Blender 2.8 Animation, Bake Action, is it broken? This question was asked Here but not answered satisfyingly.

I am attaching sample files where I reproduced the issue:

Repro:
Using Blender 2.81 (but seems to be broken in all 2.8x releases)

shift+A and drop an armature or bone.
translate object around creating a few keys down the timeline
in NLA editor make keys into a strip
in a new track create more keys down the timeline
make these into antoher strip so that you have a stack of two strips on two
tracks.
Now go to Pose > animation > Bake Action.

Expecting: Baked
    down track to result in the combined animation of both source
    tracks. Instead it acts weird, if you hide the two source tracks and
    only play your baked action you'll see it's not right.

2 Sample files are here

The Rigify file, seems to bake a key on every frame. But if I turn off the base tracks to only play the resulting combined track, you'll see the character just pops back and in the end even disappears somewhere instead of simply returning to origin.
In the other file I tried it again with a base joint rig, not controls. Same result except this time for me the Bake Action command only bakes the first and last frame even though I have it setup to bake every frame.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1LKUqg_rmoZAn25UAUul1p6LX_0ANBLnm

Is this broken or am I missing something ?

After tinkering with this here's how I work with Baking Actions:
Once you have all your edits layered as NLA tracks and you are ready to bake down to one replace layer:
Make sure that the New layers under the Animation Data tab on the right of NLA editor is set to Replace.
In pose mode, Select all the Controls of our rig, or all bones.
go to Pose > Animation >Bake Action.
In the settings use "Selected Controls" it is way faster.
Also make sure Visual Keying is on
Remove constraints if you are trying to bake animation onto a constrained object. otherwise you can leave it checked off.
When you run the Bake Action script you should get a flattened replace track of your baked animation.
If you are having issues with this, feel free to ask for clarification !


Display Vertices as Circles Is there a way to display circles instead of squares for vertices in object mode?  In preferences, only Vertex Size can be changed.
Thanks!

You can render (Viewport > Viewport Render Animation) just as particle's   Halo (default particle Point) ... the only one thing that differs is perspective (far particles are smaller than front ones).
Since it isn't geometry, just visual representation, could be memory intensive as representation of vertices.
Under Overlay Properties in 3D view editor enable Statistics to see from how many vertices your "foam" consists. Add Particle system with the same amount of particles as vertices. Frame Start 0 End 1 (or go to Render > Extra > Unborn). Source > Vertices (disable Random Order). Physics Type > None.
Default size 0.1

Size 0.01


Export Panorama Equirectangular I'm new to blender and I'm trying to export an equirectangular panorama.
I've seen on youtube an option to choose Equirectangular after the panorama's choice.

But I can't find the equirectangular option in the camera tab.
It simply isn't there.
What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

Equirectangular option is only available when using the Cycles Rendering engine. If you are using the old "Blender Render", it will not be available.


Offset edges along a plane How do you offset a series of edges evenly, looped or not?
Searching on line I came across
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Modeling/offset_edges which seems to be what I'm looking for but I can not get it to work using Blender v2.75.  Does something have to be done to activate this?  When I highlight an edge loop and hit Ctrl-E the pop-up menu does not include an 'Offset Edge' submenu.

I see this question has been asked before but the answers seem to refer to files that are no longer available.

I'm using 2.76 And it all works just fine. Here are the steps:
You need to install the addon

Download the Add-on from the link in this page: https://github.com/Bombaba/BlenderPythonScripts/blob/master/mesh_offset_edges.py

To install the Add-on in Blender:
Press Ctrl Alt U to open the User Preferences window. Go to the Add-ons Tab and press on Install from File:

Select the file you had downloaded earlier and click on istall from file

Back on the User preferences window find the Mesh section and enable Mesh:Offset Edges by clicking on the box on the right.
To make the add-on permanent on your blender installation press the Save User Settings button.

The add-on is now available and ready for use.

Select the object you want to work on and enter edit mode (Tab)

Select the edges you want to affect and press Ctrl E. The offset Edges option should be available in the Edges Menu.

The options for the tool will be displayed on the Toolshelf (T) or by pressing F^


Particle hair falls of when I animate object I am somewhat new to blender. I have the modeling aspect of the program down pretty well. However, after modeling my character with particle hair on its face (ie: the mustache, the eyebrows) the facial hairs started to fall off the character when I animated the facial movement. When I would animate the mouth (lip synch) the mustache would fall off. When I animated the eyes, the eyebrows would fall off, etc. Can anyone please tell me how to prevent this from happening and have the facial hairs move smoothly with the facial features?

You need to have the particle modifier below the armature modifier.

The modifiers are applied from the top to the bottom, that means if the particle system is first then the hair is calculated in place and then the armature moves the mesh which leaves the hair behind.

But if the armature is first then the mesh is moved before the hair is calculated.


Can a realtime webcam image be displayed on a plane through scripting? Setup: Blender 2.82

I want to display my webcam in real-time on a plane.

I managed to render images from my computer on a plane here.Can a image be render on planes through scripting?

However i did not manage to find something useful to try to capture in real-time my webcam continuously via a python script. So to open the camera and to display the image on the plane

Any help will be much appreciated.

Blender is more geared towards content creation and is not the right software for your project.

You can write a python operator which continuously grabs frame from the webcam and writes them onto an image texture.

Add an image texture and name it image.
Add a 3D object and texture it with the image. You will have to go to material or rendered view to see the image.
Create a new text block. Write a modal timer operator. You can get the structure for this script in the text editor menu: Templates > Python > Operator Modal Timer.
The modal timer operator is a Blender operator, which can be called from the interface and starts a timer. The timer calls a function at a fixed interval. In this function, we'll grab the camera frame and write it on to the image.
Install opencv-python, which can access the webcam. Identify the folder which contains the python executable Blender is using. You can do this by going into the python console and typing import sys and in a new line sys.exec_prefix. Upon pressing enter you will see the path to the python executable folder. Go to that path (...\2.82\python\bin) and open a new command line interface. Install opencv-python with the command python -m pip install opencv-python, which will also install other relevant modules like numpy. Restart Blender.

Now that you're setup, open the modal operator and remove all content from it's classes methods. When entering the modal operator, execute is called. In this method, we have to initialize the modal timer, the opencv VideoCapture and a reference to the image in Blender.

def execute(self, context):
        wm = context.window_manager
        self._timer = wm.event_timer_add(0.5, window=context.window)
        self._cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
        self._img = bpy.data.images['image']
        self._size = tuple(self._img.size)

        wm.modal_handler_add(self)
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

The modal method is called every timer tick. As in the template, let's leave the check for an exit condition (like a pressed Esc key) when we exit the modal operator. On a timer tick, we start by grabbing the frame with the opencv VideoCapture object.

ret, frame = self._cap.read()

Then we resize the captured frame to fit our blender images dimensions.

resized = cv2.resize(frame, self._size, interpolation = cv2.INTER_AREA)

To make the numpy array (which is the image opencv produced form the webcam) compatible with Blender's image datablock, we'll have to flip the R and B channels as well as the Y-dimension, convert the image pixels to floats and flatten it. (Blender expects image data to be a long list of rgba pixel values.)
This resulting "list" can be assigned to the pixels property of a Blender image.

rgb = np.flip(resized, axis=[0, 2])
rgba = np.ones((self._size[1], self._size[0], 4), dtype=np.float32)
rgba[:,:,:-1] = np.float32(rgb) / 255
self._img.pixels = rgba.flatten()

The full script at the end of this answer. Run it by pressing Run Script in the text editor. This will add the modal operator to Blenders runtime memory. In the 3D view, press F3 and type the name of your modal operator (the bl_label of your class). I named the classes bl_label Modal Timer Operator as in the template. Then click on the result.

Run this script at your own risk. Blender might crash, remember to backup.

While the framerate is insanely low, I can see my camera capture writing to the image. However the viewport updates sampling method doesn't get enough samples to udpate the image enough.

While my answer gives a method to inject your webcam image into Blender in "realtime", it clearly lacks speed and almost removes the Interactivity from the user interface. To make this remotely usable, you would have to implement multithreading storing the images in some sort of concurrent bag.

import bpy
import cv2
import numpy as np

class ModalTimerOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "wm.modal_timer_operator"
    bl_label = "Modal Timer Operator"

    _timer = None
    _cap = None
    _img = None
    _size = None

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if event.type in {'ESC'}:
            self.cancel(context)
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        if event.type == 'TIMER':
            ret, frame = self._cap.read()
            resized = cv2.resize(frame, self._size, interpolation = cv2.INTER_AREA)
            rgb = np.flip(resized, axis=[0, 2])

            rgba = np.ones((self._size[1], self._size[0], 4), dtype=np.float32)
            rgba[:,:,:-1] = np.float32(rgb) / 255
            self._img.pixels = rgba.flatten()

        return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

    def execute(self, context):
        wm = context.window_manager
        self._timer = wm.event_timer_add(0.5, window=context.window)
        self._cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
        self._img = bpy.data.images['image']
        self._size = tuple(self._img.size)

        wm.modal_handler_add(self)
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

    def cancel(self, context):
        wm = context.window_manager
        wm.event_timer_remove(self._timer)
        self._cap.release()

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Blender 2.79 interface freeze I've experienced a pretty unusual error. An issue I cannot explain enough to find it on Google. The error goes like this. When Blender starts, everything looks fine, the console shows up for a moment, and then the main window appears. But, while normally the gray background quickly changes to normal Blender interface, in my case, it stays gray. Now, it's getting weirder. When I move the window or resize it, window updates. When I click on something inside the interface nothing happens unless I move/resize the window which triggers the update of the interface.
I have no idea what is happening.

In case if needed I attach my spec-sheet:
Dell Inspiron Inspiron 5558; Intel Core i3-5005U 2GHz; Intel HD Graphics 5500;

Alright, I've worked out a solution by accident. It is a pretty unusual situation because actually, I have no idea why that solution was valid.

