Problem at bridging vertices I'm new to Blender, and I'm learning how to model characters. The thing is that I want to fill the gap between these edges, but this happens when I try to bridge these vertices:

It selects some vertices and edges that I didn't select. Do you know why this happens?

Thanks!

This looks to me like there are double vertices in your mesh. In Edit mode, press A to select all vertices, then Ctrl + V to open the vertex special menu, and click on Remove Doubles.

It also seems like you selected a loop around the eye by choosing one vertex, and then pressing Ctrl while choosing a second. When you do this, every vertex along the shortest route between the two is also selected. I'm guessing you wanted to hit Shift but missed. It is super easy to hit something in Blender and have very unexpected and confusing results, when you are learning.


Color Gradient in Blender 2.8? How can I create a color gradient in Blender 2.8?

Probably this is what you are looking for:

Use the Mapping node to move the orientation.

Good Luck


How can I disable auto compositing? I am working in the compositor with a lot of textures and distort nodes, which makes it very slow (easily 20-30 seconds to composite.) Every time I make a change, it re-composites. This is fine when just moving nodes around, but there are other operations that you can't do until it finishes. For example, Undo. If I want to undo 3 or 4 times, I have to wait for it to finish compositing every time. Likewise if I want to work in the texture nodes part of the nodeviewer, I am often waiting on the compositor to get node previews.

Is there a way to tell it not to automatically composite? I want to make a bunch of changes and be able to see the part I'm working on in a viewer node, but not run the entire stack. I understand that I can mute all the other nodes I'm not using, but that is troublesome and doesn't help with the Undo issue or problems when working in texture nodes. I can be stuck waiting on the compositor even when doing Undos on meshes or materials, which are entirely unrelated.

I find that pressing the "use nodes" works for this task (next to backdrop tickbox). When you want Blender to composite again just re-enable it.

screenshot:


How to increase this camera viewport size? How can I increase the size of the viewport(I don't know the exact name of it)
The frame in the middle.
I tried several methods, but I failed.
Only I can do is just zoom in and out, but that's not what I wanted.
The SECOND picture is the way that I wanted to.
Make the frame large without zoom-in or out.
Does anyone know how to do it?

You need to activate or deactivate the N panel > View > Camera to View option if you want your camera to follow or not your zoom in and out:


Why does "sin(frame)" where frame is "1" set a shape key to 0.841 and not 0.017? I am trying to animate a shape key oscillating between -1 and 1 by driving it with the expression "sin(frame)".

I would expect that to result in the shape key value being "0" at frame 0 and 180, a value of "1" at frame 90, and a value of "-1" at frame 270.

Instead, I am getting a very rapid oscillation which never becomes negative, and has bizarre values that I wouldn't expect. The sin of 1° is 0.017, so I would think the sin of 1 frame is 0.017, but instead it is resulting in 0.841.

Here's a screenshot of this simple setup at frame 0:

And at frame 1:

Thank you for your help!
-Ben

The sin function expects angles in radians, rather than in degrees,
which is why the correct driver expression will be:

sin(radians(frame))

Here's an example of this expression driving the Z value of a cube (you can see that it does indeed get negative values as well, and oscillates between -1 to 1):

Though as you pointed out, shapekeys have a min value of 0 and a max value of 1.


Pattern on Easter Egg for 3D-Printing I try to produce such handmade carved easter eggs: http://weburbanist.com/2010/05/22/insanely-intricate-eggshell-art-by-franc-grom/. I'm not able to sketch directly on the egg surface. I'm only beginner in 3D, so I have 2 questions:

How could I put and arrange such pattern on the surface?
How could I produce "holes/breakthroughs" in the object geometry for 3D-printing (using the 3D-printed pattern as template to transfer the pattern to the "real" egg surface using a pencil)?

Thanks for your help.

