How to I merge two objects so I can move them around as if they were one object? I've seen other questions about merging objects, usually involving deleting faces from both of them and connecting them together. But that's not what I want. I just want to be able to control many objects together, using scale, movement, etc, as if it was only one object.

Does anyone know how to do this? It seems like it should be easy but I haven't found a good explanation yet..

There are many ways to do that.
One option is to select all the objects and join them into one (Ctrl J).

Another option is to parent all of your objects to one of the objects or to an empty.

Affecting the parent_object/empty will affect all of them, but you can still edit/re-arrange each one of them individually.


VSE - Audio wave forms are tiny, audio channel is huge I'd like to see more detail of my audio wave form:

As you can see I've zoomed the channels appropriately. All the places that have "no" wave form actually have audio. When I play the animation, it renders the audio fine. Increasing the Volume, Pitch or Pan has no effect.
Help?

Changing the volume should work:

If you need to have different volumes at different times, then change an area to graph editor, click the small circle next to the volume widget, so you can work on a curve controlling the volume in Graph editor.


Animating multiple columns to sound I'm trying to make (or at least understand how to) something like this image sort of like a giants causeway and have it move up and down on a per column basis to sound. I know the idea of getting an object to work with sound what I'm not sure about is if there's a quicker way to get the columns to move up and down to sound than animating each one individually.

I suppose i'm imagining it like there'd be a plane underneath that would push columns up in waves. I found this post on lattices I'm wondering if I could use a combination of array modifiers and the lattice modifier? Or is there a better way?

Using Sound Drivers Addon

Some images of a quick sample.

Install Addon.  Drag the sound_drivers folder into one of your addons folders.  It can be found under Testing Support Level Animation Category.

Add speaker to scene, associate music file, then bake to 1000 splits of frequency range. (Make a cuppa while it bakes)  These are baked to custom properties AA0 to AA999 on the speaker.

Add a torus (or group of objects) to the scene.  Set up a sounddriver using channel 0 (AA0 in this case). Multiple drivers can be used with multiple bakes.  Select all objects you want as a "unit".  As a simple example I've added one sounddriver using channel AA0 to drive the z scale of the torus.  Any object being driven by channel 0 (eg AA0, AB0, ) will be converted to approp channel.

From the 3d toolbar SoundDrive panel, choose  visualiser type grid and the size you desire, I've chosen 25 rows x 40 columns,  a grid is created with each unit being driven by the assoc. sound bake.  Use the Offset sliders to arrange, much like the array modifier.

Each unit is parented to an empty and all to a master empty "ST_Handle". Which can be moved / scaled to suit. Reorganizing can be achieved using a simple script.


Why does cycles' volumetrics leave stepping artifacts? When I render out my rather sharp volumetrics, I get the kinds of artifacts shown in the images and links below. They are obviously produced by step size, and samples stepping through the volume, and the easy answer is to decrease step size ad infinitum and increase volume bounces until your computer explodes. What I don't understand is the concept behind these artifacts are produced in the first place. If the dark bands are where light never gets to, why does more light get to the end/beginning of each step in the first place? it suggests cycles has some kind of bias near the step, and more samples/bounces don't help somehow. if someone knows a way to fundamentally limit or stop their occurrence, it would be grand, too.

The banding in the smoke on the side of the cube is due to the volumetric Step Size and is an artifact due to the way in which rays that travel through a volume are calculated.

In the same way that your Render settings define the resolution of the resultant image (eg, 1920x1080) - and higher resolution results in more 'pixels' in the image and therefore considerably more "work" to render - the Step Size effectively defines the "resolution" of volumetrics. However, rather than define the resolution the setting controls how small or large the steps should be between samples of the volume. The smaller the Step Size, the higher the effective resolution.

For each ray that travels through the volume Blender will allow the ray to travel Step Size scene units through the volume before it samples the volume to determine the outcome (whether it scatters, is absorbed, results in additional emission, etc.). The smaller the step size, the more often samples of the volume will be taken and the more complicated the render (and subsequently longer render times) - so this setting is a trade-off between render speed and volumetric quality.

In your scene you have the Step Size set to 0.1. This is in Blender Units and the cube is only actually around 0.5 blender units in size - so any artifacts of the volume are quite considerable compared to the size of the cube.

Typically you should reduce the Step Size to something that would not be significantly noticeable for your scene. This depends on the size of the objects in your scene, the position of the camera, the "fluffiness" of your volumetrics (soft edges will hide any artifacts), etc. so there is no 'one size fits all' best value.

I'm sure all other render engines must use a similar setting - although it might be hidden/masked from the user and possibly even automatically determined. However, in Blender it is one of those settings you need to be aware of and tune based on the available render time and desired quality, scale, etc.

The banding you are seeing is effectively an interference pattern due to the range of factors that you have set up your scene to highlight this particular problem - in particular that your Smoke Domain resolution is only 32 (low for such a large domain viewed at close range), your Step Size is 0.1 (around 20% of the size of the cube that takes up most of the visible frame), your camera is purposefully positioned on the corner of the domain (which is forcing the largest angle between simulation cells and the camera rays). All of this together is creating a perfect storm of interference. As the rays pass trough the domain they either 'hit' a cell at a sample-point along their length (the 0.1 step size) or they don't. Due to how all the factors interact, the position along the ray where it interacts with a cell progresses along the ray based on all the other factors, resulting in some 'bands' hitting one set of cells (closer in so more likely to have denser smoke) whereas slight changes in angle or start point (due to camera ray angle or due to how the domain surface (the start of the volumetric ray) is a different distance at that angle.

Your domain resolution (32) is not a practical value for such a scene - increasing the resolution significantly reduces the banding due to higher resolution smoke simulation causing less interference.


Million of vertex/edges (don´t know exactly the name) well here´s the thing I´m new to blender and I started creating a model of a human figure which I will animate in the near future. Now I´m supposed to start with the retopology phase, which gets really annoying cause every time I select the edit mode, the surface of my model is full of these millions of vertex/edges/etc. which difficults my work cause it gets really confusing to create a retopology of my model.

P.S.: I´ve watched retopology tutorials on youtube in which the view of such mesh is disabled in edit mode to make the work easier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VC98kiy10Q

So in light of your wrong retopo setup these are the steps you need to take.

Prep High Poly mesh
1. Turn off "show wires" and "draw all edges" on the high poly object.
2. Give this a dark color material with some soft specularity to aid in retopo work.

Prep Low Poly mesh
1. Create a new plane mesh to be your new low poly retopo object.
2. Turn on xray on the object property panel.
3. Turn on show face normals on the navigation panel in the 3d viewport.

Prep Retopology tools
1. Turn on snap tool, on the drop down menu choose "face"
2. Turn on "snap to self"
3. Turn on "project individual elements on the surface of other object"
4. Turn on "automatic merge vertices"

Learn the "F2 addon" or other addon suggested and use it to work retopology.

Here is the screen shot.


wrap STL around a cyclinder Is it possible to wrap an STL around a cylinder in Blender using one of the deforms?

E.g. is it possible to wrap this STL
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:651829
around a cylinder to create a face mug?

(I was thinking of using a wave deform one wavelength long and then splitting the STL, inverting one half of the wave and rejoining it with the other half of the wave deformed STL, but that would not result in a circular shape.)

Thanks

Consider a

Curve modifier with a NURBS Circle.
Simple Deform modifier with Bend Selected


Annotation in the VSE How does the annotation work in the VSE, in blender 2.8 beta? If I check the box annotation in the VSE and add a layer nothing happens. What am I missing?

After adding a layer. Hold D to draw on VSE preview window.
Holding D and drawing with right click will bring up the eraser.You can turn on Onion Skinning in the options panel as well.


What is wrong with my bone rig and what settings have I messed up? I've created movement before with a simpler bone rig and since then have weight painted the entire model to red.

Whenever I go into pose mode and try to move anything, nothing happens, I simply can't get any movement.

Is there an armature setting I could be missing?

Here is my blender file.

http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=49231

Nothing moves because the "manipulate center points" is checked:


Same distance betweet multiple objects I was wondering if there is an easy way to create a gap between objects.

In this scenario I have 4 different objects so an array modifier will not work. But I want to create a gap between then that has an exact amount for all the gaps.

Now I can eyeball it, I can wiggle with the Location properties or I can create a spacer object and use the snap tool to do it. All of these workflows feel a bit extra and will not work on larger scenes.

Is there a easier way to accomplish this?

assuming that you want to create a vertical gap between objects, and their origins are in the center of geometry, you can use this script to do it, it aligns the objects and creates a vertical gab between them:

import bpy
#Change gab
gab = 1
objs = bpy.context.selected_objects
box = []
for i in range(len(objs)):
    objs[i].location = (0,0,0)
    box.append(objs[i].dimensions[2])
    if (i == 0):
        box[0] = box[0]/2
    else:
        objs[i].location[2] = (sum(box[:i])+objs[i].dimensions[2]/2)+gab*i


Copy Rotation Constraint not working when paired with a Shrinkwrap So my scene is a boat on an ocean modifier. I have a shrinkwrap modifier on a plane, the rough size of the boat, directly under it. Vertex group has been set. Plane is subdivided. Boat is not responding to rotations from the shrinkwrap, but is responding to the location.
I don't know. I might've set the origin point wrong or something? Don't really know how to fix it. Please help.
I'll leave a link to the .blend file below.
Thank you.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NmOY5HXwDEhCtLWLKaLXwPvyDrDjpvsz/view?usp=sharing

Ok, so apparently moving the plane with the shrinkwrap modifier fixes this, but why?

I'm always suspicious of copying rotation (or scale, or transforms) from vertices.  Why?  Because vertices don't have those characteristics.  What is a vertex group's rotation?  What is its scale?  Those aren't questions with clear answers.  Blender might try to give them those characteristics, for purposes of a constraint, but it's really weird that it does, and, for a few reasons, I'd expect poor behavior from Blender when trying to do that stuff-- not least, because it's not likely to get very intensive testing from users.
What would I do?  I would shrinkwrap two empties to the ocean, then damped track one and locked track the other:

Empties have been scaled up and changed to sphere display to improve visibility.  Shrinkwrap constraints on empties are not shown.


