Is there a Blender alternative to Chroma Key rendering in OpenGL? Self answered Question - no points being sought here.

For some months I've been using a transparency phenomena in Blender's 3D viewport that renders objects that are behind semmi-transparent objects such as a window, completely invisible!

For convenience I've been calling it the "Inviso effect" and using it as an alternative to Chroma Keying.

As it has proved very useful for my own videos, I'm placing this question/answer up in the hope it could also be of value to other Blender users.

To clarify, this is offered as an alternative to Chroma Keying and as far as I'm aware, will work only when rendering in OpenGL.

"Inviso" is a term I've adopted to describe an effect of invisibility (in the 3D viewport and cameras) when an object's transparency is set to just above 0. (typically .008 or even less)

When rendered using OpenGL, the object is not only invisible, but so is anything (or portion thereof) that happens to get behind it.

The effect can be extremely handy in many cases that would otherwise require Chroma Keying and it's accompanying node setup, plus whatever extra rendering is needed to apply the resultant keyed alpha layer.

Chroma key in effect, makes an alpha layered 'hole' in a video clip.

Inviso can do this also but it doesn't have to - it's selective!

i.e. Objects behind the mask can be selectively rendered invisible so that some disappear and others won't, including a backdrop (textured) plane.

Even better - the effect is achieved 'live' within Blender's 3D window.  Rendering using -= OpenGL =-, outputs your scene and the masking effect all to video in the one go!

I've not tried this but see little reason why animated shapekeys can't also be used on 'Invisos' to change the shape of a mask 'live' during an animation sequence, perhaps to match a changing viepoint or to 'hug mask' an object, such as this tree trunk below.

The above was achieved on a still image by adding vertices to the mask where needed and deforming it's shape to match the tree trunk's.  The smaller cube itself is in fact, still sitting in front of the photo, the Inviso mask in front of that again to 'cut' the tree trunk's shape out of the cube.

The post/answer this was used in is here -

Realistic rendering of mesh together with image?  (Scroll down a fair way)

Note - Surfaces so shape-keyed would preferrably not want to be buckled to avoid shading artifacts.  On a flat plane, that wouldn't be difficult to enforce.

Two more examples where this method of masking was used (Scrolled text and opening a scrolled parchment) -

how do i achieve this simple text animation?

...the gap between the bottom of the screen and the black box with the text is masked using the same method.

Below - is what is seen when rendering in OpenGL where the Inviso plane (ordinary 2D plane) is not set to total transparency and consequently still taken as 'solid' by either Blender's code or the hardware.

Selective Inviso effect -

The plane's transparency has been set to 0.008 (or close to it) and it's transparency specular set to 0, it's ordinary shading specular also at 0.

The cube is affected whereas Suzanne(?) our monkey and the ground plane are not. (See further below as to how this is achieved)

Tick or untick it's transparency box in it's properties panel (orange cube icon at right) under the "Display" tab .

When this is done, often by default the plane will then render any object (or part thereof) that's behind it, invisible.

Note -

If animating the Inviso mask, leave that until all objects involved in the masking effect are setup and are being rendered as desired.

If you do Inviso an object after the mask is animated, you'll need to unlink the mask and object's animation data after parenting! (in the layout panel at top right)

-=======-

The criteria for making a mask work reliably can depend on how the mask's  "Properties (cube icon)-->Display-->Transparency" box is ticked. (at right)

Tick/untick this box to make it work properly.

Don't confuse the box with it's Transparency tab found under it's "Material" settings.

When viewing or rendering, make sure to -= DESELECT =- everything first! (press A)

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

To Be or Not to Be -(Selective invisibility) -

If an object isn't by default, disappearing when behind the mask, simply "Parent" it to the mask. (CTL-P)  Then unparent it again. (ALT_P)

--

EDIT:  22nd April 2017-

To immunize an object from the effect altogether, you have two choices -

The first is simply reverse parent.  i.e. parent the mask to the object that's disappearing, then unparent again.  Goto the "Outliner' strips and remove any strip that doesn't directly belong there.

-= Make sure to read the beginning of the EDIT (below) '15/3/2017' =-

The second and more difficult method is -

Join it to the mask, then part it again.

A word of caution here.  Join the object to the mask. (select the object first, the mask last before pressing CTL-J)

When separating again, select the mask, press "Z" for wireframe.

Goto Edit mode, select vertice mode, box select all vertices in the object, (not the Inviso plane)

Press P to "Part by Selection".

The object should be seen normally again when you press A.
You may have to tick/untick that Transparency box in the "Display" tab.

Once separated, it's a good idea to reset the mask & object's origin back to their respective geometry.

-======-

Edit: 15/3/2017

A trap for young players with Inviso's are the properties strips in the Outliner.  (top right)

Any mask or objects that have been parented/unparented, joined or separated, may inherit each other's outliner strips.

This is not a problem when only one mask is being used.  It can become a nuisance however when two or more masks are employed. Objects that were rendered invisible can become visible again to the other mask(s)

The solution is two-fold -

Never create the second mask independantly.  Instead, duplicate the original mask and use the duplicate.

The other factor is to purge both the masks and associated objects' "Outliner" entries of anything foreign. (strips that don't belong)  Right click on each and select "Unlink".  It's a good idea to make a save of the project before embarking on this.

The only kink that may remain might be the mask's "Transparency" box needing a tick, or perhaps to be unticked.  This is under it's little cube icon at right-->Display-->Transparency.

With both methods -

A reminder to deselect -= EVERYTHING =- before viewing !

I've recently used 5 masks in a project with multiple overlaps, all without problems.

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

Video Output -

Rendered video formats inclined towards colour banding, such as mp4, gif anim etc, can reveal a mask very very faintly.

This might be the result of a specular setting not being at zero, or a particular lighting angle.  Both are easily fixed as a rule.
Adjusting the mask's Diffuse Intensity & colour slider is another way of eliminating a difficult 'ghost'.

A reminder - Render in OpenGL. (Top left of 3D window under - "Render")

If with some future version of Blender, this effect ceases to be available, simply revert to the last version where it was.
(in my case that's 2.77a)
Make Inviso clips on that exclusively.

I for one hope the effect will stay there.  It can save significant time and effort.


Clothes tearing during animation I'm importing two OBJs from Poser.  One is the body and the other is a jacket.  I apply the cloth modifier to the jacket and collision to the body.  When I animate it the jacket tears apart.  Any guesses as to what is going on?

FYI : I didn't realize I didn't weld the seams in export.  I thought I did.  It was breaking on the seams.


Why does changing the values of a shape key affect the whole model? I am working with Manuel Bastioni humanoids. They use shape keys for facial expressions. The shape keys of the girl in the middle have gone completely out of wack, that is, when changing the values, the whole body deforms. I cannot find the solution. Can anybody help please?

Thank you!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/r9p4lgii00swiju/COMPLEETconcept04.mov?dl=0

Probably you separated the humanoid by material or something and then finalised.  You'll have to start all over again, finalise and then separate. Should work. Happened to me once.


How to clean up these curves I got the following curve

But in edit mode it is ridiculous messy.

It looks it's really small, but if i hit Ctrl+A (Apply) > Scale nothing will change.

Why does my Curve not apply the scale?

As Robin Betts says, Apply Scale does work for curves as well.

If the Normals length are bothering you, you can change the display in the N panel (3D properties) > Curve Display > Normal Size


How do I make Freestyle ignore a specific edge, material or object? I'm currently trying to use Freestyle with Cycles to render a toon shaded image of a robot. The robot is holding a sword, which uses a separate material, and since it glows, I don't want freestyle to draw edges on its blade. However, I can't figure out how to make freestyle ignore specific edges. The sword does have a separate material and is a separate object, so perhaps I can disable freestyle just for that sword's material/object?

Ideally I'd love to know how to disable freestyle for edges, materials and objects.

You can exclude Freestyle lines on a per-edge, per-face, or per-object basis.

For edge-by-edge exclusion, you first mark specific mesh edges using Freestyle Edge Mark, and then use the Selection by Edge Types options in combination of the Exclusion flag.

By the same token, you can mark mesh faces using Freestyle Face Mark, and use the Selection by Face Marks for face-by-face exclusion of Freestyle lines.

Per-object line exclusion can be done by first adding objects to a group and then using the Selection by Group options.

See the Freestyle Line Set section of the online Blender manual for more detail on the three approaches:

https://www.blender.org/manual/render/freestyle/parameter_editor/line_set.html

UPDATE: Additional notes on edge-by-edge exclusion of lines

For example, if you want to draw silhouette lines except for those flagged by Freestyle edge marks, then follow the instructions below:

Enable the Inclusive option (that is the default).
Enable the Logical AND option (as opposed to the default Logical OR).
Turn on the Silhouette and Edge Mark toggles and also enable the X button next to the Edge Mark toggle.

The combination of these options indicates a condition like "silhouette lines AND NOT edge marks" as in a programming language.

There is a limitation in the Freestyle GUI that Logical OR and Logical AND cannot be used at the same time.

For example, suppose that you want to draw silhouette lines and crease lines but not those flagged by Freestyle edge marks.  In this case, you would need to specify a condition like "(silhouette lines OR crease lines) AND NOT edge marks".  This condition cannot be expressed by a single line set because the condition uses both logical AND and logical OR at the same time.  Instead you define two line sets, one for "silhouette lines AND NOT edge marks", and another for "crease lines AND NOT edge marks".  The two line sets are drawn one on top of another, so they are treated as if the two conditions were combined with logical OR.

Indeed edge-by-edge exclusion using Freestyle edge marks is a bit tricky to apply.  Inclusion of more lines by edge marks is much easier, and that is the most typical use case of edge marks.


What's the most elegant way to cut shapes out of a mesh? I'm trying to cut shapes out of a mesh, but I'm having trouble doing it, or at least doing it properly. I'm currently trying to model this flashlight:

The part I'm specifically having trouble with is the part near the green light, where there are cutouts from the cylinder. I'm not sure how to do those properly. The thing that first comes to mind is creating another object, using an array to copy it around the cylinder, and then using a boolean modifier in difference mode. This works, but it creates an ugly mesh, and it also doesn't seem very flexible, for when you need to do more complex stuff, and working on a mesh that indirectly affects the mesh you're actually trying to affect seems a bit weird. I've also tried doing things like knife project, but it's geometry isn't any better.