Regards,
Thomas

I unwrapped the mesh in "sphere projection". Then I applied this texture http://www.123rf.com/photo_35224838_vector-damask-seamless-pattern-background-elegant-luxury-texture-for-wallpapers-backgrounds-and-page.html two times onto the uv-map in an external image-processing-software. Then I applied this texture to the object in blender, which distorts the texture to the north and south pole. I don't know, how to align e.g. this pattern http://www.derwesten.de/img/incoming/origs7781524/6226267404-w552-h740-bF3F3F3-st/55449025-300x402.jpg or http://img.weburbanist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/franc-grom-eggshell-art-1.jpg (no distortion to the poles).

My idea to produce the "breakthroughs" for 3D printing is to "bake" the pattern/texture onto an uv-map based on stripes or two circles. Then export this uv-map as image, import in vector-processing-software (e.g. Inkscape) and create bezier curves/paths and export this vector format. Then import the vector format in blender and bend the curves/paths along the given egg-shape-path, that a new egg object is created. Then delete the "breakthroughs" or apply this new object to the given egg object using boolean.

Question to the blender experts: How to bend the imported curves/paths along a path and apply the boolean? I hope, that someone could give me an example.

What I did was use a bezier circle to curve the shape I used to cut into my sphere. A simple curve deform with Ctrl+P after selecting my imported .svg, then the circle.

As for the pattern cut into the sphere:

I first removed doubles on the imported curve after converting it to a mesh object with W>remove doubles and then used limited dissolve to clean it up a little more and recalculated normals with  Ctrl+N. Finally extruding the object to give it the thickness I wanted.

The last step for the cut itself, was joining the sphere and pattern objects as one, then going to edit mode, and selecting only the imported object and placing it where needed. Then finally, via the Spacebar menu, searched for Boolean, and the hole was cut.

Here's a little .gif showing that part of the process.

Edit in response to comment:

This will only address the first of the images and should get you in the direction of the desired result.

Add a UV sphere, in the operator panel, increase rings and segments as desired. I used 120 segments, and 60 rings. Scale along the Z axis to the appropriate shape.
Apply a decimate modifier set to unsubdivide with one iteration.

In edit mode select all face loops that will be kept.

Invert selection with Ctrl+I and then press X and delete the selected faces.

Select the face loops that should be raised with Shift+Alt+RMB and then press Alt+E>Region(vertex normals)

Tab back into object mode, add a solidify modifier, adjust to the desired thickness. Add subsurf if desired.

Using these steps you can go in a few directions and should be able to get the results you're after.


coinciding faces - how can I remove both of them Is there an easy way of removing these two faces at the same time as I extrude to make them overlap each other? I also would like the coinciding edges (and vertices) to merge. I am using Blender 2.8 if it matters.

If I understand you correctly, you want a hole through the mesh. Before you extrude, turn on snapping to vertex.  Now extrude and snap to one of the vertices of the back face. This way the faces will be exactly overlapping. Now just delete them with X. At the end do Remove Doubles from the Vertex menu. The vertices will be joined.


can someone look at this blend file for a sec and tell me why its rendering black? gone through all the regular bases here. im puzzled
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PMwJVFTOEmRfRU6SaOAV0tDjj_6qIsI_/view?usp=sharing
thanks guys

Yes.  In your collection Cabinets you have an object Cabinets that is a huge mess:

remove that object and the scene renders fine.


How to make particles refract/change direction through an object As the title states above, I want a line of particles that is produced from an emitter to go in an object and change direction, like a refracting effect.

Any and all ideas will help. I know that these particles will be not be effected by gravity, but can be effected by other forces.

Here is a picture to better explain my point.

you need to use keyed physics in particle system,then use a curve of your desired shape as the guide for leading the particles,here's how you do;

create a particle system,crank up the lifetime and play around with
emitter geometry.
Create a curve of desired shape.
Create another particle system at the end of the curve.
In physics tab,select Newtonian,then add keys and select the target.

Voila there you go.


Tank Rig Driver Help creating a very simple tank rig with a driver controlling the movements of the tracks. now I got the tracks to move forward but when rotating the control on the Z axis, the tracks don't don't move. Have linked a gif and image of the driver expressions. Any advice much helpful.
Tank Rig GIF

Change "Local Space" to "World Space". Local Space does not work with objects that are parented.


Fairy's wings material How can i achieve a fairy's wings material similar to this one when they glow (i'm using cycles).Thank you

There are a few ways this can be done.

The way I would go with is to draw the pattern of the wings in Photoshop/Gimp and use that as a bump map on a glass shader.

Another way that I did above is to make a base shape for your wing.

Subdivide it 4 or 5 times, apply it, then go into sculpting mode and sculpt the wing pattern (better than I did).

Then use the node set up above.

You can just use a glass shader with an emission shader in the volume, I used 3 different colors for the emission shader and mixed them with a noise texture to break up the colors.

For the glass shader I added a transparent with a layer weight node as a mix factor just so I can hide the glass and make it a little more magical.

If you use the node set up above, play with the noise texture settings and the colorramp flags to clamp what you see.

The multiply (math) node is there just to make the emission brighter or darker.

You can play with the roughness value of the glass shader too, It looks like here wings are a little bit frosted.


Where have my objects camara and lights gone? I have misplaced objects camera and lights. They do not show in the 3d viewport yet the object shows up in the rendered window. I thought perhaps I had accidentally moved the entire lot away from the grid, however the location of the object still shows to be x0 y0 z0. They are also not hidden or in another layer. They do show in Outliner and the rendered preview window. There is a strange gray line. What have I done?

You have set a view clipping border. This allows you to only see a portion of the scene for clarity, as this cuts through objects it is also good for seeing inside an object.

The small dark area you have is the visible area in the viewport, as none of your objects are in there, you don't see anything.

You set the clipping border with ⎇ AltB and drag a rectangle over the area you want to see. Pressing ⎇ AltB again will clear it.

Also if you turn off the Load UI option when opening the blend file, the existing border will not be loaded.


Cycles Render Material with black result [this is a bug; no problem with 2.77] I am viewing a 3D scene using the viewport. This problem also appears when using the Render button. I am having black results for my Glass BSDF stones. When I zoom out, I get black results. On the contrary, when I zoom in, I get good results. How can I achieve good results in every case? Blender 2.77a

I include a short version error: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3322974/BlackStones.blend

Hardware: Mac Pro 5,1; Memory 24gb; 2 processors 2,26 ghz; AMD Radeon HD 7950 3072 MB; OSX El Capitan 10.11.5; Rendering using CPU

Your card is not fully supported by Blender.

From the Wiki:

  Radeon HD 7000 series (southern islands)   | Windows 7 x64 | Catalyst Beta 15.04   | Works (Not all features)

To confirm that this is the problem, disable GPU render and use CPU render, and the problem should go away. CPU will be MUCH slower, but it will support all features.

If the problem still exists with ONLY CPU rendering, then this is not the right answer.


How to align mesh parts? Suppose I have a mesh containing, among other things, two cubes of different sizes, both oriented so that the main axes of these cubes are parallel to the world axes.

How can I align these cubes so that the top planes are at the same z coordinate, leaving other coordinates unchanged?

One way to do it is to separate these cubes into two different objects, and to align these, but the original object contains a lot more than the two cubes, so it needs to be reconstructed after the alignment, which is too much effort.

Use Snapping.
Select the vertices you want to move.
Enable snapping (magnet icon) and set it to Snap to Vertices.
In a lateral Orthographic view move the vertices you want to align.

Other tools to be aware of:
Scaling to zero.
Select all of the vertces and scale to $0$ on the axis you need.
In this example all of the vertices are scaled on the z axis, this is done pressing SZ$0$:

For a more precise alignment, copy the coordinates of a vertex in a given axis, and make the selected vertices be at such coordinates using the Item > Transform tab.
You can set the coordinates to global.

To copy and paste values, just move the cursor over to the value you want to copy and press Ctrl+C to copy and
Ctrl+V to paste


"Map Range" node equivalent for Material nodes? I would like to use the age of particles to effect the color of a material, however the Particle Info node returns the age of the particles in frames so the values are greater than one. (which makes the ColorRamp node ineffective as it works in the 0-1 range.)

So I need to convert the Age value to the 0-1 range (As you would with the Map Range/Map Value node) but with Material nodes instead of Composite nodes.
Is this possible?

Use a Math node set to multiply:

on top put 1.0 / max age  <-- this you can precalculate
in the second socket connect age

=  0....1

or, Use two Math nodes. Useful for if your max age is the same as lifetime of the particle. This way you can also deal with a dynamically changing particle lifetime.


How to take away the wrinkles on the tentacles? so I have just started on blender 3D modelling and have a question regarding it. Now, I'm planning to create a 3D Octopus, and I'm stuck at the tentacle's suckers. After I shade smooth the tentacles, the tentacles appear to have wrinkles, how do I solve that?

I tried Knife tool too.

As it has been said, your topology is bad, the stretched triangles create these artifacts. To fix this, use the knife (K to activate, Z to cut through) to create new edge loops, and join (J) the vertices like that, and it should work:


The torso and skirt texture is distorted yet everything else is fine I have been trying to fix this for a while now and I have NO clue on what else to do. Could someone explain what happened and what I did wrong?

Face Texture? Perfect! Leg Texture? Perfect but for some reason, the torso and skirt isn't okay? I don't understand what is going on with the model to make it mess up like that.

I just find it upsetting how it's so close to perfection but the textures are in the way

Ok I fixed your blend file for you.

This is a terrible answer and maybe the mods will erase this, Basically the uv's were off and it was too much trouble to manually try to fix them all. So I just erased half of your mesh and then added a mirror modifier so the texture exactly matches on both sides.


How do I fix the shading The cloth looks funky. I don't know how to fix that. Help! The more I subdivide the plane, the more I lag so Thats not an option here.

You just might move cloth simulation over sur-sub modifier.


How to get the mouse position outside of the window on Modal Operator I'm making a simple script that will move some vertices by using modal operator.
I'm using mouse position value as a variable but I noticed when the cursor is outside of blender's window it stops incrementing the value. For example, blender's normal scaling operator keeps gettign the mouse position even if the mouse is outside of the window.

How to get the mouse position even if it's outside of the window? or is there better way to do it? Below is a script that I'm testing on.

Thank you.

class ModalOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
bl_idname = "object.modal_operator"
bl_label = "Simple Modal Operator"

# Init
def __init__(self):
    print("init")

# invoke
def invoke(self, context, event):
    print("invoke");
    self.init_loc_x = context.object.location.x
    self.init_loc_x = context.object.location.y
    self.mouse_initial_x = event.mouse_x
    self.mouse_initial_y = event.mouse_y
    self.value = 0
    #self.value = event.mouse_xa
    self.execute(context)
    context.window_manager.modal_handler_add(self)
    return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

# Actual content
def execute(self, context):
    print("excute");
    context.object.location.x = self.init_loc_x + self.value / 100.0
    return {'FINISHED'}

# While loop
def modal(self, context, event):
    print("modal");
    if event.type == 'MOUSEMOVE':  # Apply
        # Use UP / DOWN
        self.value = event.mouse_y - self.mouse_initial_y
        print(self.value)
        self.execute(context)
    elif event.type == 'LEFTMOUSE':  # Confirm
        return {'FINISHED'}
    elif event.type in {'RIGHTMOUSE', 'ESC'}:  # Cancel
        context.object.location.x = self.init_loc_x
        return {'CANCELLED'}

    return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

# End
def __del__(self):
    print("del")

The following script will check if the mouse is outside the 3d_view window, not Blender's window. It's not exactly what you asked for, but I hope it'll help:

def click_outside_3d_view(event):
    area, viewport = get_3d_area_region()
    return not (0 < event.mouse_region_x < viewport.width and 0 < event.mouse_region_y < viewport.height)

def get_3d_area_region():
    for window in bpy.context.window_manager.windows:
        for area in window.screen.areas:
            if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
                for region in area.regions:
                    if region.type == 'WINDOW':
                        return area, region

***** Edit *****

I'm not completely sure, but it seems that the mouse_region_x/y are relative to the original region that the operator was running in.
The following code is more foolproof:

def click_inside_3d_view(event):
    for area in get_3d_areas():
        if 0 < event.mouse_x-area.x < area.width and 0 < event.mouse_y-area.y < area.height:
            return True
    return False

def get_3d_areas():
    for screen in bpy.data.screens:
        for area in screen.areas:
            if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
                yield area


how to make a bump texture in blender? i dont know what's it called in the CG world so here's a screenshot from payday 2 AK-47. it's really just a texture, not an actual holes and bolts.

how do you make those in blender ?

To fake relief on a surface you use a bump map, where the bright parts of the images will look as if they are sticking out of the surface.

For example in cycles. This plane with only 4 vertex shows fake relief.

Keep in mind that this is just a texture and if you look at it from the side it reveals the lack of height or real geometry.

For Blender internal the important setting is setting the normal as influence for the texture's image.


Field Weights properties not working as expected Very new to Blender, and I've just been following some tutorials to help me achieve my goal of creating a smoking logo. I've found plenty of helpful ones, but not quite everything has come together yet. One issue I'm having is that I haven't been able to make the logo itself look like it's made of smoke, while emitting smoke at the same time. I guess that's because in a real world scenario that isn't physically possible. So I'm trying a workaround whereby I first create an object with smoke but set the Field Weights property for the Wind force to 0, and then duplicate this object in the same location set the Wind force to 1.000.

In theory I thought this should work, but setting the Wind force property in Field Weights to 0 doesn't seem to have any effect at all. The smoke still continues to be affected by the Wind force, exactly the same as the one which is set to 1.000.

First question - what am I doing wrong?
Second question - is there a better way to achieve what I'm trying to do?

Cheers,
Ben

Edit: I should have mentioned, I want the logo to remain clear and legible even while it's smoking. That's why I'm trying to achieve the "looking like smoke while emitting smoke" effect. Hopefully this makes my question make a bit more sense.

Thank you for posting your question very clearly.
1) Decreasing FORCES weights on the smoke sim panel refers to a GLOBAL VALUE. That means the simulation will STOP reacting to the WIND force if you set it to 0 like you´re using now.

2) If YOU DO want to use a wind force, set back WIND FORCE GLOBAL WEIGHT back to 1. Let´s concentrate on the wind force itself. Click on it and go to the properties>dynamics tab (the little bouncing ball).

There, you should manipulate the force of the wind. Please start with a wind force of 100 units. I cannot reference much of your pictures, since you´ve posted only 1 too many times. But I´ll assume your model is big enough to handle 100 unit power wind.

Press playback and your smoke should be moving TOO strong. Decrease by half (on force parameter type 100/2) you´ll get 50. Then you can see it on realtime.
There´s a lot to cover on the SMOKE DOMAIN (the box around your logo) which is the space where the smoke will get simulated.

The direction of the wind is represented by an arrow on the base, and the power factor by circles, that way you´ll have a visual queue of what you´re doing.

To directly playback the smoke simulation once you´re done using wind (or even testing) you´ll need to FIRST SAVE YOUR FILE on a FOLDER (this is important) and then go to smoke simulation DOMAIN (click the box that surrounds your logo) and on the CACHE tab, click FREE AL SIMULATIONS first, then click: BAKE ALL SIMULATIONS.
This will send your smoke simulation to the local folder you saved your project into (see why it was important to save into a folder?)

All right, you should now have a basic understanding of how to work global weight of forces, what forces do, it´s parameters, and basic functions on the smoke domain (the box where the smoke simulates itself).

Thank you for your consideration to vote me as answer.

BFCT_Schiller


How can I update a text object dynamically in the Blender Game Engine? I have seen examples of HUD's showing a dynamic count of either ammunition or objects. I have the general idea of what I want, but I need to know how to update a text object dynamically in the game engine. My use case would be like so: on [collide with collectible] update[stockpile = stockpile + 1].

Basically, I want to add one to a value (dynamically displayed in a text element) every time the player collides with a certain type of mesh.

you can do this using logic bricks, the following are added to the text object :

the Text object has a special property called text, i have added an integer property which is incremented by space key then it gets copied to the text property at each logic tick

here is the test play :


I can't scale the size of UV texture image I was making this tile following a tutorial.
I was usually able to scale UV texture simply in the UV editor screen.
However this time, although I did the scaling as I wanted the tiles to appear bigger and larger, it looks exactly the same, very dense.
How can I fix it?
Thank you so much!

Looks like you have 2 UV sets. So to use one of them put UV map node in material, and select right one:

Then, connect UV map node to textures:


How to make a chrome texture in eevee? I'm somewhat new to blender, and brand new to eevee so if I say anything wrong I apologize.

How would I go about making a chrome material in eevee? I've tried to reduce the roughness and play around with every setting but I can't get anything to look good.

Thanks in advance.

Making good looking materials is dependent on a number of things like

Shape: Chrome is usually applied to an organic looking metal object like a fender.

Environment: A nice environment that make reflections in the surface. Make sure to use a reflection probe in EEVEE.

Material

Color: Chrome R=0.550,G=0.556,B=0.554 (https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Engine/Rendering/Materials/PhysicallyBased)

Metallic: A metal material is always 1.0 in metallic.

Roughness: It's usually a matter of taste but since it is Chrome it should be fairly shiny. Is really good to have a noise texture here so you will get variation and imperfections.


How to repostion/reset the selector closer to the object with mirror modifier still active? the question is on the Image.

if I reset orgion to 3d cusor is messes up the clipping and adjusting it does not help fix it.

Thank You...

I Just figured it out:

Place 3d cursor where you want it.
Unselect Clipping on the Mirror Modifier.
In tools, Set origin select Origin to 3D cursor.
On the Mirror Modifier, re-select Clipping.
Adjust the Merge limit to place the two sides back together.

That looks like it worked.


How do I complete my animation so that I may add nodes in composting? I'm a beginner who's been following an online tutorial to learn how to use Blender.

Currently I am trying to add the node "denoise animation", however the following error keeps appearing: "frame 'C:\TMP\001.png' not found, animation must be complete". Why does this happen?

Hey I had the same problem, here's how it worked out:
I guess you're pressing f3 when he says 'search' for the denoiser, and then denoise animation pops up, right?

You need to hit shift+a, then click on 'search' in the menu that pops up.

You should find an option simply called 'denoise', not 'denoise animation'

Hope this helps!


Parent-Child object relationship disappears after exporting Wavefront(obj) format I have 2 objects in Blender named A and B.

I set A as a parent of B by ctrl+p command after choosing both objects.

After I exported it as a wavefront (.obj) format , when I try to import it in a new Blender, the parent-child relationship disappears and 2 objects seems independent of each other. Is there an export option that I missed in order to preserve child-parent relationship ?

From the Wikipedia page for Wavefront obj :

"Obj files also do not support mesh hierarchies"

If you want to keep the hierarchy, you'll have to use another format such as fbx.


Clothes follows path then flies away I modeled money in Blender and I want to make an animation where the money comes out of the ATM.

Right now my money follows a path but after this nothing happens.

I want that the money follows the path and then falls to the ground.

