Modify a softbody during animation I am hoping to grow a branching shape while softbody animation is underway.
I am using a bmesh to update the object's mesh as the branching shape grows.
However once the softbody animation is underway, the pointcache seems to rely on a stored version of the mesh.

If say I elongate the mesh, the pointcache continues to behave as if the mesh was as it was when the animation started.

If I hack the point cache (on disk) and move vertices in the pointcache to where they should be if they matched the mesh, they spring back to the unelongated shape (but distorted by the softbody).

After each frame, after I have modified the mesh, and the pointcache, I am running
bpy.ops.screen.animation_cancel(restore_frame=False)
 bpy.ops.screen.animation_play()
in an effort to get the pointcache to look back to the edited mesh, but to no avail.

If I stop the animation and go to edit mode, the elongated shape of the mesh is evident, but with no distortion from the softbody.

I gather there must be a data structure in memory representing the edges of the mesh (as it was when the animation started) as springs.  Will I need to force regeneration of this data structure somehow?  Or maybe directly edit it?  Where can I find it?

Apart from elongation, I want to extrude parts of the mesh gradually as the animation progresses, and branch the structure.

After quite a bit of research I found out that:
The physics engine creates the springs (representing edges and if 'Stiff Quads' is set the diagonals of each quad) only once on starting a render animation.  The springs are stored in memory somewhere but there doesn't seem to be any way to modify them or reload them during a render animation.  So they can't be changed during a render.  However, if I render little bits (frames 1 to 2, then 2 to 3 etc), the springs are re-loaded at the start of each mini-animation.

But of course without any other intervention the springs are loaded from the un-animated mesh, so the physics is cancelled out at each step.  UNLESS, I discovered, the softbody cache, stored on disk, is copied before the end of a 'mini' animation (see bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post), and restored just after the start of the next 'mini' animation (see bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre).

And where changes are made to the mesh, they need to be made between 'mini' animations, and corresponding changes to the softbody cache need to be made.  It is critical that the same number of vertices are in the mesh and the cache and that they are in the same order.

With help from http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/15577/how-to-extract-convert-data-from-blender-cache-files-bphys-into-a-human-readabl I created a utility to read and unpack the disk cache, allow modifications then write the modified cache back to the same location.

Unfortunately this procedure means that each frame is rendered twice (e.g. frame 2 is rendered during the animation of frames 1-2 and during the animation of frames 2-3) but there seems no way around this.  It would be wonderful to be able to suppress rendering of the last frame in the range, but I haven't seen a way to do that.  Animating from frame 1 to 1 and then 2 to 2 etc would obviously only render each frame once, however there is no room for the physics engine to work.

If I was simply looking at animation in the 3D window (not rendering), I found that toggling the edit mode in the frame_change_post handler was sufficient to get the physics engine to re-load the springs.  Toggling edit mode during a render animation just generates an error, so the more complicated 'mini' animation approach needs to be used.

I am using Blender 2.79b on Windows 10.


import video strip VSE into the 3d image plane Can i import a strip from VSE editor and add it in an image plane as a texture?

Elements from the VSE or from the Compositor cannot be used as textures on the 3D environment directly.

You would need to export them as Video or Image Sequences and then re-import them to be used as textures on planes (or other geometry).


Rigid body cubes exploding when on floor So I followed Andrew Price's tutorial on making a realistic floor using bump maps, displacement maps, etc. I did it, everything turned out great, until I actually played my animation.
My cubes that were sitting happily on the floor violently exploded. I realized that I had to move the cube quite a bit above the plane so it would sit nicely on it without exploding.

Here's all the nodes and stuff

Is there a way I can get the cubes to sit on the floor without exploding?
Looks pretty weird just floating in the air like that.

One easy solution is to add another plane which will be use only for collisions.

Turn off the rigid body on the floor you have now.
Add a new plane, and position it so that it is at (or sightly below) the top of the bumps on your original floor.
Add passive rigid body physics to the new plane.
Disable render of the collision only plane, by unticking the camera icon for it in the Outliner.


How would I make a group vertices all the same distance from an Axis line? Essentially I want to turn the selected portion into a cylinder (but keep the z value for each vertex).

I don't even know if this is possible. Another possible way to do this ig would somehow change to polar coordinated and scale to 0 along the r coordinate, but idk how to do that.

A Cast modifier, set to 'Cylinder', with a Factor of 1, aimed at a vertex-group made of the selection you show, should do the job.

The Cylinder will be formed around the local Z axis of your object, or that of a control-object you allocate in the modifier.
It will be formed by pushing vertices outward toward the given radius. If the minimum is too large, the modifier may have to be applied, and the vertices scaled back to the desired final size.
The vertex Z-coordinates, in the cylinder's space, are not affected.

These tubes have been solidified for illustration.

Settings:


why is 'child of' modifier scaling my bone? I'm having so many issues with parenting bones. I'm trying to use the 'child of' modifier to parent a 'lightsaber bone' to a 'hand bone'. But when I apply the modifier, the lightsaber bone and its mesh is shrunk down to half it's size for some reason. How can I make it attach at the correct size?

A child of constraint is the same as parenting an object, when you move the parent the child also moves, scale the parent and the child also scales.

By using the constraint instead of direct parenting you can control some of this behaviour. By turning off the scale options you can stop the lightsaber scaling with your armature.

This does highlight one point though, you have an armature that is scaled, you most likely scaled the armature while in object mode to get it to fit your model. Having an armature that is scaled can cause odd behaviour like this at times so you may want to apply the scale to your armature by pressing CtrlA and choosing scale while in object mode.


Compositor, can`t see blur effect from different camera angle I m using basic node setup for material blur in compositor, when i change camera angle for top view it disappear. How can i make it visible ?

You are using an ID mask to assign the blur on a particular material. But the faces with that material are not visible as they are occluded by the rest of the cube.

If the material is not visible, you won't get the blur.

It seems to me that if you want to get the blur, you have two choices:

1- use a separate layer and object masks to create the blur.

2- Use volumetric lights (volume scattering) to have an environment in which suspended particles are lit by the light source that is not visible, as it would happen on a room with dust or or haze.


I'm getting double curves in Animation Nodes loop In not good in programming, but I'm trying hard and get some results. I'm trying to make a lot of curves from 1 point to points of other objects. And it works fine, but some curves double and I don't know why.
Can somebody help me find the mistake ?

Looking through your node tree, your list of vectors creating the spline contains 12 vectors (top right list).

I think what you're trying to do is to alternate between the "point 1" and each of the 6 ship locations, and draw a curve from point 1 to each location.

However, because your node tree puts all the vectors into one list, it draws a single spline through all of those points.

If we think of the 6 ship locations as A-F, your spline is drawing

A->1->B->1->C->1->D->1->E->1->F->1

as a single spline, without "picking up the pen."

So, for instance, the spline draws from 1 to B then back to 1, doubling up.  With your smoothness of .04, this will show up as a very flattened oval, which will look like 2 lines.

You can probably see this better if you turn off the Bevel Depth temporarily.

You can cheat this by just making your smoothness = 0, and it will mostly work and draw straight lines (one over the other.)

To get separate splines for each curve, you'll need to iterate through the vector pairs and create them individually.. you can't just put them all into one spline.

HTH.

Z


Boolean operations in Sverchok I'm revisiting this project after a considerable hiatus (well, you only need to print grilles so otften): Sverchok. Duplicating an object along a path.
It works very well now, but I'd like to automate one final step...
At present, I 'manually' (by which I mean 'using a non-node based solution') perform two Boolean operations on the resulting objects - to UNION the small cylinders and SUBTRACT the large cylinders.

I guess it must be possible to automate this process too (presumably using a List Modifier), but I'm struggling to get that to work.
Here's a Blend of the latest incarnation - tweaked to work with 2.9x...

Help?

To perform Boolean Operations in Sverchok you have three alternatives:

Using CSG Boolean Node: It is pretty slow and sometimes produces not watertight meshes and ugly topology. Also it has some limitations, please check the Warnings section of the nodes documentation

Use a Exec Node Mod to apply standard Blender Boolean modifiers to created objects check this comment: This option is pretty simple but requires a little of coding.

Use the Solid Nodes, that require FreeCad, to perform the operations more info here: Once you have installed the dependencies this should be the easiest and more robust solution


Blender Depth of Field is not working I want to focus on an object and I used Depth of Field (Focus) on the object but blender is not focusing on that object. Blender rendering image normally. I'am using Blender Render.

If you want physically correct Depth of Field, you need to use Cycles render engine.

In Blender Internal you will get nothing, unless you add the effect in post-processing. Enable Compositing and use this node setup:

This reads your scene Z-values and your focal point set from your Camera object and adds the Depth of Field effect by blurring the image.

Also set your F-stop to some reasonable value, so you have something else than a pinhole camera. Only the value in the node has effect, the setting on the camera object is not used with Blender Internal.


Cannot smooth without trouble on my mesh I'm working on my mesh which looks like this :

As you can see the surface is not smoothed. Then I apply the smooth option and it gives me this result :

It is the third times I start again this mesh... I cannot understand how to apply the boolean modifier without getting in troubles.

Thank you for your help.

Thank you for your helps, it is solved.

What I have done is :

I have added a subdivision modifier

Then I have smoothed the surface. At this time, problems were still present on my mesh.

Finally, I have activated auto-smooth option

What I get is alright :

Thank you for your help guys !