So, basically, what I'm asking is: Is there any way for me to do this while keeping my geometry clean?

Yes your initial array method will work. Here is the model of a circle. I have extruded it into a cylinder and delete the faces I don't need and apply an array modifier to get the below mesh. I have intentionally left out the last array object. With the mid-edge of the original mesh selected ...

Hit CtrlB to bevel the edge and you should achieve this...

Next with K I have added a cut using knife tool between the bevel like this ...

Now I will extrude downwards with the E to make a depth for the groove...

Before finalising the cut I will add a subdiv modifier. And the modifier stack looks like below. The object offset is an empty with a 22.5 degree rotation to create the array copies, rotating around the mesh's origin point.

Finalising those loop cuts in 4 locations shown here.

And now this is the mesh I have. From here on out you can either bake the normals of the highres mesh onto a low res mesh. Or clean up the highres mesh so that it's not too high a poly for efficiency sake. Hope it helps

And here's the Blend file for your reference.


How to apply all transformations to an object at low level? I am new to Blender (and to some extent to python).
I have pieced together this function that rotates and scales an Object at low level by modifying the matrices:

def rotate_scale_object(inObj, angle, axis, scaling):
        rot_mat = Matrix.Rotation(radians(angle), 4, axis)
        orig_loc, orig_rot, orig_scale = inObj.matrix_world.decompose()
        orig_loc_mat   = Matrix.Translation(orig_loc)
        orig_rot_mat   = orig_rot.to_matrix().to_4x4()
        orig_scale_mat = (Matrix.Scale(scaling,4,(1,0,0)) @ Matrix.Scale(scaling,4,(0,1,0)) @ Matrix.Scale(scaling,4,(0,0,1)))
        # assemble the new matrix
        inObj.matrix_world = orig_loc_mat @ rot_mat @ orig_rot_mat @ orig_scale_mat
        #update_matrices(inObj)
        return inObj

I call it in my script as follow:

obj = bpy.context.active_object
obj = scale_rotate_smooth_color(obj, angle = -90, axis = "X", scaling = 0.01)

It works very well: the object is rotated & scaled as expected.
Yet, I am missing a way to "apply" these transformations to the object, as one would do by pressing Ctrl + A and select Apply all transformations.

Is there a way to do this "low level", without resorting to bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=True, rotation=True, scale=True)?

Mesh transform

# transform the mesh using the matrix world
ob.data.transform(ob.matrix_world)
# then reset matrix to identity

ob.matrix_world = Matrix()

Recent answer where I used Mesh.transform Problem with rotating objects by script


How to add good light to surrounding to get a best result I wanna know is there any addon to get a perfect result for my model with lighting. Adjusting the lamp here and there and increase and decrease the light not get much good result. I have added HDRI light but yet also not good result i got. Whats the easy way and simple to get good light result. If so addon. I have attached an image with hdri and a gold material

Your question isn't terribly clear, but I'll give you a few hints at the complexity behind such questions.

For one, your scene referred render (assuming you are using Cycles) will range from zero to infinity in terms of values. The viewing transform (see the color management panel) determines how much of this scene you are going to "see" end up in your final render.

So what is "good" then? If we are talking about a photographic "good", then you can't achieve it with the default sRGB mapping of scene values to display referred values. It is fundamentally impossible without additional tweaking and bending. This is apparent from the clipped scene values in the upper right of your sample image.

The proper solution to getting a photographic dynamic range is simply to replace or add one of your transforms to properly map your scene referred range down into the display referred range.

For more information, you can peruse the tip of this complex iceberg over at this link.


How do I merge the locations of one set of perimeter vertices on a mesh with the corresponding set of perimeter vertices on another mesh? I have a face mesh and a torso mesh that don't quite align. Without moving the vertices in the torso mesh, I need to merge the positions of the corresponding vertices from the face mesh. What is the best way to do this?
To clarify, the Torso is an appended object being used as a reference to use when adjusting the mesh in the Face object. The ultimate goal is simply to have the vertices of the face perimeter/torso neck opening share the same coords. The Torso object will be removed at the end of this to allow the final, adjusted face mesh to be exported to FBX.
The blend file is located here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/f1i03g9zjhy5qx8/AnointedM1_Face26_ExportTest.blend?dl=0

I'm afraid that shrinkwrap doesn't do what I need, it is for surfaces and these are the edges of two shells. Applying shrinkwrap as described causes the following result:

The shrinkwrap method makes for a surface that is visibly sealed, but on close inspection, the vertices aren't actually merged.

I need the vertices of the face mesh to end up in the same location as the corresponding vertices in the torso mesh. The two seams need to have the vertices merged (or the vertex coords matching) for each seam, without the vertices on the torso mesh moving. That last point is critical.

I tried the second method (incredibly detailed, thank you). It almost works, but the torso mesh vertices seem to be moving. Unfortunately, Blender doesn't have a concept of anchoring vertices, so the only thing that seems to work is using the linking suggested and selecting pairs of vertices and then Merge->To Last (with the torso vertices selected last). If this is as close as I can get, I can live with this solution. However, if there is a way to perform a Merge To Last on two groups (the two edge loops), that would be great.

Create a vertex group using the vertices on the face you want to merge, then use the Shrinkwrap modifier set to Nearest Vertex and choose the torso as the Target


Grid Fill not working I have a selection of vertices that I want to bridge. I would like to use the grid fill tool because there are vertices in between. I am however getting an error Edge Loop Vertex mismatch

"Edge loop vertex count mismatch" Error

"Edge loop vertex count mismatch" error occurs when the number of selected vertices of the two edges you want to use Grid Fill on are not equal, as seen here:

So, maybe you have a vertex selected on one side that's not selected on the other side.


Measurement of the "Straightened" length of a path So, I'm having a bit of trouble with scaling. An object I'm making involves the use of a path to form a curved surface, but I need the resulting curve to be within about 1% of an exact length.

So, if I were to have, say, this curve here that I made for purposes of this question... is there an efficient way to tell how long the black part would be if you straightened it out to a perfect line?

In the Animation Nodes addon there is a node to do just that: Get Spline Length.

The example usage is what you need.


Does mesh size affect performance/should I make my object life-size scale? All of the things I've googled regarding this issue deal with what to do when your mesh is at real life scale but is really small.
I want to make a giant creature and put it in an environment that looks tiny. Should I make the actual mesh of the monster enormous (like...hundreds of meters, as it would be if it was real?), or should I just make the trees really small (like...a few centimeters and make the monster a couple of feet?). I'm a newbie but I've heard that making the mesh real-life scale is the best practice, though I'm not sure if making a HUGE mesh would slow down the program, which is my main concern as my computer is not a super high-performance one (it's not mediocre, it's just...not made for hardcore rendering.) The materials and textures and such will be pretty simple. I'm also planning to add a depth node in compositing that will make it look like the monster is far in the distance, so I don't know if that affects anything.
Thanks in advance, and...please be gentle with me. I'm still new to the program and I'm just doing this for fun. :)

while using real life scale, be careful, some simulations don't work all that great because of the tiny space between meshes, so if you do a sim and it feels off, that's probably why.


Weird Transparency when Rendering in Cycles This is my first time rendering in Cycles since I just figured out how much nicer it looks with normal lighting, but I'm getting a weird transparency effect on the objects when the scene is rendered with cycles specifically. Here is what the render looks like in Eevee:

As you can see, all of the objects are fully opaque except for the wings, which is what should be happening. However, once this exact setup is run in Cycles, it comes out as this:
Needless to say, I did not want my character to turn into a ghost. If this is a common error or if I just missed a step, please let me know!
Here is the .blend file if that helps (ignore the name): https://www.dropbox.com/s/4um4cgaxtm2wyn2/FloraRenderOverwatch.blend?dl=0

You've plugged some image textures into the alpha socket of your Principled BSDF nodes, in Eevee it doesn't create transparency by default as long as you haven't enabled Alpha Blend, but in Cycles it automatically creates transparency. What is your goal with this setup?

Alpha is useful for example if you want to use the alpha chanel of a picture in order to create transparency:


Why do fireflies increase with number of samples when using a hdri light source? I have a plane with a simple diffuse material. I use an HDR light source from Greg Zaal.

The world setup is as simple as this:

When I preview, the noise seems to increase with the number of samples. When I render, it is the same thing as every tile gets rendered. It starts out pretty noisy and then for each sample, some fireflies is added.

I would expect the fireflies to be many to begin with but be dimmed down when increasing the number of samples.

Fireflies is just the name that we give to the bright, isolated, pixel that seems to create a color discontinuity with the pixel in the neigborhood.

It is said they are resulting

  ...from numerical instabilities in solving the rendering equation.

So, talking about the rendering algorithm

  there is no guarantee that it would converge to the correct solution

Despite this, I think that in your case (and most of the times) the method is able to give a good solution, it's just a matter of iterations number.

Below you can see a few steps of the rendering process and an ending comparison with the result achievable by enabling Multiple Importance samples (see Commonly Ignored Features #1 from the author of the HDRI)

So "fireflies" from this point of view, can be considered as just the earliest stage of the rendering process, as they are when rendering caustics. We consider them bad because compared with other parts of the scene the area where they appears is always behind in terms of convergence.

Stop killing the wonderful fireflies! :)


Trying to create a material for to apply a texture on a game model I've followed a guide to import an SFM model into Blender. I've got the .MDL decompiled and into Blender, but I just cannot find a way to apply the texture that comes along with it onto the model. I've tried hitting the texture button and adding a texture, but that doesn't work.

The skeleton doesn't have that ball icon for me to click to make a new material so I can put the texture on. The only other thing that the model came with is are the VTA vertices, but they don't help in the way of putting textures on the actual model.
So how and what do I apply a texture to?