What is "Factor" in Point Scale (Geo Nodes)? If I want to use this node on the "Attribute" mode, how can I use it? what is it used for?
I tried to play by typing some built-in attributes next to the Factor input. It changed the scale but I still don't know how to use it. I mean how is the scale calculated?
The manual says:

Use the values from the attribute to move each point by a different
amount.

Why points should be moved? Is it about scaling or moving or both? or is it just my english?
I know how to use the "Vector" mode.

You can use this node to scale points by amount in a specific attribute. For example, I generated an attribute using Attribute Proximity node.  Attribute Proximity generates attribute based on distance between vertex and closest point in geometry, I called it "new_attr":

Next I scaled vertexes by this attribute. Of course, to view scale you need to have some instances distributed by them, so I distribute Suzannes.


Does blender recognize the same background if present in multiple frames of an animation? So recently, my friend and I were talking and he suddenly just put the idea out that if we render an animation of say 60 frames that has a fixed camera and only a specific component like,say, a cube rotating, blender does not render the background scene for  every subsequent frame after it first renders the background scene but rather only the cube whose rotation changes.
Is it so?

At least in cycles, no, and in other renderers, very unlikely.

In order to get physically accurate light transport you can't make assumptions like this, and Cycles definitely tries to be accurate in this regard.

Think about it, where does the computer decide where to cut from background to middle to foreground. How does it deal with reflected light or shadow onto the background? The only way to accurately figure this out is to trace the light rays, at which point you are rendering it.

If you want a static background, you render it separately and either composite it, use an emit only background pane or environment texture. This is generally the preferable solution as it is both simpler from a developer support perspective, and also puts control squarely in the artist's hands.


Common origin of multi mesh character I want to set the origin/pivot point of a multi mesh character to the feet of the character. I tried making an empty object as the parent to all other objects (and armature) of the character and have this empty objects origin in (0,0,0), but when importing to Unity the charcters origin/pivot point is still in the center of the character... Any ideas/solutions?

Set the origin of your armature object.

Don't have unity to test atm, (not since I quit windows for ubuntu)  but IIRC the origin is the origin of the armature object.

2.8 example, cube is parented to armature as though it was body mesh

Select the armature in object mode, set the 3D cursor to where you wish the origin to be.  In image example it's simply cursor to origin ShiftC.  Select origin to 3D cursor from the set origin menu. (In 2.7x Object > Transform > Origin to 3D Cursor)

Now this is going to mess up the location of all children. In the case above I have selected the cube (it's the "body" of the armature for example sake) and clear the parent inverse to move it back. AltP Ckear Parent Inverse.

This however may depend on how the mesh objects were positioned as children to the armature. in which case selecting and translating is another option.

Also to move all meshes as well to have new origin as origin follow @FFeller's answer for meshes and clear parent inverse.

Hmmm, beginning to recall might actually be the root bone location. In which case, in bone edit mode, add a new bone at (0, 0, 0) and make it the parent bone of what is current root bone (probably hips)


Edit Mixamo animation in Blender I am new to blender, i have downloaded the fbx animation from mixamo and wanted to edit the model with the animation

Here the thread of archer does not move with the fingers of model lady. I have no idea how can i edit this ??? Any help please ??

I realize this is an old question, but the best way I found for editing Mixamo's animations are these:

Create your own IK controls on top of it ( I usually import an already IK-rigged model into Mixamo, but you can apply IK to a fresh rig imported from Mixamo). For example, you can leave the rest of the animation as is, and just control the arm with your IK. If you've rigged the rest of the arms, legs, etc. then make sure to turn the IK influence down to 0 for these (otherwise the mixamo animation won't work).
Edit specific F-Curves. For example, to move the arm, you want to select either the upper arm or forearm bone, go to Curve editor, type "rotation" into the curve editor search box and try moving the whole curves up and down. You can also pick a point in time where you want to modify the movement, select a keyframe on the curve there, and move it up and down so that the hand's position is the way you want it. (enable proportional editing to also affect neighboring keyframes - otherwise your animation will only look right at that specific frame and snap right back at the other ones. You can also edit every single frame but I wouldn't do that, as it's too much work and you're bound to get jittery results)


How do i remove objects within another object's collection? I have no idea how to phrase this properly, so I hope a gif will be able to show. This is a more a matter of scene collection organization rather than modelling, but its driving me nuts.

As shown, i'm trying to remove the objects within the "connector" object collection into the "Scene" collection but it just goes back into the connector object again.
My questions are:

Why is the "connector" object a collection in the first place?
Why are the 4 objects highlighted stuck within the "connector" object collection? (I'm not sure what i did to get them stuck there)
How do i go about removing these 4 objects from the "connector" collection into another collection, like the other objects?

The 'connector' object is not actually a collection. Most probably, the other four objects are parented to the connector object, thus causing them to be shown under this object in the Outliner.
In response to your second question, the objects are actually getting moved to the Scene Collection, but they remain where they are greyed out simply to display the hierarchy (as they are still parented to the 'connector' object). Scrolling down to the bottom of the Outliner should find the four objects in the Scene  Collection.
An alternative way to move these objects is to press M.


Set color for UI window border how do I customize color for border edge between two window areas, please? Is there some item in UI Themes preferences?

I think it would be useful, if you often resizes windows and miss this edge, or mistake it by buttons line hider.

I agree.  It doesn't exist yet.

I was pushing for it on the dev site,
and they told me to go to the wiki instead.
https://mobile.twitter.com/doyousketch2/status/835212481614266369
I wasn't about to sign up for another flippin' website
just re-type what I'd already typed in.

I ended up suggesting it on:
https://code.blender.org/2016/12/the-blender-101-project-and-you
but who knows where that comment went.

Makes me feel like Blender doesn't want to hear about it.


Make a wireframe out of an uneven rectangle with even thickness? Hey I'm a newbie to blender and I want to model rooms of a building. The rooms should be wireframes except the floor, which can be a simple face. But when I use the Wireframe modifier on rooms that are not perfect squares it looks uneven in thickness. Is there a way to make everything the same thickness and keep it editable in case I want it thicker or thinner in the future? Here is a picture to describe my problem:

You have scaled your object in Object mode, so it's not scaled 1/1/1 on the XYZ axis anymore, you just need to apply your scale in Object mode: ctrl A > Apply Scale


Is there a way to Force 24 fps on Animation Playback? I have some animations and baked simulations in my scene. When I view the playback, it plays at around 16 fps. Right now I can use my mouse to scrub through the timeline which works ok, but obviously I can't move at an exact speed. I know there are ways to improve the fps, but is there a way to simply force 24 fps? I don't care how bad it looks and I don't care if it skips every other frame. I just want to see how the animation looks in real time.

I can see the problem here. It is probably because your hardware isn't able to handle it. I am sorry to say that. Maybe try restarting your computer, or try clearing any junk files, anything to increase the speed of your computer. If you could share your computer specs, it would be easier, or there is one more solution, try removing 1 simulation. This might boost your computer. It would be easier if you could share a video of the simulation in the viewport mode along with your hardware specs.
Cheers,
Aster17


Unable to render with cycles using GPU: failure to compile CUDA kernel I am failing to render with Cycles. When I hit F12 in a default scene (just a cube) it says "CUDA kernel compilation failed, see console for details." I read that you can pull down from the top of the Blender window to see the console, but that didn't contain anything of value other than the same error message. So I started Blender from the terminal and got the following:

CUDA version 9.10 detected, build may succeed but only CUDA 8.0 is officially supported.
Compiling CUDA kernel ...
"nvcc" -arch=sm_20 --cubin "/usr/share/blender/scripts/addons/cycles/source/kernel/kernels/cuda/kernel.cu" -o "/home/tim/.cache/cycles/kernels/cycles_kernel_sm20_F85D76AC61003DDA20889AF653A705B3.cubin" -m64 --ptxas-options="-v" --use_fast_math -DNVCC -D__KERNEL_CUDA_VERSION__=91 -I"/usr/share/blender/scripts/addons/cycles/source"
nvcc fatal   : Value 'sm_20' is not defined for option 'gpu-architecture'
CUDA kernel compilation failed, see console for details.

From googling it seems that sm_20 means "Compute 2.0" (which my GPU supports) and that as of CUDA 9 sm_20 is no longer supported. So are my only options to try and install CUDA 8 via nvidia's site or upgrade the GPU in this machine? Thanks!

Software:

Blender 2.79b
64-bit Ubuntu 18.04.1 TLS
proprietary driver: nvidia-driver-390
nvidia-cuda-toolkit version 9.1.85-3ubuntu1
nvidia-modprobe version 384.111-2

Hardware:

Nvidia GTX570, Intel 6600K, 16GB RAM

Blender Setup:

Preferences > System > Cycles Compute Device is set to "GeForce GTX 570 (Display).
Render button's device is set to "GPU Compute"
Cycles Render is set at top of 3D view.

Seems like GTX570 cards are no longer supported in Cycles. You should still be able to render on them in previous versions of Blender. I think 2.77 or 2.76 should still work. Else than that unfortunately I don't think there is a solution for this other than upgrading to a newer card.


How do you link to documentation via an operator So I have a series of operators I would like to link to documentation wherever I right click and choose online manual. How do I set up operators to link to them or configure it? Is there a way I can do it on the operators themselves?

In the file  2.77/scripts/startup/bl_operators/wm.py you will find all the wm.doc_* operators,

class WM_OT_doc_view_manual(Operator):
    """Load online manual"""
    bl_idname = "wm.doc_view_manual"
    bl_label = "View Manual"

    doc_id = doc_id
    ...

We can override this operator to call our own.  Here the doc_id is

import bpy
from bl_operators.wm import WM_OT_doc_view_manual, doc_id

class Overide_doc_view_manual(WM_OT_doc_view_manual):
    doc_id = doc_id
    def invoke(self, context, event):
        print("Invoke")
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def execute(self, context):
        print("Online manual", self.doc_id)
        return {'FINISHED'}

def execute(self, context):
    print("Called myClass")
    return {'FINISHED'}
# lazy register
bpy.utils.register_class(Overide_doc_view_manual)


Is possible to keyframe a mask textures as a factor for two other textures in realtime? Is possible to keyframe a mask textures as a factor for two other textures in realtime? I have set up a blender internal materials node setup, basically two distinct materials mixed with a Mix RGB Node.

