Temporarily disable add-on UI property update callback I want to synchronize two properties (e.g. sizeX and SizeY) when a “lock size” property is enabled. I have the properties SizeX and SizeY update callbacks linked to separate methods: update_sizex and update_sizey. When the property “lock sizes” is enabled, I want my update_sizex callback function to update the value of the property sizey whenever the user changes property sizex and the update_sizey callback function update the value of sizex whenever the user changes property sizey. Obviously since both properties have update callbacks, changing the value of one property programmatically from within the callback of the other property will create a cascade of recursive callbacks. Is there a way to temporarily disable the callback of a property programmatically just so that its value can be synced with other property value? (think of this as the Photoshop resize width / height lock mechanism).

sizex = FloatProperty(name='Size X', description='Size of plane along X',
                      default=10.0, update=update_sizex)

sizey = FloatProperty(name='Size Y', description='Size of plane along Y',
                      default=10.0, update=update_sizey)

def update_sizex(self, context):
        if self.lockSize:
            # update self.sizey without triggering recursive update callback

def update_sizey(self, context):
        if self.lockSize:
            # update self.sizex without triggering recursive update callback

Only trigger the update when it makes sense, when the value will be changed. Otherwise then don't set the value to the counterpart.

sizex = FloatProperty(name='Size X', description='Size of plane along X',
                      default=10.0, update=update_sizex)

sizey = FloatProperty(name='Size Y', description='Size of plane along Y',
                      default=10.0, update=update_sizey)

def update_sizex(self, context):
    if self.lockSize and self.sizey != self.sizex:
        self.sizey = self.sizex

def update_sizey(self, context):
    if self.lockSize and self.sizex != self.sizey:
        self.sizex = self.sizey

You can also use a temporary property for this. But in my opinion that makes things too complex. Also be aware that the setting can be set incorrectly making the lockSize functionality not working.

from the outside the do_not_update setting can be altered making the whole lockSize button broken.
when an exception happens during updating.

This can be fixed by a using finaly

try:
    self.do_not_update=True
    self.sizex = self.sizey

finally:
    self.do_not_update=False


How to use KX_CharacterWrapper.walkDirection I want to make a character, which would move, and I want to use character physics and python for easyer controll. I know you get the character wrapper with wraper = bge.constraints.getCharacter(own) Then I want to make it move, but I can't figure out how walkDirection works. I did it like so:

import bge

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

wraper = bge.constraints.getCharacter(own)
direction = (0, 1, 0)
wraper.walkDirection(direction)

But whnever I press the key and run the code I get an error: 'Vector' object not callable
I can't find any examples of how that's done on the intrnet, and I tryed changing the code many times.

Please, can someone tell me how it's done?
Thanks.

The wraper.walkDirection is a property of type Vector and not a function so you should do an assignment :

wraper.walkDirection = direction

to move in the local space orientation multiply the direction vector by the orientation matrix of the object :

direction = own.orientation*Vector((0, 0.1, 0))

you should include the Vector type by adding this line :

from mathutils import Vector


Snap FK/IK does not copy the motion I have had an amazing problem about IK and FK mode. Snap is used to copy the animation from IK to FK or from FK to IK. So, normally, When i do an animation using IK and FK mode, I can finally run it in each mode without loss for any motion. but in http://www.pasteall.org/blend/34672 , I remark that when i run it in IK mode for all bones, the hands did not move. What is the problem?

When editing the walkcycle action alone (file has the same issue as in this question) you haven't properly keyframed the IK-arms. In the timeline set the VisualLocRot as keying-set:

Go to the keyframes in IK mode and place the hands where you want them to be. Thereafter you can switch seamlessly between IK and FK mode.


Transparent background I rendered an animation as an png image sequence and I wanted to put a picture in the sky background (the render would mask the picture behind it) in another video editing software. When I imported it to the editing software and put an image in the background, it didn't show up. What should I do to get a transparent background?

Oh, that simple
All you need to do is the select camera properties, then look down for Film and check transparent.

Final result:


Installing Pyserial in Blender How can I go about getting pyserial installed under win7 64bit for Blenders bundled python distro?

I currently have python 2.7 installed for programming outside of blender, and have pyserial installed for that, but I'm trying to get serial data fed into blender which needs pyserial for 3.3.

When I try installing pyserial with the pyserial-2.7.win32_py3k.exe it doesn't find the python installation and I don't know how to point it to theBlender\2.69\python folder.

Answer:
I don't think there is a way to point a Python module installer to the Blender bundled Python.  So if you must use a third party Blender Python, there are generally 3 ways to go about that:

remove blender python sub-directory, blender will then fallback on the systems python and use that instead. Note that Python version must match the one that blender comes with.
Install a Python environment that's the same version as the bundled Blender Python to your system directory. (i.e. Python 3.3 64bit). Then install Pyserial (py3k) into that Python installation. Lastly copy the installed Pyserial module manually to the Blender Python installation under Blender\2.69\python. Installed Python modules can be usually found under the lib/site-package directory.
Most Python modules are just .py files that can be copies without going through a formal installation process. So, mostly likely, you can try to extract the module files from the installer, and just copy it straight to the Blender Python. This way, you don't have to keep a system Python just for installation purposes.

Non-answer: Do you really need to install it to the Blender Python? You can set up the PATH variable to basically load a module from any where on the disk.


Change the Bone Rotation (Quaternions) of an Armature in text script I am using Blender 2.49b. I have a hand model and I would like to set the bone rotation (in quaternions) to take values from text (Bone%i.txt); on each column of the text I have 4 values (W,X,Y,Z). My hand model consists of 25 bones, as can be seen in the following image.

So, I wrote the following script to do the job

from Blender import *
import math

# Path to data directory
dataDirectory = 'C:/Users/andarist/Desktop/Data'

# Number of frames to render
numFrames = 100

# Range of bones
handIndices = range(1,26)

# Bone file name patterns
bonePattern = 'Bone%i.txt'

# Hand object pattern
handObjectPattern = 'Bone.%03i'

# Global scale
scale = 1.0

# Global speed
speed = 1

def FrameChange():
    pass

def SetIpoForFrame(frame):
    frameIdx = (Get('curframe') - 1) * speed
    Set('curframe', frame)
    frameIdx = (frame - 1) * speed
    dataStore = Registry.GetKey('MoCapImporter')
    nanmap = { }

    # Move bones
    for handIdx in handIndices:
        handObj = Object.Get(handObjectPattern % handIdx)
        pos = dataStore['Bone'][handIdx-1][frameIdx]
        nanmap[handObjectPattern % handIdx] = False
        if(pos == None):
            nanmap[handObjectPattern % handIdx] = True
            pos = nanpos
        handObj.setRotation(scale*pos[0], scale*pos[1], scale*pos[2], scale*pos[3])
        handObj.insertIpoKey(Object.IpoKeyTypes.LOCROTSIZE)

    Scene.GetCurrent().update()

def LoadFile(pattern, index):
    fileName = dataDirectory + '/' + (pattern % index)
    file = open(fileName)
    lines = file.readlines()
    output = []
    for line in lines:
        c = line.split()
        if(c[1] == 'NaN'):
            output.append(None)
        else:
            output.append((float(c[0]), float(c[1]), float(c[2]), float(c[3])))
    file.close()
    print "Read %i lines from %s" % (len(output), fileName)
    return output

def Main():
    dataStore = { 'Bone': [] }
    # Attempt to load the data
    for handIdx in handIndices:
        data = LoadFile(bonePattern, handIdx)
        dataStore['Bone'].append(data)
    Registry.SetKey('MoCapImporter', dataStore, False)

    for i in range(1, numFrames+1):
        print "Frame %i/%i" % (i, numFrames)
        SetIpoForFrame(i)

if((event == 'FrameChanged') or (event == 'Render')):
    FrameChange()
elif(event == ''):
    Main()

However, it seems that the Object.Get function cannot find the bone.%3i from Armatures hand, and I get the following error

Thanks in advance for your help and consideration.

Best Wishes,

Andreas

Might be hard finding someone that remembers how to use python in 2.49. The 2.49 api docs are still available here.

The second example on the armature page might be what you are looking for - while the docs list Get() as a function the example uses arm_ob.getData()

scn= Scene.GetCurrent()
arm_ob= scn.objects.active
arm_data= arm_ob.getData()
bones= arm_data.bones.values()

for bone in bones:
    # use bone here


Copy transforms Constraint gives strange scaling and transforms? I am using a Copy transform Constraint , But when I apply it this happens .

I am trying to avoid , of course the mag stretching . BUT I have tried using Only, copy rot and Loc. That miserably fails because it moves the armature to the middle of nowhere, and rotates it awkwardly.

I am also trying to avoid Any scaling, I have applied Scale, to the armature and mesh, but that dos not work.

I have tried using "child of", It works but it doesn't follow it. It moves with it but lags behind and just doesn't cooperate with me.

It was the rig all along , The wrist bone was placed back at the elbow! , So i extruded a bone from the tip of the middle finger and used that , it had proper scaling and rotation.


What is the process for applying a realistic texture over an emission object (ex a fluorescent lamp cover)? What is the correct node procedure to add in a realistic texture over top of an emission object (CYCLES)? Adding an emission shader makes an object completely uniform with no apparent depth to it, in which case we add a fresnel or layer weight.
So let's say I have a plane with an emission shader on it --
What I'm trying to do is take a texture like this

And apply it over top of that plane so that the emission comes through it and still provides light to the scene, and (ideally) takes into account the light and dark areas of the image rather than simply an even, uniform brightness throughout.
As a point of comparison, this is the kind of effect I'm getting now by simply using the image texture as an emissive plane -- note the lack of detail and texture in the lit signs.

Add a texture to control the strength as well.
So you would have a texture for the color and one different for strength.
To further control the strength you can add a math multiply node (or any other math operation you want) before the strength socket.
using the image from the reference:

For even more control you can add a Light path node and make it so that the camera doesn't see a brighter version of the emitter. Use Is Camera Ray, to control the mix between the visible emitter and the one that illuminates objects.

If you want the lights to flicker in animation just add keyframes to the multiply value or to the emission strength.


