How do I get gloss/matte control through an image texture? First ever material I'm trying to make and can't find what I need online. I created a black and white specular map, and a normal map in photoshop.I found out how to invert the normal using the invert node, but am not getting any results with the specular map wherever I put it. I watched chocofur's glossy shader video, but when I plug the image texture to the roughness, it all seems evenly glossy and ignores the image... My question is, How do I get the smooth areas to be a matte/brushed gold, and the embossed areas to be a shiny gloss gold?

adding the file!

Below is an example of the types of finishes I would like.

I believe the issue is with your Image Texture node for your gloss map. Near the bottom of the node, change the Colour Space from sRGB to Non-color Data.

Edit

Your specular map is working properly. I checked by unplugged the normal map and looking at it. You seem to be having trouble getting your materials to look right, so I'm going to recommend that you watch the following two videos from BlenderGuru on how to create realistic materials. They're from pre 2.80, but it's still very helpful in understanding how all the settings affect your material.

How to Make Photorealistic PBR Materials - Part 1

How to Make Photorealistic PBR Materials - Part 2

BlenderGuru also linked this Google Doc in those videos, which essentially contains real-life values for various materials, it's worth bookmarking.

Physically Based Rendering Encyclopedia

PS: Part of getting reflective materials to look good is to have something to reflect...and not to have an overpowering Light.001 hidden from the viewport.


Reading out all operators in a header's menu How is it possible to read out the menus of a header and the operators in the menus with Python?

Background:
I have an external hardware with some configurable keys, and I want to trigger the operators in Blender's menus with the keys. In the hardware's GUI is a dialog to assign functions to the keys. In this dialog is a list of available functions, and I try to fill this list with all of Blender's menu items. If possible the list should show up in the same hierarchical structure (menus and submenus) as in Blender and reflecting the actual state Blender is in.

There's no straight-forward way to retrieve the contents of menus or other layout types.

If possible, create shortcuts in the User Preferences, but that might not be possible with external hardware keys. Or if that's sufficient for you, Right-click > Edit Source to see the layout code (mostly python-scripted).

It might be feasible to extract layout information somehow by hacking deep into the Blender internals with Python, see this to get an idea:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php?title=Dev:2.5/Py/Scripts/Cookbook/Code_snippets/Interface&oldid=226944#Overriding_Interface_Elements


Where to get these nodes that don't appear in the search menu? I am a beginner and am trying to replicate node groups I see in images.

Forgive me if this is a stupid question to you, but I can't seem to find certain nodes.

For example, I see the IOR node in someone's setup,

but I can't seem to find it when I search for it.

Does anyone know how I can get these "hidden" nodes?

EDIT: This is NOT a duplicate. The duplicate mentioned is talking about nodes in the compositor, while these are actual nodes in the material node editor.

IOR is just a regular numeric value, there is no specific node for it.

What you see in that image is just a renamed node title, the actual node type is a simple Value. You can change the label of any node from the sidebar.

Just select a node, expand it with the N key and change the Label field.


How do I rotate an object in an anti gravity simulation? I am creating a shot where:

gravity is turned off
multiple objects are "floating" in space
a few objects collide with eachother
each object has it's own forcefield in order to propel it forward.

I've tweaked the settings and gotten each object to move at the speeds I'd like. The problem I'm having is that I can't seem to figure out how to add some slight rotation to the objects to add to the realism. Any way to do this?

UPDATE 12/12/2020:
I've researched more and I'm looking for something that in C4D is called "Angular Velocity" as described in this video around 7 minutes in:
C4D Antigravity Tutorial
After finding that, I found info about angular velocity being available in the particle force field emitter. Can I somehow rig up the particle emitter as my force field in order to add angular velocity to my object? I also found a Blender add-on called "Projectile" which looks promising. Allows you to do exactly what I want but is rather buggy.
There's got to be a setting like this in Blender that gives you the ability to rotate the object without any collisions occurring, can someone point me in the right direction?
UPDATE 12/17/2020:
I found this helpful thread (How can I add motion to a rigid body?) that describes how to use keyframes on an "animated" rigid body in the first two frames of the animation, then switching animated off for the duration of the animation. That sets the velocity however you like it and is proving to be promising when combined with the answer below.Basically it's setting "Initial Velocity". Now I know! Here are some other helpful tutorials on this:
Blender 2.71 Rigid body - starting speed
Blender 2.81 - how to give object initial velocity for physics simulation tutorial
UPDATE 12/18/2020:
I was having trouble with the animation not carrying through after the initial keyframing. It took a bit of reading, but I figured it out. This is covered in the video links above, the first one has it in the comments, and the second one he details it out in the video. From 2.80 on you need to set up the keyframes on a frame after frame 1 or it for some reason doesn't work. Here are the keyframe details:
Frame 2 and 3: Have the initial velocity keyframes set here. Rotation and location keyframes telling blender how fast you want your object to move.
Frame 3: "Animated" box (in Rigid Body settings) is ticked on.
Frame 4: "Animated" Box is ticked off.
After that, your initial velocity should work!

This was done in Version 2.77a and should work in 2.8+ .  (Blend file below)
There's very little to do to get this working in Blender...
.
First up, make sure the physics cache has enough frames set up to accommodate the action.
What makes this work is the 'natural' dislike' physics objects have for each other.  They don't like being together and even with the collision margin set to 0.002, they'll still want to move apart in a no-gravity situation.
So all you need to do is place two objects together and switch on the physics.
Details -
The (invisible) cube is a rigid body with physics set to 'Active'  and it's ' Animated' box ticked permanently.
It's not keyframed and left stationary.
The black (floating) object is also a rigid body and left stationary but still set to 'Active' and with it's physics keyframed to 'Animated' at frame 1. That's switched to 'Dynamic' at the frame the hand in the video is to touch it, or it is to be hit by another floating object.
When the collision isn't matched to a video'd object, normal physics should apply when they hit.  Both objects could be animated and switched to Dynamic at the collision point
The forces at play as shown above are from the physics engine only.  With the cube barely touching the floater, and 'Collision Margin' set to 0.002 (on them both) the repelling force between them isn't great and it gently drifts away.
How it drifts and the force behind it would depend on the angle and penetration of the cube.
The floater will want to slow down over time so the damping settings (physics) have to be set to zero.
Similarly the shape selection on both, 'Convex Hull' as against 'Mesh' will also make a difference.
'Passive' and 'Active' choices can also have a marked effect.
-==============-
If you have 3D objects in the workspace drifting and colliding, normal physics would take care the impact mechanations.
If on the other hand you want to control the angle and at what speed the 'victim' object takes off, the described example above would do that.  The visible colliding object wouldn't need physics.  It would be animated scenery only and would have no effect on those with physics properties.


Use secondary computer for rendering I've got two machines: my developer-notebook for active working, and my standalone tower with a much better GPU. I'm simply using the tower for standalone tasks so I'm just working on it via RDP or other network-connections.

I'm now wondering how to speed up my rendering processes for my Blender processes using this secondary PC. I've already tried to use the Blender network-renderer, but since this add-on cannot use the GPU, I thing it's not the best way. I know there is also a old fork that is not in active development anymore that brings the ability to use the GPU via network, but neither seems like the best way. My next bet was to connect the secondary (tower) PC via shared folders where I push my Blender project into when ready to render, then load it by hand on the machine to start the render process. This seems to be very complicated and not very automatic, so for a lot of rendering tasks, it feels like a very slow workflow.

I've just heard about "sheep it" rendering farms, but I don't know if this is something interesting.

Both machines are using Nvidia-cards and running Windows 10.

How can I really speed up my rendering-process via network resources like described above?

Sheep-It! is a render farm service that is 100% free and works by using other people's computers to render your projects. It's a great service, and I would definitely recommend it. The only limitation with Sheep-It! is the 500mb project max size. If you don't want to or can't use Sheep-It!, I would recommend using this method:

Using  a cloud storage client

This works with any cloud storage solution that can be installed locally, such as Dropbox or OneDrive. For this example I'm using Google Drive.

First, sign up for a Google account, if you don't already have one.

Then, install Google Drive on both of your computers.
The Google Drive program essentially creates a physical location on your PC that stores everything on your Google Drive, and syncs it. For example, if you installed in on a PC with hard drive D:, and a laptop with hard drive F:. If you had google drive on both computers.. D:\Google Drive and F:\Google Drive would sync with each other.

Once you have google drive installed on both Computers, make sure you're signed in to it. Once that's done, simply create a folder on your Google Drive where all your frames in your animation will render.

Then, once you're ready to render, copy the project files over to your other PC.

Final step is to set your animation to render .PNGs, and set the render output directory to the folder you created earlier on your Google Drive.
Disable Overwrite and enable Placeholders.

Then render animation, and when each frame is rendered, both computers will pick up on it and skip that frame, to begin working on the next one.


Screen lag during GPU rendering GPU rendering causes some screen lag while rendering, with the amount depending on how heavy the render is. I understand this is due to the display driver being busy.

What I don't get is why it happens on a computer with multiple screens and graphics cards. I have 3 screens: 1 running on a GTX titan and running Blender, and the other two on a 770. When I render, it is only with the Titan. So why do my other two screen running off the 770's also lag? Is there a way to stop this?

System info:
Windows 7
GTX Titan (primary screen)
Geforce 770 (second and third screen)
32gb RAM
CPU: Intel i7-4771 quad core, 3.5GHz.

I have had this same problem on previous systems with different graphics cards and CPUs (but always windows 7.)

This may not be the answer you're looking for, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with how Blender interfaces with the GPU and how the Windows kernel reacts to that.  When the OS gets an interrupt requesting the GPU, it's put into a queue until the GPU becomes available.  When Blender gets assigned the GPU, it doesn't let go of it for an eternity in processing time... say, 60ms or so.  During that time, the Windows Desktop has to wait on Blender before it can update.

You obviously know that the most efficient way to render is by keeping the GPU load as close to 100% for as long as possible.  In order to do this and keep the monitor updating the screen, lag is introduced when the GPU becomes unresponsive for short periods of time.