I then have a mask applied as the factor. When I move the coordinates manually in the mapping node for the mask, the mask moves nicely separating the  materials in realtime, however, when I keyframe the  values, it doesn't work at all. Is there a way to fix this?

You must be doing something wrong. If you make 2 material and a mask texture, then make a third material that blends the 2 materials using the Mix Color node with the texture as the Fac input the mask should be applied correctly.
Between the UV output of the Geometry node and the Vector input of the Texture node add a Mapping node. That node has support for adding keyframes to any value.
What you want is to add keyframes to the location value and animate the value over multiple frames.
I tested it and it work, here is the file:


Create irregularly shaped gaps in cube I need to create a cross section of a surface (which takes the form of a cube), and therefore there are certain areas which need to be "empty". A visual description of what it would look like is below:.

Moreover, it might be necessary to include that there is a particle system that is emitted from the surface, and these particles should not be emitted from "empty area".

Things I have tried:

The cell fracture add-on... to not much success. Not sure if I am using it incorrectly.
Simply deselecting 50-80% of the faces (I subdivided the cube already) and then deleting them.

None of these methods create an optimal output. Any help would be appreciated!

EDIT: Here is what I have so far:

The yellow portion is to be modeled like the green cross-section provided before. As you can see, the small black-white bits on top of the yellow is a particle system that is frozen to 1 frame. So, tying everything together, I'm trying to model yellow area to look like the green image shown earlier, however the particle system must only emit from the non-empty areas.

OK, I'm still not sure what you need exactly, how it differs from what you already got or why yours is not satisfactory, but here is what I came up with.

Just add a simple cube to your scene, and a small Metaball. Adjust the Meta Ball size as desired, but make sure you apply the scale and adjust precision correspondingly afterwards.

Now add a particle system set to Volume to the Cube object, and under Render as particle object add to it the Metaball. Adjust the number of particles as necessary. A high number is expected, and so is the corresponding slowness and unresponsiveness, just give it a little.

Make the particle system emitter invisible (make the cube draw as Wire only so you can see what you are doing too), and tick Unborn and Died, also turn off physics.

Once happy with the settings select the original metaball (not the cube or particle system) and convert it to a mesh. Manually erase the stray original metaball, then you can add a Boolean modifier to it, and intersect with the original cube mesh.

To keep distinct materials at the intersection faces just add a second material slot to the object with the Boolean modifier before applying it.


My blur node does not affect a shadow between rendernodes so I'm sort of new to blender. I've recently started to experiment with nodes and render layers. Currently, I'm trying to make one object (and the shadows cast by it) blurred. I've tried running the object through a blur filter node, but that doesn't appear to have done anything with the shadow on the other object (which is sort of cool because I can use it for focus and perspective trick, but isn't so convenient for me.)

How can I get both the object and it's shadows in other render layers to both be affected by this node?

Fake way to do it is increase the size of the light, a lot.

Another fake way to do it is by mixing a transparent node with your shader and use facing layer weight for factor

(sorry for self hosting, imgur declined my request)

And now the real way: volumetrics

Plug a volume scatter shader to the volume output and control it's density with a spherical gradient. Probably can be modified for non spherical objects too.


the mesh is still snapped even i turned off snapping i have been following YanSculpts' tutorials and had issuses making eyelash.
after i made vertex snapped on the face mesh with snapping on face mode, and then tried to extrude the edge. but when ive done it, the face itself was still snapped on the face.

It looks like you have a shrink-wrap modifier on your mesh. It's not uncommon to use that when retopoing.


How can I write the vertices of a 2d polygon to a text file? I'm trying to figure out how to save the vertices of a 2D polygon to a text file.

e.g. i have drawn two flat squares on the X-Y plane, which i have named "Square 1" and "Square 2", locations of their vertices are:
Square 1: (1,1) (1,0) (0,0) (0,1)
Square 2: (4.2,4.2) (4.2,3.2) (3.2,3.2) (3.2,4.2)

I would like to save these vertices to a simple text file in this format:
Square 1: 1 1, 1 0, 0 0, 0 1
Square 2: 4.2 4.2, 4.2 3.2, 3.2 3.2, 3.2 4.2

Any help is welcome, Thanks!

after some more googling i'm finally getting somewhere!

import bpy

current_obj = bpy.context.active_object

    print("="*40) # printing marker
    for face in current_obj.data.polygons:
        verts_in_face = face.vertices[:]
        for vert in verts_in_face:
            local_point = current_obj.data.vertices[vert].co
            world_point = current_obj.matrix_world * local_point
            print('%.2f %.2f, ' % (world_point.x, world_point.y), end='', flush=True )
    print("")

this outputs to the console in the format i want, however printing to a file in the for loop doesn't work.

To keep it similar to what you have already scripted.

import bpy

current_obj = bpy.context.active_object
f = open("d:\\test.txt", 'w')  # use 'a' to append
for face in current_obj.data.polygons:
    for vert in face.vertices[:]:
        local_point = current_obj.data.vertices[vert].co
        world_point = current_obj.matrix_world * local_point
        f.write('x: %.2f\t y: %.2f\n' % (world_point.x, world_point.y))
f.close()


Distorted Shading on Model My model keeps getting distorted shading despite my attempts to fix it. I'm guessing it has to do with some star junctions on the model.

What would be a possible solution to this problem and how would i go about avoiding it the next time?

http://i.imgur.com/ie1QIQC.gifv

It's a bit unclear what the geometry is, from your screenshot. But, Paul pointed out, it is a bit bad geometry.

Som of your edges looks like they are at least 90 degrees. With smooth shading your normals will be interpolated without much control from you. A cube with 6 sides and smooth shading tries to be spherical (without much success). Look here:

If you intend it to be round. Add geometry to interpolate the normals with more control. Add a subdivision modifier like this:

If you intend intend it to be a cube, but with rounded edges, bevel them. Or add support loops and add a subdivision modifier.

Here are an example of both. The upper two is with support loops and subdivision modifier. The lower two is with bevel (no subdivision). The two to the right is in edit mode with face normals visible. See how they are interpolated.

In your case, add more geometry. I would probably go with support loops (ctrl + R) and subidivision modifier.


Understanding Proper Scaling for 3d Export dimensions Hey im using the latest version of blender as of march 2018

I made a custom wall plate for a relative to 3d print. I made sure to set units to "Imperial" and "Inches" as i needed a piece that is 1.5" square. here is a picture of my current settings

Now here is my 3d view port

As you can see i have my scale set to 1.5" but the problem happened when i shared the file (a .STL) with my relative and they printed it it came out as 1mm wallplate, so if their is anyway to tell blender or the exported stl to be in inches that would be great! thanks guys

When you exported to .STL, did you check the box next to "Scene Unit"? (Find this on the lower left hand side when you attempt the export).

When a model is 3D printed, it has to be converted to GCode using some other software. Was this software configured correctly to handle inches?

My advice: save yourself the hassle and just work in millimeters and convert from inches.


Keyframe properties change after moving playhead I'm attempting to animate someone passing off a ticket to another person, and decided to use the "child of" object constraint for the ticket to attach to both rigs (created using rigify). I've keyframed these appropriately, but when adjusting the location offset, I've found that the location, when keyframed, changes despite nothing interfering with it or me changing the keyframe.

When setting keyframe:

After moving playhead off keyframe and back onto the same keyframe:

Note: this is the same keyframe, and no actions or other keyframes are overlapping.

I believe I have done something wrong with my keying set, as removing all influence of the "child of" constraints (after positioning it) and then keying it seems to work fine.

I'll post when I have found a proper answer that doesn't obstruct workflow, but for now it seems to work fine.

In the meantime, any help would be appreciated.


Blender Scale and Unit problem, how to fix? Just a brief info about myself, I am using Alias AutoStudio professionally for almost 5 - 6 years at my work to model yachts and in rare occasions cars. I used Rhino as well, so I have some knowledge about nurbs modelling. I have always wanted to try polygonal modelling for it's sculpturing workflow but after brief tries with tutorials, I have always given up.
This time, I didn't. Last week I started modelling again in Blender, following millions of tutorials and designed a very detailed, beautiful watch with it's strap, exactly how I wanted and not how It was shown (design wise) on tutorials by mixing techniques that I have seen on many tutorials and forums. Once it was done, I moved to model a shoe of a friend's shoe brand and so far so good. I actually never liked the modelling part of my job but I should admit that I am having so much fun modelling with blender because I find it more attached to design experimenting in a faster way and that was the reason I wanted to learn it. To make some fast "mock-up" models before moving to Alias or Rhino to make a very precise version. Ok, here's my question:
I am having trouble with the units system of Blender. I mean, since the objects that I am modelling are relatively small in size, I changed the unit to cm instead of meter from the Scene Options and the unit scale is 1.000000. Then I set some planes with the sizes that I wanted as a reference as if it was a ruler to model a relatively "precise" modelling, at least proportion wise. Everything was ok on my watch modelling because there I had not changed the units, but on the shoe one, I encountered two problems:

Whatever I add to my scene with shift + A is huge, so everytime, anything, I have/had to scale down to make it useable on my shoe model. Is there a way to fix it?

When I was modelling the watch, I found a tool that I loved using, proportional editing. I have a problem with scale again on the shoe. When I select a vertex and activate proportional editing, when I am using 0.01 it is not effecting any other vertex, when I am using 0.15 it is effecting even the vertexes on the other side of the shoe, so I have very little control on the step size of the proportional transform. When I was modelling the watch, I had not changed the units and kept everything as it is and instead of modelling a 42 mm watch, I had modelled 42 m watch, just to learn the basics first and when I was using with it the proportional transformer, I could play between 2 to 25 proportional size value which gave me a greater control to fine-tune things.