Solution: Switch from high contrast theme to a normal one in Windows.

For some reason, the Blender interface was unresponsive while Windows is in high contrast mode. When changed to a normal theme, everything is working just fine.


automatic weights won't connect skeleton to mesh I have a mesh and constructed a skeleton from armatures, single bone & extruding, inside the mesh. I press CTRL+P, I click on "set parent to- with automatic weights". In every tutorial I watched this connects mesh and skeleton like magic, yet in my it does literally nothing.  I move the skeleton in pose mode, nothing, only the bones move.  I only found one person having the same problem as me and the question wasn't answered.

.blend file available here: https://ufile.io/304451 (apologizes for the crappy site).  This is after I used automatic weights.

I also tried with really simple things like a cube scaled to be a door and a single armature. still nothing.

You need to:

Select all you mesh parts
Select your armature while selecting the mesh using Shift+RightClick
Hit Crtl+P then choose With Automatic Weighting

And all will be good as shown below:

As @lemon mentioned, although it will work without joining the mesh parts together, but it's better to join the mesh parts together then apply the parenting to use the dog as one object instead of having many objects representing one object as this will avoid a lot of mess. To join the mesh parts select all mesh parts using Shift+RightClick then hit Ctrl+J


How to open properties bar, I accidentally closed it? As you can see I accidentally closed my properties bar on the right hand side and I can't figure out how to open it again. Please help!

I mean the part I have boxed in red in this one I can't get that one reopened in my current project.


Hide wireframe in edit mode I am editing a very dense mesh. It looks great when viewed as solid faces, but it's just a black blob when viewed as wireframe because there are so many vertices.

When I switch to edit mode to select some vertices, the display goes to wireframe. Is there a way to hide unselected "wires" in edit mode, but keep the solid display of all faces, so that I can work on this dense mesh?

Sadly this is not possible, however you can approximate a result like this fairly easily.

First, go to File > User Preferences > Themes > 3D View and change the Wire color to the default grey. (Around Hex 6B6B6B)

This will make it less visible, but not invisible. You can make it so that selected edges are not shown as well by going to the N menu and finding the Mesh Display options.

Also see this question


Particles fail to show in final render I have a cube emitter which emits simple blue particles. They appear in the 3D View, but not in final render. I have followed this tutorial (but not with plane) and my file is here.

Thanks for an answer!

I have figured it out, the particles don't show in simple render, unless they're activated in scene before. If they are, the render show them statically at their place. If I want them to move in render, I need to use animated render (ctrl+F12).

Thank you all for your attention!


UE4 - FBX -Blender not exporting animations I just cannot export blender animations to FBX format

they do not play in FBX viewer
they do not appear in Unreal
no import options are displayed in the FBX import dialog

I tried exporting selecting the object, the armature, then both
also tried different options in the FBX export

edit :
I created another test scene that works, and I noticed that the scene that contains the animation that fails has an NLA displayed in green
how do I remove this ?

apparently a bug in blender 2.9
being investigated


How do I make normals visible on both sides of a model? I am making a first person shooter. I am making assets in Blender and importing them to Unity. I made a building with an entrance and imported it. When I walked around it, the walls started disappearing. To solve this,I re-calculated the normals, but then when I walked inside the building the walls disappeared. When I flipped the normals, I could only see the walls inside and not outside. Is there a way I can have the normals visible from the inside and outside of the model?

You should simply add thickness to your walls, as they said in the comments, you don't have walls made only by a plane in reality, so the fastest way you can adjust your model is by using the solidify modifier just add as much thickness as you want and you should have something similar to the first picture; as you can see, this way you have normals on every side. In the second picture you can see where the thickness value is and all the other values you can play with in the solidify modifier.

Difference between solidfy and no solidify:

Solidify modifier:


Want to make this Split and Slide Effect achieved in After Effects in the VSE I've been watching this tutorial on how to split your screen with a line that grows from nothing and bisects the screen. Letting you manipulate the two halves of the screen independently ; having one or the other move up and down, grow and colour change.

The tutorial is here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOZY7Yks6hI

He uses matte to determine the alpha channels of the two halves of the screen. He then parents the alpha channel to the matte.

I was hoping to do this process entirely in the VSE, however I don't know if theres the equivalent of the pen tool in Blender that AE has.
I think I could use masks to achieve this but 1. I don't know how to make or use masks in the VSE 2. I don't know if it'll produce the desired result.

Any help would really appreciated!

Splitting screens:

The method I've used here is using the same principle for both.  A 2D plane for each video, one laid just above the other and the camera looking straight down.

Note:  Both are rendered using OpenGL, not Blender's internal render.

With the split screen an 'inviso mask' face was added to the lower edge of the white line. (thin rectangular plane laid just above the  video planes)  The line was simply rotated.

(inviso mask - plane with transparency set to 0.008)

In the torn or jaggy edge version, a single plane was used and textured with it's video.  A jagged edge (vertices) was cut into that using the knife function.  That was then duplicated (SHIFT-D) and dropped a little under the first

At the opening frame, only the top plane and video can be seen until reaching the frame where shape keys INSTANTANEOUSLY fold the respective outer edges of each plane downward and underneath. (hinged at the jagged edge)

In this example the left side of the top plane, and right side of the lower plane are folded down at the exact same frame that we start to rotate (tear) both planes out from the bottom center. (origin point set to the cursor which is already set to bottom center)

Twisting the planes in the Z axis on the way down can enhance the effect.

Underneath both planes a 3rd can be added as shown here textured with our favorite movie studio pattern.

Both Blend files are attached and compressed. VE5 (the 2nd) the straight out split screen, VE4 (1st) the torn screen.

If as you mentioned, you're still needing video footage as to how it was done that can be organised.  (hasn't been done yet)

The Blender files: (You'll need to substitute the original videos with your own)

Note:  Rendering used OpenGL, not Blender's internal render.

Thanks also to @3pointedit.  That could be another solution for you to try.


Unable to see inside object I'm using an image as texture for sky background on a sphere, however I'm unable to see inside of that sphere, which is the whole point of background image.
Thanks.

Select everything, click CTRL+N and then flip normals

Normals is the vector value that represents face's direction. By default normals are directed outside of the sphere, so everything will be displayed correctly only on this side. When you flip normals, you flip the direction of the faces to make them facing inwards.

Also, if you want to use this sky as background or lightning, make sure to check out what HDRI is and how to use it in blender.


Configuration of Cycles fisheye camera I try to use the cycles fisheye lens:

with a 2/3" sensor type
camera is attached in the ceiling at 2.5m in a room
focal length is 2.2mm
filed of view is 180 degrees.
sensor size (2/3") is 8.8mm * 6.6mm.

However, when I chose a large sensor, the image plane of a camera is contracted and when I chose small sensor, the image plane of a camera is extended (image2). Normally, this means that like the focal distance is changed. But, I am not sure what exactly mean because when the focal changes, the field of view changes! Any explanation will be appreciated.

The angle of coverage of a lens is determined by the size of the sensor and the focal length.

Blender is designed to deal with variation of all of these parameters as they would happen in real life in a real camera.

When you change the sensor size, the Angle of Coverage of a lens will be affected.

As an example. A 35mm lens in a full sensor 35mm camera with a sensor that is 36mm wide would be considered a "normal" lens (close to that of the human vision) with an angle of coverage of 54.432 degrees.

The same 50mm lens on a sensor that is 8.8mm Horizontally would be a very long telephoto with a field of view of barely 14.331 degrees.

The same lens on a large form at camera with a sensor with of 6.5cm would be a wide angle lens with a field of view of 89 degrees


How to make this petal shape a mesh? I am trying to make the petals in this image I made in illustrator in Blender but making it into a mesh that I can solidify so it looks like a 3d ring of petals that come out. How do I make this shape in Blender by itself?
whenever I import it as a svg just hte flower poath it creaste a hollow design. I am clearly very new to all this would like some help please!

Fill those petals in illustrator and after you fill that in illustrator application you will be able to fill that


Script to move object to world origin without changing z-axis position I have a blender file with 4 objects. Every object has position [0,0,0], rotation [0º,0º,0º] and scale [1,1,1] but they are located in different positions in relation to the world origin - [0,0,0]
I need to move them all to the world origin except the z-axis.
I have a script that I use to rotate all the objects in the scene but I can't figure it out how what to do in this case.
# rotate objects:
sel_objs = [obj for obj in bpy.context.selectable_objects if obj.type == 'MESH']
for obj in sel_objs:
    obj.rotation_euler = (0, radians(-90), radians(270))

I'm using Blender 2.83.0

You've lost the original locations of the objects so technically they are at the origin. In the script below I've cheated and used bpy.ops to reset the objects origins to Center of Mass.
import bpy
C = bpy.context
D = bpy.data

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

for obj in D.objects:
    obj.select_set(True)
    C.view_layer.objects.active = obj
    ### Pick one ###
    #bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_GEOMETRY', center='MEDIAN')
    #bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CENTER_OF_VOLUME', center='MEDIAN')
    bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CENTER_OF_MASS', center='MEDIAN')
    obj.location[0] = 0 # x
    obj.location[1] = 0 # y

    C.view_layer.objects.active=None
    obj.select_set(False)

After batFINGER's suggestion I modified the code to not loop through bpy.ops calls. I also changed it to only affect selected objects. The original version would have moved cameras, lights and whatever else.
import bpy
C = bpy.context
D = bpy.data

### Pick one ###
#bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_GEOMETRY', center='MEDIAN')
bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CENTER_OF_VOLUME', center='MEDIAN')
#bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CENTER_OF_MASS', center='MEDIAN')

for obj in  C.selected_objects:
    obj.location[0] = 0 # x
    obj.location[1] = 0 # y


How to get Z-distance (not depth) from camera to object for every pixel in the frame? I am currently doing a computer vision task and got stuck on the following problem. I need ground truth values for my sequence. I have a nice sequence where the camera moves trough my scene and captures the RGB-frames. Now, I need a corresponding frame for every RGB-frame, but instead of the RGB-values it should store the distance. I know, that you can get the total depth (euclidean distance from camera to real-world-object) by connecting the 'Depth'-output of the Render Layer Node to a File Output Node in the Compositing workspace using the EXR file format. But I just need the Z-component of the distance to the camera and I don't want to convert it afterwards with the camera parameters (already did it, but I need a cleaner workflow).