This script can't run twice, why? Blender ver 2.83 LTS.
Whenever I tried to run this script twice, it came out an error:
ERROR (bke.lib_id): C:\b\buildbot-worker-windows\windows_lts_283\blender.git\source\blender\blenkernel\intern\lib_id.c:342 id_us_min: ID user decrement error: OBNew_STL (from '[Main]'): 0 <= 0
I'm trying to delete the old STL object without selection or restarting the blender file. This error is driving me crazy but I have no idea handle it.
import bpy

new_stl_is_here = []

def new_stl():
    global new_stl_is_here
    #  get old object list
    old_obj_lst = []
    for j in bpy.data.objects:
        old_obj_lst.append(j)
    #  import a STL file
    bpy.ops.import_mesh.stl(filepath="C:\\xxx.stl")
    #  get new object list
    new_obj_lst = []
    for jj in bpy.data.objects:
        new_obj_lst.append(jj)
    #  new STL is in this list
    new_stl_is_here = list(set(new_obj_lst)-set(old_obj_lst))

def delete_old_stl():
    for jjj in bpy.data.objects:
        if jjj.name == "New_STL":
            bpy.data.objects["New_STL"].user_clear()
            bpy.data.orphans_purge()

def rename_stl():
    new_stl_is_here[0].name = "New_STL"
    new_stl_is_here[0].data.name = "New_STL_mesh"

new_stl()
delete_old_stl()
rename_stl()

Ditch global lists and use selection
After calling the import operator any newly imported objects are selected and make up the context.selected_objects list.
I don't have any multi-object stl files to test theory against, but will go thru the motions with a single object file.
With no current selection.
>>> C.selected_objects
[]

Import stl
>>> bpy.ops.import_mesh.stl(filepath="/home/batfinger/Desktop/untitled.stl")
Import finished in 0.0156 sec.
{'FINISHED'}

Newly imported object(s) (Have no examples of multi object stls)
>>> C.selected_objects
[bpy.data.objects['Untitled']]

Remove that import
>>> old_import = C.selected_objects
>>> while old_import:
...     D.objects.remove(old_import.pop())
...
>>> C.selected_objects
[]

Import again
>>> bpy.ops.import_mesh.stl(filepath="/home/batfinger/Desktop/untitled.stl")
Import finished in 0.0140 sec.
{'FINISHED'}

>>> C.selected_objects
[bpy.data.objects['Untitled']]

Rename this time
>>> #and to rename
>>> for o in C.selected_objects:
...     o.name = "Foo"
...
>>> C.selected_objects
[bpy.data.objects['Foo']]

What's the file looking like
>>> D.objects[:]
[bpy.data.objects['Camera'], bpy.data.objects['Foo'], bpy.data.objects['Lamp']]

Notes.
Basically think the remove method in question code is "icky", as also is keeping some global list with object references ... just asking for a crash.
Notice the way the objects were removed in python console code above. They are unlinked (de-usered) by default.
To use a list like so recommend only using names, or just not doing it that way.
Putting this into a script
Have made a version of the script using a custom property tag to "mark" any imported STL. And to keep the new, remove, rename order also looked at the name.. one thinks remove, new, rename makes more sense.. anyhow
import bpy

tag = 'IMPORTED_STL_OBJECT'

def new_stl(filepath):
    #  import a STL file
    bpy.ops.import_mesh.stl(filepath=filepath)
    #  get new object list
    # ops use context silly not to use it.
    # could do set before / after here too.
    for o in bpy.context.selected_objects:
        o[tag] = 1
        o.data[tag] = 1

def delete_old_stl(name="NewSTL"):
    stls = [o for o in bpy.data.objects
            if (name and o.name.startswith(name))
            and tag in o.keys()]
    while stls:
        bpy.data.objects.remove(stls.pop())
    stl_meshes = [m for m in bpy.data.meshes
            if (name and m.name.startswith(name))
            and tag in m.keys()]
    while stl_meshes:
        bpy.data.meshes.remove(stl_meshes.pop())

def rename_stl(name="NewSTL"):
        stls = [o for o in bpy.data.objects
            if tag in o.keys()]
        for o in stls:
            o.name = name
            o.data.name = f"{name}_Mesh"

new_stl("/home/batfinger/Desktop/untitled.stl")
delete_old_stl()
rename_stl()


Rotate (generated) UVs of environment texture without mapping node I'm trying to rotate an environment texture (around Z), but without the mapping node, as it lacks sockets.

I've successfully rebuilt, the node tree detailed here: Use another node to control Vector Mapping

Works great for Object UVs, but not for generated UVs of an environment map.
I've tried translating it along U, which also didnt work. Any suggestions?

edit: the linked node tree works for environment maps, IF you connect the Z channel from the initial separate node to the final combine node.

This is a node setup for a z-axis rotation.  The other 2 axis' are just as easy but adding all three axis' into one formula gets very complicated.

To rotate the image, adjust the Value node that is located at the top-left in the "Deg 2 Rad" frame.

Note: The math nodes all have two "value" fields but only the upper field is used for trigonometry so just ignore any values in the lower fields.


Strange shift on pixel row while compressing video with alpha channel I came here because when i export my render in AVI Raw (RGBA) i got some render issues. There is some kind of 1 pixel shift in some pixel row :

You might need to zoom to see it
This problem doesn't appears in blender render preview and it's still there if i render in .jpg at first and create a video with the blender's video editor. Here is what i see in blender with my rendre setting :

Because it appears only when i export the video  i think it come from the compression process but i don't have enough knowledge on it to find a solution by myself :/
Thank you

Leander : "Your trying to save unassociated rgba in a format, that doesn't support the alpha channel (AVI). Render it with a not transparent background: choose RGB, goto Properties > Render > Film and uncheck transparent."

"This is not a bug. You have to choose a format which supports alpha channels. There are not builtin video formats with alpha in Blender currently (such as Prores), so you have to choose an image format such as PNG, TIFF, EXR, DPX with RGBA selected. It will render to an image sequence."

So  the bug where due to the use of transparency and the RGBA mode on a file format that don't support it.

If you have issues rendering with transparency, i tried to render with alpha using ffmpeg video with the codec HuffYUV, PNG, and video codec #1 which support RGBA but either the quality was too bad either it has the bug that i came for in the first place.
It seems like Blender don't have any proper way to render with an alpha mask. i will edit this comment if i find a proper way to do it without using another soft, anyway i'll solve this subject because the main problem is solved.


How to conditionally drop frames in the VSE (Video Sequence Editor) based on a dynamic condition? I have a large body of video (dozens of hours) containing stretches of mostly frozen video. I've been able to detect these sections with compositor nodes resulting in an (incredibly inefficient) all black or all white screen as a Boolean. How can I use this node system to include or exclude frames from my source video set to pair down my data set? (I eventually want to compile these into a time lapse video.)

You can do some cuts programmatically with Python and it should be well possible to use this black/white information as a source for the timing of these cuts. I've already done such cutting of sequences with Audacity Text markers from a file:

import bpy

f = open('cuts.txt', 'r', encoding='utf-8')
data = f.readlines()
data = [w.replace(',', '.') for w in data]
f.close()

#bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].timeline_markers.clear()

for s in bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].sequence_editor.sequences_all:
    s.select = False

for i in range(0, len(data)):
    entry = data[i].split()
    start = int(bpy.utils.time_to_frame(float(entry[0]), fps=None, fps_base=None))
    end   = int(bpy.utils.time_to_frame(float(entry[1]), fps=None, fps_base=None))
    print(entry[2] + ': ' + str(start) + ' ' + str(end))

    for s in bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].sequence_editor.sequences_all:
        if s.frame_final_start < start and s.frame_final_end > end and s.channel == 2:
            print(s.name)
            s.select = True
            bpy.ops.sequencer.cut(frame=start, type='SOFT', side='RIGHT')
            for s2 in bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].sequence_editor.sequences_all:
                if s2.select:
                    s2.mute = False
            bpy.ops.sequencer.cut(frame=end,  type='SOFT', side='RIGHT')
            for s2 in bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].sequence_editor.sequences_all:
                if s2.select:
                    s2.mute = True

Now the only problem remaining should be the detection of the black/white stuff. There's a great solution from W-Sfax: Blender: Access Render Results pixels directly from Python

import bpy
import numpy as np

# switch on nodes
bpy.context.scene.use_nodes = True
tree = bpy.context.scene.node_tree
links = tree.links

# clear default nodes
for n in tree.nodes:
tree.nodes.remove(n)

# create input render layer node
rl = tree.nodes.new('CompositorNodeRLayers')
rl.location = 185,285

# create output node
v = tree.nodes.new('CompositorNodeViewer')
v.location = 750,210
v.use_alpha = False

# Links
links.new(rl.outputs[0], v.inputs[0])  # link Image output to Viewer input

# render
bpy.ops.render.render()

# get viewer pixels
pixels = bpy.data.images['Viewer Node'].pixels
print(len(pixels)) # size is always width * height * 4 (rgba)

# copy buffer to numpy array for faster manipulation
arr = np.array(pixels[:])


Python - syntax error in established code So, I'm trying to get nifscripts to work with blender 2.49b on a Mac. I suspect there may be an issue with the installed versions of python, but for the life of me I can't suss it out.

So, when I start blender from the command line, I see:

Compiled with Python version 2.5.6.
Checking for installed Python... got it!

So far so good. Running a system report generates expected output:

Paths:

/Applications/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python25.zip
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/plat-darwin
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/plat-mac
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/plat-mac/lib-scriptpackages
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Extras/lib/python
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/lib-tk
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/lib-dynload
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Extras/lib/python/PyObjC
/Applications/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/.blender/scripts
/Applications/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/.blender/scripts/bpymodules

So, it seems to be using the same python it was built off of. However, when I try to run the nif_common.py script, I start getting syntax errors. The first one seemed to involve the with... as f keyword, which I resolved by using the more traditional f = syntax.

However, now I get the following:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "nif_common.py", line 91, in <module>
  File "/Applications/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/.blender/scripts/bpymodules/pyffi/formats/nif/__init__.py", line 3277
    return b''
             ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

I fail to see the invalid syntax; this scripts uses that form several times, and only the last does it throw an error.

Line 91 of nif_common.py reads:

from pyffi.formats.nif import NifFormat

And the __init__.py file contains at line 3277:

    def _get_string(self, offset):
        """A wrapper around string_palette.palette.get_string. Used by get_node_name
        etc. Returns the string at given offset."""
        if offset == -1:
            return b''

        if not self.string_palette:
            return b''</pre>

Now, my familiarity with python is minimal, so I'm not sure whether the offending '' does anything or not. But I can't see how invalid syntax would end up in established code like this...

b'' or b"" define a byte string, this is a feature of Python2.7 or 3.x

See: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17707085/python-string-b-prefix-byte-literals

You can use Python2.7 with Blender2.4x, but you'll have to recompile Blender, linking to the newer Python version.