I am encountering a problem in the Merge by Distance as well. when I raise the value just a little bit, it is starting to merge vertexes close by whereas again with the watch model, I had a much broader range of values to play with and choose more precisely.

Searched google, forums, youtube..etc about it and could not find anything, so I finally decided to post here. If you could help, I would appreciate it as I am really enjoying using Blender and it is unbeleivable how powerful this tool is at a free cost compared to some much more expensive options. Thank you Blender team for giving us this opportunity.
Kindest Regards,
Astonish

As this answer suggests:
How can I make the default size of new objects 1 x 1?
You can, along changing meters to centimeters, also change the unit scale to 0.01 (as 1 cm is 0.01 m)

This will probably solve all your problems not just huge cubes being added, but you may find it important, that when using proportional editing, there's a circle of influence visible, which you can scale by using your mouse wheel. Due to your scale problems, this circle could be so big, that it was entirely outside of the viewport, so you should see it if you zoom out considerably before moving / rotating / scaling or if you scroll your mouse wheel up for a while:

The rate at which this circle's radius changes will depend on its current radius (the change gets slower as the circle gets smaller) and your zoom (so the change of the circle's size depends on its size in viewport). However, you can still decrease the change for a finer control, by holding SHIFT key.
Likewise, holding SHIFT will decrease step size in input fields:

no SHIFT
SHIFT


Spiral rotation falloff within a particles system I am trying to model arrows arranged in spiral manner. The effect I want to achieve is similar to the one in the picture:

Essentially, I want to have the arrows rotate and tilt inwards in a radial fashion.
I have tried to recreate this using a curve spiral and create a particle system consisting of the arrows, but I can't control the rotations as I want within the particle system. What would be the best method to achieve this?
Thanks.

This Answer uses the add-on Animation Nodes. I’m not gonna describe how to download and install it. That’s easily googleable.
We start by adding a Distribute Matrices node and set it to spiral.
That gives us an easy to control list of points on a spiral.
You can search for specific nodes by pressing CTRL + A. Use SHIFT + A to see a sorted list of all available nodes.

We don't have any geometry yet, so I added a 3D viewer node to see the result in the viewport.
We now need to add our arrow object to the Scene. I just added a simple cone, a more arrow-like shape will also work (it doesn't really matter). To use the same values as I, make sure your arrow points up (in +z direction).
Distribution
We now need the following nodes:
Object Instancer
Here we can select our arrow object. Connect the Vectors output from the spiral node to the instances input of the Instanced. AN automatically creates a Get Length node for us. We can now control the instances with the amount-slider of the spiral node.
Compose Matrix
We take the positions of each point of the Spline for now, compose Matrices and translate our objects with these.
Object Matrix Output

Tangent Rotation
New Nodes:
Spline From Points
We don't actually draw the spline as an object. But now that we have the spline, we have simple access to the tangents and can even distribute our objects more evenly.
Evaluate Spline
Use uniform to distribute the arrows evenly or resolution, to use the initial points.
Make sure to click the little arrow next to the drop down menu so the node works on multiple points instead of a single value. Connect the get length node to the amount input.
Connect the locations output to the translation input of the compose matrix node and the tangent output via a Direction to Rotation node to the rotations input.

Rotation Falloff
New Nodes:
Point Distance Falloff
Creates a falloff for the rotation in relation to the origin 0/0/0. You can controll the size and width of the falloff here.
Evaluate Falloff
This checks, how much every arrow is affected by the falloff depending on its location. Make sure to check the list icon.
Invert Falloff
Float Math
Multiply the Strength of the falloff with an angle of 90deg.
Combine Euler
Set to degrees
Euler Math
combine the tangent rotation with the falloff rotation.

That's it. You can play arround with the values in the Distribute Matrices and the Point Distance Falloff Nodes to finetune the result you need.
Edit
Concentric circles
Creating the same effect with concentric circles instead of a spiral is a bit more complicated. The spiral redistribute note in combination with the evaluate spline node does a lot of work for us: creates the vector list, handles the amount and the spacing of our objects, delivers useable tangents.
The only node that has some kind of built in concentric circle function is the circle mesh node. And with it we can create something like this:

A better apporoach is to create a loop to create individual circle splines. Its a bit more work, but not that bad. I'll just screenshot my nodetree for now. I'll add some description later if you have problems understanding whats goning on.
The Loop:

The loop addet to our old node tree:

The final result:


Pose does not work after appending I downloaded  a character and when I open it the bones work.
But after I append it to another project the pose seems not to go on.
The skeleton is in pose position.
Did I append in a wrong way or what could be the solution?

The first picture is from the original character that I found on the blendswap. The bones work there.
The second picture is when I appended it in my project but why can´t I move any bone there?

In object mode select the rig, press L
(make local) and choose "All".


Solidify: Give different thickness to specific faces My model is made to be 3D printed. I found a weak spot where my cars always break.
I would like to give extra thickness on that spot (the selected faces you can see), and not to the whole model.
What would be the best way to solve it?
Thank you!

This is very similar to this question, but the method is a tiny bit different.
Instead of setting only the weak part as your vertex group. Set every vertex of your model at 0.5 weight for instance and set the weak spot at 1. Then when you set the vertex group in the solidify modifier, the weak part will get 2 times more thick than the rest of the mesh. The weight is a direct multiplier to the solidify thickness.
Example in action :


How do I make an object move along a path in either direction? I'm trying to make a garage door open or close by rolling up or down like they usually do. I know how to make an object follow a path in one direction along a curve using constraints, but I need it to move in both directions. Is there a way to do this?

Also, when I try using the Follow Path constraint with a NURBS Path, the object attached to it only goes about a third of the way along the path and then lifts off and heads out into space. By reducing the number of keyframes, I can get it to follow the path just long enough to roll up like I want it to, but that seems to be a poor way to do this, and it still only allows the object to go in one direction.

It all depends on what kind of garage door you are talking about.

You can start with a single plank or slat.

Then add an array modifier to replicate it on the Z axis.

Add a curve with the path you want the door to follow (it's important that the door and the path have their origins on the same place):

On the original plank add a curve modifier and select the curve as guide object:

Move the door up and down on the Z axis, and it will curve following the path.

If you are dealing with a rigid door. Then instead of the curve modifier add a Follow Path constraint. And select the curve as target. Enable "Follow Path",  Set "Up" to Y and "Forward" to -Z

Then animate the offset value:


Anchoring the 3D view to one object I saw a tutorial where he used the decimal point on the numbpad to make the 3D view screen kind of anchor to that object so when he rotated the screen it would stay on that object. I tried to do that on my laptop but I dont have a Numbpad and use the 'Emulate Numbpad' feature.
Any thoughts on how I could do this with just the laptop numbers?

Open Blender

Go to Blender User Preferences (File>User Preferences or Ctrl+Alt+U)

Go to Input

In the search box, type "View Selected"

Find the one that is under 3D View and is currently binded to Numpad .

Change that to whatever key is convenient for you.

Click Save User Settings

Viola.


Incorrect Reflection of Glossy Over Glossy Here's the Render:

I hope you may see the wrong reflection of jug on that glass. Jug colors are fully swapped there.
I think I have some incorrect node setup.

Based on your comments, you actually don't have a problem, it just looks like you do.

In 3d worlds, that is quite common to see, because they are so perfect that we don't see the little variations or issues that happen in real life that make things look right. Also, when you have any curved surfaces, things can get flipped around or upside down very easily.

It looks to me like the reflection of the jug is just flipped upside down. It's a bit hard to see in the image you posted, but it looks like it's reflecting off some curved glass objects, and you'll have refraction too, so there are plenty of ways that the light can bounce and bend, which gives the results you see.

It's like looking into the concave side of a spoon, or a reflection of a shiny pot that curves inward. Things just start to look a little weird when you have reflections and refraction with curved surfaces. Combine that with how 3d worlds look too perfect and you're bound to see cases where things don't look quite right, even though they physically are.


How to set frame range independently for each camera blend file which contains multiple camera. Each of this camera will render its own specific frame range. How can i do this without each time have to edit the global frame range ?

Property getter and setter.

Quick test script.  Wires up a property on the scene, that using uses a get and set method to retrieve data from scene camera if set. The frame start and end properties of the scene are set within the getter.

Ultimately would recommend a corresponding boolean property to turn behaviour off or on.  Changing the output folder based on camera. This will avoid overwriting overlapping camera frames.

import bpy
from bpy.props import IntVectorProperty
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
'''
# set defaults test code
cam_objs = [c for c in scene.objects if c.type == 'CAMERA']
for c in cam_objs:
    c["cam_range"] = [1, 250]
'''
def get_res(self):
    if self.camera:
        fr = self.camera.get("cam_range", (1, 250))
        self.frame_start, self.frame_end = fr

        return fr
    return (0, 0) # no scene camera

def set_res(self, value):
    print("setting", value)
    self.camera['cam_range'] = value

bpy.types.Scene.cam_frame_range = IntVectorProperty(
        name="Camera Frame Range",
        size=2,
        get=get_res,
        set=set_res,
        )

def draw_cam_range(self, context):

    scene = context.scene
    if scene.camera:
        layout = self.layout
        '''
        if scene.get("cam_range"):
            row = layout.row()
            row.prop(scene.camera, '["cam_range"]')
        '''
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(scene, "cam_frame_range")

bpy.types.SCENE_PT_scene.prepend(draw_cam_range)

Note using this method fires off a lot of depsgraph events while displaying the panel.

On the possible duplicate How can I make a camera the active one?  the logic here is counter. Setting frame range from active camera as opposed to setting active camera from frame (marker).


Transition effect (common material to grid material) Please tell me how i can achieve this transition effect. Only Compositing? Or can this effect be achieved in another way? Suppose I want to apply this transition effect to only one mesh in the scene.

Yes, compositing, you will have to assign the object to his own render layer, in order to treat it separately.


How do I save a Blender file? I am going through the Blender 2.79b manual online here: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/interface/splash.html
I don't see my question answered in it.

