Rough Metal Material I am trying to recreate the FN P90 submachine gun.
I followed a tutorial on modelling and UV unwrapping.
Now I tried adding Procedural Textures to it.
The gun body is made up of a rough finished black painted metal.

For this I tried this node Setup:

But it does not work. Do I have the wrong approach? How would you go about making a painted rough finished metal?

Use the Principled BSDF Shader as a basis and then add in maps for roughness and normals to achieve the look you're going for. This makes life a lot easier.
You can use this tutorial as a basis. Blender Guru Tutorial
This is an example setup for a bumpy Plastic. Turn the Metallic slider up if you want metal.


Tried adding an HDR in blender but seems that something is wrong..need help? Tried adding an HDR in my recent project but it seems that there is a problem, need help

It seems like you are in Orthographic view. In order to have the HDR appears properly you need to be in Perspective view (Numpad-5) as said above. Maybe if you give more details one could help more. Also, have you tried F12 ? Is it the same result ?


Border Select. How to disable the selection of closest vertex to the frame? Working with tool "Border Select" Blender automatically activates the closest to the Frame Vertex/Edge/Polygon.

Is it possible to disable this feature?

You can try and change the 3D View > Activate/Select mouse action to Release instead of Press or Any that way when you click near a vertex it won't have any effect until you actually release the button.

Have in mind that this may cause a opposite side effect of selecting the vertex near where you end the selection border, if not well setup


The rendered image looks clipped, but in the viewport the clip distance seems OK I am rendering a scene, and the plane in the scene is being clipped for no apparent reason.  The near and far clip of the camera seems ok, but I extended it to 300 from 100, just in case, and no dice.

The following two images shows how it looks in blender, and the render result:

enter link description here

3:

EDIT: Links to blend file added
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44179449/jeemoneygrungebrickangled.blend

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44179449/jeemoneygrungebrickangled.blend1

EDIT 2:

I moved the camera back away from the plane, and this is WEIRD!  Why is it not a rectangular plane?  (Note: I moved the JeeMoney text over, so that didn't automatically change position because of the new camera distance)

EDIT 3:
After 2 hours of fiddling around, I found out that I had a subsurf & displacement modifer that was messing everything up.  I fixed it.  Thanks all!

This is because Clipping Distance settings exist in two places.

One set for the viewport (in your Properties Panel):

...and another for the Camera / rendering:

Edit:

However...

Now that you've posted your .blend and I've had a chance to examine it, I can say your issue has nothing to do with clipping distance.

You have a SubSurf Modifier on your plane that is curving it.

It was set only to be visible in renders, not in the viewport.

Edit again:

I just saw your comment that you fixed it, so never mind. One last thing I'll mention - you can leave the SubSurf Modifier on, but switch it to Simple instead of Catmull-Clark, and this will give you the fine geometry for the Displace Modifier that follows, without rounding your plane.


Is there a way to disable curve normals by default? Every time I create a new curve and go into edit mode, the default view looks like a centipede, with an excess of arrows to show the curve normal and direction. Although I can disable this in the Shading panel with the curve selected, I'm getting sick of doing so for each curve and was wondering if there is a way to disable it by default. I tried doing it once and saving the start up scene, but this didn't work.

Note: I think it might be possible to change the initial setup for the curve if it is specified in the python code somewhere. However, I had a look around, but couldn't find anything defined in the Python code, so perhaps the setup is handled in the C part of blender :/ If anyone with knowledge of the codebase has some ideas, I'd love to hear them.

You're right: saving to startup scene doesn't make the change permanent. A workaround I use is changing the Normal Sizes on the same display tab to something smaller and less intrusive.
Then I go to object mode, delete the curve and save as startup file using CtrlU. The next time I open blender,  the normal size for displaying curves is how I set it.


Netrender addon missing I am unable to find the netrender addon in Blender 2.79b on fully updated Ubuntu. My son is starting to work on more complex scenes and we have a couple systems laying around that can be dedicated to this.

Any ideas?

The answer for me was to download from blender.org instead of installing using apt.


How to make a script switching Active Camera to orthographic mode? how to make a script Active Camera to orthographic
don’t want to turn on the camera every time and then orthographic

import bpy

bpy.ops.view3d.view_camera()
bpy.ops.view3d.view_persportho()

dont work (((

import bpy
scene = bpy.context.scene

scene.camera.data.type = 'ORTHO' # set to ortho

and to perspective

scene.camera.data.type = 'PERSP' # set to perspectve


smoke comes out in bursts from moving object I am making a firework with a fuse to look like a S, and when i bake the flame, it is OK at first while the firework is not moving very fast, but when the firework speeds up, the flame comes out in bursts but I want it to come out continuously.

It looks fine at the beginning while not going too fast,

But when it catches speed the flame comes out in bursts

My domain settings

My emitter settings

Blend file-
blend file for download

You need to use your flow object's sampling subframes.
Select the object, go in the physics Properties tab and change the Sampling Subframes value.

It can be animated but you need to know this : more subframes = more processing time


Shrinkwrap projection seems to ignore part of target mesh I'm trying to use the Shrinkwrap modifier to project a flat mesh onto this object:

I select Mode: Project, On Surface, and set it to Direction: Negative, Axis: Z. The result is this:

Which is a little confusing to me. It has no trouble applying the outer parts of the mesh to the curved portion of the object at the base, but the middle ends up inside. It seems to be ignoring the bulk of the target object.
I've tried increasing the geometry in both meshes by subdividing several times, which at best made the flat mesh partially acknowledge the top of the object, resulting in a horrible strained-looking fibrous network.
I also tried placing the flat mesh inside the object, then projecting it outwards. This created a few different things depending on the settings, one of which was identical to the result above, the rest even worse.
Any help is appreciated, even suggesting a different approach entirely.
Thank you.
Here is a link to the .blend file

Here is your topology:

It doesn't allow your object to bend and stick to the shape, an edge can't bend at its middle if there's no vertex. Instead, create this topology:

And it will work:

How to fill:

Delete the current topology and select the inner circle:

Extrude inwards with E:

Press CtrlR to create edge loops, press + to add more:


Search for a Material I have a material that belongs to some objects, but I can't find those objects. Is there a way to search for objects that have been assigned a certain material?

Yes. What you can do is use the Search engine tool in the Outliner. Since various aspects of each object's Object Data (including materials) are listed in the Outliner, the Search engine tool will turn them up as results. Note that you may have to  MW scroll to bring the search bar into view.


Need an practical method to model this bike wheel I have been struggling all day today to get this modeled right and failed. Would anyone give me some tips? The result I have is beyond bad. Can not even get the rim done.

Thanks a lot~ This is driving me crazy. :D

Please do not laugh at me. This is what I have done (the fifth version. lol). Its passed midnight, can not sleep by thinking about it. lol

The principle can be around this:

We are in top view here, there is a mirror modifier along Z and a subdivision surface:

From left to right:

Add a circle with 6 edges. Shift it a bit along Z (for the mirror and rim thickness).

Extrude all and scale down ES.

Rotate the center part.

Select all the faces and inset I.

Extrude along Z E to the mirror center.

Delete the faces X, faces only.

This is only an approach. Of course you need to work a bit more to make it accurate to the picture.


How can I use the Add brush in Particle Edit mode? How can I exclusivity use the Add brush in Particle Edit mode?

By default the particle system has hair growing form each face, to exclusively use the Add brush to place the hairs you must first set the Number to 0.

Then you can go into Particle Edit mode and use the add brush to place the hairs.


Ivy Generator Add-on Horizontal grow How to make ivy grow horizontally with Ivy Gen add-on?

Increase the "branching probability". I'm trying to do the same here and it looks to be the answer. Still testing.


How to create a minimap with independent movement? How can I adapt this script to the following needs?

I want to be able to...

move camera only
camera travel a long the mini map shows the map in a litle circle in a
corner of the screen
without Character
press a button to back to start place
parent camera again to the character and walk with the camera follow the character

the following script is very simple in terms of operation, the camera follows the character and you see the mini map with your route, how can I modify it or how can I create this from scratch?

# Script HUD Mini Map FPS

from bge import logic, texture

scene_main = None
for scene in logic.getSceneList():

# Declarar nombre de la escena
    if scene.name == "Level1":
            scene_main = scene
            break

# Declarar nombre de cámara para crear la textura
mapcam = scene_main.objects["map_cam"]

cont = logic.getCurrentController()
own = cont.owner

# Declarar nombre textura: IM + (nombre de la imagen creada )
matID = texture.materialID(own, "IMMap")
map_png = texture.Texture(own, matID)

source = texture.ImageRender(scene_main, mapcam)
source.background = (20, 20, 20, 255)

Moving map camera

The code snippet does not move the camera at all.

I guess it is supposed to setup the VideoTexture source of an object that shows the output of the map camera.

You simply move the map camera as you like. I guess you break the parent-child relationship to the character to achieve what you are looking for.

Finding the minimap camera

The code snippet contains a strange way to find the minimap camera.

I suggest following search:

for scene in logic.getSceneList():
    mapcam = scene.cameras.get("map_cam")

Edit:

You already split the task down into smaller operations. This is good.

My above answer was telling you how to improve your code snippet, which btw. does not do any of the described operations. So I'm a bit lost where your problems are.

I suggest to discuss that in a forum like blenderartist.org or ask single more specific questions.

Here is a short strip down of the mentioned operations.

move camera only

As easy as it sounds. Do not parent it to something. Apply logic to move the camera.

camera travel a long the mini map shows the map in a litle circle in a corner of the screen

Do you mean you want to minimap shown in an edge of the window?

Place a mesh object (disc) there.
Add UV and a material with a texture
apply the videotexture as you mentioned in your snippet to show the render of the minimap camera. (You might want to use the DynamicTexture project if you are not that familar with Python)
refresh the texture at each single frame

without Character

This depends on what the minimap camera is seeing.