Temporal value node? When I'm trying to make an animated texture or whatnot for a material, I often have to set a couple of keyframes on a value, make sure things are properly selected, then go back to the graph editor, set them to linear extrapolation, so on and so forth. This is rather cumbersome.
Is there a node—either built in or in an addon—that can replicate this functionality by default? It would save a lot of time.

Driver expression: #frame
You can use drivers with #frame expression.
It's basically feeding the field with the value of the curret frame. By using a multiplying factor you can set the pendency of the curve.

It's also easy to edit: just right click the field or type in to override the expression.


Unable to pose rigged hose or keyframe it I'm new to rigging, so hopefully these errors aren't glaring :)  I'm trying to pose this hose and keyframe it, but the hose warps when I move the bones (I used a curve with IK spline for the bones).  Also, I'm not able to keyframe it.

Here's the resting pose:

Here's what happens when I try to move it:

I've attached the .blend

Unfortunately, bezier curve control points themselves are not keyframe-able.  You can, however, make a "hook" to those control points by selecting them in edit mode and pressing ctrl+h.  The hooks created this way are keyframe-able, and should give you the level of control you are looking for.


What is this weird ugly dark join using mirror modifier, smooth shading, and possibly subsurface modifier? I've made some shape in Blender 2.8 that roughly resembles a handle one might find on a fridge to learn, following along with Gran Abitt's videos.  Where the handle part of the handle meets itself in the mirror, in the "viewport shading" mode, there's an ugly dark band around it.  There is no such join on the backplate.

I think my problem is similar to Mirror Modifier making ugly smoothing on mirrored faces, but the proposed solutions don't work for me - there is no option to "clear custom split normals data", and the problem actually goes away when I tick "Auto Smooth".

The real problem is that I just don't understand what I'm doing.  Why does ticking "Auto Smooth" make the dark band go away?  What is the dark band?  I can't see anything untoward in Cycles whether it's on or off - is it actually a problem?

I should have watched further in the video I was following - there's an errant face in the join left over from extrusions which I needed to remove.

It looks like perhaps "Auto Smooth" selectively applies smooth shading to edges based on the angle between the faces they delineate, and, as the issue wouldn't show up with flat shading, the flat shading applying to the edges at the join was hiding the issue.  (I could be very wrong).


Why do my objects have white dots on them? What are these dots and how can I remove them?

I am using version 2.79b.

Those little white dots are called fireflies.
They are an annoying side effect of rendering. The easiest way to remove them is to just increase the sample count.

Blender Guru also has an article about how to get rid of them. https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/7-ways-get-rid-fireflies


Sequentially rotate object along two arbitrary axes I'm trying to rotate an object around one (arbitrary) axis using a child of constraint. Next, I want to 'let go' (i.e. set influence to zero), rotate the object along the global Z axis then 'grab' (i.e. set influence to 1), and rotate the object a second time along the same axis used in the first rotation. I've tried adding empties and also experimented with visual transform, but can't seem to get it sorted out.

What am I missing?

Best regards,
Andrew

I think I may have figured it out...:

frame 1:

use 'child of' constraint to parent object to 1. axis (other object or empty)

frame 60:

rotate axis 1
keyframe object's rot/loc

frame 61:

apply visual transform to object
keyframe constraint factor (1. axis) to 0
keyframe object's rot/loc
add 'child of' constraint to object with 2. axis (other object or empty) as target

frame 120:

rotate axis 2
keyframe object's rot/loc

frame 121:

apply visual transform to object
keyframe constraint factor (2. axis) to 0
keyframe object's rot/loc
add 'child of' constraint to object with 1. axis as target

frame 180:

rotate axis 1
etc.


Why is their weird noise in my render lighing and why does my lighitng still look off? I followed the tutorial here by Ducky3D, and it turned out I needed to scale down my scene a lot as light keeps flickering every time I move around my scene and the final result still doesn't look that good.
Also when I rendered the image, there was weird noise around my scene because of my lighting.

It could be the default shadow settings for Eevee.  Try setting the cube size higher in this menu.


My modifiers icon disappeared I am using Blender version 2.81a, my Modifiers icon (the little wrench) disappeared on my tab. How do I get it back?

Some objects cannot have Modifiers on them (lights, empties, instances).
When such objects are selected, the Modifier Tab (little wrench) just isn't shown.


Is there a way to freeze a cloth with a shape key? I created a curtain today using a CG Cookie tut that used shape keys, but when I went to apply it an error message comes up saying it can't be applied with shape keys, so my question is: is there another way to freeze a cloth simulation?

After enabling cloth, look under the modifier stack, there is a specific button there...


Where is the Sculpt Brush radius lock in 2.8? I've been trying to find the radius lock in 2.8 and i just can't find it anywhere

[![enter image description here][1]][1]

[1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/x3ehS.png

Looks like this feature changed the name to be more intuitive: It's now on Options menu, the name is "Radius Unit" and can be modified to "View" and "Scene". You can see this options on the right/down corner of your picture.


cant seem to figure out how to lock grease pencil animation to a moving camera. 2.8 First time posting a question. Forgive my ignorance.

I am really excited about animating in grease pencil with 2.8.  I created a crazy camera move as a test through a few cubes and i wanted to animate a character running with the camera move.

But i've discovered that no matter how i configure the view or origin settings the camera always moves past the grease pencil object. I tried parenting the camera to the grease pencil object and it still doesnt fully move with the camera.

I am pretty new to blender so apologies again if this is a simple fix. I am trying to use it for storyboarding. being able to draw characters in existing camera moves and all that.

thanks for any help!

Use any cam. Preferible Add-on Camera Rig
Create a Grease Pencil
Add Object Constrain: Copy Transforms
Set: Before Original and place your Grease Pencil in frame.
Now you can animate in camera view. GP will follow any mov.

lock grease pencil to cam


Using TinyCAD XALL feature while keeping faces and their assigned materials Imgur album with the pictures I will use to show you the problem: https://imgur.com/a/DBI6A

So, I have many cases like this:

Here I moved the left vertex to show you that the "green" upper edge is not the same of the "red" edge:

When I use TinyCAD add-on XALL feature to add vertices to all the edges which intersect with other edges, the faces which were supported by those edges get deleted:

Then I use Remove Doubles and press F to remake the deleted faces:

But, as you can see, the materials applied to those faces are of course different from the original ones. I could re-assign all the materials but that would require a lot of work since I have many of these cases.

Is there a way to use TinyCAD XALL feature while keeping faces and their assigned materials?

Materials are specifically assigned to faces and faces only, edges can't hold any information about material slots.

If all faces are removed and no renderable geometry is left behind then all material slot assignments will invariably be lost, there is no way to recover material information from edges alone.

This is not a problem specific of TinyCAD or any other addon for that mater, it is just intrinsic to how the data structures work in Blender.

As far as I know there is really no way around this.

You may alternatively try with varying degrees of success using Edit Mode Boolean operations to try and find intersections without loosing the faces; or use tiny cad on a duplicated copy of those edges instead of the original ones attached to faces.


How to Delete Animation Panels? Okay so I have a slight problem.

I can't figure out how to get rid of the animation panels? Please help, I'm quite new to blender so sorry if this is quite simple.

Aha! Yes, the panels... the most annoying noob thing in Blender!

Here is it:


Make softbodys squeeze through other objects? I'm playing around with the blender softbody physics and am trying to recreate something like seen in this video (around 24 seconds).

The sphere is squeezing through a torus-like shape. In blender, I figured I have to set the Pull and Push for the soft body quite low (~0.4) and make the inner Thickness for the collision object also smaller.

However, it is only working to a certain degree; the ring has to be almost big enough for the sphere to fit through without squeezing.

Is there any other way to do this kind of simulation? Any help would be appreciated

Consider Using a Lattice Modifier which can squeeze or inflate 3D meshes.

If you are not being extremely particular this is an easier choice.  Since the 3D object in the video might be a simple sphere this may simplify your work.  You will still have work to do as you may be concerned with more degrees of realism regarding the volume compression and expansion.   The lattice has shape keys.  The lattice and the sphere can be moved relative to each other for animation.  I am letting you be the artist here if you like.  You can definitely improve the lattice shape with experimentation.

If wobble suits your tastes then you can add that with another lattice.  I could try to convince you that the video included your video has low realism wobble.  You can view and be the judge of that in the video.

There are also more difficult and complicated sequences of modifiers such as weight modifiers and shrink wraps.


How do you select a vertex group? (2.8 outliner error: Not yet implemented) I understand this feature is not implemented. Is there a workaround or another way of selecting a vertex group? All searches for an answer to this has only hinted that it's not possible to select via outliner, but one may be able to select a vertex group another way that is apparently so mysterious it is left unmentioned.

Vertex groups can be selected and modified from the "Object Data Properties" tab when you've selected an object.


Trying to see the 3D Manipulator Widget on selected objects How do I get the 3d manipulator widget to appear on a selected object in Blender 2.8. When I select any object in the scene the widget does not appear with it. Is there a menu item that makes it appear?

Is the 3D widget active? Does it show the three icons for move, rotate and scale beside it? If not click on it, or press ⎈ CtrlSpace to toggle it on.

If the widget still doesn't appear on the selected object, it may be that the object's  Origin is somewhere else in the scene. The manipulator will be placed over the origin. If this is the case, go to the Tools tab of the Tools box (press T if the tools box isn't there). You do this in Object mode. About half way down, click on Set Origin, and then Origin to Geometry.

Link to Manual's description of the 3D  manipulator widget.


Why does Blender think the bottom of my object is the Front? I can't make heads or tails out of what blender thinks is front/back left/right.  Top and bottom used to be no brainers along the z axis but now that's all screwy too.

I did View/Align View/Align View to Active/Front and it is showing me the underside of my object.

Every time I try another view it just gets worse, zooming me virtual miles from my work so I have to hunt around to find it.