This was done in Vers 2..77a.  As far as I can tell the physics and particles engines in 2.8+ are much the same so all should work as described.  I believe it's the interface that's been changed.  (Blend file is below)

Details -

A single note was added - a plane, with an array modifier to make it a stack of 6.  The modifier was applied so it's a stack of planes but now a single mesh'd object.
Frankly I see this step as a waste of time unless an audience or player can actually see it's a single plane in lieu of.

The ATM's slot has a curve->path added and perpendicular to it so it curves up and out from the slot, something like a launch ramp.

The curve's ATM end is well back behind the slot so the notes won't show initially.   It's outside end is curved up so the notes will be angled at around 45 to 60 degrees.

A curve modifier is used and the note stack is animated along it's X axis.  The stack travels along and up the curve over about a half second.  (You could use a path constraint as an alternative)

The stack of notes, whilst a single object still consists of 6 planes so the whole thing was duplicated and de-animated, it's inherited physics also switched off so we have six faces from which to emit 6 notes as particles.  i.e. a particle emitter.
A single plane would do just as well, but emit from the face so the particles are launched from the center.

At the frame after the stack's curve-travel ceases, the emitter starts emitting the 6 notes over some 3 frames, and tweaked so they're traveling at much the same angle and direction as the stack.

The particles use a "Particle Object". (found in layer 9)  That's just a plane, textured to look like currency and shapekeyed over a few frames so it curls a bit after ejection.  (Cloth physics didn't want to work in this case)

Because particles are fond of penetrating surfaces they're supposed to bounce off, an invisible collision surface (an invisible plane) is placed above the visible shelf.  The shelf therefore normally wouldn't need physics.

The original note stack can be switched to invisible once the particles take over.

From there it's a matter of tweaking the emitter so the notes behave as required.  Some experimentation might be needed.


Joining an array before using a displacement displacement map Stupid question, but here goes.  I am modelling a greyhound track.  I have used an array along a curve to create the track and am looking to use a displacement mask to create tracks in the procedural sand. I am now trying to get my head around how I can actually do this. I have applied the array and thought that the easiest solution would be to make the segments (of the quarter of the track that will be visible in the shot) into one piece, subdivide this with loop cuts and then use displacement. If that is the best way forward I am afraid I am failing at the first hurdle as I can't seem to join the segments.

Undoubtedly I am being dense but any advice would be welcomed.

Thanks

Adrian

I'm not sure what your situation is without a .blend file, or at least some screenshots. The best advice I can think of is: Apply the array modifier before doing anything else. If your going to use a displacement map after, then I guess you'll need to UV unwrap again.
Hope this helps


Alpha not working on reference image I'm following this beginners course but and we should make the reference image transparent, but it doesn't do anything for me. Why is this happening?

FOR BLENDER 2.80 to pre 2.92:
Go to object data properties and select alpha and change the slider.

.
FOR BLENDER +2.92:
Same as before, go to object data properties and select opacity (they renamed it) and change the slider.


Is there a way to clear sharp edges using bmesh in python? I'm trying to speed up an addon that had to toggle into Edit Mode for sometimes thousands of object by staying at the object level using bmesh instead of object.editmode_toggle().

Is there any operation to clear sharp edges without having to enter Edit Mode for each object?

You can set use_edge_sharp flag per edge on MeshData.edges in Object Mode:

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object

# Clear sharp state for all edges
for edge in obj.data.edges:
    edge.use_edge_sharp = False

If there is no way around Bmesh for whatever reason, you can set the smooth state of all edges to True in Edit Mode:

import bpy
import bmesh

obj = bpy.context.object
me = obj.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

# Clear sharp state for all edges
for edge in bm.edges:
    edge.smooth = True

# Update the mesh
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me, False, False)

Related: Is there a way to select edges marked as sharp via python?


Beginner Problem with Knife Tool How can I use the Knife tool to create a line between two vertices?

When I try to use it, the tool simply deselects my first vertex.

If you're using Blender 2.79, and you right-click instead of left-click, you cancel the operation. use the Left mouse button to create each vertex then press Enter to finish off.