I stumbled upon this function: bpy_extras.view3d_utils.region_2d_to_location_3d , but could find almost nothing about how to use it properly. I don't know what I should give it as input.
Has anyone a solution or maybe already used the function and can explain me how i would use it in the default Blender setup (just a Cube, Camera and Light) and if it does what I expect it to do (giving the x,y,z and then I can strip the unnecessary information)?
I already tried using the world_to_camera_view function, but this only works for object-parameters like vertices and not for the whole surface to create a dense map.
I also know, that you can render the scene with a Cycles material to store x,y,z in the RGB-channels, but there you only get world-coordinates and you have to change the materials after you rendered the real sequence.
I really need just a frame with z-distance to the camera for every pixel in the frame.

I would be really grateful if someone could help me, because I've been trying to do that for days now. I posted the same question before, here at stackoverflow, but I thought it might be more suitable to post it here now, because it is blender-specific.

EDIT:

I am interested in getting  for every pixel  on my image plane.
The way I am doing it currently is, that I get the depth   for  from Blender and then I use the Thales' theorem to get  with my known focal length and the known principal point.
My problem with this solution is, that I don't get the actual true values for  because of the discrete pixels. A simple plane that is parallel to my camera (image plane) at the z-distance of 10 metres will give me values between 9.98 and 10.02 metres after my current approach.

The Camera Data node will give you a shader which will return the values you are looking for in the pixels of an image.

Here's a calibration scene. The camera is at World (0,0,1), the planes are at Z = 0, 1, 2, 3.

With this shader set-up, the pixel-value will be Z-component of the vector from the camera to the shading-point. ( You could also have shaded the planes using the Texture Coordinate node, in the Object space of the camera, and taken the Z component of that)

The nodes in the 'Illustration Only' frame are there to bring the lengths into a 0-1 range.. you wouldn't use those. Ensure the render output is linear, (set the Color Management to 'Raw'), and save to a floating-point format, probably, as you say, EXR, (in which case, as @susu has commented, color transforms will be bypassed.)


Is there a way to assign an object to coordinates on the local axis using Python? The current task I'm working on is moving objects in 4 basic relative directions. By using the local axes this can be accomplished relatively easy through View3d port.

However to script this behavior I can't figure out how to directly set coordinates in local space. The command "object.location" seems to always work in global coordinates. If I want to move, rotate, etc I can do this (or equivalent):

bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=(0,1,0), orient_type='LOCAL')

But I don't want to move objects, instead I want to place them. For instance in this picture the y-axis is flipped. The above command would correctly move it down one unit.

However I'm currently working with numbers that represent the actual location, so if I enter:

object.location[1] = 1

I would want the same action - moving down one unit. Is there a way to do that (outside of calculating world space coordinates and moving accordingly)?

This behavior is consistent no matter where I place the object origin or apply location transformations. It changes the relative coordinates but not the direction in which the axis is applied.

Believe this is the answer... although there may be better solutions.

In essence when the local x and y axes are flipped then the matrix looks like this:

>>> cab.matrix_world
Matrix(((-1.0, 1.5099580252808664e-07, 0.0, 0.0),
        (-1.5099580252808664e-07, -1.0, 0.0, -0.12700000405311584),
        (0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0),
        (0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0)))

The key values there being the scale values which represent the flipped axes. So this axis is determined the following way:

matrix = cab.matrix_world
axis = (matrix[0][0], matrix[1][1], matrix[2][2])
axis = (-1, -1, 1)

Then to get the relative local coordinates the scale factor has to be multiplied by the local coordinates:

x = cab.location[0] * axis[0]
y = cab.location[1] * axis[1]
z = cab.location[2] * axis[2]

This gives x,y,z as if the whole coordinate system revolved around the local axis (instead of having local coordinates still being given in relation to a parent). This may only work in cases of the axes being flipped, since other rotations use more of the matrix (haven't got that far yet).

The reason I need this work in terms of location as opposed to translation is due to the fact that I keep an offset slider parameter for the user, which is the distance from the wall. Applying this slider to a translation does not work correctly, while being able to use the local axis with relative distance does.

If there are better solutions to this I'll update/replace this answer. However the answers I could find dealt with using local axes with translation, rotation, etc.


Lock X and Y axis of vertices in edit mode from python I using Blender to edit terrain files that are later exported and used in my game engine. Terrain files there are planes with a fixed number of vertices with consistent spacing between them. I want to somehow be able to lock editing of X and Y coordinates of objects with some certain property on the scene. Is that possible somehow?

I came up with the idea that having a way to somehow check the execution context of bpy.ops.transform.translate would help me, since it is the operator called with specific arguments, so I just could check if X and Y coordinates are zeros, or cancel the operator. Is there any way to hook or wrap this operator?

Or is there any other ways to achieve this goal?

Once you start moving an object you can press Z to lock all motion to the z axis (preventing changes in x or y).

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/editors/3dview/object/editing/transform/control/precision/axis_locking.html


How to select the other vertices/edges after rip/rip fill If I select vertices or edges and use rip (same for rip fill) Blender creates copies of them and choses one set which is then selected and can be translated. How do I select the other set instead?

Example: Select one edge of standard cube:

After rip and some translation it is obvious that the edge belonging to top face was chosen:

How to select the edge belonging to front face instead (without performing a translation and for more complicated meshes of course)?

Just place the mouse on the wanted side :


Blender not recognizing GPU I am using blender 2.66.1 and I have a gtx 580 installed. I am using Zorin OS 7, which is based on Ubuntu 13.04. I am in the blender preferences and for 'Compute Device' I only have the CPU. Whats wrong here?

Okay. It seems the problem was not blender related. JUst run these lines of code and restart and update to the newest driver and you should be good.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current nvidia-settings


Is there a good UI layout/style for laptop screen? I've settled into using Blender on my big 2xmonitor PC setup, but every time I try to use Blender on my laptop, when travelling or holiday, I end up with barely legible side-panels, and/or small work-area.

Is there a good UI Style/Layout that works well for the modelling aspect for a smaller screen? The resolution of the laptop is very good, but it's the screen size that limits things.

As for uses, I'm mainly wanting to do modelling/texturing - I may need rigging, but I won't need animation.

There isn't a single layout that would work for everything.  Different parts of the workflow require different windows to be available. Blender comes with a set of layouts, called screens that are a good starting point for customizing your own.  You change layouts in the screens drop down on the Information header.

After the workflow, the size of your laptop screen matters.  I have a 17.3" screen, so have a good deal of space available. Pick the screen that goes with the work you're doing and customize the UI to suit your workflow.

To save space, use the TKEY and NKEY to toggle the two side menus on and off.  Also, SHIFT-Fn will quickly switch between windows.  I use this sometimes to avoid having too many windows open at once.

An example: When I'm working on lighting in cycles, I tend to switch back and forth between the Node editor (SHIFT-F3) and the 3d Scene (SHIFT-F5) rather than splitting the screen between the two windows.

Beyond that, it is really a matter of taste.


Is there a way to have Cycles skip rendering alpha? If I wanted to create an animation, each frame would have several seconds of rendering a completely transparent part, which adds up obviously. Is there a way to eliminate this waste of time?

There is nothing specifically designed into Blender to tell it to ignore the transparent areas currently.

That being said, there are some things we can do to help speed up the render somewhat.

Transparent Background - Choose transparent in the Film section of the Render properties panel. This will render faster than a coloured background (whether full black or not)

Tile Size- Choose a smaller tile size than your current (this tip is mostly for CPU rendering as GPU rendering generally uses larger tiles). This will help the render times when the buckets are processing the edge of the foreground element.

Targeted Sampling - Use the Branched Path Tracing option in the Sampling section of the Render Properties panel. If you reduce the AA sample some what and raise the bounce samples (Diffuse, Glossy, etc.), you will reduce time spent on rendering the sky/transparent background.

Cropped Render - this option is a little more extreme, but if you    have an object that doesn't move much on screen, you can crop the    render to only include the portions of the screen it's in. You'd then    composite it together with the rest of the full frame renders.


Why does this execute method makes AN stop working As soon as I add the execute method, AN is gone when I start blender.

import bpy
from ... base_types.node import AnimationNode

class Foo(bpy.types.Node, AnimationNode):
    bl_idname = "an_Foo"
    bl_label = "Foo"

    def create(self):
        self.outputs.new("an_StringSocket", "Debug", "debug")

    def execute(self):
        debug = "foo"
        return debug

Its in a folder called serial where I have another node with the same problem.

It was inconsistent use of tab and spaces. I used tabs where the document was using 4 spaces before.

The console clearly report this.


How can you warp text? I am new to blender. I stumbled upon this on instagram.  I want to know if anyone can explain how he did this?

I also want to bend and warp letters ( or shapes for that matter) but when I deform my meshes they just seem to break. I have been looking around a few modifiers (screw or deform)
but I'm not sure what to use.

Here is a way to do it:

Create your X object, set its origin to its geometry.
Give your X object a Subsurf modifier and a Smooth Shading.
Create an Empty at its base.
Give your X object a Simple Deform modifier > Twist mode, and choose the Empty as the Axis Origin.
Create 3 keyframes through the timeline for the Deform Angle of the modifier, for example:
frame 0 = 0°
frame 30 = 120°
frame 60 = 0°

Now your X object twists, but you must rotate it:

In the Properties panel > Object > Transform, rotate your X object on the Z axis, for example:
frame 0 = 0°
frame 60 = -360°

To do the second twist (on the X axis), just disable the first Simple Deform modifier with a keyframe on its visibility (eye and camera icons) after the end of the twist, create a second Empty on the right or left of the X object, rotate this new empty 90° on the Y axis, give your X object a new Simple Deform modifier with this second Empty as the axis, and again, play with angles, rotation and keyframes.

