Rig a strand with multiple control points? I am trying to figure out the most optimal way to rig things like hair strands, cables, tentacles, etc. I am looking to make a strand that is moved with a controller at the tip, but then has multiple control points along it's length. Essentially, I'm looking for the same sort of effect you can get from editing a multi-point curve with proportional editing, but on bones.
Another way to state it would be a bendy bone rig that uses a single deform bone (with head and tail) as described in this tutorial, but that then has more control points along its length.
Spline-IK with multiple hooks controlling a bone chain is close, but does not have local Y roll, and I can't get it to properly copy rotation.
Here is my current rig:

This rig consists of:

A root bone that does nothing

A bezier curve with only 2 control points(pictured but occluded)

4 bone chain spline-IKed to the curve (not pictured but in same place as bendy bones)

4 tweak controller bones that are children of the 4 spline-IKed bones (the spheres)

4 deform bones that are constrained to stretch to the 4 tweak bones (the visible bendy bones)

A hook bone that controls the tail curve control point and has Limit Distance on the rig bone

A master controller bone (the 5th sphere) that is the parent of the hook bone.

All of this works great. I can use the hook bone or master controller bone to move the curve's control point, and the whole strand follows. I can then manually go in and use the Tweak bone to add waviness, as shown in the picture. The problem is that I have no local Y rotation.
My plan was to get the needed Roll by having the Deform/bendy bones copy rotation of the local Y of the Hook bone (probably at diminishing amounts). The problem is that they misbehave badly.
When the strand is straight, they behave fine. When i move the hook/controller and the strand starts to bend, they cease to properly copy rotation. Sometimes they'll copy a bit, sometimes none, and sometimes they'll twist 180 degrees and kill the mesh. If I'm rotating the control bone instead of the hook, they don't get the hook's rotation, unless I set them to Local with Parent, but then they still do various odd twisting (just different forms of it.)
I've tried changing the order of the copy rotation and stretch to constraints, but both have problems (but slightly different ones, so I'm wondering if the Stretch To is killing the Roll.)
I'm looking for a way to solve these copy rotation problems, or any alternative ways to build a rig that will do something similar.
UPDATE: Here's the file. IK bones are on layer 2.

Try putting it in some bend poses and then rotate the hook bone or controller on local Y and you'll start seeing problems.
UPDATE 2:
This answer has solved the copy rotation problems. What now remains is issues with the stretch bones. When rotating at extreme angles, the stretch bones start flipping 180deg on local y, causing horrible twisting.

You should take a look at DanPro's Advanced Tentacle Rigging Series.

It not only has what you want, he builds it up in real time, moreover while explaining what he does.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLizSCQYO0I6OtQ479WlMGZE1ssFk2CIUP

Fair word of warning, the videos run 2h all together and building the actual rig took me another 2.


How to add custom icon to EnumProperty in add-on I have a custom add-on and I would like to create a dropdown list based on an EnumProperty, but I want the items in the list to take custom icons rather than the icons available within blender. I know that you can use import bpy.utils.previews to load custom icons into add-ons and set label's icon_value to custom icon ids, but I would like to be able to do the same with the items in a drop down list built based on an EnumProperty.

I have the following case for an add-on defining a class that will have a drop-down lists in which I want to have custom icons added to EACE item in the list. I want custom icons to show next to each item in the list as the drop down list is open (not just next to the closed drop down list: see image below):

# defined globally
easingItems = [
    ("EASE_IN", "Ease In", "", "", 0),
    ("EASE_OUT", "Ease Out", "", "", 1),
    ("EASE_IN_OUT", "Ease In-Out", "", "", 2)]

# prop defined in the addon/node class
easingType = EnumProperty(
        name="Easing",
        default="EASE_IN",
        items=easingItems,
        update=updateNode)

# then, in the draw UI
def draw_buttons(self, context, layout):
    # this is when I want the enum property to be displayed with custom icons (how?)
    layout.prop(self, ‘easingType', expand=False)

Left: This is a drop down list based on an enum property with some default blender icons.
Right: This is a drop-down list based on a list needing custom icons (displayed as having default blender icons)

The result after Jerryno’s solution looks like this:

For each enum item an icon can be specified. You just need to edit this part of your code:

# defined globally
easingItems = [
    ("EASE_IN", "Ease In", "", customIcon["MY_EASEIN"].icon_id, 0),
    ("EASE_OUT", "Ease Out", "", customIcon["MY_EASEOUT"].icon_id, 1),
    ("EASE_IN_OUT", "Ease In-Out", "", customIcon["MY_EASEINOUT"].icon_id, 2)]


Ctrl+M (interactive mirror) is not taking the object's rotation into account I am having a trouble mirroring a duplicated object in the Object Mode. The problem is: Ctrl+M only mirrors the object's location but not its rotation.

First I created a cube and used Shift+D to duplicate it.
Then I used Ctrl+M -> x to mirror it essentially about the y-z plane, using the 3-D cursor at the global origin as the pivot point. What I got is shown in the following figure.

The duplicated cube is the one on the LHS after mirroring, but its rotation z value is still the same as that of the original cube on the RHS. What I hope to achieve is shown in the next figure.

This can be done by manually adding a minus sign to the rotation z value, but it is not practical to do this for every object that I select for mirroring using Ctrl+M in the Object Mode.
I am reading a Blender tutorial book and following the steps in this book. According to the author, I should be able to use Ctrl+M to mirror all the selected objects, inluding their rotation, about the y-z plane in one step in the Object Mode. But when I tried, I had to manually adjust the rotation for the duplicated objects after using pressing Ctrl+M -> x. If I do this for ten selected objects, I'll have to manually adjust rotation ten times and that is not what I hope to do.
I have read many posts online including these two:
Mirroring in Object Mode, taking rotation into account
(The object is duplicated using Alt+D, not Shift+D)
Interactive mirror (Ctrl + M) doesn't mirror object
(The problem is the pivot point)
I also watched tutorial videos on Youtube. They are not helpful for solving this problem that I have. They do not have a rotated object or they use a modifier that I'm not using. I know that what I hope to do can be done in the Edit Mode for each individual object but it may not be practical to do if I select many different objects. I started to wonder if this operation (using Ctrl+M in the Object Mode to mirror the rotation too) can be done with the current version (v2.83), or if the author of the book wrote something wrong in the book, or if I missed something so obvious that others didn't. If this cannot be done in the current version, I'll simply give up trying (already spent more than 4 hours on this simple step in the book).
Please help. Thank you so much!

Not sure if this is what you need, but if you use Collection instance.
-Create a new collection, add the object there
-Right Click on the collection > Instance
-Then right click on the viewport > Mirror >X Global

Also, you can add more object to that collection and it's going to have a mirror object automatically

I made a video using this technique for an animation here: https://vimeo.com/417302896 or here (same one) https://youtu.be/deIwRZt-U80
Around minute 3:04.
Hope that helps


Adding multiple Physics constraints to a single object at different points (ie: 4 corners) I would like to attach multiple physics basic spring constraints to a single plane, or any object, but it seems that they only attach to the origin of the object. Is there a way to attach it to a vertex or a point?

I tried using hooks, but that didn't work.

springs.blend

I checked out your scene and adjusted the physics to be more in line with the situation you asked for.

You used only one empty in the hinges each, but since they work as a position marker on the first object selected in their constraint options, it was kinda the wrong way.
If you want the board(you called it physics) object to be anchored with 4 points, you need to place 4 empties on each corner of the board, (UPDATE: not needed to parent them, can cause glitches) and use the board itself as first target in the "rigid body constraint".

Afterwards you set the empties as "generic springs" and select the hinge on the corresponding side as second target to the empties each. You should now have 2 empties on each side of the board connected to one hinge each.

You can find the set up here:

(keeping this version available, newer file below!)

I changed one of the constraints to be weaker making the board slightly lower on that edge, and the ball rolls down. You can adjust the constraints and tinker to get what you may want it to look like.

Looks like this:

UPDATE: un-parented the constraint empties and added visual connections.
Having the constraints parented under the board caused the glitching.
They don't need to be parented to work, so easy solution, only downside is if you want to move the board, you need to move the constraint-empties as well(select all and you should be fine). May be a bug, that it glitches if parented, don't know.

Here the new version:

Happy blending.


I can't see the hdri background in my final render and render view in the viewport i'm pretty new to blender and I have a problem. Every time I import an HDRI image, the lightning changes, but not in the right way. the background color changes but the background itself doesn't change, I'm using cycles. I impoort my HDRI images by setting the base color of the world to image texture, I don't know if there is another way and if I should use it that way. The answer is probably very simple but I just can't seem to find a solution to it. Thanks in advance!
Someone asked for the node setup of the world so here it is: https://imgur.com/a/X6P9Y4D

You say you used Image texture node for the hdri? You shouldnt.  Add "Enviromental texture" node instead.


ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0' and etc Errors happend in Ubuntu Server14.04 I am using Amazon EC2 VPC, but when I start the Blender I got some errors:

root@ip:/home/ubuntu/blender-2.74-linux-glibc211-x86_64# ./blender -b

ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:4727:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
AL lib: (EE) ALCplaybackAlsa_open: Could not open playback device 'default': No such file or directory
found bundled python: /home/ubuntu/blender-2.74-linux-glibc211-x86_64/2.74/python

Blender quit

root@ip:/home/ubuntu/blender-2.74-linux-glibc211-x86_64# ll

total 162400
drwxr-xr-x 5 ubuntu ubuntu      4096 Mar 31 14:59 ./
drwxr-xr-x 8 ubuntu ubuntu      4096 May 28 04:47 ../
drwxr-xr-x 5 ubuntu ubuntu      4096 Mar 31 14:54 2.74/
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ubuntu ubuntu 113425328 Mar 31 14:59 blender*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ubuntu ubuntu  52736328 Mar 31 14:59 blenderplayer*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ubuntu ubuntu       745 Mar 31 14:59 blender-softwaregl*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ubuntu ubuntu      5404 Mar  5  2014 blender-thumbnailer.py*
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu      4774 Mar 31 14:59 copyright.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu     35147 Mar 31 14:59 GPL3-license.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu     17997 Mar 31 14:59 GPL-license.txt
drwxr-xr-x 9 ubuntu ubuntu      4096 Mar 31 14:59 icons/
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu      1591 Mar 31 14:59 jemalloc-license.txt
drwxr-xr-x 2 ubuntu ubuntu      4096 Nov 22  2012 lib/
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu      4947 Feb 19  2014 LICENSE-bfont.ttf.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu      3421 Feb 19  2014 LICENSE-bmonofont-i18n.ttf.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu      3299 Feb 19  2014 LICENSE-droidsans.ttf.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu      2396 Mar 31 14:59 Python-license.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu      6180 Mar 31 14:59 readme.html

Use -noaudio option works, like this
./blender-2.74-linux-glibc211-x86_64/blender -b -noaudio "Blender/ball.blend" -x 1 -f 1 -o //

hope could help someone!


Is it possible to mirror an object across two planes? I want to model a pair of boots for a character. I'll model one and mirror it across a YZ plane at X=0 to get two, but the boot itself is generally symmetric about an internal plane too (e.g. YZ through the middle toe). Is it possible to mirror an object across two planes at once? Thanks!

Yes, you can model the half of a boot and mirror it at the object's origin (orange dot) with a mirror modifier. Then just add another mirror modifier and specify another object in the modifier's settings that will be the origin for the 2nd mirroring. The object can be the character model or an Empty, for example.


Finished Render looks different from Preview I have a scene of a tank firing confetti and the preview render looks normal.

However, when I render the animation, the entire confetti part stays at something that looks like this.

This is a motion track and the blurry streaks are still moving properly according to the camera movement. Is there any reason why this is happening? Thanks in advance.

It appears that you have Motion Blur enabled in the Render Settings. Motion blur is not currently supported in viewport renders, hence the confetti looking different in the final F12 render.

To disable, simply un-check the box in the Render Settings tab:


Conform selected edges or vertices to the objects surface Hi all,

I would like to scale the selected vertices inwards and make them to stick on to the surface of the cylinder that i have placed in the centre. the cylinder is not joined to the plane.Would be awsome if some one would help.Thanks

As the object you want edge loop to stick to is circular (cylinder) then the edge loop should become circular. This can be easily done either via default command Shift+Alt+S, then setting the factor to 1 or via LoopTools addon, Circle option. See also How do I make vertices equidistant from a given center?

Note to avoid making faces too distorted, in this case outer edge loop shown on screenshot is better to be moved towards cylinder a bit or add one more edge loop in between existing ones.


Blender 2.8 faces not visible I'm following this tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxMwa0njGSM

on modeling. At 18:52 before adding a subdivision surface modifier my object looks like:

After subsurf:

It looks like two overlapping planes but I don't see the vertices that create them (I've already cleaned
up double vertices).

How can I remove that face so that I don't get that wedge after subsurf?

Probably a normal issue. Select the entire mesh with A and then press Shift N to recalculate the normals.


Why won't Blender run on Windows XP? I downloaded Blender 64 bit and the OS indicated that the program was not compatible with my computer chip. I then downloaded the 32 bit version which seemed to allow me to install. However the blender Icon in windows when pressed informs me that the program is not a window application. I have an Intel(R) Core (TM)2 Duo CPU E7300 @2.66Ghz if that is important and I am running XP. I am fairly sure I am doing something wrong here- can anyone help please?

The last version of blender that was officially compatible with Windows XP was blender 2.76. Versions after that probably won't work. You can download previous version of blender here.

To quote Martijn Berger (a blender developer) from here on why support for XP was dropped:

  We implicitly dropped Windows XP when switching to python 3.5. Python
  has the so called PEP system and PEP 11 "Removing support for little
  used platforms" defines the support for windows XP to be over at the
  same time Microsoft stopped supporting it. Since python 3.5 released
  after XP died it does not support XP.

  While it might be possible to backport python 3.5 to windows XP i
  think that we should not do this.

  So blender 2.77 will not run on XP. The 32 bit release requires Vista
  or newer and the 64 bit release Windows 7 SP1 or newer.


Rigid Body Physics Rolling Ball Won't Come to a Stop I want to simulate a squash ball / golf ball  sized sphere rolling down a ramp onto a plane then coming to a stop due to friction. The plane should be like carpet in terms of drag.

However, even with both sphere and plane set to friction values of 1.0 the rotation seems never ending.

I've tried higher friction values with no success.

Call it a golf ball at 43mm DIA weighing 46g rolling on a carpet. Why is it so fast and slippery? Too fine a problem for Rigid Body?

Many thanks in advance.

Physics engines can be something of a pain, even in commercial packages.

In your example I tried using two ground-planes, one sloped, the other flat, and it seems no matter what the settings are on the flat plane, the ball appears to all but ignore those that are not extreme. That would make them unusable anyway.

There are two ways to circumvent this.  Substitute the ball with a duplicate which is stripped of physics and animation, or  bake the ball's action from where you want to accelerate it's slowdown.

In both cases, this would occur from one of the bounces after it hits the flat plane.

For expedience I chose to bake the entire action in the gif shown here, but the result would be the same so long as the physics didn't decide to change it's mind at some future date.

When the entire sequence is baked, there's no way the physics engine or changes to it in future Blender versions are going to muck up the project.

Once baked, purge the ball of it's physics and animation. This would probably have to be checked in the Dopesheet also as physics strips have a habit of staying put.  Clear the animation strip in the Outliner.

Once switched to baked keyframes, those beyond the nominated switchover to an accelerated slowdown, can be deleted and substituted with just one other - where it's to stop.

The Graph Editor's handles can then be adjusted to maintain it's speed initially and also accelerate the slowdown.  You are able to determine exactly where it will stop by dragging the ball there and at the frame where it's to come to a halt. (keyframe it)


How to use presets for operator properties? Is there a way to use Blender's preset system for operator attributes? I. e. preset menu inside operator redo panel (F6).

You can enable presets for an operator using the PRESET option.

eg:

class SomeTool(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "object.some_tool"
    bl_label = "Some Tool"
    bl_options = {'PRESET'}

    # - snip -

The preset directory will be set based on the operator name and created on demand.


Motion Tracking. What is the actual scale for "Set Scale"? When doing VFX and tracking, there is an option "Set Scale" to set the relatively same scale to the 3D interface as the video you're tracking. What is the actual size for the scale (is the scale in ft, in, mm, m? etc.)

The default scale is blender units...(1m per blender unit), but if you are using different units for the scene then the units will be whatever you want.
The purpose of that option is for you to match known measurements. If you are tracking objects or markers and you know the distance between them, you can use that measurement (along with the lens and sensor size) to make the 3D reconstruction more accurate and closer to the original scene you are tracking.
Read also:
Motion track while knowing distance between points
Does scale of camera have an effect on camera tracking a scene?
Camera tracking reference scene to match different shots in a common space


How to create and render clouds in blender cycles I am creating an outdoor scene and need to create 3d clouds. What is the best way to go about this in blender cycles. I know you can't use the cloud generator addon since cycles doesn't have support for volumetric shading. Any help is apreciated.

Since the initial commit in January 2014, cycles has had volume support.

You can get a development version or any version newer than 2.70 to use it.

To render clouds with it, try sculpting a cloud shape (dynamic topology is useful) or modeling a low poly cloud with a subsurf and a displace modifier:

Smoke simulations look better, but will require more computation time to be baked.

For the cloud material, use a volume scatter node:

Result:

Make sure you set the scattering bounces pretty high in Render settings > Light paths if you want bright, fluffy clouds.


Problem with script being invoked twice in BGE I want to launch vlc.exe when I hit spacebar in the BGE.

I have this script and it does the job:

import subprocess
subprocess.call(['VLC\VLC.exe'])

The problem now, is that the script is invoked twice. It launches vlc and when I close the vlc instance, it launches it one more time. (I tried also with Tap option in the sensor)

This happens because there are two events for key down and key up. To choose one of them replace the print statement with your code to invoke and delete the other unneeded lines.

Script to test the behavior:

import bge

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()

sensor = cont.sensors['Space'] # Assumes that keyboard sensor is named as 'Space'
if sensor.getKeyStatus(bge.events.SPACEKEY) == bge.logic.KX_INPUT_JUST_ACTIVATED:
    print("sensor down")
if bge.logic.keyboard.events[bge.events.SPACEKEY] ==bge.logic.KX_INPUT_JUST_ACTIVATED:
    print("Down")
if sensor.getKeyStatus(bge.events.SPACEKEY) == bge.logic.KX_INPUT_JUST_RELEASED:
    print("Up")

One event picked

import bge
import subprocess

if bge.logic.keyboard.events[bge.events.SPACEKEY] ==bge.logic.KX_INPUT_JUST_ACTIVATED:
    subprocess.call(['C:\\path\\app.exe'])


Hair dynamics does not affect all grass stands, some are frozen I'm using hair dynamics to simulate grass blowing in the wind. When hair dynamics is activated, some hairs do not move at all. About 1-2% stand still. I don't understand and cannot find a explanation for this after searching the net. Hope someone here can advise?

I fixed the problem by deleting the emitter and particle system and re-creating it. When I made my emitter more complex (not a flat plane) and added more hairs it all worked fine.


How to project an image, and bake it so to speak, on an angled plane How to project a non distorted image, Say this is the background image, and bake it so to speak on an angled plane.

so when the camera is placed just right, it looks Just like the original Rendered:

But when you press seven and you looking at it so you’re looking straight down, it looks baked like this:

Basically without going through all the rigmarole of having a plan to Do shadow catching and glossy reflecting and such I just want to take a snapshot of the rendered image with the background and then project that on an angled plane. That way I can just set my stuff on that plane and get the shadows in whatever...
Thanks!