I have Blender open on my Mac. I have imported an svg file. I can select the File Browser view. I can see the folder URL to the Blender folder on my filesystem. There is a text box under this. There is a file directory under it.

I can type a filename in the box under the folder URL box and hit enter, but am not sure if it is having any effect -- it's not showing up in the file listing.

How do I save this or any blend as a .blend file? I can't shut down Blender until I figure this out!

As with most software, the keyboard shortcut to save a file is ⎈ Ctrl+S. A new window will open to navigate to wherever you want to save in your computer and specify the name the name of the file.

An alternative using the menu pressing file>save.


Can I choose when animation in animated dupli-groups starts? I'd like to use some sort of re-usable animations (think little animated effects, simple but a lot of them), that I can play during my main animation, without creating multiple actions, or having multiple nla blocks. I was thinking that animated dupli-groups would be ideal. But can I choose when animation in animated dupli-groups starts? If not, then this way clearly won't work.

Currently this isn't supported

This used to be supported (in 2.49), using the Time Offset field on the empty object instancing the dupli-group.

However support for this is planned. One of the goals for having an improved dependency graph (currently in development), is to have local time for group instances.


Model faces the wrong way. Any way to fix it? I'm modeling a face in Blender and I realized that it was facing the wrong way. When I had started it was facing the right way. Can anyone help me with this? Thanks!

LEFT IMAGE

You can just select the mesh in Edit mode by pressing A on the keyboard and rotate it on Z axis by pressing R (Rotate) and then Z (to rotate only on Z axis). Change angle as you want and you are set.

Press Z only while you are rotating it, or it will switch to Wireframe mode.


Why is the NLA Editor the Only Animation Editor in 2.8 Without a Hotkey? For some reason, when I click on the "Editor Type" button which appears to the left of any editor window header, the resulting editor window popup flickers and disappears as soon as my mouse is moved afterwards (probably a problem with my mouse and not Blender). So, as a workaround to this weirdness, I decided to familiarize myself with the editor window hotkeys, as this would bypass the problem by giving me access to the editor windows without the need for clicks. This works for all animation editors fine, provided I can remember the shortcuts, such as Shift-F6 for the Graph Editor/Driver Editor, etc. But the NLA has no such shortcut listed. I did some research and discovered that there was once such a shortcut in previous versions of Blender (Shift-Ctrl-F12 or something like that). I was going to try to create such a shortcut in 2.8 manually, but there would appear to be no way to right-click in the Editor Window popup and create a shortcut there. Where else would I create such a shortcut, using the UI? Failing a UI method, how else might I create a shortcut for the NLA editor window? Is there a preference file that I can edit manually? I'm running 2.82a on Ubunto Studio 19.10.

In Edit > Preferences... > Keymap > Window you'll find the Shift+F* shortcuts as "Cycle Space Type Set". Open up one you don't use and change its type to "Nonlinear Animation". Or you can create a new shortcut and set it to screen.space_type_set_or_cycle, then add the type.


3D Printing Thickness and Thin Faces Problem I am new to 3D printing and the printer in mind requires the mesh to have a minimum 2mm thickness.

I started off by creating the shape with just a plane and extruding it out by 2.5mm. However the Print3D tool still says I have many "thin faces" (as shown by the selected faces in the reference image). I've tried recalculating the normal but the issue still persists. I've also checked that the mesh's scale in object mode is 1 so it probably shouldn't be an unit problem.

Am I doing something fundamentally wrong regarding how "thickness" works when preparing for 3D printing?

Thin faces are not that the object is thin. A thin face is that you have two faces that are occupying almost exactly the same space. Somewhere you have created  for instance  a  face between four vertices  and then created a face  between three  of those  faces. The two faces occupy the same  space.
The distance between faces can be set in the 3d printing tool.


Importing a complex SVG to Blender from Illustrator - Problems with Fill I'm working on a project of polyhedral lanterns designed on topography, and using Blender for my modelling ahead of prototyping. I'm designing artwork in Adobe Illustrator, a program I'm robustly familiar with, and exporting the SVGs to Blender for import.
Most of the time this works well - but every once and a while when I import the SVG the fill in Blender does not match the artwork in the SVG file.  See below images -
In Illustrator:

In Blender:

I understand that Blender may be interpreting the position of handles improperly and hence filling places that should be empty, or leaving empty places that should be filled.  Due to the complexity of the images (and the fact I want to do this many times with different images), I'm hoping for some kind of work around that keeps me from having to hunt through the many many vertices each time.
Here is a link to a google drive with the SVG: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ITkPdh5p0qhy7y5YPJq4Gz57DgZDjCHS?usp=sharing
Alternatively, I can export the file as a DXF - and fill it after the fact.  But again, because of the complexity I can't figure out how I would easily fill the appropriate areas while leaving gaps.  Any advice would be welcome, and you'd help bring something like the below image into the world (the actual physical, not on the screen world).
Many thanks in advance.

I don't think that the intricacy  of your design is the issue here but how Illustrator is combining the many different paths. It looks like there are way too many points to create the curvature of  the paths. I suspect those extra points are the result of compunding the paths. Even in segments that are straight there are many points in a straight line.

A cure to most of the problem is converting the Handle Type to Vector

but in the areas where there are still too many control points the problem persists. Maybe there are open paths somewhere? Illustrator has tools to check for open paths.

I suspect that the paths need to be simplified and streamlined before they are exported from Illustrator to avoid the problems you are facing.


Is there a way to mask mesh in Blender Regarding the title, is there a way to mask mesh in Blender. Recently I have come across a  guide from a game(Zepeto) that allow player to create their very own asset.  However, the guide is only for MAYA and one part of the guide require the creator to mask the mesh.
The following highlighted part is the purpose and usage of the mask.

It is done in Maya through using a feature known as "Paint Vertex Tool", the right model in the image below is an example from the guide.

Hence, is there a feature or workflow in Blender that is similar to the guide?

The mask modifier can hide unuseful vertices, but it's an internal Blender modifier that will not work in Unity or others softwares. I think it's better to select the unuseful vertices, press P to separate them into another object and include or exclude this new object during FBX export, as needed.


Where can I specify how many sides 'Select Faces By Sides' uses? I'm looking for non-quad faces in my mesh and I found someone mentioned Select Faces By Sides. I found that option on the Select menu and in the Help documentation, but I do not see where I can specify how many sides. I must be looking right at it, but any help would be appreciated.

As with most operators in blender, you can access the operator options by either opening the side toolbar (T) in the 3D view or by pressing F6 immediately after running the operator:


Follow path constraint problem I am animating a roulette ball spinning around the roulette wheel using a follow path constraint.  Currently it is doing just what I wanted it to do.

However, I need to be able to keyframe animate the ball to move away from the curve and fall into one of the number holes.

I thought I would be able to keyframe the influence at the point I wanted the ball to leave the curve (ie... 100% frame 200, 0% frame 201)  However when I do this the ball moves to a completely different location.  Unfortunately I can't upload the blend file due to license issues, but I've included some frame captures to try and show the problem.

EDIT    I just wanted to say thanks for all the help on this problem.  The help I got here was just what was needed.  If you want to check out the roulette wheel animation its here  roulettewheel animation  You will find it in the credits towards the end of the video.

The ball is returning to its original position before the follow path constraint was applied.

Pre-constraint

With follow path constraint active

With follow path constraint at 0 influence

What this means is that that object (the ball or the cube) is now animatable.

I'd suggest inserting one location & rotation key on the ball before the constraint is turned off (frame 200), then on the same frame that it has been switched off (frame 201), change the location of the ball to where it should be in relation to the animation (as it would have returned to its original position)  and insert a key frame (LocRot).  From there onwards you will be able to hand animate the ball.


Stopping a moving object in bge I made a bowling-like game with bge. When the ball hits the pins they fall like they should do, because they are modeled as rigid body. But when I put them back in their position they start moving. I tried pulling up the damping to 1, setting cylindrical bounds and using these lines when I change position:

    cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
    target=cont.owner
    target.setLinearVelocity([0, 0, 0], True)
    target.setAngularVelocity([0, 0, 0], True)

but it isn't effective. Any suggestion?

You can't cancel velocities with a null vector (0, 0, 0). A null vector is treated as "no change".

You need to apply a very small velocity such as (0, 0, 0.00002).

This belongs to the Python code as well as the motion actuator.


Blender 2.8 sculpt mode shows triangulated faces As the title says, when I switch to sculpt mode in Blender 2.8, the mesh I'm working on displays the faces as if they were triangulated. I'm sure I'm just missing a checkbox that's buried somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. Does anyone know what overlay or setting is causing this?

Update: To clarify, the mesh is not being triangulated, it is just displaying triangles when in sculpt mode.

As of June 5th, this behavior is no longer present in the latest build of Blender 2.8 beta. I guess it was a bug that has now been fixed.


Animating multiple Iterations of a single Oject along a Path? I've got a two part question.

So here's an image of what I'm working with right now.

First, I want to take the single small object I've already got following the path and create identical copies of it along the same path, to make a looping conveyor belt animation. Creating a bunch of distinct objects and parenting each one to the path doesn't work (not to mention the unnecessary strain that would put on my computer). What can I do?

Second, once I have that animation working, I then want to take everything you see in this image and make a bunch of copies of it to fill up a huge warehouse. How can I create multiple copies while maintaining the animation, and how could I do that in the smartest way possible? (meaning, the way that's least likely to make my computer catch fire). I'm currently using Cycles.

Thanks in advance!

Conveyer using a curve or path -

In "Ucurve.Blend", a vertical U-shaped curve-path was used to shape a conveyer belt/production line.

For a shaped path-curve the items couldn't be arrayed as would be usual for a straight conveyer.   An array following a curve would distort items on the belt at it's corners.  A path and 5 seperate items (cubes) were used instead.

A path can only have the one set of valuation-time keyframes meaning that multiple items would all be traversing the path piled on top of each other.

The solution used here was to have a duplicate but separate path for each of the 5 items and those placed in layers 1 to 5..  Each path had it's own valuation 0 & 1.0 evaluation frames offset by the delay between the first and next item appearing at it's start. (20 frames apart)  (See Dope sheet)

When played right through, for 5 items 20 frames apart, some 180 frames are necessary to accomodate all 5 items from the 1st's appearence at the start of the path, to the 5th reaching it's end.