Okay, the thing is that you're using cycles but are not using the nodes to actually apply the image texture, you can do it like this:

Select the model in object mode -> go to materials -> select the material->go to node editor

After that, check the box use nodes

It'll look like this, then you have to create an image texture node by pressing SHIFT + A and click search, search for image texture, after that you only have to select the image you already have in the .blend file:

Hope this helps!


Damped Track on object in armature moves in unexpected and irregular way A problem arises when I move the arm of a robot I am animating. A piston connected to (and a child of) this arm has a Damped Track on it. When the arm is moved using it's IK armature, the piston occasional glitches out of position, and then quickly realigns again as intended.
It seems there is some time needed to recalculate the right position. This would not be a problem for rendering a still image, but the glitching shows in 3D viewport movement and a rendered animation.

Exactly the same render of this particular animation yields a different result:

The arm is connected to a rotating platform (their bones are respectively child and parent). This platform has a child, a cylinder (recognizable by the two capsule shapes attached), that is also the target of the piston's Damped Track. I think this loop of constraints might be responsible, but i'm not sure how exactly. (And the cylinder also has Damped Track, with the piston as target; it also glitches, but not as often)
I also think my problem is similar to this one:
Damped Track constraint on bone lags
There may even be a proposed solution in the comments, but I'm not sure how to apply it to my situation.
The piston glitching or jittering is not intended or wanted. : )
I am interested in any solution to this problem, or any (other) reference to something that might help : )

A bit weird answering my own question but I found a solution. : )
I now believe the problem was due to the piston and cylinder being each-others Damped Track target. I suspect micro translations of their origins when moving caused it, but that is a guess.
I added an object, child of the platform, at the location of the cylinder origin. And also an object, child of the arm, at the location of the piston origin. I used those objects as targets for the Damped Track constrains, instead of the piston and cylinder objects themselves. It seems this has negated the glitching or jittering effect entirely.

Even though i found a satisfactory fix myself, still, thanks to anyone who gave this problem some thought.  : )


Weight painting issues when i was weight painting a model i found that a part of my model (the left foot) was getting pulled by some other bone in the area i suspected is was the calf or the other foot, so i went back and re-did it several times yet it is still being pulled by something please help. Thank you!

To see all the bones influencing geometry:

Select the mesh.
Get into Edit Mode.
Select the vertices you're interested in.
Hover your cursor over the 3d Viewport, hit N.
Scroll down until you see Vertex Weights.

From there, select the Deform option and you should be able to see all the influences.  If there's an influence that you don't want there, hit the X next to the VG name.


Blueprints not aligned? I just started out with blender and I want to model a car with blueprints, the thing is, the blueprints don't match up to each other.
I used the cube to make sure they match up, but when I started tracing, they don't match up at all

Whenever I try to fix them, the other side gets messed up.

it is first necessary to check whether the images are compatible with each other.
Are the same places in the same direction in all the pictures?


Determine/Find any usage of a bone in a rig...how? Suppose there is a highly advanced rig (human "skeleton") with many functions like a face rig etc...
And there is no documentation at all.
How can I find/list/explore the function of certain "entity" (bone) in that rig - how can I find/list/explore all (for example but not exclusive) actions, it is used in, all bone constraints, in which it is used, all parents, all children, all drivers and so on, in other ways then by clicking each single bone of the rig separtely and look for exactly that?

The outliner offers the best overview of your scene data that is available.

You can search the contents, one drawback is that the list stops at matches. That means you can search for bones that have constraints, but you won't see the constraints listed. The other thing is that it shows and searches by the name of items, you can rename an IK constraint to be "mydoohickey" and searching for "IK" will then not find it.

Searching for ik can show bones that have an IK constraint. Note that bone constraints only show when the rig is on pose mode.

To find bones used in an action, you probably want to look at the graph editor where you can search for bone names to see if they have any animation data.

For listing other info, we are left to using python scripts. For example to list bones that have an IK constraint -

import bpy

for b in bpy.context.object.pose.bones:
    for c in b.constraints:
        if c.type == 'IK':
            print(f'{b.name} has an IK constraint')


how can i see all layers when i render animation? I have made my different object in different layers & trying to animate like object appear for few sec & again disappears & than other layers object appears & disappears.
but when i render it in object mode it show me same as i want. But when i animate it just show 1st layers & other layers object doesn't appears. how can i see all layers when i do render animation?

this is the image when i do render animation or render image

If I'm not misunderstanding, I believe you want the Render Layers feature. It's in the second tab of the Properties editor

you can choose which layers are visible in the final render using the boxes on the left-hand side:

Without sphere's layer selected

With sphere's layer selected as well

that's the simplest use for it at least, there's a lot of useful things other than that as well


How to composite an image sequence rendered in PNG? I've rendered my first image sequences of 119 frames in PNG.
I have trouble to use the compositor in order to save the final video file.
When I load the image sequence (with the image sequence node) I just have access to Image, Alpha and Depth output.
However when I rendered my sequence, I did enable many passes, like emmision, trans, diff...
Is there a way I could get access to these passes or is it too late?
I really want to use the glare option, but when I add it, it doesn't do any effect on my render.
I attached a screen of the nodes I added.

Thank you for your help and pieces of advice!
V

If your redered correctly, you should have an image sequece for each of the passes (image Sequence Emision, Image Sequence Diffuse, Image sequence Shadows and so on) if you only turn it on but did not save the passes, you need to start again. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+how+to+output+passes


Blender 2.79b Crash: A single object causes the crash, no fix I am working on a vfx creature for a movie, and I've run into a very specific issue. I haven't found anything on any forum that helps fix this issue.

I modeled and rigged a topology version of a hires sculpt, and everything was working fine. When I began the materials for the creature, I baked an AO map from the hires to the topology, which also worked fine. Then I baked an AO map from just the topology onto a separate texture in the hopes to blend the two. It baked successfully, but shortly after blender crashed.

An autosave file was available and would take me back to just after the second bake, and any command or change related to the topology object caused blender to crash.

Further, I can append every other object to a new blend file, except "Plane" the topology object (bad habit of not naming I know). This single object cannot be accessed or changed, and the autosave file has since been crashing on startup along with the original file.

I've tried opening the file on a different iMac, no luck. Changed to a different version of blender, still no. Every tip and trick and workaround to a blender crash has also not worked, I am out of options.

I am in dire need of this object, sweating heavy bullets here. If anyone can help me figure this out I am getting you a credit on this movie.

Below is the crash report saved in the /tmp:

# Blender 2.79 (sub 0), Commit date: 2018-03-22 14:10, Hash f4dc9f9
bpy.context.scene.cycles.film_transparent = False  # Property
bpy.context.space_data.system_folders_active = 4  # Property
bpy.context.space_data.system_folders_active = 4  # Property

# backtrace
0   blender                             0x0000000100c837ea BLI_system_backtrace + 58
1   blender                             0x000000010013f6fa sig_handle_crash + 362
2   libsystem_platform.dylib            0x00007fff6412bf5a _sigtramp + 26
3   ???                                 0x00000001165c9d2a 0x0 + 4670135594
4   blender                             0x0000000100993c89 modifiers_calcDataMasks + 249
5   blender                             0x00000001008a2a9e mesh_calc_modifiers + 654
6   blender                             0x00000001008a24e3 mesh_build_data + 147
7   blender                             0x00000001009b79cf BKE_object_handle_data_update + 495
8   blender                             0x00000001009b1829 BKE_object_handle_update_ex + 441
9   blender                             0x0000000100a02557 scene_update_object_func + 295
10  blender                             0x0000000100c83b07 task_scheduler_thread_run + 279
11  libsystem_pthread.dylib             0x00007fff64135661 _pthread_body + 340
12  libsystem_pthread.dylib             0x00007fff6413550d_pthread_body + 0
13  libsystem_pthread.dylib             0x00007fff64134bf9 thread_start + 13

Greatly appreciate.

Joe

From your trace it appears to be a problem with the modifiers - possibly resulting in either too many faces (so exceeding the available memory) or producing geometry that is causing Blender to hit an exception and abort.

If the problem is due to Subdivision Surface producing too many faces then you may be able to work around the problem by setting Simplify settings in your Scene properties panel before you import your object into another Blend file.

If the problem is due to the rendering in the 3D View then you may be able to open the file by disabling the 3D View on opening. This can be achieved by opening Blender (without loading a file), change the 3D View window to something else (eg, UV/Image Editor), go to File/Open... and uncheck the Load UI option in the tools panel on the left before selecting your file to open. This should open the file while retaining the current UI windows (eg, UV/Image Editor) so Blender does not try and render the scene in the viewport.

You could also try using one of the more recent development builds of Blender - eg, 2.79.6 - as these do include significant enhancements and bug fixes, especially to some of the Experimental features (such as True Displacement) which could potentially be causing issues.


Problem when merging two elements with subdivision surface modifier I'm having a problem merging two elements with a subdivision surface modifier. The vertices are pretty well aligned, I think it has something to do with the subdivision surface modifier but I can't figure it out.
To be sure I was doing it the right way I hid everything but the two edge loops I want to merge and then aligned all the vertices one by one to have an exact copy. Everything looks good if I have the viewport on 0. The higher it goes the worse it gets. I don't know what to do to fix it.
I also tried to smooth it with the smooth tool but that didn't work either.
To be more expecific if I don't have the subdivision surface modifier everything looks just fine.
Thanks in advance.

Your normals are flipped, select all in Edit Mode and press ShiftN.


Track object and draw path on top of video Is it possible to achieve a result like this using Blender, where the trail of the ball is drawn on the video?

(Screen capture from the video)
https://youtu.be/PZrky67hBSs?t=64

I've only really used blender for video editing, so any pointers are much appreciated. I was able to track the bowling ball for a few frames but as it got smaller I had to create a new marker and resize (any way to overcome that?)

Finally, I'm not sure what steps to take after I've tracked the ball in order to render the line on top of the view.

Track your object in the Movie Clip Editor

Select the tracker and in the solve section select Link empty to track.

