How to paint a mesh using materials instead of textures I've sculpted a landscape, and I`d like to paint on a few different materials. Texture paint is fine for this, but I would like to use the settings I have created in the node set up for my materials because they have normal, bump & gloss maps attatched. Is it possible to paint using materials instead of only textures?

A simple solution is to use masks.
Create an image to use as a mask between your shaders, and paint on that image.

Better if you can see for your self.. here is a simple file ready to
 paint drive.google.com/open?id=0BxfJ7ZIHabcZNXFfdTdiaGd0TGM

If you cannot download the file, this is a very basic idea of the node setup:


Physics simulation and image plane I am trying to make some 3d video effect. Is it possible to apply physics simulation on an image/video plane such that it interact with other objects in the scene? E.g. can a video becomes fluid and interact with a obstacle to create splashes?

Yes using the fSPY add-on. You can take a reference image, and then use the fSPY guides to model a scene based off of the objects in the picture. You can then import the .fspy file into Blender, and create a fluid simulation with it. This is the best way to do it.


How to animate a cube pivoting more than once without affecting it's original position Hi I'm in desperate need of help, I'm creating an animation for a Magic Cube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcQ0xYWhX0k

This video shows what I need to create

So far I have been able to move the pivot of a cube one way and then again another by using an armature and an empty, however because these are now linked up I cannot figure out how to move the cube another turn

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d8...19at162154.png

here demonstrates the point i'm at, I have place empty cubes to show where I need the actual cubes to be, however if I attempt to link them the original position has changed. Is there anyway I can animate these cubes rotating with the one above them?

I'm new to Blender and have had to learn after using 3Ds max for a while I'm struggling a lot would really appreciate the help please! Also I hope this makes sense...

One way is to do this with help of empties. to parent them one after one:

For example, in the GIF below, D (the cube) is parented to empty C; C is parented to B; B is parented to A, which is the top-level parent here ("great-grandfather" :P). Then, insert keyframe for C, B and A in turn.

By using this method, the hierachy should be well planned before parenting, based on the expected rotation orders.

You may also want to replace the empties with armature of bones. You can see the hierachy better in this way since bones have head and tails, though a bit more complicated.

P.S.: For a pivot-switchable animation like this(especially with rotations), which can be really tricky, you have to find a way to control the pivots (better to be "pivot objects") to have them in position in time.


Missing vertices in Edit Mode I have append a mesh (rex) from this .blend file.

In edit Mode I see different vertices from objcet mode (see pictures).
The vertices of belt are missing!

OBJECT MODE:

EDIT MODE:

How can I edit vertices of belt?
Is It a bug?

This is my .blend file maybe can help.

In edit mode press Alt+H to unhide the vertices.

Vertices were hidden by pressing H in edit mode.


How do I loft lines into a mesh with Animation Nodes? This is yet again my confusion with Meshing using Animation Nodes. My idea is to duplicate Lines into multiple Lines object, which later I could loft. Apparently this is not yet simple. Maybe possible, if possible how to do this?

It's easier if you use an existing node to loft elements, which is the Spline Loft node instead. Basically, you create a bunch of splines before, feed that as a list to the node, and then decide on the amount of samples / divisions of the mesh. See this blend here:

Here's a screenshot of the full setup:

The loop below is a workaround for me to get a few splines in the fashion that you did. I feed a list of integers into it, only using the loop index to generate a few start and end coordinates. With that, I create straight splines and collect them in a list at the end.

This spline list I feed back into the loft node. The samples parameter determines the number of points on the spline which the node generates. Spline Samples of 2 means, only start and end point, so a straight line. Important: you also need to set the samples in the other direction. That's why I get the list length in the end, so each spline is then sampled as a division as well.

Using a bit of randomness, you get this:


.fbx export why there are no materials or textures? I used node textures in a mesh I exported to .FBX.

I then imported it into Unreal Engine 4 and it didn't import any textures; I clicked the Upload Textures option in Unreal Engine.

Is there something I'm doing wrong or is it Blender?

This is a frequently asked question.
TL;DR
Most file formats just don't support exporting textures, let alone full blown material definitions or other application specific features. Also most Blender importers/exporters don't currently support node based materials well.
Manually reproduce your materials using available textures at the target environment.
Long story
Materials are too implementation specific and tightly tied to the rendering system they belong to, or software they were created with. You can't, for the most part, import/export material definitions between applications, you can't even get Blender Internal Materials to work with Cycles Renderer nor vice versa, and  they are both created with Blender, let alone between completely different applications.
For this reason no file format you use can, or even tries to, import or export material properties, be it 3DS, FBX, Collada, STL, OBJ or any other. These are mostly mesh-only, geometry-centric file formats concerned with porting object shapes, and some times animation, armature, and basic shading, or color properties (like MTL files); never full complex material definitions.
There are simply no data structures in the specifications for most exchange file formats to accommodate that data, let alone all possible types of properties, settings or maps; and even if there were, there are way too many different rendering implementations for a variety of purposes and responding to distinct requirements (like speed or responsiveness for real time rendering engines or games, or realism for physically based 'offline renders'), and each using its own different set of parameters and particular ways of interpreting specific properties to be able to correctly match settings, parameters or particular features between them easily.
For example most real time rendering systems have need for some form of explicit "backface culling" option because rasterization relies heavily on it for performance reasons, yet in render like Cycles it is just a basic node because for raytracers it is irrelevant which direction a geometry faces. On the other hand glass and transparent shaders "just work" with great refraction in raytracers, yet in EEVEE you need to muck about with blending modes and transparency settings, nonexistent in Cycles, because representing object interactions is expensive and complex for rasterizers.
Some more common image based texture channels may some times be correctly preserved, like diffuse, specular, glossiness, or the increasingly popular "PBR workflows", but certainly never procedurally generated textures and/or generated texture coordinates, these are generated at render time and can't be exported. Have in mind that most Blender exporters do not even support Cycles node based materials at all (at the time of writing for Blender 2.79#), so even image textures used in Cycles node trees are most likely not expected to be preserved.
Same applies for many other features specific to applications or render engines, like lighting parameters, shadow settings, lamps, cameras, physics simulations (fluids, cloths, soft bodies), texture options (clamping, clipping, tiling, color adjustments), generated texture coordinates (anything not mapped explicitly by a UV map or created by unwrapping a mesh), material options (backface culling, shadows, visibility, transparency and blending modes) particle systems, smoke and fire sims, volumetric data, modifiers, shape morphing (like shapekeys or deformation based animations) and other "generated data", can't also for the most part be imported or exported (with a few exceptions).
How to solve it then?
All you can, and should, import/export are UV coordinates with your mesh so you can correctly apply your textures at the "target application", game engine or receiving rendering environment, where you'll be importing and displaying your model, be it Unreal, Unity, Gamekit, external rendering software or whatnot; or even Blender itself when importing models from elsewhere. UV maps are generally correctly preserved by most exchange file formats by default.
There you should spend some time recreating your materials from scratch again with the provided textures and available maps. Yes, it requires some backtracking and will take some time, but with practice it'll get quicker. Save presets into reusable libraries when available, to reduce the amount of repetition.
What you can do in some situations is use Blender to bake textures that you can later use in the final destination or receiving application to create materials there, not inside Blender.
Baking is the process of pre-calculating shading and storing it in a static image texture that may incorporate several optional channels like diffuse, glossy, indirect lighting, bump maps, normal maps, light-maps, among others. This may improve graphic quality or perceived "realism" at the expense of dynamism, as certain properties of materials and textures may become static, as if "painted onto the surface", like shadows or reflections. This is often a requirement for high performance mediums or low power platforms, like web or mobile gaming, where available resources are limited or unknown, and speed takes precedence over graphic fidelity.
Exceptions
One notable exception to all this is the glTF file format, which as of version 2.0 glTF does support some material definitions based on a metallic-roughness shading model in its specs. The glTF-Blender-IO addon created by the Khronos Group themselves supports exporting Principled BSDF node based materials. But even then some restrictions apply.
Due to the recent popularity of the Physically Based Rendering, and its increasing use in Game Engines and Real-Time rendering applications, it has become a sort of vaguely defined "loose standard" for describing surface properties of materials (although several differently nuanced versions exist).
Future Developments
PBR is not a standard however and not every implementation works the same way or interprets the same parameters similarly. The Principled BSDF was already written according to a model designed by an established industry leader (Disney) for their own internal use, and game engines like Unreal Engine® or texture painting applications like Substance Painter® also adopted it.
As the PBR workflow gains popularity and traction it is possible that more applications "join the movement" and implement it in the future. If a common standard can be agreed upon, it may be possible that in the future more importers/exporters improve compatibility with an increasing number of materials properties. They will likely either read directly from a Blend file, use some other hypothetical new file format, or be forced to implement new standards; as the current ones still lack data structures to correctly describe them. At this point it is pure speculation, and no known plans are made.
Related Issues

Importing OBJ with MTL and Image not working properly
When I save something as an OBJ file the texture does not save with it, why?
How to import a .mtl file?
Blender isn't importing mtl correctly with obj?
Export cycles material to unity
How to Import a model with textures applied?


Some questions on maintaining addons with multiple Blender versions I use a special build of Blender made to work with the Octane render plugin.  But I also frequently go into the regular Blender since Octane Blender is sometimes a release behind. What is the best way to maintain my plugins so multiple Blender versions have access?

Currently, I have plugins in each of the installs addons folder.  But I also notice my installed addons (like Flip Fluids, Khronos glTF exporter) also reside in the Windows AppData/Roaming folder.

When I want to update an addon, what is the most efficient way of doing this?
Do I need to copy the new files into each installs addons directory as well as the AppData/Roaming directory?

Can I delete the addons I want to update from each of the Blender installed script directories and JUST copy them to the AppData/Roaming directory?