In order to satisfy the need for a 'contiguous loop, the frame where the 5th item appears at the path's start is 81 so we loop the animation between frames 81 & 100. (19 frames in all)   --> Layers 1 to 5 selected.

This provides a looped animation in Blender but would be a trifle short for video so the 19 frames are output as H264 Lossless video.  This is imported into the VSE and the video strip duplicated and appended as many times as required.  The result, a smooth ongoing loop.

What's really happening is that the cubes (items) are moving only 19 frames forward then switching back to their start positions for another 19 frames and so on, giving the illusion they're advancing forward contiguously.

ADDENDUM: 13 April 2019

Because the path's end is also at the exit 'hole', the cubes stop at that location and just sit there.  Each cube is therefore 'switched off' with the  the Outliner's eye icon at the frame it reaches the path's end, plus 1.

The same is done at the path's starting point. Cubes are made invisible until
due to move.


Workflow to model part of Bus how can i part this model especially that with red line. I am new in Blender and i need spme Tips and Workflow. Thanks alot.

Here is a proposition for your topology (a bit different version and more detailed):


How to draw distance lines to a central object? I am doing research on tumors and am trying to figure out a way so for every satellite tumor there would be a line marking the shortest path to the surface of the main tumor. Ideally the magnitude of the line would be displayed as part of any rendering. I am planning on animating it so it would go 1->2->3. Below is a simplified sketch of what I am trying to describe (note: the actual thing would be in 3D).

Sorry if this question is strange, I am very new to blender. Thanks!

This doesn't provide the distance info but will provide 'rubbery lines' between satellites and central body and has been done in the 3D window.  The distance information can be calculated separately and overlaid via the video editor later.

Rubbery lines -  (Rendered with OpenGL)

Add the central sphere, then one satellite.

Add a Nurbs Path and rotate it to align roughly between the satellite and sphere and so it's Edit arrows are pointing to the sphere.

Bevel it with a new plane (scaled down to suit) so it forms a rectangular pipeline. (see Bevel below)

Give it a material slot and saturated colour to avoid shading.  Remove specular.

Set it's origin point to the satellite end.

Select the satellite, then use shift-S to set the 3D cursor to the satellite's origin point. (Cursor to Selected)

Select the line and use SH-S again to set it's origin point to the satellite's OP.   (Selected to cursor)

The line will be now be rotating from the satellite's origin point.

Give the line/path a constraint --> Track to --> the Sphere. (look at sphere)

Goto Edit mode and select it's sphere-end control point.  Press CTL-H and select "Hook to New Object".

Back in Object mode, pull the new empty (hook) down to the center (or surface) of the sphere.

Parent the Hook-Empty to the sphere. ("Keep Transform")

When the sphere moves, the line should maintain a connection between the two objects.

-================-

Add a new satellite.  Duplicate the line and move it down to near the new satellite.

Select the satellite and press SH-S --> Cursor to selected.

Select the new line, press SH-S again --> Selected to cursor.

The rest of the line's properties are inherited so that's all that's needed.

Repeat the procedure for each new satellite.

-=================-

If the satellites need to roam about also, simply parent each line to it's respective satellite. ("Keep Transformation") (Child=line)

-================-

Bevel -

This is just an ordinary plane scaled down to suit the resultant cross section size of the path.

Add it, size it, then convert it to a curve with ALT-C.

Got to the path, select the plane in the "Bevel Object" slot.

The plane can be rescaled anytime to adjust the cross sectional size.


Object looses its scale on keyframe change I've made a static model of a mannequin to do some tests.
My problem is that whenever I scale a part of the model, or the entire mesh, then every time I move the time-line a bit (or Alt middle mouse. I'm used to zooming that way from maya) the scaled meshes return to previous scale, along individual centers.

Here's a image sample of the problem:
1 Before the scale

2 After the scale (note the time-line)

3 After moving the time-line*

This effect would also happen if I'd scale the mesh, and then export it as a FBX (without moving the time-line).

I've tried to apply the scale onto the model. In effect the elements of the model get incredibly small, when the time-line moves/I export it.

I would be very grateful for any help with this issue.

*I know it wasn't exactly by 5. My mistake. But it's visible that the current time has changed.

You have part of your mesh animated. When you move the frame, it displays the current transformation of the keyframe with animation.

                                  Animated Frame         Current Frame

You can fix this by going into the dope sheet, the NLA editor, or the Graph editor
And delete the unwanted animation

          You can click here to delete                      You can also select all the

          the animation for that object.                   keyframes here and delete them.

You can keep the transformation without deleting the previous keyframe by adding a new one and animating the transformation.


What is the technical difference between softbody and cloth simulation? They are definitely different, but soft body simulation is very slow compared to cloth.. why?

In short, soft bodies are compressible while cloth is not. All other features are the same.

However, this makes a huge difference in computational speed. To better explain this, I will use an extension of the metaphor CharlesL used in his response.

A Cloth Simulation essentially models the object as a bunch of balls (vertices) connected to each other by fixed-length rods. Thus, for computational purposes, the simulation can treat the internal distances between points as a constant, and only has to calculate interaction with other objects.

A Soft Body Simulation, on the other hand, models the object as a bunch of balls (vertices) connected to each other by springs. So now, not only does Blender have to compute the interaction of the object with other objects, but also has to compute its own internal reaction and the spread of force applied at one point across all of those little springs, which is much more complex.

I don't know the exact complexity of the algorithms Blender uses for these simulations, but it's essentially the difference between a linear relationship and a differential equation.


Subdivide Surface Modifier messes up concave shape I encountered a problem while modelling a toothed shape. When I applied the Subdivision Surface Modifier and added the supporting geometry so it doesn't look all that distorted, two additional pieces of surface stretched over the spaces between the teeth.
It seems there is a connection between the left and right edge and the middle vertex which I can't select and edit.

I'd try to recreate your mesh, as it's easier to do so as fix your mesh.
Create a rectangular plane and use loop subdivide, using ctrl-R + Mousewheel.

With this basic mesh, consisting only of quads, and the loop subdivide technique, it should be easy for you to use the subsurf modifier.


bpy and PIL / Pillow crash I posted this on BA but I'm posting it here as well.

I'm looking into manipulating images with Pillow in custom node trees. If I install Pillow and copy the PIL directory from

C:\Python34\Lib\site-packages

to

\bin\2.73\python\lib\site-packages

then I can import PIL just fine. I can save .png image files, but saving to any other image format type crashes Blender.

But if I run Python 3.4 in a command prompt, I can import PIL (the one from my C:\Python34 installation), and read, modify and save to any of the supported image formats.

The problematic code:

import bpy
import os
from extensions_framework import util as efutil
from PIL import Image, ImageEnhance, ImageFile

def realpath( path):
    return os.path.realpath( efutil.filesystem_path( path))

brightness = 2.0
# Use an image loaded into Blender.
img = bpy.data.images['preview.jpg']
orig = Image.open( realpath( img.filepath))
ImageFile.MAXBLOCK = max( orig.size) ** 2

# Brighten the image.
enhancer = ImageEnhance.Brightness(orig)
bright = enhancer.enhance(brightness)

# Save the new image.
img_path = ( os.path.sep).join( realpath( img.filepath).split( os.path.sep)[:-1])
img_name = realpath( img.filepath).split( os.path.sep)[-1][:-4]  # Remove '.jpg' from end
new_img = os.path.join( (os.path.sep).join( realpath( img.filepath).split( os.path.sep)))

# The following line crashes Blender.
# But if the string is changed to "_mod.png", it works.
bright.save( os.path.join( img_path, img_name + "_mod.jpg"))

What could the problem be? Why can't I do this from within Blender without it crashing?

I am using Pillow successfully on MacOSX but maybe not in the cleanest way.

In a nutshell, I'm using Blender's own python34 and I add a path to the proper version of Pillow in my script

Download Pillow for python34 and extract it in a folder – on MacOS, macport & pip automatically take care of that for me
Take the path to Pillow within that folder
In your python script before you import Pillow, add the code below

Python

import sys
path_to_pillow = 'C:/somewhere_on_your_disk/pillow/'
sys.path.append(path_to_pillow)
from PIL import Image

I'll try to run your code and see if it works on my side.

Could you copy the error you're getting when using PIL with Blender ?


I am unable to move object in object mode, reinstalled/restarted blender but only the pivot point is moving not object. i don't know why? Blender error: when i installed blender first time, i used transform tools (move/scale/rotate) but the problem is only the pivot point is moving in object mode i can't move overall object in it. In Edit mode i can move all(vertex/edge/face). i don't know How to solve this problem.

You probably have Affect Only Origins enabled. Disable it by pressing Options in the top right corner of the 3D viewport > Origins

You can also disable it by pressing the Active Tool and Workspace Settings tab in the Properties bar, and press Origins.


Is there a way to write images from render process in batch mode I want to save pictures from a rendering startet from command line in background mode. To save the final picture is not the problem, my question is, how to get pictures from the render process.

In gui mode I can view the iterations while blender cycles renders my scene. In background mode I only get the final result. I want to get these unsharp images, You know? Sure, I can save all these steps with growing cycles settings, but with this, the render time will grow also.

Do You have any ideas to solve this "problem" without multiplying the rendertime?

Thx for Your time,
Peter.

Think this is possible in current master now (brand new from early 2016 April ;) ).

Basically, if you run:

blender -b yourblend.blend -f 0 -- --cycles-resumable-num-chunks 24 --cycles-resumable-current-chunk 1

…you say Cycles to 'split' the render (its sampling actually) in 24 'chunks', and only render the first one.

Then you can use a script to keep that picture (by copying it e.g. to a new name), and render the second chunk, etc.

See also original commit log.


How to rotate a procedural material I am faking sci-fi towers with windows on each floor by using a procedural texture, but I can't get it to be horizontal instead of vertical.