You can use the "Project from view" option from the unwrap menu. That will project the uvs of your object to match the dimensions of your camera.
Create a plane an subdivide it a number of times. Place a camera so that it faces the plane at an angle and there is no empty space within the render frame.

Remember to set your render dimensions to the same ones of your reference image. Example 350 * 350

While in edit mode, press  u or click on "UV" on the topbar and choose "Project from view".

Create a new material and assign it to your plane. Now add an "Image texture" node and plug it into the color of your shader. Select your image. Set it to "Clip" so that it doesn't repeat outside the camera view.

Result from the camera view Numpad 0:

And from top view Numpad 7 :


Python FBX Export Collection and set FBX file name as Collection name Let me start by saying am no developer, I really suck at python. But save me a few 100 clicks. Can someone save my fingers and tell me what a script will look like if I wanted it to just export the selected collection as FBX and set the name to that collection name?
I hope can save me ;)
Thank you very much
Just to mentioned I was trying to use a script from Python - Exporting Each Selected as FBX
but I can not get it to work
def execute(self, context):
    for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
        bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
        obj.select_set(True)
        org_loc = obj.location.copy()

        # Sends object to zero vectors.
        obj.location = (0,0,0)

        # Creates the path for the exported fbx.
        obj_path = os.path.join(context.scene.worth_group_tools.dir_path,
                                obj.name + "." + "fbx")
        # Export object as fbx. Works, except all selected objects are
        # exported into single fbx instead of one at a time from the list.
        bpy.ops.export_scene.fbx(filepath=obj_path, use_selection=True)

        # Prints each object in list.  Works.
        print(obj.name)

        # Returns the object to its original position.
        obj.location = org_loc

return {'FINISHED'}

I would also love to set the path too, as I can not get it to work too

Some help
Script to export all objects in the context collection into a file named after the collection, into the folder of the blend file.
import bpy
from pathlib import Path

context = bpy.context
scene =  context.scene

#for coll in scene.collection.children: # all
for coll in [context.collection]:
    bpy.ops.export_scene.fbx(
            {
                "object" : None,
                "active_object" : None,
                "selected_objects" : coll.all_objects,
             },
             filepath=str(
                    Path(bpy.data.filepath).parent
                    / f"{coll.name}.fbx"
                    ),
             use_selection=True,
             )


How can I make these drivers "Blend" these shapekeys properly and with acuracy? Is there a way to blend several shape keys with only drivers properly? This seems very possible but complicated to understand, like for example in how to use the equation, and understand it and how to setup the other values and properties...

The first two (1 and 2) shape keys seem to blend perfectly but the 3 and 4 doesn't do it well, the variable equation I used is from this answer: How do I get a driver variable to taper down to 0 once the variable is doubled?
This seems to work for what I need, which is for triggering a value a from 0.000 to 1.000 of the shape key slider (but being triggered from a different smaller/bigger value for the bone/object controller location, rotation or scale), and then from 1.000 goes back to 0.000 (also I need to know how I make that transition slower or faster, whether the speed of the activation and deactivation) but still I don't get to make the settings to blend all shapes keys when I move the empty...
I want the shape keys to blend at a specific value like for example if you notice in the cube, when it moves 1 key to 1.000, then when it decreases down to 0.500, and the 2 key increases perfectly hitting the same value at the same time, and then the 2 key goes to 1.000 and then 1 key goes to 0.000, and so on with the other ones....but I want to understand how i properly match up the values in every setting (from the equation and the generator modifier) to vary the speed of this, and without messing up the sums of values...

Also please can someone please explain very well about how to use properly the drivers f-curve editor? i have been struggling on how to use it to create this type of complex shape keys, and as well still no success looking for a really good tutorial for explaining all the possible equations to use, hacks,tricks, and the uses given for every type of tasks...
I need to implement this in a facial rig, so the cube is just a demonstration for what I am trying to do so I hope you understand the setup, (seems pretty easy setup but its actually not) for later use this in a facial rig (like when opening the mouth to smile but with different scale in each shape key, from closed smile to open smile)

Have you tried the "Average Value" Type, instead of the "Scripted Expressions". For me, the "Average Value" and the correct adjustment of the curves always have resulted in what I expected it to do.


Unwrapping car problem, overlapping faces and uv "spaghetti" I've made car model. I want to unwrap some details mesh. I've marked seams on all required (I think so) faces/places. Its my first so big model and unwrapping of so many faces. The result is strange:

It's my .blend file:
.blend file hyperlink

You have somehow managed to Pin some of the unwrapped vertices. That’s the red dots that appear in the UV editor. They are not really showing in the image you posted but show up in the .blend file you provided.

What you need to do is Unpin them and then UV unwrap again.


Extruding parts of a complex mesh I want to recreate the following image:

I created one royal blue sphere object, sculpted the yellow and cyan objects, and added those onto the sphere.

My challenge: Essentially, each hole is the center of a hexagon (see red highlight in first screenshot). I want to extrude these parts to give each hexagon more shape. Is there a methodical way to do that without just selecting vertices and extruding individual regions?

If, in 2.79. you hit CtrlAltU, you can bring up User Preferences. In the Add-Ons tab, you will find 'Add Mesh: Extra Objects', shipped with the application. Activate it, and save the settings.. it will enable you to create an object like this:

.. which might be a good starting point for your object. Note not all the faces are hexagons. ( You can't tessellate the surface of a sphere with regular hexagons, there need to be 'pleats': here, intrusions of pentagonal faces)

If you have surplus triangulation, you can use X > Limited Dissolve to remove coplanar edges.

If you delete the pentagonal faces from a copy of the base object, you can use the Duplifaces mechanism for distributing your hexagonal object onto the remaining hexagonal faces. (If the pentagons are acceptable, you could repeat the process to distribute a pentagonal sculpted object.)

Throughout modeling, you may find ShiftG > Select Similar, is a good way to select sets of elements across the surface of the base object.


Adding a documentation reference for a custom Object attribute It is possible to assign custom documentation webpages for operators by using a manual map:

def my_addon_docs():
    map = (
        ("bpy.ops.myaddon.bone_preset_*",            "/workflowpresets/"), # <== works
        # ...
    )
    return "https://some.website", map

bpy.utils.register_manual_map(my_addon_docs)

I have seen that i can also RMB on object properties and then call the "Online Manual" entry. However i can not see how i have to do the mapping from a custom object attribute to the webpage. I tried this:

def my_addon_docs():
    map = (
        ("bpy.data.*.RigProps.rig_use_bind_pose",    "/posing/"), # <== breaks
    )
    return "https://some.website", map

bpy.utils.register_manual_map(my_addon_docs)

But then i get an error when i try to call the online manual:

AttributeError: 'RNA_Types' object has no attribute 'RigProps'

bpy.data.*  has attributes like objects, meshes, speakers, cameras etc.  None of these collections have a RigProps pointer property.  Use the type that the custom property has been registered on.

Small example, Object has an IntProperty named "example" registered.  Added UI in object properties name panel to test.

import bpy
from bpy.props import IntProperty
bpy.types.Object.example = IntProperty()

def draw(self, context):
    self.layout.prop(context.object, "example")

def my_addon_docs():
    map = (
        ("bpy.types.Object.example",    "/posing/"),
    )
    return "https://some.website", map

bpy.types.OBJECT_PT_context_object.append(draw)
bpy.utils.register_manual_map(my_addon_docs)

In your case, I'd suggest using the map

    map = (
        ("bpy.types.Object.RigProps.*",    "/posing/"),
    )
    return "https://some.website", map

Or if you have anchors (or query strings)

def my_addon_docs():
    props = ("use_xxx", "use_yyy", "use_zzz")
    map = [
        ("bpy.types.Object.RigProps.%s" % prop,
          "#%s" % prop) for prop in props]
    return "https://some.website/posing", map


Extruding / Raising Specific Areas I've been trying to get better at making armors in Blender, starting with helmets. The one thing I can't seem to wrap my head around is the correct / a proper way of going about extruding / raising certain areas when the geometry of the area isn't perfect itself.

My main trouble has been around the eyes of a helmet. I want to add some depth around the eyes and I can't seem to come up with a better way than adding a ton of loop cuts to be able to create a desired area good enough to extrude.

I created a quick example of what I'm referring to. Most of my helmets don't have perfect geometry, I seem to end up with quite a bit of triangles, so it's near impossible for me to extrude some of those projects.

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated ahead of time. Thank you

I don't really understand what you mean by "perfect geometry" or "proper way of going about extruding". There is no "proper way" you simply extrude and it is either the result you expect or not.

Could you be looking for a tool to extrude along each face normals?

Try selecting a bunch of faces and pressing Alt+E > *Region (Vertex Normals).


Translate all vertices of all selected objects I have a lot of objects. I need to translate every vertex of every object by an offset, without moving the objects origin. For a single object, I can do this Tabbing into Edit Mode, selecting all with A, and then translating with G. I would have to repeat this for every object.

If I select every object in Object Mode, I can translate everything with G, but the transform is not applied to just vertices; it moves the origin, too. I need this to export the mesh with Ogre exporter.

This might not be the best solution, but being a developer I can't resist myself from posting this answer... :-)

Open console and type following:

# Move mesh vertices without affecting its origin
def move_by_amount(x, y, z, only_selected=True): # Default is True
    if only_selected:
        meshes = (obj.data for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects if obj.type == 'MESH')
    else:
        meshes = bpy.data.meshes
    for mesh in meshes: # We move selected/all meshes
        for vertex in mesh.vertices:
            vertex.co += Vector((x, y, z)) # See comments

# Replace with your own x, y, z coordinates
move_by_amount(10, -15, 5, True) # True to move only selected objects
move_by_amount(10, -15, 5, False) # False to move all objects
move_by_amount(10, -15, 5) # Default is True to move only selected objects

This has at least passed a basic test with few cubes without changing origins. Please test with your data. You can always undo if things go wrong! ;-)


is the AMD Radeon HD 5700 card supported? I have a graphic card AMD Radeon HD 5700.