Typically you do not show the same thing as the main camera. You show a corresponding "level" that contains a map (several objects that form the map).

The minimap camera gets moved over this map. As result the minimap object (see section above) will show different parts of the map (rather than the level). As the map does not contain the character, it will not be visible.

The trick is to know how to move the minimap camera to get a correlation to the level camera.

press a button to back to start place

Play an action that set the minimap camera to that start place (above the map)

parent camera again to the character and walk with the camera follow the character

Parenting is an option. This will work fine when

the level is the map
the map is at an offset of the level and has the same scale as the level (e.g it is under the ground.

Example: the map is under the terrain:

(side view)

It will not work fine when
* the map is in a different scene
* the map has a different scale or orientation

In such cases you need Python to synchronize the motion of the minimap camera with the motion of the character.


Blender units vs metric I just started getting into 3d printing. At first I scaled my models down to a few cm tall in blender, but found them nearly microscopic at print time. After some fiddling with netfab, it seems like 1m/1bu = 1mm in print world. Is it common practice to keep the model in bu and let the printer software scale the object? Could this be an .stl export setting I missed? Is there a way to match the two environments consistently? Thanks!

Inside Blender, 1 Blender Unit equals 1 meter, however, when importing, the software you are using could perceive arbitrary units as being equal to something other than 1 meter.

There are a couple of ways to solve this problem:

1. Change the Scene's scale factor

To do so, go to the Properties panel, then under the Scene tab, find the Units subsection and change the Scale field.

When set to 1, 1BU = 1m, but if set to 10, 1BU = 10m; Pretty straight forward.

2. Change the exporter's scale factor

To do this, when exporting to .stl, before hitting Export, you can change the scale field, located on the bottom left corner.

3. Scale the object up in Blender

Hit S and the enter your scale factor/ratio, for instance 10, and the object will be 10 times bigger.

4. Scale the object up in the printing software

You figure that out.


Passing spline vertex property into graph to add or remove it from list I would like to find a way to tag vertices in spline edit mode in order to append or remove them from lists. For instance; I'm placing Object instances over spline vertices and using its "tilt" value from the spline I can manage to edit their rotation individually inside the 3dview.

Is there a way to the same thing but instead of affecting its tilt just edit it belonging to a list?

I am assuming you don't want to use a bit mask list in the node tree and instead want to use a native spline attribute accessible from the UI. I don't think Blender allows custom attributes for splines, see this and this. So I think your only option is to utilize the Weight or the Radius of the handles to determine their state. For instance, you can get the weights of the handles using the following expression:

[point.weight_softbody for point in obj.data.splines[0].bezier_points]

Then you check if the weight is larger than 0.5 by adjusting the expression to be:

[point.weight_softbody > 0.5 for point in obj.data.splines[0].bezier_points]

Now, simply use the output boolean list as the mask for your handles using the Mask List node. To include a point, increase the weight more than 0.5. Alternatively, you can use the radius if you are not utilizing it somehow.


Why does my object appear flat when rendering? I'm new to blender. I have an object that I want to export as png sequence or avi. However when I render it, the object is flat and dark. How do I fix this?

I placed the camera correctly as well. Below are screenshots:
This is how it looks like originally:

This is how it looks like in test render or even in real animation render, whether avi or png or jpg:

You have no light in your scene, add a sun, spot, point or anything to give some light


Desaturated/Washed/Pale colors out of the box On a 2019 5k iMac, Blender displays vibrant colors. But after rendering and viewing it on macOS preview, the colors are off.
I tried this with a MacBook, and the colors are displayed as they were intended. As well as on a PC (and using boot camp on the *iMac).

I'm guessing this has to do with the iMac's built in display correct? Are there any solutions?

*Another thing too, after uploading a render (that has intended colors) to a site (insta) the colors look off on other devices. Mind you I'm using regular settings...

The good news is that you have an awesome display. The bad news is that Blender by default does not support any type of display beyond sRGB.

So before I give you the solution, it’s probably wise to wrap one’s mind around what is happening.

Your iMac uses a different set of RGB lights to emit colour. When you render something using Blender using the default configuration, it assumes your display is sRGB. That is, it doesn’t know what kind of display you have. That means that an RGB triplet sent to the display that has no compliments such as 0.0, 0.2, 0.0 will project out a different colour light on sRGB as compared to your iMac. Of course that means by extension, every single mix of lights is totally wrong. You are seeing the lights projected out though they were connected to sRGB coloured lights as opposed to your iMac’s much more saturated and different coloured lights!

The good news is that I’ve included the Display P3 colorimetry in the official Filmic Blender repository at GitHub. Change your display to it, and your rendering should appear correctly on your iMac. Just don’t save it with that display type chosen! Any issues, feel free to post.

https://github.com/sobotka/filmic-blender

The bad news is that Blender is still pretty woefully lame regarding pixels. That means that to properly encode an sRGB image, you would need to flip your display to sRGB and save the file, as well as ideally attach the sRGB ICC tag. It’s totally wrong looking at your display, but Blender is horribly broken and it is where we are at. Another option is to leave your render set to Display P3, save it, and assign the Display P3 ICC. Painful, but works!

Hope this helps...


Numeric values of camera angles while tracking When tracking, for example the origin, and moving the camera in
space, the camera angles are clearly not zero. Still, in the
parameter display the 'Transform/Rotation' is displayed as (0,0,0).
How is this possible?

How can I get the real camera angles?

You have a Track to constraint on the camera (it's what I see), or a parent relation maybe.
The Rotation in the properties panel does not take in account the constraints or parenting effects, so it shows 0.

You can enter bpy.context.scene.camera.matrix_world.to_euler() in the console and it should give you the real orientation of the camera.


Some bones do not move in pose mode My problem is: I can't move SOME bones in Pose mode. If I try, it only rotates them.

Yes, I know about "manipulate center points", sadly it did not help in my case. Enabled or disabled it does not make any difference at all.

Here are 2 screenshots:

  I may easily move this and 3 other bones.

This one turns dark orange and rotates, instead of dragging.

As you can see on these screenshots, both bones have exact proportions, same parent and no transfer limitations. Clearing/re-assigning parent bone does not help either. To be honest, I have no idea where else may I search for mistake. Any help will be appreciated!

It is possible this might be related to auto-IK ; try going to the toolbar on the left of the screen, clicking on the options tab and turning off auto-IK.


How do I add lots of holes into the surface of my model? I am 3d printing a ds9 model from thingiverse, but I would like to add all the holes for the fibre optic threads to my mesh surface.

This Commercial kit has over 1000 holes to drill for fibre optics. I've found a company who has Drill hole plans that I can use as a texture map. I would like to shortcut the drilling hole step, and am looking for a method to create lots of holes from the texture map.

Note: I already have a method to create the shell/hollow model, as well as a method to cut the model in half.

If the drill hole plans are in vector already convert the file to .svg.

If the hole plans are not vector.
Convert the holes to vector using Inkscape, Illustrator, etc...
Once everything is traced/converted save this file as .svg.

When you have a usable .svg file.
Open Blender and choose File/Import/Paths
Choose your .svg
With the newly created path selected in blender.
Go to the curve options and raise the extrude value up.
If the alignment is good, use the boolean modifier to "cut" the holes. Example

If not already vector & automated methods fail. Instead of manually tracing the holes. You may be best off duplicating a cylinder, of the correct size, & placing the duplicates where need be. Using the mirror modifier if and/or where possible. Then use the boolean modifier as mentioned previously.


How to render with alpha-channel defined by object form? I need a transparent hole in a specific part of my render defined by object. For example, I have a cube. How to make an alpha-channel on the place of a cube?

The holdout node can be used to cut an object from the scene.

  The Holdout shader node is used to create a “hole” in the image with zero alpha transparency, which is useful for compositing

Note that the holdout only cuts through objects in the scene, you need to render with transparency and composite the scene onto the environment pass if you want the background.

You can also set the object pass index and use the ID Mask Node to mask it out in the compositor. The material index is the same thing applied to the material instead of the whole object.


Does Blender bloat unnecessarily the Windows Registry? According to Revo Uninstaller, Blender adds more than 4400 registry keys to the Windows Registry. They are almost all spread in Registry folder:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\[your user string]\Components

Assuming that the Windows Registry is kind of a highway (database) where system and user applications will eventually want to quickly store and share data, unnecessarily growing it will impact other applications performance on accessing, not to mention the impact on registry backups that Windows makes periodically.

Next follows an old opinion of Jeff Atwood about using registry as a storage room (source: here):

  a trash heap of miscellaneous junk settings for every rinky-dink application on the planet

Many of the 4400+ entries that Blender stores in Registry, if not all, are references to Python scripts, that I strongly doubt they really need to be stored in a system wide database, instead of a local configuration folder.

If you are unsure about entrys in the registry and want to keep your system clean, you can take the portable version.
Extract to a folder of your choice and pin to startmenu or what ever.

I personally dont use Blender installer at all, i use the portable every time and when there is a new build i override the folder content and have the new version.
If you have multiple versions you can have different folders.


Applying join to mesh I'm little bit lost.
I did all of those steps in this tutorial but if I'm trying to join sphere with mesh it outputs weird shapes:

I want to join them to create animation later.

These weird shapes are likely due to Wireframe modifier on the "net" object. When you join them Wireframe modifier applies to spheres too. If you are not going to change settings on Wireframe modifier later, then you can apply it before joining with spheres.


Is there a way to set vertex color of selected vertices with single click? I have some objects that I want to set the vertex colors of.  While I can use my tablet to do this in vertex paint mode, for the project I'm working on, I just need to flood fill the selected vertices with my current color.

Basically, I want to set all vertex colors to black, then pick a few faces and set the vertex colors of those to bright red.  Is there a faster way to do this, or do I have to hand paint all the colors?

You can apply the currently active vertex color for all vertices at once while in Vertex Paint Mode. Just select (Paint -> Set Vertex Colors) from the header menu. Basically, you set the dominant vertex color for the whole mesh and then manually paint a few vertices afterwards.