How to twist object maintaining uniform section? I have a long slender 'cylinder' with the following section that I'm trying to twist about the length (z-axis)

I've tried both the Lattice and Simple Deform modifiers but the center becomes thin like it's being stretched out.

It's what you would expect if you twisted an existing object but I'm looking for something more like a column of an old building.  This picture is not exactly what I want but close enough to illustrate the goal.

I've only been using Blender for a few weeks so I apologize if this is super simple.

Your topology lacks some horizontal edge loops, that's why it shrinks on its middle, so go in Edit mode, CtrlR then scroll (or +) to increase the amount of edge loops, then let's twist again!


How can I align a Point Cloud precisely I have a Point Cloud (with 20 Points). In this Point Cloud I connected two vertices (in Edit mode) with one edge. Now I would like to align/rotate that edge (and the Point Cloud with it) to one axis (e.g. y-axis). So this edge would need to be exactly on the y-axis (no rotation). I can zero out one vertice of this edge to the the origin. But I struggle to understand how I could bring the second vertice onto the y-axis. Any help would be great.

Update: I would need the edge to be parallel to the y-axis.

This looks promising:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/Precise_Align

I wrote an addon, Mesh Align Plus, for strange situations just like this! In GIF form:

You can connect two of the points to form an edge if you like, it doesn't matter. You can also just move the point data (the mesh) by itself if you want to leave the object origin where it is. Check the demo video on the wiki (or ask here and I can include info for that).


How does vitamix blender works I want to know how does a Vitamix blender works? and its worth with money? I saw there are few vitamix model price around $400 to $500.

I want this tagline.
@Pamela, no hard feelings, this is just too good.


cloth breaks away from armature as soon as first frame of bake begins I am trying to animate with auto rig pro with cloth physics baking on my character. However, whenever i leave off and enter into the first frame of the bake, the cloth that has the physics simulation on it breaks away from the armature and does not deform with the character as the cloth is baking. How can I animate the character and keep the cloth baking at the same time?

I figured it out. I did not realize that one has to set the key frames and animation data before the bake in order for it to follow. Duh, right. Its taking all of the information to bake clothing along with that includes location, rotation, and scale.


Best way to model a wavy pattern for CNC milling process? Planning a CNC milling job of for a wavy pattern I want to use on the ceiling.

What is the best way to control the curvature for each wave blending into the next one? I would like to only build the "tip" of the wave and then control the curvature (the blend) on each side independently, maybe the same way you control curvature when editing vectors in Illustrator via a 'weight' parameter to manually sculpt each part.

How's this for a starting point? I took a simple grid mesh and applied edge creases to every other row:

...Scaled it down in one direction and then pulled the edges perpendicular to the creases up and down to build a crude series of parallel waves:

...Then added a subdivision modifier:

There's plenty of room for improvement, but using edges as control points made it relatively simple to sculpt a basic wavy shape without too much hassle.


Automatically exporting baked textures I have quite a bit of baking to do, so was wondering if there's a way to automatically export the textures after they're done baking?

I'm using Blender 2.79b

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Never mind. I'm using an add-on called "Bake All" and somehow missed the "Auto Save images" tick box.


PSD image texture - material not updating? I need a way to LIVE draw shapes on my objects in blender, meaning creating squares, circles, etc as one would in Photoshop but in Blender so I can see how it looks.

So far Id just done this creating objects and making them flat -

but this isn't ideal. Next to keep the live updating I tried selecting a PSD as my material texture and UV unwrapping like this, but the PSD doesn't update live. Have to close out blender for a new shape to appear even saving the PSD file -

I need a way to add shape images/draw on my materials - how can I do this correctly? The paint tool in  Blender doesn't seem to allow for clean shapes like PS.

Image used as textures will not update automatically every time the file is changed, but you don't need to close blender to make the changes visible.

The easiest way to do this is to re-load the image in the UV/Image editor window. The shortcut is AltR

On the Properties panel of images used as texture there is also a button to reload the image from disk.

There is an addon to sychronize gimp with blender, but I don't know if it still works. I avoid using GIMP... but the info is in this answer:

Can Krita and Blender be linked?


Smoothly connect two objects (Cylinder+Plane) I have the below hexagonal shape with a 45 degree extruding pipe. I would like to connect the edges of the hexagon to the outer side of the pipe's top rim all around. It should be a smooth, curved connection as if the pipe is pushing up a flexible cloth.

Thanks a bunch for your help.

TOPOLOGY

It's always better to work with simple topology, so you don't fall into a troubles with next step in modelling. So I would recommend ...

ad Cylinder 6 sides and Cylinder 12 sides, position them and use Boolean Modifier > Union

to get a same amount of vertices, select loop of hexagon, Subdivide (W) it, select both parts of top surface and delete them, select both loops and search for Bridge

version BEVEL

now you can select loop to Bevel (cmd+B), under Adjust last operation (F9) choose Percentage and set 100%

version BRIDGE

instead of beveling you can select subdivided hexagon edge directly and circle and search Bridge, adjust setup again under Adjust last operation (F9) like seen on screen

For any version - SMOOTH surface

smoothing surface - Subdivision surface Modifier, to sharp edges select them and set Creas (Shift+E) = 1, Set Smooth shading and under Object Data properties > Normals > enable Auto Smooth with Angle like 13 (in this case)

to model hole (tube) you can anytime in a process a) delete face and use Solidify Modifier or b) select face Extrude (E) Scale (S) to make thickness of pipe and extrude again with move inside (before extrude change Transform Orientation > Normals)


How to Make a Rotation on Two Different Axes? How to achieve a rotation animation like this (GIF below)?
Where the text rotates on both orange point and its origin point axes, so it stays horizontal along its rotation.
Thanks!

Copy location constraint

The easiest way to keep the text horizontal is to not rotate it at all. Let's see the movement from another perspective: it's a text, that doesn't rotate, but it's origin is moving on a circular rail.

Use an empty to build a pivot in the center and another to set the position of the object's origin. Parent the last empty to the first one and animate the pivot to build a moving point.

Now add a constraint to the text object's location targeting the moving empty. The text will not rotate (why whould it?), but it's following the movement, achieving the desired effect.


How to simulate deformed metal I would like to know if there is a good way to simulate crumpling metal, I have tried soft body and cloth sim's without much luck(although for some deformation the soft body sim dose work). Maybe it can be done with bullet physics engine with a little scripting? Or maybe there is another program out there that can simulate metal deformation? I could just model the deformation by hand using shape keys but I am looking for a faster workflow. I need it for a three second car crash VFX shot with a lot of rolling, thus a lot of deformation so shape keys really are not ideal.

This is sort of what I am looking for: https://www.flickr.com/photos/andosteinmetz/2481005494

I've had some luck with this workflow, it still needs some polishing though.

The steps are as follows:

Choose a surface to deform(in this case the plane)
Use cell fracture add-on to brake up the plane (Note that you should probably add a solidify modifier to it first).
Add a hook modifier to the plane object for every generated fracture (very important... and tedious). It can help to create a vertex group for each shard and then just go into weight paint mode loosely paint that shard onto the plane.
Turn off gravity in properties panel under the scene settings, this is vary important for the simulation to work properly (also because metal deformation isn't really effected by gravity it shouldn't be of much consequence).
If we are going to deform metal then we need something to deform it with. A sphere will work fine for know (any object will work). After you have an object then set it as a rigid body object in the physics, then check the animated check box:
Now we need to animate the sphere, Of course the animation part is all up to you (so long as the sphere intersects the plane). This is what I did, add a keyframe on the first frame in a high position, then add another keyframe on about frame 15 with the ball intersecting the plane.
Set the shards as rigid body objects.
Now it's time to run the simulation. Make sure that the shards, sphere and plane objects are all on the same layer(or at least visible), and press play. You will probably need to stop it around frame 12 or so before the dents get to deep and weird looking.

And here is the final result!

Hope this helps someone out there, it took me awhile to figure it out and it still needs polishing but I think that it has a lot potential.

blend file link: example blend


Is there a way to move multiple objects together? I was wondering if there were a way to make it so multiple objects would act almost like one. I have created a character that is basically a lot of flat objects on top of each other to give a 2D impression but I don't want to have to move each individual item every single time the character moves. Would it be possible to just have them all move together? So if I moved one 2 units over, the rest would as well?

why not parent them CTRL+P (keep offset) under an "Empty" (to use it as a control object) which will be also nested under the main object that you want to inherit the movement from ?

Another method would be to use constraints (like copy location) but I wouldn't suggest you to do it for such simple task.

PS : You may also parent them directly to the main object that you want to inherit the movement of course.


Smoothing artifacts on wheel spokes I'm modelling a wheel and I can't get rid of these overhang artifacts where the spokes meet the inside of the wheel. I've spent 3+ hours trying to fix it to no avail. There has to be a way to do this.

Adding loop cuts to get rid of the N-gons fixes the issue,  but also ruins the shape of the wheel.

You need to get rid of those n-gons.
For that, you'll need way more evenly spaced edges to support the geometry.

Add more edges using Loopcuts. It will deform the geometry, but don't worry.
Select the individual circles, one by one.
Use Mesh > Transform > To sphere on each circle to smoothen it


How to reset object's origin The origin of my object is not where I want it, so when I set other objects to the parent, they link to the origin rather then the object where I want them. How do I change the origin?

You can recenter the active object's  origin (orange dot) by pressing ⎈ Ctrl⎇ Alt⇧ ShiftC> Origin to geometry, or the button in 3D view > Tool shelf > Tools > Edit > Set origin:


How do I make the camera's depth of field affect an imported image? I'm using Eevee in Blender 2.9 and I have imported an image (with alpha information) as a plane. My camera's focus distance is extremely low but the image I imported isn't being affected or blurred by the depth of field. I'm not sure if this is able to be solved, but it seems like a fairly big limitation if there is no way to make an imported image affected by the camera. If it can't be fixed, is there any alternate way to blur the background image? Perhaps with nodes?
I'm also curious if I can make the camera affect an HDRI in the same way. I've included a picture for reference, thanks in advance for any advice. (Note that the mountains in the distance are too sharp).