Is this card is supported in Blender 2.81?

I cant find the answer.

Unfortunately your graphics card doesn't fulfill the minimum requirements for Blender 2.8x. GCN first generation or later is required for AMD GPUs. Your graphics card has the older Terascale architecture.


Animation in Blender Game different from Animation Player Preview I have animated a torch and added the text "torch" in the end which only becomes visible when the torch is in the center of the screen. I've used both the eye and the camera in the restrict viewport visibility to make the text appear. When I play the animation with the Animation Player, it works perfectly. In game mode (P), the animation is triggered by a mouse click on the torch. Everything works fine apart from the text which is not visible. What am I doing wrong?

I have already checked the action brick and the settings are fine.

Here's a video:
http://dropshots.com/miracleshappensgoogl/date/2017-05-04/19:20:07

The BGE plays animations different then Blender is doing. Not all channels are supported.

The BGE does not support the "Restrict View" animation channel (nor "Restrict Render", nor "Invisible (Material Game Settings)", nor "Transparency" ).

You can change the alpha of the material. But this is not that easy with text objects as they are special object.

A possible way is to toggle the visibility via visibility actuator.
You can also change the content of the text object on the fly by setting the "Text" property.

Remarks: When this is aimed for a game or an interactive presentation it might be worth to isolate the text from animation. E.g. A single text object that shows the description of the currently selected object. (This requires more thoughts on the design and is outside of the scope of this answer).


texture paint is making unwanted duplication Texture paint is mirroring onto another part of my model. Any one know how to stop this? I've tried masking with selected faces and UV unwrapping with no success.

Thanks for the replies, it was the UV mapping. I projected from view. Once I'd put in some UV seams and re-mapped the mirroring stopped.


How do I add together two a⨯a images to a single 2a⨯a image in the compositor? I've tried using the translate node to move each image a/2 px left or right, but it cuts off the image.

To illustrate, here's an image:

I suggest a different solution:

here's the Compositing setup:

The first node (image node) is an empty image (generate in blender as 100% alpha image) with the full size of your output image (1024x512). When the alpha image is added to the rendered image, the output (file output) is a 1024x512px file.

Add the second scene (again translated in the opposite direction) and you'll have the two renders aligned.


Posing Overlay Model Over Model Causes Clipping Sorry if I'm bad at explaining this, I always stayed away from looking for help online and just try to fix my problems myself, also i'm by no means an animator or even much of a modeler, I'm actually a programmer so excuse me not describing this well and feel free to ask for any needed info to help.

basically i got a cube (the head) inside of another cube (the overlay), they are rigged and have the same weights on but the head deforms more than the overlay, thus creating clipping, i have overlays on each body part but for some reason it's only the head that is giving problems

If the two cubes deform in different ways, they surely have different weights. Remember that every deformation is leaded by more than a bone, if a vertex is weighted to one bone only, it moves exactly with that bone, regardeless the value of its weight.

Probably you have the same weights relatively to the head bone, but different weights relatively to some others bones (maybe shoulders and/or arms). To check this, select a vertex and search in the "N" properties panel for the "vertex weights" tab.


Render and save " view port render image (openGL)" with python directly? Hi I made one add on which can save and load custom props (drive shape keys) and pose bone transform for Armature characters as preset.json with some options.
Then I hope to enhance it which will generate preview image(jpg, or png) with json.
(eg When I save "preset.json" from add on UI button,it will auto generate preset.png of current scene preview)
I suppose I can use this module,,  bpy.utils submodule (bpy.utils.previews)
but do not know clear, how actually it work. What I hope to know is, function whici may generate preview with path which user decided.
I suspect I can mix the funciton with my custom operator class to save json..(so when save the json, same name image file will be genrated as perview)
If someone experience same thing, would you teach me how you achive it(with simple code)?
I suppose I may need to use the bpy.utils.submodule(bpy.utils.previews) but even though I read doc and example (which use the image as UI widgt, but I need not, I only need to know how generate current scene preview as image file)
//////
Though my final goal is same, but I now get some steps, then change tittle..
what I planned is,

render and save view port open GL image with current user scene setting, when save preset.json from my add on UI button

Then I hope to make render and save function, which render view port(Open GL) image and save the image "without image editor>render-image>save"
I plan to use bpy.ops.render.opengl(), to render sumbnail , is there good way,
"without open image editor(Render image) and choose slots" but save to the directory with file name, as arguments?
Have someone alrady made simillar (simple) custom funciton ?

It was actually easy. thanks there is already arguments, to direct output render-image in bpy.ops.render.opengl()  (write_still = "True")
then most simple case (if keep current scene render setting), once change path(file name) to render thumbnail(openGL view image), then after generate the img , return path as same as before. (so user may not notice it changed)
import bpy

def render_icons(fname):
    render = bpy.context.scene.render
    upath = render.filepath
    render.filepath = fname
    bpy.ops.render.opengl(animation=False, view_context=False, write_still=True)
    bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = upath

I suppose, to enhance this, untill render, set some render propertys of bpy.context.scene.render to fit as thumbnail, then return all property as same as before.
and add option flag (user may manually set those setting, or use preset for icon render)


Material not assigning in cycles render, works in blender renderer I am trying to assign a material to a mesh I have. Whenever I assign a material to my mesh in blender render, and then change the diffuse colour, it works, though when I try the same thing in cycles render, nothing happens. I have to change the viewport colour in order for me to see an effect. How do I get the materials to work in cycles render? What are the exact steps?

In the 3D view you can change the viewport shading to rendered SHIFT + Z then you can see the changes you make in your material.
But if you want to see the different colors in the 3D viewport under the solid viewport shading then you have to change the viewport color in the material settings as you did.


Normal Map Baking doesn't work at edges I tried a lot of stuff already but I can't seem to figure out how to bake a clean normal map.

As for testing purpose I used the starting cube ;-) beveled it for the high poly version.

I marked all seams, unwrapped the cube with some padding.
After that I baked the normal in Blender.

But as you can see it looks totally weird and doesn't give me any clean edge. I read and watched a lot of tutorials but with most of them, the baking "just works". Any idea what could go wrong here?

As my testing environment is super simple already, I'm kind of lost on what to try...

Cheers Daniel

Baking the normal map with a cage seems to resolve most of the shading errors I got earlier.
To do this check the cage option in the render tab under baker und set the extrusion to some fitting value. 0.05 did the trick for me.

Still wondering why such a simple object creates such huge shading errors though (yeah I know 90° angles everywhere..but still)


"track to" object under "parent" constraint I work on this project for which we have a robot arm (6 servos), a camera attached to its extremity which tracks a physical object, and we wish to set up the experiment in Blender. We used an armature to model the robot, and rotations are blocked to mimic the real robot.

We want to be able to provide the position of the camera (which targets the object) and we want to obtain from that the rotation of the servos at each extremity of the bones of the armature.

The first problem we have is to constrain the camera to the last bone (to which it is attached), but at the same time we want it to target an object. We tried to use parenting, copy location/rotation, but in the end the camera keeps moving (and ignoring at least one of the constraints)

Do you have any idea of how we can fix that?

Once this problem is solved, I hope we can extract the kinematics of the robot.

link: blend file

Thanks,

--
Matt

As I understand your problem here the my solution.

Try to do this setup from different way.

Add a "rotation" bone, witch will control hole system in z rotation.

next setup "camera direction" bone, lock its moving in x axis and parent it to the "rotation" bone. I use IK in both cases.

When you just need to setup your bones with correct lengths and axis locks. On last bone make IK constraint to the "camera direction" bone with rotation option enabled


Text filled by balls i am new to Blender , and in C4D ,i know it is very convenient to use motion graph to generate such kind of effect , Besides it is very convenient to adjust text content , and i discover Blender for a while and google stuffs , but there seems no relative tutorials .

some similar methods are feasible ,but you cant change text content anymore after you convert it to mesh!

Any one know specific or probable solutions or tutorials?

If no one ... classic

add Text convert to Mesh
add Balls, set in Collection, add Physics > Riggid Body > Active
add Particle system > Source from Volume, Render > Collection
enable addon Copy Particles to Riggid Bodies, run operator (take some time)
disable particle system for Text (Mesh) object and add Physics > Riggid Body > Passive

To change letters - type a new text, convert to mesh, assign Particle system, run addon, set Riggid Body.

I know almost the same, but still just a few clicks now, that you would have to in C4D as well (if I checked tut right).

Note: Particles were quite jumping out (because I did them too big), so I did a duplication of Text mesh and inset the shape, so they are generated from object inside collision Text mesh.

Naming of the addon could be improved cross UI, but awesome it exists.


texture projection paint settings in blender I wanted to use texture projection for camera as described by In this series. However the explanation of the settings used is not described in his video clearly. Particularly this setting which is found under the Project Paint panel in texture paint mode:

The tooltip says: "Paint most faces pointing towards the view according to this angle. "

My question is: How is this angle affecting the projection? Is it the angle of the camera with the surface of the meshes?

Please do explain in detail what this angle is and how it affects the texture projection. Some illustrations would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

It is the angle between the surface's normal and the vector from the surface to the camera (an orthographic view vector).

Top view.

This means the angle is small for faces pointing directly at us and larger for face viewed at an angle.

If you wish to exclude surfaces which are not viewed directly from the from, decrease the normal angle value.

I think the inaccuracy is due to the large brush and the bleed settings, but the idea should be clear.

While texturing from a camera projection you usually want a low normal angle. From the camera view the faces oriented away from the camera, will have less pixels per surface and the texture will be more distorted. Use a low normal value to avoid painting on the, then paint on them from a more perpendicular viewing angle with a different reference image.