When the driver becomes unresponsive to the Windows kernel (i.e. when Blender is using it)... it must wait until it responds.  You can see this when you enable Branched Path Tracing in the Sampling options.  If you set the samples too high, the GPU will become unresponsive long enough that Windows will actually reset the GPU driver and crash Blender (the operating system doesn't like when it's not sovereign over the affairs of the PC).

The point is that Windows is monitoring this.  When the Titan is your primary display and it goes unresponsive, the OS takes it's cues from that driver for the desktop display.  In other words, if Windows can't display the desktop at 60Hz refresh on your primary monitor, then it won't on the others.  I'm pretty sure Windows uses a complex queuing system for sending and receiving messages from the display adapters to keep them all in sync.

I don't have multiple monitors but I have multiple GPUs.  When I render with the two GPUs that are not hooked to my monitor, I get zero lag, and I'm running Windows 7.  You can try using the 770 as your primary and render using the Titan, but if my guess is right, if Windows is using the Titan as a display device, the 770 will also lag.

Maybe someone else will have a more promising answer/solution.  It's possible that Microsoft changed the way that it handles multiple displays in version 10, but I have no experience with it.


How to randomize textures that have an transparency/alpha channel? I can easily randomize textures but i dont know how to throw transparency in the mix.

In simpler worlds - How to randomize textures with transparency/alpha channel ?

Anyone can help ?

I figured out how to add transparency to randomization. It turned out i need to duplicate setup for randomization in that way i have exact node setup for both textures and alpha channel. Iv also added ON/OFF switch to randomization.


How can I give an array of objects a variety of colors? I would like to give the objects in an array (using array modifier) different colors.  Right now the array of objects is just one color, and i would like to give each member of the array a different color, using a gradient.  Is this possible?  I have tried using the Particle Info node to no avail.

Thanks!

I think you need to apply your array modifier, and then separate by loose parts in edit mode.  Press P>loose parts to do this.
Add an object info node to your material, and use the random output. This will assign each object assigned the material a color from the gradient.
A basic setup would look something like this:

This is an example of the effect with an arrayed Suzanne with setup shown:


make objects appear in a flash I am making something in Blender. I was wondering if there were any way I could make 2 objects appear in a flash? What I mean is like a pulse that makes them appear. If not, can I make them appear in a glare? Please note these are two objects, and are not the only objects in the project.

Using Cycles materials

Create the appearing object with material that is a combination of emitter and diffuse, and mix that with a transparent material.
At the beginning of the animation the material should be completely transparent:

Click the image to enlarge
Animate the values for the emitter and the transparency so that as it becomes more visible it also becomes brighter with the emitter. Once it reaches the brightest value, start taking the emitter back to zero so that it becomes diffuse only with no transparency.

Click the image to enlarge

Click the image to enlarge

Click the image to enlarge
For added visual punch swich over to the compositor, where you can add a glare effect (ShiftA > Filter > Glare) to the whole thing.

Using the compositor only
Separate the objects to appear in a different render layer.

Click the image to enlarge
Set the alpha transparency so that the layer is invisible at the beginning of the animation.

Click the image to enlarge
Then animate the values for the alpha channel so that the transparency is off and the layer is fully visible but very bright and blured.

Click the image to enlarge
Finally animate the values for the brightness and blur so that the render layer returns to its normal brightness and the blur disappears.


I have a mirror modifier on and I want an object mirrored but two different parts okay so my object is being mirrored from one side to the other, I would like the two objects seperate intead of just one mirrored object.

Duplicate your object with Shift+D and apply interactive mirror, or Ctrl+M, to the duplicate.


unselectable edge showing only when smotted Iseed to have unselecteable edged that I can see only when in "Z" mode or Object mode but not in edited mode:

Edited mode - no edges:

Edited mode with "Z" - Unselectable edges

Object mode, edges take shape

How can I solve this ?

You have probably hidden this part in the edit mode, press AltH in edit mode to unhide the part of the mesh.


How to hide certain objects in reflection in Eevee Hello, I want to make the kettlebell shiny but without those reflections of other objects. Is there a way to make certain objects not visible in the reflection in Eevee?

This link should help describe what you are looking for but it shows an older version of blender.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/44649/how-to-get-rid-of-an-objects-reflection#:~:text=In%20the%20properties%20window%20go,disable%20Ray%20Visibility%20for%20glossy.
The image below shows where to find the these settings in Blender 2.9.
If you select the object you don't want to reflect, in your case the pan and the egg, then toggle the "Glossy" option under "Ray Visibility" in the "Visibility" settings in the objects properties.


blend files open in 2.79 version instead of 2.83 when double clicked I can't find an answer even tho I have solved this issue already once. For some reason when I double click .blend file it opens it in 2.79 instead of 2.83. All I remember that there are multiple ways to set this in windows 10 but I can only remember one and that doesn't work. Which is to right click the .blend and set it to open with the 2.83. There is one thread about this from 2015 but it is useless nowadays. I can't delete the 2.79 as I need it for some files that I don't want to convert to 2.8+.

Seems like you encounter the dumbest design the windows registry system can potentially have. If the executable name is the same one (.blend here), it will cause some bug and not updating the table correctly.
You can make your blender 2.79 executable named as blend279.exe. This will let the register miss the original 2.79 exe and update the new value after choosing new blend file.
example below to make it "forget" 2.83 blender:


How snap object to X, Y or Z-axis? I am a Blender n00b and have this beginners question that I can't find an answer for.

I'm following this course by testedpancake on YouTube to model a car. In part 7 of his tutorial he is extruding the hood of the car to the Y-axis:
Model a 3d Car | part 7 | hood vents and topology examples

In my case I cannot get one point of the edge that I want to align with the Y-axis to snap to it. Please see the pictures below.

When I zoom in the vertice is not attached to the Y-axis

My question: how do I snap a vertice to the Y-axis?

Can somebody please help me out? Thank you!

EDIT: Here's the file: Dodge Challenger car

Selecting the edge to move to Y-axis

Having 2 points snapped to the Y-axis, but not really!

When I zoom in, the vertice is not aligned with the green Y-axis at all!

Enable clipping in the mirror modifier and then try again. If you now move your vertices to the left they should stop when they touch the other mirrored vertices.


Bone on one side distorts the other side of the mesh I've been having some problems with deformities whilst posing the limbs on my T. rex model. The problem occurs on the thigh and all of the arm bones.
Not posed
Posed thigh
Whenever I rotate the left thigh bone it causes areas of the mesh on the right side of the model to distort and follow the bone.
Leg angled to side
Rotating left arm joint distorts right
This happens with the arms and clavicle bones. The bones are mirrored and both thigh bones are parented to the pelvis bone in between and slightly to the front.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as this problem has troubled us for weeks.

This issue likely is occurring because vertices on one side have been assigned to bones on the opposite side.

When using a mirror modifier, this issue can be easily rectified by simply un-assigning all vertices from the right side—this can be done manually through the Vertex Groups area in the object data panel (just select all vertices in edit mode and click "remove" for all bone-related vertex groups whose name ends in ".r")

Another option (when using the mirror modifier) is to go through each of the right-side bones and subtract the weight from the left side. (However, when using a mirror modifier this will NOT work by selecting the left-side bones and removing weight from the right.)

If the mirror modifier is not in use, just do the second process on both sides—i.e. remove from the right bones vertices on the left, and remove from the left bones vertices on the right.


Sequencer Strip Addon I'm tinkering a bit around with some generators which would be nice as effects.
Is it possible to write an addon which generates images series as output for the strips. (Just generating them and importing is not an option)

EDIT:

I want to write an add-on which generates image-sequences for use in the VSE as strip (eg. visualizer for audio)

When rendering, you can specify that Blender saves in an image format like .png.

As long as you have set a render range (default is 250 frames), you can press the "Animation" button in the Scene properties>Render tab, Blender will generate a frame sequence in the path you set in the Scene properties>Output tab.

Notice that the button labelled "File Extensions" is ticked? That tells Blender to add the frame number to every rendered frame. This will keep your frame sequence in order when you load it into the VSE later.


Is there a way to select the lines between two verts? So I have recently been working with objects made with photogrammetry that I need to UV Unwrap. For that, I want to mark the seams of course but I find it very hard to select the lines I want to mark as seams because the mesh is triangulated. If I could just select two vertices and then the shotest way between those points that would be super useful. If not then what other methods would you suggest to UV unwrapping such a mesh?

In edit mode:

Select first vertex.
Press Ctrl+Shift and select last vertex.


How to open a rendered animation? I just sat through an hour or so to render my first 5 second animation. Now how can I access and play my file? The default folder it should be in (/tmp) only has one Blender related file, 296_autosave.blend. This is a noob question but there didn't seem to be an answer for it yet.

Go to Render > View Animation  or  use CtrlF11:

To know the output location check Output Path in Output Properties. (You may have changed this accidentally)

edit:

On Windows 10, the full path to output folder is displayed on the title bar of animation viewer


Blender Smooth With subdivision surface I made this axe and now i want to add subdivision surface to smooth the edges but i got some problems.
This is the axe without the modifier.

I applied the modifier and now i'm trying to add supporting loops to make edges sharper.

I dont want this effect on those spots. I want it kinda like in the concept photo. Do u have an idea on how to achieve that?
https://we.tl/t-NlBFZ6mraP
tried to edge slide (g + g) some edges the seams are not dissapearing.

It happens because when you want to sharp the angle on the top you create a new edge loop that also sharps the bottom one:

You can keep the topology as it is and simply slide the edge loop along the bottom (GG and you'll be good:


Lightsaber effect in cycles without compositing? couldn't find anything on the internet for something like this, but is there a simple node setup for creating a material (in cycles) for a lightsaber blade? Simply white in the centre with a coloured glow on the outside. I have experimented with mixing shaders with emissions but cannot get the white centre.