In Edit mode, "Align View to Active" will align your view to the active selection's LOCAL axes.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/3dview/navigate/align.html


UV map slightly distorted for some reason so I've been working on a mod for a videogame but I ran into a problem that I simply can't figure out on my own (I'm fairly new to blender but I honestly don't know what I've been doing wrong). So I modeled the object (an I-beam, pretty basic stuff -->started from a cube and added some edge-loops and did some extrusion and scaling) applied the scale and location and started to place the seams. Then I duplicated the object b/c I've been planning to bake a normal map later on. After that, I unwrapped the model but there always is this one part or rather loop of the unwrapped model which appears to be deformed for some odd reason. I don't know but I don't think it has anything to do with my placement of the seams but I might be mistaken. Anyway, I'd appreciate your help and please let me know if you need further information:)

About your distorted UV map:

it comes from the fact that your beam is actually enlarging on its top, so the faces are not perpendicular. The consequence is that it will stretch the UV map in the UV Editor: Blender just tries to find an average arrangement between faces, it doesn't know that it needs to give priority to perpendicular angles. I've made a second test with perpendicular faces and as you see it works fine.

What you could do though is making the UV map orthogonal with some addons, or: first unwrap the top part, then the bottom, then in the UV Editor, make the bottom faces stick to the top faces with the help of the snap.

About your Bake problem:

There might be several reasons, it really depends on your problem. I guess one of your problems is that your object is made of 90° perpendicular angles. In that case you need to know that, as the ray of the baking follows a direction that is perpendicular to the face normal, it won't be able to record any of the faces that are completely parallel or perpendicular... the baking will be completely "blank". Whereas if you slightly tilt those parallel faces the ray will hurt them and therefore they will be seen (the perpendicular face won't be seen but it doesn't matter, the parallel faces will give the illusion of deepness).


Animation with physics, UV sphere can't fall through the ''empty' I've got the problem while creating animation with physics in Blender. So I have two spheres and a tank. The aim is to get both spheres come through this tank.

1) Yellow sphere animation is based on physics (both sphere and tank are set as rigid bodies), BUT it can't fall into the tank, like there is no empty in there.

2) Red sphere animation was made as simple keyframe animation, it works pretty well but it not realistic, so method with physics is preferable.

Maybe someone had this poblem and could help me to solve it.
Thanks!

Thanks cegaton The solution is to set "mesh" as the shape in the rigid body collisions setting.


Change settings like 'limit selection to visible' or 'trackball rotation' with python My original intention is to transfer settings with a .blend file, but as far as I know, ordinary blends don't store everything.

I have tried to understand the API documentation for a while now, yet since I'm not a developer, I have a hard time closing the 'assumed knowledge' gap.

So far I've found bpy.types.SpaceView3D.use_occlude_geometry but no sample code or link and I just get error messages.

Blender's Info window output isn't revealing much either when I push the button manually, at least not to the untrained eye.
bpy.data.screens["Default"].(null) = False

So, here are my needs:

Switch MMB with SHIFT-MMB
Turn on trackball rotation for viewport rotation
Disable Limit selection to visible

Switch MMB with SHIFTMMB

view3d_km = bpy.context.window_manager.keyconfigs['Blender'].keymaps['3D View']
view3d_km.keymap_items['view3d.rotate'].map_type = 'MOUSE'
view3d_km.keymap_items['view3d.rotate'].type = 'MIDDLEMOUSE'
view3d_km.keymap_items['view3d.rotate'].shift = True

Turn on trackball rotation for MMB

bpy.context.user_preferences.inputs.view_rotate_method = 'TRACKBALL'

Disable Limit selection to visible

for scr in bpy.data.screens:
    for area in scr.areas:
        for space in area.spaces:
            if space.type == 'VIEW_3D':
                space.use_occlude_geometry = True


Moving all keyframes in a scene at once? I'm creating an animation and in order to work on it right now I need to finish the scene from the half way through point then add the beginning part on later. However before I even start I want to make sure that I can move all the keyframes at once so I dont have to go through a dozen plus and edit them all individually to fit my scene. If this is possible and anyone knows about how to do it, it would be very helpful.

Test Now and Often

To test archive your file.
Dare to move keyframes now.  If your sequence is currently in the frame range [1, 1200] try to move it to [2000, 2199] with the methods described below.
Blender is flexible and very often we need to change our intentions. No one can get non trivial interesting sequences correct the first time. Yet try to plan your storyboard and action and timing as much as possible.
There are a few items which affect observable motion.
The Dopesheet Window allows FCurve Keyframes to be moved all at once, with less detail and targets a  higher level of abstraction.   To a large degree this is true.  Select and Grab and Move in the X direction.  This can include Modifiers and Constraints. See free existing and finished intro videos on the famous website that rhymes with loolube.  Some introductory concepts are best illustrated by a video and many exist.

Know that there is an NLA Window editor which can affect motion and timing.  If you have not used it yet then at present that is not a concern.
Python Drivers.  Motion can be affected by Python Drivers with zero Blender Keyframes.   Thus there can be complications. There are other software drivers such as BAN Blender Animation Nodes which can be researched by you and are not discussed here.
Consider whether or not you have any interesting add ons
Curve Modifiers which take a Frame Range
Other issues that come to mind with further thought belong here
Know that Blender Rendering and Playback can be any range [M .. N].  0 > M > N as a simplified statement.  This includes 3D View and Rendering frames from the hard disk such and files of the form PNG.  So you can focus on frames [44,888] as an example.  You need not start at frame 01.
Clearly Scene changes allow more flexibility.  If two scenes share no visuals they can be rendered in any temporal sequence and resequenced in the VSE.
Timeline markers may need to be moved manually.


Creating a cardboard cut-out OR How do I make my geometry respect my 2d image import? I'm working on a (fun but needlessly complex) mockup for my wife's work. The idea I've had is that I can use my PBR cardboard texture along with the 2d image that will effectively define the boundaries of the plane.
Here is what it currently looks like in the Shader:

Using my more familiar 2d parlance, I just want to mask the eges out, so the cardboard texture is alpha'd wherever there isn't a pixel, thereby creating edges (which I can hopefully solidify to give depth).
Additional Thoughts:

I have been pointed toward the Mask Node, but that's relegated to the compositor, not the shader.
Regardless of what tack I take, I realize that I need a lot of subdivisions to support the geometry.
I also realize I could do this manually, but I'd prefer to figure out the proper way to generate whatever assets I might want.

Solution or no, thanks for your attention. Blender is super fun. And frustrating. And then fun again. And then infuriating. Then you feel like a god. Then I take a week off and forget half the terms. Blender is a mixed bag. Also life.

If you use alpha to give transparency I'm not sure you'll be able to give it thickness properly.
What you need to do is use your image as a background, draw a mesh that will have the exact same shape as your star, extrude, unwrap and give it your image as Image Texture.
Or import the shape as svg, make it a mesh, use X > Limited Dissolve to lighten the topology, and same thing, extrude, unwrap and give it the image as Image Texture. In your case the good news is that you won't need to rework the imported SVG.


Rotate Models Incrementally I have 35 objects, and I need to rotate them such that they complete a 180° rotation. Thus, I need each one to rotate n*5.14°.

Is there a way to do this easily in Blender?

It's a little hard to tell exactly what you're asking, but if you're looking to form a bunch of objects into a 180° semicircle, you can use an Array Modifier:

Just use an Empty as the offset object of the modifier, and keep the origin of the object in the same place as the empty. Then you can rotate the empty by 180/(35-1) to get the right increments to fill up 180°.


looking for help with base rigging a game model i am looking for help trying to set up a custom made skeleton for a game unit (For xcom 2) that i have made the concept sculpt for, but my skills with setting up something like that are more or less non existing as i am very new to stuff like this.
I have done custom animations before / edited existing animations and i know how to add custom / more bones to existing skeletons

examples of some of my animations here
https://streamable.com/khmug
https://streamable.com/jpcw0

so i am thinking I got this part down (somewhat)

the model i sculpted is here
https://imgur.com/a/RnOJq

i have tried on and off for a few months trying to set up a rig for this but have to admit i actually dont have the skill to do that yet..

anyone in here that would be able to provide some guidance on how you would set this up for animations?

It looks like you might need to start with some re-topology or a decimation modifier first. Lower the poly count so the engine can cope with your model, if it's not for a rendered cut scene that is.
Next Add some bones, the first bone must be created in
object mode (Tab), add a armature bone (Shift + A, A, S).

To keep the bones visible in front of your mesh, select a bone then go to the
Properties panel, Object Data tab, Display drop menu, TICK In Front.

In edit mode: Extrude bones (E), Parent bones (Ctrl + P), Clear Parent Bones (Alt + P)
or
add bones (Shift + A).
Parent the object (mesh) to the armature (Bones): Select the object, and the armature together
(Shift + LMB) and parent them with automatic weights (Ctrl + P, I).


Python and C/C++ relationship Sorry for my bad English, I'm new to Blender and I looked at the code many times.

As I suspect (if I'm not wrong) Blender UI is python and the core is C/C++.

For example when I want to change some features in the UI, I should do some work with python files in "bl_ui", but when I want to change Blender foundations, I should change C/C++ code

I almost know somethings about how this works but, I can't understand the connection and relationship between Python and C/C++.

When we click a button, a python file and function will be used, but what's going on after that?

I don't if know you can understand my question, I can't speak English very well, sorry.

Thank you

Using python you can import a module to use functionality inside that module. Many modules are written using python but a python module can also be a binary file similar to a shared library that was compiled from C/C++ source code. The python/C API reference at docs.python.org details how to write C code to do this.

Blender uses this C-API to provide modules that we can import from python scripts. The binary modules are merged into blender's binary file and the python interpreter built into blender takes care of giving us access to those binary modules. Most of the relevant source code can be found in source/blender/python.

So yes python is used to define blender's interface, the various functions and classes that we use may be implemented in python or C/C++, from the python scripts we run in blender we don't see any difference.


How to sculpt a High Poly Mesh in Detail? I'm having an issue with high poly sculpting in blender.

Here's my mesh. As you can see, it's composed of 11M polygons, which is quite a lot.

The thing is, when I want to sculpt little details, I'm limited by the size of my polygons. I'll exagerate it in order to show you.

But when I look at tutorials online, there seems to be no problem with polygons at all :

What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance.