Rubber cloth preset looks wrinkled on character mesh I have 3 objects (one character and two primitive objects) and I assigned cloth simulation with rubber preset (to achieve soft body simulation on self collision) to each of them with exactly the same settings. But when I run simulation character object looks wrinkled. What is the issue here? Why isn't it still? It should get wrinkled on self collision like e.g. when foot touch backpack and backpack get distorted.

Settings:

Vertex group 'Group' is whole object mesh and weight is set to 0.

One thing is - less vertices = more solid.
I would say your topology in that place self collides. Current self-collision distance cause overlapping a space of several faces in their Normal direction.
Try to lower Physics Properties > Cloth > Collision > Self Collisions > Distance

Default Sphere with 0.004

... but lower value probably make it easier to penetrate.
Or you can try to use a Vertex Group (use vertices without "frame" part so it would be excluded from self-collision), but that is probably that you don't want to ... it defence own situation.
BTW There isn't a reason for Shape > Pin Group, when set zero - pinning doesn't take any effect.


Blender plane effect from blender render to cycles render On blender render it looks like this but when i try to do it in cycles it doesnt look the same(effect from deviantart) its a bunch of planes with an image to make an effect, Please help.

I think it's better not to give up to ready to use tools but just once learn how the transparency work in cycles, and then just use the knowledge.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=transparent+textures+in+cycles

It's fairly easy. All you need is your png image's Alpha output as a mix node Factor to mix your image color in a Diffuse shader and a Transparent shader.


no compatible gpus found for path tracing No compatible gpus found for path tracing

Intel core i7-2600 cpu 3.4
memory ram: 22gb
display: AMD radeon hd 5700 series 2gb
Directx version:12

The Radeon HD 5000 Series uses the old Terascale 2 architecture. Blender 2.8 requires GCN second generation or newer for GPU rendering. Your graphics card is therefore not supported for GPU rendering.


Blender Fur particle mess up I edit my fur and everything is well, but when I render it, it as if switches to a different particle and renders it weird, then it changes everything I edited to something glitchy looking, but when I try to edit it, it goes back to what I was editing first. It only renders the glitchy one though.

Edit 1:

Here's the blend

It might be because of children tab settings:

Make sure values in display and Render are the same.

Same cube in 3D view and in Render


How to add window specific shortcuts? The steps explained here by Ray Mairlot for how to add custom shortcuts to pretty much anything in Blender are easy to understand:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/63125/50625
But I would like to do all of this, but limit the new shortcut to a specific window, just like how most of Blender's other default shortcuts work.

In my case, I want to make custom key bindings for controlling the animation timeline.
I want to stop/start with SPACE, for example, but I don't want to un-bind the default search box that normally appears when pressing space everywhere else.

Thanks

For your first question regarding comments, check this out:https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/214173/why-do-i-need-50-reputation-to-comment-what-can-i-do-instead.

To add the Space control for playing and pausing your animation in the timeline, that can be done by opening the User Preferences and going to the input tab. Find the Timeline and click the little arrow to expand it. Then click Add New to create a new shortcut. Set the control to be Keyboard and set the key to Space, then set the operator to be screen.animation_play. I found the operator by searching for AltA and using the Key Binding search, then copy pasting the operator. Since this is a timeline specific key binding, all other Space shortcuts will still work.


mix a noise texture with a normal to make patches I have a forest ground but I want to mix in a grass texture over that. I have tried but found no susses so far.
My plane are to use a noise texture an after that put on a image texture on top.

Try to use MixRGB node for blending Color and Height images with Noise Texture then put result to Base color and Height inputs of Principled BSDF and Displacement node.


Problem with actual rendering and rendering view So for the lecture im following(link below) i have to make a rabbit. I made the fur with seperate particle systems(for each part different particle system with different vertex group) like explained in the lecture. it looks good in rendered view like this:

But if i actually render the model with render image it looks like this:

It doesnt render the head fur and the eyes.
All models en meshes are enabled in rendered view, below are all my settings:

PARTICLESYSTEM:

VERTEX GROUPS:

OUTLINER

If you need any more details, tell me and i will provide.

Thanks in advance.

TUTORIAL IM FOLLOWING: https://www.udemy.com/blendertutorial/

BLENDERFILE : https://www.dropbox.com/s/g7voguv2d05979o/FluffyBunny.blend?dl=0

Nothing wrong with the particles, but Squirrel gave the idea with the eyes not being visible. Yep the whole head is hidden behind giant Metaballs. Who would have thought!? Well I guess we can all sleep easier now :)

Going to guess you have a mean machine to handle all those particles - but if you want less effort when working you can dial the Display down to something easier like 10. Keeping the display and Render at the same amount can be taxing...

p.s. Either drag the Metaballs elsewhere or switch them to visible and move to another layer or turn off the Camera for each one...


Why is there noise in my output? Ive only been introduced to Blender yesterday and have been trawling through the tutorials and loving it, definitely a new fan, albeit still taking very small steps.

I exported a VRML from a GIS application (ArcScene).  I have done little to the scene in Blender, apart from adding some material effects to the ground layer.

What I can't understand is why my final render has a lot of noise in it.

Can someone give me some pointers on how to get a better quality render?  Is it something to do with the render settings or have I missed something on the import/configuration of the scene?

Blender Internal

If you're using Blender Internal with Raytracing as your Gather mode, the following will work. Raytracing is realistic, but it requires a certain number of samples, otherwise it will be grainy.

In the World settings in the Gather section, change the samples to something like 10 or 12:

Cycles

If you're using Cycles, you can turn up the render samples in the Render panel under sampling:


Creating a UV Map from a shrinkwrapped sphere I'm not quite sure how to explain this, but I try as good as I can:
I want to create a UV Map for a room with 8 walls that has a sphere shrinkwrapped onto it, so I can project equirectengular video material on it.
Has anyone experience with this?
So far I build the room:

and I shrinkwrapped a sphere onto it:

but the borderlines are weirdly pressed together so it's not just a clean edge and the corners are also filled incorrectly, is it normal in my case?
Do I have to merge along the vertices and the edges at the borderlines manualy, so that I can make a seam there for the UV?
Is there a better solution to shrinkwrap a sphere onto such an object to get a clean spherical UV?
Thanks for any hints

Spherical projection

The above is the equirectangular projection of the Tissot Index Plate Carrie projection image found here Justin Kunimune / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)  onto a squashed 8 sided ngon filled cylinder.

The node set up explained in this answer https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/159492/15543
A Hammer Projection
and again using a Hammer Projection node setup as explained here of
Tissot index hammer projection image from wiki by Justin Kunimune CC BY-SA 4.0


No shadow with Eevee I have a problem creating an animated film as a university project. We work as a group. One of us created a landscape and the others animated a panda. I appended the landscape to the panda file and the others the panda into the landscape file. All my files have shadows on the ground from trees and the panda. The other files just have a shimmering shadow. I've been googling a lot but I can't find any solution. This happens only with Eevee, with Cycles all shadows are shown. I'll upload two files, one from me and one from a fellow student. Maybe someone can help me :)

Best wishes
Nathalie

(Not a complete answer, but comments have a limited amount of characters, and i still thought it helpful to share some things i noticed)
Wow, this is really weird. Most of your settings in EEVEE look the same but the color shading is different somehow. The sky (or himmel) object is light blue in the Shadow file, but the sky in the No Shadow file has a turquoise quality to it. I couldn't figure out why.
The most notable difference between the files was the scale, though. The sky object in the Shadow file is 430+ times larger than the the one in the No Shadow file ( I had to increase the Clip End value in the Shadow file a lot to be able to navigate the scene). This can account for a difference in resolution of shadows (one being sharp and another being very blurry and hardly noticeable) but I don't see how it would cause the absence of shadow.
I wonder how this scale difference happened and wonder about the way things where appended. Maybe it helps to use Ctrl+C to copy element to the clipboard in one file and Ctrl+V to paste them in another in the future, instead of appending via file menu. In any case, the scale difference might point in the direction of solving the problem.
EDIT:
In eevee, shadows are clipped by camera distance


Delete the cycle animation modifier from several objects How can I delete the cycle animation modifier on several objects at the same time? (as opposed to doing it one at a time)

I wrote the following python script which should accomplish your mission (http://web.purplefrog.com/~thoth/blender/python-cookbook/remove-action-modifiers.html):

import bpy

def mission1(obj):
    if obj.animation_data is None or obj.animation_data.action is None:
        return

    action = obj.animation_data.action

    for fc in action.fcurves:
        print(fc.data_path)
        for mod in fc.modifiers:
            if mod.type == 'CYCLES':
                fc.modifiers.remove(mod)

for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    mission1(obj)

( Instructions for how to run the script inside blender )

One shortcoming of this script is that the fcurves window does not immediately update to display the alterations, although it does update when you start scrubbing the timeline.


Can't extrude edges with individual origins I'm trying to extrude my edges along a road to create things like gutters, or sidewalks etc. I've tried many different extrude options and none of them seem to extrude each edge in the correct direction, they seem to follow where the origin is or something. Here's a gif that better explains what's going on:

I'm using the industry compatible hotkeys on blender 2.82, thanks in advance.

Perhaps the Edge Slide tool is better suited for this.

Select the edge and use the Edge Slide tool
Press C to disable Clamp and slide it outwards
Done.

(The yellow guides appear when you press C (disable clamp))


How to bake an air brick with all holes inside how to bake an air brick

If i start with a cube i can have this result with a baked texture?

It's because your grooves are made of faces that are completely parallel or frontal to the normals of the object that bakes, normal bake save only normals orientations, not depth, you need for example to give a small bevel to the angles or create b&w heights.


Suppresing render console output Is there way to suppress (and possibly process) console output when rendering from script?
I have batch script to set up model material etc. via CLI and I want to show overall progress of the job (for example "Image1.png done", "Image2.png done" etc...).

