Make materials uneditable & inapplicable I'm going to publish a model, wich contains certain materials. The problem is that I wouldn't like people to use the materials for their own use once I publish my file. Is there any way I could make materials uneditable, and inapplicable for other mesh that isn't the one that alredy has it?

Thanks!

As mentioned in the comments, you can hide some of the complexity in the material by baking stuff to textures, but this isn't possible for everything.

Blender offers techinical no way of doing stuff like this, in part because it is against the ideology which drives blender (Open Source) and in part because for digital stuff it is pretty much impossible. Consider how much effort the entertainment industry spends to try and create technical solutions to digital piracy, and still they get broken.

There are however legal solutions, you could release you work under a 'No Derivative Works' license (I believe there is a variant of creative commons for this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license).


Bending with Lattice modifier I'm trying to bend a simple snake-like model (see the figures) using a curve in order to tune the shape for my needs. I first tried to use the curve modifier, but since I'm already given a mesh with deformed axis it didn't work as expected. I next thought of using the lattice modifier, deformed itself by the curve I set, i.e. I first bend the lattice to match the form of my mesh (using a Bezier curve) and then apply it as a modifier to my mesh.

Unfortunately, it didn't work either: the lattice twists and squeezes the shape the way I don't want (see the figure).

What am I doing wrong? How to make the mesh deformation follow the curve I specify?

In case of mesh already bent, whose volume should be preserved, it can be too complicated to use Lattice modifier. Lattice can be edited with using Curve Modifier, but the last one may not be applied to it. And the results in this case will be rather unpredictable and bad looking (for example).

You could edit Lattice by yourself in Edit mode, but why ? A good reason not to do that is that you won't be able to use provided curve as a desired shape.

A workaround is to create rig for the mesh.
You add armature, extrude it (I began from right to left). Then you parent mesh to armature (with Automatic weights will suit your needs) and grab / rotate bones as you'd like:

I used curve as a reference according to which I edited the bones:

Download file here.


HDRI scaling problem I'm starting to work with HDRI images for lighting in blender. And I have a file that's acting a bit weird. If I open a brand new file and setup an HDRI image, and turn on the world background in Display, it looks as below:

But in my working file, if I add the exact same HDRI image with the exact same node setup, I get the following

The second case it's very zoomed in (I think), not sure exactly what settings I have that are messed up in the second case.

If I look through the camera it seems fine.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Your are in orthographic projection view.

For obvious geometric reasons you cannot view a equirectangular images in orthographic views because there is no perspective to speak of, so you are looking in a single direction, viewing a theoretically infinitesimally small portion of the background image, yielding an apparently flat looking background.

Switch back to prespective view by pressing Numpad 5


How to make pictures in Bioblender I have downloaded Bioblender V0.6 and the pdb file of this molecule. The molecule contains two chains 'A' and 'B'.

If I check the "hydrogen" check box and import the pdb I get the following image:

However, I cannot see the hydrogens of this molecule. I would like that my molecule looks more like the picture that one can find on the homepage from Bioblender (see picture below). How can I achieve this?

As I already mentioned, my molecule contains two chains 'A' and 'B'. I would like to visualize my molecule such that one can identify each chain, as for example in the following picture (found in this article). How can I achieve this?

Edit: Mike Pan noted that I do not have hydrogens in my molecule. Therefore I tried this molecule with hydrogens in the pdb file. When I add it with Bioblender and check hydrogen, the molecule is represented in a very different style then the molecule from the Bioblender homepage - why is that?

I also tried to check Spacefill and I got the following result.

However, the hydrogen looks far bigger then in the Bioblender image (second from top). I do not know how I can scale all hydrogens. In the outliner, they are not grouped.

Looking at the PDB file of 1AD4 here, it looks like the PDB does not contain hydrogen. So you wouldn't see any Hydrogen atoms in the render.

As for colouring different chains, you can import each chain by itself, and then use a surfacing algorithm (MLP or EP) to generate a surface, once you have the surface, it should be easy to apply the material yourself.

If you want to create something simple without fiddling with Blender as much, take a look at MolecularFlipbook.


Rotate end face of Cylinder keeping cylinder diameter I once saw a tutorial on YouTube that gave me a simple keystroke to rotate the end face of a cylinder without deforming the sides. I used it many times, but then didn't require it for a year, until now, when it would be really useful.
Most answers in public forums relate to using the bisect tool instead of rotate, but that was not the solution I came across on YouTube and interrupts workflow.
Does anybody know how to do this? It is extremely useful and precise, as you can simply enter [something] then [r] and then the degree, and it forms a perfect turn in the cylinder without crushing the sides.

You're probably looking for the Shear tool, shortcut AltCtrlShiftS (mh yes, you'd better not have lost a finger), it will make the selection slide on the X or Y (it's View orientation by default), then press 1 or -1 to get a 45° or -45° angle (the value is an Offset, not an angle, as you are not doing a rotation, you are sliding the vertices on an axis). Open the Operator box to enter or modify the values manually:


How can I connect an object with particle instances on an emitter via some Curve/Geometry connection Hi im trying to get a dynamic electricity effect going on:

Basically, I want an object to pass over a particle emitter, and have lines show up connecting itself to all the moving particle instances on the emitter plane.

No idea how to do this.. seems i'd need to recreate each particle and animate it, then add "connection" curve/meshes for each particle, and then clamp them on both the passing object and each particle. THis seems super tedious if I want 50+ particles.

Any idea how to approach this? I have a hunch 'animation nodes' might help"?
Thanks.

Create an edges between each alive particle and the object using the Create Edges Node then use the Splines From Edges Node to generate splines from that and output it.


Location relative to parent's origin? For a model I'm working on I need three cubes that are parented to each other to form an expandable column that moves on the Z axis. I've got a much more complex model for a robot but to simplify everything I'm using cubes to test.

Each tier of cubes is parented to the bigger cube below it.

I have taken each cube and also set its origin to the center of the top face as seen in the picture above. From this I would expect if I set all of the Z values for the top two cubes that the cubes would all have their top face aligned to each other as such:

This however only works for my the middle cube, but the top cube seems like its offset from the global origin and not its parent origin. In the picture below all of the Z values are set to 0.

And here you can see that all of the cubes are parented to each other:

I don't get what I'm doing wrong as the middle cube offsets properly from its parent cube, but the top one wont offset from the middle cubes origin. I've retried making this 3 times now and every time it ends up the same.

Here is my testrig blender file if you want to open it up.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UIYmEK1Pk0sPhWYnF5bFFau5ZdVZs_2H/view?usp=sharing

I think I found my answer: I had tried applying all transforms but what I really needed to do was apply "All Transforms to Deltas" under the "Object->Apply". I come from Maya and assumed "Apply All Transforms" worked the same as the "Set Transformation values to Zero" function in Maya.


Wheels wont rotate in animation but do in edit mode? Situation, i made a wheel, and a empty-cube.
The weel's parent is the empty-cube.
Next for the wheel i created a simple driver.
Based upon the empty cube y-axis movement :

When i am in edit mode and drag the empty horizontally the wheel rotates.
But when i animate the cube y locations they dont seem to rotate
also when render the wheel wont rotate.

Well it worked I think the cause was a huge file and blender was active for 2 days. After restart it worked


How to determine the poly/vert counts of a fluid simulation? Is it possible to determine the vertex count of a fluid simulation frame without applying the fluid simulation?

Normally I would just go into edit mode and select all to see the vertex count in the Info panel, but its a nuisance to have to duplicate and apply my fluid mesh every time I want to see this information. (e.g. if I'm going through the frames and watching the vertex count)

Is there an easier way to do this?

When in object mode the info panel shows the vertex count of every object in the current scene which includes hidden objects, with a fluid simulation this changes each frame as the fluid mesh changes.

The frame before the fluid simulation starts will show the scene vertex count to use as a basis, lets start at frame -1 and say we have 16 vertices for a simple simulation with a cube for fluid and another for domain. Jump to frame 20 and we have 17184 vertices. By subtracting the 16 vertices we started with we have a fluid mesh with 17168 vertices. For an exact figure I believe the 8 vertices for the domain are included in the deformed fluid mesh so should not be subtracted from the vertex count of the frame.


Around-Corners Transparency in Cycles? Using Ray Length I can make the center of a cube hollow. But what I actually want is the inverse - for the outline to be transparent and the inside solid. At a glance it seems this would be a matter of inverting the color, but since Ray Length uses the transparency to calculate this to begin with, inverting it short-circuits the signal flow and all transparency is removed.

Things I've tried that didn't work:

Normal node
Ray Depth
OSL edge shader (very cool, but doesn't leave the center hollow)
Cycles Matcap technique
Each output of the Camera Data node
All of the above run through various combinations of Color Ramp, RGB Curves, etc.

I would really like for this to work as a Cycles material, rather than relying on compositing. I also would like to avoid solutions that involve Freestyle lines. Those approaches are good for some cases, but in this case I'd like a material that can be brought into any .blend and "just work" on its own.

Any ideas? Thanks.

2016 Feb. Edit:

Since it seems this question is still getting some attention, and because I hadn't explained what the desired end result was, I thought I should add a little more info here.

My hope with this was to achieve an effect that can be used on textures such as brick walls, so that a wall's corners have transparency in the areas between the bricks. With a bump map you can generate shading that makes the bricks appear pushed out, but when it comes to corners the lack of transparency between bricks is a dead giveaway that there is no real geometry.

I have since switched to using particle systems for bricks and I think this is a more effective approach:

While this is a solution for bricks, it is not a universal solution for getting around-corners transparency from displaced textures. Also, geometry-based solutions tend to be more computationally heavy. Subdividing the wall a million times and then throwing a displace Modifier on is not usually practical.

So what is the solution that will work for all textures? I believe RenderMan's displacement, which creates raised geometry from a shader... is the solution.

See an example of RenderMan's displacement here.