What I want:

What I do NOT want:

I'd say postprocessing, simple glow... but if you really wan't pure cycles:

1) Start with a cube and 3d spherical gradient texture with coordinates set to Object (Absorption shader with inverted colors are here for simple visualisation):

this gives us a smoothed sphere inside the cube:

2) Scale texture coordinates in Z by some really low value - this will stretch the sphere texture in that axis, giving us something similar to cylinder:

3) remove Invert Color and Volume Absorption shader nodes (which were used just to see what is really going on with the texture when scaling and using Object Texture coordinates) and plugin Mix shader node with Transparent and Emission shaders. Plug the output to Volume socket:

4) It still is centered stretched sphere, but the transparency interpolation is too linear - lets try different interpolation (by powering linear values):

5) Interpolation is much better, but the overall emission strength is way too low now - lets multiply the values now, and also stretch the cube in Z axis to desired shape:

Tweaking math nodes Power vs Multiply should give you expected smoothing and overall emission power.

6) Simply change emission color and lightsaber is ready to use:


How to model a globe with an elevated honeycomb pattern? My English is not good and We don't have lots of Blender tutorial or lesson. I write this question in this site.

I am wondering how to make paneling model in blender

this is a continent model on surface.

i try to make this with particle system. but the particle system is overlap each hexagonal module and contol density hard.

there is no volume select modifier like 3ds max in blender?
and better scattter (paneling) solution in blender?

Answer for me~~Thanks~

My idea is to parent the hexagon to an icsophere and to enable the face duplication of the icosphere : the hexagon will be copied on each faces of the icosphere. Then, you just have to delete all faces which are in the ocean. You will need a second icosphere to modelize oceans.

create a new project and delete the cube object
Add a first icosphere (S + A and select Icosphere) to modelize continents
in the tool property panel, change Subdivision to 5
Duplicate the icosphere object (to modelize oceans)
create a cylinder (press Shift) + A and select "Cylinder")
in the tool property panel, change Vertices to 6 (to have an hexagon)
change the Radius to 0.02
change the Depth to O.05
Change the Cap fill type to nothing
Add a Solidify modifier and click the Apply button
select the hexagon and then the first icosphere, press CTRL + P and click Set parent to Object
select the first icosphere
in the object panel, press the Faces button in the Duplication pane
edit the first sphere and delete faces which are in the ocean


How can I execute Blender from a script? I am doing a big animation project and I need to use a python script to do it. As a first test to understand how it works. I am using this script found here
blender script

import Blender
from Blender import *
from Blender.Scene import Render

scn = Blender.Scene.Get("Scene")
context = scn.getRenderingContext()

context.extensions = True
context.renderPath = "c:\\temp"
context.sizePreset(Render.PAL)
context.imageType = Render.TARGA
context.fps = 25
context.sFrame = 1
context.eFrame = 100

context.renderAnim()

to execute this script, i used this command

blender --background --python runblender.py

I got this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Users/xxx/Desktop/pythonscript/runblender.py", line 1, in <module>
    import Blender
ImportError: No module named 'Blender'

Blender quit

If you are using Blender 2.5 onwards, it doesn't have a Blender module, the script you are trying to run was written for 2.49 or lower.

The equivalent script for Blender 2.7+ would be something like:

import bpy

c = bpy.context.scene
r = c.render

r.use_file_extension = True
r.filepath = 'c:\\temp'

#Set PAL 16:9 settings manually
r.resolution_x = 720
r.resolution_y = 576
r.pixel_aspect_x = 16
r.pixel_aspect_y = 11

r.image_settings.file_format = 'TARGA'
r.fps = 25
c.frame_start = 1
c.frame_end = 100

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


Dragging and dropping a texture I created a simple maze (via surface subdivision, extrusion, smooth shadows and edge split). Now I want to add some 'hedge' textures to the walls. When I drag and drop the texture, I seem to get just one color instead of a texture?

It seems only a few cells got the right texture?

Edit: I've set up the texture manually for some planes, but is it possible to automise this process?

Edit2: It works when I select everything at once and then adding the texture. When I add the texture a second time, it's just a green square.

I apologize if this answer is too basic or misunderstands your issue.

I created a blend file that I made by subdividing a plain, extruding a row of hedges along Z, and then applying a material with an image texture to the raised hedge.

The first image below is the material set-up in Cycles. The second is the view in Blender in Object mode at with Material View selected.

Here is a Dropbox link to the blend file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6klf54mwkup0ysd/hedge.blend?dl=0

If this is the issue you were trying to address, let me know if it is incomplete....


Problem using transformation constraints to rotate gears So, I'm working on a clock and to help me animating it I am using transformation constraints, but when I put it in the third gear it started reversing the rotation after rotating some degrees, going back and forth.

This is what is happening.

I already used transformation constraints before but I never had this problem.
I tried changing the values, activating Extrapolate, reseting the rotations but nothing worked.

The best way to do these kind of thing is using a combination of armature and Animation Nodes. download this addOn from here.

Do the following:

Add an armatures in the location of each gear and set its rotation
Combine all armatures (so you will have a clean armature for all of
your gears)
Create nodes in animation nodes as explained in the gif file
Link each gear to the corresponding bone.
Done!


"Drop Over" a higher channel in Video Sequence Editor Let's say I want to edit a video made of with 50 strips which replace each other with some fading between each strip. Because two consecutive strips will overlap, I put each next strip in a higher channel, use "Over Drop" and opacity (from 0. to 1., or the reverse) with keyframes, and it works fine. But Blender is limited to 32 channels and I do not know how to include the 33th strip. I guess it is possible to put it in channel 1 and not use "Over Drop", maybe "Alpha Under" or something? What should I do? What is the best practice?

Where is only 3 channels needed to make unlimited count of fades. Use Cross or Gamma Cross for creating fade effect:

And you don't need to use keyframes in this case, fade effect will be from start of one strip to end from other strip.

And channel position doesn't matter, first and second strip sets up not by top and bottom order, but by selection: first and second selected.


Blender move item rig? I have been trying to rig a weapon, but I don't have much experience. I know how to rig characters though. I don't know about anything, and I am not asking for anyone to actually rig my weapon. I just wanted to know how to do the following rig type: a bone that basically just controls a piece of the object as if you are grabbing it. I just want my magazine come out of the weapon and back in, also, have my entire weapon push back when firing. Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

make this piece of object separated (in edit mode, to make them still be 1 object), add bone in edit mode either with add armature or shift D and weight paint the armature of the object and if u want to make the object bone parented to main bone, just add parent inside edit mode with keep offset.
i think this should help


Why trees aren't showing up in Blender I'm new to asking questions online! I've been trying to figure things out on my own, but this time I cannot figure out why the trees wouldn't render even if they are unrestricted or visible. What am I doing wrong?

When you added, or I guess when the particle system for the leaves is generated, under the particle tab in the render section, the emitter checkbox is unchecked, turn that back on, and your trunks will begin showing again.

This setting here


How to add a curve name from bevel_object to the name of the output image render? Excuse me, I misunderstood the question.
Usually, when rendering, the image can be saved with F3 or through the node's "File Output", with a name of the form "ImageXXX", according to the frame number. I want to have anything instead of ImageXXX - the name of the selected object, material, and so on. In this particular case, I want the name of the "Bevel Object" selecter curve,  to be recorded in the name of the output image.

If I got what you mean, you need to edit this property,

https://docs.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_current/bpy.types.NodeOutputFileSlotFile.html

this string will be the prefix for output to image from that node, as you see below:

Of course you need to know the name of the object, as you say, but I guess this is quite easy...


PBR, Viewport more quality than openGL render Im using Clément Foucault's latest PBR Blender build and I noticed that what I see in the viewport does not appear on the OpenGL render and they are not similar.
What might be the problem?

Nevermind yall, i discovered it on my own

turns out that if you check the option for color management it produces the same effect to the viewport as it does to the openGL render. so the editing gets easier now


Make proxy with modifiers I often use Link to import objects from external .blend files into my scenes. However, in order to position a linked object within a scene, it's obviously necessary to use Make Proxy in order to position the linked object(s). Unfortunately, creating a proxy object does not create copies of any modifiers that were on the source object, meaning that I then have to manually recreate them on the linked object to match the source object.

Is there some way to get Make Proxy to copy modifiers to the newly created proxy?

UPDATE: It appears that Duplicate Linked is what I want (unless anyone can tell me why this doesn't do what it appears to do). I want to ensure that the created object is as "shallow" a copy as possible; any changes to mesh data or materials made in the source .blend file should be reflected in the linking .blend.

Have you tried the Make Local operator?

Select your object(s) then  press L > Make Local > Selected Objects should keep object data linked to the original but allow changing modifiers locally.

From Blender 2.8+ forward these can be found under Object > Relations > Make local... from there pick either Selected Objects, Selected Objects and Data, Selected Objects, Data and Materials, or All.


How can you rotate/turn a crank in barrel organ? I cannot quite figured it out how can you turn the crank and animate it? I tried parenting it to IK bone so when I move then hand it would rotate alongside but instead it just moves the crank without rotating it.

Turning the barrel organ handle -

The handle is animated to rotate.

The right arm hand-bone's 'Pole Target' (in Inverse kinematics) is set to the handle so it is forced to stick onto and follow the handle.


Blender IK doesn't bend knee https://youtu.be/5HBzaBwuUoA
In my rig, I have the IK constraint between the shin, the heel, and the knee, but the leg doesn't bend the way I want it to, any help?

Its as Moonboots says, you need to slightly bend the bones forwards before you use IK constraints


Why Blender Mesh becomes messy when imported into Salome I have created simple geometry in Blender-two concentric curved cylinders. In the edit mode, it looks okay. But when I import the STL file in Salome, a preprocessing software, the mesh become triangular and more dense. Why is this case? Anyone knows?Thanks.

I have changed the cap fill type of the cylinder to be triangle fan. It looks nicer. But the imported STL file in Salome still has some weird small redundant edges...

After I have cleaned up the mesh by merging by distance. Then the final geometry looks nice in Salome:


No operator presets: FBX 6.1 ASCII, FBX 7.4 Binary I have no operator preset options (FBX 6.1 ASCII, FBX 7.4 Binary). I had blender 2,79 now 2.80 but no presets appear. That makes it impossible for me to export FBX with textures. I read somewhere that some file needs to be modify somewhere on the computer but it wasn't clear. Any ideas??