You could enable Dyntopo(it is in the toolbar) and set it to a high detail. I would search for a tutorial on its use. Hope this helps


Noisy blur using compositing nodes I want to make a noisy blurred emitting object using compositing nodes.
Similar effect which you could see looking through waving water.

One way to get an effect like this is by using a noise texture to vary the Size input of a blur node. Note that Variable Size must be enabled:

By mixing different sizes and types of noise textures, and perhaps throwing in a bit of displacement, you can control the effect to get any sort of look you want. For example:


How to detect scene strips in the VSE on frame changes? I need to detect scene strips in the VSE on the current frame, meaning on what strip is the play head at this moment? However I can't seem to find the right type(?) to attach the ".strip_elem_from_frame" function to, in order to get the info/name/type on the strip. Here's a test script which must run in a screen with a sequencer with scene and movie strips in it:

import bpy

#update at frame change
def currentStrip(*pArgs):
    print("Current Strip: "+str(bpy.context.sequences[0].strip_elem_from_frame(bpy.context.scene.frame_current))) #Doesn't detect any strips at all.

#add frame change handle
def attachAsHandler():
    for f in bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre:
        bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.remove(f)
    bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(currentStrip)

currentStrip()
attachAsHandler()

This works, but I guess it could be more elegant and faster if ".strip_elem_from_frame" would work with scene-strips and nonactive strips. The current strip will be written in the Console.

import bpy

#update at frame change
def syncSceneLength(*pArgs):
    scn = bpy.context.scene
    seq = scn.sequence_editor
    cf = scn.frame_current
    for i in seq.sequences:
        try:
            if (i.frame_final_start <= cf
            and i.frame_final_end > cf
            and not i.mute):
                print("Current Strip: "+i.name)
        except AttributeError:
                pass

def attachAsHandler():
    for f in bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre:
        bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.remove(f)
    bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(syncSceneLength)

def detachAsHandler():
    bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.clear()

syncSceneLength()
attachAsHandler()
#detachAsHandler() #Uncomment this to stop handler


Hide objectes in specific animations I have 3 animations

idle
walk
axe

an object should be visible only in the axe animation. I have tryed setting the visibility properties (viewport and renders) for the keyframes but when I run the animation I have to manually select the correct animation in the outline for the singole object. Also, when I export in fbx the object is always visible. Can anyone help me ?
Thanks
Giulio

Use the Mask Modifier:

On your Axe object Edit Mode assign all vertices to a group and set the weight less than 1.0

Apply the Mask Modifier to the object whose visibility you want to vary
Create a New Scene with (Full Copy vs Linked) -- can used link and then Unlink the changeable (beyond scope of this answer)
In the "Is Visible" Scene, set the Mask Threshold > Vertex Weight:

In the "Is Invisible" scene, set the Mask Threshold < Vertex Weight:

Or if you want an item to appear/disappear in the same scene, animate the Threshold or Weight (see note in previous screenshot)


Modifiers not applied in texture paint mode I want to paint a texture on an object using another object as a mask. The object to paint has a complex shape, and I want to define the mask using a 3D object and a boolean intersection/difference, so I add the boolean modifier to my paintable object - everything works fine. However, when I switch to Texture Paint mode, the boolean modifier is ignored, and I get to paint on the whole surface of the object.
Basically I'm trying to do what I saw in this video: I know it refers to an older version of Blender (2.7x), but I wonder if it's still possible to do this in 2.83 and higher.
UPDATE
I tried starting from scratch, and the modifier is applied as it should. It seems that the issue has something to do with the object I'm using, but I can share that as is because it is a derived work from a file I don't have the rights to (I'm creating an original skin for a car from a game; the model itself won't be part of my end result).
I'm trying to isolate what particular details of that model cause the misbehaviour, but I still haven't succeeded. For now, another object created from scratch, that has a boolean modifier on it, appears bool-cut in Texture Paint mode and in Object mode (of course not in Edit mode); if I Texture Pain the new object, the car model (that is in Object mode) appears bool-cut; as soon as I switch to Texture Paint with the car as the active object, it appears non cut.

I found the solution. There's a button that enables the Paint Mask mode, which caused the behaviour I was experiencing.
If the button is OFF (as in the picture), the whole mesh (after applying modifiers) can be painted on.
If the button is ON, then face selection masking is enabled, and the selected faces of the mesh (without applying modifiers) can be painted on.


Mesh is Weirdly Deformed in Object & Sculpt Modes I'm following a video tutorial on sculpting and when I switch back to object mode to review my work there are weird random spikes jutting out from my mesh, as best as I can determine they arise from attempting to work around the neck area.

Attempting the smooth or polish tool around the neckline causes this:

Here's edit mode.

Here's sculpt mode:

In sculpt mode the original deformations didn't appear, I only noticed when I went to object mode. Back in sculpt mode the neckline deformations occured and all attempts to smooth it out haven't fixed it.

I have seen results like this after adding new geometry to an object with a multires modifier. It seems having flipped normals contributes to this.

As your learning, I suggest you delete the multires, go into edit mode and select all vertices, CtrlN to re-calculate the normals, add a new multires modifier then re-sculpt.

If you want to keep your sculpt data the only fix I can come up with is to apply the multires, go into edit mode, select the stray vertices and use smooth to bring them back into place. Press W and select smooth or find Smooth Vertex in the spacebar menu, then use ShiftR to keep repeating the last step.

I think I found a way to reliably re-create the issue so will report a bug.


Why can only one inner region of a plane be subdivided? Starting from this situation:

Subdividing W the inner rectangle leads to the following model, please notice that the center points of the adjacent rectangles have been displaced. Subdividing other rectangles is no longer possible.
To analyze the behaviour, I tried to subdivide the outer regions first this works flawless.

Why is that?

View from vertex mode:

.blend

The outer faces are now ngons. When you try and subdivide the outer faces they are being subdivided, which you can see when going into vertex mode:

The subdivision can't happen like before because while the faces appear to be rectangles, the topology is no longer quad based.


Volume Gods rays are not well defined I have a simple scene. Added an icosphere and emission to it. Set the volume scatter nodes. I can't find the rays coming out. Just at the fog and there's no clear light coming out. What setting am I missing?

Simple scene

No Gods Rays

Because your light source is too big.

God rays are just interesting/complicated shadow patterns hanging in space. If your light is throwing soft, boring shadows, the god rays of those shadows hanging in the air area going to be blurred and boring too.

Just as a start, here's your scene with the Icosphere mesh light at 1/20th the size, and 100x the power:

Since we just need a small sphere light for this, we'll replace that mesh with a point light as it's a bit more efficient and easier to control. I've set this one to size=0.02 (2cm) and the power to 1000. I also got rid of the volume cube around the object, unless you want some 2-tier rays, you don't need that AND the world volume.

Looks like this

You can vary the sharpness of the shadows by adjusting the lamp size. That will sharpen the rays as well. Here's the point light at 5mm instead of 2cm

Or tweak the lamp colors. Here's 2cm point lamp with an orange color. I also switched to branched path tracing, as it tends to be good with "volume show" scenes like this since you can turn up volume sampling. Plus I flipped on the denoiser:


Why is my face orientation moving while I orbit an object and how do I fix it? I am trying to model a transformer in Blender but the corners of my objects seem broken and deformed. I turned on face orientation and saw half of all faces were red. As a viewer of Blender Guru, I know that they need to be blue. When i orbit objects the colors change and I can't locate the red faces. How do i make all of them blue? I am still beginner and I would really appreciate some help. Thanks.

Your clipping distance starts very low, and Blender doesn't like it :).

Either increase the Clip Start distance in SideBar > View
or switch to Orthographic view through View > Orthographic

Increase the Clip Start distance...

...or switch to Orthographic view


How to find and focus an existing node? The title says everything. Sometimes in a very complex nodetree, I want to quickly find where an existing node is by it's name/label. (I don't mean the "Search..." in Shift A menu)

I remember we used to have such feature, but cannot find it. Or something wrong with my memory...

Just got it. It is by hitting Ctrl + F in node editor. (I know the answer is a very short one, but there really is no need to extend it with nonsense)

And thanks to the dev who ever developed it.


How do I get the screw modifier to go around the Y axis for a 2d Trace I want to recreate a chess piece (Bishop) by wrapping a side trace around the y axis. However, when I use the screw modifier, it decides the y axis isn't good enough and does this to me.

This isn't just an issue with my complicated line either, it seems that all bezier curves have this problem: here's a example of the what I'm talking about.

This shape, rather than pivoting along the y axis, pivots along a slightly tilted axis of its own. How do I fix this? Changing the center of origin doesn't help.

TL;DR

Is there any simple way to tell blender to screw a trace around an axis ignoring an object's origin?

Thanks!

The screw modifier by default uses the Z axis, you can change this in the modifier options.

If the revolution axis doesn't correspond to the world Y axis its because your object is rotated in Object Mode.

Check your objects rotation in the 3D View > Properties Shelf > Rotation (N Key)


what does bold edges mean? I'm learning how to use blender and sometimes I use wrong tools accidentally. I just realize that one of my wall has bold edges as you can see below. I don't know how I did that. What does that mean and how can I fix that?

I believe you have accidentally apply either of these to the edges

Edge Creasing
Mark Sharp

You can try these steps

Go into Edit Mode.
Select Edge Selection mode
Press A to select all edges.
Hit ShiftE,and set Edge Crease to Zero value.
Hit CltrE, look for "Clear Sharp"

Hope that helps.


Generation has thrown an exception: but there is no exception and it wont generate the rig correctly. how do I fix this? So, I have fixed many errors in my bone structure but when I try to generate the rig it says "Generation has thrown an exception:" and that's it. I've generated the rig multiple times tweaking a thing here and there but end up doing ctrl z so I don't have a broken rig. I have no idea how to fix this problem and couldn't seem to find the answer anywhere.

You can try to clean the file you're working on, going in the outliner, changing it from "view layer" to "orphan data" and click the "purge" button many times, until only brushes remain, then generate.
Try also the advanced options, choosing to generate a new rig with a new rig name, instead of overwriting the previous rig.
Try also to append the metarig into a new file and generate from there.
If the problem persist, please upload your file.