While this doesn't work on a selection but only the whole mesh, you might want to split/join your objects beforehand. So that you don't need to paint too much geometry by hand. But there might be some alternative approaches to this like working with vertex groups or utilizing the vertex weight. But this might be the more straight-forward solution.


How to make visible only a portion of an object during playback? I have a mesh that necessarily contains many many vertices, which inevitably slows down animation playback. But, I only want to view parts of the mesh at a time, yet in the outliner, there is no visibility toggle on the vertex groups to save users processing time. Is there some other way I can do this?

The Mask constraint on the mesh will work to improve the frame rate during playback. You have to create a vertex group for each part you want to view at a time, but once you do, you simply set that as the target vertex group in the mask constraint, or also press arrow button if it looks the reverse of your vertex group is showing up.


Problems baking materials in Cycles Render I've used TextureAtlas to group every part of the model together, I've set up a new UV in the editor, unwrapped the model, unticked Selected to Active, set up a new Image Texture node in the Node Editor, but I keep getting an error when trying to bake. It says that there's no active image found in material 'Iris' (for the eye). Not sure about this as everything has been selected, unwrapped and added to a UV image.

For each material added to the mesh from which you're baking, you need to have Image Texture node (selected, but not connected with anything ) with new image on which you want to bake the texture (f.ex. NewColorTexture.png, created in UV/Image editor or in Image Texture node Properties in Node editor). You can bake toon shading as easy as any other.


Is it possible to create a fluid simulation of rain? Is it possible to simulate rain with the fluid simulator?

I tried to do something with a bunch of Inflow cubes that get enabled and disabled, however this is very tedious. Is there a better way?

I realize that using a fluid simulation is probably overkill, I'm attempting this as a test. I should also note that I only want this for the simulation of the impact of the droplets on a hard surface, so I only need to simulate ~50 or so droplets.

You can try the Fluid physics type in a particle emitter :

Add a particle system to a plane and configure it the way you want (number, start, max age...)
In the Physics panel, select Fluid.
Select the object you want the particles to run down on
Add a Collision physics modifier to this object (make sure it has enough faces), with particle damping Factor set to 1
hit play and:

Next, you just have to create a nice shader (this one is a blueish transparent shader, just for demonstration, very bad)

However, this type of simulation is not very realistic and some tweaks may be needed to suit your needs. It's just a track...


Collada export breaks bones I am trying to export a Model with a armature as .dae file to load it with Assimp into my game engine. The problem now is, Blender breaks the bones.

This is how it looks when I am exporting.

When I then start Blender again and try to import the dae again, I get this:

In my game engine, which renders other animated.dae files perfectly fine, it looks like this:

I am not sure where the issue is but I guess it's me being too dumb to use Blender correctly.

After googeling hours and hours i found out, Blenders Collada exporter is just buggy. For everyone who wants to use Blender and Assimp together i recommend the FBX file format. Both, Blender and Assimp do support it, you can configure Blenders FBX exporter to use the correct Coordinate-System (-z forwards, y upwards) and it even supports exporting all animations on the animation-stack as individual animations.


How to Reopen the 3D Viewport along side the UV Edit Window I opened the UV edit window and made a uv map. Now I want to open up a second window with my model in the 3D viewport. I want to synchronize the mesh and the uv map. But I can't figure out how to open the 3D viewport.

Thank you for your help,

Sabia

I have created a hotkey for performing this most frequently needed operation with areas.

RMB click on the edge between two areas
Choose Split Area
Right Click on it again.
Choose Add Shortcut
Press the hotkey you would want to use for splitting areas (I used CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+X)
Then press the hotkey to initiate the split.
Pressing MMB button can change the direction of split.
Click the mouse when satisfied with the proportions of split.

References

Arranging Areas in Blender


How to solve camera for only part of footage? I'm pretty new in camera tracking and Blender (2.80). I have a "long"(1 minute) dash cam footage of driving on the road, where most trackers stay visible only for a second or less, so a lot of trackers must be created, which is tedious. Tracking whole footage first and solving camera in the end seems too risky approach, so I wonder if I can solve only part of the footage until some pseudo-end frame number to make sure trackers are good, then repeat with incremented pseudo-end number until the end of footage. So far, I have tried setting end frame in Blender scene settings or in timeline, but solver still uses whole footage.
To clarify idea, I want to track only 2 first seconds of the 1-minute footage and then solve camera for only first 2 tracked seconds, then add tracks for next 2 seconds and again solve camera, but in total for 4 first tracked seconds. And repeat until I have whole footage covered. This way I will see results faster and could start improving tracking accuracy right away.
Example frame below, but in general, question still holds for any dash cam video or similar to CGMatter tracking tutorial (first 2 seconds) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vo-jyWlDhM, but imagine video goes way longer.

It helps if you understand a bit deeper how tracking and 3d reconstruction work.
When you track points in the video and solve the camera you get two different kinds of information: Camera intrinsics and extrinsic parameters.
Camera intrinsics are the camera lens, lens center and distortion. Intrinsics are unique for a combination of sensor size and a specific lens. So all shots done with the same lens on the same camera will behave the same.
Once you have the camera intrinsics, then you can calculate the extrinsics, which are the correspondenc of the placement of points in an image, with coordinates in 3d space.
pff.... got that out.
So what does that mean in this case? You just need to solve a small portion of the scene to determine the camera intrinsics (lens field of vies, optical center and distortion coefficients). With that information you can solve other segments of the shot as well.
At the very least you need 2 images that show parallax and have 8 accurate trackers to solve the scene, but it helps if you have a few more and  more frames to evaluate more precisely.
The segment to use can be defined in the keyframe section, the range of frames between frame A and B will be the one used to solve the scene.

But setting that range doesn't mean that only that segment of the video clip will be solved. Blender will still try to solve the whole thing, but by setting the range means that you don't need 8 trackers on every frame.
And now for the grand finale:
Yes! you need to add trackers for the whole shot if you want to solve it. Don't be lazy or try to take a shortcut: It's only a minute of footage, a limited number of frames and blender is doing most of the work! But remember that not all of the tracking needs to be wonderful, just the segments used between keyframes. Bottom line is: unless you add trackers blender will never guess any motion for you.


How to particle system with permanent particles I made of trees of different species with the sapling tree generator. I put them into a particle system to populate a forest with trees. The particle system wants to animate the trees being emitted and dying. This is an animated project so I can't just pick a frame to keep. I want the trees to belong to a location and stay. How do I make the particle system permanent so the trees stay in the same arrangement?

Set the Frame start and End frame to 1, and the lifetime to the length of frames for the whole the animation.


Installing CUDA for Blender Cycles on Ubuntu 12.04 Linux box (Corei7 920, 12 Gb RAM, 1TB hdd, Nvidia GTX 460) running Ubuntu 12.04.

I'm enough of a noob that I've hit a wall of discouragement trying to install CUDA to take advantage of Cycles! This is the most helpful resource I've found so far, but it is super intimidating and I'm afraid I'll just be wasting hours and hours of time, and eventually fail.

Can someone confirm they've accomplished what I'm trying to do?

Can someone link me to some good tuts/lessons on Linux that will help me accomplish this task?

If you want to use CUDA for rendering with a downloaded Blender release, you do not need to install the CUDA toolkit. What you do need is (proprietary) NVidia drivers for your graphics card, any reasonably recent version will do.

Ubuntu and other linux distributions provide a way to do that, and you may already have them installed. If you don't you should for best Blender performance even when you don't use Cycles GPU rendering. If CUDA does not show up in User Preferences > System > Compute Device, you may need to install a newer NVidia graphics driver.

If you want to make your own Blender builds with CUDA support, you need to install the CUDA toolkit. To do that, download the CUDA toolkit 5.0 from:

https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit-50-archive

And install with a command like this:

sudo sh cuda_5.0.35_linux_64_ubuntu11.10-1.run

It may ask you about installing drivers, but it's usually best to skip that part and only install the toolkit in the default location. The drivers will interfere with drivers that you installed through the package manager. You do not need to set any environment variables or make links like that tutorial, it's really this one command.


How to make a mesh look like glass I want to make a cube look like made out of glass. I know how to give it transparency but I don't know how to make it reflect light like glass in real life do
(Blender version 2.9)

Use a glass shader.

The Glass BSDF is used to add a Glass-like shader mixing refraction and reflection at grazing angles. Like the transparent shader, only pure white will make it transparent
Color
Color of the surface, or physically speaking, the probability that light is ransmitted for each wavelength
Roughness
Influences sharpness of the refraction; perfectly sharp at 0.0 and smoother with higher values.
IOR
Index of refraction (IOR) defining how much the ray changes direction. At 1. 0 rays pass straight through like transparent; higher values give more refraction.
Normal
Normal used for shading.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/shader_nodes/shader/glass.html?highlight=glass

For reflections, set something in the scene or the environment that will be reflected on the surface.
Read:
How to turn off reflections on glass


How to get all types of nodes dynamically? The node editor is constantly changing due to cycles. There are new nodes in every release of blender so I'd like to know whether there is a way to get all available node types in a list. I remembered that Node Wrangler has this beautiful "switch my node to something else" thing, which I thought already implements that functionality. However, all nodes are hard coded like that:

shaders_output_nodes_props = (
    ('ShaderNodeOutputMaterial', 'OUTPUT_MATERIAL', 'Material Output'),
    ('ShaderNodeOutputLamp', 'OUTPUT_LAMP', 'Lamp Output'),
    ('ShaderNodeOutputWorld', 'OUTPUT_WORLD', 'World Output'),
)

Q: Is there a way to get a complete list of all available node types by category and ideally all custom groups as well with bpy.types or something similar?

This addresses the second part of your question. How to auto generate all this.