The .fbx ASCII format has been removed in Blender 2.8, the remaining export format is the binary format. You should be able to export to the other application just as you did in Blender 2.79, except that in the older version you had to explicitly select the binary format which is now the default in 2.8. The materials need to be setup separately because .fbx can't store Cycles or Eevee materials.

In order to embed texture into the file you have to set the following two options:

Path Mode is Copy
Embed Textures is enabled

Although I haven't personally tested it, you may want to try glTF as export format because it should be able to translate textures and materials to the other software, if you use the principled shader for a PBR setup.


How do I mirror one side of an object to another side that's already there? What would the best way to go around mirroring one side of an object to another already existing side?

Allow me to show the blend file. I need to copy the side with the holes to the side without the holes. https://a.pomf.cat/jqerzl.blend

edit:
I am trying to cut a revolvers cylinder in half so I can mirror one side to the other, but I am not sure if this is the best way to do it.

I'm going to provide 2 solutions to this answer: mirroring the side with the cone shaped holes, and secondly extruding that side to give bullet chambers that pass all the way through. Feel free to use either option.

Solution 1 - Mirrored Side Option

Delete the duplicated object Drum.001
Enter edit mode on the Drum object
Change selection mode to Edge and select an edge that connects both side of the cylinder.
Select S - Cursor to Selected (make sure you don't move the cursor after this step)
Select all the verts on the end that you are not keeping and delete.
Select all the verts on the other side that you want to mirror, and Shift D to duplicate
Press the . key to change the pivot type to Cursor
S Y -1 to scale along the y axis in the negative direction. This should copy your verts to the other side of the cylinder.
Select all, and Remove Doubles
Select all, and do Limited Dissolve (this is optional but it makes connecting the two side easier in the next step).
In edge select mode select the outer circle of both sides. Then SPACE and type Bridge to find the Bridge Edge Loops command.

Solution 2 - Extruded Side

Delete the duplicated object Drum.001
Enter edit mode on the Drum object
Change selection mode to Edge and select an edge that connects both side of the cylinder.
Select S - Cursor to Selected (make sure you don't move the cursor after this step)
Select all the verts on the end that you are not keeping and delete.
Select the tips of the cones and delete. You should now have one face with 6 holes in it.
Select all, and Remove Doubles
Select all, and do Limited Dissolve (this is optional but it makes connecting the two side easier in the next step).
Press the . key to change the pivot type to Cursor
With all verts select press E to extrude and Enter.
S Y -1 to scale along the y axis in the negative direction. This will move your extruded side to the other location giving you a full cylinder with 6 bullet chambers that pass all the way through.


How to position a poncho with cloth physics I'm working on a character who is wearing a poncho:

The poncho has cloth physics, and the character is a collision object. To get the model in that screenshot, I started with a flat subdivided plane with a head hole cut out, I positioned it around his neck, and the physics drop it around his body.

I'm trying to figure out if I can "pose" the poncho differently. I'd like to have it like this:

Is there a good way to achieve this pose?

I'd check out this answer from Faceb Faceb. My first thought is to grab a few vertices on your poncho, and assign them to a group. In your cloth physics settings, check the "pinning" option. You should be able to use that same vertex group to parent to the cloth to the shoulder of your character. The tricky part is, you'll have to 'pose' the cloth in edit mode all stretched out, and when you apply physics, the cloth should fall into place, and the pinned verts should stick to your object. Check out more here:

Pinning cloth to moving model


Pressure Tab Not Shown I cannot find the pressure tab in the cloth attrributes section. I was trying to make a couch and was going to add pressure to the pillow. But, I could not find it anywhere.

You are using an older version of blender that pre-dates 2.82

The new cloth simulator you are looking for comes with blender 2.82 and higher


When should I pack an image into the file? When would I not want to use the tab "pack an image as embedded data into the .blend file" ? If I do use it should it only be at the end before final export?

Packing images has nothing to do with exporting. Most exporters have their own ways to deal with textures.

Blender's packing feature allows you to include external resources in your .blend file. This comes in handy when you want to distribute them to other people or showcase them on Sketchfab.


Snapping using translate Im trying to translate a vertex in 3D space while it should snap to closest point if it finds one.
I have tried with all the snapping parameters listed in the API can’t seem to make it work anyone has any idea? I have also forced to snapping mode with these lines:

  bpy.context.scene.tool_settings.snap_elements = {'VERTEX'}
  bpy.context.scene.tool_settings.snap_target = 'ACTIVE'
  bpy.context.scene.tool_settings.use_snap = True

Try what was answered in this thread:

https://blenderartists.org/t/can-a-modal-operator-use-snapping/1175190


How do I solve non manifold errors with this relatively simple shape? I'm pretty new to Blender, and I have a model that I am having problems with. I have some non-manifold geometry but I don't know what's wrong. I highlight the edges but I don't see anything wrong with the edges the pointed out. Here is a screenshot:

I've tried deleting the edges, because I thought they might be duplicate, but they're not. I tried deleting the surrounding faces and regenerating the faces manually, but that doesn't help. I created this model with a face I subdivided, then extruded the nine faces. Then I cleaned it up and added a bunch of vertices and faces. I thought maybe that construction technique was bad, so I tried creating this same thing by starting with two cubes and repeatedly boolean subtracting the "carving" cube away from the main form. But after four or so cuts I started getting non manifold errors with this technique as well. Any ideas? If you tell me how to export just this object, I can do that and share it if that would help. Thanks in advance!
Edit:
Okay, here is the file if anyone wants to look:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2g00zfgs5xyzdhd/non_manifold.blend?dl=0
Inspecting the mesh, I couldn't find the problems you guys mentioned. Maybe I just don't know Blender well enough to see them.
As to Make Manifold, I never saw that button there, LOL. It actually works, which is great. Thanks!
I will still be playing around with the mesh as a learning experience however. I want to figure out what is wrong with it.

I would stick with the extrusion method, personally, but you do have to be aware of doubled edges or faces, depending on how you extruded it.  I would look at it in Wireframe mode to see if you have anything like this:

The red arrow is showing a doubled-up face inside the object, so you'd want to delete any of those.
The blue arrow is showing an edge that is ACTUALLY a face (with zero height).
Have you tried simply doing a Merge By Distance to clean up any vertices that are doubled up, or just realllly close to each other?
Also, silly question, but have you tried clicking that "Make Manifold" button there on the right side?
If nothing helps, you could upload the blend file.  If you don't want to upload it because there are other objects in the scene, you could save a copy and delete everything else.


Images not displaying correctly with transparent objects in Blender 2.80 I have an "empty" plane in which I am displaying an image.  In Blender 2.80 this object seems to have trouble interacting with transparent objects in the 3D view, although this technique worked in Blender 2.79.  In the following example, the entire blue sphere should be visible, as seen in the first image where it has alpha = 1.0.  But when alpha < 1, the "empty" image behaves as if its "always in front" setting is activated, but only with the transparent object, not with fully opaque objects.

The sphere color is set as sph.diffuse_color = [0.0, 0.3, 0.8, 0.5].
The image is a grayscale tif, loaded into an "empty" plane.

Is there setting I am missing, in order to tell the "empty" image to interact properly with transparent objects in the scene?

Thanks.

This looks like a bug related to the "sorting problem".  It appears as if image empties are being alpha blended to the color buffer after all regular Alpha Blend objects, so they always appear on top.

Two workarounds:

You can switch the blending mode from "Alpha Blend" to "Alpha Hashed".  This will give you a really noisy blend, but it gets the transparency right.
You can enable the "Import-Export: Import Images as Planes" add-on and add your image using "Add -> Image -> Images as Planes".  This adds the image as a regular plane mesh, and it seems to behave correctly even with "Alpha Blend".

Given that image empties can't be rendered anyway, as far as I know, "Images as Planes" is probably the best solution if you actually want the image to be a part of your scene.


How can I debug a script in real-time? I need to debug an add-on in real-time (installed & running in Blender).

While I am an experienced programmer in several languages, Python is not one of them.

I'm trying to fix an add-on written by someone else. Released as a Beta, the creator is no longer around to finish the job.

The add-on is active from the moment Blender starts (adding a new tab to the left margin), so placing "debugger" commands at the top of the script only crashes Blender.

Unfortunately, I can't post the code for the following reasons:

It's not mine.
It's too big.
It calls in-house apps to work, so you couldn't run it anyway.

I know what the problem is (it's writing to the wrong path) but not why. If only I could set breakpoints and view the contents of variables at various times, I'd be set.

Any advice is appreciated.

Run blender straight from the command line...then watch the console for the errors. If blender quits, the info will be printed out. Also, add printouts or setup a python logger to "view the contents of variables."

I can't really think of any other ways to help other than these suggestions without seeing the code (or even a description of what happens when the "bug" occurs).


OBJ files: How to subdivide materials for model? The model in this OBJ file (https://poly.google.com/view/534TY_Ie4jz) contains one material.

Is it possible to import the file in Blender, then "cut up" or divide the material into different sections?

Specifically:

1) If we want to make the stick red but the top of the popsicle green, there's no way to do this because it's all one material.
Changing the material color changes the color for the entire popsicle. Is it possible to change red to green?

2) If we want to subdivide the red area into an arbitrary number of subareas, is this possible? For instance, could we turn the red area into 5 subareas of different colors?

There are two ways you can do this, with Materials, or with the Texture.
In Blender you can add materials and assign then where you select the mesh (Click Here to see a similar question)

Or you can also keep only one material and customize the image texture that comes with the .obj When you download the model check out a small image that contains 4 colors, that's the image texture for the model.

In case you have any questions about assigning texture in Blender check

This for Blender Internal

This for Cycles

 Image texture

Since the model already has a UV mapping, you only need a 2D Image Editor (Photoshop, GIMP, etc..) Then you can change the colors for your desired parts.

After saving that image, in Blender, on the UV Editor, click Image > Reload Image


How to store a list or an array with python so its global available? I think I know this is a basic question but I dont got the connection between values inside a class and outside.