Also, if you want to move your X object in your scene, parent your X object and its empties to a new empty.


How to remove line sample? You can sample the pixels of an image in a line with the Sample Line option in UV/Image editor > Properties Region > Sample Line, then dragging a line across an image.

However, I can't figure out how to remove the line afterwards. (I can zoom out and sample a new line far away from the image so it is less distracting, but this can't be the right way to do it)

How to remove or hide the sample line?

Basically you have to re-initiate it and then cancel that operation.
If you have a line you can just LMB on the button once to activate it then RMB on it again.
You can also invoke the space-function search menu and search 'Sample Color' activate it and hit ESC to cancel it.


How do I remove green background without replacing it with another background? My objective is to produce a foreground video clip with a transparent background, that can be superimposed on any background video. I know how to remove the background using compositor, by replacing it with another background, but when I try to replace the green background with a transparent one produced in Gimp, I get a black silhouette in place of the foreground image.
I am using Blender 2.82, Windows 10 Home, working with 30 fps, rendering to ffmpeg. No audio yet, although the future plan is to have foreground with audio.
So far, I have only used Blender VSE at a basic level, and just starting with compositor. I am new to video editing, and  so step by step instruction would be very helpful.
Thanks.

For this Explanation i will use a clip of an alpaca on a greenscreen from here -
https://www.videvo.net/video/alpaca-on-green-screen/3442/
Step one - setup
Open blender with the General preset

And select the Compositing workspace

Select use nodes

Step two - add nodes
Remove The render Layers node by clicking it and pressing X on the keyboard

Add a Movie Clip node by clicking the add menu

Select the sub-menu Matte

And select Keying and drag the node to left of the Composite node

Add Movie Clip Node with Add -> Input -> Movie clip

Click Open On the Movie Clip node and select the video clip
Add a Viewer node with Add -> Output -> Viewer

and place it under composite node

click the yellow circle on the movie clip node and drag the mouse to the Image input on the left of the Keying node and connect all the other nodes as in the image

you will notice the clip in the background
Click V on your keyboard a few times to zoom out or Alt+V to zoom in so that you can clearly see your video.
Step three - Keying node
Select a frame in which there is a subject on the greenscreen
By changing the frame

Click The Color Input on the keying node

Click The eyedropper icon

And Click The Green on your image if there are darker and lighter areas click somewhere in the middle

you will see the green vanish but it won't be perfect every time so we will tweak some settings
Set The Feather Distance to about 2 or 3 pixels

Then Change the Dilate/Erode to some negative number that doesn't cut away from the character

Play with settings until it looks right
Step four - render
First set the End to the last frame of your shot which you can find by changing the frame

on the right select the output properties

Make sure the file format is set to png
and RGBA

Press the select file button

select a output folder and make sure it is empty because it will fill with images
and press accept on the bottom right
Now all you have to do is render out the animation
select it from the render dropdown and wait for it to finish.

when the image Stops changing Your Done!
You can import a image sequence in most video editing software including blender and the background is removed
Step 4 - finish
close blender with the big red X on the top right when it finishes rendering


How do I make bunch of objects be in one plane? How do I take these blocks:

And place them all in one plane to get something like this:

So that none are sticking out or pushed in?
I run in similar situations all the time and I wonder if there is any way to do it more efficiently than manually rearanging each block, witch is next to impossible to level perfectly

enable the Objects: Align Tools addon

select all objects to be aligned. the active object will be the reference object

go to n-panel > item > align tools and choose appropriate align location axis (here, y)


Where's "Copy from Active" in Blender 2.8 I'm new to the blender community. I'm using the latest 2.80 Beta release (2019-02-10) of Blender and am unable to find the "Copy from Active" option in the new interface. I'm not sure if it's in some context menu and I can't find it, or if it's missing altogether.

So the problem I'm facing right now is that say I create an array of cubes (not touching each other), apply the modifier and separate the cubes by loose parts. I then apply a physics attribute to one cube. But then I'm unable to copy those attributes to all other cubes because I cant find Copy from Active. I've found a work around of applying the physics to the object before before I separate it by loose parts. But that's just one instance of using Copy from Active option.

Can someone help me with finding the "Copy from Active" option or share some advice on a better workaround for the moment?

You can find something similar by pressing F3 and typing : "copy rigid body settings".


Problem with incorrect Freestyle rendering Can anyone help with why the area red is rendering incorrectly? The middle and back objects are duplicates of the front mesh. Object 1 & 2 rendered fine.

Thanks, JohnS

You have a plane blocking that part of the frame!

Move it out of the way and render happily ever after.

The issue can be explained like this: even though you disabled the visibility for the camera, freestyle is using the geometry of the scene, and is creating a new border


Armature doesn't animate despite being keyframe'd (video) To help illustrate my problem, I have uploaded a video demonstrating the issue alongside this post:

Youtube video

I first create a path, following which I set two of its odd vertices to an empty handler (select verts, control-h). Thus, when I rotate the empty, the vertices move also.

The last bone in the armature has a SplineIK modifier applied to it, so it deforms depending on the shape of the path.

I first animate the empty, which causes the path to deform, which in turn causes the armature to animate as I would like it to. However, the animation itself is currently defined in terms of the rotation of the empty, which is confusing; I'd rather have the animation be in terms of armature keyframes (as per usual).

So, I go back through the animation, and insert keyframes of the bones at each point that there is a keyframe of the empty. However, Blender does not seem to think that the bones have moved at all, despite clearly being manipulated by the current empty.

I also noted that when I mute the empty channel in the Dope Sheet editor, the animation gets 'stuck' on whatever frame was current just before the channel was muted. When I un-mute the channel and seek with the cursor, the animation becomes 'un-stuck', and remembers what form it should assume.

What I'm ultimately trying to do, is to initially animate the swimming animation using the path, only to then insert the bone keyframes and delete the path and all helper objects.

Constraints are applied after keyframed values. In a similar fashion the values that normally get keyframed are before constraints have been applied.

First you will need to disable the constraint to see the keyframed animation as the constraint will hide any movement if it's source is not animated or it's animation is muted.

To get the result you want, you need to use one of the "Visual" keying sets, these will keyframe transformation values after constraints have been applied. With a constraint then disabled you should see the animation that you are aiming for.


Why is my model so dark? I'm working on texturing my model and have been previewing the render. I have a light in my scene but my model is really dark.

Here are my nodes for the material.Am I doing something wrong? (I'm using cycles btw)

The Normal Map Image node was plugged into the wrong input. It was in normal but height appears to have fixed it. Thanks to moonboots2 for the answer.


Can Blender easily render a single image from 3D source files? Very simple project:  I have a number of PNG image files, including textures, height map, normal map, and some masks.  I want to turn these into a single still image.

Before I invest time learning how to do this in Blender, I'd like to know whether Blender can even do this, and how easy it's likely to be.  I know a lot of the concepts of 3D rendering, but I've never used this kind of software before.

Is Blender likely to be a good choice for me?

Thanks in advance!

The types of images you mention are what you would use in blender to control the surface appearance of a 3D object, that you then position and render into a 2D image.

If you want to merge multiple images into one image, you would be better off using a 2D image editing program like GIMP or Krita. Another option could be using ImageMagick to combine them using the CLI.


How to convert numpy array into image and add it to images inside bpy I have a numpy array which I'd like map onto a cube inside blender. Is there a way to make texture out of it, without writing to file? This array will change over time and writing to disk and reading it again seems very slow and also in future I might have many numpy arrays to texture the cube.

Bonus question:) Is it possible to do this without PIL in the middle?

Here is example TestImg to which we write numpy array (in this example it is all zeros). Thing to remember if image size is 100px width 100px height, and 4 channels then numpy array size must be 100*100*4. eg:

numpy.zeroes((100,100,4), dtype = float16)

Example

if "TestImg.png" not in bpy.data.images.keys():
    bpy.data.images.new("TestImg.png", width=128, height=128, alpha=True, float_buffer=False)
outputImg = bpy.data.images["TestImg.png"]
input_res = int(math.sqrt(outputImg.size[0]))
np_out_img = np.zeros((input_res,input_res,4), dtype = np.float16)
outputImg.pixels = np_out_img.ravel()  #flatten the array to 1 dimension and write it to testImg pixels


Control object emission strength (not material) I have multiple objects with the same emission material. Is there a way to control the strength of the emission for each object?

The simplest for me would be to use the object pass-index.
This is supposed to be used in the compositor workspace but the value can be accessed in the shader editor. It is an integer value so if you want more precision, you can add a math node set to divide between the "Object Info" node and the "Emission" node.


What's the shortcut for return to previous 3d viewport scene? When I edit a mesh at a user perspective viewpoint if I press a viewpoint hotkey by mistake how can I return to the previous viewpoint? Is there a hotkey for that?

I don't think you can save user perspective locations unless you have a Camera in your scene, in which case you could position the camera to your desired perspective and press "Num 0" to return to that position.

It might also help to enable "Lock Camera to View", as you could easily adjust the perspective like you would normally in the 3D view. If you switched to any other perspective hotkey, you could just hit Num-0 and go back to your previous view.

Hope that helps, feel free to ask any questions.


Instancing texture mapping not working? i'm trying to create an LED screen in Blender and i've noticed the UV mapping isn't carrying over from 2.7 to 2.8 and it appears completely greyed out in cycles.

I've been following this tutorial but it doesn't seem to work in 2.8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7Zfa1yc5eM

I've tried creating it from scratch in 2.8 but the instancing/dupli option on the texture coordinate node, doesn't seem to yield the same whole image result as it did in 2.7 rather it just maps the desert image individually to each sphere if that makes sense.