Top bar missing on my laptop I tried blender on my laptop, the top of the window seem to be cut, and i can't see every tool especially taskbar which's supposed to be there.
That's not such a big problem but the real problem is that the cursor is copletly off when i try to click on something the cursor actually goes way higher than what i was aiming for.

The white cross is actually where my cursor is supposed to be and you can see the taskbar is missing up there

Most display related errors, or missing elements on the interface, are caused by the drivers for your GPU (graphics card).

Try a different version of the driver. Sometimes upgrading helps, sometimes you have to go to an older version.


How do I rotate an object with a image on it? It’s hard to word it but I have a 3D model of a shirt and I have a png on the back of it. But when I go onto that animation tab, and try to rotate it the image i have on the object(the shirt) it doesn’t stay at the same spot.

From what I understand your image is actually not part of the T-shirt material, it is an image plane that is shrinkwrapped around your T-shirt. So if you want to keep this solution, you need this plane to follow the T-shirt object. To do so, the simplest way is to parent the image to the T-shirt. If it doesn't give you satisfaction you should consider using the image as an Image Texture within the T-shirt material.


Copy animation to other Object New to animation here.
I'm trying to copy the animation I made for the C and paste it onto the 3 other letters and then have them play one shortly after the other. I used Ctrl+L > Animation data which causes the K to move to the C and they play at the same time.
Is there a way to copy the C animation over to the other letters allowing me to edit the delay on the other letters?
Thanks!

Select the animated object and copy strg+c all the key frames in the Dope sheet editor
Set key frame on all channels were you want to paste on your target object. otherwise, you cant paste there.
Paste strg+v your key frames on the target object
Since you pasted the location of object on your objects are now inside each other. You most likeley want to tweak the animations in the graph editor.


Blender still using CPU even when I have CUDA chosen in preferences? The problem is as title suggests, I selected CUDA and checked my GPU in preferences for the Cycles Render Device see here. But when I'm running my render, the CPU usage is anywhere from 88-99% and the GPU usage is around 10-15% see here. I can only imagine that Blender is still using my CPU to render the scene.
How do I fix this?

Head over to the Scenes tab, and select GPU Compute.

PS: you can paste/upload images directly into your post.


The metalic look of the material looks opaque My final renders look "opaque", "poor","doll", "boring" in comparison with my viewport shading and i don't know what to do to improve it. (I use Cycles render)
The metalic look of car with its physics and the lighting goes away in the final render... and the window is opaque black and doesn't react to light at all, al the normals are correct and i didn't use any texture for the materials, i used procedual materials with nodes, i didn't took pictures of my node trees but don't think that's the problem,(i even used blender's Glass BSDF) but i'll show you guys what i mean...

Can you see the differences between the 2 images? please any tip would do just fine! here is 3 a.m. ATM and i'll go to sleep, but tomorrow i'll read the comments! good night everyone!

You need to setup an environment texture.
Go to our ressources in texture link and find the "HDR/JPEG Skydome Images" section. Check the links to find a HDRI environment texture and set it up in your world shader as an "environment texture" (not the usual "image texture").
in shader nodes, select world

Add an "environment texture" node and connect it to the background shader.

This is a basic world setup. Be aware that HDR images can be big files


Why does my 3D Object become transparent When I click f12 the texture of my 3D object become like this. If I missed something please tell me. I'm newbie at motion track. It'll help a lot thanks :)

You enabled option shadow catcher.  The shadow catcher is a specific option, used typically on floor planes in order to 'catch' shadows from lighting within the scene. It is useful for integrating a rendered object onto a photographic background.

You need to enable it on floor, not on object.

See also

How to use shadow catcher


Change the effect of a light on a certain object? I need a Rim / Backlight for my object, but the mesh is standing on a Glossy floor and when I put a spot lamp even which is pointing upward, it is still casting light on the floor, which is something I do not want.

Is there a way to make the Lamp not to be able to affect the Floor or make the floor to ignore the Lamp ?

Here's a screen shot showing the sort of compositing setup you'll want to make.

There is an orange lamp shining from the top left of the shot, and a blue lamp shining from the top right. The floor plane is ignoring the blue light while the cube and cylinder objects are receiving light from it.

First, for this to make sense you need to know the difference between layers and render layers. A layer is a slot where objects can reside. A render layer specifies for a type of render to be made by arranging layers in a special way.

So that you can see which objects are on which layers:

(I can label the layers because I'm using the Layer Management add-on)

Here are the Mask and Exclude settings for the render layers:

Explanation of render layer settings

Main Render Layer: Layer 2 which contains the floor plane is masked out.

Floor Plane: Excludes Layer 3 which contains the blue lamp. Masks out Layer 1 which contains the cube and cylinder.

Note that it's not even necessary to enable the "Blue Spot Lamp" render layer for the blue lamp to have an effect as long as the layer it resides on is enabled. Disabling that render layer speeds up render time.

More info: Understanding Render Layers


"Compress" a transform hierarchy My scene consists of a Null, key-framed rotation on itself, with a cube as child. The cube is translated at (6,0,0) and has a key-framed rotation along the x-axis.

What I would like is to bake or compress (not sure of the right term here) the transform hierarchy. The end result is the cube, moving exactly like when it was the child of the Null, with the offset, but now, it's not the child of the Null any more.

And if there's a way to do it with Python, that would be a must!

This is non-trivial.  For an arbitrary animation, you would basically have to evaluate the data_paths at every frame and insert a keyframe.  For a rotating cube you would have to give it both rotation and location keyframes.

For an example of how sticky this can become, consider the similar http://web.purplefrog.com/~thoth/blender/python-cookbook/snapshot-keyframes-as-mesh.html, which I do not include inline because it does not actually solve your problem, it is just an example of how things can get messy when you have to step frame by frame and coerce blender to apply (for lack of a better word:) stuff.

For the special case of rotations, you can use sinusoidal easing (on the t menu of the fcurves editor) to animate the location of the cube as long as it always rotates in 90 degree sweeps.

Another trick for the limited case would be to change the origin of the cube's mesh to be where the empty used to be and then rotate the cube.


HELP! I made a mistake when sculpting and when trying to fix it, it lead to a bigger problem (Pictures included to help get my point across :) )

I was sculpting this character that I've been working on

and I made a classic blunder. When I was sculpting the ear i accidentally forgot to turn the symmetry on. Because it was almost finished and I hated sculpting ears, I decided to try to work around it

I used the Boolean Modifier to cut the sculpt in half and then mirrored it. Everything seemed fine until I realized that because of this, there was now a face/mesh in the middle inside of the sculpt

Now whenever i sculpt this happens.

I tried manually deleting the mesh inside using edit mode but because of the bad topology from 'dynamic topology', its nearly impossible.

I really need help! I want to finish this sculpt.

Here's the blender file: blender file

Thanks a lot guys!

There seems to be an easy fix for your particular mesh problem: (because it is a nice flat internal surface)

Go into front view and turn off perspective (press 1 and then 5 on Numpad, ... or tick emulate numpad in the preferences menu if you don't have one, in that case also 1, 5)
Its always very important to see what is going wrong without all the rest blocking the view, so then use Alt+B to box-restrict the visible mesh around the center:
Then select one of the internal faces and select "linked flat faces" (shortcut: shift+ctrl+alt+F)
then delete those with ->delete->Faces and check if this solved the problem. As you can see in the right picture in your particular case the mesh is already clean after this.

Now you can use Alt+B again to return to the normal unrestricted view.

That should have done it! Happy blending! :)


My tracks stop tracking I am almost new with camera tracking and I am working on a small test. But in frame 93 15 of my 18 tracks stop tracking. The rest stops one frame later. The video ends in frame 220. Can someone help me?

Move the tracking point back to the correct position (manually) and continue tracking. If it looses track again, put it on the right track manually again.

If the video is blurry or jumpy the tracking can have problems. Rotating the camera fast will give you a blurry image.


Bake transparent textures onto plane I'm trying to bake a branch made from a cut out atlas onto a single plane for a tree to be used in a game engine.

(Branch mesh with applied textures)

(Branch ready to bake onto a flat plane)

However, when I bake, the transparency on the textures does not go through to the bake. Instead, the transparency is replaced with a black fill.

(Bake result, replaces texture transparency with black fill)

I'm in the middle of creating another quite complex pine tree and I need to bake the branches onto single planes, very much like the SpeedTree Leaf Map Makers tool (aka "Clustering") as seen in this video demonstration.

I've wondered if there was a way to cutout transparency like what shaders can do in Unity and Unreal, using the transparency to cut out the geometry, making a very high poly mesh, then transparency won't be an issue. And I don't want to have to manually cut around every single leaf there.

I've done a lot of searching and have not found a way to do this without SpeedTree. Surely SpeedTree isn't the only program that can do this... right?

Thanks.

EDIT: Here is my material setup just in case anyone is wondering:

not sure if this will help but.. the way I do this, is by baking a Diffuse Color only, from the mask that I'm using as the factor in the mix shader with the transparency node.. thus having a mask image to use.
you can also you the emission shader with the emit bake.. probably a better choice.


Using just Blender to make cloth assets on a model in UE4? Here's an actual example of a test I'm attempting. I have a small dagger, and I want to add a bit of cloth to the pommel that will flow around while swinging the dagger, or walking around. I have the dagger completely finished in terms of making the mesh, UV unwrapping etc, it's even textured. It does not however have bones. I've been importing it as a static mesh.

From various videos, I am pretty sure I need to have bones and a physics asset, therefore needing a skeletal mesh, I just need confirmation. That would mean needing a skeletal mesh for even something like a fruit stand with a tarp over it or something. I actually imported the dagger as a skeletal mesh and messed with cloth paint, but it didn't have any effect, I'm assuming since it lacks bones or physics asset for directions.

So, do I need to make anything that will have cloth physics a skeletal mesh, and will that allow me to select the different components as long as they're applied to bones? And can I do this by just modeling and rigging in Blender and then using clothpaint in UE4? Thanks.

I'll comment since I've figured this out, in case someone else is as clueless as I was. So, I modeled each part of the object, IE the dagger and the cloth. IN BLENDER, I gave the cloth and the dagger each a material (didn't change any settings). Combine them, export them and texture them, whatever. I didn't add bones or anything.