I have an Array with string values defined in a OperatorClass and I can use it inside but what I really want is defining the Array Values outside of the class and then reference it when needed - everytime I define a PropertyGroup or StringProperty I cant find it...

I think I miss some basic understanding where values are stored in that blender data structure or how to add the array to some kind of globalness…

EDIT:
so I would like to outsource the Arrays from this class

class OBJECT_OT_createWorkFolder(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "object.workfoldbtn"
    bl_label = "Create Projectfolder"
    bl_description = "Fügt dem Ausgew. Verzn. Arbeitsfolder hinzu"

    Workfolder = ["00_DATA","01_INCOMING","02_Workspace","03_Render","04_Compositing","05_OUT"]
    WS_Subfolder = ["02_0_Exports","02_1_Assets", "02_2_Textures","02_3_Light","02_4_Scripts","02_x_Caches"]
    Rndr_Subfolder = ["03_0_TestRender","03_1_FINAL"]
    Comp_Subfolder = ["Photoshop","AfterEffects","DaVinciRes"]
...

Two methods:

Method 1: python way

import bpy

arr = ["string1", "string2"]

class ClassName(bpy.types.Operator):

    def execute(self, context):
        for str in arr:
        print(str)

    return {'FINISHED'}

classes = (
    ClassName,
)

def register():
    from bpy.utils import register_class
    for cls in classes:
        register_class(cls)

def unregister():
    from bpy.utils import unregister_class
    for cls in reversed(classes):
        unregister_class(cls)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Method 2: Blender way

import bpy

class Variables(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    string1: bpy.props.StringProperty(name="a string")
    string2: bpy.props.StringProperty(name="another string", default="default value")

class ClassName(bpy.types.Operator):

    def execute(self, context):
        bpy.context.scene.var.string1 = "Hello World"
        print(bpy.context.scene.var.string1)
        print(bpy.context.scene.var.string2)

    return {'FINISHED'}

classes = (
    ClassName,
    Variables,
)

def register():
    from bpy.utils import register_class
    for cls in classes:
        register_class(cls)
    bpy.types.Scene.var = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=Variables)

def unregister():
    from bpy.utils import unregister_class
    for cls in reversed(classes):
        unregister_class(cls)
    del bpy.types.Scene.var

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

learnt from: Godot Game Tools

edit:
this is how you can access a variable in blender from anywhere. I've used GodotGameTools as an example and also highlighted what it should have been if you used my code


Spinning wheel has pauses after each rotation? there is a part of my model that I want to be spinning at the same velocity forever. However, every time the wheel turns its full 360 degrees it seems to slow down and stop toward the beginning of each rotation. I assume this is because my first and last keyframes are exactly the same. Outside of calculating the angle that the wheel should be on the last keyframe, is there any way to keep my spinning velocity consistent? Please help, thank you.

Most likely, your keyframes are moving in bezier curves. This causes them to slow down at the beginning and end. You could try going into the Curve editor, selecting all of the keyframes on the curve that corresponds to the rotation of your wheel, key "T" and select linear on the left side of the pop-up menu. This will solve your problem.

Now, instead of continuing to add keyframes until the end of your animation, you can key "Shift+E" choose linear extrapolation, and the rotation will continue forever.

Hope this helps! Happy blending.


Bone Turns Orange And Auto IK Doesn't Work The model's left leg is perfectly fine. I can select the lower leg and with G, move the leg with auto IK. For some reason, when moving any bone on the body, the right leg's upper bone turns orange. The right leg will not budge when using auto IK, but moves just fine with normal rotation and positioning.

I'm very confused. The armature has no constraints on it. The bone just turns orange and won't move with auto IK.

I've stumbled upon this question myself and believe that this is an issues regarding X-Axis mirror and Auto-IK working together.
To reproduce the issue,

In pose mode, turn X-Axis mirror and Auto-IK on together.
Move a bone that is properly mirrored, the Auto-IK and X-Axis mirror should work fine, result in the mirrored bone moving accordingly.
Turn off X-Axis mirror, then try moving another bone, the "mirrored" bone you just moved (the one you didn't directly grab) will appear orange and attempt to stay in its place, result in certain bones locked down.

So to clear this situation, you can simply "turn X-Axis mirror and Auto-IK on together again" and "move a bone that is NOT properly mirrored (like the head or any other bone in the center)." Then you should be safe to turn your X-Axis mirror option off!


How to make a reflective object have a solid texture in Blender internal? Using Blender internal, how would I go about adding a non-reflective (or less reflective) image texture to a highly reflective object? For example, how to make the black printing on the shiny gold lego C-3PO be non-reflective, like the following photo of the physical object:

(when I apply an image texture to a highly reflective material, the image gets washed-out/diluted by the reflective value)

You'll want to experiment with the Influence settings of your texture. If you set your image to influence "Intensity" in the "Specular" section it will change the brightness of the specular highlight, keeping it from being washed out. NOTE: You'll have to turn off it's influence of other factors.

If your image is in color, it might not affect the specular intensity the way you want, by default. You may have to create a B&W version of the image that controls where the specular is brightest (white) and where the specular is dimmest (black), and then use the color version to influence the surface color. If you're up for a challenge, you can actually make a B&W version of your color image just using the texture settings in Blender. That way, you don't have two images to update when you make changes.

Depending on how sophisticated you want to get, you can also have another B&W version that's slightly different for controlling the hardness, another for controlling the specular color, and another for mirror.

I hope that helps!


How do I make a plane have a colored material in Cycles while adding thickness? How do I make a plane have a colored material in cycles render mode, while making it at the same time have thickness?

This can be done very easily thanks to the Cycles material editor and the Solidify modifier.

First add a material and change the color as desired. The default material is a light grey diffuse material:

Then add the Solidify modifier and change the Thickness value:


Adding a new image texture slot to a particle system in Python I'm having problems with Blender 2.78 when creating a new texture slot to a particle system. It has no effect even though the settings are similar to the one created manually. Manually tweaking any controls has no effect to its functionality.

But – if I remove the programmatically created texture slot and create a new one manually with the imported texture selectable from the drop-down list adjusting the influence setting, it starts working!

Here is the complete creation code for reference. get_object is just a shorthand for retrieving an object from the context with the given name.

What am I missing?

def create_particle_system(property_id, object_type):
    def _add_texture(tex):
        mtex = bpy.data.particles['ParticleSettings'].texture_slots.add()
        mtex.texture = tex
        mtex.texture_coords = 'UV'
        mtex.uv_layer = 'demUVmap'
        mtex.use_map_time = False
        mtex.use_map_density = True
        mtex.density_factor = 1.0

    obj = get_object(object_type)
    bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='PARTICLE_SYSTEM')
    bpy.data.particles['ParticleSettings'].frame_start = 0.0
    bpy.data.particles['ParticleSettings'].frame_end = 0.0
    bpy.data.particles['ParticleSettings'].distribution = 'RAND'
    bpy.data.particles['ParticleSettings'].use_rotations = True
    bpy.data.particles['ParticleSettings'].use_rotation_dupli = True
    bpy.data.particles['ParticleSettings'].render_type = 'OBJECT'
    bpy.data.particles['ParticleSettings'].dupli_object = obj
    bpy.data.particles['ParticleSettings'].particle_size = 2
    bpy.data.particles['ParticleSettings'].rotation_mode = 'OB_Z'
    bpy.data.particles['ParticleSettings'].rotation_factor_random = 0.1
    bpy.data.particles['ParticleSettings'].phase_factor_random = 2.0
    bpy.data.particles['ParticleSettings'].physics_type = 'NO'
    bpy.data.particles['ParticleSettings'].size_random = 0.1

    tex = bpy.data.textures.new(property_id + '_tex', type='IMAGE')
    tex.image = bpy.data.images.load(filepath=os.path.join(basepath, property_id + '_' + object_type + '.png'))

    _add_texture(tex)

After carefully enumerating all properties of the texture slot, I found one difference.

After explicitly setting

mtex.blend_mode = 'MULTIPLY'

it finally started working. The blend mode is set to MIX by default.


Use different UV mapping with multiple textures I am tring to set two different texture on a cylinder. The first texture has a text on it, the second is a paper cardboard texure.
In order to center the text in the first texture I had to select faces and scale them up, in order to make the text smaller.
Then I added the second Texture and I noticed that it has the same the mapping of the first texture:

You can clearly see that the cardboard texture has been scaled.
Is there a correct way to do this?
My shader:

UV Mapping:

For the moment, the text and the background texture share the same UV, so what you're doing is just scaling the UV for both the text and the background texture.
If you want to put a text over a background texture without affecting the texture you need to use another method, like mixing the text and background into a Mix Shader with the alpha of the text as factor of the Mix Shader, then create a second UV map for the text and use a UV Map node before the text node with this second UV map selected.


How to add a triangulate modifier and apply it? Im trying to check if the selected object has a specific modifier, adding the modifier if it doesn't exist, and then applying all the modifiers:

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object

modifs=[]
for modifier in obj.modifiers:
    modifs.append(modifier.type)

if 'TRIANGULATE' not in modifs:]
    bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='TRIANGULATE')

for modif in modifs:
    bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(apply_as='DATA', modifier=modif)

Code above adds the modifier if it isn't present but it doesn't apply the modifiers to the object. If I paste bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(apply_as='DATA', modifier=modif) into the python console it applies the modifier. What am I doing wrong?

The list doesn’t contain the newly added triangulate modifier (if there is one). Also, it seems necessary to apply by name, not by type. The following works for me:

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object

modif_types = [ modifier.type for modifier in obj.modifiers ]

if 'TRIANGULATE' not in modif_types:
    bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='TRIANGULATE')

modif_names = [ modifier.name for modifier in obj.modifiers ]

for modif in modif_names:
    bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(apply_as='DATA', modifier=modif)


Trying to animate an extrude in 3D using curves generated by an equation over time Trying to animate an extrusion in 3D using curves generated by an equation over time.
I can create a 3D spiral pattern using python and animation nodes but how can I extrude the curves so they vary over time and in 3D?
The Python code I'm using is:
import math

x1 = a*math.sqrt(t)*math.cos(t)
y1 = a*math.sqrt(t)*math.sin(t)
z1 = -t

x2 = -a*math.sqrt(t)*math.cos(t)
y2 = -a*math.sqrt(t)*math.sin(t)
z2 = -t

position1 = Vector((x1,y1,z1))
position2 = Vector((x2,y2,z2))

See attached animation of what I have:

The image I'm trying to recreate is the Lily Impeller and how it's created/growth pattern takes shape over time.