Anyway, this is the sort of effect I was after, and hoping I could fake something close by first creating a shader with transparent borders. At the time I posted this question I was not aware of RenderMan's displacement feature. And of course, it would be nice to have this in Cycles too... we will see what the future holds.

True surface displacement can be achieved with tessellation and a Displace modifier.

There is also a new Experimental Cycles Displacement node, but since it isn't continuous across face boundaries, it creates gaps between faces.

Cycles - What is the expected range of values for Displacement?


How do I add text to an object mid animation? I have a cube which changes colour at frame 10 & 20 then changes size at 30 but at frame 40 I want to add text. I also want the text to change colour at frame 60. I cannot find a tutorial about this.

You can use text object (Shift+A>Text) or create a texture with no background and text on it and add it to the cube and mix color You like the text to have with cube color using Alpha channel of this texture.


Cycles isn't appearing in render engine drop down list I just upgraded to 2.75 and there isn't an option for cycles render in the engine drop down.  How do I access cycles render in the new environment?  It only list, blender render and blender game.

First thing to check is in the Addons tab in the User Preferences:

  User Preferences > Addons > Render: Cycles Render Engine.

My best first guess is that the box for this option is unchecked.


Blender 2.8 December 24 Grease Pencil convert to geometry is gray out and it's not working Hi everyone I don't know if it's a bug or not but I'm using latest version of Blender 2.8 December 24 blender-2.80.0-git.4c5e76025d83-windows64 and I can't convert my strokes to geometry at all they all are gray out, disabled!

I'd suggest to report this issue to developer.blender.org, as it sounds like more of a bug of the latest builds rather than anything else.


Hair Particle system and Fluid Simulation interaction Making a scene with grass made with a hair particle system in a fluid simulation. I was wondering if there is any way for the hair particles to be able to sway based on the fluid simulation. If so how would I go about it? What physics should I be playing with?

tl,dr
You can't, the fluid simulation system is not meant to interact with non-fluid object/forces/particles.
Keep in mind, that software such as Houdini is free for the apprentice version and allows to export geometry to Blender (as an obj sequence e.g.).

This answer assumes you are a proficient Blender user, given the complex context of the question. Adress unclear things in the comments and I'll extend the answer.
The Manual Way
Manually scatter force field in your scene. Such as Wind. Rotate them manually and keyframe their strength to mimic the flow of the water. Force fields influence hair particles.
This will probably be the fastest way in Blender internally.
The Hack

Keeping the Fluid Domain setting "Generate Speed Vector" box checked opens up a Hack.
The wrong movements in the demo gif arent limitations, but I didn't want to pursue the matter further. (My obstacle needed different geometry.)
Create the Vector Pass for the render layer. Then place an orthogonal camera directly above your scene. We will output the speed of the surface into an image sequence with the following compositing nodes. Don't forget to choose (e.g.) OpenEXR as to not loose negative or higher values.

Choose a small output Dimension (10x15 in my case) and render it.

LTR: image sequence of speed vectors; orthographic camera directly from above, left-lower corner matches (0, 0); render settings
With this method we only get the speed vectors for the surface, so it still won't come close to mimic a realistic result.
Now, we will grab the direction values of each pixel, and place a wind force field at the corresponding 3d position.
First, create some Wind Force fields, since my image is 15x10 pixels, I need 150 forcefields.
import bpy

w, h = 15, 10

for x in range(0, w):
    for y in range(0, h):
        bpy.ops.object.effector_add(type='WIND')
        pass

fields = []
for ob in bpy.data.objects:
    if ob.name[:5] == "Field":
        fields.append(ob)

i = 0
for x in range(0, w):
    for y in range(0, h):
        fields[i].name = str(x).zfill(4) + "_" + str(y).zfill(4)
        fields[i].location = (x, y, 0)
        i += 1

I saved my motion images to "//motion####.exr". Sadly, image sequences don't update on frame change from python, so we will have to load each image separately. Create a new image "motion_image", then execute the code. The comments should make the functionality clear.
import bpy
import mathutils

# method for reading a pixels values
# an image (as in bpy.data.images) has the attribute pixels, a list of values
# in pixels, rgba values come after each other (they are not grouped)
# rows aren't grouped either, they come after each other
# [0x0_r, 0x0_g, 0x0_b, 0x0_a, 0x1_r, 0x1_b ... 15x10_a]
# more info here: http://blenderscripting.blogspot.de/2012/08/adjusting-image-pixels-internally-in.html
def getPixel(pixels, x, y, width):
    idx = (x + y * width) * 4
    return pixels[idx], pixels[idx + 1], pixels[idx + 2], pixels[idx + 3]

scn = bpy.data.scenes['Scene']

# grab our prepared image and its dimensions
img = bpy.data.images['motion_image']
width, height = img.size[0], img.size[1]

for frame in range(scn.frame_start, scn.frame_end):
    # this may take a while, so here the update in the console
    print(frame)

    # load the image from disk into our Blender image
    img.filepath = "//motion/" + str(frame).zfill(4) + ".exr"
    bpy.context.scene.frame_set(frame)
    bpy.context.scene.update()
    img.reload()
    img.update()

    # see CoDEmanX's comment: https://blenderartists.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-268545.html
    pixels = list(img.pixels[:])

    # loop through all pixels
    for x in range(0, width):
        for y in range(0, height):
            r, g, b, a = getPixel(img.pixels, x, y, width)

            # access the wind force fields through our naming system
            ob = bpy.data.objects[str(x).zfill(4) + "_" + str(y).zfill(4)]

            v = mathutils.Vector((r, g, b))

            # convert the direction to a quaternion_rotation and calculate the strength
            ob.rotation_quaternion = v.normalized().to_track_quat('Z', 'X')
            ob.field.strength = v.magnitude * 200
            ob.keyframe_insert('rotation_quaternion')
            ob.field.keyframe_insert('strength')

Don't forget to set all forcefield object to quaternion rotations. ⎇ Alt LMB on a property to change it for all selected objects.
I also offseted my forcefield (0.5, 0.5) to center them in the pixels.

Now we have lots of crazy forcefields which we can use for further experimentation.


Nothing happens when baking fluid simulation Blender File: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/f5t132aukwqmg0l/AADiffjRgnVy7CMPK-VkSs7Va?dl=0

I'm attempting something similar to this (https://youtu.be/Gk0uhBcLknQ?t=6m24s) (link should start at what I'm attempting to create).

What I'm trying to do so far is do a simple bake so I can experiment with how the water will flow and set obstacle setting afterwards. However, baking does absolutely nothing.

I've looked around many sites and I can't seem to find an answer. I've tried deleting the cache files and going with advice that has been given to others with similar issues, but nothing appears to work.

Apply the scale to domain and inflow object. ⎈ CtrlA

Why is there an inverted sphere in the inflow? Remove it, it is going to give us some wrong direction otherwise.

And finally, your domain is very large compared to the preview resolution of 45. The inflow is so small that the emitted fluid is not visible.

Voxels (volume elements) are the smallest unit in the volumetric fluid simulation. Since the emitted fluid is smaller than a voxel, no geometry is created.

To solve this:

Scale up the inflow.
Scale down the domain.
Apply scale.
Increase the resolution.
Immediately switch to final resolution under viewport display. This is going to show us the final resoluted geometry.

Here are some more efficient scale at a final resolution of 200. Note how to domain will barely contain all of the fluid.


Bones and mesh relationship is wrong (Bug?) I am not good with words, for that I apologize. I don't know how to explain in few words this problem.
I was working on my old personal project when I realized that it would be nice to make some changes in bone structure and rigging.. well, I have saved my old file and made a NEW armature (all bones, nice rigging, working perfectly in bone structure when I go animation mode)... but here is the problem. When I add to my mesh the armature (CTRL+P with weights and also tried without it) the mesh just gets twisted badly. Therefore I first removed all vertex groups that automatically came and added manually (also tried adding armature without weights, same problem) to make sure all is working as it should be... but, big fail. All my work got twisted in all direction.
Well, I went further, took out the bone structure (armature) deleted all my work (as i have the old backup) and made a simple tube (with plenty of subdivision for each bones) and tested it the simple way.. well.. it is the same problem. All tube is twisted badly, doesn't work as it should work. I don't know what I might have done wrong, or what is wrong with my bone structure and rigging, but... I'm a little bit upset since I have wasted 3 hours to find the solution myself.

I don't know what is wrong with this. I'm asking the community help, perhaps corrections/tips/solutions/advice, whatever could enlighten my problem and lift up my crankiness.

I have added the file (the simple test file with the tube and the armature) so that someone who has time, take a look at it and see what is wrong with it. Why gets my mesh twisted so badly and not work in the proper way as the armature works.

Thank you all in advance, again apologize for my bad English and perhaps twisted phrases.

Your example file shows a mesh that does not match the armature in Edit Mode.

You have the choice of either building your bones inside the mesh - or - modeling your mesh around the position of the bones...

Before parenting your armature to the object it is also good practise to Apply the Scale with CTRL>A as this can also cause complications.


My first Cycles to Eevee render looks wrong. Tried many things to improve.. failed! Good Day Peoples.. :)

I am having trouble with eevee. the cycles end result was pretty good. Lighting wise. But eevee looks rubbish and

I understand that eevee is not Ray Tracing and uses the same tech as games, Rasterization. But I have seen some beautiful results online and want to know what I'm doing wrong.

I have altered heaps of settings, I have tried :
Adding indirect light sensors,
Changed node setup different ways..
Building normal maps and adding more to node setup
Fiddled with lights and turned on contact shadows which gave the image some depth but I still get the overly cartoon vibe

The Image Below shows Cycles / Eevee direct render / Eevee Edited to improve best I can!!

I'd like to get some help with what to try to improve it more.

If anyone wants the blend file I have stored it in my google drive.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1J7fslQR96G_2p2QVIuT7TwqNGjEdxCmc

If anyone here is up for taking a look at what can be done to improve, I would really appreciate it.

The saved .blend file is for Blender 2.8 (Of Course!) and saved with the setting which gave the 3rd result.