The image contains no depth information, to blender it is just a plane, so you won't be able to have any selective defocusing based on the distance to the camera.
If you want to blur parts of it selectively, you need to create some kind of depth map: a black and white image in which the close areas are dark and the far ones are bright.
Then use that image in the compositor. Feed the original image to a defocus node and the fake "depth map" as the Z information. You can use a color ramp to change the values to determine what areas get blurred.

Read:
How can I get a Depth of field render pass?
Blender (Cycles) Manual DOF


Rendering detail on close-up views with lower resolution models? How can close-up views of a model have enough detail, be smooth, and not pixelated when rendered without adding a lot of subdivisions?

Increasing the subdivisions of the model works for improving close-up render quality but render time jumps really high with this option. Is there any better way?

(In the example below, both models are smooth and have displacement and bump maps applied, the only difference is the number of subdivisions.)

For example:

Low resolution model close-up

Medium resolution model close-up

In Edit mode, select all faces with A, then press T to open the toolbar, then select Shading/UV, then Faces, then Smooth.

Is that what you were looking for?


Is there a way to designate a vertex group *without* weight painting? I have a grass particle-system that I am working on. I would like to establish the areas on my mesh where those particles should exist. Now, I know that I can use Weight Paint mode to draw out my desired area and set the Density to that group.
But is there a way that I can just choose the faces (not paint it out) and set that to become my Density? I just want to avoid the incredibly imprecise painting step that is required for that when all I want is "these four faces".
I hope that's clear; thanks in advance for your help.

In edit mode select the vertices you want, the weight you want, and use "assign" in the data properties:


Rendered image is not as smooth as in 3d preview I'm a newb to blender so apologies if this is obvious.  I modelled a simple cup and set the modifier subdivisions to 5 after I turned on 'smooth'.  It renders fine in the CTRL+Z render preview window but when I do a final render the handle of the cup is blocky and not smooth.... Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Attached pics of the render with blocky handle and the object/render settings

Many thanks

Well, Cegaton already found the problem, but the question needs an answer for future users.

The Subdivision surface modifier has two important parameters: the view and the render subdivisions. As their name suggests, view determines how smoothed out the surface will be when viewing it in the viewport, and render does the same for rendered images.

This is useful if you want a smoother object when rendering, but want a better performance of the viewport and don't need much detail when previewing – you can set a lower view and a higher render.

If you set the render parameter lower than the view parameter, objects will appear smoother in the viewport than in actual renders.

Another possible cause of this problem is that the modifier is visible  but isn't being rendered . In that case, click the camera icon to enable rendering of the modifier (in the image above, both rendering and viewing are enabled).


On what Cloth Simulation Model is Blender Cloth Physics Based? What research papers were leveraged to implement Blender Cloth? I know of several cloth models - Geometric, Physical, Particle. There are several researchers who have published work within each type of model (Provot, Baraff & Witkin) and I am not certain if Blender utilizes one over others or a combination of multiple.

In short, I am not entirely certain what each of the Cloth Settings actually represents as far as a calculation is concerned. I am not sure what units are being manipulated for, say, "Structural Stiffness", when you decrease the value from 15 to 10. I'm unsure of what a "Stiffness" of 1 unit actually means (mathematically or physically). I know that it cannot be arbitrary (at least I hope). A further understanding of the actual physics and math behind the "Quality" step sizes, the "Structural" and "Bending" qualities, and the "Spring" variables under the Damping setting are of interest. This powerpoint has helped, as has this .pdf, but neither offer a total picture on what Blender may be using.

Summary: Initially in 2004, Todd Koeckeritz leveraged Provot's Cloth Model (Deformation Constraints in a Mass-Spring Model to Describe Rigid Cloth Behavior); also, he leveraged simplified portions of Provot's Cloth Collision Model (Collision and self-collision handling in cloth model dedicated to design garments). Then in 2006, Daniel Genrich completed an implementation of Mezger's Cloth Collision Model (Improved Collision Detection and Response Techniques for Cloth Animation). Additionally, Todd Koeckeritz created a parameter named "Steps"/"Quality" to handle time steps. Finally in 2008, Daniel Genrich released Blender Cloth (according to BlenderNation.com).

Research Papers:

Todd Koeckeritz (Contributor of Blender Cloth) says in April 2006:

  Provot was chosen when we started the project because I had the code written already from two years ago when I was working on cloth as a python module. So, we've started with that. However, the few semi-unique characteristics of the Provot paper referenced in the wiki page are being replaced now with a similar process from another paper. So, in some ways Provot is gone, or will be in the next release. However, the nice feature described by Provot in section 5 of his paper, deals with eliminating the super-elastic/rubbery effect that some cloth simulators exhibit. That was my reason for choosing the paper two+ years ago.

The initial checkin of Blender Cloth files for "trunk/blender/source/blender/makesdna/DNA_cloth_types.h" by Daniel Genrich (Contributor of Blender Cloth) reads in September 2007:

+/**
+* This struct contains all the global data required to run a simulation.
+* At the time of this writing, this structure contains data appropriate
+* to run a simulation as described in Deformation Constraints in a
+* Mass-Spring Model to Describe Rigid Cloth Behavior by Xavier Provot.
+*
+* I've tried to keep similar, if not exact names for the variables as
+* are presented in the paper.  Where I've changed the concept slightly,
+* as in stepsPerFrame comapred to the time step in the paper, I've used
+* variables with different names to minimize confusion.
+**/

Todd Koeckeritz talks about his implementation of Provot's Cloth Collision Model in April 2006:

  What we have now is a partial implementation of one described by Provot in his paper "Collision and self collision handling in cloth model dedicated to design garments."  We may not implement all that is described in that paper, but we do need to get friction working properly and get it working properly with moving and/or deforming collision objects.  What we have now works fine for dropping pieces of cloth on cubes and such, but there's no sliding when there should be and it isn't working now with collision meshes being deformed by armatures and such.

Todd Koeckeritz talks about Daniel Genrich implementation of Mezger's Cloth Collision Model in March/April 2006:

  Genscher is focusing on work on the k-dop collision system [...]
  The collision system we've implemented is described in papers by Metzger in 2002 and 2003 and is known as K-DOP BVH. From an end user standpoint, there isn't too much that needs to be understood about this implementation that is specific to the collision system. In most cases, you either want to spend CPU time computing collisions or you don't.

Todd Koeckeritz talks about Time Steps in April 2006:

  There is one more important concept for an end user to understand and that is the one of how the simulation deals with time. It is impossible to model all the atoms or molecules in a piece of cloth and those objects with which it might collide as it would simply take too much time to compute the results, so we compromise by using the point masses and springs described above. There is a similar problem when it comes to dealing with time. While some parts of the cloth modifier attempt to deal with time in a continuous sense, other parts only compute the results at specific points in time. For example, think of dropping a ball on frame one and having it hit the ground on frame 21. If you only had results on frame 1 and frame 21, you'd have no idea on how the ball behaved between those frames. It might have been moving at a constant velocity or it might have been accelerated from rest by gravity or another force. On the other hand, if you had all the frames from 1 to 21, you could examine the position of the ball in each frame and then know much better how the ball moved during that time. With that new information, you can then better predict how the ball should move between frames 22 and 51. The cloth modifier has some similar problems, although we deal with them at the sub-frame level. To do this a parameter called Steps is provided. The higher the number of steps, the more time is spent computing a result, however that result should be more precise. The lowest setting for Steps is 1, meaning we'll run the simulation once per frame. This is the fastest way to get a result from the cloth modifier, however, the results might be less physically accurate than if you choose a larger number.

In April 2006, Todd Koeckeritz called it "Steps". Between September 2007 and January 2008,  Daniel Genrich renamed "Steps Per Frame" to "Quality". The following code diff of "/source/blender/src/buttons_object.c" represents these changes:

-               uiDefButS(block, NUM, B_DIFF, "Steps:",                    10,80,100,20, &sb->minloops,  1.00,  30000.0, 10, 0, "Solver steps/frame ");
-               uiDefButI(block, NUM, B_DIFF, "Steps per Frame:",          10,150,150,20, &clmd->sim_parms.stepsPerFrame, 1.0, 100.0, 5, 0, "Quality of the simulation (higher=better=slower)");
+               uiDefButI(block, NUM, B_CLOTH_RENEW, "Quality:",           10,150,150,20, &clmd->sim_parms->stepsPerFrame, 4.0, 100.0, 5, 0, "Quality of the simulation (higher=better=slower)");

Parameters:

The Blender Cloth Modifier is based on a Spring Network, according to Todd Koeckeritz in April 2006:

  The spring network is built of three types of springs and the user is allowed to control the stiffness of the springs separately: (1) Structural Springs are built on the edges of the mesh. They provide the main structural integrity of the cloth. (2) Shear Springs are built on the diagonals of quad faces and provide some resistance to shearing forces in the cloth. (3) Flexion Springs are built similarly to the Structural Springs, but are built on top of two close to parallel Structural Springs. Flexion Springs provide resistance to folding, the stiffer they are, the more the cloth will attempt to retain its original shape. Think of them as starch for your collar.