Or should I set a custom path where each version of Blender can look for addons?
If I choose a custom path, does Blender still look in its own installed addons directory - first for all the addons that come with Blender and then in the custom path?

Blender saves its config files in a different folder for each version of blender. If your custom build is based on 2.79 then it will read the same config as the standard 2.79 build. The location and layout of config folders is explained here.

To have the same addon available to multiple versions, you need a copy of the addon in each versions config folder. To simplify upgrading you can use links to have each version read the same file contents. Links are also known as shortcuts or aliases. Create a folder for your addons and put your addons there, then create a shortcut in each config folder that you want the addon to be available. This may be easiest if you install the addon for the current version and then make links from that to any older versions you want to use the addon.


Animate Object to appear 1 layer at a time I am trying to animate an object so that it appear gradually one layer at time as though it was being 3D printed - almost like a timelapse of the object print

The easiest way is probably the boolean modifier. Set it to difference or intersection, whichever works better for you. Then, create an object (probably a cube) that either cuts off the parts you don't want or just includes the parts of your object you want the camera to see. Then animate the cube to move upwards as slow or fast as you want it to move.
Obviously, set the cube to not be rendered.

Two downsides of this method: You need a clean topology, otherwise the boolean modifier might create awkward results. The more vertices your object has, the longer the first initialisation of each frame will be once you hit the render button and especially when editing. For a couple of hundred or thousand of vertices this is probably no concern though.

Another method might be to animate the camera's clipping. This will not create a filling face on the top, however. And the camera has to be on top of your "3d print". This method is very rudimentary in general.


Is it possible to use a slider toggle from FK to IK, in a armature? I've seen in older Blender character rigs (such as Big Buck Bunny), character armatures had some floating slide toggles that affected whether a rig appendage was Forward-Kinematic or Inverse Kinematic (FK/IK), but newer rigs (such as Sintel) don't.

What is the current "best practice" way of creating an FK/IK toggle (is it part of the core application?), and what version of Blender did that become available?

For the former, it was never version specific and can still be done with later versions, people have desisted from doing so since there are several more efficient ways to do so.
The method I personally use and I think is most people use is a blend of constraints, drivers and a little scripting to create GUI components in the sidebars to toggle from FK <-> IK. I cannot say exactly when this became available but it is a core part of the application.


Weird driver behavior on frame change I came across some weird driver behavior and hope someone can explain this to me.

I was trying to create a wheel that rotates automatically on the floor when it is moved along. (Just like real world wheels do.)

To achieve this, I wanted to use a driver. (Use position to calculate rotation -> rotate the wheel)
However, I got different results for the same frame while scrubbing on the timeline:

Note that I'm always on frame 44 and the xLocation is also equal. But the driver result varies and the wheel's rotation vary.

I found the difference to be dependent on whether I scrub using the mouse or the keyboard, and also from which direction I reach the frame.
(44 is arbitrary - it's the same for any other frame)

This is the Driver:

(not the solution, yet ;) )

Pressing "update dependencies" seems to fix it, but it is very impractical in this situation, because I'm trying to see if the wheel slips on the floor, and I need to jump quickly back and forth between frames and can't press the button each time.

Thinking this has sth. to do with the Dependency Graph, I tried to open this file in 2.8 and got the same result. Also in 2.79b and 2.79.5.

I would expect to get consistent values on the same frame. Any ideas why this happens? Thanks!!

This is the just the dependencies graph not updating in the right time just as you speculated. The value 101° is actually the result of the driver at frame 45 while the value 96.2° is actually the result of the driver at frame 43. The true value of the driver at frame 44 is 98.5°.

When you approach the frame 44 from the left, the last computed value is at frame 45, so its value is used. When you approach the frame 44 from the right, the last computed value is at frame 43, so its value is used. If you updated the dependencies at the frame 44, the true value is used.

I don't think there is an easy way to solve this, and this is one of many reasons I stopped using drivers. I recommend using Animation Nodes instead.


Boolean Modifer + Animation Problem I am currently using a Boolean Modifier to animate half of object to disappear. I have already tried a fading away affect with a transparent Shader, but it takes about 5 hours to render each frame doing it that way.

Anyway, this is what happens when I render it. This is a quick test one, in low quality.

I am using cycles Render.

I encountered this same problem today. I think the real solution is to use something like the cut-away shader mentioned in the comments, but there is a bit of a hack which worked for me.

Basically, if you play through the animation quickly, EEVEE is very useful for this, there are a relatively small number of frames where the boolean seems to have no effect at all. If you just jiggle the boolean a tiny bit, either by slightly changing the position, scale, etc., it will fix the problem. Then, you can just keyframe the change you made and keep walking though the animation fixing any problem frames.

This is definitely a hack, which is why using some other method is preferable, but it works well enough and is very easy. You will want to play back through the animation before rendering, however, as it is possible one of the new keyframes you introduced caused the boolean to have the same problem in an earlier frame. This happened for me on one frame, and after keying this away, the animation worked fine.


Can I access the render screen size in a custom filter 2D in the game engine? I am using Blender Game Engines Filter 2D to make a post effect with GLSL.
In an fragment shader applied on the frame buffer, I want to access the size in pixels of that buffer in GLSL.

uniform vec2 screensize;

This is possible for objects of the type BL_Shader

shader.setUniform2f("screensize", w, h)

The viewport size can be accessed in this way

import bge

w = bge.render.getWindowWidth()
h = bge.render.getWindowHeight()

print (w,h)

But I don't know how to get the BL_Shader object. The SCA_2DFilterActuator does not have any reference to such object.

co = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
distortion = co.actuators["riftDistortion"]

All the game properties stored in the object that calls the Filter 2D are passed to the shader as uniforms. So if you have a width and a height float game properties you can set their values at run-time to match the window size.

However, be aware that the window size (which you get from render.getWindowWidth() or render.getWindowHeight()) is not the buffer size. The buffersize is the closest power of two for that dimension (e.g., a window that is 1024 x 768 will have as buffers 1024 x 1024).


My materials seem to be locked on one colour? I've created an object that has a specific (in thie case Glossy) colour, then i have two other objects that are diffuse. I can change the colours using the materials tab or the node trees. However when i render the image the original colors return and the new ones are not there and i have no idea why?

any help?

I think I have an idea what you are referring to. You are duplicating an object and changing the materials of the properties, correct?

When you go to the material of the duplicated it might look like this "Material.002 and then a box that says "2" next to it before the "F""+""x". Click on the number (which is 2) and do so on texture as well if necessary. I hope that helps, as that was my solution.


Blender 2.8 simple approach to overlaying dirt? In Blender 2.8, within the boundaries of a big rectangle I have several overlapping objects (planes and text) to which I would like to overlay a semitransparent layer of dirt.

Will this work?
(a) Create a new plane that with the same dimensions as the big rectangle
(b) Assign a .png image of dirt to the new plane
(c) Position the new plane over the big rectangle
(d) Set the transparency of the new plane as desired

If so, I would appreciate suggestions on how to
(i) make the dirt.png image appear in the new plane and
(ii) set the transparency of the dirt

Thanks in advance!

Select the plane with the Black and white dirt image and switch its blend mode and shadow mode to "Alpha something", and play with the parameters until you get the look you're looking for.


Python: doing an action depending of the type of object hello i have a really simple problem

if my active object is an mesh i want to do an action, if its an empty another one, ... ect

so i want for example in this case, move the location of the active object only if it's an empty

so i tried

if bpy.context.object.type = 'EMPTY'
    bpy.context.object.location[0] = 8.46184

i really dont understand why it doesnt work, when i type

bpy.context.object.type

in blender python console, i have 'EMPTY' as an response...

what is wrong ?

You are trying to assign 'EMPTY' to "bpy.context.object.type" within an if clause.
For checking the value of something, you need to use "==", not "=".

if bpy.context.object.type == 'EMPTY':
    bpy.context.object.location[0] = 8.46184


Can smoke receive shadows in Eevee on 2.8? I have a shot with an object in silhouette against a spotlight with volumetric lighting and a smoke simulation.

With Eevee is there a way to have the smoke simulation receive the shadow of an object suspended in the smoke from the spotlight?

Would try this in Cycles but I'm working remotely on a MBP right now and my machine sits on the first eight sample squares for 30 minutes so even rendering a single frame to evaluate the result is prohibitively expensive.

Have tried the following and non of them result in shadows:

Render Tab:

volumetric shadows

Spot Light:

shadow settings contact shadow settings

Here is a link to a blend file that demonstrates the question. In the actual file I have text instead of a sphere, so in this .blend there is placeholder text in place:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/azj00xfp5y9dl1r/Stinger_SEShare.blend?dl=0

It actually is working in your file, but with such wide spot lights it's invisible/too subtle to see. As you can see, even with cycles it's not visible:

This is because there's still plenty of light being scattered from behind and in front of the object's shadow; in comparison the amount of light being blocked becomes insignificant:

If you add a larger object, casting a larger shadow, you can start to see the effect. Narrowing the light cone also works.

However, you may run into problems with the shadow resolution being too low, especially with small objects. Make sure the global shadow resolution is sufficient in Properties > Render > Shadows:

Other common problematic shadow settings are the Clip Start on the lamp's shadow settings (make sure that isn't too large) and too much Softness, which can eat narrow shadows (like those cast by text). With 0 softness you get nice crisp text shadows:


Deform bones configurations produces a bad deformed beak yesterday I bought the addon called "re-face!" and I have completed the rigging tutorial contained inside the package using the character that I'm creating,a bird with an humanoid face. The script uses two armatures : Body_rig and Face_rig. The first one is for the body and the second is for the face. I have parented the Face_rig to CTRL_head bone,as the tutorial says. The eyes are parented to the DIF_head bone and all other TRK* bones to the CTRL_head bone. I can add more bones to the Face_rig armature,but I can't delete the default bones. If I do it,I get one error that says that the deleted bone is not present and the script does not generate the facial rig. Also,the script generates two armatures,on the first one there are the deform bones and the control bones,but on the second the deform bones disappear. Problem is that when I do the automatic weights,the beak is deformed bad. This deform bones configuration :

after the automatic weights,produce this outuput :

and this :

generates a situation like this :

as you can see,in any case,the beak is deformed very bad. How can I fix it ? thanks.