Switch to the the regular 3d view. Through the camera biew you'll see an empty that behaves like the tracker.

(I added the video image as background for clarity, but is not necessary)

Select the empty and snap the cursor to the empty (Ctrl+S and select Cursor to selected)

Add a Curve > Bezier object.

I edit mode (Tab) select the end control point of the curve, and snap it to the cursor, that will move the end of the curve to the empty.

Exit edit mode.

Select the Empty and while pressing shift select the curve. And enter edit mode (this is done so that the Empty becomes the target object for the next operation)

Press the space bar, type "hook" and select "Hook to Selected object".

That will make the end of the curve follow the empty.

Go to the first frame of the video (or where the movement begins), and snap the cursor to the empty (Shift S > snap cursor to selected). Don't worry if the other segment seems to unhook from the empty momentarily

Then select the curve, enter edit mode, select the first segment of the curve and snap it to the empty (snap selection to cursor). (don't worry if the other segment seems to unhook from the empty momentraily)

Note that the curve will track the beginning and end points but not necessarily curve along the way... you might need to adjust that manually.


Why does my water turn into a cube at the end of the simulation? I'm new to blender, I'm trying to learn water simulation, but after the end of the flow it turns into its domain shape. Why and how solve this?

There can be several reasons to this.

If there is no fluid in the domain (possibly because of an outflow), it will display the domain mesh.
The simulation is not baked to the last frame of the scene. Once a simulation is baked (it uses the scenes start and end frame) it stops at that frame. Increasing the end frame would result in some unsimulated frames, the simulation has to be run again.
The fluid particles may be too small or too few in the domain. When the fluid falls below the minimum size (specified by the simulation resolution), it display the domain mesh. If you have many tiny drops, which you want to simulate, you need to increase the resolution.

The solution is to hide the domain in the viewport and in the render.
To hide the domain mesh from the last simulated frame onwards, animate the Restrict Render and Restrict Viewport visibility. This way, you can hide the domain mesh on certain frames.

Step 1: Go a frame where domain is still simulated. Hover over the Restrict Render property in the outliner and press I to set a keyframe. (Same with the Restrict Viewport visibility property.)

Step 2: Go to the first frame, from which on you want to hide the domain.  Disable Restrict Render and Restrict Viewport visibility and keyframe them again.


Putting the texture on the object / Displace Modifier I created a plane, using normal map/displacement/occlusion/spec/diffuse and an blender displace modifier I made structure of the pavement. I would like to "put it" to the prepared system of roads. Unfortunately the disintegration of verticles on it is uneven and modifier works stronger in some places. By UV/Image editor I can fit the texture to the shape of the object, but how to make the modifier also followed this uv map? It is possible with this road model, or I have to create it on the other way? I don't have other ideas how to create a square...
As second, is it possible somehow to modify the texture so that roads would branch from the square and weren't just directed up?

Update: after modifications.

On top view UV select all of the faces  of your road object and do unwrap form view, so that the mapping is even and has the same scale.

Another thing worth trying is not using UVs for mapping on the modifier but an Empty.

Re-sizing and moving the empty might give you more control on the placement of the texture.

To make the displace modifier work smoother you might need to add a subsurf modifier before the displace modifier.

If you are not going to see the pavement texture very close on your image, you might want to consider using it as a bump map, instead of a real 3D displacement, that would require much denser geometry.


Why is undo/redo not working! I accidentally pressed some unknown key combination, and now I can't use Undo nor Redo in Blender

If you are using English Software (Blender) under Windows
based Operating Systems but with an AZERTY keyboard, accidentally hitting Shift+Alt keys toggles keyboard layouts, as explained here.

This apparently "disables" the Undo/Redo operators, when in fact what happens is it changes the keyboard shortcuts

Ofcourse they still work, but now you need to use Ctrl+W to Undo instead of the usuall Ctrl+Z, or use Shift+Alt to toggle back to your usual keyboard layout.

You can also disable the shortcut in the Regional Options of the control panel if you follow the steps described here

Credit goes to 3fingeredfrog for the explanation


Fire Domain color ramp affects whole scene If I have a simple node setup like the following:

Then when I render it looks like this:

Whereas if I disconnect the bottom node path (with the color ramp), it looks normal again, but the flames don't render.

Your material lights up the entire Smoke / Fire domain instead of just the flame part.

Put the Fac output of the Attribute "flame"-node into the Strength input of the Emission node. You might need to insert a Math node between those and multiply the value to get a brighter flame.


What is the logic to having an axis labeled Z and also having Z refer to distance from the camera? What is the logic to having an axis labeled Z and also having Z refer to distance from the camera? It seems like an easy way to confuse people. Is this due to the conjunction of two different lexicons, one from geometry where they have a Z axis and one from photography?

Quoting from iKlsR's answer:

  Blender uses the right hand coordinate system with the Z axis pointing
  upwards. This is common with the coordinate systems used by most
  common 3D CAD packages.

However, it's also a standard to use Y up for images (with Z as depth).

To help with getting used to it, you could try a couple things:

Imagine you are looking at the image editor top down instead of from the side.
Think in terms of the camera's local coordinates (the local Z is always out the front)


Curved object wrinkled What can be causing these wrinkles?

Select all the edges around your pole vertex, Ctrl-E, Subdivide, Select the resulting loop and shrink it so it's quite small and flatten it with the pole.


Continuous rotation in AN with certain control behavior? (Speed) My Goal is a continuous rotation of an object in Animation Nodes around on the z-axis that can be controlled via a value in the way that 0 means no rotation and 1 means certain speed. -1 would be reverse.

Increment values, reassign values?
My understanding of AN got tested in this case really hard. First of all the Rotation Input by default doesn’t use the Object Transform Output as a new Input, is there a way?
Second of all is there a way to “store” values or “reassign” them to get this certain kind of behavior.

My First idea was to simply do it with a time_info but multiplying the time_info, logically prouces reverse motion on curve descend. Demo File is 2.81

Comparison to Unity C#
Coding this behavior in unity and c# is easy, because of its incremental fashion: Every tick I can use the current rotation as new input and decide whether I want to add or subtract a certain amount. In AN the linear Time_Info Curve gets multiplied and clinched as a whole.

help would strongly be appreciated! :)

To be able to properly animate in Blender, it is important that frames can be evaluated indepedently without the need for a previous frame or start frame. (Sometimes you want to change the start frame, but frame X should still show the same content.)

Create an empty object, which controls the speed. I added and empty circle and keyframed its X-axis. Grab that Fcurve with Animation nodes.

The position on a frame is merely the accumulation of the speed-value on all previous frames.

To simplify the matter

I use a starting position of 0
interpret the input speed value [from the fcurve] as speed per frame
ignore the subframes (no differential equations) and pretend the speed to be constant for the duration of a frame

but you can easily add the first and second bullet points.

This means we have to get a list of speed values up to the current frame. For that, I use a loop with as many iterations as the current frame number and evaluate the speed-fcurve's value. The resulting list must be summed to get the actual value. I use it to control the X position of a cuboid.

With movement on multiple axis this actually the same.

Final note, do not go the math routes. Although I don't know your context, integrals are most likely overkill.


Why does my rig pose change when i render? i made a rig of some arms and added a pose. But when i hit F12 to render it, it sets back to default. What's the cause of this?

Look for keyframe registrations.  If a pose has been keyframed, rendering will set it to the appropriate, keyframed pose.

Following the render, hit ⎈ Ctrl+z to return to your unregistered, unrendered pose, then try advancing a frame (with mouse over the timeline, hit right arrow.)  Does the pose change?  Then you have registered keyframes.  Register your new pose before rendering, or delete existing keyframes.


Where the dimensions of the object have moved in Blender 2.81 I'm trying to locate the dimensions of the object in 2.81. I'm watching an online tutorial made in 2.7. In Transform object properties used to be Dimension window after Scale Window. Is the window moved in another property or it became irrelevant and taken off for good? Thank you.


Where is the Overlay dropdown in Blender 2.9? it appears to be gone from the viewport Does anyone know where the Overlays drop down is in the newer blender updates? or if I somehow deleted it, and how to recover it?
both my Blender 2.83 and Blender 2.9 don't seem to have the drop down I see in a tutorial I am trying to follow. Google has been no help

The text "Overlays" has been removed but the button is still there. There is just a small down pointing arrow.


Animate which faces a material is assigned to I have a sphere with various materials assigned to different faces. I want to animate it, so the materials get assigned to different faces while the animation is running. Of course, I could always create a different material for each face manually and animate each one separately, but that is boring and repetitive. Is there any easy way to achieve this, maybe built-in or using AnimAll?

Two preliminary animations. Top with constant color. Lower with linear interpolated color.  2 Samples [only] per frame with Cycles, thus graininess. The OP can deliver more exact visual requirements.

import bpy
import datetime

print(datetime.datetime.today())

def object_id_mark():
    m = 0
    for s in bpy.context.selected_objects:
        m = m + 1
        s.pass_index = m

object_id_mark()

In the Python above, the object index is assigned values to coordinate with the materials nodes.  Those objects are the faces of a sphere with a parent for grouping.  Extrude Individual Faces and Separate Spare Parts.  Those objects have the same parent. They can be easily selected and the script above is executed.

Material Nodes, note the group. Image above.

Detail of Group.  Image above.

Material Nodes.    The color ramp interpolation can be set to constant or linear.  Click to see larger image.

Correct RNA path.  Image above.

Be especially careful on the node named [Datablock Careful].  This value is the current frame in a material node which requires Datablock Driver. The 3 Panels are intended to stress the necessity of navigating a deep heirarchy in the Data-Blocks Mode of the Outlner Window.

ObjectName/MaterialSlots/[MaterialName]/Material/[MaterialName]/NodeTree/ShaderNodes/[NodeName]

then

Outputs/Value/Node/[NodeName]/DefaultValue

This list is quite long and my path may not meet exactly your reading of the path. Changing the value manually will verify you have correctly navigated the hierarchy.  The Outliner Data-Blocks window interface may help you reduce clicks by automatically opening a single choice when present.

Image Above.