The Blender Cloth Controls were more detailed in April 2006:

  Collision : This toggles whether the object is a collision object.    Collision objects are not cloth objects, they only allow the cloth
  objects to react to them when they collide. To collide with a cloth
  object, this button should be toggled on and the object should share
  a layer with the cloth objects with which it should collide.
  Bake Settings : This button switches the mode of the cloth modifier    panel to baking mode, allowing the user to bake the results.
  Simulation Type : Presently there is only one solver implemented, the
  Provot solver as described in his paper above. There are however 3
  forms of integration, Explicit Euler, Middle Point and Runge-Kutta.
  Collision Type : This allows the user to specify what type of    collisions to process for the cloth object. Presently only the None
  and KDOP options are available.
  Pinned Vertex Group : If a vertex group is chosen in this menu, those    vertices are not affected by the cloth modifier. They are
  pinned in    place.
  Mass Scale Vertex Group : This vertex group allows the user to    multiply the point mass by the influence/weight a vertice has in the
  vertex group. Thus parts of the cloth can have different weights
  making part of it appear wet or heavier for other reasons.
  Mass Vertex Group : This vertex group allows the user to directly    specify the weight of the vertices. The Scale parameter is used to
  adjust the results of this.
  Scale : This allows the user to scale the results of applying a Mass    Vertex Group.
  Gravity X, Y and Z : These provide an external force to the cloth.
  Spring Stiffness : These three parameters control the Structural,    Shear and Flexion spring stiffness.
  Damping Springs : This is the damping factor applied to motion    produced by the springs.
  Damping Viscous : This damping factor is applied to all motion of the    cloth, higher values produce results like moving through water
  or    mud.
  Damping Self Fr : This will be used as the damping factor for    friction caused by self collisions of the cloth.
  Damping Friction : This damping factor is applied to the cloth    vertices that collide with collisoin objects.
  Simulation Steps : This controls how many steps per frame are used in    the simulation. Higher values produce better results in general,
  but    take longer to compute.
  Simulate Adjustments : Adjustments controls whether or not attempts    are made to keep the springs in the cloth from exceeding their
  original length multipled by Tc. When set to -1, the Structural
  springs get increasingly stiffer, up to 100 times stiffer, as the
  springs's length divided by its original length aproaches Tc. At 0
  (zero), not adjustments are made. At 1 (one) or greater, Provot's
  algorithm of adjusting the springs is done as many times as specified
  by this parameter.
  Simulation Mass : This specifies the base mass of a vertice in a    cloth object. The final value of the mass for any given vertice can
  be influenced by the Mass Scale Vertex Group and/or the Maxx Vertex
  Group.
  Simulation MinZ : Provides an artificial floor below which the cloth    vertices will not go.
  Simulation Epsilon : This provides a buffer distance for collision    detection and response. In the current implementation, small values
  in the range of 0.001 to 0.005 generally work best, although in some
  cases larger values may be desired.
  Simulatin Tc : This specifies the critical deformation length as a    ratio to the original spring length. This value has no effect if
  Adjustments are 0 (zero).
  Simulation Spr Len : This allows the user to specify an artificially    large or small base spring length. When this value is
  1.0, the    simulation behaves normally. With values less than 1 (one), the    springs are treated as if they were shorter than they
  actually are    which can be useful to shrink clothing to fit tighter
  on a model ...    think spandex. If this value is greater than 1
  (one), it provides an    artificial force to expand the cloth object
  which can be useful to    give bounce to a skirt or dress.
  Simulation Pre-roll : This provides some artificial frames prior to    the start of the animation to allow the cloth to find its resting
  position.
  Simulation Col Loop : This is the maximum number of times per step    collisions will be tested. This parameter is likely to go away.

Daniel Genrich simplified the controls by May 2008:

  StructStiff: Structural Stiffness also includes shear stiffness. Both    define the stiffness of the structure of the cloth. Lower
  values will    make the cloth look like elastic rubber.
  BendStiff: Bending Stiffness describes how the cloth forms its    wrinkles. Higher values result in bigger but not necessarily more
  wrinkles.
  Spring Damp: Specifies how much the amount of movement will be    lowered. This can prevent unwanted jiggling, and can result also in
  smoother animation.
  Air Damp: How thick is the air? How much movement will it stop due to    its thickness? Practically speaking, you receive slower movement
  of    cloth with higher air damping. With air damping set to zero, you
  have    moon surface conditions.
  Quality: More quality gives more stable cloth (less jiggling with    high BendStiff) and additionally you receive better collision
  responses.
  Mass: More mass gives heavier cloth, with slightly more weight on the    border like normal cloth.
  Gravity: X, Y and Z direction of the gravity you want to have working    on the cloth.
  Min Distance: Defines the cloth thickness where the collision    response kicks in. It helps to keep a minimum distance between the
  Cloth and the colliding mesh. Just increase it if you encounter
  collision penetrations (This is only one of two available options
  to resolve that issue - you could also increase the Quality on the
  first Cloth panel).
  Friction: Friction defines how good a cloth can slide over a    collision object. See this for how friction effects the cloth
  collisions.
  Min Distance: Defines the cloth thickness where the selfcollision    response kicks in. It helps to keep a minimum distance between the
  Cloth.
  Selfcoll Quality: This values helps you to resolve several layers of    selfcollisions. Be carefull: the Collision Quality has to be at
  least    as high as Selfcoll Quality to have it working!
  StructStiff VGroup: Vertex Group to be used for Structural Stiffness    scaling.
  BendStiff VGroup: Vertex Group to be used for Bending Stiffness    scaling.
  StructStiff Max: Defines the Structural Stiffness maximum. The    structural stiffness gets scaled between this maximum (the red
  painted values on the vertex group) and the minimum StructStiff on
  the first Cloth panel (blue painted vertices on the vertex group). A
  linear interpolation function is used inbetween.
  BendStiff Max: Defines the Bending Stiffness maximum. The bending    stiffness gets scaled between this maximum (the red painted values on
  the vertex group) and the minimum BendStiff on the first Cloth panel
  (blue painted vertices on the vertex group). A linear interpolation
  function is used inbetween.

As of today (April 2015), the controls for Blender have three damping forces (Spring, Velocity, Air). Provot's model explains these three damping forces as follows (respectively: Internal, Gravity, Viscous-Damping/Air):

  The internal force is the resultant of the tensions of the springs
  linking P_ij to its neighbors. The external force is of various nature
  according to the kind of load to which we wish the model to be
  exposed. Omnipresent loads will be gravity, a viscous damping, and a
  viscous interaction with an air stream or wind. Let g be the
  acceleration of gravity, the weight of P_ij is given by F_g=mg. The
  viscous damping will be given by F_d=-C_dv where C_d is a damping
  coefficient and v is the velocity of point P_ij. The role of this
  damping is in fact to model in first approximation the dissipation of
  the mechanical energy of our model. It is introduced as an external
  force but could actually be considered as an internal force as well.
  Finally, a viscous fluid moving at a uniform velocity u exerts on the
  surface of a body moving at a velocity v a force F_v = C_v((n dot
  (u-v))n where n is the unit normal on the surface.

The controls today (April 2015) are very similar to the controls in May 2008. The full set of updated parameters can be found in the the current Blender Manual:
http://www.blender.org/manual/physics/cloth.html


How to deal with this edge Hello everyone,
I have done everything I can to deal with the line in the middle in an attempt to smooth it and turn it into a single surface but not been able to succeed in the end and wonder if any of you wish to take a look at the piece and help me out. It is part of an old object of mine that I worked on a long time ago and I have no idea what I pressed back then!
Despite having asked for help about this issue before, and been reading up help pages such as How to smooth shade an object while retaining hard edges? it has not managed to help me solve  the issue unless I was doing something wrong. No matter what features and tools I have tried using, the line stays and won't go, I sharpen the object or smooth it, the line stays.
Help appreciated :) I will add a download for analysis if anyone wants to take a look.
 github.com/Vemone/Projectss

First of all go to Edit Mode, select all and W > Remove Double, than select this edge and Ctrl+E > Clear Sharp.


duplicating a surface and making it a child node I would like to copy a surface from a rounded cube and make it a child node of the rounded cube. This image depicts what I mean.

The black square represents the surface that I want to duplicate and add to the cube as a child node. I'm really new to Blender and I appreciate any help I get.

Duplicate, separate and parent

To get the surface you'll have to duplicate the faces.

Enable Edit Mode, select the faces you need, duplicate them by pressing shift+d.
Your new faces shall now be selected, but they still belong to the cube object.

To separate them press p while the faces are still selected. Choose "Separate" in the pop up menu to tell blender that you want to put those faces in a different object with "selection" criteria.

Now that you have two diffeent object you can parent with hierarchy.


Making ventilation holes in a hockey mask style model I have searched tutorial videos and google for the answer to this but maybe I haven't been searching for the right thing, I basically want to make a grid of evenly spaced circles that can be wrapped over the surface of my model so that I can cut evenly spaced holes out of the mouth area for ventilation like a hockey mask. I want the circles when cut out to be perpendicular to the curved surface they will be set on, rather than all the holes cutting in the exact same direction. Is there a better way than making a grid of circles and manually warping them to a close enough curvature? I have found the circles to end up warping too much out of shape when doing this for my liking so wondered if there is a way to do this whilst keeping the perfect circular shape completely or almost intact. I have added a screenshot from a tutorial for modo with the orientation I want to achieve with my own ventilation holes.

If your mesh is clean and subdivided enough you can make as many holes as you need with the following method. If it has not enough edge loops you can add some with W > Subdivide Smooth or add and apply a Subdivision Surface modifier.

Select four faces, press i to inset, and scale down the inset.
Press W > LoopTools > Circle
Delete the inner faces of your circle
Now you have a hole
Add a Solidify modifier to give thickness to your shape
Add an edge loop around your circle if you want a sharper edge

If you want a low-poly mesh you can create a low-poly version of your mask, bake your high-poly version, and, in the low-poly material, recreate fake holes with Normal or Bump maps.


polar array w/empty plane axes First sorry for my english, i'm trying to create a polar array of a cylinder around another cylinder, i've seen some tutorials about polar arrays using an empty plane axes object to do that, however in my case i cant obtain the result i want, the first image shows the original array of objects, i have a small cylinder on the sufface of the bigger cylinder, i've located an empty plane axes object in the same plane that the small cylinder then i define the array modifier, i want 3 small cylinders around the bigger cylinder, i'm getting 3 cylinders but not around the surface of the bigger cylinder, the first one is the source object, the 2nd is rotated 90º over Z axle, the 3th is rotated 90º respect to the 2nd and around Y axle, , i'm guessing that the problem is in the orientation of the axes of the empty plane axes object, can you help me to solve this??? Thanks in advance:
LS

Place the 3D cursor in the center
Add your empty and the cylinder you want to clone
Go to edit mode and scale and position your cylinder at the First position
back to Object mode and create an array modifier on the small cylinder relative to the Empty and bump count up to 3
Rotate the empty 90°

A lot like here.