Please check the answer found here. This will give you two options to fix this:

Modify the weight painting to tweak what parts of your mesh are
affected by each group.
Create empty vertex groups and then do
the assignment manually, this will give you a bit more control over
how your groups are created as you can see it on the fly and edit it
further.


How to scale a UV Image Texture? I have a tiling texture that I prepared for use as a bump map.

The problem is that it's too big!

I want the texture to display on the model at about 1/8th of the present size, but I can't figure out how to scale it to be finer. The bump map is supposed to resemble fabric fibers, but at present it just looks like scaly clumps because it's too big.

How can I change the mapping to fix this using Cycles nodes without altering my UV map? If this were a procedural texture I could just change the scale value, but I'm not sure what the equivalent approach would be with an image texture.

Thanks

This can be solved by inserting a Mapping node and setting the Scale values as desired.


pupil constrained to a surface I want to break away from sphere based eyes where I can set the iris/pupil to constrain to a mesh ( which would have some roundness, just not a sphere), and can be moved around with a typical of tracking rig set up.

Anyone have a quick walk through?

Check this out:

I will circle back around to polish the build instructions, but the things that make this work is adding a shrinkwrap constraint to the location of the empty (that is being rotated in the following animation), parenting the Iris/Pupil mesh to that Empty, and adding a shrinkwrap modifier to bend to the shape of the eyeball (the trick on this one is to set a small offset, and check keep above surface).

For an extra, I added a shapekey for the pupil dialation.


Why can't I add sky nodes to a lamp in Blender Cycles? I feel like my interface is missing the ability to add sky.

Although I have easily applied sky in another file before, no matter what I do in this file, the sky is black.

What went wrong?

You cant add sky nodes to a lamp, you have to create a new World "material" and add nodes to it's setup, not the Sun lamp.

In the Properties Window go to the world tab (Fourth tab with a blue globe) and add a new one there if there isn't one already.

Then in the Node editor Window switch to World node type in bottom header, second button with the same blue globe icon.


Despite weights being painted correctly, mesh moves in weird ways when I try to animate bones So I'm trying to rig this little wolf up, but the weighting is really weird. Whenever I move any of the bones, despite the weight painting being all correct, it moves the entire mesh rather than just that bone and its children. So in the second picture, as you can see the whole wolf moves, but it really should only be the upper body.

I read somewhere that it could be something to do with 'rubber tweak' but I can't find that option anywhere, and I don't even know if that's actually the issue.
Additionally, when I move some other objects that have the weights painted correctly, it doesn't move things enough, like on the tail:

Finally, it seems that it's only the spine that's causing the whole mesh to move, while other bones just don't move the rig enough.
I used the wolf premade riggify rig and edited it to suit my needs.
Here is the Blender file, better late than never: https://pasteall.org/blend/92d516501ec14a029255840b655c5a6e

You have overlapping vertices, so go in Edit mode and merge by distance. You'll maybe have some corrections to do though.


Normal Map Artifacts Im trying to bake a high poly mesh onto a low poly mesh, but it bakes incorrectly, it does it for both blender baking and substance painter, so it's something with the mesh for sure.

Yeah, i figured it was my UV, the uv had some intersecting parts, so just had to get some more seams on the mesh, funny how you figure these obvious problems out once you've spent hours trying to figure them out, just to realize your problem after posting it on a forum sigh...


How to extrude in the same way a "3D" angle? I'm modeling a rubber boat.
I want to extrude the edges of a cylinder in the same way they point before not only slightly up but also slitghly to the left (inwards). If I only extrude "in the same angle" it will causes the rubber boat to have a "nib" and that's not what they look like. Is it possible to extrude it following these two angles (the light blue I drawn and the orange one) without using freehand?

What I do, and what Mr Zak mentioned in the comments, is to create a temporary face then extrude from that.

Simply select the end edge loop, and press F to make a face.
Blender needs some direction to extrude along, making a face creates a face normal.

Now blender will automatically extrude along that face normal. Note that in order for this to work correctly the face must be flat.

In this gif I first extrude with no face showing that there is no auto direction. Then I undo that, create a face and extrude again, this time along the new face normal.


matrix_world not giving correct results I have a plane which I rotated up 90 degrees on X and 45 degrees on Z. I run this code to get the vertices world location's:

import bpy

ob = bpy.context.object
verts = [i.co * ob.matrix_world for i in ob.data.vertices]
print(verts)

The results I should get should be something like:

-0.707, -0.707, -1
0.707, 0.707, -1
-0.707, -0.707, 1
0.707, 0.707, 1

Instead I get:

-1.41, 7.1e-15, -1.19e-7
-1.19e-7, -1.06e-7, 1.41
1.19e-7, 1.06e-7, -1.41
1.41, -4.1e-15, 1.19e-7

What is going on here?

to multiply Matrix with Vector, order is important:

v2 = matrix * vector

see: mathutils.html#mathutils.Vector


How can I create a shiny metallic plastic-looking material? My first post here.  I apologize in advance for my ignorance.  I'm looking to create a material (and lighting to make it look right) that will look like the one below.. maybe a bit more metallic.  I am a complete noob when it comes to materials and light so I don't even know where to begin.  Help???

I'm using cycles render mode.

Just use a white glossy shader with a bit of roughness, and an HDRI image for the lightning.

Blender file: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/31926


Glass object on video i'm new on Blender 3D and i want to realized something.

I have a video during 250 frames, i just want to add a text object using Glass BSDF Surface material it is possible ?

Thanks for answer.

Use the add images as planes addon to create a plane that has the video as texture for an emission shader.

Then add the text and give it a glass shader and place it in front of the plane.

For additional integration you might want to use the video as background for the world, that way the video will also be used for the reflectinons on the glass.


How to export an animated object from Blender to an .usdz-file for Reality Composer (AR)? I'm totally new to Blender.

I only need it to make a rectangle with an animation that extrudes or scales over one axis over time.
So I keyframed X-Scale of a rectangle and tried to export it in an .abc-file, then tried to convert it to a .usdz-file via my terminal.

But when I do this I only get a simple cube without animation and without material.

Does anyone know how to do this?
Thanks in advance.

export animated .DAE file first, and then open with Xcode, Xcode allows you export .USDZ file, this step works great for me, hope it helps.


How can I make springs stretch and squeeze, depending on the cube movements? I have a lot of springs, connected in between cubes. These cubes are next to each other. How can I make the springs stretch and squeeze with stiffness, depending on the cube movements? With constraints or with physics?

The stretching of the springs can be accomplished through the 'stretch to' constraint.

The motion of the cubes driven by the springs can be generated using Blender physics.

The animation, generated in Blender 2.76, uses rigid body physics to solve for the motion of the cubes and uses the 'stretch to' constraint to stretch the springs.

The steps to generate this kind of animation are:

Add three cubes to the scene. Name the cubes 'top', 'mid', 'bot'. These will be the red, green, and blue cubes in the animation.
In the physics tab, add rigid-body dynamics to each cube. Add rigid-body constraints. Setup spring constraints between each cube. For the top cube (the red one in the animation, check 'Animated'. This setup will animate the cubes moving up and down, driven by the springs.

Add 4 empties to the scene. The empties will be used to locate the ends of the spring on the cubes. Name the empties as follows: top-lower, mid-upper, mid-lower, bot-upper. These empties are placed at the upper and lower face of the cubes. The image below illustrates the placement on the bottom of a cube.

Create the spring so it aligns with the y-axis. Parent the spring to the empty on the bottom of the cube. Repeat this each cube.

Add the 'Stretch To' constraint to each spring. Chose the empty on the upper part of the cubes as the target.

Now, if the animation is started, the results should resemble the animation.

The blend file for this animation is:


Prepare a set of parameters for reuse in multiple panels I need to calculate a set of parameters for each draw cycle, which are needed in multiple draw() functions from different panels. Currently i calculate the parameters within each panel's draw() function which appears to be very inefficient.

So i search for a way to add a function which runs once per draw cycle. Then all panels can safely use the pre calculated parameters as needed.

Simple Example:

I need this set in 2 panels:

bones = set([b.name for b in bpy.context.selected_pose_bones])

How can i calculate this set once and then reuse the set in both panels ?

Answer is rather simple, afaik: you cannot.

There may be some ways to cache that result, maybe in scene object, but we do not have any set-like type of property in RNA anyway, and you would have to handle update of it, which would not be trivial.

Note however that I doubt this to be a real performance bottleneck, unless you have tens of thousands of bones…

And you should use context given to panel's draw func, and do not need to use list comprehension to create a set, there is a set comprehension too:

bones = {b.name for b in context.selected_pose_bones}


How to set up game engine publishing (cross-platform) addon? I need to export a game runtime using Blender in Linux, that can run in Windows. In other words, from Blender in Linux, I need to export the game as an .exe with accompanying files etc., such that when the whole folder is copied to windows, the game can be run.

I have done a lot of searching, and I know that the add-on called "Game Engine Publishing" should let me export a game engine runtime for multiple operating systems. I found this wiki page about the add-on that says this:

  Out of the box, this addon can only publish using the "default" platform, which makes use of the Blender binary used to run the addon. In order to publish to other platforms you will need to download extra binaries. The simplest way to do this is to download the binaries for the platforms you wish to publish to and extract them into your Lib Path (//lib by default). From here the Auto Add Platforms operator (found under the platforms drop-down menu) can be used to automatically setup platforms for the binaries in your Lib Path.