Any help would be greatly appreciated thank you :)

This is actually a known issue with From Instancer option (see here for more on that). Good news is that it's just a viewport bug, it renders just fine.

Quick tip as well since you'll have to render the image to see any updates: If you use emission shaders only you can render noise free with 1 sample in Cycles and it's super quick. Won't help with diffuse/glossy/glass etc., but for just previewing colors it may help.


faces are lined and stripey in the view port after extruding I'm new to Blender and I was wondering how to correct this; i'm not sure what to call it on my faces...

i'd be grateful if you legends could enlighten me?

To get straight to the point if you try to extrude an object that is completely selected, it creates a duplicate of the object. Basically the weird "glitch" you are seeing is blender's lighting is having trouble processing your model because there's two of them in almost the exact same place.

Note: Extruding an entire object isn't a bad thing in blender, it can be used add another layer to the model, if you scale what you just extruded.

I tried my best to recreate the problem you were having in the following pictures:

The first image is an extruded but fully selected model

The second is after I extruded the model

This picture is of the same extruded model from picture two except I scaled the object on the X and Z axis (You can scale objects on specific axis by pressing your S key to scale and then X, Y, or Z for it so scale on one of those specific axis.)

In picture four I'm trying to show a huge use for extruding an object. If you were to bring an object with only one set of faces ("only one layer thick") it would only show one side and the other would be invisible.

Hope this helps sorry for the barrage of information, but I remember being new and I just don't want you to hit my same pot holes.


How to texture a racing helmet (with all its logos) I'm trying (and failing to) shade a racing helmet. My initial approach was to have multiple UVs for different parts of the design, but I'm finding it impossible to match perspectives properly.

Looking at models for sale on Turbosquid and CGTrader to see what the pros are doing isn't helping a lot either. For example:

How did this person texture this? You can see in the render that the white lines are pretty straight on the 3D model, but all over the place in the texture. Did the artist use a different UV (say project from the left view) and then baked those lines onto a new UV?

How would you tackle this? It's driving me nuts, and I can't find the answer.

Thanks!

We don't know how this specific artist created the unwrapped/distorted image texture.

  Did the artist use a different UV (say project from the left view) and
  then baked those lines onto a new UV?

This is a common technique called Projection Painting which is widely used during texturing. Since I found no clear overviews in any answer, I will demonstrate the basic steps.

Create a UV map, I named mine uvmapUnwrapped and unwrap it, maximizing used space and minizing distorsion. As you noticed, one cannot add any images onto the current 2d uv layout with them being distorted.

Create a second UV map (the plus-icon) which places a logo (or other desired image) neatly onto the object. I loaded the Blender logo in the UV editor and found that unwrapping the subdivded cube from orthographic front view with Cylinder Projection worked best for this szenario. But there are plenty of other unwrapping methods. U

At this point, both images should be showing correctly on the object when their respective uv maps are active.

Select the object and enter Texture Paint Mode. Go to the Slots tab, choose Image as mode, select the uv layout image as canvas layout, which we're going to paint on an choose its matching UV map layout.
We could now paint on the object by drawing strokes on it in the 3D view.

Go to the Tools tab, select the clone brush. Check the box at clone from image/uv map. Select the logo image and its matching uvmap. You can now "draw" the logo onto the texture.


Blender Remesh Error in Sculpt mode. How do I decrease the polygons correctly and save the project? I have a big problem.
Some time ago I asked a question about this project regarding the selection of polygons to be able to work in zones.
The problem now is another, not being an expert in polygonal sculpture, I immediately started creating my character at the maximum polygon resolution. For this reason now the file weighs too much and when I open it despite having a PC worthy of power, the 500k vertices and 900k faces I would say are really excessive.
In fact, every action that I go to perform in blender, whatever it is, needs time to load it.
In the previous question, I received an answer that my project had too many polygons and was advised to remesh my character, thus creating a low poly copy.
However, after some time I just tried to perform the remesh, perhaps inserting wrong values, I don't know, even if I took reference from the screenshot that was recommended to me.
Performing the remesh I encountered these problem.
Problems :

The whole surface is pierced, and my mesh is corrupted as shown in the figure.
even the color used with vertex paint is canceled and transformed into a totally reflective surface.

Principal Questions:

Am I still in time to be able to recover this project or is it to be thrown away and redone from scratch?
How can I consistently decrease the weight of my file without completely ruining the character?
Why does remesh create these holes? Can it be caused by vertex paint? How do I resolve?
(I also tried using the Decimate modifier too, but I think it's not the exact tool).

Extra questions:

What would be the right technique to create a character, what are the precautions to use, especially not to stumble into certain errors.
Above all what are the steps that should be followed for the complete realization of a character? Such as creating a low poly copy, how to color in the right way, but above all when to do one thing instead of another.
For these two points it is clear that a simple answer is not enough, so if you know where to send me to document me I would be grateful. (A site, a guide relating only to this). Or even some simple basic concepts that make me understand the steps to be respected.

p.s. After completing my application I was able to find several questions already asked, related to some of my extra doubts, so if you agree I will not delete these questions as maybe they can be used by someone who is looking for the same things and cannot find them. However, I have found several interesting answers for these extra questions of mine, which I will attach the links to my question. while obviously higher priority will have to be given to questions concerning my project. However, opinions, reflections and advice are always welcome.
For example this question, yes, can answer some of my doubts and I also found a video on how to paint in layers. Paint high-poly mesh and then bake for low-poly, OR just paint low-poly with normal-map applied?
But I think I need a specific answer to this question because I can't work on this project anymore. I want to resolve my fault.
While that other question has managed to answer some of the polygon sculpture questions about how it's best and what it's best to sculpt a certain way for.
What is the importance of low poly vs high poly?
-I tried to upload the file but it weighs 90mb, and the maximum is 30mb. how do i compress the file to upload it through the exchange? or should I use something else?
[ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Idc8Jg9wtHwQey5V7qpwuxwtw1QjEM4K/view?usp=sharing ]
Thanks in advance.

I just wanted to add that I encountered the same choppy model result from remeshing and that closing up all holes in the model solved the problem.
This was the result using Remesh when I had forgotten to close the neck hole:

After closing up the neck hole the Remesh worked fine:

Happy Blending!


Particle Collision Object for some particles but not others? Newb here. I have particles coming from two different emitters inside a sphere. I want the particles from one emitter to collide with the sphere, staying inside it, but I want the particles from the other emitter to pass through the sphere to the outside. Can this be accomplished?

Thanks for your help.

Yes, you can place particle system and collider objects on multiple and separate layers, and they will only respond to the layer(s) that they are in.

Example blend file:

Note: The blend file didn't require the objects to be on multiple layers to achieve the requested effect , but just to be complete, to place objects on more than one layer, select the object, press m, then press Shift and Left Mouse click on additional layers.

Can also be done in the Properties Area > Object tab > Relations panel.


How can I convert an image to JPEG from the active material node with Python? I am adding to an add-on and I am trying to take the image in the active material node, make a backup of the original, and then with two different scripts, resize it, and convert it to JPEG.
Example:
In the active object's material, there is a 4k image attached to the diffuse, and a 4k image in the roughness input.
The user can select the diffuse image, click a button to resize it to 2k, then click on roughness image, click a button and resize it to 1024x1024 and then click another button to convert it to JPEG, automatically saving a backup, loading the new version and refreshing all modified images.
I was able to figure out how to resize, save and refresh all those images, but it overwrites the original, uses ops to save and I still don't know how to convert it to jpeg.
image = bpy.context.active_object.active_material.node_tree.nodes.active.image
image.scale(512,512)

bpy.ops.image.save_all_modified()

for image in bpy.data.images:
    image.reload()

Try
image.file_format = 'JPEG'
image.filepath_raw = your_new_filepath_here
image.save()


How to change orientation of object and location? My object (the tiny donut) seems to be floating but I wanted to place my object at the center like how the box is centered with grid axis in the image below:

Is it also possible to change the orientation of my donut so that it would face upwards?

To put objects back into World origin, you need to reset their transforms.
You can do it for both Donut and Icing at once.

Shift Drop the Icing onto the Donut in the outliner. So they move together.
Select your Donut and clear all transforms one by one. This will put both in center.
Select Icing and clear Parent relationship (Alt+P). Then go Object > Apply > All Transforms.


How should I design the jaw for rigify pitchipoy? I decided to try using the Rigify (Pitchipoy) Add-on and watched a tutorial on how to set it up.  When they where working on the face they parented the jaw without weight paints, just normal parent and it looked like the jaw was 2 separate objects from the rest of the mesh, the upper and lower jaws each their own.  I was wondering how I should model the jaws for this.  Should I make separate meshes for the upper and lower jaws and parent them to the mesh and to the armature?  If so, how do I make it so when the character opens his mouth and jaw it doesn't saperate and you see the inside of the back of the head?  Basically, how do you model the inside of the mouth for this rigify (pitchipoy) add-on?

When rigging you need to be clear about what you want to achieve, because every little function takes time to accommodate for. Which also means that I cannot give you the perfect answer unless you describe your character more clearly. If you want a character with a normal organic jaw, then skip the following paragraph.

The only reason you would parent something without weight paints is if you want a ridged object attached. If this character had an iron jaw for example, it might make sense. I'm not sure if pitchipoy is built for that, but if you were to attach it to just one bone you could probably achieve a ridged effect. However, that would make some mesh items harder to track down. So i'd recommend a ridged bind (flood the influence to one bone) that is IF you want a ridged jaw.

If you want a normal organic jaw, then ignore your tutorial and find a better one because organic meshes generally require weight binding. I'd follow the official video for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dwCXMc2V0U

The only thing i'd advise making into separate geometry is the teeth and tongue. That's just so that it's easier and more clean of a job when weight painting. Teeth can have ridged weighting, tongue can have auto weights. For the mouth, it's just a concave section of geometry, and of course attached to the rest of the surround mesh. You will need to ensure that the weights do not collapse the geo into the teeth and tongue when the character open's it's mouth.