Cheers
Shaun

EDIT: I have found that changing 'shadow method' under "Shader Tab" from ESM to VSM I get better quality shadows. But still looking for better quality :)

EDIT: With Help from AxiomDes and trial and error I have found that enabling VSM method shadows, ensuring have checked the items AxiomDes suggests and also playing with contact shadows settings results will improve.

EDIT: Objects with transparency, materials need to have Alpha enabled. (The Daz Model here, I used "Alpha Hashed" for eyeMoisture, and hair objects)

It would be worth noting that between Cycles and Eevee It would be worth just renaming all lighting for cycles as Cycles_lamp1 etc Disable, and making a new set just for Eevee. Some Lamps work well between Cycles and Eevee so this is depending on your scene.

Anyways

Thankyou for your help today AxiomDes

Here are my latest results.

Try baking a denser and smaller area for your light volume. This should resolve some of the shadows better. I'd also set up lights specifically for Eevee, since the lights from Eevee are not 1:1 with Cycles. If you're not already, turn on soft shadows as well in your shadows option. If you've got subsurface scattering in your scene, make sure it's properly set up within Eevee as well by turning it on.

Edit

Here are the settings for the Irradience Volume, note the XYZ resolution.


Blender internal - pure white plane with shadows/gloss I'm trying to do something like this in Blender internal renderer:

Here are some Cycles-solution using, which I'm trying to replicate in Internal:

How do I make a pure white plane that receives shadows?
Render shadow on transparent background with Blender Render

I will be making something very simple, with bouncing balls etc, so I don't need the realistic features of Cycles, and like the render speed of Internal.

So how would I do to make everything white, and only cast simple shadows? So it's kind of like a light box, with only my objects in focus.

I've tried make a bent plane, but it doesn't look white.

I also tried a white Horizon color but this affects the lighting in the scene.

I appreciate any help, and if you can point me to some good material/lighting tutorials for Blender Internal, it would really help. It's so hard to google it, due to the generic name, and most tutorials I can find is using Cycles.

Thanks!

You could try to use "Shadows Only" option in the material's shadow settings

and set horizon color to white in the World tab.

The result looks like this:

This is the blend with such simple setup (I have also enabled Ambient Occlusion effect in the World settings).


How to make countour edges I have a shape and I want to offset or contour the edges as you can see in the image below. Is there any add-on to offset the edge or any other method?

Here's the .blend file:

As a lazy solution which also needs some clearing work, use Offset Edges addon. See how to install addon to access its functionality.

First, for it to work properly, apply scale for the object (Ctrl+A > Scale) and remove doubles (W > Remove Doubles).

With that, run Ctrl+E > Offset Edges > Offset (or Extrude, depending on whether you want the extruded edges to be connected to original ones or not).
It won't work well in the corners because of big amount of vertices there. You might need to edit that by using e.g. Vertex Slide tool to grab vertices along the edges to get rid of distorted corners.

Repeat the same for yet one more concentric iteration.

This will be easier if you dissolve that big amount of vertices before using the addon with Limited Dissolve (not an option if those vertices are needed as details).


All radio button icons missing on new install I recently installed the new 2.77ver. initially on a usb hdd. on opening it for the first time I found all the radio button icons  were grayed out with a mottled grayish texture. In Blender stack exchange I found ref. to a vaguely similar problem and the advice  was to reinstall. I have now done that using both zip and msi. files plus an trying older ver. I also tried different drives. All with the same result; the buttons icon are all missing. I have  wiped my hdds after each unistall to remove any remaining files. Any Ideas? Thanks. jrt

Thanks Mr.Zak & Duarte
For your input  regarding the GPU as a possible Culprit. PROBLEM SOLVED! I initially tried changing the resolution however that had no affect. I checked for driver upgrades but I already had the newest ver. Other people with similar problems had been advised to turn off the Anti-aliasing  function on the GPU driver. A common setting option on older drivers however the driver for my Intel Chipset has no such feature instead it has options for "performance Level" and the default setting was "Max performance". I decreased it to "Balanced performance" and bada-bim bada-boom Fixed!  Funny thing, my decade-plus old el-cheapo celeron based toshiba tablet runs ver 2.71 just fine. But renders  take a loooooong time. Thanks, jrt


Unable to extrude SVG inside Blender I am using Blender 2.8 with 20.04 Kubuntu. I have an SVG made using Inkscape 1.0 with 3 layers which I tried to import into Blender and extrude each layer with different heights. Sadly when going to Edit mode and trying the extrude option, I get almost zero results. Please see the image below. If possible, a helping hand will be great.

Extruding vertices, edges or faces can only be done with meshes.
SVGs are by default Curves not mesh objects, a different kind of object, with different properties.

For 2d curves use the Geometry->Extrude options.

For further transformations you might need to convert the object to mesh. On the "Object" menu choose "Convert to" -> Mesh From Curve/Meta/Surf/Text.


Reflectivity in Principled Shader? Before 2.79 I used a dialectric node setup outlined by Andrew Price for PBR materials.  This involved "reflectivity" maps among other maps, which I used, and many PBR texture maps include the reflectivity map.  But I see no "reflectivity" value in the new Principled Shader.  Where do I plug in this map?  I know it's not roughness, because that's its own thing, and I know that the "specular" value probably isn't it, because I've heard multiple people say that that value isn't for when you're trying to do physically accurate shading; that it's not a PBR-related setting.  I know there is some other PBR-related value I'm not using that affects reflections, because I plug in roughness and normal maps for very rough, dull materials, and they still look shiny.

Thanks for any help y'all can give!

Actually, it is the specular value input, specular is reflectivity. It's just that in some non PBR setups specular is a way of faking a reflected highlight without calulating actual reflections, and they called it specular. But in the principled shader specular means reflection and that's where you would put the reflection map, also sometimes called a specular map.

Play with the specular value and you'll see you can go from zero reflection to 100% mirror reflection. Roughness is basically your way of dulling down or polishing up the reflectivity, it's like a gloss value


Is it possible to prevent a Displacement modifier from affecting certain parts of a mesh? A Displacement modifier is doing a great job making a mesh look a realistic object, but there are certain spots, such as a dozen or so vertices at one corner of the mesh, where I don't want any displacement effect.  The displacment is making a mess of things in those spots.

I don't want to undo my brilliant sculpting work there and re-do it after applying the modifier, or to fix the mess afterward. In fact, I don't want to apply the modifier.  Never mind my particular reason, since other Blender modelers may have the same question and want to animate, adjust the Displacment settings later, copy the object but have different ripples in the objects (using global coords), or whatever.

What would be nice is a way to modulate the "strength" setting with a grayscale image or painting in a UV map, but I'm not seeing how to do that.  I'm one of: unlucky at Google today, stupid, or ignorant of some non-obvious feature in Blender.  Maybe there's a nodes editor way to build a processing pipeline for modifier parameters?

You can achieve this by applying your displace modifier to a vertex group.

Just ensure that the vertices you don't want it applied to are not a part of your vertex group.

Example:


Why does the Minecraft-texture have black/dark borders in Cycles? I've used a spot-lamp as the only light source (the fire doesn't spread any light). Also, the problem shouldn't occur in the textures because i already checked it in different angles. If i look at it at the front of this "stair" the black/dark border disappeared. What is exactly the problem and how can i fix this? I've exported this world using jMc2Obj.

The following pictures may be of importance:

Material of the stairs:

Textures of the stairs:

Spotlight:

The problem is caused by Smooth Shading, to solve that you have to give your stairs model Edge-Split Modifier.

Before the ES Modifier

After the ES Modifier


Where can I find a proper API reference? I can't believe I have to ask this, but where do I find an actual API reference for Blender scripting? I just can't seem to find one. I see tutorials but no proper reference documentation.

For instance, this page feels like it should be giving me a list of all the members of bpy.data but I don't see any way to get that information. The "next" button just takes me to the next section, and "modules" takes me somewhere else entirely.

What am I missing?

EDIT: The linked dupe DOES NOT answer the question. Clearly you did not read my question. I can't find the ACTUAL API REFERENCE. I don't understand why this is so complex to answer.

How do I know what each "class" (or whatever the python equivalent is) member variable and function is?

Look for class members, (properties, methods et al), in the classes doc page.

bpy.data is  a reference to an instance of the bpy.types.BlendData class. All the members of that class will be found in the documentation page for the  class (or type),

Most python documentation, I am familiar with, is organized this way, and has often, as is the case here generated from the source.

There may be many references , in this example scrolling down to reference section see that context.blend_data is also  an instance of bpy.types.BlendData.  Note Even though context.blend_data and bpy.data are both of the same type and for this case mostly the same object, but it is not necessarily so. Might start using me = context.blend_data.meshes.new(...) for methods where context is passed.

A type with numerous references is the  blender object. bpy.types.Object for instance the context object of any blender object type. The target of a driver, modifier, constraint on an object. A member of a collection: blend data objects; collection objects or scene objects  etc etc etc etc.

Blender uses the convention: names of properties and methods are in lower case, classes in title case. eg bpy.types.WindowManager is a class (being in bpy.types is a bit of a give away too), bpy.context.window_manager an instance of it.

Turn on developer extras to get an API link by right clicking on a property.


Altering transparency / thickness of rising smoke How can I create a more transparent, thinner bottom area of smoke, then rising higher to be much thicker and opaque? It will not need to be animated.

Use a Gradient texture to control the mix between the smoke density and a transparent shader.

You can use generated coordinates and a mapping node to control the placement. In this case note the rotation on the $Y$ axis.

After the Gradient texture you can use color ramp to control the placement for the transparency.


Missing the texture paint mode stencil mask overlay when in texture paint mode for an object (blender 2.8) In the tutorial series I'm watching the object the person is painting changes to "texture paint mode" where the object is flat shaded like this:

However when I enter this mode my shading doesn't change, and instead looks like this:

Which makes it hard to see which object I am currently painting. My texture paint opacity is at 100% and sliding it doesn't seem to make any difference in the scene like it did in the tutorial.