Here's a video of what I'm trying to model/animate the growth pattern of.
https://youtu.be/by0JhirtO-0?t=224
I was thinking that the curves need to be extruded in the -Z direction at a 60 angle but I couldn't come up with a way of how to do this.
I'm open to other ideas or suggestions on how to do this.
See attached blend 2.83 file.

A way to make the impeller to appear to grow like a shell is to use Boolean operations between a shape and the Lily impeller. The animation below shows an intersection between a cone and an the impeller.

Steps to recreate.

Import/create the lily impeller.
Add a cone that roughly matches the angle of the lily impeller spiral and large enough to contain the full impeller.

Animate the cone moving from the above the impeller until it fully encloses the impeller. This will generate the animation above.

The geometry for the impeller above was from  https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:956458 modeled after Jay Harmans drawings, courtesy of yzorg.


Particles fall through collision object I am trying to make leaves fall on the ground but the leaves are intersecting the ground.

This is the collision floor seen from under:

The object has collision enabled and Particle Damping to the max. I've played around with different settings but couldn't find one that worked.
I haven't been able to find a similar question here where the particles are falling onto the object...

To avoid particles to intersect with the ground, check Size Deflect checkbox in particle system Physics settings. This is not a perfect solution either, cause the particles will hover over the ground plane a little, so what you can do is to use this plane as collision box, which won't be rendered and it's duplicate without collision added, which you move closer/furhter away to the particles and which will be rendered. If you need even more physically accurate interactions between leaves and a plane, you would need to use separate objects (which can be created from particles by Shift+CTRL+A) and make them rigid bodies.


How can I take an image and create a flat 3D model out of it? So basically I have this game that I've been developing for a while, and it's been making use of heavy alpha cutout in Unity. I've been told over the course of the development about tile based gpu architecture, and that I will keep having a very hard time optimizing for mobile if I continue with having forests upon forests in where I can't take advantage of a mobile gpus optimization techniques.

Here's what my game ends up looking like in Unity:

https://media.indiedb.com/images/presskit/1/1/776/general/14_LeafProjAttack.gif

The trees look great with the alpha I think...but the problem with optimization has been really holding me back here...

I'm honestly wondering if there's a way in where I could create that same high quality look but just convert my 2d images somehow to 3d models?

The good news is, since it's all pixel art, the edges are semi-predictable I suppose? Here's a sample image that I'd like to convert to a flat 3D model:

https://i.imgur.com/JnBKBiE.png

Is there a way to do this or am I going to have a very hard time per image that I convert to 3d?

Thanks for any help ahead of time that you can provide!

It's absolutely possible, look up billboard sprites. For generating them in Blender, get a render with transparency enabled (more googling) of one tree and then you can duplicate it around to fake a forest. It's also potentially a good idea to render some far off trees to make a distant background rather than rendering potentially hundreds of those billboard sprites.  It might be fun to experiment with more roomy tree renderings given you don't have to have unity do that part anymore...

Edit: totally opposite approach is what's being asked for here!

Instead, you can also start from the geometry which was alpha masked, and subdivide it (use simple instead of catmul-clark) then select verts that are outside the texture map and delete them. Probably don't want to subdivide too far before doing this because deleting verts can get boring...


How do I get rid of the unexpected shadows that appear inside the holes of objects using Glossy BSDF? I'm learning the basics of Cycles and I created a simple cup with a material with a Glossy BSDF shader.

The scene is enclosed by 6 planes and I tried illuminating with a point lamp and then with a light emitting plane, but the shadows remain. Below you can see the render and the mesh.

The rendering settings are the default ones except for the number of samples.

EDIT:

After examining the mesh closer I realized the problem might be there, the subdivision surface tends to keep the slope of the straight edges of the original mesh. The first picture below shows the render and the mesh (after applying the subsurf) from the same point of view. The second one shows the original mesh, which was made with the spin tool. I tried beveling but the problem persisted.

The blend is here: file.blend

You need to increase the number of glossy bounces in render settings > Light paths. These "black surfaces" are caused by rays which enter the cup and then bounce back and forth between the sides until they hit the limit of bounces they are allowed to do, and then return nothing (as defined by the max bounces and glossy bounces values).

By increasing the number of allowed bounces, the rays get more of a chance of gradually working their way over to a spot where they can bounce around to someplace else.

With only 4 glossy bounces:

With a lot more:

Another things that can help is adding a bit of scattering (roughness) to make  paths more random and less likely for rays to get trapped going back and forth for large numbers of bounces:

Note that in some ways this is realistic, as this kind of thing happens in the real world too. In the real world, there is an infinite number of bounces, but light does diminish in intensity at each bounce. So eventually light bouncing around would be absorbed completely, and the surface would appear black.


Motion tracked Video doesn't show up in the render or in the compositing tab I tried to add a 3D object to a clip by following a youtube video. But clip doesn't show up in the render or in the compositing tab. It show up even in the camera view. I didn't change any settings.
please help.
Thank you.

And the  rendered images has only the cube in it like in the picture above.

What you are missing is the alpha channel on the render layers. Without an alpha channel the "alpha over" will fail. Enable Film>Transparent so that the areas with no geometry will be "transparent".


How to bake softbody animation into keyframes? I am trying to bake a softbody animation into keyframes but I can't, does anyone knows how to do it? Thanks!

You can't bake softbody into keyframes anymore, blender uses shape keys now. So you would need to generate a shape key for every frame of animation and also keyframe that shapekey to its frame. You do that with running this script:

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.active_object
start = bpy.context.scene.frame_start
end = bpy.context.scene.frame_end

def insert_keyframe(sk, f):
    sk.keyframe_insert("value", frame=f-1)
    sk.keyframe_insert("value", frame=f+1)
    sk.value = 1.0
    sk.keyframe_insert("value", frame=f)

meshes = []
for f in range(start, end+1):
    bpy.context.scene.frame_set(f)
    meshes.append(obj.to_mesh(scene=bpy.context.scene, apply_modifiers=True, settings='PREVIEW'))

obj.shape_key_add(name="Basis", from_mix=False)
for i in range(0, end-start+1):
    key = obj.shape_key_add(name=str(i+start), from_mix=False)
    insert_keyframe(key, i+start)
    for vert_id in range(len(obj.data.vertices)):
        key.data[vert_id].co = meshes[i].vertices[vert_id].co

for mesh in meshes:
    bpy.data.meshes.remove(mesh)

Don't forget to turn your modifier off or to delete it (or it will override the shape key animation)

Also you can export your softbody animation as an New Tek's .mdd mesh cache format (export addon will do this) and load this file into Mesh Cache modifier. This allows you to for example offset the animation and further manipulate it.


IK - can you prioritise position targeting over rotation? I have an IK constraint with a target at the hand, the problem is that the IK solver will prioritise getting the hands rotation right over getting the arms position right.
For example if it is impossible with the constraints to have the hand at the desired location and rotation, it will move the hand in other ways to get the rotation right. I would prefer it get the rotation as accurate as it can after getting the position perfect first.
So if I enable the IK for targeting position it will work, if I then enable rotation too, it will only work in very few cases - where it can acheive both rotation and position accurately. A huge majority of the time though the movement will break and the resulting position will be random to get the IK rotation to work. I want it the other way around, get the position right always and rotation if it can.

Thanks!

What you're describing sounds like an IK arm done wrong. When done right, an IK arm will allow you to translate the hand, rotate the elbow into position, and rotate the hand into the right orientation. I've included an example file to demonstrate.

Axis Alignment

When you make a bone chain for IK, it is best to create them on a single plane (x,y plane) to keep them all lined up. An IK constraint is dependent on the angles between bones, so having bones misaligned will spell disaster for the solver. In my demo file, enable axis display in the armature properties and go into a right-side orthographic view. You should see all the X and Z axes aligned to the global axes. Y axis does not matter in this particular instance.

This axis alignment matters because the solver calculates the best position for the intermediate bones based on the angle between arm.up and arm.low (in the demo file). It tries to get the bones as close to their original angle difference as possible. If the axes are misaligned, this is unpredictable and easily breaks.

Pole Target

There are multiple elements that play into the pole target's functionality, too. The first and most obvious is the need for a target in the first place. This allows you to manually adjust the position of the elbow after positioning the hand. In the IK constraint settings, there are settings for target object, target bone, pole target object and pole target bone. In my demo the target is the pole.target bone, visualized as a pyramid in the viewport.

In order for a pole target to work, you need to have some sort of angle between the intermediate bones. In my demo file, select arm.up and go into edit mode. Open the properties (N) and look at the difference between the Y value of the tip and base of that bone. This one centimeter difference (could be less, actually) creates an angle on the bone's Z axis between arm.up and arm.low. This angle gives the pole target a starting point on its math. It uses this angle to determine the direction the bone chain will point during calculation.

Hand Transforms

This last piece will get your hand to orient in the right direction. In the IK solver, there are two options for the IK weight: position and rotation. By default, position is selected and has full weight, and rotation is disabled with zero weight. Leave these the way they are. Enabling rotation behaves unexpectedly and unpredictably. We solve this with a copy rotation constraint. Select ik.target, then shift-select hand.ik. Add a copy rotations constraint. This adds a constraint to hand.ik with a target bone of ik.target. At the bottom of the constraint options, you have an option to change the space. This means the transform coordinates of the object. By default, they are set to world space <-> world space, which is what we want in this case. This copies the exact world orientation of the ik.target bone into hand.ik.