Subdivision Surface modifier deforms mesh on 2.80 I'm learning Blender for a university course, although I already have a few years of experience on 3DS Max. I'm having a problem with the subdivision surface modifier.I have this low poly mesh:

I want to smooth it out, since it only has 8 sides, so I applied the subdivision modifier (it's the only modifier on the mesh and I only increased the subdivision count, I didn't change other options), but I end up with this result:

See how the mesh bends instead of remaining straight? I can't solve that issue. In 3DS Max, a mesh like this, withoud a bottom cap, would have had many more sides added to it (becoming a better cylinder) but the tube sides would have remained straight. I tried: adding various horizontal support loops, maxing out the creasing amount on the bottom edge, closing the mesh and beveling the bottom corner, but I still get that pin cushion effect. Creasing the vertical sides makes the lines straighter but end up with a smoother octagonal shape instead of  a cylinder like I want. What am I missing?

One thing you might be able to do is either make your own bevels, or use the bevel modifier Like so....

I start off with your problem:

After using manual bevels:(after selecting everything, do ctrl+b)

Or you can use the bevel modifier to do it for you:

NOTE: Make sure you decrease the width of the bevel modifier and increase the segments to achieve better results. Experiment with this a bit until you get what you are looking for.

If something like this is happening on a cylinder what you can do is extrude the end inward by pushing e than s, like so:(if not using the bevel modifier)


How do I change where an object goes when I press Alt+G So i am trying to create a rig. I want to make it so if i move say the arm or the eyeball, and I don't wanna have to keep undoing., how could I make it so i could just press Alt-G, and the object snaps back to where I want it?

By definition AltG, AltR and AltS will bring back the bones to their rest position, i.e. their position in Edit mode.
If you want to go back to a particular pose that is not the rest pose, you may be interested by the Pose Library that is in the Properties panel > Object Data.
You can create as many poses as you want, to create a pose, click on the "+" button, to recall a pose, click on the magnifying glass icon, to change a pose, click on the "+" button and choose Replace Existing.
Note that if you select one bone only and click on the magnifying glass, it will only recall the pose for this particular bone.


World Background Solid Colour Cycles I'm new to blender, and would not consider myself to be 'good' at it. I'm trying to create a changeable sky texture that I can use for an animation by changing the world colours using sky nodes and noise nodes. But when I do so, the colour remains solid.

You are in orthographic view, press 5 on your numpad.


How can a path animation be used as an action in the game engine? I animated a rollercoaster using a Bezier Curve and a Follow Path Constraint affecting the vehicle.
Then I tried to use the automatically created action in the game engine but the Action Actuator has no effect .

How can this action be used in the BGE?
Can the Path Animation alternatively be converted into keyframes?

You can convert actions such as constraints to keyframes with Object > Animation > Bake action. (see this)

You may want to enable Clear parents to replace parent/child with keyframes:

Also note that without Clear Constraints enabled, constraints will not be removed, possibly giving unexpected results.


Blender wouldn't paint neither face sets not the mask anymore I got blender into a somewhat strange state after I decided to add some vertex colours to my sculpt for better visibility.
As I load the save file I cannot paint the face sets anymore, not can I paint the mask. 'Invert mask' would do nothing.
Creating a new mesh and trying to sculpt it won't work.
Effectively, I'm forced to go back to my older save, or copy everything to a new document.
I think the only things I did to get here was:

set up the vertex paint material
tinker with the viewport display to show vertex colours
actually paint some over the mesh

Any advice on how can I force the document back into an usable state?
Note 1: Here's the blend file featuring the problem.
Note 2: The overlays are indeed enabled.

The problem is the Armature. Modifiers prevent Hide, Mask, and Facesets in Sculpt mode. Usually, you get a warning like this:

Armature, Cloth, and Hair/Particles, and all the other physics are also Modifiers. It's probably a bug that Blender doesn't warn you if you have one of these 3 activated. (Dynamic Paint gives you a warning.)
To see your Facesets and Mask in Sculpt Mode again you just have to disable the Armature modifier in viewport render by clicking the little icon that looks like a monitor.

Make sure your Faceset overlays are enabled. It's not enabled in the uploaded blend file ;-)


Align vertices in a line NOT in axes So here is a picture:

Here i have 3 verts. I want to align them in diagonal, centering on middle vertex.

There is a solution tho - creating an edge and setting it as a custom transform orientation, but it seems to be overcomplicated. What if i need to do this on multiple vertex groups?

May be there is another way to straighten verts in a line, that is not aligned with axes?

UPD: actually above situation can be solved by scaling along normal Z axis.

But what if i have this:

Here i want verts to be aligned in a line between first and last verts. But transforming by normal orientation does not help here.

UPD: tried making an edge between these two verts, but its orientation appeared unsuitable for scaling (like on image).

UPD: used lower face as transform orientation, but result was not as expected. And what if i have no suitable faces, oriented appropriately?

Please advice, what am i doing wrong here?

It appeared that the problem is easily solvable by creating the edge between two extreme verts by F and then subdividing that edge, so it has the corresponding number of verts. Then simply slide the verts of the edge with double G with enabled snapping to vertex, so every new verts are aligned with the verts that need to be straigtened. Lastly i managed to get perfect straight edge of verts by merging them!

Thanks Mr Zak for the hint!

Also i've found a nice plugin shipped with blender - Loop Tools. It has a tool named "Flatten". It also performs fine in this situation.


Extra vertex in Cycles render When I render a deformed cube using the Cycles engine, an extra vertex which crosses the top of the shape diagonally is processed. This vertex does not appear in Edit mode. How do I stop the engine from "halving" the face?

What you have is an extra edge. From what can be told from the picture, the positions of the vertices forming that face are not flat, and so you are asking it to make an impossible shape. You cannot have a square with diagonal verts at different heights that do not create a flat plane. It is showing the triangle because you are asking for something that is not possible.

Smooth shading may help. But for the shape you want, you need more geometry for it to be possible.


Particles in fluid-simulation are falling through Object I made a fountain in Blender. The fluid simulation looks like it works, but in the last part of the Fountain it falls through it.

I had a similar problem few weeks ago and I solved it by increasing the Timesteps minimum and maximum in the Domain settings.
But here it does not help.
Any ideas?

Make sure the bottom is thick enough, or increase the resolution of the domain. You might also want to enable "fractional obstacles" because I see that some of the fluid is sticking to the surface of the fountain.


Driver bone not working For some odd reason I can't get my driver bone to work. I've followed tutorials, but whenever I move the bone on the Z axis (local) to control whether my eye opens or closes, it doesn't do anything. :-/

Your driver was working with local X movements, while moving a bone along its longitude is local Y axis. I changed the driver formula to "scripted expression" and multiplied the variable (named default "var", but you can change it) by - 10 for having consistency between bone and eyelid movement.


Patch notes for 2.8 beta? Where I can see it? Doesnt seem to find anywhere. And new updates are released every day it seems? Should I update Blender every day too? Afraiding of that something will be broke in updates, like recent sss for eevee.

2.80 is not finished yet. If you are afraid of something broken, you should not use experimental builds. There are broken things in them - that's a fact. So you should not do anything about 2.80, but you can if you want to and you can download it every day if you wish - you would get some updates daily because they are built pretty much every day(see the build dates at the download page). 2.79b version is stable and complete and you should use it for work that you cannot afford to get broken at some point.

If you wish to keep up to date with the development, you can see links on this page: https://www.blender.org/get-involved/developers/. You can find Blender Developers Blog there, you can even see developer Weekly Meeting Notes. There is also this guy doing Blender Today Live streams on YouTube. You will also find many discussions some unavoidably about 2.80 on BlenderArtists.org forums


Filling large gaps between curved geometry using faces? I have this:

And want this, but also with thickness (not shown in photo):

(1) Is there a reasonable way to create it with editable faces and (2) have it be a slightly thick, 3d object without collisions along the edges? I tried doing a Boolean modifier for the faces, however, I could not subdivide or loop cut any at all. I am not sure if it is because the vertices on either sides of each "wave" are in much different places.

(3) Finally, it would be nice not to have a zillion subdivisions on the faces or loop cuts along the wave, while maintaining the smoothness.

I created the curved plane using a Path and Bezier curve. I think I could just solidify the curve and then try to fit a seperate polygon along the walls, but this doesn't seem proper.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

EDIT: clarified question

In case like this it might be easier to continue using curve object for modeling and convert it to mesh once the wave is completed.

Bezier curve objects can be filled to become flat surfaces. It's possible though to do that only when their shape is set to be 2D, i.e. positon of control points is constrained to their local XY axes. You still can rotate curve in Object mode though.

So grab your curve which was used for wave creating, set its Shape option to 2D and rotate as needed in Object mode. Note - it is important to do that in Object mode as rotating in Edit mode will actually create straight line because movement of control points is constrained by 2 axes.

To give curve thickness use Extrude option in the Properties editor > Object Data tab > Geometry rollout. To control resolution use Preview U option in the Shape rollout.

Once you use everything possible of the curve you can convert it to mesh. Note that most likely you'll need to retopologize the mesh as converted curves often have topology not suitable for anything like later subdivision or beveling.


Where is the startup file stored? I need to reinstall Blender but I want to backup my startup file first. Where is this data stored?

The configuration files are:

startup.blend and userpref.blend, bookmarks.txt, recent-files.txt,

Windows

The following files are stored in:

%APPDATA%\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.73\config

(%APPDATA% points to C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming)

In more recent versions of Windows it will be in:

C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\<VersionNumber>\config

Note that AppData is a hidden folder, you can change directory to AppData from the command line.