In UE4, all I did was import it as a skeletal mesh, and opened it up. Having a material on each the dagger and the cloth allowed me to select them separately in UE4 and thus "create cloth from asset" in the engine.

I could apply the Material I made for the combined object to both the cloth and the dagger, and it looked fine. The only purpose the material in Blender served was to allow me to select the cloth separate from the dagger in UE4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC2UlF3BWhQ&t=0s&index=31&list=WL This video although low quality, is what helped me figure it all out.


Lofting: can I copy a Shape-Keyed mesh for each frame of its animation? I have made a simple profile mesh (an edge loop) which I've animated along a path
using 'Follow Path'.
It has a number of Shape Keys, and as it moves along the path,
it changes shape.
I would like to capture a copy of the full state of the mesh, in place, at each
frame of its animation.

This would be, if you like, a sort of 'physical onion skinning'. Dupliframes capture the transformations of the mesh at each frame, including tilts and scales derived from the path,  varying those along the path, so come very close. But they don't capture the Shape Keys. If I alter the shape, it changes in all the duplicates,irrespective of keyed frames.

I'm attempting this in the hope of modeling with the resulting copies: creating a mechanism for lofting between varying profiles along a curve with a reasonable degree of accuracy, and ease of workflow.. so if there's an alternative route to that, please comment.

Bmesh script

Select the profile mesh, run script. Creates a copy for each frame from scene frame start to scene frame end.

A simple edge loop animated with follow path constraint, scale, and a mix of two shape keys.  BMesh.from_object gives a mesh snapshot at that frame (Apologies for low quality gif)

import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector, Matrix
from math import radians, degrees
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
ob = context.object
me = ob.data
bm = bmesh.new()
f = scene.frame_start
step = 1
while f <= scene.frame_end:
    scene.frame_set(f)
    bm.from_object(ob, scene)
    rme = bpy.data.meshes.new("Rib")
    bm.to_mesh(rme)

    copy = bpy.data.objects.new("Rib", rme)
    copy.matrix_world = ob.matrix_world
    scene.objects.link(copy)
    bm.clear()  # interesting without.
    f += step

Skinning the thing.

Rather than having an object per rib, could also make one object.  Taking advantage of the order each rib ring is added, can bridge these edgeloops with bmesh.ops.bridge_loops  Could be done on a lower level by creating faces.

import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector, Matrix
from math import radians, degrees
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
ob = context.object
mw = ob.matrix_world.copy()
me = ob.data
nverts = len(me.vertices)
nedges = len(me.edges)
bm = bmesh.new()
f = scene.frame_start
step = 1
rings = []
while f <= scene.frame_end:
    scene.frame_set(f)
    bm.from_object(ob, scene)
    bmesh.ops.transform(bm, verts=bm.verts[-nverts:], matrix=ob.matrix_world)

    rings.append(bm.edges[-nedges:])
    f += step

# build from rings
next = rings.pop()
while rings:
    ring = rings.pop()
    bmesh.ops.bridge_loops(bm, edges=ring + next)
    next = ring

rme = bpy.data.meshes.new("Rib")
bm.to_mesh(rme)
copy = bpy.data.objects.new("Rib", rme)
#copy.matrix_world = mw
scene.objects.link(copy)


How to avoid particle data being stored in blend file to make it smaller? I'm working with particles (for grass or leaves).
The problem is the blend file is very huge when it contains a lot of particles.

Is it possible to stop blender storing particle data to make the file smaller?

In your particle system tab there is a minimized subsection called Cache.  If you open that up and check the Disk Cache checkbox and Bake, that will cause your particle data to be stashed in a directory called blendcache_something/ and not in your .blend file.


How to select one (or multi) particular particle hair? As you can see,I am in particle edit point mode. If I use select box tool on the left,I can left click drag my mouse creating a rectangle,when I leave my mouse,the points in the rectangle is selected. However,if there is many hair in the mesh,it will be very difficult to select one (or multi) particular complete hair in this way.

To select an object in edit mode you can hover your pointer over the object you wanna select and press L which will select the entire object you want and ignore the other objects within the edit mode


why the color is not same In the scene the material and the modifier same. But why the result not same. Test tube liquid has light color and bowl has dark color

Any suggestion why the color look different.

The reason is quite simple: transmission depth

In the real world, if you look at a glass of water, it is transparent, while the sea is blu.
That's because when your partially transparent material is thicker, more light is stopped and its color becomes darker.

You can see in your scene that the bowl is much larger than the tube, so it stops more light.

if you watch it from above you can see that the bowl is now lighter, because the light has less material to go through, and its color is similar to the tube

So, if your goal is photorealism, this scene is accurate.
If you want them to be the same color you can "water down" (make the color lighter or the transparency higher) the liquid in the bowl, but then it would become physically incorrect


Where is the input box for setting the number of `Vertices` of a circle? I want to reduce the number of Vertices of a circle but I cannot find out the input box for setting this. I am now at the Edit Mode and already selected a circle. Where is the input box?

Steps

Press Shift + A and select Circle to add a new circle to the scene.

After clicking the Circle, the input box of Vertices is now shown in the left hand side menu.

Explanation

The editbox for that only appears directly and automatically after you added the circle to the scene.
If you switch to editmode after that then you can't change it anymore that way.

You'll need to undo the adding, add it again and change the value right away and THEN go into editmode to work on it further.

Alternatively you can just stay in editmode, remove all vertices and add a new circle, it'd be the same in the end.


how to set camera fov and focal lens independently? I am going to set the blender camera as the real surveillance camera, which the focal lens and fov of real camera is 4mm and 69.9 degree.

Firstly, I manually set the focal len of blender to 4mm, the blender automatically set the fov to 140.53  in the perspective view, I changed the sensor width and height, it has the influence but still doesn't simulate the focal len and fov as the real camera I used.

Secondly I followed this post - How to simulate a real camera with blender, but in the panoramic view, I added a new camera, even the parameters (focal len, fov and sensor width height) are changed as shown the post, nothing happens.

I wondered why in the perspective view both focal len and fov are automatically changed?  and why the change in the panoramic view doesn't change at all.

The blender version I am using is 2.7.9

This is the picture of focal len at 4mm below

This is the picture of focal len at 12mm below

Increasing the focal len will make the objects in far distance look bigger?

The field of view is determined largely by two factors: the lens length and the sensor size (we're going to leave focus distance out of this calculation to keep it simple). So changing the lens size will always change the field of view, unless the sensor size is changed accordingly to compensate.

Increasing the length on the lens will make for a smaller field of view (like a telephoto in a camera). A shorter lens would have the opposite effect, the field of view would be much wider (like in a wide angle lens). How much will depend on the sensor size.

In my opinion, the simplest answer for what you need would be that if you know the field of view you really don't need anything else. Just set it to 69.9 and don't worry about the sensor or lens size.

Knowing the sensor size from the manufacturer might not be the answer either, we don't know many things: how much of the sensor is actually used? Are the measurements of the sensor (and field of view) you are given for the width, height or diagonal. What is the aspect ratio of the generated image? Also there are many things in the real world that do not meet the specifications of the manufacturers (is the 4mm lens really 4mm?)

If you want to make a simulation (for depth of field reasons maybe)
that uses a 4mm lens covering a field of vision of 69.9 degree, then move the sensor width until you get to the numbers you want (5.591mm)

Notice that the field of view you just set up is only good for the Camera view.


Hair particle system possibly bugging out I've been working on body hair for a character in Blender, when it is not rendered , the hair looks fine even during animation, but when rendering it does this weird glitch and i have no idea how to fix it.

Anyone have any clue what might be going on?

I figured it out, it appears I had the amount of hair on render set to 100 and 3 on the viewport and did not notice it.


How can one do rendering with Cycles using an NVIDIA RTX GPU? I have a NVIDIA RTX 2080. I've got an error like this:

  CUDA binary kernel for this graphics card compute capability (7.5) not found.

Does someone know how to enable it?

Update as of July 29th 2019: NVIDIA RTX GPUs are now officially supported and can be used to accelerate renderings in Cycles using the raytracing cores of RTX cards. You can read more about this from the Blender Developers blog here.

In the past, RTX GPUs were not supported even for normal use cases unless you compile Blender from source code yourself or download a pre-compiled version of Blender 2.79 (link below)  for Linux. However, if you want the latest features/bug fixes you need to compile Blender from source still. People have compiled Blender this way and submitted their results to Blender OpenData too. As shown on Blender OpenData website, RTX 2080 Ti is currently the best GPU for rendering scenes with Cycles as of now.

If you're using Windows you can follow these instructions to compile Blender yourself:

Install Development Tools

Subversion, Git, CMake and Visual Studio must all be installed.

Install Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition (free)
Install Subversion for Windows (SlikSVN)
Install Git for Windows

In the installer, choose to add Git to your PATH to ensure the Git version is in the splash screen.

Install CMake

In the installer set the system path option to Add CMake to the system PATH for all users.

Install CUDA 10 for CUDA support in Cycles.

Download Sources and Libraries

Create a folder to store your copy of the Blender source code. This guide will assume your chosen folder is C:\blender-git.

Then open the command prompt window by hitting Windows+R, and then typing cmd, or by searching for it in the start menu. Then type the following commands.

For 64-bit Windows, check out the precompiled libraries with Subversion like this:

cd C:\blender-git
svn checkout https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-blender/trunk/lib/win64_vc14  lib/win64_vc14

For 32-bit Windows, use this command instead:

cd C:\blender-git
svn checkout https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-blender/trunk/lib/windows_vc14  lib/windows_vc14

Download the Blender source code:

cd C:\blender-git
git clone git://git.blender.org/blender.git
cd blender
git submodule update --init --recursive
git submodule foreach git checkout master
git submodule foreach git pull --rebase origin master

Compile Blender

cd C:\blender-git\blender
make full

Source for the things above. In case you follow these steps and you still cannot get Cycles render anything using your RTX card, you need to follow the steps at the end of my post to rebuild/recompile Blender.