I want to get rid of these lines:

Fra:5 Mem:115.16M (0.00M, Peak 213.60M) | Time:17:15.52 | Remaining:07:30.02 | Mem:26.82M, Peak:26.82M | Scene, Render-Alpha | Path Tracing Tile 45/64, Sample 1079/2000

to make output more readable.
Is there any way to do it?

It would be nice to display rendering progress without flooding console (for example as "50% done", but this would be just finishing touch :D) - I would be glad to just remove console output completely.

I tried redirecting output via:

sys.stdout = io.StringIO()

and some other examples using contextlib.contextmanager but neither did work (console was still flooded with progress messages)

I would like to do it directly in python - I am on Windows so using grep awk or other tools is complicated. Plus it would be nice to control script output from one place.

Unfortunately, the message you want to get ride (Fra:5...) is printed directly on stdout by a fprintf function (source/blender/render/intern/source/pipeline.c). It's not printed by a specific function which has a hook with python... And I don't think the embedded Python engine has the power to act on the pipe between the console and Blender. I think the only way to do what you want is to write an external launcher script to filter Blender stdout. As you don't want to use external tools like awk, you can use the Blender python engine which is in the blender directory.


How not to overwrite current "Render Result" but generate a new image with different name (bpy)? I know basically after "render" we may save "Render Result" image or change slot of render, but I hope to use render.opengl() to generate current scene thumbnail with exported json files (kind of shape key preset, or bone pose preset system)  without overwrite current "Render image".
bpy aleady offer way to save render.opengl()  image  to the user defined path, but after all it still generate and overwrite the "Render image" too.
So when I export preset.json, with my script, generated "thumbnail" render.opengl image (it generate tiny viewport render with my setting) It auto overwrite current "Render Result" without intention.
What I hope to do is,  use "render.opengl()" then generate image to the defined path as thumbnail,  without overwrite current "Render Result" . Is there good way to achive it with bpy?

(eg generate as different image name from "Render Result" and remove it, after save json)
(this question related with Render and save " view port render image (openGL)" with python directly?)

Though I am still serch and apreciate better answer, but temporally
I made new render-slot for "Render Result" image as "icon-img",
then when save json, if there is no slot name (icon-img) for "Render Result"
make new one, or if there is already "icon-img" slot, set to it as active one.
Then generate json, save render.opengl() image to the user defined path,
and return all setting as same as before.
rr = bpy.data.images["Render Result"]
rs = rr.render_slots
cslot = rs.active
fl = False
for slot in rs:
    if slot.name == "icon-slot":
        fl = True
        rs.active = slot
        break

if not fl:
    aslot = rs.new(name = "icon-slot")
    rs.active = aslot

(functions to generate json with render.opengl image from blender file exploler)
rs.active = cslot
it seems worked for me.. (but I do not know way to remove icon-slot, without use UI)


How can I see the mesh when I have vertices hidden in edit mode? I don't have a mesh when I hide vertices, how can I turn it on?

When I hide vertices, I don't want to hide the mesh too, I want to see what I am editing(the mesh).

It seems this functionality differs in 2.8 and 2.7 versions. Geometry modified with modifiers inherits the state of being hidden from the original mesh in 2.80:

There does not seem to be a way to achieve exactly what is shown in the video in 2.80 at least at the moment.


Creating 3D pixel modeling? I envision creating a 3D model but in the pixel art, 16-bit style. Like the old Mario or Zelda games  Not just outlined liked this but the entire model. I searched for ways to do this but i can't seem to find something like this. If someone could help me find a way to do this i would greatly appreciate it.

If it is a 3D model of a sprite you want, then I have actually made a Python Script / Addon that takes an image and converts each pixel to a cube with a material of the same color.

https://gist.github.com/MrSprite/ff7fda1ec4bf6850d357.  Go here and click the button that says Raw. Then you can right click on the page that opens to download the .py file.

Install it in Blender like a normal addon.

I don't recommend using images over 100x100 unless you want Blender to lag a lot.  Also it takes around 1 minute to generate 100x100 cubes, but only .39 seconds to do a 32x32 image.

Also, if a pixel has ANY transparency it will not be created, so be careful!


Blender can't get extrude to lock in odd position again So I was making a side walk for a curved park of a road that I made, but I wasn't sure how I was going to make it. when I tried to extruded the edge, the extruder locked into place in some odd angle, but it was an angle that surprisingly worked perfectly for me so I got the side walk on on side of the road but on the other side I couldn't figure out how to get the extruder to lock into place. I will include a picture to help show my problem. I would really like if someone could point out how I made the extruder lock into place like in a odd angle.

Thanks, Nova

By default extrude will lock along the normal of the selected faces. The normal is perpendicular to the plane of the face. In other words, the direction the face is facing.

To unlock it, press Z after extruding.

To re-lock it, set the transform orientation to normal in the header of the 3D view. Then press ZZ after extruding and unlocking (or GZZ if you cancelled/completed the extrude/transform operator)

Also see:

Extrude Faces along Local Normals

How can faces be rotated around their individual normals?


How to change icon in Add Object menu? It has always bugged me that Blender add-ons (in this case the Sapling add-on for generating trees) have a wall socket as their icon in the Add menu, instead of something more custom. I would like to be able to set this icon for these add-ons and for the scripts that I write.

Is it possible to change this icon, either through a custom build of Blender, or by modifying the Python script in any way?

For existing addons you'll have to find its code and change the code where operators are added to menus.

When you write your own add-on, you can choose a different icon by specifying the icon parameter to the operator function with which you register your operator in a function.

From the Mesh Add operator template in the Blender text editor the snippet:

def menu_func(self, context):
    self.layout.operator(AddBox.bl_idname, icon='MESH_CUBE')

For a list of icons to choose from see the blender documention. There are many places where you can define an icon, but there is only one list. For instance for the menu function of a layout. It takes an icon, the list is the same.

Icons outside these are not (yet) supported. You can replace the entire icon set though by specifying an icon file at the bottom of the User Interface section of the theme editing in User Preferences


change camera into multi-view camera? When I am trying to use multi-view (highlight) and I press Render, then it says this: 'camera "camera" is not a multi-view camera'

But in the camera settings I don't know to change my camera into a multi-view camera

A camera being ‘multi view’ or not isn't a specific camera setting but relates to the configuration of multiple cameras, with one camera object for each 'view'.

If you look at the bottom of the Views panel of your first screenshot you'll see the 'Camera Suffix' property. This can be defined for each 'view' of the camera.

To link the cameras into a 'multi view camera' you simply need to name them to have the camera 'name' (eg, 'Camera') followed by the suffix.

So, for a multi-view camera named 'MyCamera' with views of 'Left' (suffix '_L') and 'Right (suffix '_R') you would name your two cameras 'MyCamera_L' and 'MyCamera_R'. Selecting either camera as the 'active' one will effectively select both for rendering.

All of the defined Views must exist as cameras in the scene for it to be considered "multi-view".

See Is there a way to batch render images from several cameras? and continuous sequence of frames with multiple cameras with each camera starting at start of animation?


Export OBJ with materials crashes Blender on import I am having an issue with exporting obj files containing materials. I have created default materials in cycles with no changes other than diffuse color for each mesh in my scene, and I export to obj with materials. It is a basic scene, just a few different meshes with a single default material applied to each.

When I try to reimport the files into blender it freezes and can not import it. I am able to export the obj without the materials selection and everything works however in this case I need  separate material for each object created in Blender to be exported.

Anyone have an idea of what to look at to get the export to work properly?

Thanks

Export the .obj out with no materials (unselect write materials on export). Import the obj into a brand new scene and recreate all the materials.


UV texture paint not working on sharp edges/tips? I am trying to texture paint onto a mesh with a lot of sharp edges and tips. These areas do not seem to register with the painting, which creates artifacts. I have tried using different UV unwrapping methods and pretty much ever brush settings I can think of, but it doesn't help. Why does this happen, and how do I fix it?

Turn off backface culling in the options of your brush in paint mode.


Object appears in 3D view, but partially disappears in camera view and rendering I'm trying to make a world background by enclosing the whole area in a big sphere, and projecting a spherical map onto that sphere, as per a tutorial on youtube that I can't post because it won't let me post more than 2 links, but it's called "Blender Game Tutorial (2.6): Building a 3D Game - Part 1".

The sphere looks normal in the 3d viewport. Here it is with 3d display mode set to Solid, and inset in that image is with 3d display mode set to Material, showing that my image successfully mapped onto the sphere to make a space background to the world.

But when I go into active camera view (numpad 0), part of the sphere disappears!

The same thing happens when I render with F12 (I can't post more than two images though).

It does not seem to be an issue clipping/camera distance. I varied the max camera distance to quite a wide range of values, and it didn't affect this phenomenon at all.

I'm fairly new at Blender, thanks for any help you can give.

Try checking the N-panel (right pop-out of the 3D view) in the View section where the Clip settings are.  This is not necessarily identical to the camera and controls what you see in the 3D view (which can be different from what gets rendered).

( your question is probably a duplicate of short view distance in 3d view? )


Morph targets and armature animations to UE4 I'm trying to import a character mesh from Blender that has both an armature rig with keyframe animations and also morph targets with shape keys. Is there a way to export/import so that both of the animation types work? The armature is applied to the whole mesh and the morph target is applied to the face. When I export from Blender as FBX 6.1 ASCII the morph target works but the rigged animation doesn't, and when I export as FBX 7.4 binary the morph target isn't there but the animation works. No matter what options I select during export/import I can't seem to get both working. I've tried unchecking the 'Apply Modifiers' checkbox during export which is what a lot of other posts suggest.