This is the node setup right now:

This question seems to be about the same thing but for one, I can't read the nodes (which is why I squished the node layout horizontally so all the print is visible in the screenshot), and two, my best stab at copying it doesn't seem to do anything.

So how do I rotate the stripes 90 degrees so they form neat horizontal bands around the axis of the tower? When I change the numbers in the Rotation column of the Mapping node, nothing happens.

There are several issues with your model that prevent proper results.

You have inverted normal in your model - Unrelated to texturing but can cause issues, fix it by ticking Flip in the Screw modifier
Your curve object has unnaplied transformations (more importantly scale) and has an offcentered origin point, both of which will negatively affect your texture coordinates and make them harder to work with. Apply scale and properly place the center relative to the object.
You inconsistently use Vector type of mapping in Vector Mapping nodes for textures, all should be set to Texture
You use duplicate Texture Coordinates Vector mapping and Wave texture nodes which are not necessary
Your shader node setup also seems far too convoluted, and looks like it could be simplified.

Here is my proposed node setup to achieve an identical result. Not sure exactly what you final result should look like, you may need to adjust the color ramp node to suit your liking. The Modulo node will control the tiling size.


How to pull sequencer data from the top left corner and to the right lower corner Using batFINGERs example from here I get the data from the lower right corner to the top left corner. Is there a way to read the data in the opposite direction?

Example here: How to get a clip's source media starting and ending frame numbers?

EDIT: I just realized that the order of the list is the order clips are added to the timeline and not the order the clips are located in the timelines. So reversing the loop is not the solution.

Python's sorted() can use a custom function that defines the key to use when sorting a list and it also has a reverse option.

def start(strip):
    return strip.frame_start

def end(strip):
    return strip.frame_start + strip.frame_final_duration

Then you can sort by start or end frame with

seq_strips = bpy.context.scene.sequence_editor.sequences

strips_by_start = sorted(seq_strips, key=start)

strips_reversed = sorted(seq_strips, key=end, reverse=True)


Blender loop cut e boolean doesn't work together. How to fix this ? How to create an arc on plane of loop cut? I'm trying to reconstruct a real structure, and the whole structure so far has been obtained from a simple plan through the '' loop cut '' system. Which on some occasions is bringing me several problems such as double edges or vertices (easily solved but frustrating) and in this exact case in the construction of arcs.
Question :

Is there a way in the loop cut system or in general a method to derive from the only plane I have, an arch, curved or oblique shapes? Obviously to attach them perfectly to the support surface.

Also if I try to pierce the plane through an external object and therefore a full semi-circle, the boolean modifier doesn't work or creates ghost artifacts or nothing. (Also tried merged with the "array" modifier).

In any case, any other faster or safer method to build this kind of shapes even in a simultaneous way is accepted.

I hope you have the answer to my mistakes.

Another thing sometimes after having knocked down some walls and rejoined the vertices to recompose some facades using the "F" FILL key, I can't execute a new loop cut, for example in the walls above the selected arches.

------------ NEW --------

I have added some screenshots. In the last two I show you how I had to solve. By deleting the wall, I manually inserted an external arch to the structure and joined later.
The only problem is that then I have to rebuild the wall, vertex by vertex, because otherwise, graphic artifacts would be created.

So the questions always remain the same,
that is, if you know other methods to build in series using certain measures between the created objects. and why the boolean modifier doesn't work like in this example. (it doesn't work even using an external object, the subtraction is seen in Edit Mode but not in Object and not in Render.)

[Solution?]
I solved it like this in the end, but it is very laborious. (fig.7)
While if I had managed to pierce a plane already dissected by loop cut, it would have been better, and less tiring, but the boolean modifier didn't work.

Not sure that responds to your question for some other reason.

But to keep things simple, you can make a hole in the wall, and place the windows in it as a separated object (you can join them later if needed):


Strange artifacts when using Solidify I am pretty new to Blender, and have run into a problem that's been bugging me for days now, and I can't seem to find any solution in the forums.
Basically, I'm trying to fabricate a vacuum manifold with a weird shape and ideally a constant 3mm thickness.  Here is one-half of the object without any thickness (I haven't applied the Solidify modifier yet):

Everything looks hunky-dory when it's just a 2D mesh, but once I try to add a Solidify modifier, I get very strange artifacts in two small strips on the cylindrical end:

I've tried using the wireframe view to see if there are any errant vertices or edges, but all I can see are these weird curvy edges (in the vicinity of the deformations) that I can't seem to select or delete like normal edges between vertices.  These weird, un-selectable edges seem to disappear when I remove the Solidify modifier and go back to a 2D mesh.
As long as I'm here, I'd also be extra-grateful if anyone can tell me how to make the thickened edges of the 3D part align so they're flush with the YZ-plane (since I plan on 3D printing this part and its YZ mirror-image and epoxying them together to create the complete vacuum manifold!).
I'll attempt to add my ".blend" file to this post.  I am very new and clueless with Blender and I'll bet I'm missing some basic concept ... literally any advice would be very much appreciated!
Thanks in advance.

There is a vertex mishmash. Press M to Merge by Distance with value like 0,001

I did some more manual cleaning (Merge by Last to merge some others vertices that were close to each other) and Slide by Edge GG to straight back some edges of cylinder part.

To keep straight cut in some axis I would suggest to use Mirror modifier and as final touch apply Solidify and Mirror and use Bisect tool to cut.
Topology is not good, so if you will have more issues, you would have to retopology your object anyway.


transparency texture problem with particle system (shows wireframe) i want to animate this scene with falling leaves using the particle system but they are not transparent for some reason. (you can still see the wireframe and on a darker background it seems to be black where it should be transparent)
but why?!

i'm using the internal blender renderer
in viewport they look exactly as i want them to.
here are my material and texture settings:

Those are Freestyle outlines. If you don't want them you can turn Freestyle off in the Render tab of the Properties panel. Or, if you want them but you don't want them on those particular meshes, you can add a Material stroke modifier under the Properties panel->Render Layers tab->Freestyle Line Style->Alpha. Then set the Freestyle stroke alpha to zero in the leaf material. Or, you can model the leaf shape more accurately and stop using alpha on that material entirely. This would help a lot with the problems you're having with the mist, too, and I would personally recommend that you model the silhouette of the leaf a little more meticulously to help with that.


Mesh becomes pink in weight paint mode every time middle mouse button is clicked to rotate/pan view As the title, I have been experiencing pink mesh in weight paint mode every time I try to rotate/pan the view using the middle mouse button.

What I did:
1. Select mesh object and go to weight paint mode
2. Select a bone - weights of the bone shows correctly
3. Try to rotate/pan the view - weight becomes pink as if it hasn't been parented
4. Reselect the same bone - weight shows correctly again

Refer gif:

From the gif, you can see that the hand and the clothing are two separate objects parented to a single armature. However, the problem only appears on the clothing and not the hand. For the hand I can rotate/pan the view without problem.

Any insights on the cause are greatly appreciated!

This might not help at all but, usually pink refers to when you have enabled but failed to define a texture or lighting file. I just remember when inputting an hdri lighting source for my scene things went pink. I would just check to see you didn't apply anything in scene or texture or any of other tabs that has an input to import things you aren't using.


Vertex paint strange artifacts on big object I'm experiencing difficulties with vertex paint mode. I got a really huge object (huge in display-size and in vertex-amount) and thus need to zoom out very much to paint it. Looks like this:

(see the small square at the bottom of the image - its blenders grid at the coordinate systems center)
Now i take another color and paint it on it. Looks quite good:

The problem now is, that it isnt good at all. When zooming in, very strange artifacts occur:

It seems like only one quad of vertices per pixel of my monitor got painted. Do you have any idea on how to get around this annoying effect?

Most of the tools that are asked to automatically operate on mesh elements (faces, vertices, edges) depending on their visibility on the current view have this issue.

You'll experience the same thing for example by circle/lazo/box-selecting a dense mesh while in solid-shaded mode, or using the gradient/paint tool while weight painting.

On the top right a box selction in Solid mode, while on the left a selection made in Wireframe mode.

I'm not qualified to tell exactly what's going on under the hood of the source code, so I'll suggest to take the following lines as my personal thought

As elements share more or less the same location on the screen because they are one next to each other, it is difficult for the software to exactly tell if one of them is there or not. From the pattern created, that shows a "quantization" of selection, I can guess that the algorithm is probably checking whether a element is falling inside one of the pixel cell of the selection/brush. Mix that with some numerical approximation and the result is that some of them are missed.

In addition you are doing that in solid mode, so the software has to take into account element's visibility and face's normal thereshold that make things usually harder.

My personal solution, when possible, is to paint/select while in "wireframe" mode or draw a shape and fix error from a closer view.

As currently (Blender 2.77) there is no option for going to a 3Dview-like wireframe mode (where you see behind solid faces, I mean, because wireframe mode for weigt &vertex paint means: "please, show me the wires"), you must look for custum build like this one where the creator has added an useful "limit selection to visible" option for vertex paint mode too.


How do I copy a pose from one blend file and paste it to another? I have a pose in 1 file and I'd like to copy that pose to another file. I think this blog post is in the right direction but I can't get it to work between 2 blender files.

I also tried running 2 Blenders and Ctrl+C the pose then Ctrl+V but it doesn't work.

With your armature selected look in the properties panel at the object data tab.

The first thing you see at the top of the tab is your Pose Library pannel

Create a library and add your pose to it.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Rigging/Posing/Pose_Library

save your blend.

in your new blend, you can append the pose library (from the Actions folder).
You can then add the poses via the Action Editor


Unable to render an Alpha Transparant texture I am creating rocks with a group-hair particle system of leaves on top of the rocks. The leaves was just an alpha image being textured into a plane. It was working fine.

However, when I render the alpha image, there are shadows of the plane. I wanted it just to have shadows on the leaf and not the alpha-part of the image. What is the cause?
Here is the blend file.

P.s. I already checked transparency on the material of the plane and make sure to have zero alpha and spectacular. Also, when I render the leaves alone (not the particle system), it appears fine. Like on the pictures below.

There are shadows when in particle system.