How do I set third person controls in bge? I am trying to make a third person game. When moving my character, I want its direction to be determined by the position of the camera, not the direction my avatar happens to be facing. How do I do this?

Change your motion actuators to global instead of local

Try clicking on the L on the right. also does your character rotate mid game or just move left, right, forwards, and backwards?
If you set the motion to global, the movement would be always in the same direction even if your character rotates. So as long as your camera doesn't rotate, the movement should be always the same and therefore the same with respect to the camera.

Hope this helps :)


Image used on a plane does not line up when using an array modifier I have a simple brick road with yellow traffic line divider. When I apply the array modifier and line up the traffic lines at the default relative offset parameters, the road lines up but the traffic lines do not. When I align the traffic lines at Y relative offset .011 , the road itself becomes misaligned.

As suggested by ateks, a curve modifier did the trick. In order to keep it straight, I just extended the curve, nurbspath, on x axis (g-x), then applied the modifier to the road section. Then applied the array modifier to lock it all in.


How to make animation like this using array? How can I make animation like this using array without deforming the shape of the ball? I already tried to make it using array and curve but the balls are deforming when I make the 2nd layer of the curve.
(sorry for my bad english)

You don't need an array, what you need is a curve with the shape you want and then use dupliframes.

To set it up read How can I duplicate a mesh along a curve?

Then, animate the "duplication end" for the object used along the curve Read: How can i add more duplicates to a curve?


Is it possible to use different CUDA-capable graphic cards to render simultaneously? I know that you can't mix different spec cards for SLI gaming, but I suspect that when it comes to 3D rendering, the renderer will simply divide the work up automatically.

Choosing the optimum tile size is important for efficient usage of the core's in our processors, I suspect that the tiles will simply be distributed to the difference in power of graphic cards.  So the key to getting it to work efficiently (I suspect) is finding a tile size which allows the renderer to effortlessly divide the work to graphics cards with different cuda core sizes.

In my e specific case, I have a GTX 970 and a TITAN X; can I use them both for rendering?

Yes, you can use multiple GPUs for cycles rendering even if they are not the same kind (as long as they are not a mix of Nvida and AMD/ATI based cards).

Adding additional GPUs is the easiest way to speed rendering in cylces. Two GPUs will render an image in almost half the time it would take to render with only one. 4 GPUs will cut rendering times to almost 1/4...

In the Compute Device section of the User preferences you can choose the GPUs to be used.

When rendering in cycles, each GPU will render one tile and move on to the next unrendered tile until there are no more tiles left to render. Blender will render simultaneously as many tiles as there are GPUs available.

Each GPU will render it's assigned tiles, but if one of the GPUs is substantially slower it will just not render as may tiles within a frame as a faster GPU, and that might even cause the rest of the GPUs to idle until the rendering of the last tile is done.

The available memory for rendering will not be the sum of all the memory installed on the cards, but will be limited to the vRAM of the smallest card. In other words: adding a new GPU with 8GB to a system that has an old GPU with only 2GB, will make the new GPU only use 2GB of vRAM.

To find the optimal tile size you'll have to experiment a bit, as it varies depending on the the geometry, the size and complexity of the textures used. A good starting size is 256x256 but I suspect the cards you mention might be able to deal with larger tiles.

Other considerations:

Keep in mind that GPUs that are connected to a monitor (or monitors) will not work as efficiently as those that are just used for rendering. Refreshing the screen(s) or using other applications might also take away from the resources available for rendering.

If one of the GPUs is substantially slower or has a very limited amount of vRAM, it might be more efficient to have the less powerful card just take care of refreshing the monitors and not take part in the rendering

Rendering using GPU is generally faster than rendering on CPU, but there are still a lot of processes (ie. physics, particles, baking, etc) that are not dependent on the GPU, so having two or more GPUs will not make simulations cache or bake any faster.

If your scene has very large textures or needs to use more RAM than what's available on the GPUs, your scene will fail and not render, no matter how many cards you put in. For very big scenes with large textures that require a olt of RAM, you might still be limited to rendering on CPU.

Check that your power supply is adequate to handle both cards.

With two or GPUs your machine will generate a lot more heat. Make sure you have an adequate cooling system. If the machine overheats it will slow down and eventually shutdown or fail.


Emit particles and move particle on this surface I'm new in blender, and I am stuck in the progress of my project.
I want to emit particles from an object (done). Then i need these particles move on the surface of this object randomly (turbulences).

I have duplicated my emitter object, and i scaled up a little (ALT+S). I put it in collider.
So now, my particles are stuck between these two objects, but the simulation time is big.

I just want to know if there are a better solution to lock moving particles on surface.

Thanks!
Best, Vincent.

You can achieve this by using Forces to direct the particles to your mesh surface. The key is to change the shape of the field to "Surface" :

Here the cube has a Force Field added, with the type set to Force, Shape of 'Surface' and a negative strength. This will draw all affected particles towards the surface.
Note that particles aren't affected by forces applied to their own mesh - so you need to create a separate mesh to generate the particles. However, this could be in the same location as the mesh - so that it appears that the particles are spawned by the same mesh - if that is a requirement.
I also added a couple of fource fields to affect the particles - a 'Drag' field to slow them down (with Quandratic set to 2.0 to slow fast moving particles more than slow-moving ones) and a Turbulance field to move them about a bit. You could also add a Self Effect force on the particles themselves to push them gently away from each other. You'll need to play with the relative strengths of those forces for your situation but I used -5 for my 'surface' effect, 0.005 for the particle self-effect repulsion force, Linear 1.000 and Quadratic 2.000 for the Drag field and 7.4 for the Turbulence field to give them some 'jiggle'.
I also added Collision to the mesh so as to affect the particles when they do hit the surface - to effectively 'grab' them and slow them a bit - by increasing Stickiness to 0.7, Damping to 1.000 and Friction to 0.25.
This produces the following effect :


CPU temperature high when rendering with the GPU I tested a cycles render in 2.8 and my cpu temps were really high like 90 degrees high.

I then tested a cycles render with my GPU instead of the CPU, although my GPU temps remained low the CPU temps got really hot again.

So if my settings are to render with the GPU why would my CPU be doing any work and still getting hot?

How can I isolate my renders to just the GPU, keep in mind I am setting the render settings to GPU render but my CPU still putting in work evidently.

Which doesn't make sense if i'm using the GPU for renders. NM i was about to add a screenshot and realized when i select GPU it becomes grayed out so evidently a AMD RX580 is not compatible with blender.

Do I need to do some additional setting up somewhere within blender? Also my drivers are all up to date, as for the cooling I need to purchase a after market cooler anyway, right now I'm just using the stock cooler that came with my Ryzen 5 2600 a  Wraith Stealth Cooler which does pretty well with everything else except cycles renders. I also have some Artic MX-2 thermal compound I been meaning to apply maybe that will help a little better over the pre-applied compound. But I've seen other posts where people mentioned cycles making CPU temps jump real high [with good coolers] so idk. I've included a pic to show you cycles grey's out when I select GPU render.

Turn off the CPU in the GPU render by going into Preferences > System, and under the CUDA Settings, uncheck the CPU.

I noticed this, too. I'll say that, under the same load, with similar effects and raytracing options, Blender renders, CPU, GPU, or shared, run hotter than in other software, for me.

Blender renders hit 90+ degrees after five or so minutes. Cinema 4D doesn't really go beyond 84 degrees.


Arm Polygons attached to Clothes Polygons? Hi Blender Community,

so i tried to set a rig for this Character and everything seems to be fine except for one thing:

When i move the Hand Bone around the Polygons of the Pants follow (the whole Mesh is one Object the Clothes are not seperate)

Since the Character wasn't build by me, i can not change the Mesh and as seen in the picture (right side)  the original Pose isn't T. Also the Forearm and upper Arm are attached to the polygons aswell. -.-

The first thing that came to my mind was, well maybe it's because of the weight painting but i checked and its doesn't look like that's the problem because there is no weight of the other Bones on the Pants.

Maybe there is trouble with the vertex Groups ? Could it be that ? I personally don't really now how to define which vertices are part of each group because i'm still learning Blender. Does someone know a Solution for my case ?

Best regards

Debbie

This is due to weight painting, just not the bone your using.  when your moving a bone and it's moving part of the mesh you don't want it to, and the weight painting seems to be normal, check all the bones that are parented to the bone your moving.  in this case, check the fingers.

I hope this is helpful.


Mirrored object is misaligned when compared to its source object I have an object to be mirrored on X. Its origin is at the world origin as is the 3d cursor. The problem is that when I apply the mirror modifier to it, its mirrored pair is not exactly aligned when compared to the source. (see pic 1-- it's the RightOrtho view))

I think this is an obj transform/align issue because the object was rotated etc during its build, and its nested under an empty that has also been rotated etc during the animation. So if I look at N, I see loc and rot info (the loc is of the empty) -- prior to parenting the object to the empty, I had applied AtrlA>all to the object.

If I apply Ctrl A>All to the object, that zero's out its Loc, rot -- fine, however now the obj's origin is now not aligned to the world origin so I can't apply Mirror to get a copy along X. Then if then try to get the origin back to the center by using Object>set origin to 3d cursor (which I placed at the world origin) then I can mirror the object along x again, but I'm back to the original problem of having its mirrored pair not being mirrored exactly right.

Unless I'm wrong, I think my solution is to get its Loc, Rot to 0 AND have its origin set to the world center so it can be mirrored exactly. I can get either loc=0 or origin to 0, but not both at the same time. If this is how to correct this problem, what are blender 2.8 settings to get that done please? Or what should I be applying another solution instead?

In this image you can see how the mirrored pair is "higher" in Z than it should be.

This one is of the top view... see how the mirrored pair is "closer" along the x axis compared to the source.

You can also see silver clamps from another object.. as you see those are being mirrored perfectly at source and destination (their rot, loc are 0 AND its origin is at the world origin, so as expected its mirroring perfectly) That's why I'm thinking my solution is to apply the same to the messed up part, but like I said, i'm not doing something right to get all Alignments done correctly to get a correct mirror.