EDIT I decided to try and get it to work with a new file and it doesn't. I took the default cube and added a black texture. The object still shows in 3D and not flat, and the texture opacity slider does nothing. I can't replicate what the person had in the video.

Here is the new file with just the cube:

And a screenshot of what it looks like for me in texture paint mode:

You didn't pack the image. Anyway, I've created a new one. What you need is just to choose a brush with a higher Strength and another Blend mode. Also, be careful with your unwrapping, some faces are overlapping so when you paint on a part it will paint somewhere else. The easiest way, if you only paint in the 3D View, is to unwrap with Smart UV Project. If you also paint in the Image Editor, maybe mark seam and then choose the simple Unwrap mode.


How do you move a mesh to the origin? So I can import a 3D object, see screenshot.  That tiny orange (selected) object way below the workspace grid is my file.

How do I transform (I mean move, but Blender lingo for this seems to be "Transform") the object to the origin of the workspace and transform it's orientation so the long axis of the part is parallel to the Z axis?

Kind regards,

Mike

To move it's location:
Select the object, move the 3D Cursor to the center (Shift + S, R) or to a desired location, then move the selection to the cursor (Shift + S, T).

To change the origin:
Select a part of the object in Edit Mode, move the 3D cursor to it, and then
switch to edit mode and snap the object to the cursor(Shift + Ctrl + Alt+ C, T).

Rotate the object first if you want to change the angle.


How do I export an OBJ to an .X file I just downloaded blender 2.70 windows 64. I want to convert .obj files to .X files to use then in the pmd editor and MMD. I cant find an export to .x file. the tutorial that I am looking at is for an older version of Blender.

Enabling Import & Export of DirectX 3D Model file format .X

Blender 2.70 comes with the "DirectX X Format" Export addon built-in.

However, the "DirectX Importer" Import addon is not built-in. If you'd like to have the ability to import .X files, you can download it in this addon bundle.   (Note: that post describes how to add the addon to Blender's scripts folder.)

To enable these:

Info header -> File -> User Preferences

Then, in the search box, type Direct. Two DirectX addons will appear:

The one named "DirectX Importer" provides the ability to Import .X files
The one named "DirectX X Format" provides the ability to Export .X files
Check the checkbox at the right hand side of the addon to enable it
If you want to always have these import/export options in your File menu, then click on the Save User Settings button at the bottom of the screen:

You will then have the .X file format as import & export options:


How to add metalness to a specific color on a card Hey there :D I want to make a little card. So far so good: I imported the image as a plane in blender but now I want more texture on the card like roughness on the white paper, metalness/ shinyness on the orange color.
Btw: The card is for history class about the Communism. Could someone please help me? Thank you :D

In your image editor select corresponding color on your card and make black and white mask for metal, where white is metallic part.
Invert that mask for roughness map (or make new mask for more control).
Modify your card material in node editor to use principled shader, where base color connects to your original image.
Use your metal mask for metal, rough mask for roughness.

If you want to get more adventurous, you can make a 3rd mask where you set your 'paper' material with fine-grain greyscale noise, and you can apply it with bump map.

Your final shader would look something like this (notice non-color data for masks):

If you find some masks give too strong/weak effect, you can use ColorRamp from Convertor menu for fine-grain control.


Bodies linked with a Rigid Body Joint are detaching by itself in simulation I have two rigid bodies (they both are small hierarchies actually) and attached them to each other using a 6dof joint with all limits locked to zeroes.

One of the bodies is controllable with left-right keys, there is a motion actuator that does simple rotation.

I start a simulation, do the rotation, wait 5-10 seconds, and the joint detaches by itself. The second body stands still in the air.

The scene file is here download blender scene

Ok, I found it. I had to set "No Sleeping" flag in the Physics properties for each of the rigid bodies.


BGE: Can a cube copy the rotation of another cube in game? If cube1 has rotation logic, how can I make cube2 imitate the rotation of cube1 without using the logic of cube 1?

This is possible with a simple python script:

import bge

def main():
    scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()

    cube1 = scene.objects["realCube"]
    cube2 = scene.objects["secondCube"]

    cube2.worldOrientation = cube1.worldOrientation

where realCube and secondCube are the names of the actual cube objects in blender.

To attach this script to secondCube, you can use a python controller with an always sensor. Note that the script name must end in a .py extension for the script to be recognized as a module, and that the python controller is given a method (.main) defined as a function inside the script:


Why does EEVEE not have a displacement option? When I switch in to EEVEE there is no micro displacement in the options.

Why won't micro displacement work in EEVEE?

Because no one has coded it for Eevee yet. Eevee can't use any of Cycles' displacement system. For best performance at least, it would need a completely new displacement engine based around OpenGL tessellation shaders. No one has gotten around to writing this yet, so for now Eevee just applies displacement nodes as a bump map.


Transparent Strip Around Border Of Render Preview Whenver I try to preview the render, using the Ctrl+B render box I get these strange transparent strips
I haven't tried rendering the whole model yet (as it isn't finished) but I hope they won't affect it?
They popped up seemingly without any cause and occur no matter what I box select.
Anyone know what to do?

When you did ctl + b and drew the box to render you only selected that part that you see rendered. There is more to the scene but you would need to redraw your box (ctrl + B) around the whole box outlined in red (the render view).

To recap:

Just ctrl + b around the entire red square and you should be fine.

The ctrl + b is just for rendering a certain part of your scene so you do have to waste time rendering everything.


How do I make an armature skeleton? I am very new to Blender, so please forgive how simple this sounds and is. I am working on a spoof of VeggieTales, and I have a character who is pretty much a capsule, and I want to be able to bend him somewhere near his middle. I thought trying to create an armature in three segments (3 bones) would work for animating him, but I don't know how to connect the bones to each other. Can anyone help with this?

I've tried to connect them by making one a parent of the other, but any time I go into "Pose Mode", and try to rotate them, they simply come apart - as you can see.

Basically, I want the bones to stay together at the joints, and if the one at the bottom moves, then so do all the rest, etc.
Thank you for any help you can give!!

After selecting your armature, go into edit mode and select the bone you want to join to your master bone (in your case, the lowest is your master bone). While in edit mode, go to:

Properties >> Bone >> Relations

and under "Parent", select the master bone and tick the "Connected" box. If you haven't named your bones, you might have to try all of them but luckily you've only got 3.


Blend shadow casted by a 3d object over an object in real-life footage (VFX) I blend my character (to the right) into the scene. I want some shadow casted by the character over the doll (real-life). How do I do it in CYCLES?

As for the floor, you should add a transparent object receiving shadows.

Since Cycles has been thought for photo-realistic renders, there's no easy way to isolate shadows.

You can use Layer and Render Passes.

Foreground

This layer contains all you want to render (your character)

Transparent objects receiveing shadows

This layer contains the helper objects that will receive shadows (the puppet).

Since we won't use any color informations, we'll use the Diffuse Direct Pass.

Background

This layer contains the shadow of our hero.

To avoid the "helper object" to cast any shadow, we'll exclude its layer.

Background image

Scene

Composite

Use the RGB Curve Nodes to adjust the shadows and to set the white level (white is transparent in Multiply Node)


Do EEVEE samples have any effect when rendering? Do EEVEE samples really matter when rendering?

Can't really see a difference except for render time

There are several things affected by EEVEE sampling, as you can see in this example scene, rendered at 1, 8 and 64 samples:

soft shadows are obtained by sampling large light sources using many small light sources. Low samples will "reveal" the point lights. This is generally the main downside of a low-sample rendering, therefore you should choose the number of samples based on how good your soft shadows look.
 top view:

the direction of refracted and reflected is also sampled because, especially around the corners, a sub-pixel change in the direction of the ray can make a difference between hitting an object, another object, or the sky. For low samples, this results in a strange pixelated blur

aliasing is what happens when a curved profile is drawn using pixels: it gets jagged if the pixels aren't "smoothed" (antialiased) adequately. More samples make the contours smoother.

[Added Sept 2020] the quality of Alpha Hashed transparency is also affected by the global sampling. Indeed, for each sample, a pixel will either be rendered as fully opaque or fully transparent: a fractional transparency is a result of averaging over multiple samples. With too few samples, tranparency appears patched/noisy:

[Added Sept 2020, suggested by Andrey Sokolov] the number of volumetric slices rendered depends on the EEVEE sampling: note how at 1 sample the dust cloud appears 2-dimensional.
PS There is another "Samples" count inside the Volumetric tab that controls the quality of each slice, and is independent of the global EEVEE sampling.


Vertex Color not showing up in Cycles Render very strange problem:
A SpeedTree model comes with vertex colors for shading control.
These vertex colors show up in Shaded Mode / EEVEE Render, but disappear when switching to Cycles. They are neither rendered in color, nor are they being used in my shader which I made for color variation.
This is a consistent problem with 2.83 and 2.90.1.
Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?

I also attached the file below, maybe something is off there?
https://filehorst.de/d/dlymjper

Update: This is due to the naming of the vertex color set. Naming it something else than "color" fixes the issue.


How to create volume scattering material not throwing shadow? I'm using Blender 2.83 with Cycles and I'm an absolute newbie to both.
I'd like to visualize light rays in a part of the scene (like godrays).
For this I put an object using volume scatter material into the scene.
This works, however the light intensity decreases, as light passes through the volume scatter material (due to scattering, apparently), and the volume scatter object casts a "half-shadow" onto the objects behind.
Both is undesired, i.e.:
I'd be happy to make the volume scatter material not reduce the intensity of passing light.
Is it possible? Or any better approach?
Thanks a lot!

Volume scatter will always make your lights seem darker. So you can make the lights brighter until you get the level you want.
You can animate the density.
$0$ density will make the volume scatter transparent, then bring up the value when you need the volumetric lighting.
As an alternative don't use volume scattering in the world, but on an object with volume scatter as voume, in a way in which you get the rays as you want, but not on the rest of the scene.
Another alternative is to disable ray visibility on light so that is invisible to Volume Scatter.