For Linux:

If you're on a Unix-based OS you can follow the instructions written here; Make sure you have installed CUDA 10 already. If you don't want to compile Blender yourself, you can instead download a version of Blender 2.79 compiled against CUDA 10 from here.

Update as of Dec 3rd 2018:

As of today, the master branch of Blender natively supports NVIDIA RTX cards. So you don't have to follow the steps below anymore.

In case you follow the above steps and still cannot render anything using your RTX card, you need to do the followings to recompile Blender. This step works for Windows, Linux and Mac:

Open CMakeCache.txt
Look for CYCLES_CUDA_BINARIES_ARCH
Add sm_75 to that list
Rebuild/Recompile Blender


Material controls are missing While looking at a tutorial on the Anisotropic shader I got stuck. The controls it tells me to use are nowhere to be found.

One of the first things is tells me to do is to add an hdr file for some lighting. In the video when he has the World tab selected there is an option called Surface and within that there is a Color option but it's not there, and also isn't there for materials!

Did these things move to a hidden location between 2.65 (when the tutorial was written) and 2.74? Might I be in some mode that causes that option to be missing?

This is the tutorial I got stuck on: http://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/an-introduction-to-anisotropic-shading/

Any pointers to good resources for beginners would be great as would any ideas on what stupid mistake I'm making. I didn't bother making the sauce pan in the tutorial instead just going with the cube you get by default but I don't think that would cause this issue.

I think you are working in blender render engine, you must change this to the cycles render engine. You can find this option in the header.


How do you make a curve which is in a spiral shape and scale it while keeping one point still I've already made the spiral, but I want to know how to scale it while keeping one end still, like what would happen if you compressed a spring.

I did it by changing the origin point of the object with Control-Alt-C.


How to fade one material into the other? Hello blender community.

Could someone please let me know how to fix this issue?
I have one material for the whole face and a different one for the lips.
there's a noticeable edge that I want to get rid of. I just want it to have an ease fade instead of a sharp edge.

what's the best way to go about this?

Thank you in advance!

Finished Update

I wanted to give an update on how it was fixed with @hexbob6 and @Lemon 's help.

I needed two textures. One is the actual colored version and the 2nd is the black and white masked version. Hexbob6 described very well on the process here: Cycles Emit Light from area on Texture

A: The node process on how to do it.

The B/W masked texture is going to be connected to the Fac of the mixed shader along with its UV coordinates. Make sure the image is on clip instead of repeat.
the 1st shader is going to be the black part of the B/W masked texture. An important thing to note is if you have a texture already for the object, be sure to connect the other UV coordinates!
the 2nd shader will be the white part of the B/W masked texture.

B: This section is the UV layout called "mainUV" where all the color goes.

C: This section is the B/W masked texture to focus on the lips.

D: Just the render view

E: Best way to texture something is to be able to see it in 3D view and texture paint.

F: Just showing that there are two textures to keep track of. One is the main UV and the 2nd is to focus on the lip.

That was it. Once again thanks to those who replied and helped me figure this problem. In the process I learned other things that I didn't know about blender even though I've been using it for years.

A mesh face cannot be assigned to several materials. So you'll need to "incorporate" one of the material nodes into the other.

For convenience I have set face nodes/shader and lip nodes/shader each in a dedicated nodes group. That allows to use them both in your face or lips original materials. Doing so, imagine that 'as if' these nodes groups were replacing your initial materials.

Now select you lips faces and one ring more around. And assign these faces to a new UV map (called 'LipsIntensity' in the screen capture (1)).

Create a blank image (2).

Put your original face and mouth nodes respectively in a node group (select and group all the nodes except the output for each). So that you can reuse them (mainly the face shader) in the lips material (3 and arrows).
Now mix them so that the mix (4) factor is driven by the texture you added and itself based on the 'LipsIntensity' UV map (5).

Now go in the 3D view (6) and in texture paint mode and rendered mode. Make sure that your are painting on the 'LipsIntensity' texture (look at 'Available paint slots' in the 'Slot' panel of the texture paint mode).

Now simply paint in black over the lips, with a relatively large brush in order to obtain the ease you want (7 / 8).


Blender model to .dae/.sdf with textures I'm working on a project where I need to export a Blender model to a Gazebo model. I am able to do that, but the textures are not showing in Gazebo. I'm using Blender 2.82 and Gazebo9. To my knowledge Gazebo can read .stl and .dae files.

by textures if you are meaning the materials they don't render in exported objects(read why: .fbx export why there are no materials or textures?)
otherwise textures as images shoud should show up.


Why hair particles not showing the result Im making a grass compound wall. I have a plane and given green color and added the hair particles default settings.

Default hair particle

Press shift+z to render the hair particles showing rectangular shapes and not hairs. I want to have grass effect.
Hair showing rectangular shapes

Any suggestion or help why the hair particles showing the rectangular shapes other than hair particles.

In the very bottom of the Particle Settings you will see a section called Cycles Hair Settings. Change the 3 options:

Root
Tip
Scaling

These should make your hair thinner to your choice.

Settings section:


How to render flat shading just like LookDev in Blender? I'm making graphics for a tile based game that has 2.5D look. I am making most assets in blender, and everything works out great, except for the walls, that have to have seamless tiling.
I am using a 4x4 wall layout as pictured below to do the tiling, but I can't figure out how to achieve a flat look, where object's geometry does not affect lights.
LookDev shows exactly what I need, but when I render it out with shadows and AO disabled, nearby geometry still affects the shading, and I get darker spots where I want them to be purely flat. Basically I want lighting to show up only according to how face normals are positioned.
Here is the illustration of what I want (left is done in vector graphics software), and what I get (right is Blender). Red marks show problematic spots.
I suspect I need to play around with shading to get this done. Any rendering engine will do, but I would prefer a solution with Cycles, and I must be able to have Freestyle outline.
Workbench does achieve a similar look, but in there the outline is white, and shading looks a little weird and unnatural.

Looks like I figured it out.

There should only be sun as a light source, no other lights
In Object Properties -> Ray Visibility, only Camera should be checked

This produces something that looks a bit more bland than LookDev, but it tiles perfectly.


Subsurface Modifier Is acting strange So I am new to blender and am following the 2.8 donut tutorial (what a surprise haha). I got to the step of the subdivision surface modifier, but when I add it to the donut to smooth things out a bit my donut looks VERY weird in edit mode (note that Blender Guru's does NOT look like this):

Any help in fixing and understanding this issue would be great!

The vertices in this area are causing an indent in the surface. When the subsurface modifier is applied, the subdivided surface has a smoother transition and intersects the coarse mesh in edit mode. This is completely normal.

A basic torus

One vertex moved along the z-axis to create a dent

You can hide the subsurface modifier for the edit mode.


Curve Inner Edges of an Mesh (Not the outer edges which I can use bevel on) I am quite new to blender and am trying to model a futuristic delta wing spacecraft/plane. I am having trouble creating a cockpit because I couldn't find how to curve edges. Please note I am not looking for how to bevel the edges but curve the side of an object.

I want to note that I started by making two curves then converting them to meshes. Then I joined the meshes. And last I connected the vertices. If there is a better way to do what I am doing please tell me.

Here are some reference images to help you understand what I am saying and the situation.

Unfortunately I don't have enough reputation to post more images. I hope you can understand what I am trying to ask. Thanks in advance.

I didnt found a precise answer but you can delete the mirror modifier then delete the vertices that are in the positions (x,y,0) axis (so you should be left with a mesh that contains vertice that are connected,) then apply a screw modifier and change axis to y. then once you have that object you can apply the screw modifier then use knife to cut through in souch a way that it would be useful to add the mirror modifier again , apply the cut.Then enable clipping in the mirror modifier and scale at x axis to get a pleasing result.Also at this point instead of scaling you can play around with the curve modifier or others modifiers like deform.If you are good in nodes you can install a plugin called sverchok and try creating the cockpit there but it can be ways harder than doing it with this way.


Python in 2.80: How to get the base color texture from a Material If I have a bpy.types.Material, how do I get the textureslot assigned to the base color if there is one?

For a simple setting, you can use this:

import bpy
from mathutils import Color

# try/except if the setting is not as expected
try:
    # Get active object
    obj = bpy.context.active_object

    # Get its first material slot
    material = obj.material_slots[0].material
    # Get the nodes in the node tree
    nodes = material.node_tree.nodes
    # Get a principled node
    principled = next(n for n in nodes if n.type == 'BSDF_PRINCIPLED')
    # Get the slot for 'base color'
    base_color = principled.inputs['Base Color'] #Or principled.inputs[0]
    # Get its default value (not the value from a possible link)
    value = base_color.default_value
    # Translate as color
    color = Color( (value[0], value[1], value[2]) )
    print( color )

    # Get the link
    link = base_color.links[0]
    link_node = link.from_node
    print( link_node.image.name )
except:
    print( 'not found' )


Material Colors don't show when exporting? I have this model here and instead of textures I've just assigned materials to different parts of the mesh and gave them plain colors. But when I export it in any format, fbx or obj or gltf, when I try to upload it to sketchfab or mixamo or even try to open it in microsoft 3D viewer, it just shows a blank version of my model.
When I import what I exported, it still has the materials but their colors are gone and instead of "Emission" they're now "Principled BDSF". How do I solve this problem? Thank you.

EDIT:
Moderators: I have already checked the question provided and all the other questions, they say it's not possible but I've seen people do it on YouTube like Grant Abbitt on his "how to rig the easy way" video.
So I've checked quite a lot of questions on this matter but it still doesn't solve my problem. (Also important to mention that I'm very new to 3D stuff)

Most exporters will only handle very basic Principled BSDF materials. You can make a Principled material that will look like you want by putting black in the "Base Color" socket and putting the color you want in the "Emission" socket. (You may also want to try cranking the roughness up to 1.)

I tried exporting this with .fbx/.obj/.glb and reimporting, and they all worked.


How Do I Get a Material to Assign to All Faces? So first of all this question likely suffers from the same problem as this question. I say likely, because I was never able to make the answers for that question work, so I can't be sure exactly what is going on. I AM fairly certain that I simply don't know some crucial part of applying materials, and that is causing this problem.