Any other suggestions on what might be the issue here? I noticed there was another very similar post here that hasn't been answered:

Right settings for exporting FBX with Rigify and morph targets to Unreal Engine 4

Thanks in advance
LB

So, I've been playing with this today, and discovered something very odd. Skeletal meshes imported from Blender with (apply modifiers off), do not seem to import to UE4. However, if, after it's done importing, you right-click on the skeletal mesh asset and select "Reimport", it will bring in the morph targets on reimport, even if the original file is unchanged.


Is it possible to use a CSV file to assign to frames poses from a pose library? Is it possible to use a CSV file to assign to frames poses from a pose library? For example: having a CSV file with the frame number where a musical note is played. The musical note been the pose required to play the note on a saxophone.

I have done it for a vibraphone, using the CSV file to drive a bone which in turn with a driver moved the stick to the correct place. But it looks to mechanical. Thanks for any help.

This is a CSV like control file which starts with the frame number, an object variable (short cut and a list of assignments where Arm.L references a bone layer and things like KuenHalf or Tan are pose names

0 SET:A=r6839C
1 A:All=IRAS
10 A:Arm.L=KuenHalf,Arm.R=Tan
20 A:Arm.L=Fook,Arm.R=Bong
30 A:Arm.L=KuenHalf,Arm.R=Tan
40 A:Arm.L=Fook,Arm.R=Bong
50 A:Arm.L=KuenHalf,Arm.R=Tan
60 A:Arm.L=Fook,Arm.R=Bong

The source to create the animation from a control file is on github.

Note that this was designed for Makehuman created MHX rigs.


Two stage collapse using rigid body physics? I have long wanted to make a two-part destruction using RBP, namely, an object is struck and breaks into two pieces which fall, hit the ground, and then each break into multiple smaller objects.

My solution works rather well, though it can be tedious.  There may be a better way which may well be the Bullet Constraints Tools but I have had little success in managing the details.  A short test movie can be found here. Does anyone know a better way?

Unfortunately blender doesn't really have much support for this kind of thing at the moment (the rigid body simulator itself was just added fairly recently). Ideally the fracturing would be done real-time, based on impact forces etc.

However, it's possible to fake it with constraints, as you mentioned.
I like use this addon for setting up lots of breakable constraints between the shards.

There are a couple ways you can go about this.

One way is to fracture object object into lots and lots of little shards, and constrain everything together with breakable constraints (using the addon).
Video of result, and blendfile.

Another way is to fracture the object normally, then manually cell-fracture the bigger shards and constrain them together with the addon.
Video of result, and blendfile


(eevee) Lights limit? My question is...

How many lights (spot) can be on at the same time?

There's a limit imposed by blender or the machine specs?

Here's an example https://youtu.be/8Hjy2o3A9pg

Limitations:

Shadows are not supported on light instances (dupli objects, group
instancing).
Only 128 active lights can be supported by Eevee in a scene.
Only 8 Shadowed sun lights can be supported at the same time.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/eevee/shadows.html


How do I rotate my viewport around the position of my cursor? I have googled a lot and didn't find the answer.

I think in older Blender versions, if you for example middle mouse click on a model and drag, it rotates around the point you hovered your mouse cursor over, for example the surface of the model.

But since I updated to Blender 2.8 it always rotates around a fixed point somewhere in the distance, so I have to use the walk navigation to rotate around the model. For example I wanna rotate around the model but it rotates around a point far behind the model

Edit -> Preferences

I think you need this to be checked.

This also could be interesting for zooming to/from mouse position

I found a nice tutorial on that subject.


Help with creating color tinted glass with dusty look I'm creating a mars scene and have a glass pane on the roof of a building. I want to give it a better look than just clear or straight one color. I would like to make add a orange reflective tint to it and make it look almost as if it were dusty with Martian sand.

Is this any good?

The trick is to mix between a transparent shader and a glossy shader. First, you'll need a dust texture. I used this one from Blender Guru.

I set up a mapping and coordinate nodes just to be professional, as it gives you more control over the texture. Next, add it to an inverted math texture node (I chose noise, as I think it gives the best result), then color ramp it as you wish to an orange shade. At this point, we need to make our object behave like both a metal and glass, so I use a transparent node mixed with a glossy node, both with color from the color ramp.
The final node setup looks like this:

You can tinker with the amount of dust, metallic-ness, and transparency to your liking, but importantly, this material has all of those things.


I can't find a way to make a flashing cursor effect? I was trying to make a title screen where it was like a flashing typing cursor. Any ideas to create that effect?

In Cycles you may achieve it (if I got you right) animating the Factor value between Emission and Transparent nodes.

Add your text with dash and convert it to mesh with Alt+C-->Mesh from Text. Select the dash and give it a material using material nodes as pictured below (mix Emission and Transparent shaders).

Go to frame 1 on a Timeline and press I while hovering the cursor over the Fac slider of the Mix shader (set it's value to 0.000 before). It'll add a keyframe to it.

Go to the frame 10 (or any further one), change the Fac value to 1.000 and insert the keyframe again.

Now go to frame 20, change the Mix value to 0.000 and repeat the keyframing process.

To extend the animation go to the NLA Editor and press the 'double down arrows' symbol there.

Finally open the properties panel there (N) and set the Scale and Repeat values. Scale'll increase the blinking lenght and Repeat'll extend the whole animation.


eevee smoke/volume not being occluded Been touching upon EEvEE every so often depending on what kind of image quality I'm looking for at the moment, and for the first time I am adding smoke. More specifically Glowing Smoke, as in "Magic". However, the volume material shows through other objects in front of it.

You can see more clearly on the right the yellow magic outlines the entire horn, even the part that is embedded into the skull and hiding behind the hair. I have played around with the material's Blend and Shadow Modes, Refraction and Subsurface Translucency, and all the settings connected with Volumetrics (and Shadows), but it does not seem to make a difference. Anything I am missing or is this a bug?
Blender 2.92.0 2021-02-24 16.25
EDIT
I made a new project with nothing in it, I imported the right model, and applied the smoke on the horn, and brought up the Emission Strength only. The whole thing still shone through.
EDIT2
When putting in the ordinary geometry from the Add menu and shaping them approximately to the model, the smoke is occluded.

You can try this file (2.93) or try with some new file to eliminate something specific to your issued file.
Left Smoke sim / Right only Volumetric material ... both seems to be working.

Edit
That was real issue hunting ... the main reason is this Question ... for Eevee it is too small step in depth when volumetric is calculated. And I'm not sure there would be solution for you. Here is example with solved issue ...

... but the only one solution I found ... crop the area under Render Properties > Volumetrics > Start/ End and increase Samples up to 256 ... also don't use Distribution around 1, use some low value.

That means very limited range of volumetric effect depend on Camera distance.
Your file has other things that can cause some issues ... like extremely high Viewport Clip End that generates flickering, some of your objects like unicorn's hair use wrong Normals direction, and it is always better to have Applied Scale for all objects if possible ... not the case for volumetric issue, but any time I tried to switch to Eevee all computer crashed that never happened for many years to me.
Here is a file in condition that I expected you will share (hair+horn) that takes only 0.6 MB.

If you are looking for just an effect like glowing horn, you can use new object type Volume with Mesh to Volume modifier instead of Smoke simulation ... or even easier animate emission material for horn with some high value and enable Bloom in Render Properties.


Add more samples after render If I rendered in cycles with 128 samples for example, is there any way to increase the samples count to 256 and only do the additional 128 samples without starting the rendering all over again?
I'm using version 2.83.

You can enable Progressive Refine (Render Properties > Performance > Tiles), set the sample count to a high amount like 10000 and stop the process manually (ESC) when satisfied.
However, I'd suggest use the Render Region feature and drag a rectangle around the darkest spot in the image (CtrlB), set the viewport samples to 0 and wait until the noise is resolved to get an idea how many samples are required and do a full render based on that knowledge.


Are triangles bad for a mesh What impact would this have on say a game asset or something like a tank that's animated ?

Asking as I'm piecing together a project that will be involving my own models.

On occasions I've noticed when Bevelling edges the create Triangles on another face, so I wanted to be certain be accepting it.

Thank you

You can find a plethora of articles all over the place dealing with the subject. Like this one, or that one.

TL;DR:

  Use whatever works. Quads are the default. But feel free to use triangles when you need to use them. There’s no hard and fast reason to say that you should never use a triangle. Sometimes it’s just easier!


Boolean Not Working The Way I Think It's Supposed To So When I do a Boolean Modifier on the Sphere, and select a torus surrounding that sphere, I expect it to do what it first did in the middle, but it just cuts a hold straight through it.

Change the type to carve and try to change between difference , intersect ... untill you get the wanted result


Hard surface modeling - topology problem Don't know why the problem occurs.

after smooth shading, this appears

I need an edge loop there for the sharp edge of the gun cut-out.

The problem is that your normal directions have become mixed up. To solve, (in edit mode) select all, then pick  Mesh > Normals > Recalculate outside.


Render points only if visible from another camera I am trying to find a way to render only parts of the objects and scene that are visible from another camera. As an example, imagine I have two cameras pointing towards an object, the second making, say, a 45° angle with the first one. I want to render the scene from the first camera, and then render on the second a mask with only points that are visible from the first camera (like a visibility mask).

I can do this either using Nodes or Python (or something else). What I can think of now is :

something similar to the Node Light Path output Is Camera Ray, used as a factor of a Mix Shader in Cycles. However, I would like to use another camera than the one being used for the render.
In Python, I can render a depth map from the second camera, and then for each pixel, use the camera matrix and the depth information to backproject-it to a 3D point, and evaluate the distance of the first camera to that 3D point. If that distance is greater than the depth of the pixel on the first camera, I know that this pixel is occluded. So I would render it on the mask.

Is there any simpler way to do so ? Thanks in advance for your time !

All you need - projection mapping. Just put additional UV layer on objects which you want to control, add UV project modifier, and add new logic to material. Second camera projects normalized UV coordinates [0;1][0;1], but we can calculate if some point is outside and apply different material to it. Emissive like on first screenshot, or Transparent like on second one.