Conclusion

By now, your arm IK should be aligned, safe and predictable to handle, allow translation of the hand, allow manual control of the elbow and allow manual rotation of the hand independently from the arm. This is a proper IK setup. Obviously, every case will be different in its specifics, but this is the idea.

I will edit this answer with one more piece of information when I get back to the computer.


How to show face in edit mode after hiding with "H" Very simple question but I couldn't find answer

I'm modeling some complex stuff which I need to hide some faces to move forward, but after I'm done I want to display those faces back

⎇ AltH or 3D view > Header > Mesh > Show/Hide >Show Hidden will do it:


Noise reduction on only one layer To reduce render times I want to apply some noise reduction on a simple scene using Cycles.

I don't want to apply it to all scene because it blurs a bit the first plane (A), so my idea is to separate layers and apply the denoise in the background layers, where the shadows are falling (B) and composite them.

How can I apply denoise to only one layer?

I have listed down the steps and attached the implemented blender file here.

Move the red circular object to layer 2
Give a material index to red object. I have given it a value of 1. We do this to have a mask for this object, which will be helpful during compositing.

3.Setup render layers as follows. Notice denoising is checked in render layer with shadow. Also 'material index' pass is checked for red object layer, which we will use in compositing.

In the compositor, set up the nodes as shown below.Basically, the material Id mask cuts out just the red object from the second render layer. We then add this to the other render layer with shadow.

Done! Checkout the attached blend file, where I implemented the above steps.


Scripts with sound path - Imported audio not working with Save Game as Runtime I'm using a Blender 2.74 and am trying to pack external audio data into a .blend file. I am using Windows 7. If I try run my game on other another computer, everything but the audio seems okay.

Here is the audio script:

import aud

def main():

    cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
    own = cont.owner
    scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
    gunspawn = scene.objects[own.name]

    # sensors
    Message = cont.sensors['Message']

    #sound of glock shoot
    sound = aud.Factory.file("C:/MakeHumanZip/project_last_back/sounds/glockshoot.ogg")

When I pack the external data into the .blend the audio only works on my machine. The audio doesn't work on other Windows 7 machines and the scripts eventually crash.

Can anyone help me with solution?

Referring to a file in a python script doesn't tell blender that it is using an external file, so it isn't included when packing external files.

You can add a sound strip to the Video Sequence Editor or you could add a speaker in the 3D scene and open the sound file with that. Both of these methods allow blender to pack the audio file into the blend and I expect that both will be included when exporting to the game engine runtime.

An even better approach would be to use a sound actuator and open the sound file with that, which allows it to be packed. You can then use the actuator to play the sound or access other properties with a python script, you can also use sensors to play the sound without the script.

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
actu = cont.actuators['Sound']
cont.activate(actu)


How to make sunbeams in blender? I was working on a something and I thought, wouldn't sunbeams look great with this.
So I searched in google and everywhere but didn't find any answer. So my question is how to make sunbeams in blender?

You probably meant God rays, and googleing that would be a good idea.
In Blender Internal:
Step 1:
Add a spot light (Shift-A>Lamp>Spot)
Step 2: Check Halo
Intensity will effect how strong your God Rays are, step will remove any banding, you will
what to set the step to at least 8, otherwise this effect will not work properly.

Step 3:
As you may have noticed, you have one solid ray, which doesn't look very nice.
to fix this, you will need to make a stencil for the light.
To do this, add a plane.
Subdivide it(W>Subdivide>F6)
It the menu that pops up set the cuts to five.
hit (Shift-R)
Step 3.5:
We will now cut holes in our stencil.
Hit C to activate brush select.
select a random pattern on your plane as such:

Hit X. Your stencil now has holes in it.
Step 4:
Move the stencil close to the top of the stop light's cone as such:

Your God Rays are now ready to Render.
In Cycles:
Complete Steps 1, 3, 3.5, and 4 form the previous section.
Step 1:
Make sure you are using a very recent build of blender 2.71+

Step 2:
Go into the world tab of the properties panel. Under volume set the material to Volume Scatter.
(You can also add a cube around the spot lamp, and set its volume material to Volume Scatter, it will save a lot of rendering time.)
Also check Homogeneous Volume* if you want less slow render times.

Usually the default value of 1 for density is way to high, so start with a smaller value and find what works for your needs.
Keep in mind that the intensity of the lights in the scene will be affected by the scattering, they might not seem as bright as you expect them, so be ready to set the light intensity to a much larger value than you normally would.
Step 4:
Put your samples up really high, (approx 150)
Hit Render...
Wait...
Wait...
Wait...
Tada! you have God Rays in Cycles.
*Homogeneous Volume means that you have applied no textures to your world volume, if you do, something will break.
Edit
Note, that in cycles, mesh lights work as well as a spot light. with mesh lights, you can also add a texture to the emission value.


Rotating camera view in Grease Pencil Draw Mode in Blender 2.8 I'm new Blender and I'm really excited about the Grease Pencil feature but I'm finding it difficult to achieve a function I use in other 2D animation programs, namely rotating/rolling the camera view while in a drawing mode.

In Toon Boom's products you have the ability to rotate the camera view of the canvas to make it easier to draw at an angle without transforming the drawn elements. To do this you simply hold Ctrl+Alt (which brings up a overlay of an animation disk) and then Left-Drag to set the rotation angle. To reset the view you press Shift+Z.

To rotate the camera view in Blender I find I must escape out of Draw Mode to Object Mode, select the camera, rotate/roll the view, and re-enter the Draw Mode.

In searching for a better solution I found this which links a video that supports a similar feature  but I feel it's inefficient.

The link goes on to explain that pressing R will achieve what I want but I don't seem to be able to get it to work as described.

I believe I should be able to write a script to add a shortcut. I spent some time on it but not being familiar with Blender scripting I find it difficult to even know how to approach this problem.

I found a simple framework here for adding a shortcut that seems to work but the business logic escapes me. Essentially my approach has been to assign a keyboard shortcut to Ctrl+Alt+Left-Drag while in Draw Mode to go directly into rotating/rolling the camera, and then upon release go back to Draw Mode on the object I was just drawing in.

Does anyone have similar script or helpful direction?

As others have already pointed out that Shift + Numpad 4 and Shift + Numpad 6 rotate the view by increments. This is ok and already works on the default set up.
For me, the better solution was to go to Edit > Preferences Keymap under Grease Pencil > Grease Pencil(global) press Add New. From here set your preferred key binding (I chose Middle Mouse Button ) then click the little "expand" arrow, add any modifiers (I chose Shift + Alt) and type `view3d.view_roll" into the command box.
And that's it, this allows arbitrary rotation while holding Shift + Alt + Middle Mouse Button . To reset press Shift + Numpad 1.


Render turns out plain white For some reason, when I render out the image, it is plain white. I've checked the sky settings, and I tried applying textures, but nothing seems to change.

How can I fix this?

In the 'Image Editor' window, where the white render appears, you have selected to view the alpha channel of the image. Because the image has no transparency is displays as solid white. You need to switch back to 'Color' mode to view the colours of the image:


Freestyle lines as an independent render pass In 2.7x series I could select Freestyle lines into its own render pass. In 2.80RC2 I cannot find such an option. Is it not implemented yet or I am missing it?

The option isn't available in Eevee but is still available in Cycles. You need to use the Filter panel in the Render Layers properties and disable the elements (eg, Surfaces) that you don't want to appear in the render :


How to center a cylinder on an existing hole in a mesh? Given a project with many mesh objects which have the wrong size mounting holes, I've created a bored cylinder with the correct bore diameter, which I intend to boolean union in the existing holes.  However, I'm missing how to center the new piece on the existing holes.  There is a nice explanation [align two objects][1]][1] for centering objects, but I don't see how to modify the explanation to my problem.
Is there an easy way to align two objects on a specific axis?

In Edit Mode select the hole's rim with Alt+RMB and press Shift+S-->Cursor to Selected. Then in Object Mode select the cylinder and press Shift+S-->Selection to Cursor (Offset).


How do you apply colormanagement settings to EXR files? How do you apply colormanagement settings to EXR files?
When i do some color adjustment by using colormanagement and try to save exr file and open it in photoshop it looks like colormanagement settings was not applied to it.

Correct.

Due to a very unfortunate design decision, no matter whatever your view transforms are set to, the EXR will always be the unadjusted, scene referred values from the Cycles render buffer.

In order to perform colour transforms from an OCIO configuration, you would need to perform this task externally using a tool such as ocioconvert from the OCIO package.

Note that while an EXR can contain any type of data, with regards to imagery and visual energy, it is a standard convention to store that data with linear visual energy ratios. That is, in terms of colour space transforms, you would want to avoid storing nonlinear encodings in an EXR file via baking in a transfer function curve.


Smoke is not appearing in the "render" viewport, version 2.82 I am in need of help. I was trying to complete a smoke tutorial, but I needed to update Blender. After I had updated to 2.82, I had put in all of the desired values into their designated slots. I pressed Bake, and afterwards I tried to look at the results through all four Viewport Shading displays (Wireframe, Solid, Material Preview, and Rendered). At first I could see the smoke in Wireframe and Solid, but only if I don't place a Principled BSDF node. If I do, it is invisible no matter what.
If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. Below is the screenshot. The emitter is in the red circle, a small plane.

Edit: I searched some more on the internet for answers. It appears that I have a Graphics Card that is incompatible with Blender, a Radeon Pro Vega 64 16 GB. The only graphics cards that are supported are from NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, and Macs with software with an IOS version of 10.12 or older. That is most likely why it shows up with the message "No compatible GPUs found for path tracing" when I try to render the smoke with CUDA or OpenCL. The CPU works fine, so that is why only Cycles works. However, even if I switched to Cycles and CPU processing, the "Render" Viewport Shading Display just fills up with blocky black and red pixels, instead of a single cloud.

Edit 2: I believe I found the solution! I now was able to see both modular and replay in WINDOWS rather than Apple, but now I found out that it renders the same image over and over again when I wanted to hit Render Animation. I created a new question that is more related to that rendering issue, rather than this Viewport issue.

I'm sorry if this is a dumb answer...but is your inflow (the plane) inside the confines of the domain? If it is even with the borders, or slightly outside the domain of the domain i don't think it will work. I think it needs to be totally inside.


Animated text body drops Playback FPS by half I'm developing my first Add-On, its main purpose is to visualize Scientific Data (BlenderNC), I'm using Blender v2.83 (Mac OS 10.15.5, 16GB RAM, Radeon Pro 555 2 GB). As a feature, I want to animate text in the Camera view to display the daytime or step of the data on each frame. If the update text function is unregistered the Playback FPS is ~60 fps (Fig.1), however, once I register the function the Playback FPS drops to half (~27 FPS; Fig.2). I'm using the attached script to reproduce this issue. This drop by half significantly affects the display in Real-Time of scientific data.
Is there anything I could do to improve the Playback FPS?
import bpy
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent
import time

@persistent
def update_frame(scene,context):
    tic = time.time()
    time_t = bpy.context.scene.frame_current
    print(time.time()-tic)
    if 'Camera' in bpy.data.objects.keys() and time:
        tic = time.time()
        Camera = bpy.data.objects.get('Camera')
        size = 0.03
        coords = (-0.35,0.17,-1)
        children_name  = [children.name for children in  Camera.children]
        print(time.time()-tic)
        if "BlenderNC_time" not in children_name:
            tic = time.time()
            bpy.ops.object.text_add(radius=size)
            text=bpy.context.object
            text.name="BlenderNC_time"
            text.parent = Camera
            text.location = coords
            print(time.time()-tic)
        else:
            tic = time.time()
            childrens = Camera.children
            text = [child for child in childrens if child.name=="BlenderNC_time"][-1]
            print(time.time()-tic)
        tic = time.time()
        text.data.body = str(time_t)
        text.select_set(False)
        print(time.time()-tic )

handlers = bpy.app.handlers

def registerBlenderNC():
    bpy.types.Scene.update_frame = update_frame
    handlers.frame_change_pre.append(bpy.types.Scene.update_frame)

def unregisterBlenderNC():
    del bpy.types.Scene.update_frame
    handlers.frame_change_pre.remove(update_frame)

registerBlenderNC()

Example in Blender default scene, unregistered text update:

Example in Blender default scene, registered text update:

The issue was with unselecting the text object:
text.select_set(False)

testing if the text object is selected, to then unset it solved the issue.
if text.select_get():
    text.select_set(False)

Full fixed code:
import bpy
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent
import time

@persistent
def update_frame(scene,context):
    tic = time.time()
    time_t = bpy.context.scene.frame_current
    print(time.time()-tic)
    if 'Camera' in bpy.data.objects.keys() and time:
        tic = time.time()
        Camera = bpy.data.objects.get('Camera')
        size = 0.03
        coords = (-0.35,0.17,-1)
        children_name  = [children.name for children in  Camera.children]
        print(time.time()-tic)
        if "BlenderNC_time" not in children_name:
            tic = time.time()
            bpy.ops.object.text_add(radius=size)
            text=bpy.context.object
            text.name="BlenderNC_time"
            text.parent = Camera
            text.location = coords
            print(time.time()-tic)
        else:
            tic = time.time()
            childrens = Camera.children
            text = [child for child in childrens if child.name=="BlenderNC_time"][-1]
            print(time.time()-tic)
        tic = time.time()
        text.data.body = str(time_t)
        if text.select_get():
            text.select_set(False)
        print(time.time()-tic )

handlers = bpy.app.handlers

def registerBlenderNC():
    bpy.types.Scene.update_frame = update_frame
    handlers.frame_change_pre.append(bpy.types.Scene.update_frame)

def unregisterBlenderNC():
    del bpy.types.Scene.update_frame
    handlers.frame_change_pre.remove(update_frame)

registerBlenderNC()


keep initial weights with dynamic paint I have a plane with hand drawn vertex weights and I'm trying to dynamically paint onto it during animation. The problem is that if I set the dynamic paint vertex output to the same vertex groups with my hand drawn weights on, then rather than getting modified by the dynamic paint, my hand drawn weights get completely overwritten at the start of the animation.

Is there a way to keep the existing weights and just modify them dynamically?

You can use a different weight group for the dynamic paint. Then mix these two groups with the Vertex Weight Mix modifier. This way you can choose how your weights will be mixed with great possibilities.


Animation changes after applying mirror modifier I have an object, a quadcopter propeller. I applied a double mirror to generate 4 propellers.
Then, I animated the propeller so it rotates. This produces the four propellers to rotate in their places (this is the desired output).

However, if I apply the mirror modifier or if I export it to an fbx (which I need to do), the animation changes and all the four propellers start to rotate around the original one, which continues to behave in the same way.

Is there anyway to avoid this behavior?

The object has an origin which is used as center for the rotation but your object is made by doubling mirror on object so the initial object's origin is being used as the generated object's origin by the animation.

To fix this you must separate the mesh obtained after applying mirrors into 4 meshes, into edit mode select the faces of one propeller, press "P" and hit "selection", you must do this three times so that you have your four propellers.

Once this is done you still have one thing to do, it is to set your 4 objects origins: use "Shit-S" to access the alignment tools and use it in edit mode to set your cursor precisely where you want your rotation axis to be.

Then back to object mode "object>tranform>origin to 3d cursor", you could also use origin to geometry (in this case blender will interpolate between all the vertices of your object and set its origin there) and note that geometry to origin is the same as "apply location


How to combine "toon-diffuse" shader and "toon glossy" shader? What is the best way to combine these two shaders? When I use the "add shader", it doesn't just combine the shaders, but it masses up the colors and the lighting. What would be some of the best ways to do that?

I reccomend a Mix Shader. If you want it to combine it in a different way, you can always attach nodes like Color Ramp or Fresnel to the Fac value to change the output.


How to match material properties to physical reality? I'm trying to make a realistic gold shader. I would like to know what is the right way to match the information found on refractiveindex.info (for gold:  http://refractiveindex.info/?shelf=3d&book=metals&page=gold) to my cycles shader. The page is in a section for "information for 3D artist" but I'm wondering what parts of the information can be integrated in a cycles material and where it should be plugged.

In this tutorial (in the section "Basic metallic shader" at the end) : http://www.chocofur.com/6-shadersamptextures.html is mentioned a technique for the reflection information. Even though this is a very-well written and complete tutorial, I'm not 100% sure about the accuracy of the information because the author claims that the red, blue and green curves match RGB curves (which I doubt because they are labeled as being for polarization) and in the author's example for gold, the curves to not actually match what is found on refractiveindex.info, as exemplified here :

I understand very few people are BOTH 3D artists and physicists, maybe explaining the difficulty of finding accurate information on the subject. As you can see, I have very little knowledge of optics myself.

Is there any other information on refractiveindex.info that I could plug in? Like wavelengths and absorption information for exact colors, for instance. Any information would be appreciated, suggestions of documentation on the subject as well.

Here's a wonderful tutorial by Blender Guru for making a completely accurate metallic shader. I would follow his tutorial, and use this list of colors to set up your gold. Metal in real life has different colors on the edges facing away from you than the ones facing you, so this tutorial and data-table should describe how to set it all up. This approach may also be simpler than trying to interpret the graphs and curves you are currently having problems with. It's kind of a workaround, but I hope it helps! Cheers,
Graves Broderick


Why do bones without visible weights move the mesh? I'm using Blender 2.82.
It looks to me as if the first 2 bones in my .blend file do not have any weight.

However rotating them cause my mesh to deform.

I know that rotating the root bone causes the mesh to rotate, but that is not what I mean. In fact, parts of the mesh are deforming.
Why is this happening, and how can I resolve this?
Rotating the first 2 bones should not have any effect.
I have also uploaded a video here that shows the problem.

Actually blue doesn't necessarily mean zero weight. To make sure that a bone has zero influence you need to enable the Zero Weight option in the Viewport Overlays panel. The black areas mean real zero weight. Here you can see that the second bone has influence on a large part of your object.
I don't know why zero weight is not displayed by default in Weight Paint mode by the way, blue confuses people as they may think there's no influence when actually there might be.

Also note that you can make sure that a bone has no influence: select it and in the Properties panel > Bone, disable the Deform option.

The first bone's Deform option is deactivated but as it makes the others rotate, and as the others have influence on the top of the mesh, rotating the first bone will move the top of the mesh.
I guess you need to set your armature correctly, reparent the mesh to the armature, and give corrections in Weight Paint mode (most of the time parenting With Automatic Weight is not right away correct).


Blender Cycle too much noise I've spent all my morning trying to get rid of all fireflies in the final render, but the result still shows too much noise. How can I fix it (without changing materials)?

Thank you.

Normally, you'd have to increase the sample count (4x to halve the noise...)

At the noise level you show in your image, and if you are using Blender 2.79, you can try to use the noise reduction: in the Render options, switch 'feature set' to 'experimental', then in the 'render layers' tab activate the 'Denoising' option.
Denoising will add a bit to your render time (but less than increasing the sample count), and can lead to some loss of fine detail. It's up to you to decide if the detail loss is a problem.

I don't think they will be very useful for your scene here, but some other options that can reduce fireflies are:
-  in the render tab, under 'Light paths': (slightly) increase 'filter glossy'
- in the render tab, under 'sampling': set the 'clamp' options to a value higher than zero (the higher, the less effect, but there's no upper bound afaik)


When I applied Armature Modifier, Mesh does not follow the animation I have a FBX model that has a bone key frame animation.

When I imported it into Blender, it came with a Armature Modifier.

Then, I applied the modifier. Bones follow the result, but mesh are separated from bones.

How can I solve the it?
Any help or tips are greatly appreciated.

After a long fighting, finally I solved the problem. I'll post it later.

The answer is fairly simple, don't apply the armature modifier.

Once a modifier is applied, it cannot dynamically change the mesh. Applying a modifier simply takes the current effects of the modifier an applies them permanently to the mesh. This is rarely useful for the armature modifier, as generally you want to keep animating the mesh.