One more thing to note, not sure how important this is... this problematic object (and I have a few others with the same issue) are nested/Parented to Empties, some of then parented to empties and other empties upto 3 levels deep. using these Empties to animate these objects for a game. Thinking that the parenting was causing the mirror problem, I've also tried unparenting the objects from the Empties (keeping transform) and then trying to get the loc, rot and origins to all be 0 and line up, but not been successful.

I've also tried ShiftD S X-1 and that does produce a copy in x-1, but that duplicate also then has the same rot and loc problems in exactly the same way as using mirror produces as is described above.

Any suggestion to help solve this, greatly appreciated.

Consider using a Mirror Object. This allows you to use another object as the reference for the mirror point and axes. This way, you don't have to mess around with the origin point.

An Empty Axis works well as a Mirror Object.


Blender Hand Twisting If I twist the hand, the wrist also twists (as shown in photo).
Blend File :

It seems normal that if you rotate the hand, the wrist mesh get twisted too. What you should do is make the forearm rotate as well so that the torsion looks more natural.
To do so you need to give your forearm bone a Copy Rotation constraint, with the left hand as Target and Space > Pose Space /Pose Space. The problem is that for the moment it will mess up because the forearm can’t be both the parent of the hand and be affected by the rotation of the hand.
So what you should do is:

Create a bone under the wrist, it will be the controller bone, parent it to the armature root bone (in Keep Offset mode).
Parent the hand to the controller (in Keep Offset mode).
Give the forearm a second constraint, the Inverse Kinematic constraint, with the controller as target, and a Chain Length of 2 (it controls the fore arm and the upper arm).

Now when you rotate the controller, it makes the hand rotate, and it makes the forearm move and rotate as well.
Also maybe in Edit mode, pull the elbow a bit downards so that the arm bend a bit, and create a bone (parented to the root as well) that you put behind the elbow to create the Inverse Kinematic Pole Target.


How do I change the file path for all the textures used? I have made a scene in blender following some tutorials, however, since my C drive was getting too loaded, I shifted all my Blender stuff to the D drive. Now when I make a render in blender, all objects have a Purple colour to them. Reading other questions, I figured that it might be because the source of all the image textures have been shifted from C to D drive.

I changed the source of my textures on the current model I am working on through the node editor, however, for all my other .blend files, do I have to correct each textures location file one by one or is there an easier way?

File -> External Data -> Find missing files -> Choose your texture folder -> Find missing files.

Blender will then replace all missing textures with the fitting ones from the new selected folder.


How do I change the transparency of an object without changing the material (Cycles)? I am animating a chess game, and every time a piece eats another piece, I want an effect similar to Chess Titans where the piece fades out of existence. The only problem is that all the chess pieces of one team are using the same material, so I cannot animate the material of it.

I know I could make a separate material for every piece, but I was wondering if there was a way to animate an objects transparency regardless of material. Thanks in advance!

Using pass index

You can use the object 'pass index' from the 'object info' input node.

Pass index is an integer. But you can divide it by a given 'scale' value to have a progressive transparency:

So that:

Note: pass index will animate (keyframes) in render mode only.

Using object proximity

Another way can be testing the proximity of an object/empty to the mesh:

In this case, the node setting can be using object texture coordinates from both the mesh itself and an empty.

Then we take the difference and test it on X, Y (eventually Z), then multiply (will make like a ponderated logical 'and' then divide by a tuning value).


Blender Misaligned address in CuCtxSynchronisze I'm a beginner blender user.
I'm trying to render this simulation but almost every time I render it, it will stop rendering at some point in the render and show the "Blender Misaligned address in CuCtxSynchronisze" thing. It's not only in this one render, I've experienced this hundreds of times when I'm trying to render anything. This frustrates me, especially when I leave my laptop to render while I'm gone and come back just to find out that it stopped because of this error.
I've tried someone's advice on youtube to use a smaller Tile but it didn't work.
Informations:
I'm using CUDA to render.
Cycles engine.
My laptop: Asus TUF A15 GTX 1650, Ryzen 5 4600H, 32GB of RAM.
I tried both using Optix Denoiser and disabling denoiser. Both have this issue.
Sample count is 32-64 since this is just some test render.
1920x1080
It would be very helpful if someone can give me a solution.

Thank you in advance.

I figured that i can use OptiX rather than normal CUDA rendering on my GPU. So i used optix and it worked well! No pauses and even faster rendering.


Sqorus with rounded edges? Seems sqorus was removed in blender 2.7.x so I used add mesh -> extra -> beam builder instead. How do I make this have rounded edges? If I add bevel modifier to it, it looks completely messed up.

This is what I want, smooth curves but cut straight in the front/back faces.

Use the beam builder

Then in edit mode, select all and correct the normal CtrlN.

Now select one of the edges you want to bevel.

ShiftG to select similar and choose "length".

Your wanted edges are now selected.

Use CtrlB to bevel (use Numpad + or Numpad - to set the bevel depth).

Note: if you want to smooth it, click on smooth, but the result is weird, so, add an 'edge split' modifier.


Cloth simulation weird behaviour - Blender 2.8 im trying to do some cloth simulation in blender 2.8, and everytime i check self colision option my cloth automaticly deforms to extremly wrinkled something.

Note: It only happens when i use self colision, and everything works just fine in blender 2.79.

I was having the same problem and read elsewhere that wrinkling can happen because of small distances between vertices (or something like that).

My solution here was scaling up the whole scene 10x, applying transformation (Ctrl-A) and then running the cloth animation/simulation...

(It even appears that simulations runs faster that way, too.)


How to modify vertex groups through script I'm trying to modify an object's vertex groups from a python script. I've come up with the following code which throws no errors, but doesn't change the values in the vertex groups:

class scaleWeight(bpy.types.Operator):
bl_idname = "object.scaleweight"
bl_label = "scale vertex groups"

def execute(self, context):
    ob = context.active_object

    try:
        assert ob.vertex_groups
    except:
        return

    for v in ob.data.vertices:
        #print(v.index)
        for grp in ob.vertex_groups:
            weight = grp.weight(v.index)
            #print('weight=', weight)
            try:
                grp.add(v.index, weight * 0.5, 'REPLACE')
            except:
                #print('err')
                continue

    ob.data.update()

    return {"FINISHED"}

Can anyone tell me where I've gone wrong here?

Set the group weight on the vertex.

The VertexGroup.add(...) requires a list of indices, you have only given an int.  Neeed to grp.add([v.index], weight * 0.5, 'REPLACE')

To get all verts in a vertex group.

Different take on this, iterate thru the vertices, and if they have been assigned to group (I've used selected group, change code for any) its group weight is multiplied by the scale factor.

This needs to be done in object mode, included a mode toggle.

import bpy

class SimpleOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.simple_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Object Operator"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    scale_factor = bpy.props.FloatProperty(
        name="scale_factor",
        default=1,
        min=0.001,
        options={'SKIP_SAVE'})

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        obj = context.object
        return (obj is not None
                and hasattr(obj,"vertex_groups")
                and len(getattr(obj, "vertex_groups", [])))

    def execute(self, context):
        obj = context.object
        mode = obj.mode
        me = obj.data
        # all groups (using selected)
        # groups = [g.index for g in obj.vertex_groups]
        # active group

        groups = [obj.vertex_groups.active_index]
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
        for v in me.vertices:
            for g in v.groups:
                if g.group in groups:
                    g.weight *= self.scale_factor

        me.update()
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode=mode)
        return {'FINISHED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(SimpleOperator)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(SimpleOperator)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    bpy.ops.object.simple_operator(scale_factor=0.5) # test call


How can I assign string variables to an object selection list I wanna make a script witch automatically connects my sim geo to my high res geo with a Surface Deformer.
But Object lists only accept objects, not strings. Is there any way to convert strings to objects or force them to use string?
so = bpy.context.active_object

selected_geo = [obj.name for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects]
geo_name = selected_geo[0].split(".")[1]
dyn_geo = "dyn." + geo_name

so.modifiers.new("Dyn To Mesh", "SURFACE_DEFORM")
so.modifiers.new("Cloth Smooth", "SMOOTH")
so.modifiers.new("Cloth Thickness", "SOLIDIFY")
so.modifiers["Dyn To Mesh"].target = dyn_geo

Consider a pointer property.
Prior to being able to set a property to point to another object, would have used names, and some naming convention, or custom property on the object to "mark it".
However since the ability to assign pointers would consider instead creating a pointer property, that when updated adds and sets the modifiers to the object accordingly.

Simple example, adds a deform_object pointer property to every object. When this is set the modifier is tested for, and created if it does not exist. If the object is set to None (unset) the modifiers are removed.
Test script. Added a test UI to text editor footer.
import bpy
from bpy.types import Object
from bpy.props import PointerProperty

def poll(self, object):
    return (
            object.type == 'MESH'
            and self is not object
            # and ...
            )

def update(self, context):
    # modifiers
    sdm = self.modifiers.get("DynToMesh")
    if self.deform_object:
        if not sdm:
            sdm = self.modifiers.new("DynToMesh", type='SURFACE_DEFORM')
            # set some mod props when created
            sdm.strength = 1.5
        sdm.target = self.deform_object
    else:
        # clear modifiers
        if sdm:
            self.modifiers.remove(sdm)

bpy.types.Object.deform_object = PointerProperty(
        type=Object,
        update=update,
        poll=poll,
        )

def draw(self, context):
    ob = context.object
    self.layout.prop(ob, "deform_object")

# stick draw in text editor footer to test

bpy.types.TEXT_HT_footer.prepend(draw)

Note the update will also be fired when set via code, eg the following in python console is the equivalent of setting / unsetting as shown in GIF above
>>> C.object
bpy.data.objects['Cube']

>>> C.object.deform_object = D.objects['Cube.001']

>>> C.object.deform_object = None


Need help flattening one mesh onto another I'm trying to make armor for skyrim I have a model of the body and the armor I'm trying to create. I can't simply merge the vertices as they have different vertices count and they have too many in general so I wouldn't be able to merge them all successfully. So I was thinking of turning to sculpting and seeing if its possible to flatten the armor mesh onto the body, someone please help.