Node Category (cycles) and each registered node.bl_idname in the category

import bpy

ddir = lambda data, filter_str: [i for i in dir(data) if i.startswith(filter_str)]
get_nodes = lambda cat: [i for i in getattr(bpy.types, cat).category.items(None)]

cycles_categories = ddir(bpy.types, "NODE_MT_category_SH_NEW")
for cat in cycles_categories:
    print(cat)
    for node in get_nodes(cat):
        print('bl_idname: {node.nodetype}, type: {node.label}'.format(node=node))

Output is (snipped):

NODE_MT_category_SH_NEW_CONVERTOR
bl_idname: ShaderNodeBlackbody, type: Blackbody
bl_idname: ShaderNodeValToRGB, type: ColorRamp
bl_idname: ShaderNodeCombineHSV, type: Combine HSV
bl_idname: ShaderNodeCombineRGB, type: Combine RGB
bl_idname: ShaderNodeCombineXYZ, type: Combine XYZ
bl_idname: ShaderNodeMath, type: Math
bl_idname: ShaderNodeRGBToBW, type: RGB to BW

Custom Node Groups of type ShaderNodeTree

[ng for ng in bpy.data.node_groups if ng.bl_idname == 'ShaderNodeTree']


Glass rendering incorrectly with dark areas I am a fresh newbie in Blender. I watched lots of tutorials from Blender Guru, and wanted to make a potion bottle. I don't know what went wrong, but the shading went completely wrong, and for some reason the main spehere doesn't reflect anything. If anyone knows why, please help me!

I used a glass material, mixed with diffuse for the bottle.

The dark areas are normals facing the wrong direction. Fix these by selecting everything A in edit mode and pressing Ctrl+N.

To fix refraction issues, add a solidify modifier to the mesh. You might have to adjust the thicker part on the top. The glass shader is trying to guess where the glass is solid, so you should use it on closed meshes  only for the refraction to work correctly.

For tinting glass, use a volume shader in the volume material output instead of mixing the surface with a diffuse shader.


Eevee Eyeball procedural texturing I’m trying to create this eye in Eevee Mode with procedural texture, but I get this strange effect on the iris.
Below I attach the shading nodes panel and the link of the tutorial I was following
https://youtu.be/1Nkx2CuaREc

The glass must be projecting a shadow on the pupil texture, you need to switch the Properties panel > Material > Settings > Shadow Mode to None.


Some of my model doesnt render I am sure this is just something stupid. The main model doesn't render, just the eyes and the beard for some reason!

I took a look at your blend and it is because when you added the beard (Particle system) you told blender to hide the model.

Just check this box.


Bevel modifier doesn't do anything If I try to apply Bevel modifier to Object - nothing happens, changing Amount, Segments.. Only "Absolute" Width type actually adds tiny bevel but I can't change neither the Amount, only Segments.
If I try to do it manually, by selecting all and CTRL+B it bevels all the edges. I would want it to act like Bevel Modifier. What could be fix for Bevel Modifier, or how to set the CTRL+B to bevel only Edges like Bevel modifier would do, sharp edges.

Clamp Overlap option prevent two bevels overlap each other. Basically it clamps bevel width by the shortest distance between two beveling edges:

If disabling Clamp Overlap reveals bevels, try to remove vertexes that's close to each other.
Select all - press M ⇾ By distance may help


Rotating an edge around another without stretching edges How do I go about rotating an edge around another while keeping all edge lengths the same?

On the included screenshot, I'd like to move the orange edge freely around the white edge without any edges changing lengths. So, the white edge should simply be the pivot.

In the Pivot Point menu, select Active Element, then do the rotation (around the Y axis in this case, so R/Y)

The Active Element is the last selected element, it appears in white instead of yellow.


Camera View Coordinates and Z-depth values In my understanding the z-coordinate of the camera's view looks at the observer, away from the image plane. This is consistent with the camera angles of (0, 0, 0)
while the camera looks down and the camera's z-axis points in the same direction
as the global z-axis.

In the rendered image window, when I click on a point in the image, I am
getting a positive z-coordinate for an object in front of the camera. Should that
not be negative?

The Local Axis for the camera is as you describe: Negative Z is the direction the camera is looking at (the camera local axis is independent of the global axis, and might not be aligned to the global axis at all).

If you move the camera using positive values on it's local Z axis , the camera moves back (away from wherever it is pointing at)

The local Z Axis for the camera and and Z-Depth on the image created by the camera are no the same "Z".

The Z-Depth values (or  Z-pass) are always in positive numbers, they represents the absolute distance from the camera to geometry in the scene for every pixel of the image. The camera is the 0 on the scale and the units used for its values are the working units set for the scene (blender units, meters, cm, inches, etc) The minimum and maximum value are clipped according to the camera's start and end clip distances.

Z Depth does not give you any information on the coordinates of the objects on the scene nor does it give you any information on the coordinates or rotation of the camera.

Just to clarify... Z-Depth values are positive values away from the camera (in its negative local Z axis...) and all of these Zs are completely independent of the World's Z axis.


Freestyle line sorting not working? What am I doing wrong? I can not get the sorting lines work. For the second set of lines, the settings are identical, except for the other line color.

I used two sets of lines in the example above, and for sorting work only one is needed. If there are more than one set, then the first is superimposed on the second, and so on.

So I changed colors with a modifier (I previously created two groups of objects and each created its own set of lines) and the sorting, finally, started to work as expected :)


How to call invoke_popup? I just can't figure out how to create a custom popup which can receive data etc. What I want to do is let the user select one of the currently selected UV-layers and just hand that back to me. So I created a class like this:

class UVLayerPrompt(Operator):
    """
    Prompts the user for the uv-layer he wishes to select for each object
    """
    bl_idname = "mhmu.uvprompt"
    bl_label = "Choose the uv-layer"

    uv_layerPos = 0
    def execute(self, context):
        print('HI')
    def invoke(self, context, event):
        self.layout.template_list("UI_UL_list", #is this correct? I guess not...
            list_id="UVLayer_LIST", # I guess yes
            dataptr=context.object.data, # my guess: yes
            propname="uv_textures", # yes?
            active_dataptr=context.scene, # I could use some other location, okay
            active_propname="uv_layerPos") # I have to assign a IntegerProperty to this, right?
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

after I registered my class etc.

  when I call window_manager.invoke_popup(UVLayerPrompt) then it says:

  TypeError: WindowManager.invoke_popup(): error with argument 1, "operator" -  >Function.operator expected a Operator type, not OrderedMeta

I realized that this is not correct. Still I don't know how to react with the context (how do I popup a new instance? with python code ofc?, how do I read the chosen value from that?)

EDIT: I will try to clarify my question: I have an export script that may export several objects. For each of these objects I want to ask the user in a responsive way which uv-texture he wants to be exported. Only one layer per object should be possible and of course I have to call the popup within my script (NOT by the user) and after it run I have to know the result of it.

How far have I gotten with this by now? Using the answer below me I realized that I should use a script that is 'INTERNAL'. Secondly I think I now finally understand how Operators are supposed to work.

I figured out how to do it: if you want to call a script from inside a script you have to call bpy.ops.operator.name('INVOKE_DEFAULT')

invoke_props_dialog(...) seems more appropriate here. It opens a popup with an OK button, and the operator's execute() method will only be called if the user clicks this button. (The other popup types execute on every property change.)

A dynamic EnumProperty is populated automatically with all UV textures of the current object (see uvtex_items callback). It is added to the dialog as expanded prop(...), remove expand=True if you want a dropdown list instead.

invoke_* require an operator instance (object), not an operator class (type). You usually pass self, which is a reference to the operator instance:

import bpy

def uvtex_items(self, context):
    return [(t.name, t.name, t.name) for t in context.object.data.uv_textures]

class SimpleOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.simple_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Object Operator"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    uvtex = bpy.props.EnumProperty(items=uvtex_items)

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return (context.object is not None and
                context.object.type == 'MESH' and
                len(context.object.data.uv_textures) > 0)

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        return context.window_manager.invoke_props_dialog(self)

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        col = layout.column()
        col.prop(self, "uvtex", expand=True)

    def execute(self, context):
        self.report({'INFO'}, self.uvtex)
        return {'FINISHED'}

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Paste the code into Text Editor and Run Script. Then move your mouse over 3D View, hit Spacebar, search for Simple and run the Simple Object Operator.


What are  and how to get their values? I'm currently trying to store API and their values into a .json. and as i'm browsing through blender API sometimes instead of having the value, We can get a <bpy_struct> object
For example
C.object.bl_rna.properties["color"] # or through C.object.bl_rna.properties.items()

will get me <bpy_struct, FloatProperty("color") at 0x00007FF6C4A67210>
What is this Type?
How is it used? How can I get it's value instead?

Property definitions saved in blender rna.
When we define a prop with bpy.props the methods are akin to python's property method, extended to save the details in the blend files rna.  (From the geneticists mumbo jumbo)
All the things we define in the definition funcion, in this case FloatVectorProperty are stored here.  The value when set is stored as a custom property in the file.
Even tho we don't need to define Object.color it's very, very similar to  as if we defined
>>> from bpy.props import FloatVectorProperty
>>> bpy.types.Object.xcolor = FloatVectorProperty(
...         size=4,
...         default=(1, 1, 1, 1),
...         )

>>> C.object.bl_rna.properties['xcolor']
<bpy_struct, FloatProperty("xcolor") at 0x7fa4ee68d288>

Which looks just like
>>> C.object.bl_rna.properties["color"]
<bpy_struct, FloatProperty("color") at 0xc110c20>

Instance value
>>> C.object.color
bpy.data.objects['Cube.004'].color

>>> C.object.color[:]
(1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0)

Some defaults.
>>> C.object.bl_rna.properties["color"].default
0.0

>>> C.object.bl_rna.properties["color"].array_length
4

The array's default value
>>> C.object.bl_rna.properties['color'].default_array
<bpy_float[4], FloatProperty.default_array>

>>> C.object.bl_rna.properties['color'].default_array[:]
(1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0)


Why faces have a dark texture? Already recalculated normals When I imported this model into Unity a few parts of the model seem to be inside out. (the wings and the left engine)

I opened the model in blender, selected the relevant components, and recalculated normals. Now nothing is inside out.