The problem is that if I try to apply a material to an object, the material is only applied to some faces. In the linked question, I tried to apply a material and a texture to a roof structure, so I decided to scale things down and practice on a cube. Same problem.

I created a simple green material, but it only applied to two out of six faces. Selecting the whole cube and clicking assign again has no effect. The rest of the cube is black.

Quite simply, I don't know why this is happening. Based on my understanding of materials, when you select a face and hit assign, the material is assigned to that face. Either this isn't happening, or it just isn't showing up. Why is this? What am I missing?

If possible, I would like an explanation of how the material works, not just a simple 'click this then that' answer.

Blender file

NOTE: I apologize if this seems too much like a duplicate of the linked question. I'm asking again because the answers supplied never fixed the problem for me, and because I wanted to remove all other factors and work with a simple cube for reference.

The material is assigned to all the faces. The black you're seeing is the faces that aren't exposed to the light. If you were to move the lamp in your scen around you would see you have applied the material to the whole cube. My suggestion would be to use a Hemi light in Material mode, since it is an even lighting, or no light at all in Textured mode.


Fastest way to remove an inset? I created this inset on a cylindrical part of the model, then decided I didn't want the inset anymore. What's the easiest way to remove it? I tried Dissolving Faces and Dissolving Edges, to no avail.

Delete edge loops

Switch to face select mode (⎈ Ctrl↹ Tab>Faces)

Select the face loop inside the inset (⎇ Alt RMB on an edge. See How can edge rings be selected in a predictable way?)

Switch to edge select mode (⎈ Ctrl↹ Tab)

⎈ Ctrl⇧ Shift⎇ Alt RMB on an edge to deselect the edge ring.

⌦ Delete> Edge loops (the menu accelerator G can be used for extra speed)

Scale and remove doubles
This is only really practical if your inset is aligned to an axis. Setting up custom axes and such would sorta defeat the purpose. However, if your inset is aligned (as it appears in your case), then this might well be faster than the first method.

Select the inset as shown in your screenshot

Scale to 0 along the Z (or whatever axis your inset is aligned to) (SZ 0)

W> Remove Doubles, or WE if you use the menu accelerator.

⌦ Delete> Faces (⌦ DeleteF with the menu accelerator).

Apologies in advance if the gifs are too fast. I was attempting to show what it looks like at sortof-full speed, but I'm not sure if it's possible to follow at gif framerates..


Exporting all shader node with object to import into another scene I have a loverly loaf of bread, textures, shaded the lot but it's to be part of a much bigger scene. When I export it as any of the files types on offer in the drop down, 3ds. .abc etc., the shader nodes don't come with it and I'm left looking at something like a plastic lump. Do I have to redo all the shading/textures/normal maps etc., in the scene to which I have imported the object or is there a way to bring everything across? Also tried the append function and had no joy.

You should not use the import/export tools when copying stuff from one scene to another. Use the Append tool in your big scene (File->Append) and choose the bread .blend file. Then navigate to the "Objects" folder in the .blend file and select all objects belonging to your loaf of bread. This will import it with all materials applied.

The alternative is to first open the bread .blend, select the bread and press Ctrl + C and then paste it into an other file opened with Ctrl + v


How to insert space or make a gab between many joined stripped pieces of Audio VSE? My question is the reverse process of this question: How to automatically join stripped pieces of video?

I have many pieces of audio or clips that are joined together (eg: 20 clips). I need to make some space/gap between the fifth and the sixth clips so that I can insert another clip.

I downloaded the power sequencer Plugin but I'm not sure if it can do it or not.

What's the easiest way to do it?

There are at least two fast methods:

First method

Inside the VSE, deselect all strips then, press b and drag your mouse to box select the strips you want to move. When you have selected them, press g to grab all of them and move them by the desired amount with your mouse. Finish with LMB.

Second method

Inside the VSE, place your cursor inside the strip after which you want to insert the gap with LMB. Then select Strip -> Insert Gaps or press Shift+= and it will insert a gap after the current strip. This is actually the reverse of the method mentioned in the question you linked.

Hope that helps.


How to select multiple keyframes in the dopesheet Sorry if this is a dumb question, but how do i select multiple keyframes at once, i need to delete half of my keyframes in my animation, but do i need to select each one individually?
Thank you for your help.

Simply go to your Dope Sheet, Press B for "box Select" and drag the left click button to select the keyframes and perform the operation you want.


Bone in wrong position when apply animation I'm trying to use some Mixamo's animations on a character (rigged with Mixamo too) and when I go to "Dope Sheet > Action editor" and change the character animation to the new one, the bones are very wrong. I've seen lots of videos but still, I'm missing something

The image below shows the 2 armatures (the character's one and the imported one). How can I fix this?

I figured out that this was happening because of the different rest poses of the armatures. Because my character had legs and arms in different positions, the animation was weird. Fixed the rest pose and all works fine. Hope it helps someone.


How to round decimal places of vertex positions? How can I round the position of all vertices in a mesh to a certain decimal accuracy, to e.g. reduce file size.
32 bit precision is not always necessary.
Is there a function built in to do this?

VERTEX 0
-0.36867856979370117

to
-0.3687

or even better
-0.37

This is quite easy to achieve but it won't affect Blend filesize - vertex coordinates are held as 32-bit float values. Rounding to a limited number of decimal places will not affect the number of bytes needed for each vertex. However, if you were to export the mesh to another format (eg, XML, CSV, or other human-readable format) then it could potentially reduce the size of the file considerably as you suggest.

To achieve this, open the 3D-View properties panel (N) and set the Display grid Scale to the desired precision - ie, if you wanted to round to 2 decimal places (eg, 1.23) then set it to 0.01.

Then, in Edit mode, select vertices you want to change (or all with A) press Space and type Snap Selection to Grid. This will snap the selected vertices to the grid specified in the Scale property.


Rendered image in eevee is not displaying shadows I am not sure where to look.
Both renderings are done with the exact same operating system environment settings yet one of them is not displaying shadows. What is the difference here and how do I fix it?
I have tried shutting down and restarting the computer numerous times with no changes to either file.
Thanks in advance.

EEVEE fakes pretty much everything in the scene when rendering. This includes Ambient Occlusion (which creates more realistic shading in EEVEE), reflections, refractions, etc. If you want a better result in EEVEE, I would recommend you use an HDRI map, and enable the checkbox for "Ambient Occlusion" in the render properties panel.
You can download high quality HDRs and HDRIs for free here.
More about Ambient Occlusion (AO) in the Blender Manual here.


Blender Intro only renders one frame I just finished making my first intro in blender, and when I click animation it only renders the text for the first frame and the clouds for the first frame and then stops rendering, I have a few screenshots that could help solve the problem.

I actually fixed it by re-installing blender, my friend tried to render it and it worked for him so i decided to try re-installing blender.


Blender sculpting mask tool not working For the past few days I've been learning Blender and today I'm trying out sculpting by just using all the tools and trying to make a simple face.

However I want to extrude out the neck as I did make a low poly face. At first it worked perfectly when I masked the neck area and used the snake hook tool to extrude it out, however my mask was not how I wanted it to be so I removed it and tried masking again.

I might've pressed some wrong keys trying to remove the mask and when I select the mask tool again it shows a grey circle (not sure if its supposed to be grey or not) but doesn't actually draw the black region over my model. When I restart Blender it is still the same. Does anyone have a clue on what I might have done wrong here and how I can return it to default? The strength is not set to 0.

Happy new year and a thank you in advance!

I had the same problem and found in the top left drop down menu "sculpt" there is a check box for show mask. The hotkey is CTRL M


How to Make White Transparent in a Shader (Eevee) So I have 2 textures hooked up to a color ramp, but I want to combine them in such a way that the colors on either isn't desaturated. I tried a whole heap of blend modes, this seems like a really basic maneuver in shading but I just could not findanything on this except for stuff that only works in cycles.

Neanderthal node setup

Node output

What I want the node to spew out

Thanks to any legend who points me in the right direction.

There are many ways to do it, here it's one of them:

In your color ramps you need to replace the white color with a transparent one (just set the Alpha value to 0). That way you can have a white background and add the colors on top by using the Alpha output of the color ramps.

An alternative way could be to use the black color instead of the alpha and choose Screen or Add as blend modes


How to make a whiff of steam rising off a mug of coffee? I want to make steam rising off a mug of coffee.
I attempted to create wisps of steam or visible heat vapors (not sure what the phenomenon is called) rising from the coffee by using Quick Smoke.  That was way too much - tried changing parameters but my efforts did not reduce the blast of smoke to a "snaky looking" wisp.

I did it by using an Emission shader for the volume.  I mixed with the given quick smoke setup that uses Volume Scatter and Volume Absorption, but the mix is so low for them I suspect that I could leave them out.  I also animated the density from 1 to 0. (Stuff is grayed out in the domain's settings because I baked it.)  I changed things like the Vorticity and Dissolve time, and Noise Method and Strength. My problem was getting the steam to be white instead of gray. Maybe if I got rid of the Volume Absorption I wouldn't need the Emission?  It doesn't look quite right since the steam is lighting up the inside of the cup.

animation (it's still rendering and needs about 30 more frames for the full 70 frames.)


How to render out in VSE only a region of the frame? I can see in VSE there is the option to render a region of the frames (and to crop).
Can you please confirm it is possible to do that and how to define the region in VSE?

It depends on the blender version that you use. The transform tools are heavily changed in version 2.92 (currently in beta). The changes are described at https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.92/More_Features and more in depth at https://developer.blender.org/rBe1665c3d31.
Before version 2.92 the use of the crop tool was problematic. Now, it works as expected and you can crop in pixel values from top,bottom, left and right.


Can I use the the animation/action from one bone on another bone on a later time? I have a animated bone : translation on Y with ipo keys,

can I use this exact data (linked) with another bone - starting on a later frame?

and how?

Or how is a proper workflow for this...?

maybe nla?

Yes, when you keyframe a bone an action will be created. To assign the same action to another bone just switch to the Dope Sheet set Action Editor mode and select the action.

In the NLA you can arrange the actions e.g.