How can i save already done UV maps when merging two objects I have two objects which have already unwrapped UV's and I wont to merge them
in to one object but when I do that I lose UV's map from one object, so is there a
way to merge them with preserved UV's ?

So you're using Blender Render but I've got the solution. First merge all the columns, then in the Properties panel > Object Data > UV Maps, change the name of the UV map you're currently using, use the one you're using for the temple itself (it is called UVMap). Join everything, it works.


Online render farms for blender I wanted to ask if there are any free render farms. I tried to find one but I couldn’t. If anyone finds a “free” render farms pls tell me.

Sheep it is free to use. Your projects will be prioritized if you have enough "credits", which you obtain by sharing your CPU/GPU (that is, rendering other users projects), but that's not mandatory.
Sheep it Renderfarm


White background turning grey during video creation I use filmic color management and cycles. I have done a 360° turntable animation and created 120 PNG frames (8 bits) with pure white background.

However, when I create a video from this PNG sequence (with VSE), the white background turns to grey (I use MPEG-4 and H.264 codec). I encountered a similar problem when I created the frames: I used compositing to add the pure white background, since everything was transparent except for the subject, but I faced issues due to the fact I was using filmic. This post saved me: White background with filmic blender.

So my question is: what can I do to have a video animation that have the same color range than my input PNG sequence and then have my pure white background?

Edit 1: after investigation (I'm new to Blender), it appears that the background already turned greyish on the preview in video editing mode. Maybe it can help to find the source of the problem.

Short answer:

Your source and your output need proper color management.

Long answer:

If your sources have already been mapped to display referred values, then set the input values to sRGB and set the color management to use sRGB as well and set the view to default.

It makes no sense to use filmic blender color transforms if you are not using scene referred values with a wide dynamic range, or if your sources are not log encoded.

As a side note: if you end up using log encoding, avoid an 8bit format for the images, it will only give you headaches and lots of quantization errors.
Please read this post: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/46940/1853 to understand how values are mapped.


The basics of how to start modeling I am having a lot of trouble starting with blender. I am trying to make a train track to start but I am having a lot of trouble creating the shapes. When I click on Add → Mesh → Cube, it gives be a cube that I do not know how to resize.

What are some general ways that I can resize, modify and go about transforming the default primitive objects in Blender?

For a very, very quick start. The absolute 3 things you need to know to begin effectively modeling in Blender are:

Interaction Modes

Object Mode

You are placed in object mode by default when you add a new primitive. You can translate, rotate and scale the object along the three axes whilst in this mode but to get finer control, you want to enter edit mode. Use Tab to enter edit mode from object mode.

Edit Mode

In edit mode, you have access the underlying structure of the object, you have much more control here and this is where you will spend most of your time when modeling. Likewise, use Tab to exit edit mode and enter object mode.

Mesh Select Modes

Once you are in edit mode, you have 3 different control handles that you can use to help shape the mesh. These are pretty intuitive so I won't explain them and you can read more about these on the relevant wiki page.

Vertex

Edge

Face

Mesh manipulation

This is how you can shape and tweak your mesh. While you can do this object mode as well, you have much more control while you are in edit mode as you have access to the mesh control points.

Translate

Rotate

Scale

If you can understand those, you are on your way. Once you are past this stage, you can start looking at more advanced things such as extrusion, beveling and modifiers etc.

There is too much information to go into here and this should suffice. Your next steps would be to:

Watch some introductory video tutorials (archived), more tutorials for modeling in Blender.
Read the introduction to modeling on the manual.
Browse the modeling and workflow tags on this site for more tips and tricks such as this.

Also, some common shortcuts that you should learn are:

G to grab (translate)
S to scale
R to rotate

Nail these basics and you will be making your own models in no time, using the basic steps above, you can make your train tracks easily by just scaling and translating simple cubes.


sort objects in outliner case-insensitive I really love blender but what puts me off a little bit is the case-sensitive sorting in the outliner.

Mostly I use lower case object names, but freshly created objects always have an upper case first character. The only option available here is to disable alphabetical sorting, but that's counterproductive in my case.

So, does anybody know an addon or something to achieve case-insensitive sorting?

I think there's no need in addon for the thing like that.

The software put a new object name with an upper case because of python script in the source code that define an objects' (for example cube) name with upper case. So the solutions are:

Name your objects with a capital letter
Rewrite source files. I mean put cube instead of Cube in every file where it is. But it's time consuming

PS

You can create new objects on the separate layer with enabled option "visible layers" in outliner


how to send property value as a message sent by multiple object? i was working on a game and i need to send multiple property values from different objects through different scenes using message body set to "property"

any ideas ?

As ZargulTheWizard mentioned, the only way to receive the body text/values at run-time is with Python API. However, you could use a different setup, that being to send a simple "buy.100" message as you showed above, than, on the object(s) that are meant to be receiving the messages vie message sensors, have them use a property actuator with type "copy" to copy the "value" property to and fro the sending/receiving objects. You'll also need to have a game-property with the same type (e.g boolean, integer, float) on the receiving object(s).


Color disappears after changing render engine from Blender internal to Cycles I am importing a colored .ply file, which is basically an output of a 3D scan. When I import it in Blender internal, and tick the checkbox "Textured Solid" in the menu, the color shows up on the 3D model. No issues so far. Now when I change it to Cycles, I am not able to see the colors. Colors on the object change to the default grey.

I have checked the following questions which were previously asked:

Textures disappear when the rendering engine is switched to cycles

Textures and colors not imported from OBJ file when using Cycles render

They talk about plug-in which converts materials or textures added in Blender Internal to be compatible with Cycles. But in my case, there are no materials that I am adding. The texture associated with .ply is not shown in the materials or texture section. I am not using any UV maps also. So, I am not able to figure out how to turn on the texture associated with the ply file in the Cycles Render. There is no .mtl kind of a material file with .ply

In the materials panel, go to the Options section, and set the checkbox for Vertex Color Paint.


How to import bpy module in PyCharm IDE? I know that bpy is not available in python outside of blender which is totally fine, however I'd like to work on my blender python scripts using an IDE (in my case PyCharm from Jetbrains).

Therefore I'd like to somehow let the IDE know about the bpy module so my import bpy statements are not marked red and also autocompletion features would work. What would be the best way to achieve this?

I don't have PyCharm on this machine, but have used it with Blender on my dev machine. So I can't detail the setup now - but for starters, see this dev doc regarding debugging Blender with Eclipse: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Tools/Debugging/Python_Eclipse

should be close enough for you to use with PyCharm (which is a custom eclipse). I presume you're okay with local (single machine) debugging - that's what I have setup in Eclipse/PyDev, tho in other Python work, I came across a browser-based setup that I adapted to PyDev - so now I debug Blender in the Browser - with the api docs in the 'tab next door' - very convenient.

if you're interested in remote debugging instead, see this recent dev blog entry: http://code.blender.org/2015/10/debugging-python-code-with-pycharm/

m23d


how to twist two wires into a blender? have next problem. One wire is twisting around second, but second is not do same

i want create next:

Comment by Giorgious echo: the circle that is not getting screwed is perfectly centered on the object origin. Move the geometry to that the touching point of the two circles is what is over the origin.


One object darker than another I have two separate objects, however one seems darker than the other. I've checked the normals, which seem to be all pointing outwards

Could someone please explain why the smaller object seems darker than the larger one in 3d view?

Here are the color of meshes in viewport and their meaning


How to supinate the arm How do you rotate the hand from a neutral position:

to a supinated (palm facing up) position

I rotated the forearm bone on the y axis for demonstrative purposes
which twists the elbow like a balloon animal

In actual anatomy, the humerus (upper arm) would naturally rotate about 60-90 degrees, and the remaining 90-120 degrees would be performed at the distal end of the radius/ulna (essentially the wrist). To model this in a blender armature, I would rotate the upper arm bone ~70 degrees, and the forearm bone ~110 degrees.

Of course, this may introduce problems with skinning. You may want to break your upper and lower arms into 2 or 3 sub-bones each, with constraints that keep them from doing anything other than an axial rotation with respect to each other. Then you can weight paint the surrounding mesh in a gradual fashion so the mesh smoothly rotates just like in reality.


All Faces to Individual Objects I am looking for a way to take all the faces of an object and make each face it's own object.

In the image above, you'll see a basic representation of what I'm trying to accomplish. On the left is a shape with faces, all attached. On the right is the result I want, an object for each face. The project I'm working on is much more complicated than this example, so I can't select each face and separate by selection. I have over 3,000 faces to work on.

In edit mode with all the faces selected, press space type split and select Edge Split. Then press P > By Loose Parts. Every face is now a separate object.

Warning separating 3000 faces into different objects will take a while, if not crash blender.
After splitting the faces, you may have to brake up your mesh in to smaller pieces, then run the By Loose Parts command. You can select (say half of the faces) and separate them into different objects with P > Selection.

If you need the new objects' origins relocated, you can select all the objects and press ShiftCtrlAltShiftC > Origin to Geometry. Or if that keyboard short cut is too long, in the 3D view header Object > Transform > Origin to Geometry.


Shadow pass - terminator problem? BI. Simple UV sphere with smooth shading and Point lamp with raytraced shadow. Main render is correct, but Shadow Pass is blocky. Why?

Split view:

You're in luck, since you are Blender Internal. This can be fixed using the Shadow Bias sliders in the materials tab. It will recalculate the blocky shadows taking the smooth shading into account. Render times will be just a bit slower, but not by much.


Node setup for realistic transparent plastic I'm looking for a material node setup, which makes it possible to create plastic objects like this. I'm mainly interested in the shiny edges. The glass node is nearest but not perfect.

The problem with this kind of model is that the light needs to bounce around inside the glass many times to reach the edges and create the shiny edges.

A glass shader is what you need, but you also need to crank the number of Glossy bounces way up. See this comparison with the default number of Glossy Bounces (top) vs. the maximum number of Glossy Bounces (bottom):

Note that I also increased the total maximum number of bounces.

In the bottom image there is much more edge glow, however the rendering time has also increased by almost 70%. For larger models this effect will probably be even stronger since the light will bounce inside the glass for a longer time.Be aware that if your model is so large or complicated that the light will need more than 1024 bounces to reach an edge you will not get shiny edges there.