Linux

The Linux versions stores the same files at this path

/home/<UserName>/.config/blender/2.73/config

OS X

For OS X, the config files can be located at

/Users/<UserName>/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.73/config

The Library folder is also likely to be hidden by default so you may have to look up how to unhide it.

More info: https://www.blender.org/manual/en/getting_started/installing/configuration/directories.html


cant restore previous version of file i accidently saved over an important blender file and don't know how to recover it I have already looked it up and cant find anything, if you know how to recover blender files then please tell me

There is a way to do this. go to > file> recover> recover>last session.

this should work to recover your last saved file.


Get current frame of objects scene? I've been working on an add-on that manipulates text data called randomiser
https://github.com/BenSimonds/Randomiser

My problem is a bug I'm trying to resolve with getting the correct "current frame" for an object based on what's scene it's in. If the blend file only has one scene, or if the object only appears in the active scene this is trivial (context.scene.frame_current).

However if the object appears in another scene it gets more complex. ob.users_scene will return a list of scenes that the object appears in and I could maybe get the current frame from them, but if the object appears in multiple scenes then how can i decide which to pick frame_current from?

Or is this precisely why the script should only let you use a value keyed by the user and not directly use the current frame?

There is no current frame property for objects, there's only a frame_current for every Scene. What "current frame" means to an object is not defined.

What you might want to do is to get the current frame of the active scene, there's only a single active scene per Blender window and it's what the user sees (are you using a frame change handler that changes Text.body based on frame_current?)


Reconstructing vertices and uv separate from polygons I am trying to export the vertices, triangles, vertex normals, and UVs with blender's Python (bpy). I need code that actually works.
My program is supposed to run like this:
Loop through and create a face with UVs and verteices for each index,
Loop through vertices and create a new list of vertices and uvs that are not duplicates
Loop through faces and adjust the indices for the newer vertex list
Export
A duplicate vertex is a vertex that shares the same location and uv location as the other (I need some duplicate vertices because they do not share the same uv)
So basicly, I want to remove vertecies that have the same location and uv and create a list of faces that can go with it.
I am not sure what is wrong with my code. I could share images onces I figure out how.

#import bpy
import bpy

#my house
house = bpy.context.object.data
uv_layer = house.uv_layers.active.data

#basics
triangles = []
vertices = []
uv = []

#(the house is already split into triangles)
for i0, tri in enumerate(house.polygons):
    triangles.append([])#create a list
    for loop_index in range(tri.loop_start, tri.loop_start+tri.loop_total):
        i1 = house.loops[loop_index].vertex_index#vertex index

        triangles[i0].append(i1)#add vertex index to triangle (all I want)
        vertices.append(house.vertices[i1])#add vertex
        uv.append(uv_layer[loop_index].uv)#add uv
#new arrays
newvertices = []
newuv = []

skip = []#contain indices that should be skipped

#-1 means it should not be skipped
for i in range(len(vertices)):
    skip.append(-1)

#loop through vertices
for i, vert0 in enumerate(vertices):
    if skip[i] == -1:
        index = len(newvertices)#amount of new vertices

        skip[i] = index#this index routs to the newest vertex

        #create new vertex and uv
        uv0 = uv[i]
        newvertices.append(vert0)
        newuv.append(uv0)

        #loop through remaning vertices
        for j in range(i+1, len(vertices)):

            #create vertex2 and uv2 for testing
            vert1 = vertices[j]
            uv1 = uv[j]

            #if vertex1 is vertex2
            if vert0.co == vert1.co:
                #if both vertices have the same uv
                if uv0 == uv1:
                    #mark this index as skippable and rout it to the newest vertex
                    skip[j] = index

newtriangles = []
#re-order triangles
for i in range(len(triangles)):
    newtriangles.append([])
    for j in range(len(triangles[i])):
        newtriangles[i].append(skip[triangles[i][j]])

vertex_str = ""
normal_str = ""
triangle_str = ""
uv_str = ""

for vertex in newvertices:
    vertex_str += "%s,%s,%s,"%vertex.co[:]
    normal_str += "%s,%s,%s,"%vertex.normal[:]
for tri in newtriangles:
    triangle_str += "%d,"%tri[0]
    triangle_str += "%d,"%tri[1]
    triangle_str += "%d,"%tri[2]
for uv in newuv:
    uv_str += "%s,%s,"%uv[:]

f = open("c:/users/.../desktop/house/triangles.txt", "w")
f.write(triangle_str)
f.close()
f = open("c:/users/.../desktop/house/vertices.txt", "w")
f.write(vertex_str)
f.close()
f = open("c:/users/.../desktop/house/normals.txt", "w")
f.write(normal_str)
f.close()
f = open("c:/users/.../desktop/house/uv.txt", "w")
f.write(uv_str)

[2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xAGM0.png![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ihNKb.png)

I was putting skip into triangle when skip was already the triangle face re-ranged


Blender merge vertex to edge and remove additional edge Hi I would like to make A and B coplanar by merging the edge on A onto B also the vertex in yellow should become a vertex on the edge of B and the edge of A should be merged with B edge I am going crazy! any idea? thanks

It looks like you should create 3 loop cuts (CTRL + R), as marked by green lines, in order to fix your topology and make it easy to connect A with B.


Why the path didn't Follow the Curve? I am trying to model a racing track, but when I add a curve, the model and I add a curve modifier to the path, it goes to a "random" position and I don't understand why!
I leave here an image of the file.

This is the track with the modifiers muted. Notice it is centered on the origin with location, rotation, and scale applied. Notice the length of the track is along the X axis. Its not shown, but "BezierCircle" is also centered at the origin.

Here is a view with the modifiers applied. Notice the array modifier has "Fit Type" set to "FitCurve" and "BezierCircle" is selected, and "Relative Offset" is selected and set to (1,0,0) so the duplicates run along the X axis. Finally, notice the "Curve" modifier also uses the X axis as the deform axis.


Why is this Normal bake triangulated? I have a character mesh I'm trying to bake normals onto from a duplicate of the mesh that's been subdivided to smooth it out.

Problem is, the normals I get from baking from the hi poly to the lo poly are highly triangulated, and this triangulation shows up when the mesh is viewed with Material shading in the viewport.

I've never done an organic mesh before, so I don't know if there's just some missing steps I passed over or what, but this is pretty frustrating (also mystery issues like the normal baking onto a totally different diffuse map I have but thats another thing...)

Here's what I'm doing:
I have the Lo Poly mesh on layer 1
Hi Poly mesh on Layer 3
I select Hi Poly on layer 3, select layer 1 and layer 3
Select Lo Poly on Layer 1.
Go into edit mode and select all geometry. I set the UV image to a blank (128 128 255) blue image.
I go to the bake controls and these are my settings:

And this is my result:

Just what is going on here? Why are my normals baking in such a way that they aren't leaving the mesh looking smooth when used in a material?

I've Uploaded my blend file to Dropbox if anyone wants to take a look.
Lo Poly is layer 1, Hi Poly is layer 3. Other layers just have old WIP backups of the model.

If you look at the back, unlit part of the model you'll see the normals are WAY off, with lots of artifacting going on back there.

You are doing right man! Don't worry i had the same problem.

FIRST Smooth your low poly (LAYER1)

SECOND UNWRAP and BAKE like you did before, the high poly onto the low poly
mesh.

END


Multiple material on a label! I made a model of a cosmetics bottle with a label on it,

regarding my design the logo should be in Silver hot foil texture so I made the design picture as PNG.

Then applied it on the label then the silver material under it, then the last material should simple diffuse white material as the adhesive paper back

Now when I apply the three materials on the label, the silver foil material doesn't appears on the preview render but the paper back material do.

But when I remove the paper back material the silver foil appears,
but I need them all to appears cause the are a transparent bottles not only what plastic bottle,

thanks in advance.

I think I've understood what you asked.

What you need then is a mix node for your label/Silver using the backfacing of your label's material. Here is the node setup :

This allows you to use a specific material when your look at the back side of your material.


Closed mesh has weird artifacts (Blender Guru Anvil Tutorial) I'm making an anvil and while the wireframe of the mesh looks fine, there are weird artifacts near the base of the anvil that I can't seem to get rid of (I tried recalculate normals and merge by distance).

The problem is exacerbated in lookDev, where I'm getting an odd, swirled stretching effect.

You have ngons (faces with more than 4 vertices). Try to avoid that, especially on twisted surfaces. Just join the vertices with J to make quads.

You also have faces overlapping like these ones. Delete them but also the ones underneath because sometimes the face is large as 2 faces. Here again make sure that you have quads.


Convert *.FBX to Solid for Physics Sim I have downloaded a .fbx model from mixamo and import into Blender 2.80 beta without issues.

However, I want to perform a physics sim with that model by draping a cloth over the model and unvealing it. However, there is no option for me to set the .fbx model as a rigid body or collision target.

Do I need to convert the .fbx model into a mesh or solid? If so, how can I do it?

Thanks.

The FBX should presumably include a mesh when it is imported. Most likely if it came from Mixamo it also includes an armature, and the mesh will be parented to that armature.

Make sure you select the mesh, not the armature, and then you should be able to add physics properties to the mesh.

In this case you want to go to the Physics tab of the properties editor and add collision to the object. This will tell any cloth objects that this object should be treated as an obstacle.


How can I attribute a parameter to multiple objects? I would like to apply a custom parameter to a selection of objects with the following setup:

class MyPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Tool"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "TOOLS"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return len(context.selected_objects) > 0

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout

        myprop = context.active_object.myprop
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(myprop, 'subdivs')

For now it works with the active_object, but how do I have to change my panel so it can pass on multiple variables to my update function?

bpy.props allows you to define your own get/set/update methods for a property.

import bpy

def update(self, context):
    #self ~ owner of the property
    for obj in context.selected_objects:
        #assigning a value to obj.property would cause a recursion!!!
        obj["custom_property"] = self.custom_property

bpy.types.Object.custom_property = bpy.props.IntProperty(update=update)

If you change the attribute custom_property for an object the change will be applied to all selected objects.