This is the armor I am currently trying to edit:

This is the body:

I discovered i need to use the shrinkwrap modifier for a projects similar to this.


Only one of the materials gets added when importing from GLTF I have a GLTF file with two materials, each with a texture. There is only one mesh. However, when I import the file into Blender, only one material is available.

I imagine that the issue is that the second material isn't assigned to any mesh. I want to have two materials available for the same mesh and be able to switch between them somehow (for example, one texture that looks like grass while the other texture looks like metal, covering the whole model). Is there any way to achieve this?

I worked around the problem by adding a duplicate of the mesh and associating the second material with it. Not quite what I wanted, but it works now.


How can I make a shape follow a profile without it following the profile normals? I'm trying to make a column, just like this picture:

How can I make the red shape follow the yellow profile?

I try converting them to curves, and then assign the red curve as a bevel object for the yellow, but the resulting shape follows the yellow curve normals, like this:

My Blend file in case you need:

Edit: I've just trying to make these columns all this morning, and found out that this simple looking problem turns out to be very hard. Let me explain.

At first, I tried the manual method, which is to extrude and scale the red shape so that it has the profile that matches the yellow shape. However, scaling the red shape leads to uneven results, illustrated here:

This leads me to use the Offset addon here (https://blender-addons.org/offset-edges-addon/). But this method has another problem, which is:

You can see although it creates an edge that has even distance with the original edge, the circular feature becomes distorted.

So how can I make this column with perfect circles like in the first image? It looks simple, but the more I dive into, the more I find it hard.

In this example I use two objects "Pillar" and "Bevel" ...

select "Pillar" curve and search for Set Origin to Geometry
search Convert to Curve (both objects should be a curve)
Search Spline type >  Bezier and set handle types (V) > Automatic
under Properties Editor > Object Data > Bevel assign a curve "Bevel"
with curve "Bevel" selected go to edit mode (TAB) and rotate vertices in X -90° (so curve goes in Y axis) and move all control points to bring bottom vertex to origin position

Note:

always good to Apply Transformations (Ctrl+A) like Scale in here
switch curves to 2D (Properties Editor > Curve Data)
I had to scale up the Pillar shape (in edit mode) up to 3 to get result where Bevel curve doesn't generates weird in thinner curvature

Edit: just from what I see on your reference image, you should probably start with five circles object, because when you bevel on final floor shape you get wrong intersections of small circles with big one. Step by step is the same. Except for Bevel Curve move control points a bit far from origin. Here is the result.


Blender baking problem I'm following this article about texturing a model. I'm already in step 30 but when I baked my model, I get these holes between the neck and chest. What causes this?

Edit:
Even when not baking and just setting the shading to smooth, shows this odd faces (3rd picture). I think its because of how I connected the neck to the body. Any tips on how should I correct this?

Thanks.

It was because the normals of the faces got turned upside down, so backfacing was making them invisible in textured view.

All I had to do is recalculate the normals: Tab> Edit mode > A> Select all > CtrlN> Recalculate normals.


Merge objects together I have downloaded a model of a quadrotor. It is comprised of a zillion different parts. Is there a way to wrap it with a mesh or something and get the outside of it. Kind of like a mold that just leaves you with a thin layer.

Yea, I know this sounds crazy but it would be extremely delightful if someone knew this. I need to feed it as a mesh to Unity3d So I can make a collider for this complicated shape. I really need it to be the exact shape of the quadrotor, just because I am going to need to do this with other shapes.

Maybe there some sort of merge tool?

It's okay to be composed of a zillion different parts.  Really.

There are a couple of options for dealing with all those parts.  The best is to create an armature for the whole quad, and then parent all those parts to it.  Or you could create an empty and parent all those parts to it.  Or, you could just join all the parts into a single mesh, that works too.  In case you're wondering, just select one object, shift select another, and ctrl-j.

Now, can you merge them into a single mesh?  Yes.  Even though you shouldn't.  You can do this via a boolean modifier on union mode.

Will this screw up how your models look?  Yes, probably.  It will likely require that you retopo the mesh.  That's one of the reasons you shouldn't.

Now, how should you handle this in Unity?  You shouldn't use mesh colliders.  Especially not concave mesh colliders.  Seriously.  They are easy, but they have problems.  You should use primitives-- capsules, spheres, cubes-- that represent your mesh instead.  It is far better to use one hundred primitives than it is to use a single mesh collider.


Use Object Attribute Input and Output I want to set data on objects, but I have several problems.
Here is one. Why can't 'Object Attribute Input' find the attribute?

You have to use square brackets and quotation marks to make the Object Attribute nodes work with custom properties.


How to add 'Properties > Camera > Focal Length' to 3D View Panel? I would like to add the prop from Properties > Camera > Focal Length to a panel in the 3D View, but I can't seem to get it right.

class MyPanel(bpy.types.Panel) :
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_label = "My Panel"

    def draw(self, context) :
        TheLayout = self.layout
        TheLayout.prop(context.space_data, "lens")  #Like this, but for the Camera's focal length.

The console suggests:

bpy.context.object.data.lens

And this gives me the value of the function:

bpy.data.cameras[bpy.context.active_object.name].lens

But how do I make a widget with this function in a 3D View panel?

I would recommend starting with the templates available. You need to import the blender python module & register your panel.

import bpy
from bpy.types import Panel

class MyPanel(Panel):
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'  # properties section 'n'
#    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'  # tool bar section 't'
#    bl_category = "My Tab"  # add to specific tab
    bl_label = "My Panel"

    def draw(self, context):
        TheLayout = self.layout
        col = TheLayout.column(align=True)
        col.label(text="viewport lens")
        col.prop(context.space_data, "lens")
        col.separator()
        col.prop(context.scene, "camera")
        col.separator()
        col.prop(context.scene.camera.data, "lens")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(MyPanel)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(MyPanel)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Edited

Removed Loop of all objects to find multiple cameras.
Added scene camera prop for local selection in the event of multiple
cameras

.


Hiding Vertices Behind Mesh To give context to what I'm trying to do: I'm creating 2D image renders out of my 3D models using a camera, and I'm trying to modularize components of my meshes so I can mix and match them as images together outside of blender.
For example: A body with clothing on top of it, you can keep the same body image but replace the clothing image from different renders for different clothing.
So going by that context, if I have a mesh, is it possible for me to make it hide things behind it while also hiding the specific mesh? (in the example above this would be the body) Here's some images for context:

These are 2 different meshes, you can see the mesh in front should hide anything behind it.
So once we apply the hide/mask it should render the following:

I don't really know if its possible to do this, but I can imagine I potentially need to use materials?

I found a solution. Apparently, you can use a holdout node in the shader editor to get this desired effect.
Create a new material or use an existing material and assign it to whatever object you want to hide and hide whatever is behind it. Go to the Shader Editor and add a holdout node and assign it to surface, you can create the holdout node by going Add >Search and then search for Holdout.

Once all of that is done, you won't notice anything in the editor after the changes and it should look the same as seen below.

You'll need to render to see it take effect so press F12. Here's the result below, I think you can set the holdout to display a specific color it seems by default its just transparent (which is what I want) when you have the node selected in the Shader Editor just edit the color and experiment around with it.
If you want everything transparent you'll have to change the World settings from the default grey as seen below to transparent.


How to change the Decimal point in Node Editor How to change the Decimal point in Node Editor

I can just change only First decimal place everytime

I got this

But i want this

Hold down Shift key while grabbing the input value with the mouse cursor. So you can edit up to three decimal numbers.


Is it possible to nagivate Blender viewport like with WASD in a video game? In video games, flying in the level is typically like this:

W - move forward;
S - move backward;
A,D - move right/left without turning;
Space - jump/ascend;

If I try this in Blender, it does not work (and in general makes some mysterious hard-to-undo changes when I press unknown keys).

Is there any easy mode for navigating the scene using video-game-like controls?
Is there even mode video-gamish mode with gravity (towards the center of the closest big object) and clipping (not allowing point of view to become too close to some surfase)?

The shortcut is now Shift-`, for `2.79` use Shift-F. Then you can use WSAD.


Extending hair length in particle edit mode Is there a way to extend hair in particle edit mode without expanding the entire strand of hair? The "length" tool in the brush menu makes the strand of hair longer, but it affects the entire strand. Here, I only need the end of the strand (the selected key) to extend outward. However, when I use the length tool, the entire strand of hair gets affected.

This is what happens when I use the length tool

This is what I want to achieve.

Another question: My plan is to extend the hair at the very end and then subdivide it to get the necessary keys for editing. Will the entire hair get subdivided? Or will only the selected keys get subdivided?

Uncheck the keep lengths on the toolbar menu for the comb tool. This will enable you to extend an individual key without affecting the others. As for the subdivision question, only the selected keys will be subdivided.


How do I hide the red lines of the path following in the game engine? I have set up path following using logic bricks. Everything works well but I cant hide the red lines in the final game. Also, I cant find anything on the web about these lines. How can I hide/remove them?

In the top of the Blender window there should be a menu bar (called the Info Bar) with the drop-down menus for File, Game, Window, etc.

Click on Game, then make sure the option Show Physics Virtualization is unchecked. (If you are using the UPBGE fork, go to Game, then click the Show Debug option to open another submenu where the option is there.)

This may be the culprit. It can be easy to turn on by accident.


get Bisector for each point in a line From a mesh which contains only vertices and edges, I need to find the bisector vector (or angle) between the two edges that collide in each vertex.

How can this be done using animation nodes?

EDIT

Following @Omar Ahmad answer I arrive to this point where I'm no getting the desired results.