The model I used in my example is just a scaled cube with a simple glass shader and an emission shader on one of the faces.

EDIT 1:
Make sure the color of your glass shader is set to (almost) white. Otherwise every bounce will darken the reflected light and there won't be much left for shiny edges. Unfortunatly the default color of the glass shader is grey and the light will not bounce for long.

EDIT 2:
Here is another small test scene:

I gave the edges a slight roughness and used a texture for the displacement of the surface. You can download the .blend file as reference.


How to select polygons facing camera instead of polygons located in the opposite side I want to select marked face:

however back face gets selected:

Is there an option in blender to only select facing polygons camera ?

While in Edit mode and (by default) along the bottom of the 3D view, between the Vertex/Edge/Face selection and the Magnet will be an icon that looks like two square polygon faces with four vertices on the corners with one face being in front of the other.

Hovering over this button will bring a tooltip that says "Limit selection to visible (clipped depthbuffer)". Toggling this button will change between the model being solid or transparent.  When the model appears solid, you will only select faces that are directly under the arrow, and not faces that might be behind it.

I wish I could post a screenshot but I'm unable to at the moment.


Alpha 2.8 - Mirror in edit mode I'm currently discovering the reworked UI of Blender 2.8. I have some kind of cube, cut in half, mirrored to a full cube again using the mirror modifier. In edit mode, I've noticed some changes that I personally dislike.

It could be a bug, a feature, or just a default setting:
I'm only seeing the half mesh that I'm able to edit, the other side is simply not shown. In previous blender versions, you could always see the mirrored part, here it is completely gone.

Also, if I'm using subdivision surface, I can only see the real model in edit mode, without the filter "applied".

Here are two screenshots showing a similar model in edit mode:

Do you know if this is just a simple setting?

Thanks

I would suggest that it's simply broken at the moment - the button on the modifier to 'Display modifier in Edit Mode' is still there, it just doesn't do what it's supposed to do right now.
I'm sure they'll get round to it eventually!


Sampled motion blur in cycles I'm using blender 2.78.5 (daily builds) to render a scene where an object it's supposed to appear "vibrating".  The idea is to add sampled motion blur, such as when several frames are rendered and composited on the same picture.  I'm not trying to achieve a realistic motion blur effect, but more an artistic effect to illustrate the notion of movement.

The manual for 2.78 says that there is an option for sampled motion blur in the render settings, for the internal render.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/blender_render/settings/motion_blur.html

Is there any way to do that in Cycles?

Thanks

The individual frames that you see with Blender Internal are more of an artifact due to the low number of samples, not really a feature.

You can achieve something similar in Cycles with a custom shutter curve that has multiple peaks:


How to completely fill an object with fluid? I know how to make obstacles and inflows in Blender, but I do not know how to simply select an object and have it be filled totally with fluid.

What tool/command/setting do I need to have an obstacle become filled with fluid?

There is no shortcut at all. My idea could be select the inner side of your container mesh and duplicate it with Shift + D.
Then press P to separate the selection into another object.
You can try to make new mesh closed by selecting its top loop and pressing F and with luck get it close without much work (the mesh must be closed the Fluid sim to work).
Then add Fluid modifier in Physics panel.


How to change text color from red to white? I did a text animation based on this YouTube video.

Dissolve Animation by Tutor4u

When I render by clicking the animation button I get this.

APG Dissolve Animation

My issue is I want to color the "A" and "P" text white (hex color - ffffff) and leave the "G" text red (hex color - ff0000) but I can't seem to find a way to do it.

Here is my blend file.

Go to top view (Numpad7) In edit mode select the A & P text with box select. In the material tab add new color and change color white (fffff) and assign the material to the mesh.


How to reset animation curves in graph editor I changed up the curves in the graph editor however i would like to reset them back to automatic interpolation. I dont know how to do this and I cant seem to find a solid answer

I don't know if there's a direct way to do it but starting from that:

you could press V to change the interpolation mode to Vector:

then press V again to choose Automatic:

and you'll be back to the default interpolation:


Smoke isn't rendering in cycles 2.92 I was trying to make a smoke sim but noticed after baking that the smoke doesn't render, the sim shows up in wireframe view. Any help?
[https://pasteall.org/blend/0cc1f3837ff24ccaa43e8c4e6ee1c080](.blend file)

give this material setup to your domain:


Deformation of the grid with the falloff I am trying to model a deformation of a grid with interpollation in the Animation Node, but as you can see I didn't can to use FALLOFF for to get a grid according with 1/r². Can someone help me? is it possible to use an configuration(Falloff) in AN to deform the grid according to the equation (-1/r²)?

Equation [-1/(x²+y²)]
[]2

Falloffs in Animation Nodes are mostly hard-coded, that is, you need to write cython/python code to create a custom falloff. So it is much easier to compute the effect you are after manually. A simple implementation of grid deformation is as follows:

Want to transform it based on an empty? Simply subtract the location of the empty from the x and y of your equations:

Want to scale it? Similarly multiply the scale of the empty to the x and y of the equation.


Why am I getting artifacts around the edge of a mesh I'm texture baking? I’m trying to bake a high poly branch into a plane. I’m getting these weird artifacts around the edges of the mesh. Why am I getting this? Are there any ways to fix this?

I found a solution to my problem. I set the Margin to 0 px. Blender generates additional pixels for seamless bakes which I didn't need.


What have I done that causes the one face to be effected differently to the subsurf modifier? I must have done something to this face,edges or vertices that despite looking O.K. in wireframe mode is affected by the subsurf modifier. Can I correct it?

The face was in fact detached. At some point I must have used the Hotkey Y and split the face whilst the face was selected. According to the blender Manual this disconnects (splits) the selection from the rest of the mesh and the border edge to any non-selected elements are duplicated and the “copy” is left exactly at the same position as the original.
To fix this I used the Remove Doubles tool which according to the Blender Manual merges the selected vertices that are closer than a specified distance to each other.

In Vertex Mode, Select all, Ctrl-V (shortcut to Vertex menu), Remove Doubles.

This answer was in fact provided by Robin Betts in the comments section. Many thanks to him.


Mixamo FBX and animation to blender I want to import FBX file from Mixamo into blender to render some animation but regardless of what settings I try the armature twists the model into unhuman positions. It functions proparly with the model so by reseting the rotation I can get the model with armature standing in Tpose but I cannot get any of the animations working because of the twisted position.

I also noticed that the animations are not realy animations, only frames that have the same values.

anybody running into this issue as well? or am I missing something important.

The settings

With Apply transforms on(actually rely gives bad results)

And the settings that I show on the pictuer only the manual orientation was different by the (laying figure) but thats not something I would be confused about...

I can un-check the use pre/post rotations but that way I achive only the same as if I reset all the bone rotations. figure in T-pose with no animation attached.

thank you everyone I am trying to figure this out for quite some time already.sorry for the lack of knowledge if Im missing something obvious.

After some time and (walk outside), I got to find some sort of solution,

I used the Mixamo Collada (.dae) export that opened (after import to blender) as an armature only (no model included, Not sure why but anyway).

The difference is that the .dae file was correctly animated with no armature distortion/twists.

here is armature in the animation (sleeping position)

than I imported .fbx model in T-pose that I also run thru the Mixamo ridging process, to make the armatures matching with the (.dae).

there is some issue with the T-pose in Mixamo exports as I found in this coment on youtube (god bless him)

And then I swap the armatuers of the .fbx model
in hierarchy -> right click on armature(the one you want to !change!) ->  select 'remap User' -> in drop down menu by 'New ID' select the new armature that has the animation.

There is some issue with the hip bone of the .dae armature but that should not be too difficult to solve.

hope I can help someone, If there is better solution how to get the mixamo Characters (animations) work good, pls post the answer ( I have tried to look countless tutorials ( most of them old by now ) and I think that things has changed and nothing of that worked for me.


Boolean modifier not working with hiccup Newbie to blender here, I've done quite a bit of searching through the rest of the forum for this answer but I'm sorry if it's already been asked.

I work in a medical office and we might possibly be 3d printing a prosthetic nose attachment.  We have a patient missing some of her nose and I have a 3d scan of her face.  I also have a 3d scan of someone else's nose I am trying to fit on the front of her face. (Pictured, I can't show much more for confidentiality reasons)

I've lined them up fairly well and I was thinking I'd use boolean difference to "carve" out from the nose attachment everything that was really on the patient's face.  For some reason the modifier just isn't working at all.  When I click, nothing happens.  I've read around the forum's and suggestions such as solidifying the objects (they already have been) don't seem to work.  The bulk of the other suggestions deal with making sure the objects are manifold.  When I use shift-ctrl-alt-m to find non-manifold surfaces, nothing shows up.

The other thing I read was that overlapping parts can cause some issues for the boolean modifier... well, that one I don't know how to get around.  Maybe you have some suggestions?

Edit:
Update for you:  both items are scaled the same.  I removed all doubles, followed guidelines suggested by cegaton and made sure normals faced the same way.

They had been solidified but I noticed that the modifier WAS actually doing something, it was just drawing a faint line around the nose where it overlapped.. so I realized while the face was solid it just wasn't very thick.  So I solidified it as much as blender would allow me (without turning the face into a giant ball) and tried again... Which resulted in this:

My overlap threshold is set at 0.0002.  That seemed to make it more noticable than when it was set at 0.000001.... but let me know if thats a huge mistake.

Or if there is an easy way to separate the part of the nose I want after it did draw a faint line.... I'm game.

Booleans are odd things and need certain things to be right before they work, one of the things that stops them working is Scale.

Make sure you have the scale of both objects set to $1,1,1$. by pressing Ctrl + A to Apply Scale (adjust geometry to match the scaled version and set scale to $1$.

Also try and make sure your models are fully closed (solid with no holes). Since  your working with  a scan of a face, try to add geometry on the back, or use the Solidify modifier with a large thickness, to turn it into a solid object.

I also find the Bool Tools addon helps me a lot as well.