But I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know what it means by "downloading the extra binaries," and despite a lot of googling and stackexchange searching, I haven't been able to find a simple answer. Could somebody please help me or point me to some resources on this?

Also, one possible complication is that I'm exporting the game from a high-performance computing environment where I don't have admin, so I'm not sure if I can add files to directories higher up than my home directory.

Click on the arrow pointing down below the platforms label, there should be a button to automatically download and install them for you. Alternatively you can download them manually from www.blender.org, basically just download blender for windows/mac (zip version) and extract them on the //lib folder.

However, if you really are looking for a profesional way to publish your game, avoid using the addon at all, use a launcher instead. BGECore comes with a ready-to-use launcher: https://github.com/elmeunick9/BGECore/tree/master/tools/Simple%20Launcher


Blender wont find python in usr/local/bin I wont to run blender2.49 and I have compiled and installed python 2.6.6 under /usr/local/bin and when I start blender in console it says

Compiled with Python version 2.6.2.
Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>
Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>
Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]

when I run python in console it says python 2.6.6
How can I add python to library path or $pytonhome ?

On OSX, open a terminal session.
In your user directory (e.g. mac/users/doeke) make sure you have a file named .bash_profile If it is not there then create one.

Open terminal.

sudo nano .bash_profile

add:

export PYTHONHOME=/usr/local/bin/python_whatever_the_fing_path_is

press ctrl + x to quit and hit y to save the file.

Now log in and out or reboot. Hopefully it is fixed now.


How to use set/get property callbacks correctly? Hi I am trying to use the set method for a property.
Thats how I try to use it:

def set_coa_sprite_frame(self,value):
    self.coa_sprite_frame = value

bpy.types.Object.coa_sprite_frame = IntProperty(
        description="Frame",
        default=0, min=0, max=10,
        set=set_coa_sprite_frame)

But I get a maximum recursion depth error. Whats the problem? Do I use it incorrectly?

The property set callback is intended to be used when you need to store the value in some alternate location (a set callback could write to multiple other properties for example - store the data on disk... a JSON, XML data... whatever you like).

Using both the get/set callback, you can expose access to settings stored outside of Blender.

Assigning the value within the set callback, causes infinite recursion.

So, either:

use the set callback to write to a different location.
use the update callback instead, to perform some change after the value is set.

Or, if you really want, you can write to the underlying property store directly, however this relies on an implementation detail on how properties work. While we don't intend to change this part of the API (which would break scripts)... its better to avoid this.

eg:

def set_coa_sprite_frame(self, value):
    self["coa_sprite_frame"] = value


How to hide light shape source through transparent window in Cycles? Shape of area light becomes visible through the transparent window in Blender Cycles.
I would like to keep the lighting effects, but hide the source shape.
On 1st screen: we can see the steam and droplet I want to keep
2nd screen : unchecking transmission disable all lighting through window.
3rd screen : window is hidden; square shape is not rendered.

Any help will be appreciated !

One possible way is to use the Light Path node.

This hides transmission light - when light goes through glass
But keeps light dispersion - when light is scattered inside glass/waterdrops/steam

Example using a glass pane, Suzanne and a mesh light.
Note the light dispersion on the glass pane


Artifacts in cycles clouds and volumetric atmosphere I am shading a planet, made up of three ico spheres, one for the planet itself, one for the clouds, and one for the atmosphere. However, the cloud layer is introducing this weird band/artifact on the planet that runs behind the beginning of the shadow. Up close, it almost looks like water caustics.

Here is the node group for the cloud layer.

The atmosphere also produces a similar effect, but it is harder to see. It is clearest on the edges of the planet.

Ok, after trying many different things, the problem is that my clouds and atmosphere were too far above the surface of the planet. The light would pass through one side of the icosphere, above the surface of the planet, and come out through another side of the icosphere. The weird caustic effect is caused by the normals of the icosphere, since it doesn't have thickness. This means that the normals were correct for the outer face and incorrect for the inner face, which meant the light came out weird.
The fix for this is can be found in this article: https://www.katsbits.com/codex/backface-culling/#rendered-cycles. The geometry node has a "backfacing" output, which means that putting that into the factor of a mix shader connected to the main texture and a transparent BSDF will make the light hitting the interior of the icosphere transparent, fixing the banding problem.


Python - Linear interpolation before keyframe I'm having trouble to find a way to set the interpolation before a keyframe. For example, this is useful if you want to animation to continue before the first frame and after the last frame to get correct motion blur.
I haven't found a way in the UI either, as setting the interpolation to linear is not acting the way I want.
Is there a way to do this?
Attaced is an example from Nuke where the interpolation is set to linear before the keyframe (which makes the animation continue).

Just to follow up with the help from @batFINGER:
import bpy

o = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]

for fc in o.animation_data.action.fcurves:
    fc.extrapolation = 'LINEAR'


Understanding automatic key frames insertion In my animation, I am using the red button to automatically insert key frames. So, it automatically saves Rot/scale and location. However, suppose that I need to just save the rotation of the object, so I click I and to choose Rotation and I expect that in the dopesheet the LocRotScale will be changed to Rot only, but it does not change. I know that I can turn off the red button and insert key frames with rotation only. However, I see a lot of tutorials that use the red button and I to insert key frames but I do not understand its utility? Any explanation will be appreciated.

The red button in the timeline enables the Auto Keyframe function.

By default, autokeyframe will create a LocRotScale keyset. So even if you changed only one thing and left the rest untouched, it will create 9 keyframes, one for each axis of the Location, Rotation and Scale.

If you only want to record a specific channel with autokeyframe (for example rotation, but not Location or Scale) you can create a different keyset by left clicking here:

And enabling "use Active Keying Set Only"

Your changes will only be recorded for the current Keying set.

You can temporarily disable the use of "Active Keying Set Only" and make changes in other channels (like location for example) and the autokeyframe will revert to the default behavior of recording LocRotScale.


Cycles image texture node is writen in python or c? What language is the Cycles image texture node is written? are these editable?

Implemented in C, see:

The whole tree:
tree/HEAD:/source/blender/nodes/shader/nodes

The Mapping node:
HEAD:/source/blender/nodes/shader/nodes/node_shader_mapping.c
The image texture node:
HEAD:/source/blender/nodes/shader/nodes/node_shader_tex_image.c

Editing / changing is possible, but then you embark on a journey of custom compiles whenever you want to update, maintaining your own branch might not be an option until you have a certain amount of C / compile / revision control experience.


How to adjust camera clipping for object? Hi there,
I am a complete Blender noob and still don't quite understand how the clipping start and end points work. More specifically, I don't know what, say this Shift X value 0.01m, implies. Is the camera moving 0.01m away from its origin in the +x direction? It seems part of my purple sphere is getting clipped off when I rotated the view to the front. From the side though, I can see the whole object. Would appreciate any feedback. Thanks!

@ETHAN DAY, thanks for the response! I  tested out what you said and found that was my camera was a dot relative to all my other objects. How is it then that the camera could have captured all the objects from its perspective? Does the render mode show the view from the camera's perspective or the view it's locked to? Thanks again!

this is a good question.  the shiftX value will shift the camera however many units in the X direction, but the point of origin will stay stationary, if that makes sense.  The camera has a point of origin, like every object. And also like every object, it will rotate around it's point of origin.  In this case, the point of origin is the tip of the camera where all the lines meet (See picture)
The origin can be seen as a small orange dot.  If you wish to change the origin, there are a number of ways to do this.  You can see all the options by going to: Object-Set Origin; and then choose your preferred position.  Hope I answered your questions correctly!


How do I install Blenrig Addon in blender 2.9 I am using blender 2.9 and I want to install Blenrig for my character but there are many python files in the folder and I am unable to find the option "Install from Folder". How do I install the addon?

From BlenRig 5 Documention

Download the BlenRig .zip file.
Blender allows to install .zip addons easily. Open User Preferences,
go to the Add-on tab, and press "Install From File". Then browse to
the download directory where the zip is.

After this is done, the add-on should appear in preferences available for use.

A new rig is added via Shift+A>Armature>Blenrig 5 Biped Rig
Also, from the docs:

You will find the rig in the Object Add Panel, under the Armature
Menu. In the View3d Sidebar you will find all the animation controls.
In the Armature Data Panel you will find all the rigging related
tools.


Is it possible to use a displacement map without having real geometry? I'm currently trying out displacement maps. As I was told by some video tutorials I need to apply them as a (displacement) modifier on the mesh. Therefore, I have to subdivide the mesh to achieve more detail. These subdivided mesh is then stored in my blender file, making it very huge. And also blender eats up a lot of memory...

What I'm looking for is some kind of virtual subdivision function which doesn't actually store the vertexes, which are only displaced by the displacement modifier. So they are actually reconstructible by having the number of subdivisions and the displacement map available. It would also be nice if I could disable the subdivisions visibility for some objects during work and only render them in high detail.

Also, blender v2.76 seems to crash sometimes when having too many subdivisions for a quite simple plane (scaled to 7x7 units, subdevided by factor 100 and then again by factor 3). While I have 16 GB of RAM installed in my machine... Any Idea how to reduce this?

Additional Info:

As I was suggested to use the subsurf modifier, I looked (again) through the list, but wasn't able to find it. I know I have used it some years ago, when I worked through some blender tutorials... Has it's name been changed?

Using a subsurf (subdivision surface) modifier before the displacement will give you a lot of flexibility.

Here's a simple plane (imported with the images as planes plugin) subdivided 100 times in edit mode, and then with a subsurf modifier added to it...

(Click on the images to enlarge)

The main advantage of the modifier is that you can determine different levels of subdivision for the 3D viewport and for the final render, so you can keep a decent level of detail for the final render, while having a responsive interface...