Here is the Textures for the leaf (I can't get 3mb to upload here. Btw, the source was from a tutorial by Andrew Price):
http://www.pasteall.org/pic/75151

You're using buffer shadows, which according to the documentation cannot render transparent shadows.

  Raytraced shadows are generally more accurate, with extra capabilities such as transparent shadows, although they are quite slower to render.


Blender and Unity. Materials/Shaders question (Cycles, BlenderRender, Does it matter??) I have been tinkering with Unity and Blender for a fair amount of time, although mostly in Unity I don't have much 3d skills in Blender yet.

But I'm struggling to fully understand materials.

If I assign materials to areas of the mesh in Blender. (Let's say I am making a basic house. And I assign a material to each face (walls) and then a couple of windows with a separate material. Do I need to tinker with the material settings inside Blender?

I wonder this because I have been making materials in Unity for a long time, and I could easily change the materials there. But when I watch/read Blender tutorials they always make lots of changes in the material. I wonder is this because they want it to look nice in a Cycles render or whatever, or because it is needed to become a game asset.

So imagine my house in Blender is all white (like the basic Blender mesh material colour). And I just have the material1 and material2 (mat2 where the windows go), can I then import that to Unity and just set my own materials from there for transparency etc?

Anyone experienced with importing their own Blender stuff specifically for Unity use and not rendering inside Blender, please let me know your workflow for simple 3d models to Unity (with more than one material/texture)

Note: I also do use UV mapping. And it works great, but I haven't yet done one with transparent windows using UV mapping and this got me thinking that I don't need to mess with the materials/shaders in Blender.

Cheers ! :D

Check out Poliigon for amazing textures if you don't want to tinker the settings manually.

In Blender, we mostly use Cycles Render engine and starting 2.80, the internal render engine(Blender Render) has been removed.

In order to tinker with the material settings, you need to make sure the render engine is set to Cycles render and select Node editor from the bottom left corner(change from 3d view to Node editor or extend a new tab and change it).

It works similar to how 3d View works, shift + a to add a new shader,x to delete, g to move etc..


Procedural texture is stretching I have this procedural texture which creates a little camouflage pattern, but it appears to be stretching on the hull of the plane.

Here is the node setup, super simple.

And here is the issue. You can see the texture looks good on the sphere and the wings, but not on the hull or the vertical stabilizer...

I did initially stretch a cube to start modelling the hull, but I have tried applying scale to no benefit. Am I missing a node or step here?

Bounding Box Size

I may guess is caused by a different bounding box size between the objects.

When there is no vector input in a texture node, Blender automatically use Generated coordinate type. As stated by the Blender manual page:

  Automatically-generated texture coordinates from the vertex positions of the mesh without deformation, keeping them sticking to the surface under animation. Range from 0.0 to 1. 0 over the bounding box of the undeformed mesh.

The hull certenly looks less tall than long, causing a "compression" of the values upon the Z-axis.

See in the image above the different mapping caused by a different bounding box's size.

And here you can see the values that the noise texture is passing to the Voronoi node. Notice how the mapping range is the same (0,1) but as is placed on object who has different sizes, the results don't match.

That's not probably your case, but remember that each kind of geometry is taken in to account for bonding box calculations, even loose vertices:

If you would like to spread the texture homogeneously upon the objects, I would suggest to use a Object Texture coordinate instead, maybe pointong not to the object itself (changing its scale would affect the texture size too) but to an Empty like in the example below:


Is it possible to visualize ray length info as a black and white map? Prompted by my previous question, Is it possible to see the output of a node group like this one: (created from this tutorial on blender cookie)

as a easy to visualize (and quick to render) black and white map like this?:

Simply connecting the output of the group to an emission shader does not let rays through the object, so the output is white:

Connecting the emission shader directly, as you suggested won't work indeed, but how about mix of transparent and emission depending on Geometry->Backfacing? Should work.

Edit:
Works for me:


Pivot Point wont change I have a scene with some objects.
Lamps, modelled stuff and imported 3ds objects.

When i try to rotate the 3d View via middlemouse, the pivotpoint is never inside the selected object.
It always sits at the middle of the screen.

Is there a way to force blender to pivot around the selected object ?
Pivot Point settings imply that you can easily tell blender where the pivotpoint should sit.
But if i use it nothing changes.

Things i already tried:
I reset the origin.
I tried all Pivot Point Settings.
I applied Rotation and Scale.
I looked for already asked questions and answers but none of them helped.

What is it im doing wrong ?
Is there a simple solution and im just stupid ?

Assuming that it is the rotation of the 3D view that always pivots around the center of the screen and you would like it to pivot around the selected objects origin instead, you need to activate the "Rotate Around Selection" setting.

File menu > User Preferences > Interface


Blender2.77 layout sharing How do I share a Blender2.77 layout with other Blender2.77 users? I have saved it on my computer but have not saved it with other Blender user computers.

When you create a new layout in the Themes tab in the User preferences, then a xml file gets created in the Blender app data folder. At Windows 7 it's

C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.77\scripts\presets\interface_theme

Let's say you added a new preset and named it mytheme, then you will find a mytheme.xml in the above folder.

You can grab this xml file, and other users can then install this xml file as a new theme with the Install Theme button in the Themes tab in the User Preferences.


Blender on OS X Sierra 10.12.4 - Menus not working correctly When I try to use the file menu is sorta, works but not well.  I cannot click on anything if it appears at all.  Sometimes I get Python: INFO_MT_file instead of the file.

I have deleted ~/Library/Application Support/Blender to make sure there is no cruft. I have tried blender versions 2.69, 2.77 and 2.78c - all have the same poor behavior.

Has anybody see this before?  Googling "Blender INFO_MT_file" gives me nada.

A bad version of a python module on my system or something?

Thanks

Ok, working with some other Mac software I found the following pattern to clean up stale bits that could be causing bad behavior.

So I did the following rm -rf  ~/Library/Caches/Blender/*.  I assume I blew away a few customizations with this as weel.

I will just leave this here and hope it helps someone else.

The issue came back.  This time I unplugged all USB peripherals except my mouse and keyboard and the issue disappered.


Blender Grabbing Vertices Duplicates Them I'm following a tutorial on how to make a low poly character and whenever the guy im watching grabs certain vertices and pulls them they move but for me, the create a duplicate version of its already existing vertices and i don't know how to fix it.

you must have duplicated your mesh, you can try 2 different things:

Select and delete the duplication: put your mouse on the mesh and press L to select the duplication, then G to move it away and X to delete.
Merge the overlapping vertices: Select the whole mesh with A and press AltM > Merge By Distance, you can see how many vertices have been deleted on the top horizontal bar, meaning there were overlapping vertices, maybe you'll have to play with the Merge Distance parameter in the operator box on the bottom left of the 3D viewport window.


How do I control the mesh extrusion? So a got a some mesh here:

And when i click E to extrude it doesn't do it and i get some sort of a division:

And setting up Origin to Geometry makes the plane dissapear. Any help?
Moving the object with G also makes it dissapear.

You mesh does not appear to be a major time investment thus I suggest

Delete the mesh.  This may delete a one time mistake.
Create a new mesh
Fresh Start
Try to work with the new mesh

Deleting defective work that has a low time investment and creating a new work can save time.  If you have the same defect many times in a row and you report this then we need a different approach.


EZ uv-mapping of generated images to sphere, but never the right direction I'll be generating images in python and then uv-mapping them to a sphere and hope to automate it - possibly even a new image each frame coordinated with the sphere shape keyframed as well. uv-mapping was quite easy when I did it here with a NASA image, but when I tried again with PNG images that were saved using plt.imsave('img2', img2) blender seems to want to put the "poles" somewhere on the equator.

update: The NASA images don't work now either. I recently moved to a new computer environment (clean install) and installed the most recent Blender.

Below are the images shown a few ways to make sure I have the orientations in both "tall" and "wide" format. The shapes of the numpy array generating the images are [1201, 2401, 4] and [2401, 1201, 4] where the third index represents R, G, B, A.  The pattern is calculated so that the lines are constant thickness from "equator" to "pole" after uv-mapping to a sphere.

I used the GUI to make the first sphere and set the parameters, connected the Nodes material, then copy/pasted a second sphere and edited the image file. I haven't rotated the spheres at all.

While I can half-fix this by adding a mapping node as @Gandolf3 shows, I really want the direction of the lines to reliably map to the top and bottom of the uv-sphere mesh object - being the place where all the edge loops meet.

Is there some way I can get Blender (here) to always uv-map the long edges of the image, or at least the top/bottom edges reliably to the poles of the uv-sphere? If I do this a lot I may try to automate it, and images may differ in size/shape slightly I'd like to get a handle on this!

Here are img2.png and img3.png to play with!

Nodes:

uv-spheres

Rendered:

the two images

This Doesn't Help! (all permutation of x, y, and z 90deg rotations)

I found the problem the next day when the coffee was fresh and it's somewhat of an oversight, but since I found it I'll just post it here.

The Projection setting in the Image Texture node needs to actually be set to Sphere if you want to project on to a Sphere. Makes sense :).


[Cycles]Is there any way to bake float values I want to save the 32-bit floating point values generated in a set of OSL procedural nodes to a bumpmap. Is there any way to finagle that?

Also, if it just can't be done, I'd like to get that out of the way.

There is currently no support for sending data from an OSL node to a file, values can only be passed into a nodetree used by cycles, which does mean that your OSL script can replace the image node you would use for a bumpmap.

By setting a float output value you pass your calculated height directly into the node setup to be used to alter the displacement or bump of the material.

shader myosl(output float Height = 0.0 )
{
    Height = sin(P[1] + 0.25);
}

While you probably don't want to use both displacement and normal adjustment, you may realize that you don't have to use a closure output in your script. You can calculate any value you want and integrate it in your nodes where you need it.


Transform orientation Issues I 100% know that someone has probably asked this question but why is my orientations (Global and Local) all funked up. Why are my extrusions going off in different directions? Photo on what I mean below...

you use Global transformation orientation at the moment. only to do is to shift transformation orientation to Normal and the gizmo will re-orientate perpendicular to selected plane.