Occasionally I have also used a work around of copying the Boolean objects and pasting them into a fresh scene and voila, it works! Not always a reason given, you can then paste them back to where they need to be.


Best way to achieve floaty bouncy physics? I'm trying to achieve non-realistic bouncy physics, specifically for ears and tails like the physics shown in these example Example 1 Example 2
I've tried with the spring bones addon and blender's default soft body & clothes but I haven't been able to achieve something close to that bouncy-floating style of physics. Any help or suggestions with this are highly appreciated!

I realize that my first answer may be buggy (or at least I need to fix the issue), so here are 2 alternatives, with or without addon, I don't know if it will fit your needs though, as you ask for realism:
With the Wiggle Bones addon:

Create your mesh and armature. Download the Wiggle Bones addon created by Shteeve here. In Pose mode, select each of the ear bone and go in the Properties panel > Bone and enable the Wiggle Bone option, play with the parameters.

Without addon:

Create an edge, each of its vertex must stick to each bone's head and tail. Assign it a vertex group, the bottom vertex must have a weight of 1, the second a weight of 0.7, the last one a weight or 0.2 or 0.1.
Give this edge a Physics > Cloth and in the Physics Shape panel, choose the group as Pin Group.
Create an empty for each vertex, parent each empty to its vertex (select the empty, shift select the edge, go in Edit mode, press CtrlP > Make Vertex Parent).

Give each bone an IK constraint and give it as Target the empty its pointing to. Choose a Chain Length of 1.
Parent the edge to the head bone.


Armature Fingertips Not Following Bone I've been working with making a rig for about 2 hours, now, but just can't get past one issue. I had several issues with my rig, but then I used an automatic deform instead of an empty group and assigning all the vertex manually.

The only issue I can find now, it that when I move the fingertip bones, the fingertip don't follow the bones correctly. If I move the whole arm, or the forearm or hand, the fingertips move correctly with the whole arm, but moving the actual fingertip bones doesn't work correctly.

I'm guessing it has something to do with bone weighting, but I don't know what to adjust.

Here is a picture of the finger before moving the bone:

And here is one after moving the bone:

EDIT:
I  just found out that it only happens with the finger tips on the index fingers, all the other fingers are fine.

My friend suggested I check if the finger end was connected to any other bone, it was also connected to the middle part of the finger. Fixed that, and now it works fine.


How to create a cable/wire for animation? So I've created a "noodle" with a path and a bezier Circle that has soft body so that when I click play it will drop and flop about.

What I'm trying to do is have one of the cubes stationary while the other moves around having the noodle between them stretch and move around like its a cable.

Any tips on this?

Create a singe wire mesh composed of one edge, connecting the two cubes as desired.

Subdivide it a few times in Edit Mode. Create a new Vertex Group for the tips where you will only include the two end vertex (will be used for pinning later).

Now Object Mode select one of the cubes, then Shift select the cable so that both are selected. With both still selected enter Edit Mode on the cable and select only the corresponding tip vertex.

Hook that vertex to the cube by searching the Space Bar menu for Hook to Selected Object. Repeat the process for the other cube with its corresponding end vertex.

Now activate a Cloth physics type for the cable, and pick the previously created Vertex Group for pinning.

Add a Skin modifier to give the cable some thickness

Add a Subsurf modifier to the cable mesh at the end of the stack to get a circular section cable and smoother results.

Rearrange your modifier stack if necessary to make sure both hooks are at the top of the list, followed immediately by the physics modifier.

You can now move the cubes and have the cable behave realistically.

You can optionally add a second Subsurf modifier to the rope before skinning to get smoother bending, or alternatively right before the physics modifier for a more detailed simulation. Beware that the second option will considerably affect simulation complexity, and may severely affect performance and calculation time.


Exporting back to ArcScene I am trying to create surfaces in Blender using data from ArcScene. Using BlenderGIS I have imported my shapefile, exploded the polygons and lofted the ones I want together and smoothed them. I have tried exporting this as a collada file back into ArcScene but the result is just a mash of polygons that the software cannot interpret even though it thinks it can.

I guess the question here is how do I export a model from Blender back into ArcScene, preferably rectified if possible. I have attached an example of the file I am trying to put into ArcScene here

Thanks in advance for any help,

Josh

The answer to this question basically comes down to processing power and patience. The error I state above was solved by closing the program and trying again. The other issues come down to making sure that the normals are correct in Blender which was addressed by this question.

Making sure the computer has enough memory to cache all the data require is a must, I found that computers with more RAM and processing power could handle transforming shapes with higher face counts into multipatches. Having said that I suspect there may be a limit of about 50,000, but have yet to confirm this.


Cycles memory problem I have a scene, about 20 mio faces, 1000 objects, 90% are instances. All modifiers are applied to the objects, in fact, not a single modifier is on any object.
Using the cycles preview, the scene takes about 1GB of my 4GB VRAM. Blender says 2,5GB Mem in the title bar. The scene renders in seconds in the preview.
When I render using F12, Blender uses almost all of my 8GB physical RAM (value of Windows Proccess Explorer), saying in it's title it uses 5.5GB of RAM. I increased my virtual memory to 24GB on an SSD, making 32GB in total.
Blender uses all of that, taking forever to synchronize objects and build BVH.
I let it run, it continued, but very slow.
At the end I get the CUDA out of memory message.
Conclusion:

4GB VRAM
8GB Physical RAM
24GB Virtual RAM
In preview rendering the scene uses 1GB VRAM and 2.5GB RAM.
In final rendering 4GB VRAM and 32GB RAM ain't enough to render it

Any idea what I can do?
EDIT:
I simplified the scene and made a screenshot.
Green marker: GPU Memory
Red: RAM, Taskmanager (top), Blender (bottom)

Still the scene doesn't render, memory rises in task manager up to 7.7GB, then starts to fill up the 24GB of virtual memory.
Nobody seems to know, how to solve the problem. Maybe someone can answer the question, why this is happening. Why takes it 2 seconds for the cycles preview render to load my scene, build BVH and render it without any trouble, peaking at 1GB VRAM, while F12 eats up all RAM, fails to render and claims I'm out of VRAM? It should be other way round, that the F12 render uses less VRAM, from my experience.
Also the question, why Blender displaying RAM usage completely wrong, remains. I've read an article of Blender Developer Sergey, he's talking about memory fragmentation, but I doubt that would cause more than double of RAM usage. Sure, I don't know.
EDIT2:
I scratched together my last bucks and bought 16GB RAM. Didn't help. Syncronizing and building the scene used again all 16GB of memory and then continued with the virtual memory.
All I can say is, this is definitly a bug. I cannot think of any logical reason, why a scene that uses 1GB VRAM in Cycles preview would use 10x as much in final rendering, given the facts that:

There is no modifier on any object
Textures are small, 90% of objects are instances
Nothing is created at rendertime, there is no particle system

I have no clue where to look for, what could cause this, and apparently no one else has. So I will conclude this is a unknown bug.

A bit hard to see on the screenshot. Below you can see the GPU memory peak at 10GB. On the right you can see Blender claiming to use 2770MB of memory. Not on the image, in the taskmanager all 16GB of RAM where used.

I know your question is ancient, but I've just hit the same problem, and yours was the closest matching thread to my circumstances - Cycles running out of VRAM on render when you have already checked Subsurf doesn't have higher Subdivisions on Render vs viewport.

My VRAM "leak" was off-camera objects. It appears viewport Cycles render only loads the objects currently on-screen into memory, while Render time everything not explicitly hidden in outliner in the Rendered layers enters VRAM.

Given you mentioned many objects, quickest fix is to use Camera Cull (think introduced Blender 2.76) ticking it under Scene> enable Simply > Tick Use Camera Cull. Then tick "Use Camera Cull" under all the possibly offscreen object's Object panel > Cycles Settings.
Provided you're not too fussed about off-camera objects casting shadows/reflections from far off, simply tick the Use Camera Cull on one object, then select all other objects with the initial object as Active and use the "Copy Custom Properties" button (installed from external script by  scorpion81: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?316484-Addon-Copy-Custom-Properties), which will tick this on all objects instead of doing it one-by-one.


How can I add background to rendered image I have just made my render but I cannot see the background in my Rendered Image. I have already added it to the "camera perspective" but still cannot see it in the rendered image. Please help me because I really want my render to be perfect...

You can  create plane and use this recipe with texture you like it works perfectly every time


Select object by clicking it (not based on origin) I have a very annoying issue, I have set left click select. The problem is that when I try to select an object Blender will not only choose the object based on the origin that is the closest 90% of the time but it also selects more than 1 sometimes. I want to select what I click on regardless of which origin is nearby. I can't find any options for this.

Use Alt+click to choose which object to select in the menu listing all objects underneath your mouse position, even if their origin is far from the zone.


Test if empty touches mesh/depth object with python I'm doing motion capturing of facial expressions, having an empty (constrained to a track in the movie clip editor) "sliding" on a facial surface mesh (depth object). However, for some large facial movements, the empty "drops off" the depth object. I don't want to enlarge the depth object.

Here the empty "slides" on the depth object (facial mesh):

Here the empty can not be projected on the depth object and "falls off" to some standard distance:

Is there a way to test for each frame whether the empty "touches" the mesh/depth object (or not) in bpy?

Thanks to the link of batFINGER to the function closest_point_on_mesh() I wrote a function which does the trick:

def is_empty_on_mesh (empty,mesh,maxDist = .000001):

    empty = bpy.data.objects[empty]
    mesh = bpy.data.objects[mesh]

    # to compute distance via closest_point_on_mesh() the
    # objects have to be translated from global to local space
    emw = empty.matrix_world.to_translation()
    mmwi = mesh.matrix_world.inverted()

    local_pos = mmwi * emw
    (hit, loc, norm, face_index) = mesh.closest_point_on_mesh(local_pos)
    vec = mesh.matrix_world * loc

    dist = (vec - emw).length
    #print("Function Dist:",dist) # Debugging
    return(dist < maxDist)

is_empty_on_mesh(NameOfEmpty, NameOfMesh)

The function returns TRUE or FALSE, depending on the distance being smaller than .000001 (this value is somehow arbitrary).