Since your mesh only contains vertices and edges, we will have to find the angle or bisector between every possible combination of edges that share the same vertex. So, the first thing to do is to find the neighbours of each vertex. The fastest way to do that is to use the following expressions:

Then we are going to loop over the vertices and their neighbours and construct vectors going from the vertex to its neighbours:

Then, we loop over every combination of vectors computing the bisector vector, where the bisector vector $\vec{c}$ between the two vectors $\vec{a}$ and $\vec{b}$ using the following formula:

$$
\vec{c} = \vert\vert\vec{b}\vert\vert\vec{a} + \vert\vert\vec{a}\vert\vert\vec{b}
$$

Every combination of vectors can be computed using the expression:

list(zip(*combinations(vectors, 2)))

Where combinations is a function in the itertools module, so make sure to import it in the advanced node settings. So we can implement it as follows:

Constructing transformations based on those bisectors gives:


Create Cross Sections and 2D planes in Blender I have a model of a canoe in Blender that's about 12' long - I wish to break it up into 12 sections so that I can print out each individual cross section and set up the forms so that I can cedar strip my custom canoe! Is there a way to break up my model into these cross sections?

Also, I would really appreciate if somebody could show me how to take these cross sections and get them onto paper somehow, or maybe I'm asking too much now? Sorry

EDIT

Can't figure out how to attach Blender files in comments but here's what I did

My canoe :

I actually went a different route and decided it would be way easier to make a Stand Up Paddleboard, so I modified the canoe (shrunk it) and played with it a little until I got the shape I liked

Then I used the method outlined by AliasGuru to create the cross sections!

I'm going to put them into Photoshop and resize them to what they should be, and then export them as PDFs so I can print them on a large size plotter.

I can only post two pictures because I don't have enough reputation, but it looks really nice! Currently trying to get Blend Exchange to work so I can post the actual blend file.

Thanks for the help !

EDIT 2:

Got it:

Be aware that the cubes are not correctly numbered.

Still can post only two links so I'm going to have to get rid of another picture, sorry!

depending on how sophisticated you want to go, there is a few solutions to this. If you manage to create a closed volume from your boat model (the hull I guess is the part needed), you can do it using the Boolean modifier.

Create the volume first. If your canoe is only a shell, you can use the solidify modifier to generate some thickness. if the volume is closed, you're good to go.

Create a cube and scale it so in one axis it is really flat. This will be the thickness of your section:

Add a boolean modifier, set it to 'Intersect', and choose the boat hull as the object to cut with (in the former screenshot my object is the 'Dragon'). If you now hide the boat hull, you should see the first section.

Now you only need to duplicate this object across your boat with constant offsets. Press Shift+D, X (if you want to go along the X-Axis) and then type in the amount (like 0.1) Enter. You should now have a second section in place. If that worked, hit Shift+R, which repeats your last operator (duplicate and move), and do this 10 more times to have 12 sections in the end.

These objects can be now individually selected (that's why I did not use an array modifier) and put on layers if you like. If you select one of the elements, you can see the dimensions of the bounding box (I made it visible in the screenshot) in the Transform tab:

This you can use to resize the section images later on to correct size in Photoshop or Gimp (unfortunately no way to do this out of the box afaik). Getting the images is a matter of setting up Blenders viewport and do some openGL renders. Setup a new World, make it white, and set Blenders viewport to show the world and only render:

Using the 'render OpenGL Image' button marked in the screenshot above gives you an image in the resolution set up in the render settings, so you can go for really high res templates if you need to.

For scaling the images to correct size you'll need to consult the image editors manual.


How to speed up when blender has suddenly slowed down? My daughter has been using blender on a 2015 iMac with 2GB graphics card, 4GHz processor and 32 GB memory. Blender was working great until just now when she applied a smoke effect. She is surprised how much it has slowed. We are wondering if there are any caches or something of that sort that we should be periodically clearing to help speed. The only other app running is a browser where she is watching a tutorial. A few helpers and such are in the background but Activity Monitor shows they are using virtually 0% of CPU, and Blender is only using 2%.

My Question is: Is this normal for the smoke effect?

She is using the number divisions recommended in the "Smoke" tutorial linked below, 256, much higher than the default number of 32. (Alas, I am not up to speed on Blender myself, just repeating what she explained to me.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snDUjSbBo20&feature=youtu.be

Yes, this is normal.  The fact that the CPU utilization was so low tells me that your daughter has probably 'baked'[1] the simulation to a disk cache so most of the 'work' will be showing up in the form of disk I/O rather than CPU utilization.  This is a good thing and probably giving her much better performance than if she 'frees' the bake.  The physical sims (smoke, fire, water, soft body) are fun but expensive: they are quite computationally and storage intensive and will often soak up any amount of performance a consumer grade system has to offer.  The performance and storage issues get exponentially worse as you dial up the detail, such as going from 32 to 256 divisions.

Some tips to help her deal with this:

When you're working out a scene, keep the detail settings of the sim as low as possible to provide the general 'feel' for how it's going to look when it's done.  Bake it for performance and work through as much as possible of the rest of the scene.
Once you have everything else worked out, free the bake
Now then start dialing up the detail level of the sim until it is just above her threshold of 'that looks the way I want it'
Bake the sim again at the final detail settings
Fine tune / finish up
Render the final animation

[1] To determine whether the smoke sim has been baked or not, select the smoke domain and then go to the 'Physics' tab of the Properties browser.  At the bottom there is a section 'Smoke Cache' and a set of 6 buttons in a group.  If the first button is labeled 'Bake', then she hasn't baked the sim.  If it is labeled 'Free Bake', then she has.  Either way, the smoke cache defaults to using a sub-directory in the same directory as the main .blend file (so if she has saved it as my.blend, there should also be a blendcache_my-smoke directory)


Bone/armature mirror option isn't working I'm practicing rigging a model and tried to enable the axis mirror in the options menu on the left side of the screen in the tab but it's not working. I recently updated to the latest version of blender and I haven't used this option before.

Does anyone know what could be stopping the axis mirror from working? Also using screenshot to help explain would be a huge help since I'm a visual learner :)

Also due to copyright reasons I can't upload the model, sorry.

I found an alternate solution to mirror bones :)

Select the bones you want to duplicate.
Duplicate the bones(shift D).
Press S for scale.
Press X for axis.
Type -1 to flip it.
Press Enter and violá! Mirrored armature/bones :)


Bug with Blender (the UI to be more specific) - weird stuttering and glitches I installed Blender in my PC (Ubuntu 16.04) and I've this weird stuttering and glitches on the GUI when I mouse over the cube from the startup project in sculpt mode. Also, when I maximize the window the stuttering and glitches become permanent.

The specs of my PC are:

CPU: AMD FX-6300
RAM: 8GB
GPU: AMD R9 270X
GPU-Driver: Open Source AMD - Mesa 13.1.0-devel

Blender was installed using: sudo apt-get install blender

Here's a short video of the problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orUQFJKJlgQ&feature=youtu.be

https://gyazo.com/c9458a26f3445f6a7f4cf6b974325dc8

I'd like to know if it's a problem with my GPU, my drivers, this version of Blender in Linux, etc.

Thanks in advance.

I had graphical glitches as well with the mesa drivers. I fixed it by going to File > User Preferences > System, and under the Window Draw Method title select Triple Buffer and then press Save User Settings


What's a good way to make planks in a pattern from a vertices pattern (see image) I made this plane of vertices

and I'd like to turn it into a pattern of wood planks.

So far I've tried a solidify modifier resulting in this (great!)

And then a boolean, but I get this

I've played with thresholds, boolean modes, offsets and thicknesses but it always results in nothing, missing planks or random messes of faces and vertices. Any ideas/recommendations?

Select all the faces in Edit mode. Press I (letter not number) to inset, then press I again to inset all the individual faces. Only do a small inset so there's a small gap, then without deselecting the faces, press P and select > By Selection to separate your new faces into a new object.

From there you can extrude the faces up, and delete the object containing the filler that you no longer need.


Why does mean crease not work properly? So I want the back of the ship's mesh to be pulled to the mean crease (1) I have set. When I try to fix it, I am left with an ugly result.

Give those edges some fun ;) (understand Mean Crease):

(also the bottom ones respectively)


How to deform a mesh based on bone rotation? Is it possible to set up a rig in such a way that a soft, rubbery part of the mesh can be "deflected" based on the rotation of a bone?

For example, I have a mesh like this:

And I'd like to rig it so that when the cylinder part is rotated, it deflects the rubbery torus like this (roughly):

Unfortunately I can't just weight the torus to the arm bone, as that doesn't deflect the torus so much as rotate it:

Note that the cylinder should be able to rotate in all directions and deflect the rubber "gasket" accordingly (as depicted in the second screenshot).

Is this possible to do with a rig?

Your example is tricky because the ring forms a loop to rig, which is difficult for it to work omnidirectional and also stretch.

Normally for sliding stuff like handbags on shoulder etc. you would just IK rig it and give the control a Floor constraint to emulate the collision. But this would be too difficult here.

Instead I suggest placing reasonable amount of bones into the rubber ring and building the same amount of rigid-body collision meshes for it making together the ring. They need to collide with the shaft and be connected with rigid-body joints. When you parent the bones to the pieces it should give the most realistic results.

You could also try to rig the torus with a star of bones radiating from the torus center to edges and script a custom driver for them that will move the bones away from the shaft.


weird white reflection in my glossy material There is no bright light shining on the material so I am confused. Must be somethign wrong with my settings As you can see the mushrooms have weird white circles on them.

How do you know if an object is shiny? Because other things are reflected on the surface...

What things?

Whatever is in the environment. If there is a sun in the image used as environment or if there is a light on the scene you can expect it to be reflected on the surface.

Read: Why does an object with a glossy shader render in black?


How to setup correctly the spot lamp Can someone give to me any suggestion to set up correctly the spot lamp ? I would like that the light is like the one that you see on the last attached picture. I watched a tutorial,I tried different kind of parameters,but I'm not fully satisfied....very thanks.

To control the softness of the source move the Lamp Size value.

The larger the light source the softer the shadows (read: How to minimize/soften the shadows?).

(Click on the image to enlarge)

To change the radius of the light change the Spot Shape Size (in degrees).

(Click on the image to enlarge)

To have volumetrics add volume scatter on the world or create a domain.

read: Atmospheric lighting in cycles