The order of the modifiers is important here because you want to subdivide first and displace later, otherwise you'll have a much smoother map but with less detail, like illustrated here:

To change the order of the modifier stack, use the triangles on the right side of the modifier's window:

A happy medium is using a subsurf before displace modifier and then one after:

But be extremely careful!: by doing that you are making an exponentially large number of vertices.

For example: If you set the first modifier with a subdivision level 2, it will create 25 vertices out a single quad. Further subdividing those 25 quads with other subsurf modifiers can very quickly take you to a number your computer will not be able to manage, and might even make it crash...

  Please read this performance considerations: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/15667/1853

To get to very detailed but efficient mesh, you can get to the level of detail you want with the subsurf modifiers, apply them (use the apply button on the modifier), and then use a decimate modifier to make the number of vertices more manageable while keeping the shape.


initial velocity for simulating planetary motion I was going to simulate planetary motion in blender and i have simulated the gravitational attraction between two planets with rigid body and force field.
but i don't have any idea about how to give one of them initial velocity with physical accuracy
If there is a way to do this with python that would be awesome!!
Here is my blender file :
https://gofile.io/d/XnTyAw

There is a problem with the common trick of giving objects initial velocity because it suddenly disappears :

an initial velocity in a rigid body simulation is very easy to do:

check animated checkbox and keyframe a location

keyframe another location on another later frame (distance + keyframe distance will "make" the speed

one keyframe later: disable animated checkbox and keyframe it


Make a bone head movable within the armature Is it possible to make a bone movable relative to another bone? My goal is to rig a hinge such as this one, where the middle rivet of arm A can slide in a slot on arm B:

I managed to rig a version without the sliding effect using inverse kinematics, but the movement of the entire hinge stops or flips to a wrong position, as the sliding would actually be necessary after a certain amount of rotation to keep on moving the hinge.
Maybe using an armature is the wrong way to rig such a thing?
Thanks for any hints.

I'm not sure a full mechanical solution with rigging is possible, with Blender being primarily a modeller/animator.  A game engine might be better suited to this.
If it's only for video however, the simplest way would be to rotate the green strip and have the grey strip looking at the bolt screwed into the green.  i.e. Give the grey a "Track to" constraint.  Set the target as the bolt.

Addendum:  7th Feb 2021
Should the green strip be attached to a hinged window, then it would be the same constraint on the grey strip but the green strip would not be animated, instead, be carried in an arc by the window frame.


Can you paint over an existing image texture in Texture Paint? I'm thinking of painting over my current image texture to fix a few errors instead of going back to my image editor and make a guess work on corrections. Is that possible?
And if I'm to duplicate an existing texture paint image, will the original be affected by the edits I'll make on the duplicate? If yes, how can I make a independent duplicate just so I can go back to the original if I didn't like the edit.

ok...yes is possible, but I don't know where to duplicate it in the texture painting panel, but in the shader...
first add your texture with image texture

second: duplicate image texture with shift + d ... and click in the number next to name

and ready select one and edit
or you can save copy,and open your original texture again.


Is there a way to make a render animation take its information from texture mode? I have created a scene in cycles render mode.  I have followed the instructions on how to bake all the objects, and everything looks great in texture mode.  I can smoothly move through the scene.  However, when I am starting to render it, it is taking the information from render mode, and not from texture mode.  This is very slow. Did I do something wrong? Is there a way to make the render animation take its information from texture mode?

You can trigger what is called an OpenGL Render in any of the Viewport Shading modes (solid, textured, wire, matcap,...). Switch to the mode you want first (in your case Textured Mode, make sure the output settings in the render panel are set correctly, and use the Render OpenGL Animation or Render OpenGL Image button from the 3D Viewport:

That should only take a few seconds to complete on short animations. If you need to tweak the quality, you can use the menu in the Info header bar:

You can set Anti-Aliasing and the background transparency directly from there.


Problems after separation part of a mesh I am learning how to destroy a building with this tutorial

The part of the building that gets smashed is separated from the main building (one large mesh).

Somehow some artefacts have been created.

What is wrong and how to repair this ? Or better go back and separate the "smashed part" again ?

Hmmm ... now I notice that there are some problems with that left column too .... ????

It looks like a traditional normal issue, your faces are turned to the inside of the object.
It actually happens in both your objects, the 'shard' and the rest of the building.

Enter edit mode, select one of the darkened faces, press Shift + G to select grouped and choose Normal to select faces facing in the same direction (check the selection for unwanted non-darkened faces and deselect any that don't apply)

Then press Ctrl + N to make normals consistent across the surface.

Repeat for the red frames on the building too, they also seem to be facing inwards.


shortcut to show a single channel (solo mode) in the graph editor ? Does anyone knows if there is a shortcut to show only a single channel in the graph editor ? (eg. key + click)
I always have to uncheck all channels but one to work... And that's quite annoying.

Thanks !

You can select the channel and press Shift+H to "Hide Unselected Curves". This option is also found in the Channel> Hide Unselected Curves menu in the graph editor.

You can then press Alt+H to "Reveal Curves" to bring the hidden ones back.


Gradient Fade on this texture in cycles I have a bunch of planes with a laser beam texture applied, from the CGCookie tutorial.

I want the beam to fade along the length of the beam. Unfortunately fiddling around with the color gradient node has the fading action along the wrong axis (side to side instead of end to end).

How can I fix this?

This can be done quite a number of different ways, I have listed three.

You could make a new UV map, and rotate the uvs 90° (like chebhou said). Then use that uv map just for the length fade.

You could add a Gradient Texture node (or a image of a gradient) and use a mapping node to control which way the gradient is going.

(my favorite) You could add a Texture Coordinate node and then a Separate XYZ node. That will give you a gradient running along the axis specified. In this picture it would be black at the left edge, and running along the X axis white at the right edge.

So your whole setup could look something like this. The X axis from the separate node is used for the "length fade." The Y axis is how I'm creating the beam fading out top to bottom. Then the Multiply node combines the two gradients.


Switching Materials On Command Ok, so here's the setup: I'm working on a model of a spaceship, using Cycles as the renderer. Eventually, this model may end up in a game (possibly under Unity or Unreal Engine). The ship has multiple light objects (running lights, cockpit lighting, etc.)

While the exact materials for each light will depend on the lamp, all will have materials for an Off/On state. Some lights may have multiple colors to indicate status (IE, the engine lights will have Off, Red, Amber, and Green depending on the engine's condition).

Right now, I'm selecting faces and manually applying the materials when I want to render lights off vs. on. Which is fine when I'm working in Blender and only want to adjust one light at a time. However what about when I actually try to bring this into a game engine? I may not be able to swap materials in and out in this manner. And is there a way I can dynamically switch between the On/Off state when working in Blender, especially once I begin rigging and animating the switches and toggles on the control panel?

You need to do all this on one material. Applying materials to individual faces is not going to work for rapid testing.

Once you are using only one material toggling On and off is easy and changing the color is super simple.

First off you will need a mask to differentiate what parts of the mesh will get what. I'd recommend using an image (easy to paint in texture paint mode and transferable to any game engine), but you can also use vertex colors, or proxy objects inside blender.

For my example I'm using an image, and vertex colors.

The image texture node is the mask I painted. The key to the toggling is the MixRGB node(s). The Value input node is what I'm using to control the toggling. When the value is 0 the MixRGB node is outputting 100% black, which is feed into the Fac for the Mix Shader node. (0 uses the top socket, 1 is the bottom socket) Likewise when the value is changed to 1,  the MixRGB outputs the mask image which has white painted in the proper places. Thus the Emission shader gets to shine.

Its the exact same thing for the one I have labeled "Engine toggle" except here I'm using the vertex colors as the mask instead of an image.

The RGB input is how I'm changing the color of the "lights." You could also use a image and a special UV map just to re color (You would simply move the UVs to a different color) but for in blender the node is much easier.

The nodes can look much neater when wrapped in a node group, but for testing I prefer access straight to the nodes.


Normal map baking - All clean blue (no color variation) I'm trying to bake a normal map from a high poly mesh, and apply on a low poly mesh (in Unreal Engine 4). Bare with me as I'm new to Blender, and especially new to normal map baking with Blender.

I'm not sure how to accomplish this task. The guides I've seen and read, explain how to uv unwrap the low poly mesh -> select the high poly -> shift-select the low poly -> hit bake (normal -> "Selected Active").

For some reason, everything shows up completely blue (no color variation -> No elevation information), and I'm not sure how to accomplish the baking?

The UV of the low poly:

Normal Map:

Low poly VS. High poly:

Could anyone help me?

EDIT:

Of course I'm aligning the 2 meshes so Blender can read the elevation differences.

Normal maps are not showing elevation of the faces, only normals angle (faces angle of high poly relative to low poly model), in your case all the normals facing low poly model exactly at the same angle, thats why you do not see any changes on the normal map.

In an example below you can see that faces that are 90 degrees to low poly model are not visible.


How to copy objects and set their origins with Python console? I am trying to copy Cube and set different random origins to the copies.
I use the following code:
import bpy
import random

C = bpy.context
src_obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']

for i in range (0,5):
    new_obj = src_obj.copy()
    new_obj.data = src_obj.data.copy()
    new_obj.animation_data_clear()
    C.collection.objects.link(new_obj)
    new_origin = (0.0+random.randint(1, 9)/100,0.0+random.randint(1, 9)/100,0.0+random.randint(1, 9)/100)
    print(new_origin)
    C.scene.cursor.location = new_origin
    new_obj.select_set(True)
    bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CURSOR')

The objects are successfully copied, but their origins are always the same: they are equal to last generated coordinates. I added print to make sure that new_origin is always different, but the last value of new_origin is applied. What I am doing wrong? How to make the origins to be different?

The reason all of them use the same location is because you are leaving them all selected.
bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CURSOR')

will set the object origin to ORIGIN_CURSOR for all selected objects.
Add:
new_obj.select_set(False)

as the last line in your for loop.


adding a transparent label on material I am sure this has something to do with my nodes... but I got the label to be transparent.. however.. it's making the actual object it's placed on transparent NOT the label itself.. I think. Please see picture.

The issue is that the part with the label has a different material than the rest of the copper container.

Go into edit mode and make all of the object have the same copper material

Now that everything is copper then add the label texture and transparency to the node tree:

The texture should fall into place since the only faces that have a UV map are the ones you chose for the label.


How to keyframe the volume of a speaker with python one can set the keyframe of an objects location with:
bpy.context.object.keyframe_insert(data_path="location", frame=1)

and it will set the keyframe of the location.
Right now I'm trying to add a keyframe to a newly added speaker that I created with python:
NewSpeaker = bpy.ops.object.speaker_add(location=(0,0,0))

following that I change the speakers volume:
bpy.context.object.data.volume = 0.6

this does work propperly and with no issue, so when trying to keyframe the volume like this:
bpy.context.object.keyframe_insert(data_path="volume", frame=1)

I receive the following error message:
TypeError: bpy_struct.keyframe() property "volume" not found

It does work with things such as location or rotation_euler, but nothing in the Object Data Properties.
Things such volume min are not able to have keyframes, but volume and pitch are able to be keyframed.
Is there a way to keyframe the volume with python?

Volume is a data property, not an object property.
Don't use:
obj.keyframe_insert("volume")

But use:
obj.data.keyframe_insert("volume")


Rough edges on mesh in final render[cycles] I made a car in blender and added some materials to it. I also downloaded a background image and set it as a background along with some node editing. But in my final render, the car has rough and jaggy edges, mainly in the top right area. Is there a problem with my nodesettings, or on my mesh?

The node which is not fully visible (see on the top of the picture) is a mix node.

...you could start by clicking anti-alias in both the ID Masks....


What's the fastest / most fun way to create a fork in Blender? Related challenge: What's the fastest and / or craziest way to
model an arrow in Blender?

I tried to make a fork in Blender, but it was so boring I fell asleep.
Is there a faster / more fun way to make a fork?
I'm open to everything: Modifiers, shaders, curves, booleans, displacement nodes...
I always get only this far, and then - - - chrrrrrrr - - -

As you know a fork rarely comes with only one peak, it generally has 2, more often 3 or 4, sometimes more. It would be very tedious to model each and every of those peaks.
As you may know, for this kind of task, Blender comes with very powerful tools like linked duplications, dupliframes, array modifier, etc... instead of modeling each of the peaks, you can model only one and repeat it infinitely.
Here I've used Particle System > Hair. The huge advantage is that you can easily choose the amount of peaks:

You can also change the Seed value in order to make it look more natural:

I hope it helps.


Mesh with full weight moves less than bone, and moves another mesh with no weight So The object on the left has a full weight and it moves slower than the bone when they are both moved. The second mesh has a weight of 0 for the bone on the left and does not move like it's supposed to. The mesh on the right has a full weight for its bone (right bone) and does not move when its bone is moved, yet the mesh on the left does while having a weight of 0.

I tried removing the armature modifier on both meshes (as you can see, one still does not have the modifier) and re-applying them, but the same issue is occurring. I even deleted the bones, created new ones, re-positioned them and still a fail.

What problem is occurring and how do I fix it?

Also, there are two spheres that contain these objects and they move the same speed as the bones do when moved, and don't move the one on the other side.

EDIT: Here is the .blend file.

In edit mode, if you select a vertex you can read - in the "N" panel - all the weighted bones, so to understand why the vertex is moving that way: if you want the vertex to move exactly with a bone it should be weighted to that bone only (even if the weight is not full 1.0).
If this does not resolve the problem I think you should upload the file.


How to render mesh that's inside another mesh? I'm looking for a way to render a mesh that resides inside another mesh, here is an image of what I mean:

I want the part of the monkey that is inside the cube to be rendered, so the result would look like this:

I know, I could achieve this using boolean operators, but this is prone to error due to not closed meshes, also because I will have cases, where multiple objects will lie inside the boundaries.

Is there any other way I could achieve this?

You can achieve this by using render layers:

Give the cube a transparent material.
Give each object a different object index for masking with the object ID mask in the node editor (Properties Window --> Object tab --> Relations --> Pass Index).
Render, go to the node editor and set up a node tree as in the attached image or blend file.


Extrude multiple cylinders from one I want to extrude three cylinders from one. I don't want to create another cylinder mesh, so this way I can avoid clipping

Here's exactly what I want:

https://gyazo.com/d9f9d82db16d75bb2386da1380c9022f

Thanks

From 6 vertices for the base cylinder and 3 tentacles in the picture, you can assemble it in three parts :

First assemble the extremity, extruding one vertex on two
Extrude them (without moving)
Alt+M to join them at center
Then select more Ctrl+NumPad+
And make the faces F

Now select the three faces as the extremity
Extrude them with Alt+E then "individual faces"
Separate this faces a bit

Now round them using Alt+ShiftS and move the mouse to the right and validate
Then extrude again


Select faces with crossing normals I'm working on a geology surface model, and I'm trying to find an automated way to identify cracks, rifts or crevasses. One way I thought of is to identify faces with normals crossing at a certain opposed angle (+- 180°). Of course the value of this angle is important, as is the distance threshold (ultimately, most normals are probably crossing each other).

Does anyone have an idea how to do that? I suppose it would need some scripting as it's a quite specific problem...

You could try hooking up a Pointiness node to a ColorRamp. If you're working in the experimental 2.8, the Ambient Occlusion node does exactly what you're after, and you can ramp it, as well. In addition, if you check the 'inside' box, you'll see where are your strongest ridges and outcrops are.

Since it is an experimental version, I'd suggest saving a copy of your model when you're finished modeling it, and uploading the copy into 2.8 just to bake out the AO shader as a map to use in your original.

You can also bake out the AO directly in 2.79, but this requires world setting and futzing around with lights, plus your results are usually very noisy under 2k resolution. The shader in 2.8 is both simpler and faster, plus it looks much cleaner. If you want to go for the 2.79 option, the wiki actually has a good tutorial on it, and you can find it all over YouTube.

Please Take Notice: Currently, the Ambient Occlusion node 2.8 only works in Cycles, not Eevee. As you start in Eevee by default, you'll need to switch your render engine, now located under the render settings tab.


New vertices added to vertex group automatically I make a vertex group containing those two edge loops.

Then I make those two loop cuts above and below.

When I select the vertex group I previously made, I see that the new edge loops are included in the vertex group.

How can I make loop cuts without adding vertices to the vertex group?

Seems like there is no way to prevent new vertex assign to near vertex group, even if it's locked. This is due to the gradient vertex weight distribution.

To better understand the mechanics turn on Vertex Group Weights:


Strange shading on model hi, why the model looks weird. no double face or normal flip?

I include the blender file
file download

You have Custom Normal Data assigned to this mesh.

Go to Data Tab > Geometry Data > Clear Custom Split Normals Data


When rendering an image the output is grey I've tried rendering an image using the Cycles render engine. here is the output:(everything looks good)

I tried rendering the same image, but using Radeon ProRender engine. This is how it looks at samples 28/128(not ready yet, it looks fine):

 And this is the output.. I don't understand why I get a grey image. Did I miss something ?

EDITHere are my blender preferences

 I have also installed this from their official website //// i do not know what other settings so show here

 My .blend file is this

Your Render Layer is not connected to the composite node.
You need to go to Compositing, here you need to connect the render layer image to the composite node


simple deform modifier not working properly I have some problem using the simple deform modifier, for some reason it doesn't rotate on the z axis making a circle but it does the stuff in the image

Bend simple modifier rotates an axis around the specified one in the modifier.
When Z is chosen, the X axis is bent:

That why you have the result indicated in your question when all is aligned along Y.
If you want to keep things along Y, though, you can add a deformation origin object (an empty) and rotate 90 degrees it so that its X is align along Y:


Change a mesh to a specific number of faces I'm trying to figure out individual steps of my ultimate goal from this question: Use Blender to get "Average" skull shape
And particularly, I want to duplicate what the authors of this paper did here:

Resampling of the mesh data was performed by raycasting based on a
hemi-icosphere with 20641 vertices and 43284 faces. The directions of
the rays were based on the vertices of the icosphere.

It sounds like, in order to create an 'average' skull, the authors made every skull have the same number of faces.  This makes sense given what I know about shapekeys and morphing objects into one another.  So, rather than tackle the entire project in one Stack-Exchange question, my question is very precise:
If I had a skull, or any object, with lets say 453,987 faces (random number) and I wanted it to be 43,284 faces (or some other specific number).   Could I do that?  Decimating or remeshing seem like they could get CLOSE, but is there a way to target a specific number?

You can try a Quadriflow Remesh (in the object Data Properties tab). Pick quad and select Quad and then hit the Remesh button:

Before it performs the operation, it brings up an options window where you can select, among other things, the target number of faces:

The results aren't always super pretty, and I only think I've seen once when it was able to remesh to the exact number of faces I targeted, but the algorithm generally selects what is best for the mesh (mathematically at least) and is usually pretty close to the target number. If the objects you are starting with (the different skulls) are relatively similar, they should produce quite similar results. At the very worst you will have to add or remove <30 faces manually.


Cycles won't render image However, blender render does render the plane image. It's just a picture of trees (and an added sun, pointing at the plane, and I made a two second animation, just to see (I'm like really new, still).
So, I decided to try cycles render, to see if there was any difference in the image (and to see how much longer it takes), and it just renders the plane without the image.
I added an icosphere, just to see and both renders it.

Thanks.

Make sure to have texture created with "Node Editor".  This is the basic node for texturing in Cycles Render.

From 3D View, toggle to Node Editor -- make sure to toggle "Use Nodes"


Volume locked on sound strip in VSE In VSE I have a sound strip where I adjusted the volume and then accidentally clicked the dot icon to the right of the volume box which seems to have locked the volume and changed the dot to a diamond so I can't alter it now. See image.

How can I undo that?  I've tried clicking it again, and selecting various menu options but no luck so far!  (Blender v2.82a)

You have added a keyframe. It can be deleted by clicking on the diamond again, or right-clicking in the number widget and select "Clear Keyframes":


How would I create this material in Blender? I was wondering how I would go about creating this clean, black painted metal material in Blender.

Could it be just a simple material and it's a lot of lighting it?

Yeah this is very simple. It's just a Diffuse and Glossy node put into a Mix Shader node. Turn the Fac on the Mix Shader towards the Diffuse side, and turn the Roughness on the Glossy shader down a bit.


How to export selected objects using three.js exporter I can find there is an option to export a single object or the entire scene, is there a way to export only the selected objects

To export multiple objects please check the answer made by @poor found here very helpful and useful and you can edit the script to fit your needs.


Help: Timeline has turned red - how can I get back to default? I am a completely beginner in Blender, and inadvertently have turned the timeline to 'red'.  I googled it, and for the life of me can't figure out what happened.  How do I just turn it back to normal?

The header color can be changed in
Preferences > Themes > DopeSheet > ThemeSpace > Header


Planes rotating to face the camera, but only along one axis I'm using planes as labels on a map over which the camera makes a path. The problem is that if I simply have flat labels they don't look good when the camera is low (blue dots in the animation). With the track to constraint I can make the labels follow the camera (red dots in animation).  The problem is that the labels on the sides also rotate along their Z axis which I don't want. I want the text to always be horizontal wrt the camera, like the labels do in Google Earth.


Create a flat plane with beveled edges As you may infer from this question, I'm a complete noob. I've gone through quite a few tutorial videos but I still don't understand how I can create this shape...

You can do this by modifying a simple plane.

Add a plane: Shift A -> Mesh -> Plane
Go into edit mode: Tab
Go into vertices mode: Ctrl Tab -> 1
Select all vertices: A
Bevel vertices: Ctrl Shift B

This will create an ngon, ideally we would only like quads (faces with only four vertices)

If you want to fix this you can easily connect two vertices.

Select two opposing vertices and connect them by J
Repeat until all ngons are gone


Texture vs. Material vs. Shader I'm working my way through a Blender online course.  Sometimes the word material is used, other times it is a texture or a shader. I feel like all three of these words, while related, have a difference specific technical meaning.  Can someone explain what each means and how they are different?

Shader

A shader is a piece of code that is run when shading a mesh. It can be anything, including a texture, but the term is often used to refer to a shader that runs a BSDF or group of BSDFs, or something of that nature, such as emission. Blender's UI follows this convention, the BSDF nodes are in a submenu called "shaders". (but in some sense, all the nodes are shaders).

Texture

Textures add detail at the shader level. They do this by either loading an image file, or creating a procedural pattern of some kind, such as noise, bricks, or gradients. There are also a number of things that aren't quite textures that fall under the vague heading of "utility shaders". These perform some conversion function (examples in Cycles would be the Math node, or the Blackbody node), or provide access to variables (such as the Geometry or Texture Coordinates nodes)

Material

A material is a collection of shader(s) that you apply to a model to define how it is shaded. A material might consist of a single BSDF, or it might contain a vast array of textures, utilities, and multiple BSDFs. You can think of it as a container or wrapper

Finally, remember that many people are not always consistent about using these terms according to the definitions here. "material" and "shader" especially are often used interchangeably.


How to export a sprite sheet from animation? I want to use an animation in some code as a sprite sheet - is it possible to export a sprite sheet?

Info: a sprite sheet/animation strips, is a list of images that you can load into most game engines:
https://www.codeandweb.com/texturepacker/tutorials/how-to-create-a-sprite-sheet

It is possible to do so by using a mapping node, the thing is that you may lack of precision since this job is done usually proceduraly without messing with normalized values (as UVs) but absolute instead (pixels).

So the idea is to create a plane (or as many as the poses you want to "extract") and with a mapping node pick and fit the proper sprites on them using the spread sheet as an image texture.

A more elegant and efficient way would be to do this automatically by using a python script but then it becomes a pain in the a#s since there is no any bundled / native lib for image processing.

In theory what you had to do would be to parse the JSON file (as is in your example) and get the directions from there for the pixel width/height and the position on the spread sheet of each pose or element.

you may take a closer look on this post : Crop image with Python script

where is the basic concept of cropping images in blender with python scripting.


Cyclic dependency of constraints: "Track To" to child object I have a cube and an empty which is the child of the cube. I add the "track to" constraint to the cube; the tracking target is the empty.

This will not work. When moving the cube, the empty will not move. I would like to have such a setup because it would be very intuitive for some animation nodes I am doing.

The console shows that I created a cyclic dependency of the constraints:

  Dependency cycle detected:

  Cube depends on Empty through Track To.
  Empty depends on Cube through Parent.

I'd like to be able to move the cube (and the child - the empty - with it). Only when I explicitly move the empty, the cube should reorient itself in order to track the empty.

Any help or workaround is greatly appreciated.
blackno666

This doesn't work because a dependency cycle, i.e. both objects are dependent upon each other. To solve this, add another empty and parent both objects to it. To move the cube, move the parent empty.


Cycles bake with separate uv maps? Okay, so I was watching Andrew Price's tutorial for cycles baking (Found Here)
And I was wanting to do that with the floorboard addon (More on that Here)
And the addon creates a uv layout for wood textures, but it's random for realistic rendering. Anyways, I want to bake the material, but I don't know how to do that with an object that already has a uv layout.

See my answer here:

  A screenshot just to show how things are initially:

  Create a new UV map in Properties > Object data, then with it selected, edit or re-unwrap to make the second UV map layed out how
  you want it:

In your case, Lightmap pack or Smart UV unwrap will probably do fine for the unwrap method.

  Create a new image to bake to by pressing ⎇ AltN in the image editor, or by pressing new in
  header > Image:

  Add a texture node to your material(s), set to the image you want to bake to.

Here set the bake type as combined, then select the texture node and press bake:

  After it's baked, remember to save the image. F3 to save it
  to disk, or header > image > Pack as PNG to pack it into the .blend
  as a png.


How to Punch a Hole in a Plane I have a face that is 4 by 11 units. I want to punch a perfectly square hole in that plane, about 3 by 3 units. How do I do this?

I do not want to use any subdivision whatsoever.

Make a plane with the dimensions you need to cut.

In object mode select the cutting object first then while pressing Shift select the object to be cut.

Set your view to orhtogonal, go into edit mode, press the Spacebar and type Knife Project

Th Knife Project tool will make a hole using the shape of the selected object.


How to snap an object to another without moving origin? Say I have two cubes. I want to move one entire cube so that one of it's vertices snaps to a vertex of the other cube, WITHOUT having to faff around moving the origin of one of the cubes. Is this possible?

Similarly, can I do this with the midpoint of one of the cubes' sides instead of a vertex? i.e. snapping a midpoint to a vertex or another midpoint?

EDIT: thought I should mention that I'm on Blender 2.8

Select the cube you want to move, go into Edit mode, turn on snapping to vertex, select all vertices and choose one as the active by clicking on it, change pivot point to active element. You can now snap the whole cube from this vertex to one from the other cube.

To snap the center of the cube to the other cube, change pivot point back to median pooint. Also snapping target to Center instead of Closest. Play around with it, you can do it all just by changing pivot point and target options.


Can light affect specific objects only? In C4D I can control which objects to affect with a light, in the image below only the main object is affected by the light source, the background and other objects are not affected. But I haven't found a way to do this in blender!

Is it possible to specify which objects to affect with a light source?

To remove specular, as that's the name for the thing pointed to, you select the faces that shouldn't have it and give them material of the same color, but with a different name. Then, in a node, set its Roughness to 1. This goes for Cycles.


Having trouble creating an Addon with multiple modules I'm trying to put together an add-on that contains two operators.  I've gotten each operator file to run properly independently, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to write an init.py file that would allow me to distribute them as a single add-on.

I've posted everything on Github.  The three files aren't too long:
https://github.com/blackears/blenderStairs/tree/master/src

I've read a few other threads, but nothing seems to work for me.  How can I get my init.py to register my operators properly?

The add-on registration can be simplified using a register() and unregister() function per file that can be called by the __init__.py. You've already implemented these to test your operators, but they can be used for the full add-on as well. Therefore all you have to do is import the kitfoxStairs.py and kitfoxStairsCurved.py and then call their register() function in the __init__.py.
# Copyright 2019 Mark McKay
#
# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
# You may obtain a copy of the License at
#
#    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
#
# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
# limitations under the License.

bl_info = {
    "name": "Curved Stairs Mesh Generator",
    "description": "Adds new mesh builders for quickly creating staircases.",
    "author": "Mark McKay",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "location": "View3D > Add > Mesh",
    "wiki_url": "https://github.com/blackears/blenderStairs",
    "tracker_url": "https://github.com/blackears/blenderStairs",
    "support": "COMMUNITY",
    "category": "Add Mesh"
}

import bpy
from .operators import kitfoxStairs
from .operators import kitfoxStairsCurved

def register():
    kitfoxStairs.register()
    kitfoxStairsCurved.register()

def unregister():
    kitfoxStairs.unregister()
    kitfoxStairsCurved.unregister()

If you want to reload modifications of your scripts when they have been imported before, then you need to replace the import statements
import bpy
from .operators import kitfoxStairs
from .operators import kitfoxStairsCurved

with the following code:
if "bpy" in locals():
    import importlib
    if "kitfoxStairs" in locals():
        importlib.reload(kitfoxStairs)
    if "kitfoxStairsCurved" in locals():
        importlib.reload(kitfoxStairs)
else:
    from .operators import kitfoxStairs
    from .operators import kitfoxStairsCurved

import bpy

Scripts can be reloaded through F3 > Reload Scripts. Blender 2.8x doesn't have the F8 shortcut anymore, but you can add it to your keymap. Since Blender 2.83 this feature is available via the top bar menu Blender Icon > System > Reload Scripts.
Note: I've removed the if __name__ == "__main__": from the __init__.py since this doesn't work with relative imports.