Blender doesn't ask 'Do you really want to quit', when I press file -> new When I am working on a .blend file, but didn't press file -> save or file -> save as, then when I want to close Blender, Blender will ask whether I am sure to quit:

However, unlike for example microsoft paint, it doesn't ask this question if I press file -> new or file -> open (thanks to Jan Kaderabek :) ):

It explicitly says "Open the default file (doesn't save the current file)" when I point my mouse on it, but some new users may not know this and open a new file without saving their previous file.

My question: how can I make Blender ask this too when I want to open a new file?

Unfortunately, you can't do this. Notice that Blender uses an operating system specific dialogue box instead of the normal Blender UI. This appears to be more of an operating system thing than a Blender, but it obviously doesn't work with the Blender controls.

You can see that if you do File > Quit, Blender will open a dialogue box that asks if you want to quit (it is the same whether the file is saved or not).

This is not a "smart" dialogue. The same applies to the "new file" button. Blender opens a dialogue box, but it is not an OS level "smart" dialogue box.


How to change the driver's Expression to "var * 3 + var * 2"? I want to make a driver that combines the value of ShapeKey1 multiplied by 3 and the value of ShapeKey2 multiplied by 2.

I set the DriverSettings Type to Sum Values as shown in the image below.

And, I entered "var * 3" and "var * 2" in Expression.

However, an error message like the following image appears.

What should I do?

Change driver type  to scripted expression, (from sum variables) call your variables say sk1 and sk2 and make the expression

3 * sk1 + 2 * sk2

or

sum(3 * sk1, 2 * sk2)

Currently you are typing an expression var * 3  into the name field of the variable hence the error.

To do this with sum variables driver type would need to add the sk1 variable 3 times and the sk2 variable twice. (all with unique names)


Why my active rigid bodies are vibrating Continuously? I am making a simulation where dominoes are pushing each others,So I made it with rigid body , when I made my dominoes an active rigid body object and played the animation all of the dominoes vibrate from right to left which cause some dominoes to fall before its pushed by the other.

This is the properties of all of the dominoes :

How can I prevent the Dominoes from moving until its pushed by the other ?

...

One factor that can considerably affect the Rigid Body behaviour and stability is the Scale of the objects in the scene. Where possibly you should always Apply Scale on each of the objects after you have rescaled them. This will also ensure that it behaves appropriate to its actual size rather than it's pre-scaled size and weight.

In addition, you can drastically improve the stability of the rigid body simulation by increasing the number of Iterations on the Rigid Body properties panel.

The default value is 10 and this is fine for crude simulations. Higher values provide more accurate simulations  but will take longer to simulate. Increase the number of iterations until the simulation is stable. I created a test scene with a single domino and found that increasing Iterations to 500 was plenty enough to avoid jittering without significantly affecting the simulation time.


Getting UV values per vertex for export I'm writing a small exporter for my OpenGL project and I want to get UV values for every vertex from a Mesh object. I can get all the other needed values like the vertex position and normal, but not the UV coords.

Can you help me how to find that?

Thanks!

If you're doing scripting with python checkout the documentation

Mesh attributes can be found in the Bmesh api


I can't find Global Undo in Blender 2.8 I can't turn off/on Global Undo in Blender 2.8 because I cant see the checkbox in the User Preferences dialog.


Drawing a Bezier curve from two vertices The idea here is for the control points to have the same location as two vertices from a different object, so that when I draw the curve I want, convert it to mesh, and add it to that object, I can snap it into place with minimal effort.

Also, some clarification on including one object into another so the snapping can take place would be nice.

You can snap to other object's vertices just fine..

For example, just enable vertex snapping in the header, then hold ⎈ Ctrl while transforming vertices to snap:

Once you have the curve positioned, convert it to a mesh with ⎇ AltC> Mesh and join it to your mesh object by selecting both objects and pressing ⎈ CtrlJ. Note that you probably want your main mesh object to be active (last selected, with yellow outline) when you do this, so the resulting object has all the object data, modifiers, and materials that your mesh object had.


I can't find the individual and interpolate options under inset tool I am not able to inset multiple faces individually. Pressing I twice also doesn't work. blender version 2.64a x 64 win7.

Use the "individual" option in the "inset faces" panel in the bottom left part of the 3D view (the option will be shown after a first inset operation).


Align object to view with Python I was trying to a add a plane primitive using Blender Python and aligning it to the viewport.

I already tried setting align_view = True when adding it via Python, but it doesn't change the rotation at all.

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_*() operators need to be run in a proper context (3D View) in order to use align_view.

Either run an operator via Spacebar menu, or use an override:

import bpy

for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        for region in area.regions:
            if region.type == 'WINDOW':
                ctx = bpy.context.copy()
                ctx['area'] = area
                ctx['region'] = region
                bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add(ctx, view_align=True)
                break

Note that there seems to be a bug, the plane appears to be in Edit mode, but the UI reports Object Mode, and the face may be missing.


Rigged low poly charector deforms when moving Whenever i try to move my Armature on my moddel it just deforms (See Gyazo underneath)
https://gyazo.com/7e69fd15d5ac351e89e700787c42935a
This is my first blender creation so there is a good chance i made a mistake while making the character

You've missed adding two of the upper arm vertices to the arm vertex group so they stay in their original position while the rest of the arm moves. In Edit mode, select the arm.l vertex group by hilighting it in the R/H pane and clicking 'Select'. Then Shift-click on each of the vertices I've indicated on the model and click the 'Assign' button in the R/H pane it should work ok. You seem to have done the same with most of the head vertices. That shows an even worse problem!


How can I keep hard edges with this shape? I'm unsuccesfully tryning to keep the edges blunt, not too sharp for a more natural render by applying a Subsurf modifier. That's why I don't use the crease of 1. I tried to add an edge loop (CTRL+R) but can't on the top face. Thanks for your help.

Both answers work perfectly except for the following shape. I would like to soften the hard edges of the mesh. Thanks.

The easiest way would be to delete top faces, extrude rim and close the cup in different way, but if you want to keep quads, use bevel edge, by selecting outer edge and pressing CTRL+B and moving mouse to set bevel size.Her are both ways:


Cycles: sharper transition from transparent to opaque areas when using partly transparent texture I want to apply a sticker to a glass bottle that has transparent areas. I got it to work that the right parts are see-through. My problem is that i have white blurry areas where the sticker transitions from not transparent to transparent. But I want sharp edges around the border of the colored part. In other words:

I want the texture to be either 100% transparent or 0%. Nothing in between.

Here is a screenshot of the texture, my node setup and my current render result.

You were on the right track: you can use a math node in between the alpha output of your texture and the mix shader. set it to "less than" and input a number between 0 and 1.
if you input 1, only 100% opaque pixels will be diffuse, all other pixels are glass.

Here is the node setup (I used transparent and emission shaders for demonstration purposes. this works with your node setup as well), the texture I used and the result:


Mirror and Subdivision Surface is causing a problem I added Mirror modifier to my Archway and everything is fine untill I add Subdivision Surface.

Without Subdivision Surface modifier:

What Am I doing wrong?
Here's Blender file:

You have an inner face, delete it. Also, enable the Clipping option of the Mirror modifier.


Cannot resize windows The 2 windows/panels I can resize are the ones you get by pressing "T" and "N"

I'm a blender beginner. I can't seem to resize any window after I create it, neither the properties panel on the right. The double-edged arrow does appear, but when I grab it and move nothing happens.
I'm on Mac.
Please help.

Edit:
here is a video demonstration of the problem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rig5zg9l4QQ&feature=youtu.be

Have a look in  File > User Preferences > Input > Screen Editing > and check how you have the  Move Area Edges  setup.

You need to have this option checked to be able to resize the windows by dragging on the windows edges. Also check to see what the selection method is. Mouse, Left Mouse button.


Problem With Jagged Edges When Using Boolean Difference When I go to use a Boolean modifier, some edges are jagged but the model doesn't seem like it would cause that.

This is probably because you have four faces on your plane at the top, and only three on the object that you were trying to boolean difference with. It's like when you try to sharpen a regular eight-sided pencil. The edges are always jagged.


Can't zoom close to object with small unit When working with relatively small units (mm) and small object I am not able to zoom in so I can see the object. It looks like part of the view is obscured (as shown on screenshot).

in the 3d view press N and go to view and make clip start smaller:


Bones are invisible in blender When I move the camera around in Blender the bones instantly go invisible however when I press 1 they're visible.

Seeing an object in axis aligned view,
but not in user-defined view usually means it's far away from the current POV (point of view) or
outside of the current frustum. Orthographic view provides no sense of depth. Objects appear the same
size no matter how far or how close they are.

New objects are placed at the postion of the 3D Cursor.

The 3D Cursor is placed with LMB. A click in empty space will position it in a plane,
that is parallel to the view plane at the distance of its old position.

A click on a visible object will project the 3D cursor on the object.

The current cursor position and the position of the selected object are shown (and can be changed)
in the Properties Panel of the 3D View.

You can also use the Snap menu by pressing
ShiftS.

E.g. with the object selected press ShiftS - Cursor to Center, ShiftS - Selection to Cursor to set the objects position back to the center.


3D Manipulator only selects a handful of times I have tried this fix and it did fix my problem.

I have noticed one thing as I've been trying to get the 3D manipulator to work. It is that everything has the manipulator at the a place other then the center of the object. I don't know if that is what is causing the issue but it did seem strange and worth mentioning.

Another strange this is that when I am able to select an arrow it moves in the wrong direction. In the picture included I am trying to brag the x axis and when finally grabbed it moves in the 7 axis.

 is my screen shot I think everything needed is in the picture. Let me know if you need more information.

After looking through the 3d-manipulator questions this helped me find the solution.

It turns out I somehow locked my objects to another object. I don't know how I did it but after clearing all the objects from having an object they were locked to it fixed the problem.