You can also use drivers to synchronize properties.


Procedural texture is not visible in render I made procedural texture, but it is only visible in material viewport shading but not in rendered view or rendered image.

Can anyone please advise me what is wrong?

The problem is with the 'Add Shader' node before the color ramp node. This is because the 'fac' input to the color ramp node should be a value. Instead the 'Add Shader' node gives a shader which the colorramp node can't understand properly.Also, ideally the 'Add Shader' node should take shaders as inputs instead of color or values.

In the place of the 'Add Shader' node, use 'Math' node and change it to add.Math node can be accessed by Converter>Math

The node setup will look something like this.


Alt+S doesn`t work as expected I`m working on a model for 3d printing. I wanted to make it hollow, so i made a duplicate with Shift+D and wanted to scale it inwards with Alt+S...
I expected something like in this question explained:
Alt+S and S scaling

scaling with S I get something like that

but with Alt+S I get this and cannot scale :(

scaling only with S I don't get an evenly thick frame... so I don't know how to solve this.

Thank you in advance and happy modeling :)

You are only able to do the Alt-S command while your in edit mode. From what I see in the second picture you posted, your'er in object mode. And for future key commands that don't work just go to the wiki for them, like at the bottom of this  page
it shows the Alt-S command you were asking about, and that it needs to be used in edit mode.


How to Import Python Blender Modules in PyCharm IDE I have just started using Python as a language.

I have built blender as python modules using the instructions at https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Ideasman42/BlenderAsPyModule.

I have built it successfully on Mac OS X. The last operations I have performed successfully, as instructed by the webpage, are

cp ./bin/bpy.so /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/

cp -R ./bin/2.77 /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/

However, when I run the last test:

python -c "import bpy ; bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)"

I get:

  File "", line 1, in
  ImportError: No module named 'boy'

Even in PyCharm IDE, PyCharm IDE does not recognise import bpy.
I can see bpy.so and 2.77 on the site packages for python. I do not think the 2.77 contains the file in the correct structure.

How do you correctly copy the built files correctly to the Python site package folder?

Try running these two lines in your terminal and see how your test works afterwards. I had the exact same problem when I built the module.

sudo mkdir "/Library/Application Support/Blender"
sudo ln -s /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/2.77 "/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.77"

Python isn't recognizing the bpy module because Blender's unique import protocol searches for /Library/Application Support/Blender/2.77 before the Python site packages. You can work around this by creating a symbolic link that leads to /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/2.77. Your test should work once you do that.


Mesh gets out of sync while in edit-mode (Python) When modifying/accessing a mesh in Python, changes made while in edit-mode by the user are not available to Python.

bpy.context.object.data.vertices[x].select

For example, doesn't change for any vertex  until I (for example) switch from edit to object mode.

Is there a way a way to access the current state of the mesh?

In edit-mode, the mesh as defined by bpy.types.Mesh is not used, there is in fact a different mesh-representation being used (bmesh.types.BMesh), which supports editing operations and modifications.

So changes to bpy.context.object.data are not displayed, and they will be overwritten when exiting editmode.

Instead, you have to access the BMesh.

import bpy
import bmesh

obj = bpy.context.edit_object
me = obj.data

# Get a BMesh representation
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

Once you have a bmesh from the edit-mesh, you are directly accessing the same data which the user is manipulating.

For the full example, see:

  Text Editor -> Templates -> Python -> BMesh Simple Editmode

See BMesh API docs:
http://www.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_72_release/bmesh.html


Unable to make holes using boolean modifier I am pulling teeth trying to get these cylinders to create holes in my movie reel object. Not sure what I'm doing wrong or what settings I should have...can't seem to get to work with any tutorial.

Here's the .blend file:

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/39092

The problem with your file is that you have a lot of disjoint geometry and non volume geometry.

Observing a small section of the model shows a problem: A, B, and C are disjoint. (Not attached to eachother) and they therefor don't form a watertight (Manifold) volume. Also B and C even have Polygon normals  that go in opposite directions. Which you can tell by the color differences in the mesh. Purple vs Grey.

I'm sure if you study the model further, or come back to it when you have more experience with the Boolean Modifier you will see immediately all kinds of things that make it impossible to do what you are trying. I suggest a different approach, it's easier I think.

Here's a demonstration of what my approach would be to this. Use the Screw Modifier and a profile as the rotation shape. A benefit of this is you can easily change the number of vertices on the circumference of the object, by changing the 'Steps' value.

I've also used the Array Modifier to make a radial array, this arrays an object (The extruded Circle) around a fixed point (an Empty). The Empty's rotation influences the rotation of the repeated object.

Then finally you can add the boolean modifier and hide the Circle object.


Weird Blender Subsurface glitch For some reason, when I add the Subdvision Surface modifier, I'm getting this. Does anyone know what might be causing this?

Subdivision surface only works well with quads, and from the looks of it your model isn't constructed in the most clean way. There are a few things you can try short of remodelling the mesh:

Remove doubles
Recalculate Normals
Add a bevel modifier, which might be able to clean up the edges for you so you can apply a subsurface modifier.
Add 2 edge loops around the perimeter of the object so that subdivision works better.


Is there a way to increase wall thickness after applying solidify? I'm going to go ahead and do it manually, but before I do I would like to know if there is a better way

There is a way in edit mode you might prefer if you select the wall faces and press Ctrl F and choose Solidify. The thickness appears in the operator on the left. The new faces are automatically highlighted so at that point, you can add the new faces to a new group. Then if you make further modifications and want the thickness different you can select the faces from the group, delete and redo.


I'm new to blender and having a lot of trouble simulating because of bad subdivisions (importing my objects from rhino as OBJs) TLDR: I want the subdivides on this to look like this so that it simulates properly
I'm planning to do a thick cloth simulation using mesh deform in a couple of days, and I've been practicing with simple geometries-- the problem is even these simple geometries seem to import horribly with their subdivisions, and when I go to simulate, the messy subdivisions create a mess.
I've inserted a couple images of the messy subdivides, and a gif showing an error of one simulation I did.
here are the messy subsurface divides from today
here are the messy sub divides from yesterday which are even worse
here is the thick mesh i'm simulating, which works perfectly
gif of the simulation error
But THIS type of subdivisioning is what I need! It's from a tutorial I was watching and I'm assuming he built the object in blender which explains the insanely beautiful clean subdivides.
I've tried cleaning up the subsurface through limited dissolve but that doesnt work because the simulation doesn't work on one face and if I try to add a subsurface modifier it becomes very messy again.  I basically just need an even square/ rectangular divide which currently is only possible for me to do if I make the original object on blender, which I won't be able to do soon once I need to use some more complex rhino models.
The subsurface divide modifier is just very confusing to me in general because it closes holes in my models, and generally doesn't seem to do what I want if it's not just a rectangle. I might just be confused on how it works though.

The subdivision surface modifier is optimized for meshes that are entirely (for the most part) constructed of quads. Your CAD imports have a lot of uneven topology and tris. This is inevitable when you are working in CAD programs with NURBS and then are forced to convert them to polygons so you can open in Blender (or other mesh based modeling tools). It's why you are getting ugly results with the subsurf modifier.
Here is how cloth simulation works "under the hood" (Straight from the blender docs):

As you can see from the above, accurate simulations depend on even topology so it can compute springs properly.
Unfortunately there is no magic button or export option that will fix your problem. Blender can't natively import NURBS - at some point in the pipeline you are converting from parametric data to polygons and horrible topology is inevitable.
The closest thing to an "easy fix" would be to import your model into ZBrush, and use ZRemesher.
Beyond that, your only other option is to remodel/retopologize the cloth you want to simulate using traditional subd modeling techniques.
Hope this helps.


Noise issue in animation I have rendered this animation and this noise happens in the model. Any help? Thank you!

The denoiser is only suited to certain situations - in some cases it can actually cause unwanted artifacts and noise; it is generally best suited to well lit, less noisy renders to tidy up a small amount of noise or bright spots caused by caustics. In your case your raw render simply contains too much noise for the denoiser to produce consistent results between different frames of the animation.

To demonstrate, I created a noisy test scene with a banded material similar to your 'skin' and rendered three times : without the denoiser, with the denoiser, with more samples.

Here's the 'raw' noisy render (32 samples) :

The denoiser can help considerably for individual frames but when animated the denoising slips between frames causing artifacts (click the image to see it full size) :

Note how the darker benoised areas seem to wash around and move in subsequent frames of the animation.

An alternative to the denoiser is to simply render with more samples (256 samples) :

This takes more time to render but produces much more consistent images between consecutive frames.

It's difficult to see from the above images so here is a comparison on a zoomed section of the denoised and more sample animations :

Denoised :

More samples :

Note the fuzziness caused by the denoiser throughout. The 'more samples' result is generally much more stable (except where the banding is inteferring with the pixel width - causing the rippling at the start/end).

So, in summary, in your particular case, the details of the 'skin' and the low light and shadows are a case where the denoiser causes considerable artifacts. It would be acceptable for still frames but not for animation. Your only solution is to disabled the denoiser and render with more samples (but this will considerably increase render times).


Is it possible to simulate an egg? Is it possible to simulate an egg?

Specifically, I was wondering how to handle simulating the yolk.

I was thinking fluid simulation, but it seems you can't a specify different viscosity for different parts of the fluid. (I'm not even sure if that would even be the way to go about it)

How can I achieve this?

Yes, you could use multiple fluid domains with different viscosity settings. The trick is to bake into different folders.

The UI allows you only to have one fluid domain therefore you need to disable the first one after baking in one folder by setting its type to none. After that you bake the second one and re-enable the first domain.

NOTE: that the domains shouldn't overlap while baking (I'm not sure about that), I tried to reproduce the steps descibed here

The yolks volume was subtracted from the egg-white using a boolean modifier.

The result needs obviously some tweaking: