecting the orange part (alt+ctrl) and I try to scale it (s).
But then the very bottom of the cup becomes deformed..

Like this picture:

I am trying to figure out what I did wrong here. How do we scale it without deforming the bottom of the cup?

I'm guessing you're making the the cup after making the donut.
When you did the icing (frosting) on the donut, you will have set the Proportional Editing Falloff to Random to create that uneven edge of the icing running down the side of the donut.

As I recall, I made the same mistake, because Andrew (Blender Guru) omits to tell you to switch off proportional editing (probably because it's a series of videos that he made at different times).
So before scaling the cup, make sure that Proportional Editing  is switched to Disable.


Hotkey for changing pivot center? I frequently go forth and back between "3D cursor" and "Median point" as pivot center.

Are there any hotkeys for this?

Blender's Manual gives you the answer:

Bounding Box Center: ,
3D Cursor: .
Individual Origins: Ctrl.
Median Point: Ctrl,
Active Element: Alt.


Mesh Deformer Modifier - Low poly mesh with softbody simulation deforming a high poly mesh Is it possible in Blender to optimise the softbody simulation by using a low poly mesh for the simulation to deform a high poly mesh? Instead of simulating the high poly mesh itself which would take much longer.
Just as it is possible in Cinema4D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CykigKQwadU
I've tried to set it up in Blender but I can't parent the high poly mesh to low poly. Well, actually I can but it doesn't move with the low poly mesh due to the origin point of the low poly mesh staying in the same place during the softbody simulation. The result is kind of fancy but obviously it's not how it should look.

Any ideas how to make it work in the correct way?
Thank you all in advance.

Parenting only effects the origin and the transforms of the object, never the mesh. There are two ways to achieve this however.
1. Lattice: you can use a lattice modifier, which can be given a softbody component
2. More practical: Mesh deform modifier. It's a bit cumbersome to set it up, but I'm sure you'll find help with that online.


Non Manifold object ? why hole is not print with 3D Printer? I don't undestand when why i print my gear (with central hole) the hole (only on the top) is fill and not print.

There's problem in my blend project ?
Is non manifold ?

I hope someone can help me !

Sorry for my english...

Some normals are flipped, so go in Edit mode, select all and recalculate the normals with ctrlN


Exporting ONLY the selected, visible faces of a scene I'm a 100% newbie when it comes to Blender, only needing it for a single task (for now, might return later to learn more).

I have a large scene involving many objects and I need to cut out a small cube of it. I've hit Alt-B and selected a cubic region. Now I want to export (obj at the moment, but I'm somewhat flexible as to format) only those visible faces, even if they were part of a larger object.

Alternatively, reversing the selection and deleting all the other faces would also seem like a possible solution, allowing me to export the remainder—my selection.

There's "Export Selection" in the export dialog, but that seems to still export the non-visible faces of the objects that intersect my chosen selection cuboid—which ends up being pretty much everything.

I don't need lights, cameras, or anything else except the geometry. I don't even need textures, though the texture names might still be of use to identify different parts of the data, so preserving the materials would help.

Any suggestions would be appreciated, especially if written for a newbie. Though I'll learn what I have to if given a push in the right direction. My Google searches have so far failed me in solving this problem.

EDIT: adding an image of the masked area I want to limit my export to:

If trees are particle instances you will have to make them real first...

than delete all unwanted meshes in object mode to make first clean up, than select all (the rest of objects you want to export and if there is a lot of unwanted faces Join all objects (Ctrl+J), because like now, trees objects shares same object data (that can't be edited separately). If you are able to simply go to edit mode, select faces and delete - great, you can stop here and export.

If you have some large faces out of your range you can cut them. Like ...

Go to Top View, create a new plane object on top of all objects, in size of area you want to export.

Select new plane first, than your joined object, switch to edit mode and search for Knife Project ...

in operator panel set Cut through

Select (B) the rest of vertices you want to keep ...

... invert selection (Ctrl+i) and delete.

Export result

but ... for a huge forest scene it can be killing process :)


How can a f-curve be used in an animation in BGE? I created some f-curves for different frequencies from an MP3 files, using the "bake sound from f-curve" function from the Key menu in the f-curves editor. The curves are assigned to a keyframe and scale the cubes while the music plays the MP3 has been added as a sound strip in VSE (looks like spectrum analyzer).

How could the f-curves be used in the BGE, could they possibly assigned to an action?

F-curve is generally used for controlling actions, I assume that you were asking "how to use action in BGE".

The simplest way is to set the Actuator type to Action. Then choose the action you want, and tweak a few settings within it, as shown below. Hope I didn't misunderstand that.

EDIT: I'm feeling that I sort of misunderstood that, did I? :-\


Why can't I enable the 'new' button of action? I want to import the action template of action editor, and use template ID to display it.
But the 'new' button is disabled, how could I active it?

here is my code currently:

import bpy

def drawRenderEngine(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        ob = context.object

        window = context.window
        screen = context.screen
        scene = window.scene

        if ob is not None:
            bpy.context.object.animation_data_create()
            layout.template_ID(context.object.animation_data, "action", new='action.new')

bpy.types.TOPBAR_HT_upper_bar.draw_right = drawRenderEngine

The operator does not poll.

The issue arises since the operator bpy.ops.action.new does not poll in the toolbar header.

Similarly in python console

>>> bpy.ops.action.new.poll()
False

Closer inspection of the action editor UI code, will see that the template object is the dope sheet space st = context.space_data not the animation data of the context object. My guess is the operator uses space to poll.

Code wise will confess to never using this operator; to add a new action would instead

action = bpy.data.actions.new(name)

and assign it to the animation data of the object I'm animating.

Enough waffle. Recommend here creating an operator bpy.ops.foo.bar  that makes the new action and assigns it where you wish, it appears from Q this is on the active object  Call the following from your operators execute method.

def main(context):
    ob = context.object
    name = f"{ob.name}Action"
    action = bpy.data.actions.new(name)
    # choose whether to set as active action or whatever
    ob.animation_data_create()
    ob.animation_data.action = action

Have it poll if there is a context object

Then use it instead for new

layout.template_ID(ob.animation_data, "action", new="foo.bar")

Side Note.

The draw method is only meant for drawing to the UI. If you put an __init__ in a panel class will see they are initialized constantly.

Trying to alter objects in any way during a draw will result in an error.  This applies to

bpy.context.object.animation_data_create()

in question code.


What is the difference between a subdivision surface modifier and multiresolution modifier? I'm currently modeling my game character in Blender (see below picture).

What is the difference between a subdivision surface modifier and a multiresolution modifier? I know they smooth the surface but are there specific characteristics to using each and what are those?

When using the sculpt tool, you will sometimes want to add more detail than your mesh has vertices to support.  You could add vertices by subdividing the mesh, but subdividing the mesh will increase the complexity of the model, slowing blender down, making the model larger, making the mesh less usable for certain applications (like games).

Sub surface allows you to increase the vertices as a modify, but isn't affected by sculpting.  It's purpose is to add geometry to the whole mesh and make a lower poly figure a higher quality without increasing the complexity of the mesh. You cannot move, alter or sculpt the new vertices without applying the subsurface. It wasn't designed for it.

Multi resolution modifier was added to allow you to add geometry for the purposes of adding detail to a sculpt. Vertices in a multi res modifier are affected by a sculpt even when not applied.  This allows you to sculpt with more verts than the base mesh has.  This is useful because you sculpt at a higher resolution, bake out the sculpt as a map, and apply it to the mesh as a normal map, without increasing the actual number of vertices the mesh has.

So, if you're not sculpting, sub surface and multi resolution are logically equivalent, and the preference is for sub surface (less data in memory, easier interface).  If you are sculpting, and want to keep the mesh low poly, but need more detail in the sculpt, use multi resolution and then bake out the normal map (which can then be applied to the surface of the object as a texture in the cycles node editor).


How can I create a face with a rounded edge? I'm trying to fill the empty face. Is there another way than to add vertices along the outlined edge to connect them with the face of the half circle?

I tried to connect only the four angles of the polygon but the face of the half circle overlaps it.

Have you considered retopologizing the top part of your object?

If you align the top loops in a perpendicular direction they can perfectly match the remaining half circle border loop and maintain a quad based edge flow.

Edit A little more detail:

Place the 3D Cursor correctly aligned at the right depth in relation to the face to be filled.

Erase you top existing faces, select the remaining top curved edgeloop, extrude it with E but cancel it immediately Right-Click.

Afterwards, with with 3D cursor already placed as described above, press the . (Period key) to transform relative to the 3D Cursor position, scale the edges in the Y axis only with S > Y > 0 (zero). That should flatten it directly and the right position.

Add one extra edgeloop along the height of the object, connect the two first segments of the bottom circle with the loop, and then you can fill the whole height of the object at once with the Bridge operator by selecting only the top and bottom edge loops (not the two large vertical bridging edges).

All done


Can this software be used to design a logo? Can this software be used to design a logo ?

yes indeed, In fact, Blender does more than I really expected to get from a free software.
Blender can be used to: Model in 3D, UV map, Texture, Rig for animation, Animate in 2D and 3D, even make games using the logic brick method. So yes, a logo is a simple matter for a user of Blender.

But naturally, it will take time and a bit of practice to get good, but hey, when you're there, you're there.


How do I add a cylinder between two moving objects? This question is related to this thread How to add a Line between two moving Objects with Python?

But the answer in this thread uses an edge, while I want it to be a cylinder (just like a bond connecting two atoms).

How do I extend from that answer to achieve this? Thank you.

All you need to change in the previous answer so that it would generate cylinder connectors instead of boxes, is setting the Skin modifier to smooth shading, and adding a subdivision surface modifier on top of it.

import bpy, bmesh
C = bpy.context

# Reference two cylinder objects
c1 = bpy.data.objects['C1']
c2 = bpy.data.objects['C2']

# Create new connector mesh and mesh object and link to scene
m = bpy.data.meshes.new('connector')

bm = bmesh.new()
v1 = bm.verts.new( c1.location )
v2 = bm.verts.new( c2.location )
e  = bm.edges.new([v1,v2])

bm.to_mesh(m)

o = bpy.data.objects.new( 'connector', m )
C.scene.collection.objects.link( o )

# Hook connector vertices to respective cylinders
for i, cyl in enumerate([ c1, c2 ]):
    bpy.ops.object.select_all( action = 'DESELECT' )
    cyl.select_set(True)
    o.select_set(True)
    C.view_layer.objects.active = o # Set connector as active

    # Select vertex
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
    o.data.vertices[i].select = True
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

    bpy.ops.object.hook_add_selob() # Hook to cylinder

    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
    o.data.vertices[i].select = False

m = o.modifiers.new('Skin', 'SKIN')

## New bit starts here
m.use_smooth_shade = True

m = o.modifiers.new('Subsurf', 'SUBSURF' )
m.levels = 2
m.render_levels = 2

## End of new bit
bpy.ops.object.select_all( action = 'DESELECT' )


How can I properly orient custom leaves with a Particle System modifier? In trying to replace Sapling 2D leaves with custom ones, I struggle to orient them properly. Setting the Tangent value to 1 in the particle system doesn't have any effect (bug ?).

The new leaves in this blend are in the right plane and their bases touch the branches. It must remain like that, but the new leaves should grow in the same direction as the old one (at the moment it's random). If you select one of the old leaves's face and choose "normal" for the orientation, you can notice that the x and y axis follow the sides of the old leaf, so the orientation information is in the mesh. But how can I get it to influence the particles?

The base of the new leaf must touch the branches because the tree will be in the foreground.
The orientation must follow the original leaf's one.
The whole foliage must be easily editable and form one mesh (to be able to make instances of it). For that, the current solution is to use a particle instance modifier. The answer can use something else, but it must have the same convenience (fast because having each leaf in one object makes blender slow at 2000+ leaves and easy to modify : modifying one leaf mesh modifies the whole foliage)

You could use Duplifaces. When the sapling addon creates leaves, each rectangular leaf is a single face (hex leaves are two faced).

Create your custom leaf and then make the leaves object a parent of your leaf. In the object properties for leaves turn on Duplifaces.

Now your custom leaf will be duplicated at the location of each original leaf. The object centre of your leaf will be at the centre of the original face and will be rotated to match the rotation of the original single poly leaf. Modifying the original leaf will adjust every leaf to match. The original poly leaves won't render, just your custom leaf.

To speed up the viewport you can add a decimate modifier to the leaves object to reduce the amount of visible leaves.


My sculpting tool is not changing my model but I can transform (grab, snake hook, etc.) brand new to blender here. Recently started following some tutorials to learn how to sculpt and model in blender. After one video, I decided to run off on my own and try to mess around a bit. Ran in to an issue where after a bit of preliminary framing and stretching of my shape, I can't edit it with any of the "add material brushes" (draw, clay strips, inflate, etc.) but I can still "transform" it (snake hook, grab, etc.). I think it has something to do with dyntopo and the circumstances surrounding my usage of it, but I'm not too sure. This has happened twice now and I can't seem to find any option to change within blender nor any similar question online. Any help is appreciated here!
Not sure if the picture I posted is of any use, but here it is.

I ran into a very similar issue. I'm using version 2.91.2 on Windows. Only Grab, Hook and Clay appeared to work for me.
To fix it, I started off by trying everything in this Blender StackExchange answer - Sculpt tool not working - But it didn't help.
Restarting Blender however, did the trick.
I would have answered on question I linked to, which is much easier to find in a Google search, but community rules prevented me from doing so. So happy days if you find this answer, and it works for you.
Also check your brush tablet pressure settings, just in case:

You'll want to switch them off, when troubleshooting issues with sculpt tools.


how do i create spiral vortex with texture or by modeling hi i need help to creating spiral vortex something like this it would be great if you help me

What you could do is create a vertical edge, move it away from its origin, give it a third vertex next to the bottom. Give it a Screw modifier. Apply it. Give it a white material. Select the face loop that was created between bottom and second vertex and give it a second material (black). Give your object a Subdivision Surface modifier.

If you have a more complex texture pattern (example: Image Texture), you could just keep one segment, unwrap it, give it the texture, then duplicate on the Z axis.


Bending a railway line I'm entirely new to Blender and am learning as I go, so I need a bit of step-by-step guidance please.

I'm working on some voxel based graphics, creating them in MagicaVoxel, exporting as .obj files and then importing into Blender. Most of the graphics are easy enough, however I have a railway line which looks like this:

In this case I want to 'bend' the railway line to become a curve, I need to make a number of curved sections in this way. I want to use these as 'tiles' within a game design environment (Unity) and so the rail needs to stay flat to the 'ground' of course and I want the straight and the curves to fit together, like pieces from a model railway would.

I've looked at some online videos and so on and ended up playing with the Simple Deform - Bend modifier, but I can't get to grips with it at all, the results I'm getting are nothing like my expectation!

Can anyone please provide me with some advice to help me understand how to approach this? Any guidance would be gratefully received. Thanks.

First apply an array modifier to the train tracks. With a distance set to one, this will make the rail segments touch, and iterate. Then, add a bezier curve. Select it, press tab to switch into edit mode, and then manipulate it to get a good shape. Apply a curve modifier to the rail, and set the object to be the bezier curve you created. The rail will curve to match your bezier curve. An invaluable resource in blender is the modifier encyclopedia on Andrew Price's website. Great tool for reference. Hope this helps!


Making an Interface in blender game engine I am learning how to make interfaces in the game engine, and I have set up 2 buttons: an exit button and a play button. When one of the buttons receives a left click, it either closes Blender or goes to another screen with a monkey.

The problem is that both buttons are doing the same stuff at the same time. They're switching scenes and closing the program, and the biggest problem is that I don't have to click on the buttons at all. When testing, I can click anywhere in the Blender and it does this.

Here is the .blend file if you need it.

The Mouse Sensor when set to Left Button will send a positive pulse whenever the left mouse button is clicked. To get it to trigger only when over a specific object you have to add another Mouse sensor set to Mouse Over and plug it in to the same And controller as the click sensor. Like in the image below.


Merging an array of paths to be used as a curve deformer I am trying to make an array of paths to create something like a repeating wave pattern. The final pattern will be very long and would be a pain to do manually. What I want to be able to do, is merge the array of paths together, so it can be used as a curve deformer for another array of objects. This picture shows a simplified version of the problem. Currently the array of objects ends at the end of my initial (pre-array modifier) path. I am guessing it is thinking of each path as a separate object, but I need it to behave as if it is just the one. I have tried using the merge option in the array modifier, as well as the weld modifier, but neither have worked. Any ideas how this could be achieved?

Unless the paths are connected (not just joined together in a single object) the array will not extend past the original curve.
Convert the curve to mesh, and then apply the array (making sure the merge option is enabled) that will give you a mesh with the shape of the arrayed curve.
Then convert the mesh back to curve and the other array should work as you want.


Why does my river change itself into a big, flat (with some bumps) square when i use the ocean modifier? I already tried to apply the scale, but unfortunately nothing's changed. How can i fix this problem?

By default, the Ocean modifier is set to generate its own geometry and discard whatever you're applying it on.

To have it use your existing geometry, just Generate to Displace:


Why is blender crashing when trying to render? I am trying to make a room in blender, I finished making the beds that I now want to render so I can see how it looks when its rendered fully...except I can't seem to render it, I just finish my scene, set the samples number and resolution, and press render, it loads I what it need for it to render, but when it arrives at the point where its "updating Meshes" blender crashes without even an error, I sure its not a RAM issue since it didn't fill up the RAM in task manager.

Here are my 2 laptops specs (I tried the second one to see if there was a RAM issue):

First one (my main one)

  Windows 10 1803 32-bit

  2gb RAM

  Intel Core 2 Duo T5870 @2Ghz

  Intel Mobile Chipset Express Series integrated graphics card

Second one

  Windows 7 32-bit

  Intel Core 2 Duo @2.4Ghz

  3gb RAM

  Nvidia card (forgot which one) (512 VRAM)

Im dealing with:

I have 4k textures, its a 1920*1080 image, tile size is 128*128, samples 200

P.S: I still use 2.76 since my computers can't support opengl 2.1

Here is the file if anyone wants to diagnose it: (removed it since problem is solved)

Similar questions are asked regularly in this site, and the answer is mostly the same: the scene's complexity is larger than the resources available on your computer.

Some of the reasons your scene demands so much RAM:

You are using a lot of very large image textures (2x and 3k). Even though you are using jpg compressed images that might not seem like large files, blender needs to access the image as a whole decompressed image. The larger the image, the more RAM used.

Read: Why does Blender use so much memory for large textures?
Some of the subsurf modifiers have a subdivision level of 5 for rendering. For every level of subdivision you are increasing the number of vertices exponentially, so it  is easy to run into a situation where you have a very large number of vertices.

Try to keep the subsurf levels as low as you can by using better topology and using fine detail only in those areas that need a lot of detail.

For more info read:
Blender render crash when using subsurf modifiers.
You have 3 different render layers that you want to render simultaneously. Blender has to cache the information of every layer separately and keep it available for compositing.

A workaround is to render each of the layers separately, save it as an EXR file and combine them later in the compositor or other compositing app.

Read also: How to Render a Complex Scene without it Crashing

As is, your scene needs at least 1gb of ram to render:

2 or 3GB is very little RAM. Most of that is used by the operating system itself, leaving you very little to work with. Microsoft's requirements to run WIndows 10 are: 1 gigabyte (GB) (for the 32-bit version) or 2 GB ( for the 64-bit version)

To deal with scenes that are larger than your available computing power consider using a render farm or try to get access to more powerful computers.

A (slow) alternative is to try to change the settings of your operating system to use more virtual memory. But that you will have to research yourself as it is out of the scope of this site.


Part of my object is black I don't know how I did this. Can someone explain. Is this lighting? shading? why the extreme black and how do I fix this? Thank you. Cheers!

Your Normals are probably flipped on this object: Select this object, enter in Edit mode, select all those black faces, hit ctrl N, it should fix it


Change color of fresnel node I want to have a white outline and not a black one like the fresnel node makes

I think you are confused on how the mix shader works.

It has two inputs for shaders and one for the factor of the mix.

If one of the shader inputs is not connected to anything, you are using the fact to mix to a non-shader (or just black).


Broaden part of a sphere I like to make a shape that is egg like, meaning broadening the lower part of a sphere but keep the upper part the same (and not narrow it like an egg).
I know you can scale a UV sphere on a certain axis, but that narrows/broadens it all together.
Is there a way to scale only a part of the sphere and keep it rather smooth?

This is my first question here so I hope I am coherent enough.

In edit mode, you can select the vertices that you want to scale the most (those that will be the widest part) then turn on proportional editing. Press S to scale, and use the mouse wheel to control the radius of influence.


Change origin of collections I am trying to animate a fbx imported file originally made in solidworks, since it was made in solidworks all the parts are in different layers. In order to change the rotation pivot I need to change the origin however nothing happends when I try going the object/set origin route.

Is there a way to change the origin of collections or merge a collection to a single object so I can change the origin?

There are serveral hundreds of subcollections so I cannot select them individually.

The only way I think you can solve that is by pressing alt-p to clear parent and keep transformation then set the origin to geometry, after that you are free to delete the useless empty and start animating.


when baking normals, do I have to set shading to smooth or flat for the low mesh? When I set the shading for the low-poly to flat, I get the sharp edges baked into the normal map which I don't want. When I set the shading for the low-poly to smooth, the smooth-shading gets baked into the normal map, which I also don't want.

How can I simply bake my high-poly details onto the low-poly
mesh?
Why does Blender even change baking behavior when changing the shading mode of the low-poly mesh? As far as my understanding goes, this should have no effect - the goal is to bring my high-poly details to low poly. I do not care either about sharp edges of the low poly or the ugly artefacts of the smooth shading. Is there a purpose behind such behavior?

This is when baking with smooth shading for the low-poly:

The marked area should be a completely flat area, yet the smooth shading artefacts also get into the normal map.
And this is when baking with flat shading for the low-poly:

This looks better - but, alas, sharp edges of the low-poly cylinder end up in the normal map as well!

A tangent space normal map is a bake of normals relative to the low poly's normals.  Whenever you make a tangent space normal map, it is going to take your existing normals, whether they're flat shaded or smooth shaded (or custom split normals, for that matter), and bake them into your normal map.
So I think you just have a bit of a misunderstanding of what a tangent space normal map is.  You shouldn't be looking at your baked image to judge a normal map-- it can't be judged on the basis of the image alone.  You should be judging it on the mesh for which it was built.
Now, it should be said, there is someplace where it's important whether your low poly is smooth shaded or flat shaded or something else.  That's because whenever Blender bakes anything, it looks in the direction of the baking normals to figure out what to bake.  So, for example, if you bevel a cube, and then bake to a flat-shaded cube, you'll find that some bake samples never actually hit the high poly.  Unless you know really well what you're doing, you generally want a smooth-shaded low poly that completely encloses your high poly.
It's not very clear exactly why you want your normal map to somehow be independent of your low poly's normals.  I think there's probably some misunderstanding of what a normal map is, or what the colors mean.  But if you're really sure that you don't want your normal map to depend on your low poly's normals, you might consider baking an object-space normal map instead.  Object space normal maps are stored relative to object space, rather than relative to the sample's normal (which turns into the Z axis for the tangent space.)  However, object space normal maps will still be affected by your normals in that the low poly normals will still determine which way the rays shoot from the low poly (or cage) to hit the high poly.  Object space normal maps are not any good for deforming geometry, which is why tangent space normal maps are seen more frequently.


How do I copy one side of a box and paste it on the rest of the sides? As you can see from the picture below, I have a box with a plating on one side. How do I copy/paste it so that I can get it placed precisely on the rest of the sides?

To "copy" the detailed side to all four sides, I use a array modifier, and an empty.

Start by adding an empty at the same location as your cube. Rotate the empty 90° along the Z axis.
Edit your cube to look like this, or without the top and bottom triangle.

Add a array modifier. Set the Count to 4, uncheck the Relative Offset and use the Empty as the Object Offset.

If you only want the detail on the opposite side

Add a loop cut down the middle (perpendicular to the X axis).
Delete the half of the cube that you have not yet modeled.
Add a mirror modifier to the object.


Remove the smooth animation in Blender Is there a way to disable smooth transition on key-frame animation in Blender?

Lets say I have a character modeled in Blender and now wish to animate it.
I want this character to have really bizarre spazz-like animation that doesn't seem realistic.

So I'd like this characters arm to 'teleport' between frames. From up to down and so on. Right now, the key-frame system forces the hand to transport visibly to the location.

This also would open doors for animated textures as changing image on object using AnimAll add-on.

You may try to set the interpolation type of the curves to Constant.

If you're looking for a manequin, bizzare looking movement try the Bounce effect.

Here's this dynamic effect applied to the head and a right hand of the model.

I also encourage you to test some other available types of interpolations, for the different (sometimes really amazing) movement types. Maybe one of them'll fit your needs.


Blender interface appears gray? I'm not sure what's going on, but today in the morning when I opened blender it had turned gray from black.

I don't think it's affecting any type of performance, but it is not feeling right while working, is there anything I can do to revert this change?

I'm using Blender 2.50

Blender is gray by default:

So it sounds like the theme you were using was somehow reverted.

There is a black theme bundled with blender called Back to Black. If you select it in File menu > User preferences (or CtrlAltU) > Themes > Presets, then blender looks like this:

To set this as your default theme, click Saver user settings at the bottom of the user preferences:


Object invisible during render (Blender v2.81) So, I'm new to Blender and I'm following a tutorial. I'm making a doughnut and everything looks fine until I decide to see how it looks when I render it. I set the render engine to Cycles and press F12. However, when it finished, I see that all the icing is gone. The rest of the doughnut is there, all the sprinkles are still there, but the icing is nowhere to be seen. I have no clue what's wrong, all objects are enabled to be viewed in render, this is all in one layer, and I can't seem to find anything else like this.

I'm using Blender version 2.81.16 installed on Steam, an AMD CPU and GPU, and Windows 10. If you need anything else, you can just ask me.

If you need to look at the .blend file, here's a Google Drive link to it, you can download it there: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vhXdp79OQ2n_YzPkMRLonwRkiWrF_-tD

I'll put several screenshots here:

I hope someone can fix this, I have no clue what's causing it. Thanks!

Select your icing then go to Particle Settings and in the Render foldout, check "Show Emitter"


FPS causes logic malfunction? This might seem confusing, but I have an issue relating with my FPS affecting my logic bricks. When I play on wireframe, everything works smoothly as I am capped at 60 fps with no lag. When I play in textured, I am stuck around 20 fps and some logic simply doesn't work. I know I'll receive replies asking for whats going on with my logic and what is my logic anyways. It is not one thing, it is rather many. Any object that has logic could potentially work incorrectly or malfunction. It doesn't seem that there is any way around this. How can I fix this issue? Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated, thanks!

This is possibly related to the issue of Delta Time issues. I am not familiar with Blender as a game-engine, but this is a common issue in game programming.

For those not familiar with the issue: The amount of movement the engine needs to make between frames depends not only on the mathematical/physics calculations, but needs to consider the time (in real life) it takes between two frames, ans use it as factor in any transformation (translation, rotation, scaling) to mitigate lags. This factor is known commonly as deltaTime.

It seems like blender game-engine doesn't have a built-in deltaTime factor you can use, but this post seems to suggest you could easily create it.

Blender seems to be even more peculiar on the issue, by trying to use a fixed frame-rate of 60fps to calculate physics, and that decision is most likely affecting you. I suggest you read this post by SolarLune and try out his and MrPutuLips's solutions.


Unwanted deformation by changing the pose of armature I have a mesh (an operation table), like a normal operation table, just the top part(cushion part) can be bent and because of that, I put an armature inside the mesh.
What I want to have at the end is that the top part of the table can be bent, but the bottom part, the cantilever, shouldn't be deformed when I rotate the bone of the top part (x-axis top when you see it at the pic). The problem is that when I rotate the top part, the bottom part of the mesh is actually moving along the deformation of the top part of the mesh. How can I set the armature so that the bottom part isn't deformed along?

Blend file

This is the bone (It won't show even with the X-Ray mode)

The bottom part (the reverse T part of the table shouldn't be deformed - Just stay like it is).
  How should I put the weight or edit the armature? I haven't got the hang of weight of the armature.

Okay, so we have no idea what you did to this to get it this whacked out, but first of all, I went to the object menu, and cleared the armature from the table's parent.

Notice that the table flies across the entire world after doing this.

IN OBJECT MODE with no weight paints, or anything else going on, get the table and the armature in generally the same spot as each other using G (translate).

Next, select the table, and then the armature. Hit Ctrl+P > with automatic weights. This fixes most of the problems.

You may need to do some veeery minor weight painting, but don't go overboard 'cause it's real easy to mess up with the weight paint.


luxrender gpu render farm Is it possible to set up a gpu rendering farm? I have a cpu render farm but I would like to make a faster gpu render farm. The gpus I have are a geforce 8400m and a geforce gt 730 my is is ubuntu 14.04. And My internet is definitely fast enough to handle this.

You can try to set it up via the network renderer addon. But if that's no option for you you could try different things.
if you use windows
You can control Blender via the command-shell. That means that you can do it with a short batch file as well. You will need 3 batch files for that:
setup-client
this file is optional but it makes things a lot easier. It asks for the parameters like start frame, end frame etc. .write it on the master-computer.
manager
the manager is a short program that distributes single frames to the seperate render clients and uploads the file together with the parameters to an ftp-server (or a public drive). this program normally runs on the master computer as well.
render client
This program starts blender with the parameters submitted by the manager in the GPU rendering mode. An advanced feature would be to make it restart outomaticly if Blender crashes during rendering.
if you use Mac, Linux or Windows
Create an custom addon for Blender that replaces the batch files.


Setting Voxel Coordinates I've been looking online for a long time, searching for documentation on the subject of Blender Voxel Data. So far, I know that Blender uses many file types, including the .bvox file type. For the .bvox file type, I have found that it uses ASCII characters to load in density values, starting with the dimensions. For example, a data set with dimensions 64,64,64 would save into the .bvox file as:

@@@

However, only the density values are saved. The data set I have is formatted as follows, where dd is a density value:

xx yy zz dd
xx yy zz dd

My python code strips each line and takes only the density values and uses pythons pack struct to pack the values into a .bvox file. This works fine, but I am wondering how Blender knows where to put the coordinates of the densities? Each density value has to be at a specific point, and how does Blender know where that point is? And also, is it possible to specify my own coordinates for each value?

In the Blender wiki article it says

  The voxels are stored in a flat z/y/x grid of floats.

That means that the coordinates of every density is defined by its position in the file. I guess that your original data set is sorted that way too. For example:

xx yy zz dd
-----------
12 20 00 dd
12 20 01 dd
12 20 02 dd
...
12 21 00 dd
12 21 01 dd
...

In this case the coordinates are redundant because they can be easily deduced from the position in the list. Thus the coordinates can be omitted.

Also the file format doesn't use ASCII characters. It is a binary file and simply stores numbers. Every number can be interpreted as an ASCII character. The character for 64 is @. But in this case this is irrelevant.


Attach flat mesh (or curve) to another mesh Ok, this may be a total noob style question, but all the solutions I've found don't seem to cover this particular type of situation...

I'm creating a number of different types of glass bottles for a graphic design class, some curved, some with flat faces, etc.. (if it makes a difference, I'm using cycles). I have a logo that I created in illustrator (and exported as an svg and png) that I want to attach to the face of the bottles so I can experiment with how it would look both extruded out and cut into the already solidified surface.

So, my question is, how do I take the logo (in any format), and place it (with some level of precision) on the surface of the bottle, following the curve or angle of the face/area I'm placing it, to allow me to experiment with cutting it in (bool or extrude inwards) or pulling it out (again, extrude or bool) to create variations on the appearance. I don't just want to leave it flat (i.e. UV mapping), and don't want to have to overly subsurface to use as a bump map (i would also like to be able to bevel the edges on some variations or make other modifications). Finally, I would like to do it after I apply the solidify to the bottle mesh so that it doesn't affect the inside face of the bottle because I intend to 'fill' them with another mesh to simulate liquid (like the blender guru beer glass tutorial).

Happy to provide images to clarify what I mean if necessary, as well as further explanation of my idea if not totally clear. I just feel like I'm missing something easy here and overcomplicating the process...

You could use a displacement modifier with the image texture.

Some examples of this are: Extrude the outside of a cylinder using a grayscale image, Creating a large landscape with accurately varied elevations and Landscape topography from grayscale image,

Given that you want to avoid changing the inside shape of the bottle, this might be useful, because it describes how only one side of the solid can be influenced: How to make a perfectly flat bottom for 3D-printing topographic relief?


How to hide the object emitting particles in a render in Blender 2.80? I have a surface with particles. But I don't want to see the original object in the render. How to fix it?

Transparency, other collection / scene doesn't work.

There are two settings Show emitter:

in the Render section works only for the final render
in the Viewport Display section for the current view port

However when you un-check the Show emitter in the Viewport Display section both emitter and particles may disappear. You need to re-select Dispaly As as Rendered and then only the particles will show.

To hide the original object or collection used for particle instances just hide them in Scene collection window.


Python Panel Render 1 of 4 scenes? How do I target a specific scene to render?

I note from the nodes button that the path is as follows:

bpy.ops.render.render(layer="RenderLayer", scene="Van")

Can anyone tell me how I would apply this to a button?

This question,in relation to setting operator properties in a draw method,  is a duplicate, but can never find it.

Here is a sample draw method that adds a button to render the layer "RenderLayer" of all scenes in blend.

def draw(self, context):
    layout = self.layout
    for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
        op = layout.operator("render.render", text=scene.name)
        op.layer = "RenderLayer"
        op.scene = scene.name


Right Click and Hit the Tab Button I'm new to blender. I'm trying to right click on the image to change the text but no cursor is showing to allow me to backspace.I have watched YouTube videos and the make it look simple. They all say right click and hit the tab.
 What and where is tab?
How do I make the cursor appear?

Right-clicking selects the object you want to edit (in this case, it would be your text), and the "tab" button on your keyboard (above caps lock) allows you to enter into Edit Mode. Alternatively, you could right-click on your text and then enter Edit Mode via the menu at the bottom of your screen where it says "Object Mode".

Check out this link and see if it helps: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/modeling/texts/editing.html


alpha over node is adding to the foreground artifact that is not in the background i'm using blender 2.8 beta and i'm trying to conduct a test in which i make a lightsaber without volume for the haze so that the rendition isn't to long, so i used 2 view layers (used to be called render layers) one of the blade and one of everything else so that in the compositor i can change the blade color, and then blur it, and then use a alpha over node to use it for the background of the other view layer. yet it adds a green to the edge of the handle.]2

i'm trying to get rid of the green artifact around the handle of the lightsaber. it is more clear with colors other then white around it but alpha is replaced with white on this site. on the compositer screenshot i gave shows more clearly the problem

I'm not really sure what you're trying to do, sorry.  This might help, might not: https://uvassociates.in/sites/default/files/resize/remote/c0631e46351ca76e7380488b072beb7f-400x312.png

It makes a mesh invisible and just renders the light from it.  It's an older version of Blender, so may not work.  GL


Prevent extruded/poked vertices from inheriting vertex group they were extruded/poked from? Subject says it all.

Create icosphere
Assign all verts to vertex group.
Poke all faces.
I now want to select SOLELY the verts that were part of the pre-poked icosphere, and NOT select the newly poked verts.

It seems impossible. When I select my original vertex group, the poked verts are included even though I don't want them to be, and didn't manually assign them to the vertex group. Same problem happens with extrusion or applying subdivision surface.

Is there a secret "new verts don't inherit vertex group" setting I'm not aware of?

After 'poking' select one of the new vertices - ShiftG and choose Amount of Adjacent Faces then CtrlI to invert selection. Create new vertex group if necessary.

Should probably add that the behavior is the same as parenting - meaning the children inherit the vertex group of their parents...


A part of model broken whilst posing Is there any way I could fix this issue easily? I discovered a part of my model was broken whilst I've been posing it. I reset the pose to default and fixed the object, but it still goes a bit deformed once it's back in its pose.

Improvement:

First, the mesh of your belt is not closed, you should delete some vertices and use W > LoopTools > Bridge. Also, it's not parented to the good bones. You should join it to the rest of the body ctrlJ, select your belt in Edit mode, remove from any group in the Properties panel > Data > Vertex Groups and Remove From All Groups function, then in Weight Paint you assign it to the bones that you want i.e. same bones as this part of the body) with the Limit Selection to Visible option disabled (on the horizontal menu bar) so that it paint the vertices you can't see.


Sort a list of objects by their distance from a point I have a list of objects like this [bpy.data.objects["Text.002], bpy.data.objects["Text.003], bpy.data.objects["Text.005], bpy.data.objects["Text.007]]
how can I sort them by their distance from a point like for example p =(0, 0, 0)?

I've tried to calculate the distance from two points in the 3d space using the origin and the point coordinates, but then how can I sort the objects?

There are a number of ways to sort lists in python. Here is one using lambda.

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector
# some list of objects (taken from q)
objects = [bpy.data.objects["Text.002"],
           bpy.data.objects["Text.003"],
           bpy.data.objects["Text.005"],
           bpy.data.objects["Text.007"]]
# sort by location from (0, 0, 0)
objects.sort(key=lambda o: o.location.length)
# sort by visual location from (0, 0, 0)
# eg objects moved by constraint / parenting etc.
objects.sort(key=lambda o:
             o.matrix_world.to_translation().length)

v = Vector((1, 2, 3))
# sort by distance from v
objects.sort(key=lambda o:
             (o.matrix_world.to_translation() - v).length)


How to define dependent geometries (e.g. for a male-female connector design) Is there a way to define dependent geometries? For instance while designing a male-female components of a connector I want that if I change something in the male component - the female component will adopt itself automatically to the change (and vice versa).

The plan is to use the Bool tool addon that is Default in blender and can be activated in Edit > Preferences > Addons ,then create a big cube

this will act as a female port holder , where we will create our female port
Now you can add another small cube to be used as our male adapter

Then select the small cube > then the big cube(please follow the order) and click  N
to open properties tab , go to Edit tab and expand Bool Tool to find the brushes.

now Choose the slice option .You can notice that the part of smaller cube intersecting with the mesh has sliced it to create a new block , now you can change the geometry of the original small cube to change the slicing in both big and sliced cube

This method is responsive and geometry changes in real time
for legos this can be done with a boolean brush
Model a Lego

Make sure that the bottom of the lego is a little bigger and the top a little smaller then duplicate the lego and put it a little above the first lego.

Run a boolean brush , like this (Remember select the bottom lego first )-


Problems with A.N.T. landscape. doesnt edit when adding the landscape mesh it shows an error (shown in image) and doesn't let me edit the landscape I added with the side menu. I already reinstalled blender and it didn't work, any suggestions?

What version are you using? Did you add the landscape through Add -> Mesh -> Landscape? Remember that as of blender 2.79, you don't have to install it using a separate file, blender already has it in its optional addons with the compatible version.

For that you can go to user preferences -> add-ons and search for A.N.T and activate it like this:

Ps. I had some trouble when i was first starting out and downloaded the addon from a previous version, causing compatibility problems.

As described here you could  try:

1 -close blender

2 - rename C:\Users\yournamehere\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79
  to
   C:\Users\yournamehere\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79.bak

start blender, should be good as new now.

Remember to always download from the official blender site, blender.org


Will new versions of Blender support my models from 2013 version? I must use old (2013) version of blender for a bit of time.
I'm not doing so complex work, just simple Modeling & Unwrapping.
So i hope, if i will want to open my blender files in newer version, everything will be okay, right?

It may be just a stretch to assume that "everything" will be okay, but Blender has long had backwards compatibility as part of its overall design philosophy, so that in almost all cases, you can load old blender content in newer versions, even retaining the UI of the older version.


What is this 'view only the selected area' mode I am in, in the 3D viewport and how do I out of it? I've managed to enter this 'view only selected area' thing in the viewport and I have no idea how to get out of it.

This looks like clipping region.
Enable/disable it through View > View Regions > Clipping Region.
Shortcut: Alt+B


Blender 2.8 - Panning in the viewport Does anyone know the shortcuts to pan a scene horizontally or vertically in the viewport?

In 2.7, holding Shift or Ctrl and scrolling the middle mouse button would let me pan horizontally or vertically, I can't seem to do that anymore in 2.8.

I don't know why it's not set up by default but you can change the "pan view direction" in: Preferences > Input > Keymap > 3d view > 3d view global and it will work


Printing a game model that looks rendered I am a very new user of blender and game modeling as a whole, so forgive me if don't use the correct terminology. I'll try to explain this as best I can. I'm trying to figure out how to 3D-print a game model without it looking polygonal and with the smoothing that you see in the game engine. Here's an example of Aron from Pokemon Sun;

In-game, the model looks smooth and has smooth shading.

But when imported into blender, the model is very polygonal;

So here's the question; how can I render the model or alter the polygonal base model so that it can be exported to stl like a smooth game render without recreating the model entirely? Are there any tutorials you know of that could help? I have looked at some tutorials for subdividing and the mesh and smoothing vertexes, but that basically gives me rounded polygons rather than a more smoothed surface.

Thanks in advance!

This looks like a perfect time to use a Subdivision Surface, which is a modifier that adds additional polygons for each polygon in your base mesh.  The default implementation of this also smooths them out, which should produce the result you're looking for.

You can then apply the modifier and turn it into real geometry, and then send that geometry to the 3d printer.

The easiest way to apply a subdivision surface is select the object and press ctrl-2, which (at least in the default keymap) is the shortcut for apply a subdivision surface modifier with a 2x resolution, effectively subdivide-smoothing the mesh twice over.  Once it's on the modifier stack, you can adjust the number of subdivisions until it looks how you want.

It might make any creased areas of the mesh overly smooth though - I can't tell from the original image how sharp it's intended to look, but there are ways around that problem too - investigate the bevel modifier with the limit method set to angle, and experiment with the angle value.  30 or 60 degrees usually looks good and preserves some but not all creases.  Make sure to put the bevel above and thus before the subdivision modifier, or it won't appear to do anything.

Here's a couple of screenshots with a default suzanne, then a subdivision surface suzanne, and then a bevel at 60 degreees + subdivision suzanne:

 - base suzanne mesh.

 - with the subdisivion modifier

 - also with the bevel at 60 degrees or higher.  Note the eyebrow creases.


How to change the material of 1 or more faces of a object I would like to change the material of two faces of a cube to be glass as opposed to changing the entire cube to be made from glass. Is this possible to achieve or does each object have to be wholly comprised of 1 material?

Add all the materials you want for the object to the materials list. Then, in edit mode, select the faces you want for a specific material. With the faces selected, click on the material you want to use and then click “assign”.


Change shortcut for Frame Selected In 3D view editor (and most of the others) there is a function Frame Selected that brings selected in center of view. By default its shortcut Numpad + . , since I stacked at home with keyboard without numpad – How can I reassign shortcut to something else?

Note: When I tried it from User Prefferences > Keymap > Search by name Frame Selected the only one listed is function for Node editor that adds selected Nodes into a Frame )it has nothing to do with the view function).

I am using portable 2.82a on Windows. After I tried to search it, turns out there is inconsistency with the text. In the Keymap, I can't find "frame selected", and instead it is actually "View Selected".


How to cut sphere with sphere? Topology problem Basically it is a letter N. Tried many ways with no luck or lack...of knowledge.. :)  trying to make my own logo to 3d. Using boolean and rotating spheres, but topology is big problem.

Any suggestions?

It's possible to avoid much work here with simple inset. It won't provide great topology straight away, it will add loopcut all over the corners where sharpening is needed in order to add Subsurf.

When you have a letter just after the Boolean chances are it looks something like tris, lack of continous loops etc. Select the part with indentations (the one you'd like to sharpen out):

Invert the selection (most likely face selection will be the most comfortable). It's also possible to use Outset option by pressing O while Inset is active; then insetting will happen outwards and this step should be skipped:

Then inset with I. There will be some areas where inset will create self-intersecting geometry, some cleaning work will be needed. However it might not be necessary to do it for all the letter (although it all depends on the final result as always):


Best way to add color to your 3D model? I have created a rigged 3D model, and it starts with nothing but white. I wonder how to color the model.

I did try painting it directly in Blender and did not like the results. There were spots I couldn't get to make my model blink.

I also tried unwrapping the mesh, painting it in an external program, and "wrapping" the new painted texture around it. The results were much better.

Am I on the right track? What can I do to improve the resulting model? What other options do I have? I want the model to be 100% done, to be used in an external game engine, so that I can start with the programming.

From your supplemental comment, you seem to be creating game content for the Unity game engine, which will limit the set of possible answers, but the answer will still depend upon what kind of content you are making. Inorganic content--vehicles, metal objects, and painted surfaces, may be better colored by defining the color properties of the material. Organic content--living things (even imaginary ones)--and complex items like highly detailed structures may be best done with an image texture mapped to the surface of the model using UV unwrapping.

If you've got some modeling experience, I'd suggest Ben Simonds' book, Blender Master Class, where he discusses a wide range of coloring techniques for various kinds of elements, organic, and inorganic.

ns


In many models, many objects have vanished and just appear as dots. Why? My GPU is an Intel HD Graphics 530 - driver: i915 v: kernel.
on Linux Cinnamon.
A bunch of my models suddenly look very different in Blender. Some objects look unchanged, but most of the objects in any given model only show up as an orange dot at the object's center. In these cases the object itself is invisible, and yes they are all marked as visible and renderable.
Some models have dozens of objects and almost all of them have this useless behaviour. Closing and reopening Blender did not help. All the objects are meshes of simple shapes, combined with boolean operators (just about always Difference.)
I assumed I'd somehow corrupted Blender, so I deleted it and installed 2.91 (Linux). I opened models and the problem still exists. I can only assume there's some strange setting that's sticky across installations and models, but I'm still moderately new at Blender so I'm only guessing.
I have a lot of complicated models at this point that I do not want to lose. I don't want to try editing them (not that I could see what I was doing) for feat of doing more damage. Can someone walk me through fixing this?
This should look something like a vacuum tube (and used to):
Blend file: Something like a vaccuum tube

I rebooted the system, and perhaps related, switched from Cinnamon's software rendering to hardware rendering in the reboot (but it's been set to software forever). The problem went away.


My blender is so laggy that its unusable, any suggestions So, two days ago I shut down my computer for a few hours. When I turned it back on and opened Blender, it was extremely slow and still is. (I've tested Unreal Engine and it runs smoothly). All the solutions I found involve Nvidia processors but I use Intel and I've had no luck finding issues.

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-8130
Laptop: LENOVO
OS: Windows 10

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I found the answer. Might be a bit confusing.

So when I turned my computer back on it said my driver was not compatible, so I looked online. I got a file called "opengl32.dll" which let me open blender, thats when I found the lag.

I recently updated my graphic drivers and the lag was still happening, so I removed the "opengl32.dll".

So pretty much, I had to update my graphics driver and not add in that file. Thank you for the answers though :)


Get modifier keys to show in Screencast when they are pressed by themselves Is there a way to get keys like SHIFT and CTRL to show in Screencast when they are pressed by themselves? This would be very beneficial for the viewer in cases like where one first selects one object, then holds down SHIFT and then selects another object. In this case, the SHIFT held by itself doesn't get displayed, so the viewer is left not knowing exactly what was done.

There is no setting which would allow displaying modifier keys alone. I looked into the source and the modifier keys are disabled in line 550 of the screencast addon:

ignore_keys = ['LEFT_SHIFT', 'RIGHT_SHIFT', 'LEFT_ALT',
         'RIGHT_ALT', 'LEFT_CTRL', 'RIGHT_CTRL', 'TIMER',
         'MOUSEMOVE', 'INBETWEEN_MOUSEMOVE']

You could right click on the screencast control to open the python source in the text editor and remove the keys want. Click register in the text editor's header and run the script. (Of course you could also save the modified version in into the blender installation folder).


How do I completely remove an image from my .blend file? I'm creating a model for a 3D game that will eventually be exported using a custom Python script. This model makes heavy use of UV textures.

However, the project now references a bunch of images that are not used by any objects in the project. Example:

I don't want the first two, or the red_bubble.png image. However, I have no idea how to remove them from the project. Selecting one of them reveals that there are "2 users of the data" although I am not using it anywhere.

How can I get rid of these excess images?

If you have an image (or other piece of data, such as a material) you can force remove all users by Shift clicking on the X next to it's name. This will "mark" the data for removal upon closing the file.

After you force remove the data, you'll need to reopen the file in order for the data to be removed. You can do this quickly by saving the file with CtrlS and then opening it with CtrlShiftO and selecting the file.


my camera won't track my ball i have a scene (scenefile link below) in which a ball (soft body) rolls down the stairs.
the camera is moving on a circle around the scene (which works) and i hoped that i could track the ball with the track to modifier, but the camera does not show the ball when it is moving.
Can somebody help me?
blend file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1u6g2w854imemn9/camera_track_to.png?dl=0

In a softbody simulation the mesh moves away from the origin (while the origin stays in the same place). And the Track To constraint tracks the origin.
But you can alternatively also track a vertex group.
Select the ball object, go into Edit Mode > Vertex Select. Select a central vertex (or simply all of them). Go to Properties > Object Data Properties > Vertex Groups and click Add Vertex Group (the little plus icon) and click Assign. Finaly for Vertex Group: in the Track To constraint select the newly made group. The camera should now track the group, and subsequently the ball.


Make Video Sequence Editor (VSE) playback in real time? How do I make the Video Sequence Editor (VSE) playback in real time?
I have some 4K video clips that I want to edit, however, I'm unable to do so because when I hit play I get about 2 FPS playback (even without any effects/Modifiers applied) instead of the video clips/timelines 25 FPS.
I have a pretty powerful computer, and these clips have no problem playing back in, for example, Premiere. I know Blender's VSE isn't the best or most powerful, but there's gotta be a way to playback the video and audio clips you edit in real time?

If you have a very powerful computer you might want to try using a different app. Blender vse is a very outdated tool that doesn't really use all of the potential of your hardware. No gpu acceleration, limited multithreading. The only solution for blender is working with proxies at a lower res. If premiere works fine for you, keep using premiere. Blender is a wonderful 3D creation app, but the video editing tools have not advanced to the needs of today's users.


Extrude vertices along edges I've been looking for answer on this site, but didn't find a solution, or dumb enough not to apply for my situation.
I need to extrude vertices along already created edges? Is there any way to do that?

Three different ways to do this currently. Options #1 and #2 only allow to specify distance factors relative to edge length. Option #3 should allow absolute units.

Use vertex slide: Press G,G twice to activate Vertex Slide, while the cursor is hovering the edge with the desired direction. Afterwards press C to deactivate clamping and allow extending beyond current position.

Scale in relation to the other vertex: Place you 3D cursor at the other end of the edge by snapping it to the vertex with Shift+S > Cursor to Selected. Change the Transform Pivot to the 3D Cursor and then scale the opposing vertex with S.

Use a custom transform Orientation: Select the edge with the desired direction. In the 3D View Properties Area from Transform orientations chango to local and press + to add a new one. Select it from the list (should be named Edgeby default), then select your vertex and move it by using G then tapping twice the desired axis to move in local coordinates, in this case Y,Y.


Is there any way to use instances using Array modifier? i'm duplicating an object with Array but the object itself has a lot of geometry, so my computer slows down a lot, is there any solution to this, like adding more ''copies'' as instances?

Thanks in regard.

Try using a Simplify option. Check the Simplify box in Scene header and reduce the subdivisions to 2, 1 or 0. It may help you.


How do you undisable in viewport all object in a collection? I have a complex scene I moved from 2.79 to 2.81. What makes it complex is that it has lots of objects as childs of other objects. Think complex folder tree. Basically hundred folders and each have their own sub folder structure. For whatever reason some objects are randomly disabled in viewport and as such hidden from view and I want to undisable them. Make everything visible. But doing them all individually is just too much work and would be extremely slow.

Is there a script or some hack or hidden blender feature which allows me to set all objects in one collection visible in viewport? Or even all objects visible in all of the blend file? Going back to 2.79 and re-importing with 2.81 compatible viewport settings is too late at this point.

The title claims this question is subjective but I think this is very much a question which has a solution that works and is not about opinion about something. If I wanted to make an opinion I'd say the migration of assets from 2.7x to 2.8x needs more work.

Pressing H will hide the selected objects from viewport, Alt+H will unhide all objects in viewport.

You can also right-click the collection in the Outliner, and select Visibility > Show All Inside


How can I store lists & dictionaries in an object? In blender, you can store strings, integers, floats, timers, and boolean operators in an object by creating a property in its logic. However, you cannot store lists and dictionaries. I am creating a class, and I can't store a dictionary or a list as you cannot create this in an object's properties. The only method I can seem to think of is the following:

Have a module with the properties you want to save. For this example, I will refer to this module as class_properties.py.
When creating the class, refer to class_properties.py for properties.
In the module that has the class, use import imp and imp.reload(class_properties) in order to always reload the module and get the newest values.

Sure, this may work, but it's messy and nonsensical. With all my properties in my class, I can refer to the game object's properties. For example, I can do the following:

class Player(object):

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

        self.health = self.game_object["health"]

But if I have a dictionary, I cannot do the following:

class Player(object):

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

        self.health = self.game_object["health"]
        self.dictionary = dictionary{}

Why can't I do this? Well, the reason I used self.health = self.game_object["health"] is so I can update the player's game object's property health and have the class always have the updated value. If I use self.dictionary = dictionary{}, I would not be able to change dictionary according to the current scenario as self.dictionary would always be dictionary{} without anything in it as it always gets reset, for the __init__ function will always be called.

In other words, I need to have a dictionary in a game object's properties. I can store, for example, integers, in a game object's properties, so integers will always be stored. However, I cannot store a dictionary, so the class will never have  the correct dictionary as it always gets reset in the __init__ function.

How can I store a dictionary & a list in a game object the same way I would store, for example, an integer? Thanks.

You can store anything in a game property from python. You simply assign it:

obj['inventory'] = {'sword':3, 'armour':5}

It doesn't have to be present in the logic brick window.

Also, you can (and probably should) store the instance of your class rather than regenerate it each frame. You can do this in a number of ways including:

Using module mode and a global variable
Saving it in a game property
Saving it to bge.logic.globalDict

That way, __init__() isn't called every frame

The other thing you can do is you can mutate the game object. The API includes this example:

import bge

class CustomGameObject(bge.types.KX_GameObject):
    RATE = 0.05

    def __init__(self, old_owner):
        # "old_owner" can just be ignored. At this point, "self" is
        # already the object in the scene, and "old_owner" has been
        # destroyed.

        # New attributes can be defined - but we could also use a game
        # property, like "self['rate']".
        self.rate = CustomGameObject.RATE

    def update(self):
        self.worldPosition.z += self.rate

        # switch direction
        if self.worldPosition.z > 1.0:
            self.rate = -CustomGameObject.RATE
        elif self.worldPosition.z < 0.0:
            self.rate = CustomGameObject.RATE

# Called first
def mutate(cont):
    old_object = cont.owner
    mutated_object = CustomGameObject(cont.owner)

    # After calling the constructor above, references to the old object
    # should not be used.
    assert(old_object is not mutated_object)
    assert(old_object.invalid)
    assert(mutated_object is cont.owner)

# Called later - note we are now working with the mutated object.
def update(cont):
    cont.owner.update()

Which gives the game object the function 'update'


Animated tentacle collision / Rigid body not working I've created some IK rigged tentacles animated with noise modifiers :
(.blend file at the bottom)

I'd like to create some animated tentacles that uses the rigid body system so they don't go through each other, but instead collides with each other.

As you can see, i've set the tentacle geometry to Rigid Body with Active / Dynamic / Animated set for each of them.
Spheres are Rigid bodies / Active / Dynamic.

I have two problems :

-My spheres collides ok with one of the tentacles but the collision isn't really precise (there are some great gaps between the sphere and the tentacle). They don't seem to collide with the second tentacle.

-Tentacles don't collide with each other.

Since you're animating them, they don't respond to physics, as earlier mentioned by Mutant Bob.

If you're looking for live animations, separate the tentacles so they can collide with each other. But if you use predetermined animations, this can glitch out on you.

To prevent each tentacle to collide with itself, you have to tweak the settings a bit to increase stiffness and apply self colliding.


I want to unite every piece of this into a connected unified mesh without anything to clean up afterwards tried bool-union clumps with ctrl J,each one and nothing seems to give me that simple 1 mesh. is there a way to convert this without booling each of the scales?, the bumps are going deep into the center egg like shape.

also tried every mesh->cleanup option and they all dont give me what i want. i just want all these little bumps and center mesh to forget they have anything inside and become a shell of their super imposed shells.

thank you for your time reading this.

A possible way is using the Shrinkwrap Modifier, though it might not affect the look, it will most likely radically change your mesh geometry.

First we have an object consisting of multiple meshes:

Then we make a high resolution (in terms of vertices) sphere around it:

Then we put a Shrinkwrap Modifier on it. Choose the initial object as your target. Choose "Project" as the Mode. And check the box "Negative". Lastly click the Apply button.

I have no idea which is which.

Seems the icosphere was more then enough high rez. You might want to tone it down a little depending on the level of detail of the initial mesh.


Weird Edges in Blender 2.8 Eevee Hey all, does anyone know why this is occurring and what I can do to fix it?

Thanks in advance

I could fix it with different light resources, sun instead of spot, larger radius.
Problem:

Solution:


Switching or selecting the Object associated with ObData (Mesh) Hopefully someone can help.
I want to use the Outliner to help select a number of Objects based on the ObData name and then organise them into collections.
I used ALT + D to duplicate instances of a number of objects.  Unfortunately, to create iterations of the original rock, I Shift + D duplicated and did not change the name.  So the original objects were named rock.001, rock.002 and rock.003.
All the duplicated instances have names rock.038, rock.201 and so on.
The ObData have names that match the original geometry:Cube.001, Cube.002, Cube.003
I want to now organise the rocks into Collections based on the original geometry.
In the Outliner, I can search by name and I can select the Meshes (ObData?).  However, I don't believe I can't only move the ObData to a new collection, I need to go up the hierarchy to the object node.
Is this possible? If so, how would I accomplish this?

I believe I found the one answer.
Select the original object that was duplicated and then use:
Select > Select Linked > Object Data (Shift L)
However, what happens if you have inadvertently deleted the Original Object?


How to make an instance of a model for animation? When you are animating, you lose control of the directions on which the bones are being manipulated, such as rotation, location and scale. For example if you are animating a mouth. If the head is stationary on its primary place its easier to animate the mouth. But then when its rotated, it is a little more difficult, because the mouth is not aligned with the axis. I'm not a fan of the transformation orientations, because sometimes its not accurate and it is even more for the vertexes and edges. Is there a way to create an instance of the model with the bones which can be animated more easily? Or maybe something to make the process easier?

Update - In case I confused anybody -
Just like when you create an instance of an object and then use that instance in the render that you can rotate, scale.... and the original one is stationary on the axis which you can manipulate in edit mode so that the instance updates as if it is aligned with the axis.

I want to do that exactly with the object and the bones.

You may want to look into blender's concept of NLAs.  Actions are data blocks just like meshes and materials. You can create a new scene with an instance of the armature and mesh.  You can then animate the pose to move the mouth.

You can use the Action Editor mode of the Dope Sheet to figure out the name of the action (and rename it if you like).

Then in your scene you can find your instance of the armature and use the NLA editor to add a track.  Then add a strip to that track and use the mouth animation you created in the other scene.


I wanted to change my computation device, but there is no dropdown menu to change it The title already says it all.

How can I change the device?
EDIT: Yes, I have a (Nvidia) graphics card and CUDA installed

I've got a GeForce GTX 960M with updated drivers

Additionally to installing the drivers and Cuda, I had to choose the NVidia card as the card used for rendering (hybrid card), by runningsudo prime-select nvidia and log off and in again, afterwards it works.
This is now really off-topic.


Modeling a curved ring projected to a circular top I'm trying to model a ring with a special form. On one axis, the sides wider towards the top and at the same time the top part is making an oval like in this drawing:

edit: here is an actual picture of the ring

And Here is my failed attempt:

How can you model a rign like this?

edit: I tryied to scale / move the upper part with proportional edit, but I cannot achieve a smooth result:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGy94dVU--A

Your blueprint is not very clear but I've tried something, here it is, step by step, tell me if it's correct.


Blender 2.8 - quadratic gradient fail My goal is to create a gradient in a circular manner (one color in the center of the circle, the other at the edge with a transition in between).

I attempted to apply the lessons from this post, but can't get it to work.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Does your sphere/disk have UVs?

Also, if you have UVs and move them by x-0.5, y-0.5, the gradient gets pushed outside of the UV space. If it's there it might be very faint.

An easy setup to control this can be the following:

Note the Empty in the Texture Coordinate Node! - You can move, rotate and scale it to position the gradient. Keep it in the center of your object as a starting point. (My mapping node looks different because I'm using a build of 2.81 at the moment. But it works the same way.)

Another tip: Use the NodeWrangler Addon that comes bundled with Blender to look at the Outputs of the Texture Coordinates or the Mapping Node while you make changes. (Just Ctrl + Click the Node a few times) That way you can see what you're affecting.


Sheep it render farm outputs blank frames I came across Sheep It, the render farm. I'm uploading my .blend file, the output is just blank photos, it's not showing anything. The thing is that  I had a problem with the file, I don't know if the problem mentioned here has something to do with the fact that clicking animation button would render only one blank frame, but Ctrl + F12 is working just fine, I hope I made my problem clear.

Here is my blend file:

Your active camera is a plane. Select your camera and hit Ctrl+0.


Why can't I move the camera as freely as I can navigate in the 3D View? Just switched from maya to blender and as you can assume, I'm having some troubles. I can figure out the program just fine, but I want to know the reason why the render camera is designed with such navigation restrictions? Why not give it the same movability as the viewport? And is there a way I can change this?

The camera has absolutely no restrictions whatsoever. Normally you can move it just like you can move any object with your Move, Rotate and Scale tools.

If you want something like a first-person-mode expand the side panel on the right edge of your 3D-view (or hit the N-key on your keyboard) and then go to the tab View->View Lock and toggle Lock Camera to View. This will "bind" the camera to your viewport perspective.

Once you're happy with your camera position un-toggle the option to move freely again, without accidentally displacing your camera.


How to add backdrop images for py nodes? When creating a custom Node - tree type (not scene/material/texture) is it possible to have a background image defined? This would be similar to how the compositing nodes allow an image backdrop, but instead, for a custom tree type.

well, either way I took this as a challenge.

With any luck by including the code, it will anger someone into making a much more elegant solution. (if the from bgl import * bothers you importing as you need is probably tidier. But adding bgl. infront of everything gets on my nerves.

You'll notice it looks for the Sverchok custom tree, changing it to your own should be zero work.

# ##### BEGIN GPL LICENSE BLOCK #####
#
#  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
#  modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
#  as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
#  of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
#
#  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#  GNU General Public License for more details.
#
#  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
#  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
#  Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
#
# ##### END GPL LICENSE BLOCK #####

import time
import bpy
import bgl
from bgl import *
from bpy.types import SpaceNodeEditor

from sverchok import node_tree
from sverchok.node_tree import SverchCustomTree
from sverchok.node_tree import SverchCustomTreeNode

callback_dict = {}
point_dict = {}

def node_id(oper):
    return str(hash(oper) ^ hash(time.monotonic()))

def tag_redraw_all_nodeviews():
    for window in bpy.context.window_manager.windows:
        areas = window.screen.areas
        for area in (a for a in areas if a.type == 'NODE_EDITOR'):
            for region in (r for r in area.regions if r.type == 'WINDOW'):
                region.tag_redraw()

def callback_enable(n_id, nt):
    global callback_dict
    if n_id in callback_dict:
        return

    data = {}
    data['tree_name'] = nt.name
    args = n_id, data

    handle_pixel = SpaceNodeEditor.draw_handler_add(draw_callback_px, args, 'WINDOW', 'PRE_VIEW')
    callback_dict[n_id] = handle_pixel
    tag_redraw_all_nodeviews()

def callback_disable(n_id):
    global callback_dict
    handle_pixel = callback_dict.get(n_id, None)
    if not handle_pixel:
        return
    SpaceNodeEditor.draw_handler_remove(handle_pixel, 'WINDOW')
    del callback_dict[n_id]
    tag_redraw_all_nodeviews()

def callback_disable_all():
    global callback_dict
    temp_list = list(callback_dict.keys())
    for n_id in temp_list:
        if n_id:
            callback_disable(n_id)

def draw_callback_px(n_id, data):
    space = bpy.context.space_data
    ng_view = space.edit_tree
    if not ng_view:
        return

    ng_name = space.edit_tree.name
    if not (data['tree_name'] == ng_name):
        return
    if not isinstance(ng_view, node_tree.SverchCustomTree):
        return

    face_color = (0.2, 0.2, 0.2)
    scn = bpy.context.scene
    s = scn.sv_scale_unit
    image_name = scn.sv_available_image

    img = bpy.data.images.get(image_name)
    if img:
        img.gl_load(0, bgl.GL_NEAREST, bgl.GL_NEAREST)
        texture = img.bindcode
        w, h = img.size
        w2 = w / 2
        h2 = h / 2
        _w2 = w2 * s
        _h2 = h2 * s
    else:
        return

    glEnable(GL_BLEND)
    glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture)
    glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D)
    glBegin(GL_QUADS)
    glTexCoord2f(0.0, 0.0); glVertex3f(-1.0 * _w2, -1.0 * _h2, 0.0)  # Bottom Left Of The Texture and Quad
    glTexCoord2f(1.0, 0.0); glVertex3f(+1.0 * _w2, -1.0 * _h2, 0.0)  # Bottom Right Of The Texture and Quad
    glTexCoord2f(1.0, 1.0); glVertex3f(+1.0 * _w2, +1.0 * _h2, 0.0)  # Top Right Of The Texture and Quad
    glTexCoord2f(0.0, 1.0); glVertex3f(-1.0 * _w2, +1.0 * _h2, 0.0)  # Top Left Of The Texture and
    glEnd()
    glDisable(GL_TEXTURE_2D)

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

def get_items(self, context):
    images = bpy.data.images
    inames = [i.name for i in images]
    return [(i, i, 'image %s' % i) for i in inames]

class svImageShowOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "scene.operator_sv_show_image_bg"
    bl_label = "Image Show"
    bl_description = "Toggle the visibility of the background image"

    # _handle = None

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        scn = context.scene
        if scn.sv_show_image and scn.sv_available_image:
            return True

    def modal(self, context, event):
        nt = context.space_data.node_tree
        if scn.sv_show_image and scn.sv_available_image:
            n_id = node_id(nt)
            callback_enable(n_id, nt)
        else:
            callback_disable_all()
            return {"CANCELLED"}

        return {"PASS_THROUGH"}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        scn = context.scene
        nt = context.space_data.node_tree

        if scn.sv_show_image and scn.sv_available_image:
            n_id = node_id(nt)
            callback_enable(n_id, nt)
            return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}
        else:
            self.report({"WARNING"}, "View3D not found, can't run operator")
            return {"CANCELLED"}

class SverchokImageBG(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_idname = "Sverchok_img_bf"
    bl_label = "SV BGIMAGE"
    bl_space_type = 'NODE_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'
    bl_category = 'Sverchok'
    bl_options = {'DEFAULT_CLOSED'}
    use_pin = True

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        try:
            return context.space_data.node_tree.bl_idname == 'SverchCustomTreeType'
        except:
            return False

    def draw(self, context):
        scn = context.scene
        layout = self.layout
        ntree = context.space_data.node_tree
        c = layout.column()
        c.operator(svImageShowOperator.bl_idname, text="Show Image")
        c.prop(scn, 'sv_show_image')
        c.prop(scn, 'sv_available_image', text='pick image')
        c.prop(scn, 'sv_scale_unit')

def register():
    bpy.types.Scene.sv_show_image = bpy.props.BoolProperty()
    bpy.types.Scene.sv_available_image = bpy.props.EnumProperty(
        name="Images", items=get_items,
        description="Image paths")
    bpy.types.Scene.sv_scale_unit = bpy.props.FloatProperty(default=1.2)

    bpy.types.Scene.sv_custom_backdrop = bpy.props.StringProperty(default='')
    bpy.utils.register_class(svImageShowOperator)
    bpy.utils.register_class(SverchokImageBG)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(SverchokImageBG)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(svImageShowOperator)
    callback_disable_all()

    scn = bpy.types.Scene
    del scn.sv_custom_backdrop
    del scn.sv_show_image
    del scn.sv_available_image
    del scn.sv_scale_unit

if __name__ == '__main__':
    register()

Edit

hmmm, as soon as nodes are added the texture gets broken.

PRE_VIEW works nicely, but the texture at (x,y,0) is behind the grid.
in 'POST_VIEW' adding this seems to stabilize the image

glEnable(GL_BLEND)
glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture)
glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D)
glBlendFunc(GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA)
glColor4f(1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0)
glBegin(GL_QUADS)


The Shade Smooth option is ignored when baking a displacement map Is the smoothing option meaningless since the displacement map is meant to be extracted from high polygons?

So what is the correct way to create a greyscale bump map?

And here is my blend file

Now it's much more clear and you put your "real" question.

It seems you wish to bake displacement (ie: geometry) from shading (ie lighting): it will never work imho.

Use a real "smoothing" option, like more subsurf

so, why "Shade Smooth" doesn't work when baking a displacement map, unlike the "normal map" (that works)?

because "smooth shading" is, in fact, just a shading trick: it alters the normals, to let the object appear smooth (as if it had more geometry, which it has not), so the normal baking takes it into account.

the "displacement baking" instead needs to bake the geometry "height levels" into color levels (the baked image), but since "smooth shading" leaves the geometry untouched, you get the same identical result as without the smooth shading...


Hexagon Atom circle wire frame I'm trying to achieve a hexagon alike shape Image 1, But I cannot figure out how to make the projecting vertices looking like image 1, ellipse/circular, Mine are hollow and hexagonal like the mesh sphere, I understand this result because I'm using the wireframe modifier, ( if its the correct approach towards the result..). How can I achieve a similar result like image 1?

Thank you.

You can use Dupliverts.

Add a big icosphere and at its center, a small one.

Parent the small one to the big one. (select small, then big, Ctrl+P, Object)

Select the big sphere,go to Object panel, in Duplication, click Verts.

The little sphere is now replicated on every vertex of the big one. Notice that the faces of the big sphere won't be rendered, despite they appear in the 3D view.

Now you can duplicate the big sphere (Shift+D), disable duplications on it, and add a Wireframe modifier.


How to curve just one face I have an object of which I would like to curve one face.

What I have:

What I want to do:

My final goal is to model a television:

My blend file:

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/34647

How do I curve just one face?

A different approach (than my other answer)  would be to modify the mesh slightly so that you could perform a bevel operation.

Beveling rounds off a corner, so you need a corner where you want the rounded part instead of a flat face.  I accomplished this by connecting the two edges across the face and moving the new edge to a positing where it's two adjoining faces are at right angles.

You can then select the new edge and hit Ctrl+B to bevel the edge into a curve, using the mouse wheel to control the number of subdivisions.


How to copy constraints from one bone to another? I've created some shapekeys driven by the bone controllers for my character. Then I gave constraints to the bones on the left side. Now I want to copy and paste them to the right side. Two questions:

how to do it?
is there a fast way to copy all of the constraints from left to right side?

Blender has a built in way to copy bone constrains, but it only copies from one bone.

In pose mode, select the bone you want to copy the constraint to, then select the bone with the constraint (that way it is the active bone).

Then press Space to bring up the search box and type in "copy c", select "Copy Constraints to Selected Bones".


How to get distance from camera to all points in a mesh? I have an imported mesh and camera is positioned to look at this mesh object. Is there a way to get distance from camera to every vertex(point) in mesh object.

P. S. I want to perform this action in a script, but a link to a User Interface action that performs what I desire wold be helpful too.

Simple Vector Maths

Blender uses vectors , so this becomes a simple matter of subtracing the global camera location vector from each global vertex location vector. (links)

The global location of the camera is camera_object.matrix_world.translation.   The global location of a vertex is its local coordinate (For vertex j in mesh me : me.vertices[j].co) , multiplied by the matrix world of the mesh object. (ob.matrix_world)

Test script, prints the camdist list to system console. camdist[i] is the global distance of me.vertices[i] from the camera.

import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

cam = scene.camera
ob = context.active_object

if cam and ob and ob.type == 'MESH':
    camloc = cam.matrix_world.translation
    mw = ob.matrix_world
    me = ob.data # mesh
    camdists = [(mw * v.co - camloc).length for v in me.vertices]
    print(camdists)


How to repeat an Image Map in blender 2.8 In Blender 2.79, there is a way to repeat images in a tab:

Whenever I try to apply this in Blender 2.8, in node form, I don't get the same results as mirror x and y in Internal. I know it is the Mapping node, but how do I get a repeating option like these examples:

Without the repeat

With the repeats

Here is the current node being used in EEVEE:

You might look into this, seems like a lot of nodes for what was just a checkbox. Hopefully someone else has a better answer.
Is there a way to do mirror Image mapping in EEVEE?


Terrain generation with height map I have python program that generates heightmap (matrix). Which way to generate landscape would be better? I'm new to blender, so I don't know where to start

A way of achieving this would be to save the matrix as an .exr image texture (for instance using the imageio package and its imwrite() function).

You can then create a plane and add a Subdivision Surface modifier (on the wrench in the menu) changing from Catmull-Clark to Simple, and then add a Displace modifier.

On the Displace modifier, click New to create a new texture and then go to the texture menu (a square like a chess board).

There you can open your .exr image.

Now if you go back to the modifiers menu, as you increase the viewport subdivisions in the Subdiv modifier you should see how the plane starts to resemble your image.

If there's interest on this I'll add more details and screenshots :)


Filling objects doesn't go well i like modeling in blender, but always there is an problem.

As you can see here, i want to fill the hole, but in hole is an circle, so when i press F... this happens

My question is, how to fill it without making it fill the circle too? Since i have to use more and more faces which complicates texturing the model.

Any help is apprecitiable.
+
Sorry for my English, if needed, i'll try to explain my problem better :)

There's lots of ways to connect a hole. The only rule you have to obey is that at least one edge has to connect the inner edgeloop with the outer edgeloop. Two or more are usually better.

If your mesh doesn't have to be watertight, and polycount is important to you, then you can even make a very simple hole as long as it gets covered by the other geometry (lower left).