There is an error in the menu_func of kitfoxStairsCurved.py. It should reference the AddStairsCurved class instead of AddStairs. The correct function is:
def menu_func(self, context):
    self.layout.operator(AddStairsCurved.bl_idname, icon='MESH_CUBE')


How to read a pixel from an image texture with Python My Python script needs to read RGBA values from a specific pixel of a texture bitmap.

How can I do this in Blender?

import bpy

D = bpy.data

image_file = 'Image.png' # this refers to an image file loaded into Blender

img = D.images[image_file]

# we need to know the image dimensions
width = img.size[0]
height = img.size[1]

print ( "Image size: ", width, " x ", height )

# define location of the target pixel we want to read
target = [150, 33] # X, Y
print ("Target vector: ", target)

# target.Y * image width + target.X * 4 (as the table Pixels contains separate RGBA values)
index = ( target[1] * width + target[0] ) * 4
print ("Field index: ", index)

# aggregate the read pixel values into a nice array
pixel = [
    img.pixels[index], # RED
    img.pixels[index + 1], # GREEN
    img.pixels[index + 2], # BLUE
    img.pixels[index + 3] # ALPHA
]

# print the values for debug
print ("R: ", pixel[0])
print ("G: ", pixel[1])
print ("B: ", pixel[2])
print ("A: ", pixel[3])

I wrote this based on articles from this blog:
http://blenderscripting.blogspot.com/2012/08/adjusting-image-pixels-internally-in.html


Unable to flip the fog upside down I am relatively new to Blender and am doing Andrew Prices' tutorial on Youtube for "Make a Grassy Meadow". I am at minute 44:25 where he flips the mist cube upside down. Unfortunately for me when I flip my cube the gradient remains the same, with the fade ending at the bottom. Does anyone know how to work around/ fix this?

For something simple like this, I would just separate the generated coordinates into XYZ and use the Z value plugged into a ColorRamp node.
This will give you a far better control of your scattering density.

The object orientation should be world oriented (at least if you're using Generated or Object coordinates), so that the Z axis is aligned to the world Z axis.

On the right 3DViewport you can see that the local axis for the box has at least the Z axis (blue arrow at the center of the box) aligned with the world Z axis (the blue arrow at the bottom left corner of the viewport).
The Z axis is then used from the 'Generated' coordinates, which are mapped from the bottom/top to a scale of 0 to 1 and plugged into a color ramp, that defines the vertical density map.


How to get a "smoothed" wireframe using Freestyle lines? Let's say I have a cylinder. When I turn on smooth shading and auto-smooth, the side edges are smoothed out like this:

So the question is, can I do that on wireframes? I mean I want to hide all the smoothed edges, leave the outline and sharp edges alone like this:

(photoshopped)
I guess some eevee shaders could do that but I don't know how.

If you use Freestyle, one of its parameters is 'Crease Angle'.

If you set that high in Freestyle's general settings, and one of the discriminants for the Line Set is Edge Type > Crease, then Freestyle will pick up edges between faces where the internal angle between them is below the given threshold.
There is a 'Face Smoothness' checkbox for the Crease Angle. If it is unchecked, it will use the angle between face-normals in the underlying geometry. If checked, it will use the normals as interpolated by the smooth shading algorithm...

...above, with 'Face Smoothness' checked. The left cylinder is flat-shaded, and the right cylinder smooth-shaded, with Autosmooth set to split out its caps.
There is also a Crease Angle modifier available for attributes of the Line Style. So you can, for example, vary the color of the line, depending on the angle between the faces it separates:

You can always render out Freestyle as a separate pass, to composite with other components as you choose.


Is there anyway I can boolean a smoothed surface without making it look deformed? I'm trying to create some holes that are shaped as X's onto the smoothed surface, but it ends up making the surface look deformed.

You have to use an edge split modifier to make the newly created edges sharp.

If this doesn't help, try using Blender 2.8 the boolean operation got improved.


Blender collada import export, sketchup comparison I have building models (with no textures) in Sketchup (15 and 17, free and Pro) that I close into solids and export to Collada. However they appear to sometimes break and sometimes wont reimport into sketchup. Blender however will open the files and re-export them to dae again. The new dae files are typically larger but can be opened in sketchup and other applications. Both have triangulated faces. This tells me that Blender has a better collada import and export tool. Well done. Can anybody tell me the technicalities of why it is better? The sketchup community seems quite quiet on the matter. If there are any converts online who are at that level...

I don't know Sketchup for it's not open-source neither do I use it much but let me explain Blender's collada exporter.

First why is Collada so unique other than it being libre(open),

  COLLADA is designed to be highly flexible. It can store
  application-specific data using its  mechanism at various
  places in the document. You can insert this data in your DCC tool
  using the user properties mechanism; the COLLADA import/export will
  then carry this information for you, so there is no need to change the
  exporter source code to carry your application/game-specific data into
  the COLLADA format.

This means that sketchup's implementation of it has flaws of implementation for it's a relatively simple to use format, and it just records data and passes it on. So the data recorded might be written improperly by the software.

Blender currently uses the opencollada library to provide support for collada import and export. And as it's open, it's more mature than the rest of the libraries used by other tools that the power of being open.

I believe but there are repos like https://github.com/godotengine/collada-exporter.
That improve the implementation for game engine Godot.

That's probably all there is to the implementation.


After configuring the domain shader I do not see smoke simulation I'm learning to work with the fire and render it in Cycles. After setting up the domain shader (to make it invisible), I see the mesh-emitter without fire.

What is my mistake and how to fix it?

In this smoke setup the smoke and fire won't be rendered because:

Attribute node which provides information for shaders has property typed incorrect, it should be density.
There isn't any Attribute with property for flame.

To fix that:

either use Quick Smoke operator from 3DView header > Object > Quick Effects which will setup objects and materials automatically. You can choose what type of smoke sim you'd like to in operator's options in the Last Operator Panel (in the Toolshelf). The materials will be setup appropriately:

Automatic setup may be not desired if there is domain / flow already created (you could link materials though from objects created with Quick Smoke to your main ones). So it's possible to correct spelling of the property manually and add one more Attribute node which will be connected to the node tree via one more Add node.

See related question: Rendering Smoke in Cycles


How to get the beginning position of each line of a text object (Pyhton) I'm trying (desperately) to get the beginning position in space of each line of a text object, but just couldn't... :( Any help would be wildly appreciated. The positions I'm trying to get to are marked with red crosses in the attachment picture.

The bounding box

Many of the kerning options for the text object are available. IIRC there is another answer (unfindable so far) that uses these to calculate the  positions.
Instead I'm going to simply use the bounding box, single first line, 2 lines, 3 lines etc.
The bounding box is the local axis aligned extent of an object, in local coordinates.  The box has 8 coordinates, the zeroth coordinate is the front bottom left hand corner. eg (-1, -1, -1) for default cube  Multiplying by objects matrix world gives the global location.
Test script adds an empty at beginning of each line of the text object that has context.
Answer for version 2.8.  For 2.7x would use a scene.update() to rejig for changes to text body.
import bpy
from mathutils import Vector

context = bpy.context
dg = context.evaluated_depsgraph_get()
ob = context.object
mw = ob.matrix_world
text = ob.data.body

lines = text.split("\n")
for i, l in enumerate(lines):
    ob.data.body = "\n".join(lines[:i + 1])
    dg.update()
    bbox = [Vector(b) for b in ob.bound_box]
    bpy.ops.object.empty_add(
            location=mw @ bbox[0]
            )

Related Counting amount of lines in a text object


How do I measure the distance between two UV vertices? I am using Blender version 2.77a. I am attempting to make a paper model of a mesh that has been UV mapped, but not to scale. I need to:

Measure the distance between any two vertices on a UV map
Make a duplicate of a UV island

I don't believe there is any true way to measure the distance between two vertices in the uv image editor, but there is a fairly simple workaround.

Finding the (x,y) distance between two points

With your mesh unwrapped and the UV/image editor open, open the properties panel within the editor via n. At the top there will be what is called "UV vertex". Once you select a vertex it will tell you the coordinates of the vertex.

 Okay, now the hard part. After finding the coordinates of the second vertex use the distance formula, which is:
√ (x2−x1)2+(y2−y1)2

 This online distance caculator should make things easier.

Duplicating a UV island

In 3D View
First and foremost you must select the desired UV island, like so:
1. Enter edit mode TAB
2. Put select mode on "face" CTRL+TAB
3. Hover mouse over the desired UV island and press L.
4. Hit Shift+D
      In UV/Image Editor
Whatever you copy and paste in 3-D view should appear in the image editor.

References

How to select a UV island?


Why doesn't my SkyTexture show up in the preview tab? I have a problem with an image not showing up in the preview tab for the SkyTexture. In the screenshot below you can see the image is displayed correctly when used as a Background image in the 3d-view. I'm using the image as an environment texture. Any help welcome! (I'm using blender internal).

In your world settings, do you have real sky, and environment lighting enabled? Here are the steps to get your desired results.
Go to the world tab and click real sky, then environment lighting. Then, make sure that you have sky texture selected in the drop down menu off to the right.
Next, go to the textures tab and choose your image. Set the mapping as you already have, and click horizon, and that should do it. The world settings I use are as in the attached screenshot.
Hope that helps.