OK, lets get really freaky!

Of course, you have to render Z-channel to some EXR file (or sequence if you have an animation). Then add more to material: drivers to get camera position, math nodes to calculate distance for sampling point, and little more to avoid another reincarnation of z-fighting problem.

Just one fix to previous: that UV projecting produces "square", so you have to correct aspect (based on projecting camera render), it was 1080/1920=0.5625 to ScaleY.

I love Cycles magic!


How can I rotate the view while using another tool (like extrude) in 2.8? Add any object, select a face and press E to extrude.
Now try to rotate the view while extruding.
Normally middle mouse does this but while extruding middle mouse does not work.
How do I use the mouse to rotate the view WHILE using extrude (or anything else).

You (nearly) can do that using the operator panel:


Correspond an object's z coordinate to a noise texture? The displacement modifier moves vertices of an object up or down based on how black or white the corresponding part of the texture is.
Is there a way to apply that same principle on multiple separate objects? Is there a way to treat the origin points of each object like a vertex on an object with a displace modifier?
I am trying to animate hundreds of separate cubes in a grid formation to move up and down based on a noise modifier. How could I do this procedurally?

If the cubes are identical, you can parent a cube to a grid, displace the grid and use the grid as per vertex instancer:

To do that:

Create a grid
Add it the displacement modifier and set its direction to "Z"
Parent a cube to the grid
In the grid property panel, set "instancing" to "vertices".

If you want some color variation, you can set it using the cube shader. For instance:

which is done with the object info node on a noise texture:


Is there any way to combine/simplify interpolation curves? To put things bluntly, 5 curves per bone has always intimidated me.
In short my questions are:

Can I combine curves in to one master curve?

If not what is the best way to simplify this workflow?

I've been looking for a solution to this for a while, if I've been dumb and missed an obvious google search can someone point me in the right direction? :)

An fcurve that you see in the graph editor is able to animate only one value throughout an animation. As you follow the curve from left to right, it's x,y location gets translated to the frame and value for the property being animated.

For an object (or armature bone...) you can have one fcurve for the x-location, another for the y-location, one for x-scale and so on, meaning up to nine curves for the loc/rot/scale. You may also have extra fcurves for an object if you have other properties animated, like visibility, shape keys, modifiers, constraints...

While you need an fcurve for each value that you want to animate, you don't have to have an fcurve for every possible value, you only need an fcurve for each property you want to control during an animation. When you insert a keyframe using I->Location blender will create three fcurves for the location. You can also  RMB on the x-location display and choose Insert Single Keyframe to only create one fcurve. If you then use I->Available only the values with existing fcurves will get new keyframes.

If you have excess fcurves that you don't want, you can delete single fcurves in the graph editor. With the fcurve name selected and the mouse over the list press X to delete the entire fcurve.

When you have multiple fcurves, you can also simplify the graph editor display to make it easier to work with. For each fcurve and each group of curves, there is a small eye icon that can show/hide the fcurve or groups of fcurves. The cursor in the header allows only selected items to be listed in the graph editor, while the magnifying glass to it's right allows you to filter by name.


How To Make Two Objects into One Mesh and then Only Animate One Object (Rotation) I have two obejcts, one of which I want to rotate 45 degrees then bring it back to its original rotation, while the other object stays in its place.

I am having problems animating both meshes and combining it into one event in another source because when I import the two animations, the animation of the object that should be rotated is acting in weird ways in relation to the static object. I'm hoping by combining them to one object, its rotation will hold true to how it is showed inside Blender when I hit play.

I'm going to say that your importer or exporter is defective.  I am also not optimistic that unifying the mesh will solve things since it actually complicates things.

If you want to have a single mesh where part of it is animated, the first thing that comes to my mind is an armature paired with vertex groups.

You will need to assign all the vertices of the moving part of the mesh to a vertex group.  Select the mesh.  Enter edit mode.  Select the vertices for the animated part.  In the Mesh/ObjectData panel use the Vertex Group subpanel + button to create a new vertex group.  Then use the Assign button to add all those vertices to the group.  Double check that the weight is 1.0 (sometimes it is 0.0, which is almost useless).

Go back to Object mode and add a new Armature.  By default its single bone will be named "Bone".  Switch to edit mode, select the bone, and go to the Bone/ObjectData panel and rename it to match the vertex group of the mesh (which is probably named "Group").

Go back to Object mode.  Select the mesh.  Go to the Modifiers panel and add an Armature modifier (under the Deform section).  Choose the Armature as the modifier's object.  Make sure the Vertex Groups is checked.

Now you can select the armature and go into Pose mode (usually Ctrl-Tab) and put some keyframes on the bone to animate it rotating.

Because the bone and the vertex groups have matching names, the armature modifier will make the object deform according to the motions of the bone.

As you can see, this rig is much more complicated than two objects, one of which is animated.  If your importer/exporter malfunctions on your current project, I have doubts that it will properly support the intricacies of armatures.


How can I create a natural fading effect on planets in cycles? I've have experience with CAD but am a complete Blender (especially the Cycles engine) noob. Recently I've been doing a lot of self-learning, then I came across this image:

Could anyone please tell me how to achieve a natural fading effect on the planets? My nodes are a mess but the result still comes off as too "stiff" and "mechanical".

Hope that I've explained myself well enough and that you guys understand!

Use Volume absorption and volume scattering as volume on a mesh that completely surrounds your scene.

Play around with a  texture for the density and you'll be able to make clouds and all kinds of fun stuff.


My soldiers all march to the same spot, how do i give them seperate orders simulanelously? In a follow up to this fantastic question that I've been waiting for some one to ask, I would like to know how I can send d people in an RTS game to different locations. I already have an empty being added with a different property each time I click, but I don't know how to get flocks to only steer toward an object with a certain property, and not just the object.

How can I set an object to only seek empty with property[goto]=1 while anoter group is seeking empty with property[goto]=2, and so forth? This would be really helpful, thanks.

To make every characters go to a certain target whenever you click the ground we create flag object and set it as a target for the selected characters,
when all the characters reaches the flag, it gets deleted

Details :

we have the function main() which is excuted when you MMBclick on the ground this function :

creates a new Flag object at cursor position
loop through all objects and find the selected ones that have Move property,
for each found object :
change the Steering actuator target to this new Flag
increment the Flag Followers property by one
set the object properties Active and Move to True
when Active and Move are set the object start seeking the flag

this is done with this part of code :

main():
.......
    flag = scene.addObject("Flag", "Tracker", 0)
            for obj in scene.objects :
                if obj.get('Select', False) and 'Move' in obj.getPropertyNames() :
                    obj.actuators["SeekTracker"].target = flag
                    obj['Move'] = True
                    obj['Active'] = True
                    flag['Followers'] +=1

The Flag has property Followers which indicate how many objects have it as a target, so if it has no followers it should be removed , for this we have a function flag_self_check() which does that, the code part for this is :

def flag_self_check():

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

        if own['Followers'] == 0 :
            own.endObject()

but what makes the Followers count goes down ? it is the object, the moving object has a near sensor to detect the flag when the object gets near the flag it stops Moving and decrement the flag Followers count by one

def reach_dest():

        cont = logic.getCurrentController()
        own = cont.owner
        sen = cont.sensors["Near"]

        if sen.positive :
            hit_flag = sen.hitObjectList[0]
            if hit_flag :
                if hit_flag == target :
                    hit_flag['Followers'] -= 1
                    own['Move'] = False

i have added if hit_flag == target : so moving object don't stop at the wrong flag when passing by


Any methods to show wires in texture paint WHILE face selection masking is enabled? Strangely, wires are not drawn on the masked selection (yes, the very selection you've masked off and are trying to paint).  Does anyone have a reasonable workaround for this behavior?

Edit mode: faces selected to mask.  "Wire" and "Draw all edges" checked:

Texture paint mode: Face selection masking disabled:

Texture paint mode: Face selection masking enabled (wires are not drawn on the masked faces):

I have used this technique for a long time now. Make a square texture with a colored border, I make mine with transparent center square and a blue outer rim. On the object to be painted, assign a new uv map and unwrap it, reset it so that it is all faces overlapped as a square. set the texture to use this second uv map, and set the main texture as the active painting slot. I set the square texture to 'Multiply' instead of Mix, and I use GLSL to make sure I see the effect of the texture over the main color texture. I am including a screen shot to show that the texture simulates the wireframe you want and works while you are using face selection masking.Here is the texture


Why can't I see the Physics button on the world panel? I'm starting to make physics in blender, but when I was going to edit the parameter "gravity" on the "World => physics" button, I found it nowhere!

Can someone please help me? What can I do? I need it for my animation assignment.

It is like the first image when it should include the buttons shown in the second one.

Here I have the world panel, but the "physics" subdivision is nowhere to be seen

It should be like this. Sorry for the spanish.

They are in the "Scene" section, not on the world.


Is possible to calculate the shortest distance between two geometry objects via python? I need to add new geometry to my scene and it should fit inside a large box without any intersections.

Is it possible to calculate the shortest distance between two geometry objects in space, and check if the objects are intersecting each other via python?

Going by the question in your title this is my answer.

To get the distance between two objects use this formula.

$$d = \sqrt{\left(x_2-x_1\right)^2+\left(y_2-y_1\right)^2+\left(z_2-z_1\right)^2}$$

Then the python code is as follow. Comments are included in the code to help you understand what is going on.

import bpy
from math import sqrt

lst = []  # create list to store the location info

for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:  # iterate over the selection NOTE: two object should be selected
    lst.append(obj.location)  # populate the lst with the location info

# calulate the distance of the two objects
distance = sqrt((lst[0][0] - lst[1][0])**2 + (lst[0][1] - lst[1][1])**2 + (lst[0][2] - lst[1][2])**2)

# display the distance
print(distance)