My view field looks like this now:


How can I smooth out the edges of this mesh? Okay, I did look up other questions and actually I found that I need to use Bevel modifier for this, but due to a way of how my mesh is made, it creates the shape which I don't want, what can I do to remove those "damaged look" parts from my mesh? As you can see below, adding Bevel modifier smooths it out how I wanted it to be smoothed out, but it also smooths out in between the vertices and adds (random?) dents, giving this weird look.

My mesh and problem that occurs:

Any ideas? All vertices (I checked thrice just to make sure and really couldn't find any single one out of place) seem to be in their places (on x plane, all vertices have same x, on y plane they also have same y and so forth...)

the problem is that some of the faces are triangulated, resulting in the bevel modifier having a hard time in finding a desirable solution. looking at the model you have there, you could automatically clean up the geometry using a decimate modifier BEFORE the bevel, set its mode to planar, and then, as lemon suggested, use the angle method in the bevel. See those two screenshots here:


How to keep certain faces planar while decimating mesh For a papercrafting application I need to decimate (collapse) the geometry in order to reduce the number of faces. The original geometry looks like this:

When applying the decimate modifier (with triangulation), I noticed that the flat base of the spherical dome is not planar anymore:

I want keep this face planar (which is intentionally so in order to be glued to something else) while collapsing.
Is there a way to constrain the vertices of that face such that the decimate modifier will be able to move them only within the plane of that face?
Since I'm still a newby to Blender, I wouldn't know where to look for a solution. My searches for obvious keywords did not surface anything that looked applicable to my problem.

Use checker deselect to dissolve every nth top and bottom vertex or try the Decimate modifier options (co-planar etc.)


Rigify doesn't let me move my pg I have just used rigify. I follow the tutorial pretty well but i can't move it now. Can't understad why . . . the weight paint is set, control are placed but when i move one of them the mesh doesnt move. The only one that works is the cube in the center of the body.

Here the file

Just disable the "Manipulate Center Points" with the icon or by pressing Alt, (comma).


Get properties from different scripts in game engine? The question explains itself. I have a property in one script and another property in another script. I am not sure how to define the python scripts in the blender game engine. How can I get a property from a different script in the game engine?

Properties belong to game objects rather than Python code.

You write a property with myGameObject[propertyName] = value

example:

hitObject = sensor.hitObject
hitObject["detected"] = True

You read a property with value = myGameObject[propertyName].

example:

hitObject = sensor.hitObject
wasAlreadyDetected = hitObject["detected"]

I hope it helps


How to make object non-transparent in viewport? In the viewport I can see through my character, when I render it out it is normal, I'm just wondering how to fix this. I exported this from Maya.

Turn off "Show backface" in the material settings. You'll have to do this for all the materials individually.


How can I calculate global coordinates for GPencilStrokePoint in Blender 2.8 and Python? I have already tried by calculating:

point_global_co = grease_pencil_object.matrix_world @ point.co

But it gives very odd results.

The following script prints the global point coordinates for every grease pencil object in the scene. The coordinates seem to be accurate, judging from basic tests.

import bpy

for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    if obj.type == "GPENCIL":
        print(f"\n{obj.name}")
        for layer in obj.data.layers:
            for frame in layer.frames:
                for stroke in frame.strokes:
                    for point in stroke.points:
                        print(obj.matrix_world @ point.co)


How to make a cylinder cap concave? Probably really simple answer, but I can't seem to find any info about how to make a face concave.

Another way you can do this is with Proportional Editing (O):

Steps taken in the gif

Add a cylinder (⇧ ShiftA> Mesh > Cylinder)
Enter Edit Mode (↹ Tab)
Select the top and bottom faces (⎈ Ctrl↹ Tab> Face to set the selection mode, then ⇧ Shift RMB to select)
Inset (I)
Select just the top face and inset again (I)
Add loopcuts (⎈ CtrlR, then  MW to adjust number of cuts)
Select the middle ngon
Turn on Proportional Editing (O) and set the falloff type in the header
Move the face down on the Z axis (G, Z. Use  MW to adjust the falloff)
Add a subsurf modifier (⎈ Ctrl1, where 1 refers to the number of subdivisions in the modifier. Can be any digit from 1 to 5)
Add supporting loopcuts (⎈ CtrlR) to control the subsurf.


Blender 2.72 No Cycles Hair Rendering/Settings Tabs I have tried blender versions from 2.69 to present and have yet to see the Cycles Hair Rendering or Settings Tabs.

My steps
1.  New blender project with the cube present
2.  Go to particles and hit +
3.  Choose Type: Hair

and no Cycle Hair tabs??
My crazy cube hair renders just fine, but the Cycle Hair tabs are never visible.  Am I missing a setting somewhere?

If you look at the top of your screenshot, you will notice that the render engine is still set to the Blender default, which is Blender Internal. You need to select Cycles as the render engine.

Now all the settings appear as expected.


Blender 2.78a force field not affecting particles I have a particle system and I want them to move to the side using a Wind force field. Thing is, none of the force fields do anything in my scene. I looked for the issue online but no matter what I changed, no luck. How to set up one to actually work?

If you want your particle system to be affected by a force field, add a separate force field object (or alternatively enable force field physics on any other object), and also check its strength setting in its physics panel as the default strength of 1 is a rather subtle effect. Also in the case of a "Wind" force, check its direction, because by default it might be vertical, and the effect might look like gravity. Simply rotate the object with the wind physics to change the direction.

If you enable the force field settings on the particle system itself, it will not have the effect you want: these are used if you want your particles to affect other dynamic objects, such as other particle systems. You can check "Self Affect" to affect itself, but this is still not what you want.


Weight Paint and deforming issue I seem to be having a problem with my rig. I've added Automatic Weights to my mesh, but for some reason, whenever I rotate or move the thigh or control root, the legs deform and split away from the torso. I'm not sure why this is happening. All my armature is parented correctly and the torso and legs are joined together via Ctrl + J. I even tried parenting them. Any ideas?

Here's my save:

I think everyone has his own way to rig, personally I would organize the armature this way: switch the direction of your hips bone and parent the thigh and the spine to it. Also, you will need to enable the Deform option of this bone. And, at last, you will have to switch to Weight Paint mode to make a lot of corrections, because it's currently not well weight painted: Keep your armature in Pose mode, then select your mesh and switch it to Weight Paint mode, then select each bone to see and correct its influence.


How to create a slinky animation in blender? I tried using mesh deform, and using the curve modifier. I am a total beginner so please forgive any obvious things I might've missed.
Here's the link to what I want to recreate in blender:
https://youtu.be/Dyn4O6WP3Jc

You can generate the mesh of your slinky using the screw modifier on a crossection mesh. Then you want to use a Bézier to deform your slinky.  You can animate the whole thing by applying shape keys to your curve. You can simply key frame these.

You will encounter a problem regarding how far your object stretches along the curve. I have no solution but key framing the z scale yet. But I think you can calculate the length of your Bézier and write a driver for it if it is too much to animate. Which is way more difficult for a beginner.

a lattice might improve the destribution of your slinky along the curve.


Edge Split disconnecting the edge I have modelled the following head in Blender 2.90.1:

The only modifier on this model is the edge split modifier (30° and Sharp Edges)
When i apply the modifier, the edges get disconnected which is subotimal for the rigging process:

If i discard the modifier, the mesh looses quality:

I tried to mark all disconnected edges with sharp edges and merge them by distance, which didn't improve the problem. Does anyone know a good fix to use the edge split mod without loosing the quality and without disconnecting the edges? Would be great, because I used this mod on almost 70% of the whole character. Changing them all by hand would be terrible.

Yes.  That's what an edge split modifier does.  If you don't want to disconnect the edges, don't use an edge split modifier.  If you're trying to use an edge split modifier to create hard edges, there are other techniques (mark sharp, autosmooth, which it appears you're already using); if you need an edge split modifier for an export somewhere, don't apply it until after you weight, if it's screwing you up.


Some models doesn´t show up when rendering I have modelled a house for a technical information piece and I was trying to test a render just to see if everything was ok, but the walls of the house did not show in the render window. I was using the archipack addon to make walls and windows but something is amiss. I have materials selected and added to the walls, just a simple diffuse shader. This render is from Eevee, but I had the same result when I was rendering in Cycles.
Would love to hear from you experts what I can do to make this better.
Best regards
Ulf

Object Properties > Visibility >
Check all the render box is checked.
Also make sure all boxes in Ray visibility are checked.


Blender for Virtual Reality How would you create a game with Blender that can be used by the HTC Vive? Is it even Possible? What are all of the steps for this to be possible?

Yes, here you go: Blender Room Scale VR Viewport on the HTC Vive

Source can be found here:

https://github.com/cedeon/hmd_sdk_bridge/tree/cedeon-vive
https://github.com/cedeon/virtual_reality_viewport/tree/vivetest

For a real project you should consider using Unity3D and creating assets with Blender.

See also:

Blender VR
- https://blendervr.limsi.fr/doku.php


How to mix glass, glossy and diffuse (sticker on glass jar) I trying to make sticker on the transparent bottle - but i couldt figure out - how to mix shaders by mask? I place the sticker with help of UV. I can make the bottle completely glass like - or non glass but with sticker.

Ok, sure. Before posting this question a play a lot with my file, and was very close to solution - but every time something was not perfect :) In some cases i receive good combination, but some part of sticker was transparent and as inside glass. Anyway i was not quite sure - of what is wrong. After you reply - i found issue with my sticker - it was not exported as i expecting. I attach the difference. For the below right version - i add white non transparent background. So i can control this transparency :)

Then i adjust materials and nodes as read it in links - i catch idea in right way.


Where is "Regular Solids" option? Following an online tutorial that uses an object named "icosahedron" from Add > Mesh > Regular Solids > Archimedean > Icosahedron. This object is not available in my version of Blender (2.74). Presenter asks me to include an add-on named "Add Mesh: Regular Solids", which again is not listed in my User Preferences dialog. What can I do about it?

The plugin you need is called now add_mesh_extra_objects.
To enable it press CtrlAltU to open the preferences window.
On the Addons tab type extra and and check the box for Add Mesh:Extra Objects

There are new options on the add mesh menu. Select Math Function Solid.

On the tools tab (T) select Icosahedron

Alternatively press F6 to access the option for the tool.


Why ALT + Click does not work when you need to return the checkmarks to all objects in the Visibility parameter? these parameters cannot be returned to all selected objects using the Alt + Click method. It turns out only to uncheck everyone, but not to return it back. What is the problem, how to fix it?

In the design of Blender, if an object is hidden, it cannot be selected.
Also, if it is not selectable, you can't access its properties.
So when you disable selectability or viewport visibility for all selected objects, it automatically excludes all objects from selection.
Somehow the "active" selected object (yellow dot in the viewport) is still selected, explaining why you still can toggle its visibility or selectability.
In short, this is Blender's developers team design decision and you can't change it easily.
I suggest you use the outliner and collections for this behaviour :


Armature not moving with object Hi! In the blender game engine, The object is the armature's parent, and has no collision physics. When I run the game however, the armature prevents the crocodile from falling or moving at all. If I add physics, it just begins to fly everywhere. How can I fix this? Thanks!

First you must set the crocodile mesh to no colision and child of the armature, and the armature also to no colision and child of a cube that will be your colision bound. actually that cube is your crocodile and it will interact with physics and logic, the armature and the mesh must be merely visual.


Weird joins coming up with subsurf I am finding that at certain spots in my mesh, when I've applied subsurf modifier, I get these weirdly sharpened / extended edges on some joins, but not on others. See the photos for what I mean.

I've tried playing around with adding edges and loop cuts but that doesn't seem to fix the issue.

Here's another example of this, may be a different problem, but this was seems to actually be making creases of some sort.

Blend file is here: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/33247
Any help much appreciated, Thanks!

The artifacts you are talking about are results of a bad topology of your mesh. The subdivision modifier is very sensitive to your edge, vertex and loops placement. The mesh should be ideally all square faces (no triangles or ngons) and have similarly sized polygons around creases.

There is a lot on the internet about mesh topologies (examples etc.), search for "mesh topology" or "mesh edge flow". Here are some tutorials from CGcookie.

In your model you can start by removing ngons, having all quads, and spacing even edge-loops around your creases:


Cycles mixed material I have a problem with setting up a mixed material for a bottle label I need.

The label will need some different surfaces;
- Diffuse (the base paper) preferably with a normal map for adding the paper feel to it.
- Glossy (the golden text and details), preferably with a normal map for adding a bevelled feeling.

I have all parts isolated in different PNGs/TIFFs.

Now, is it possible or even a good idea to set this up in the same material? Or should I go for different materials on the same object (and if so, please guide me)?

Very nice results with your setup @bstnhnsl! I think it produces exactly what I need. (sorry for answering my own question, but I didn't know how to post an image sample otherwise).

One question, though: You mentioned that one can use an unlimited amount of material this way, and I've tried but I don't think I get it; should I use one more Mix shader to add for instance one more texture image?

I do a lot of similar things (book mockups with different finishings for presentations etc.). The way to go is definitely a setup in the same material. The idea is for each material to have its own shader and mix them together with a mix-shader-node and a bw-image (the white parts of the image represent one material, the black parts the other material).
If the logo changes you can simply swap the image for the mix-nodes.

This is the image I used for the mix-node:

This is the general node setup:

the blue part defines which parts are gold and which are bricks
yellow and red are the different materials (you can add normal maps, bump-maps, albedo etc...)

and the final result:
(I just grabbed a brick-texture for demonstration-purposes)

A few tips: to add realism you can use the mix-node-image as a bump-map for your gold-ink-material and mix the normal maps of the different materials.
you are also not limited to 2 materials, just add another material and another mix-node with a mask... unlimited materials. yay


How do you take reference photos? I'm trying to model my face on Blender using this tutorial and it gives links to reference photos.

The thing is, as I mentioned above, I want to try and model my face.

So I've decided to take photos of my face. But it doesn't seem to be working well (not symmetrical enough and stuff), so how exactly should I take my reference photos so that it would work well when I try to model it with the Mirror modifier?

Note: I only have the 'webcam' on my Macbook Pro and the camera on my Hongmi phone and I don't want to spend money on a new camera.

Use your phone camera, and hold it as far away as possible to reduce lens deformation. Hold the camera so the lens is at eye's height, as centered as possible. Cut the photo in two using gimp or other 2D software, and mirror it. Even professional taken photos have some non symmetricsl details.

Also take a shot in profile, at the same distance and height, and adjust to keep as close as possible the proportions between the two shoots.

Use the reference just as it is: a reference not a sharp point-to-point grid.


How to get Smoke into Z-Depth Pass? Is it possible to render smoke into the Z-Dpth pass? I did a setup following the advices found here but it renders only the domain as geometry no smoke.

You cannot get a Z-depth of a volumetric shader. You would have to somehow turn the volume into a mesh - and get a depth of those polygons.

An idea would be to give the smoke a color based on distance from camera - you can shade the volume almost solid with high density scatter shader - but that relies on external lighting. With emission shader the volume behaves additively resulting in incorrect depth-values (it's brighter than mesh at same depth). So there's no way to get the smoke's Z-depth other than meshifying it.


How to work with layers in 2.9x like in previous versions (2.7x) I'm trying to learn Blender using version 2.9.  I'm watching a tutorial from Blender Guru, Andrew Price, in which he uses an earlier version (tutorial made 2017).  This is the Anvil tutorial.  However I am trying to "interpret" what Andrew is doing on his version and how to do the same on 2.9.
A prime example of this is Layers.  In his Anvil tutorial he makes a duplicate anvil and places it on a spare layer for use later on in the "bake".  This allows him to work on the first layer and keep the other for later.(High poly and low poly version)
In 2.9 I have found the box with layers in the top right.  I have tried copying to a new layer, but when I sculpt on the original one it changes the other layer too, which can't be the aim.
I can't seem to create the same actions in the latest version and run two distinct layers with different info on each.

The 2.7 Layers have been replaced by Collections, you should now use Collections. Basically one former Layer is now one Collection (and when you open an old Blender file Layers are automatically replaced by Collections).

You're confusing Layers with View Layers, which are completely different things, View Layers are useful for the Compositor (which is not the case in this tutorial).
With View Layers you're just changing the visibility settings of the current scene for later compositing purpose, so when you modify an object, it's the exact same object as the one of another View Layer.


How would one make noise into fractal noise in cycles? The cycles noise texture has a detail slider to increase the number of times the noise is layered on itself, making a fractal, however, not all textures have this slider. How would one be able to make, say, voronoi noise into fractal noise.

A hacky way I can think to do this would be to create a series of Voronoi texures, and combine them in a way that each iteration is a portion of the size of the previous (in this example each iteration of the texture would be one half than the previous one). Then combine the textures using an RGB node in multiply mode to bring all of them together into a single texture:

(click on the image to enlarge)

Though I'm sure that some of the very smart folks that actually know how to write scripts, can come up with something more reasonable.


Duplicate along a path WITHOUT transform I have seen several tutorials about the subject but I get something wrong.

I need this:

I have made a box and a plane. Related the box to the plane as a parent.
Then a applied a Mirror and a Curve modifiers to the plane.

The result is not what I need:

QUESTION:
How to duplicate the box along the path as it shown in the 1st picture.

The method you follow is fine, but you've got problems with the scale and orientation of your objects.

Lets start with the Curve.

Make sure its Origin (A, the orange dot) is located at one extremity of the curve. Otherwise, make them fit in Edit mode.
Make sure its Scale (B) is (1 1 1) and Rotation is (0 0 0): otherwise, in object mode, press Ctrl+A / Rotation and scale.

Now we'll set up the plane and its modifiers.

Make sure the plane's origin is at the same location than the curve origin : in Object mode select the Curve, Shift+S / Crursor to selected. Then add the plane.
Make sure the plane is oriented like the yellow ones in my picture. Make sure its Scale is (1 1 1) and Rotation (0 0 0), or Ctrl+A/Rotation and scale.
Add an array modifier. In Fit Type, select Fit Curve, then select your curve. Crank up the offset to space them a bit.
Add a Curve modifier, select your curve.

You should obtain something very similar than the grey planes in my picture. If not, check every step again...

Let's add the box:

Select the plane, Shift+S / Cursor to selection, Shift+A Cube.
You'll want to resize it : please, do that in Edit mode ! I'm pretty sure 90% of your problem is that you resize/rotate in object mode.
It should be oriented like in my picture.
Once again, Ctrl+A/Rotation and Scale

Make the box a child of the plane, activate Dupliface on the plane. Tada! Once you're here, you'll probably want to disable Render Instancer (so only the boxes will be rendered, not the planes).


My Sculpting Object Is Darkened And Can't Be Sculpted This is what it looks like. I do not know what I did but I can't sculpted. It seems like it is not selected. Any suggestions?

It looks like the mesh is f-masked. to undo this, select the F Mask bush and select subtract. you can now make the mesh editable with this brush.


How to move the hook with a curve I know how to move the curve with the hooks, but is there a way that hooks that are assigned to the curve , are moved by the curve.

Common parent.

Give the curve and the hooks a common parent. Move the curve, and hence hooks relative to parent,  by moving the parent.


How do you make clothes move along with model how do you make clothes move along with your model? Do you rig the model first and then parent it to the body of the character then click cloth simulation? I am a little bit confused with the process. Thanks for the help.

You need to setup some pinned vertices on your cloth mesh.

Create vertex group with pinned vertices:

Enable Pinned and use that vertex group:

Done. Now your pinned verts will follow the movement of cloth object. You can parent it to bone or some other object.


How does BGE inheritance work Following the documentation at: https://docs.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_76_2/bge.types.KX_GameObject.html I can extend a game object with:

class Mine( types.KX_GameObject ):

    def __init__( self, old_owner): #Note: where has my argument gone?

         #stuff

def activate( controller ): # Called from Controller

    Mine( controller.owner ) # Note: Object is stored nowhere

But I'm missing what's doing the magic here. Somehow the controller not gets passed as second argument to __init__ but as first and the game object is internally (?) exchanged (?) with mine.

So how is this working exactly? Is there some blender-foo or is this something Python can do for me which I'm not aware of?

EDIT:
To make it more clearly: If I do "normal" inheritance in Python this is how it works:

class Parent:

    def __init__( self ):
        self.a = "FOO"

    def talk():
        return a

class Child( Parent ):

    def __init__( self, b ):
        Parent.__init__( self )
        self.b = b

    def talk( self ):
        return self.a + self.b

child = Child( "BAR" )
print( child.talk() )

someglobal[ 'child' ] = child

so the parameter "BAR" gets passed as second argument b to the constructor of class A. The constructor calls the other one from class A and I end up with an instance which I have to store somewhere globally in order to access it from somewhere else.

Compare this to blender's version: The already instantiated object is passed as an argument to the constructor. But it doesn't end up as second argument to __init__ but gets somehow mangled in while the second argument is something else (in fact it seems to be nothing. trying to access it yields in an error). The finally constructed instance is then somehow stored in the global dictionary for objects and replaces the old one.

These somehows and somethings are which I'm interested in. What's happening here?

EDIT2: Taken from the linked documentation:

def __init__(self, old_owner):

# "old_owner" can just be ignored. At this point, "self" is
# already the object in the scene, and "old_owner" has been
# destroyed.

If I only read the python code in this module (my first example) this is not what is supposed to happen python-wise. So what makes self the object and what destroys the old owner? Is this some c-code magic patched into the python interpreter? Or is this some python magic somewhere in KX_GameObject? Or something else?

When inherit an object you will "merge" the attributes, properties, functions:

class Mine( types.KX_GameObject ):

    def __init__( self, old_owner):
        self.life = 100

def activate( controller ): # Called from Controller

    object = Mine( controller.owner )
    print(object.worldPosition) # [0,0,0] KX_GameObject.worldPosition
    print(object.life) # 100

While no inherit:

class Mine():

    def __init__( self):
        self.life = 100

def activate( controller ): # Called from Controller

    object = Mine()
    print(object.worldPosition) # ERROR
    print(object.life) # 100

About, is this something Python can do for me which I'm not aware of? PY classes class-objects


How to stop fluid simulation to stick with moving obstacle after collision I have this little guy here jumping into a pond.

However, the fluid simulation is causing a weird bubble-like wrap around him as he swims in the water.

How can I fix this?

Appreciate any help and thanks in advance :)

Thanks to Nick Bosse 18,
So the solution is to check 'remove air bubbles' in Physics -> Fluid -> Fluid Boundary.
*Note: After I did this, the effect of the frog leaping into the water doesn't look as 'strong' as before but I have bubbles emitting from it. So I keyframed the size of the bubbles from big ones when it enters the water, to smaller ones when it's swimming.


Removing doubles on imported 3DXML ngon mesh Pertaining to building objects created from the script shown in the answer here https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/42590/15543

The import data has seperate vert data for each surface, so each face can be selected and moved ( as shown in image ) which produces a lot of doubles. For example a simple cube would have 6 x 4 verts which after remove doubles would be reduced to 8.

Each surface has uv texture coordinates.

To vastly reduce the amount of verts in the scene I thought I would remove doubles.  However,  running the bpy.ops or bmesh.ops remove doubles also removes faces such as the one highlighted, leaving gaping holes in buildings.

Any suggestions on how to approach removing doubles on such meshes leaving faces intact, which can be ultimately be scripted?

If the poly is opened up like shown then remove doubles works well. If remove doubles is run on the separated but "closed" poly then remove doubles fills the holes with edges.

EDIT

A better approach would be to look for the two "ripped" edges in a face that share the same geometry. (edges parallel with same mid point test or similar), and remove the edges verts from the remove doubles list.

Thanks for your help guys, The answer kinda came to me when I was creating pics to explain the situation and opened up the poly.

The trick was looking at faces with more than one double and removing them from the remove doubles operator, otherwise will end up trying to make a poly with holes, which ends up being a hole.

The following reduces vert count of building.014 from 4205 to 1258... and leaves the roof intact.

import bpy
import bmesh
context = bpy.context
obj = context.object
print("X" * 80)
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(obj.data)
bm.faces.ensure_lookup_table()
ignore_doubles = []
for f in bm.faces:
    verts = f.verts
    dubs = bmesh.ops.find_doubles(bm,
                                  verts=verts,
                                  dist=0.00001)
    double_verts = dubs['targetmap']
    if len(double_verts.keys()) > 1:
        for k, v in double_verts.items():
            ignore_doubles.append(v)

verts = list(set(bm.verts) - set(ignore_doubles))
bmesh.ops.remove_doubles(bm, verts=verts, dist=0.00001)

bm.to_mesh(context.object.data)


Achieving a split/cracked wood grain effect? I'd like to achieve a split and cracked wood grain effect on a mesh such as in this reference image:

Is it possible to do something like this in Blender through a particular tool / modifiers?

There are a few ways that this can be done.

1) You could use sculpt mode to define the texture for a sculpting brush that resembles the wood patterns that you want.  Assuming default settings for version 2.7, go to the bottom panel that says "object mode" and click "sculpt mode".  In sculpt mode, expand the "Texture" tab on the left pane by clicking it and click the "New" button.  The texture will appear as a type of noise.  In the properties tab on the right, click the texture icon to get to the texture tab.  Under the texture tab, click the material icon.  You should see your brush texture.  Change the texture source from "Clouds" to "Image or Movie".  Load the image of your choice to act as a wood texture and you may begin using the brush to sculpt the mesh (if it has enough vertices).

2) Alternatively, you could use a displacement map to simulate some wood effects.  With your mesh selected, locate the object texture (go to the properties tab on the right and click the texture icon).  If the object has no textures, make a new one.  Change the texture source to "Image or Movie" and load the image you want to act as a displacement map (for these kinds of maps, the value channel is used to determine amount of displacement and so black pixels have no effect, white pixels have full effect, and everything between is interpolated).  Under the "influence" tab, check the "normal" and "displace" buttons and un-check the "color" button (unless the texture defines the color as well).  You may want to reduce the amount of displacement and tinker with it until you're satisfied.


Cut mesh into two objects along selected edge I want to cut the mesh along the blue line,I've tried different ways, with no luck

If I select the 4 edges then press P, then I get a Square shape rather than a mesh, I saw tutorial says edge split in Edge Menu can do the job, but I'm using blender 2.9 there is no such item in the Edge Menu, I dont want to use a plane cut either cause the mesh I'm cutting is a rare case that the edges forms a plane, I want a more universal way of doing this in case of the edges does not falls into a plane.

No worries, the split option is still there :)

Select your edge
Go Mesh > Split > Faces By Edges
Done.


Any way to make a curve from intersection of two objectives? Maybe its a noob question but I still cant find a simple solution about how to get a curve (or mesh edges) from intersection of two objectives.
Something like project knife doing, but there should be a simplier solution.

You could duplicate one of the objects, use boolean modifier with the other object and apply it. You would get geometry that contains the edge, so only problem left is to select it. You could use ctrl+clicking to select shortest path and this way select all the edges you need, then invert selection with ctrl+i and delete everything else. Once you are left with a mesh object that contains only edges of the intersection edge, you can convert it to curve (Object menu-> Convert To-> Curve)


What do these Animation objects in Outliner represent? I want to export a model as DirectX .x format and retain the armature and animations. It's partially/sometimes working but not consistently. I have the checkboxes in the exporter checked to export animations, export separate AnimationSets, export unused animations, and the "export selected objects only" unchecked. My animations are separate Actions within Blender under dope sheets.

My model has 2 animations. Sometimes the exported file has 2 AnimationSets (which are what the animations are called in the .x format) and sometimes 3. One of them always has only 1 Animation sub-section that contains {Armature} (the name I gave to the blender object containing the armature and mesh). The others are the animations I want to export and contain Animation sections for each bone (sometimes there is only one of these AnimationSets.)

I think this has something to do with the following screenshot of the outliner:

There is an Animation on the main section of the object and another on the mesh. These get out of sync, and I'm not even sure the correct way of setting one or the other or what each of them are. I also notice that changing one of them sometimes doesn't change what animation is played in Blender. What are each of these supposed to represent and how do you set each of them? If I knew what they were I could probably figure out how to consistently export all animations.

In the screenshot, Sphere is the mesh and Armature is the mesh parented to the bones (sorry for poor naming, right now I'm just trying to get it to work.)

I'm using Blender 2.77a.

Blender records animation data into an action. Each object can have one active action which receives the keyframes when you use insert keyframe for a property or group of properties like LocRotScale when inserting keyframes in the 3DView.

When the dopesheet is in the Action Editor mode, the active action is visible and this action name is the first item visible under Animation in the outliner. You can change the active action and create more actions here.

While only one action can be active, which is the one being edited, we can create multiple actions for each object and use the NLA Editor to merge them into a larger animation. The tracks and actions added to the NLA Editor are then listed below the active action in the outliner. The combination of actions in the NLA is what you see in the 3D viewport. Note that actions can be muted in the NLA as well as individual channels in the dopesheet and graph editor, also the active action may not exist in the NLA but will be added to the animation in the viewport.

It's isn't too hard to get mixed up when using the NLA. Let's say you create an action that contains animation from frame 1 to 20. When you place the action in the NLA you can re-position it so that it plays from 50 to 70. If you then re-select the action so it is the active action again, as the active action it will play back from frames 1 to 20 and will not play from frame 50 as set in the NLA. This would be the cause of the out of sync animation while exporting. To fix this, select your mesh and remove the active action from the action editor.

With just a quick look at the export_x script, it changes the frame and exports the location/rotation as read from each object at that frame, this should match what you see in the 3D viewport when playing the animation.

I would expect the best results will be achieved if you remove the active action and only use NLA when exporting.