However you can see that those parts are now really dark. And I can't fix this.

The problem itself can be seen in blender as dark faces. Similar to the problem seen when faces are inverted.

I have already tried:

recalculating normals on all components (the rest are unchanged)
checking that the normals actually ARE facing outwards by showing the weights of the normal
checking that both parts share the same material

why are these faces darker? how can I fix it?

Since you can't upload your model, I will try to point out the problems with your plane based on your screenshots. As stated in the comments, your issue is caused by flipped normals. You also have overlaying geometry, that can be caused by

duplication of the object at the exact same spot of the original mesh
duplication of all faces "inside" (in Editmode) of the objects

One of the objects has normals facing inwards, the other object faces outward. That explains why the normals are consistent, but look inconsistent. Find the Object or faces that point inwards (dark blue) and delete them or move them to another layer.

There were also some additional issues with your model, they are not part of the question but I want to point them out anyways.

faulty mirror modifier: (sorry for the typo in the screenshot)
the mirror axis is off, you have intersecting geometry on your Y-axis
there are several places with poor topology. I would suggest you to remodel parts of the object with cleaner topology. I hope you didn't pay too much for this model, its quality isn't very good.

if you want me to take a closer look, send the file to ian.smith[ätt]posteo[dott]de


"Holdout"-alike Effect Strip for Frames in the VSE? Is there a way or a workaround to omit certain Frames in the VSE completely while rendering out a final video from the Sequencer? That would be even handy for Playback in the VSE.

When I want the compositor to not render out something (but have an alpha value of 100% appear at certain places resulting in not being visible), I can use a Holdout Shader to achieve this.

Is there something similar for the VSE like an "Holdout" Effect Strip that will basically just skip all the frames including the Audio that are covered by this Effect Strip? I don't mean being rendered transparent, but omitted completely.

It would basically allow me to cut out parts of my Video where I have lots of timed strips that have to stay in place because of the timing with multiple cameras/sound files being all used together. And I have many markers already set up properly at certain time positions after the range I want to be skipped/not rendered that should stay in sync with my footage, so I think just "deleting" all strips from all channels in this range using soft or hard cuts won't be an option here.

Using a Speed effect strip with a very high multiply value doesn't work here as it doesn't really skip frames and doesn't reduce the final amount of frames to be rendered while my remaining strips stay in their position at the timeline.

To make it more obvious with an example: I want to skip the muted and selected strips in my resulting render at around 2:30 to 3:20 with a Holdout Strip I place above them:

But I want to keep my markers at their exact positions and I need these strips all at their relative positions so that my sync between the multiple cameras and audio files won't be lost. They are already aligned perfectly fine in time so far and therefore start at different positions.

I just want these frames where the (fake) Holdout Strip is placed to be omitted while rendering. The benefit would be that I can easily adjust this Effect Strips position even though while there might be some cuts "underneath" already.

Why not just place all of your strips into a meta strip (or VSE sub scene) then trim a hole in that strip. Your editing will stay in place but the animation will skip it upon rendering. To undo the trim simply un-meta the strip.


white lines in edit mode I am new to blender and I love it.
This model now for some reason has white dashed lines all over it and some solid black lines too. I know the black lines are supposed to be there but i have no idea how the other lines got there, I must have clicked something but have no idea what i have done. Please help

Your edges are marked as Sharp. In the "T" menu, go to Shading/UV, select all edges (A), then click Smooth.


Setting custom normals without customdata_custom_splitnormals_add() operator? I'm trying to make my scripts more low-level and less operator-dependent. One thing that I haven't been able to figure out is this one:

me.use_auto_smooth = True
bpy.ops.mesh.customdata_custom_splitnormals_add()
me.normals_split_custom_set(no_array)

Is there any way to do it without the operator? If so, what's the corresponding low-level code?

Turns out you don't need the operator at all and I was getting funky results because I had a remove_doubles operation further down the pipeline.

Working example code:

no_array = []
for face in me.polygons:
    for vertex_index in face.vertices:
        no_array.append(mesh_verts[vertex_index][3:6])
    face.use_smooth = True
if use_custom_normals:
    me.use_auto_smooth = True
    me.normals_split_custom_set(no_array)


Transferring materials made in Cycles Render to Blender Game Engine I have a question about importing objects painted in cycles render to a blender game engine file.

I've just finished my model and want to put it in a game. I textured, rigged and animated it in the cycles render. When I switch to the blender game engine, everything works fine, but my model's textures and material didn't transfer over. Do I have to texture it again in blender's game engine or can I just import the model into a blender game engine file?

Cycles and the BGE don't share the same (or even remotely similar) material systems, and the materials are not transferable between engines. That means you will have to create a new material when switching engines. However, if you have any image textures or any other non-procedural data you can reuse them, you will just have to set up the materials to use the texture.


Boolean union creates a hole I am trying to create a union of the following meshes:

However, the result has a hole in the geometry. The hole disappears if I nudge one of the objects a little.

What I've tried:

Checking that the normals are oriented properly
Triangulating
Degenerate dissolve
Subdividing
Making sure the geometry is water-tight (I think it is)

The meshes are generated algorithmically, and this only happens some times. Since the entire process will be done in a script, I'm hoping for a general solution that doesn't require manual tweaking.

Thank you!

Here is the blend file:

There should be a slight difference in dimensions on the Z axis which causes boolean to give an unexpected result. Try to scale the cube.001 very little on Z, it will work then:


Why isn't my mesh appearing in the viewport? I've been working on a detailed character model for some time. I finished the retopology, hid the sculpt, and now I can't seem to reveal the sculpt again in either object or edit mode (selecting the object from the outliner and hitting tab).

I took a look at my item menu and the sculpt's location and scale look right.

However, when I append the sculpt object into an empty .blend file, it's completely visible.

What's causing this? Thanks in advance!

Check visibility toggle in the Outliner:

For the object itself and the collection, to which that object belongs to.
Also check these settings in object properties


Why won't smoke appear? Been trying to get smoke to appear on my "plane" object, but it won't seem to emit on that or any other object.  What am I missing in my settings? Not sure if there are changes to the newest version of Blender, as most tutorials I've been watching are for older versions.

I see in the file that you have more than one smoke emitting objects, there's a separate cylinder under the wheel

Try to

enable for the domain both "adaptive domain" and "high resolution" (with "show high resolution" to see it in the viewport)

set lower density for all the smoke objects, since they are pretty dense (unapplied screw modifier helps in this respect) in the example below I also changed smoke color to see better...

Since smoke simulation is a difficult topic in itself, I suggest to experiment with a simpler geometry before, and since your scene has complex geometry, you could also "fake" the result emitting smoke from a simpler (but invisible) object, in the end.

Remember, CG you see in the movies is very much about cheating...


Apply Rotation on downloaded, appended eye model resets original rotation and it's driving me crazy I’ve downloaded a very simple eyeball with a jpeg texture, and when appending to a file I am unable to apply the correction rotation. When I apply, the eyeball flips exactly 180 degrees. Thus I am unable to use it in any eye socket of a character. Interestingly, it flips 180 degrees on either the x or z axis to the exact same position (whereas the rotation is really only on the x axis). I can apply scale and location, but not rotation.
File is linked please help. I’m sure it’s so simple. thank you
single eye file

It has to do with your Texture Coordinate and Image Texture settings, choose the UV output socket instead of Generated and choose Flat instead of Sphere. Choosing Generated makes the pupil come back to front when you apply the rotation, which is not what you want:

Or you can put a Mapping node between these 2 nodes and play with the rotation values.


Fill particles in a container I have tried everything to fill an invisible container with particles but the particles just seems to sinks to the bottom and they don't fill the container. I am trying to create something like in the video below how balls take the shape and fill up the space i want to create something like this. Please help.

Edit : have also tried the molecular script but that doesn't seem to work as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgUipRRin0k&t=16s

You can use rigid body physics to simulate the particles filling a containing mesh. This is a different approach from using the particle system.

1) Create the container geometry. Make sure there is an opening for the particles to enter.

2) Create the particles to fill the container. The particles can be created by add a single sphere to the scene. Then using 3 array modifiers to generate the collection of spheres. Apply the modifiers. (see explaination) Then, in edit mode partitioning the mesh using  P> Selection to separate the selection into a new object (see explanation ) When done, you should have the container and particles which will fill it.

3) Add a solid body physics to the container. Duplicate the settings shown here. The default settings are modified do the container will hold something, but not move during the simulation. Also, the mesh is used to contain the particles.

4) Apply solid body physics to a single sphere. The default settings are modified to allow the spheres to move and to ensure that the sphere stop moving relatively quickly once in the container.

5) Copy the physics settings to all of the spheres. Select all of the spheres, deselect the sphere with physics, reselect it last so it is the active object. Then use the physics toolbar to apply the physics to all selected objects. (see explanation

6) Set the final timestep for the simulation to 100.

7) The default physics settings may not get the desired results. Modify the physics setting for higher accuracy. Depending on the number of particles, it might be necessary to tradeoff accuracy for simulation time by decreasing the number of iterations and steps. Once done, press 'Bake All Dynamics'. It may take several minutes to complete the simulation. The progress bar in the info bar will show the progress in the simulation. Once done, the simulation that was used in the animation will be completed.

8) If the simulation is settled down on the last frame, this is a reasonable approximation of the filling in the container.

An example with an alternative container.

This solution can be used for any shape container. More particles can be used, the simulation times will be higher with more particles.

Blend file -


Why is my render taking so long? My interior is rendering almost two hours and it shows only 2 samples that have been rendered. I don't quite know how to select properly those render settings to make good quality interior scene.

Here's what I've done:
samples: 2600
resolution: 1920x1080 at 50%
frame rate: 24

Well, there's isn't really a magic button you can press to make your renders finish and clean up faster, but here are a few points that may help, or may not.

Hardware

The main thing that comes to mind is your hardware. If you don't have somewhat nice hardware, you aren't going to get very far.

For the built in cycles renderer, it is good to have a NVidia GPU with CUDA (if you have a nvidia card, learn to setup cuda here). This is much faster than the normal CPU rendering. Having a decent CPU is also good if you don't have a GPU

Scene

Another factor, is going to be your scene. It can really be a lot of things.

Since you said you where doing an interior, that fact that the light will be bouncing around more will slow down your render. If you have complex materials, naturally, it will slow down your render. If you have lots of lights, that can do it also.

There's really lots of stuff it can be. Without knowing more about your system and scene, it's really hard to say.

Render Settings

Another big factor to consider are your render settings. Number of light bounces, number of samples, and resolution. High light samples are commonly seen as being the source of lengthy render times, but resolution is another significant factor. For a scene I was rendering at 1920x1080, it was taking around 5 minutes per frame. I reduced the resolution to 1280x720, and it reduced the time it took to render each frame to 30 seconds. Consider reducing your resolution if where you share/use the file doesn't use or need the extra pixels.

This article should give you a few extra pointers on what you can do to speed up cycles.

And for Blender Internal, this article could help out a bit also.


Attaching Custom Data to the blend file, scene, objects I see many examples that attach custom properties to objects eg.

bpy.types.Object.mytype = bpy.props.StringProperty()

What are the other useful places to put custom properties. In particular I want to store a global to the blend file itself?

 len(dir(bpy.types)) # -> 3282!

I see there is a type BlendData

Only ID types, Bones and PoseBones support properties:

  Custom properties can be added to any subclass of an ID, Bone and PoseBone.

http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_70_release/bpy.props.html

The only type with just a single instance is bpy.types.WindowManager, but its properties aren't serialized to .blend.


How to export a scene to Nuke? How to export animated camera (and basic geometry of scene) from Blender to Nuke?

For example I want to create a ship in the ocean in Blender and to add a people to the ship , using Nuke. I definitely need to add people to the ship in Nuke, not in Blender.

How to transfer animated camera (and the scene) from Blender to Nuke ? In scene I need only basic geometry, (texture, etc. not important).

I tried to use FBX, 6.1 ascii version of the exporter (thanks to @cegaton for help), but in this case, the camera was looking in the wrong direction. In Nuke, in the camera settings I turned on "Compute rotation", then the camera began to look almost in the right direction, but still wrong.

For the test, I used a simple scene with an animated cube and animated camera.
https://youtu.be/RMTmptv-Suc - VIDEO TEST (Blender and Nuke)

First Frame in Blender and Nuke:

Use the FBX import-export plugin. Try to export the scene as FBX 6.1 ASCII - this should work immediately. Go to File > Export > FBX.

Load it into Nuke via ReadGeo and Camera Nodes and plug both into a Scene Node. Don't forget to to enable compute rotation in the camera property panel.


Material turns black through Glass material (Internal) I am using this Glass material (http://www.blender-materials.com/material/glass-cg001) for this model here.

The thing is, the yellow color of the Diffuse material on the base of the model turns black when rendered:

I have little to no experience in designing materials in Blender Internal. How do I go about fixing this?

To enable shadows from objects with transparency you need to enable Receive Transparent in Shadow section in material tab.


How do I get rid of this orange selection box? All i did was hit cntrl+b... Please help!

Right Click out of it, or just do  Ctrl+ Alt+ B...


Render layers different from viewport I just made a simple scene to test render layers, but they're different from the Cycles viewport (black actually).
https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/WLaKYGzj

This is because some objects are not set to be rendered:
In layer.001:

In layer.002:


Is there a way to bake an array animation? I have an object with an array modifier. I animate this array, using empty as “object offset” (like in this tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COCFd_BKqLw ).

Is there a way to bake an array animation (in order to export it to another program later)? I need to save this animation, without the array modifer, which is supported only by Blender.

Thank you in advance!

If the software you want to export it to supports alembic (i know for example that fusion does), you can use this fileformat. It was just added to Blender so it only works in the newest Versions. Exporting it in Blender and importing it again works fine and it bakes the animation to mesh cache (In Blender it then uses the mesh cache modifier). This is also how you can export fluid simulations for example.

Just choose File - Export: alembic (.abc) and configure the options (especially the end frame)


How does the Turbulence Force Field work? I am doing a series of experiments with smoke & fire. I found a blend file that uses the Turbulence force field in a fire simulation. During the simulation the force field is moved along the Z-axis starting below the fire and ending above the fire.

How does the turbulence force field work exactly and what is the impact of the various settings ? There is not much info in the manual and I cannot find adequate tutorials.

A force field is a vector field, meaning at every point in space it defines a vector based on some vector-valued function.  In the case of a force field, the vectors represent forces pushing the particles around.   In other words, at each frame the force field exerts a force on every particle dependant on the particle's position.

What differs between the different force fields is the vector function they are based on.  For a turbulence field it uses some noise pattern (Perlin, I think), creating random "turbulent" particle movement.  Most of the settings for the force field (the ones that change when you change the force field type) modify this noise pattern.

TL;DR: The turbulence force field pushes particles around based on their position in a 3D noise.

Here's a rough explanation of the key settings:

Strength controls the amount of force the field exerts on the particles.  Note that this is a multiplier to the strength given by the noise texture so it' actually a maximum value since the noise gives values from 0 to 1.
Size is the scale of the noise texture.  Larger values (compared to the scale of your scene) will make the particles move in bigger masses, while small values will produce more chaotic movement.
Noise is the amount distortion applied to the noise texture.  Higher values will make the particle movement tighter and more erratic.
Falloff - Type (Sphere/Tube/Cone) changes the shape of the falloff zone.
Falloff - Power changes the polynomial power, essentially the steepness, of the falloff.  A value of 0 here means no falloff, meaning all particles are affected by the force field equally no matter their relation to it.
Falloff - Minimum/Maximum changes the start and end point of the falloff curve.  The force field is in full effect for all particles closer than the minimum and does not effect particles beyond the maximum at all.


How to keep mesh exactly as it was after a simple modifier when I join it up with another object I'm a newbie to blender so sorry if this is a simple question.

I took a cylinder and 2 half spheres joined them and then bridged edge loops. I need something that is thinner in the middle so then I used an add modify / stretch which gave me the form I desired in the middle part, but squished the spherical caps. I removed them and I'm trying to attach new half-spherical surfaces back. The problem is that the moment I join them the stretch is re-applied again and destroys both the spherical cap and the middle part.

How can I make the modifier not re-apply after join? Thanks.

PS I cant upload a picture for some reason :(

Without an image it's hard to guess which form you exactly want to achieve, but if you would like to make the cylindrical part thinner I would add some loop cuts and shrink them to your liking.


Animating object from speed data in python This is the deal now...I have a speed data in a .DAT file; For example lets say the file looks like this

0.111
1.11
2.22
3.33
4.555
1.111
2.22
10.11

What this data represents is the instantaneous speed in m/s of a certain object, these data intervals are in 10 mil-second difference that means that we get the speed of the object in every 10 mil-second interval. So I was wondering on how I will convert this to a motion on an empty in blender using python. Any help or ideas in the comment is also more than welcome.

Integrate the velocity curve.

Please note: Am currently working on an addon that uses 3rd party addons scipy (to integrate here) and matplotlib to plot.

Displacement is the integration of the velocity curve.

Instead of 10ms between points (would need frame rate of 100fps for a frame each) have spread the velocity across the scene frame range. dt is how many frames between points.

Scipy.integrate.cumtrapz is used to integrate the velocity list, setting initial displacement to zero.  This is basically the sum of the area of each trapezium. Remember have bloated out the time scale, for strictly having  10ms between readings

t = np.linspace(0, len(v) * 10 / 1000, len(v))
s = integrate.cumtrapz(v, t, initial=0)

and the frame for 10ms (where fps = 24) can use the utility method.

>>> bpy.utils.time_to_frame(10 / 1000)
0.24

Result of Matplotlib.pyplot

Displacement in blue, velocity (scaled by frames per point (dt)) in red

The resulting fcurve.

Test script maps the displacement to the frame range, considering velocity as blend units per frame, rather than meters per second.

import bpy
import numpy as np
from scipy import integrate

plot = False

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
ob = context.object
ob.animation_data_create()
ad = ob.animation_data
action = ad.action or bpy.data.actions.new("Displacement")
ad.action = action

v = np.array(
    (
        0.111,
        1.11,
        2.22,
        3.33,
        4.555,
        1.111,
        2.22,
        10.11,
    )
)

t = np.linspace(
    scene.frame_start,
    scene.frame_end,
    len(v))
dt = t[1] - t[0]
s = integrate.cumtrapz(v, t, initial=0)
if plot:
    from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
    plt.plot(t, s)
    plt.plot(t, dt * v)
    plt.savefig("disp.png")
    plt.show()
# ravelled list of frame, value keyframes
kfs = np.empty((v.size + t.size,), dtype=t.dtype)
kfs[0::2] = t
kfs[1::2] = s
# move in x location
fc = action.fcurves.find("location")
# remove if exists
if fc:
    action.fcurves.remove(fc)
fc = action.fcurves.new("location", index=0)
fc.keyframe_points.add(len(v))
fc.keyframe_points.foreach_set("co", kfs)
# add linear velocity points before and after
kfs = np.insert(kfs, 0, (-dt, -v[0]))
kfs = np.append(kfs, (scene.frame_end + dt, s[-1] + v[-1]))
# set handles based on before / after
fc.keyframe_points.foreach_set("handle_left", kfs[:-2])
fc.keyframe_points.foreach_set("handle_right", kfs[2:])


Why does image texture used in displace modifier not give the correct height? I have got a custom heightmap-loader in Java, which converts each pixel of a Heightmap into a coordinate between 0 and 255, obviously with 255 being white and 0 being black.

The problem is, blender doesn't quite convert it the same.

Here's my rendering the heightmap with my own loader:

And here is the one created by blender:

Is it generally the same, White = up, black = down - But there are quite a lot of subtle differences. Certain places are higher, certain places are lower. And it generally is an incorrect mess.

To create the heightmap, I am following this tutorial. To sum it up, I create an image via a plane and use the Displace tool.

I just want an obj model which is 512 coordinates in size (ranging from 0 to 512) and has the same height as my custom generator, which simply sets the height directly to the amount of red on the heightmap at a certain coordinate.

And yes, the heightmap is black-and-white. So it doesn't matter if I get the red, green, or blue on the Heightmap, it'll be the same.

Why is it incorrect? What can I do to make it look exactly the same?

First of all make sure that the displace modifier's texture is mapped to the correct coordinates for your object (usually UV coordinates).

Now on to the settings on the display modifier.

The displace modifier will deform the the object based on the light/dark values of the image indeed. Using the default values, it will raise up the white parts (255) of the texture to 0.5 units and sink the dark values (0) to -0.5 and keep the mid-grey values at 0 in the Z axis. To alter the scale, change the Strength value to meet your needs. To make the dark values fall at 0 on the Z axis put the midlevel at 0.


Strengthen normal (bump) map in Blender Internal rendering engine? Is there a way to do this in Blender Internal rendering engine with a normal map already set up and good to go? Specifically when the model has nodes enabled.

Main control is the Normal value in the Geometry section of the influence tab in the texture properties panel. Other than that, you can play with the contrast control of the texture slot.


Custom arduino controller in blender I have a very basic setup with a potentiometer hooked up to my Arduino analog 0 pin with it spamming output to the serial monitor.
I am attempting to get the output in blender to match the arduino output by using the following code:

from time import sleep as wait
import serial

ser = serial.Serial("COM4",9600)
    while 1==1:
    wait(1)
    print(ser.readline())

This code freezes the main window and also outputs whatever the initial value for the potentiometer was despite rotating it so the output gets stuck outputting something like

b'493\r\n'
b'493\r\n'
b'493\r\n'

I realise that these issues are mainly due to the fact that my loop is endless but I'm not really sure how to create a coroutine in python and all the tutorials I've tried either don't work or require extra modules. I'd also like to know why it is outputting differently from the arduino serial monitor and how I can solve that.

This is the arduino code/output

void setup() {
 Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  Serial.println(analogRead(0));
}

574
576
578

You're reading binary data from the serial port, so that is why you have a bytes string (indicated by the b'' style of quoting). To convert it to a string, use

as_bytes = ser.readline()
line = as_bytes.decode('utf-8')

To get a repeated call to a "loop" function, it's easiest to start a modal operator with a high-frequency timer.

import bpy

class SERIAL_OT_arduino_read(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "serial.arduino_read"
    bl_label = "Read From Arduino"

    def execute(self, context):
        as_bytes = self.ser.readline()
        line = as_bytes.decode('utf-8').strip()
        print('Serial line:', line)

        return {'FINISHED'}

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if event.type == 'TIMER':
            self.execute(context)
        elif event.type == 'LEFTMOUSE':  # Confirm
            self._finish()
            return {'FINISHED'}
        elif event.type in ('RIGHTMOUSE', 'ESC'):  # Cancel
            self._finish()
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        self.ser = serial.Serial("COM4", 9600)
        self.timer = context.window_manager.event_timer_add(0.01, context.window)
        context.window_manager.modal_handler_add(self)
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

    def _finish(self):
        context.window_manager.event_timer_remove(self.timer)

bpy.utils.register_class(SERIAL_OT_arduino_read)

# test call
bpy.ops.serial.arduino_read('INVOKE_DEFAULT')

This will read the serial port approximately 100x per second. Blender can still be used while this operator is running.

I haven't tested this code, just copied parts of the documentation and mixed it with your code.


Blender 2.8 : Black faces when baking ambient occlusion I have a high poly crater that I'd want to make it into a low poly object.

This is my low poly model for the crater.

When I try to bake the ambient occlusion, there are solid black faces popping on my uv map.

This is the result:

I've tried many things but without success... How do you get rid of those black faces?

Well, hidden object may affects on baking. To solve this issue, do following. Enable render and viewport toggles in Outliner in Filter menu:

then make your object invisible in render and viewport, by pressing on camera and monitor icons:


Problems Boolean Modifier Blender 2.8 I have some problems with booleam modifier. I have a cube and a mesh (two cylinders unified) and I want to apply a difference. The result I hope is to maintain the cube but with a hole with the cylinders shape but it doesn't work. I wish you could help me!. Thank you!!
Before apply the modifier

After apply the modifier

Booleans don't always work perfectly based on the geometry they are told to "cut" into. I hope there's not a specific reason you need the cylinder to be exactly there, because moving it a VERY small amount on the y axis before applying made it work for me. See below:


Shape Keys - opening the mouth Any advice on the best way of opening the mouth using Proportional Editing or rotating the bottom jaw from the pivot point/3D cursor? It's the latter I'm trying to achieve. Sadly, the jaw always looks a bit too wooden, like a ventriloquist dummy's.

Thanks

From my comment

  Bones/Joints are much better suited for movement which rotates around a pivot point, namely the eyelids and the jaw.
  The Jaw will interpolate strangely between open and closed if it is just shifting between a shapekey. A bone would ensure a rotation similiar to the real world jaw bone.
  Shapekeys are best suited for the eyebrows, mouthcorners and and other movements which rely more on muscle contractions instead of mechanical relations.

Edit: To understand the images illustrating this post, you must note, that I have used a custom weight paint range. Every vertex weight above 0.000001 looks similiar to the standard weight settings. However, a weight of 0.0 is set to white. I did this to be able to tell the difference between a very small weight (e.g. 0.00001) and actually no weights, which is not possible with the standard mapping of blue.

Weight Painting the Jaw

Make sure all of your head geometry is associated with the head bone.
Add the jaw bone, make sure that

there is a vertex group named exactly like the jaw bone
the jaw bone has deform enabled
the jaw bone is part of the armature used by the the mesh (via the armature modifier)
your geometry is not unnecessarily dense (it seemed you have applied the subsurf modifier, this makes the process very difficult. I would unsubsurf the model 1 step with the decimate modifier.)
in weight paint mode, Auto-Normalize is checked

Lock all groups except for the head and jaw vertex group.
Roughly paint the jaw to the jaw bone.

Now open the jaw with the bone and make sure the complete jaw is fully assigned to the jaw bone.

Now choose the the mix brush and paint weights of approximately 0.5 on the corners of the mouth. Choose other quantized weight for other areas if needed. Roughly block out the correct shape. You can raise the mouth corners by adding weights to the head vertex group and you can lower them, by adding weights to the jaw group.

Using the blur brush smooth the area. Then use the add brush with a very fine Strength to shift single vertices untill the desired shape is reached.

Image shows the head's weight group.


faces semi-transparent in edit mode, revealing background plane working on the hood of a car, I've been looking through the similar kind of questions here, couldn't find something that resembles my question.
So, how can I make faces a bit transparent (in solid view) in order to easily see the image background plane. It makes me kind of like forced to delete only the faces in order to see what I'm working with. (switching to wireframe view hides the plane)  Is there a easier way? Somewhere in the display mesh settings?

Thanks / Dan

You don't need to have your reference image as a plane, you can also have it as a background which is visible in wireframe mode too. To do so you have to press N to open up the properties and then you have to scroll down to 'Background Images'. Check the box, click 'Add Image' and open up your Image. From there on you can modify the image the way you want like changing it's opacity or making it only visible from top view.

Another way of doing this is to change the maximum drawing type of your car hood to 'Wire' in the 'Object' tab (orange cube, then scroll down to display). This makes only the car hood appear in wire mod and everything else is in the mode you want e. g. Textured, so you can see through your hood but you can still see your background plane textured.


Rendered aspect ratio appears stretched even at 1:1 I have the render aspect ratio set to 1:1 under the 'Output properties' tab.

And yet my scene is still coming out stretched like this

I also noticed that the width of the render is much wider than the output resolution. What else is affecting the aspect ratio/resolution? Thank you.
**I have figured it out. The aspect ratio in the image editor was different. I put it to 1:1 there and it fixed it.


Texturing a window frame I would like to texture a window frame that is part of a wall. Whenever I try texturing the window frame the wall gets textured with it. I want to texture the window frame without texturing the wall. I tried:

Selecting the window frame.
Clicking the + icon at the right side of the material properties.
Here is where I get stuck: I cannot give the new material a color. I would have to click the New button to do that but that is not mentioned in the solution.

I am using Blender version 2.82a. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

You will have to create two materials (one for you wall, and one for the window frame). Select the window frame and create the new window frame material (click +, then click Add new material). Then, click Assign to assign that new material to the window sill.


Blender's 2.7 Texture View in Blender 2.8 - How do I remove all the shadows? I'm not very good with Blender so please bear with me. I use Blender to create models for a game that I'm working on. The game doesn't have any light sources so all the shadows and highlights are drawn directly into the textures. In Blender 2.7 there was a "texture view" button which showed my 3d model and the texture on top of it without any sort of lights or shadows. I understand that in Blender 2.8 this has to be done via the node editor where you create a material which you then apply to your object and by using Dev Look you can achieve the same result. I've done that and it's almost there, but I still have some soft shadows on my characters such as around his chin, armpits and so forth. What am I doing wrong? Thank you!

You can use the Workbench engine for this purpose. In the render tab set lighting to Flat and color to Texture.


How to merge/morph/transform an object into another object in Blender? The letter "A" is walking from left to right and slowly evolves into the letter "B".

How is this done?

Here's my search process:

"Blender merge one rig into another"
returned articles on how to combine various armatures.
"Morph blender character in timeline" returned a beautiful answer merging one object smoothly into another while animating but I need one object to 'disappear' completely into the other object over time.
"How to transform a moving object into another form in blender" returns searches about copying and duplicating objects.
"How to merge  two moving objects in blender" returns articles on combining objects into a single object, like building a Transformer.

Most reference shape keys and target morphs, but will these work with complex objects? Or simple objects only?

e.g. Could a white rabbit run across a field and change into a blue duck?

I am new to Blender, so if I'm not asking the right question or using the right terms or if there's a better way to ask this question, I'd be happy to be pointed in the right direction.

Took a while, but found the answer watching an Olav3D Tutorial on Transformation Animations:

Basic Steps:

Add two objects (Object A [Default Cube] and Object B [Suzanne])
Add shrinkwrap modifier to Suzanne, select target--> Default Cube
Apply shrinkwrap modifier as shape key
In Object Data Properties Panel, edit shrinkwrap shape key: Increase shrinkwrap value to 1.0 (this shrinks it down to default cube size)
Click "i" to insert keyframe
Go to frame 100
Decrease shrinkwrap to zero
Click "i" to insert another keyframe
Set up camera and add materials, background, and lighting to taste
Edit render output settings (resolution quality, render samples, etc) to taste
If adding a material to Suzanne, add it to the default cube as well
Change render end frame to 130
Change file format output from PNG to AVI JPEG
Set render output quality to 100%
Render animation and voila! We're done, we successfully transformed(merged/morphed) Object-A into Object-B along the timeline.

Final Result (Better late than never!)


Import script as a module I have two files in a directory: "render.py" and "functions.py". From blender I use the text editor to run the "render.py" but the question is how to import "functions.py" to the file. This code fails.

import functions

How can I import in blender so that i can use functions from "functions.py" ?

As a textblock

One way to do this is to add functions.py as a Text block. Make sure the Text block has a .py extension and you can import it directly using import functions. Described here: python-is-it-possible-to-import-another-text-block

As a module

Otherwise, add functions.py to scripts/modules/some_name/functions.py, then

from some_name import functions

A slight hack

  There's probably an elegant way to do this, but if your stuck...

The render.py could load functions.py from a given path into a text block named the same:

# render.py #

import bpy

fp = '/home/zeffii/Desktop/functions.py'

def make_functions_local(fp):
    texts = bpy.data.texts
    t = texts.get('functions.py')
    if not t:
        t = texts.new('functions.py')

    with open(fp) as module_file:
        t.from_string(module_file.read())

# trigger it
make_functions_local(fp)

import functions

# your stuff


Is there a way to subdivide a face without using ctrl r and creating unnecessary polygons? Blender beginner here, I want to add some stairs to the front of my model and my initial thought was to subdivide the currently flat staircase face and then translate every second edge running down the face so that it forms a staircase. However the only way I know of doing this is to use ctrl r and loop cut the entire model which would create numerous unnecessary polygons on the rest of the model. My question is: Is there an alternative way for doing this which doesn't create so many polygons, while keeping all of the stairs evenly spaced? Thanks in advance for any help!

Yes you can, by creating "n-gons". Bad for topology, usually but it can be done like this:

in edit mode select just the side edges of the slope then subdivide them enough (use edge tools > subdivide - CTRLE):

you get edges subdivided as you want along their length. Now activate vertex snapping, and in side mode select vertices like this

then (with all those vertices selected) grab them along global Z and snap to their bottom unselected vertices

then do the same but on global Y with their upper unselected vertices

you get this in the end:

of course this is just a simple example...


Extract object properties from animation for each frame I am an absolute beginner, please forgive me if this is a basic question. I am using Blender 2.91.
So I have n objects one in the middle and others surrounding it and the one in the middle is the parent of everything else. I am rotating the middle one using keyframes that results in the others revolving around it. Now I am playing it using python and have a handler for frame change. Here I want to extract object properties like location and position of each object for each frame.
Currently I am using obj.rotation_euler and obj.location to fetch the properties, but I get same values for all frames. (I am doing this inside the handler, so I presume it has the current frame properties in the ‘scene’ param?)
So can you please tell me how to extract these properties per frame.
Note, I need to do some mathematical calculation with the values , if that makes any difference.
Will be grateful for any help.
Edit 1 :
def process_obj_location(scene):
if scene.frame_current in frame_read_counter:
    return
print(f"\nProcessing object location for frame : {str(scene.frame_current)}")
# for obj in bpy.context.scene.objects:
for obj in scene.objects:
  if obj.type == 'MESH':
      location = obj.location
      object_instance = scene_objects_dict.get(obj.name, None)
      object_instance.set_location(location)

frame_read_counter.append(scene.frame_current)
print(f"Finished processing locations for frame {str(scene.frame_current)}")

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.append(process_obj_location)

I haven't tested your code, but if everything else works, you will be fine after replacing
location = obj.location

with
location = obj.location @ obj.matrix_world


Blender 2.83 Aling Objects MISSING recently started using Blender 2.83 and just now I noticed the Align Objects is missing.
When I select one object and then the other one and then go Object->Transform from the menu bar at the top,
it's missing. There's no Align Objects as it used to be. Instead, there's "Align Selected to Active", but when I do that the menu that used to pop up in the left down corner with more options is missing. I tried with search and it still doesn't find it. I'm I blind or the tool has been moved to someplace else?

This is a screenshot from my version of blender (2.83). It seems to be here, if it's not, try re-downloading blender:


Edges with mean crease set to 1 are still rounded by a subsurf modifier I am a complete beginner in blender, so my question may turn out to be trivial.

I have a cylinder with some square-ish elements slightly carved into it, as you can see in this screenshot

All of the edges of the squares have a mean crease value of 1:

However when i apply a subsurf modifier the result looks like this

.

What should I do to keep the edges straight when applying the modifier?

Make sure the inner edges are creased at the corners as well. For example:
With only outer edges creased

With inner edges creased

As a bonus, you might want to drop an Edge Split modifier on as well to get your object smooth and remove the stretched shades that creasing and subsurf will produce. Also see How to smooth shade an object while retaining hard edges?.


How do you make grouped objects a focus point without moving the camera? In my blend, I am trying to focus on a pile of doughnuts and then focus on them. While doing this, blurring the background and the side windows without losing some of the detail on them but making them quite blurred. How would I do this? I Have tried making an object a focus but it is not achieving my desired finish. This is a sort of blur I am looking for...

I will atatch my .blend file if you would like to see.

Add an empty and place it where you want to focus.

Set the empty as the focus object and lower the value of he F-stop to reduce the depth of field.

You might need to increase the number of samples to deal with noise.


Timing particle emissions So I'm making a Minecraft sword fight in Blender 2.8. I'm really just doing finishing touches, and I've been trying to make sparks fly from the swords every time they collide/clash with particle emissions. Apparently you can't make the emitter stop emitting once it starts.

I know I could use hundreds of particle systems but that's way too hectic and would get in the way if I change a few animations.

Is there a way I could do this with just one particle system?

It is currently not possible to directly keyframe the emission of particles in Blender.

But you can use a collision object that completely surrounds the emitter object. Make sure that you check the "Kill Particles"-checkbox and then keyframe the Permeability-setting to let particles through the collision object when you want them to "escape".

You can find more info on Collisions in the Blender manual.


Boolean difference operation and bevel problems in blender 2.9 I am very new to blender, please help.
I am trying to make a hole in part 1, by subtracting part 2 from it using boolean difference. But when i do that nothing happens, but in wireframe mode it shows that the boolean happened (see pic).
When boolean difference did not work i made a union and selected all the faces and deleted them, and got the hole. But bevel is not applying on it uniformly after that. I have tried applying the scale, rotation, and transformations, also flipped the normals both on 1 and 2, but nothing worked. (the other holes were made by using part 3, it had similar bevel problem, which was solved by recalculating the normals.)
What are the edges protruding out of the mesh? (the bevel changes its curvature around those two axis, marked by arrows in the pic)

When the difference boolean modifier is applied, delete part 2. You have to do this because the modifier doesn't delete it automatically. So even after having successfully applied the modifier, the hole doesn't appear because it is still filled with the original part.


How can I add more axes of symmetry? I try to make this building, which has 10 pillars. So every pillar has to be connected with another at an angle of 36°. With the normal mirror modifier I would only be able to create 4 pillars.
Also I have no idea how to do this cupola in a proper way. If you have suggestions I would be very grateful.

Another way is to use the "object offset" option in the Array modifier.

Create your pillar/section of the cupola
Apply Rotation & Scale (or move the origin of the cupola to the origin of your scene)

Create an Empty at the origin

Add an Array modifier to your cupola section, select the "Object Offset" checkbox, and choose the Empty

Enter the number of times to repeat your object (in this case I chose 10)

Select the Empty and rotate it 360 degrees divided by the number of items.  In my example, since I want 10 copies, I rotate the empty by 36 degrees (360/10).  If you wanted a half-circle, you could use 180.

If you get weird offsets, make sure the object you want to repeat has no rotation or scale on it.  Then, you can control rotation, scale, and offset via the Empty.


Keyframe not working I'm new to Blender and I don't know what is happening. When I want to do an animation, first I select all the parts of the rig at frame 1 and insert keyframes. Then, I go to frame x and move the parts I want.

My problem is that I'm trying to do the same with the eyes and when I close them, they are closed at every frame, even at the first one. What I am trying to say is that it's not doing the animation, the eyes are closed by default when I do that.

I'm a beginner, so I have not created this model, but the eyes are controlled by these (if that's of any help).

Your keying set is "LocRot", every time you press I or place automatic keyframes, some Loc and Rot keyframes are created, but not scale values.

Your blinking eyes are drived by a scale value, so simply set your keying set as "LocRotScale" and you'll be OK.