A shape of cubes has "dangling edges" The shape I made consists of several hundred cubes (generated via Python), with some stacked on top of others, and all joined into one shape using Ctrl+J.However, if I attempt to slice it using Skeinforge/ReplicatorG, it says that there are "dangling edges".

Is there any probable cause of these "dangling edges"? I have tried all of the Mesh > Clean up tools, but to no avail.

Thank you!

Here's a part of what the mesh looks like so far:

Edit: here's the .blend file:

Terminology may vary, but what Skeinforge/ReplicatorG is calling "dangling edges" refers to one specific type of non-manifold geometry. It is the kind where an edge is shared by more than two faces. In other words, this is bad:

It is an infinitely thin shared edge, because even though each cube has a volume, they are joined in a way that is impossible in physical reality. Imagine if you were to perfectly line up two tables so that their corners touch in a similar way - would you have one table or two? You would still have two tables, of course. With this kind of non-manifold geometry it would be analogous to having the tables inseparably stuck together at the corner where they touch, even though they are only connected by a few molecules. A 3D printer doesn't know what to do with that.

Here is another example - infinitely small corners. Or if you prefer, "dangling vertices".

So what are your options? Well, you can either separate them:

Or you can create a very small area where the cubes touch that joins their volume:

3D-printable edge connection:

3D-printable corner connection:

Now that you understand the nature of the problem, your challenge will be coding into Python a new way of generating your geometry that is manifold. Have fun. :-)


Can't export Model with IK Constraint I have some issue with Blender when I export my model with IK Constraint to .FBX file then open with 3D viewer it said:"Couldn't load 3D model". I've tried to import that file to Unity but model pose was wrong. If I remove IK contraint bone then everything get back to normal. Can anybody help me :(

Constraints can't be exported.
IK must be built on the software it's being used in, in your case Unity.


Should I create a large map as a single model or in sections to export to Unity? I want to start working on some 3D landscapes in the Unity engine, I'm a coder so working on unity has never been the issue but I'm a little lost on how to make the landscapes work.

On a large scale world map would I create an entire world in blender then export it or would I create it in sections, then stitch them together in Unity?

How big should I make them? They can be scaled up in Unity but would I just create a world of 10x10 and subdivide the hell of it to create a low poly landscape by pulling the faces and so on.

A map like World Of Warcraft is massive, how would of they gone about that? Create the entire world as a single 3D model or section by section contacted by rivers and so on?

There are many ways to create large maps depending on the game project. You can finds lots of intricate information on YouTube searching for "GDC terrain" for example. The awesome AAA examples are often low-level implementations with many optimization techniques tailored to the specific games. Unity has their own optimized terrain system featuring texture painting, collider and foliage but not everyone opt to use it.

Most terrain systems featuring an async continuous loading do it in square chunks. The game world is divided by the world coordinates and the terrain system keeps the nearest 4, 9, 16 or so terrain chunks around the camera position loaded. Choose your chunk size considering how far the player is able to see in general and in programming parametrize chunksize so that you can easily try different numbers to see which performs and works best for your game project.

Finally when it comes to Blender and modeling the terrain, consider what you want to store in the mesh data. You probably need a material with UV coordinate or you could use the world position XY in shader. You probably need multiple materials. You could do it with a splatmap texture or you could use vertex colors or even material slots if you don't need seamless transitions between materials. UV2 you should keep for lightmapping when working with Unity unless you have an alternative plan about lighting.

When transforming the terrain mesh remember that you don't want to disturb the chunk seams. Many games including WoW only transform the terrain in Z axis and any more complex geometry comes from additional meshes on top of the terrain. If you establish smooth rolling terrain using subdivision modifier, you can also get simplified collider for the terrain chunk by reducing subdivision level. This could be a clear starting point for a system to build up from.

Unity has vertex limit of around 64k per mesh so that might also limit your chunk size. I wouldn't split the mesh until exporting, you could set up a python script to do it for you where you could input your desired chunk size to tie in with what you want to use in Unity.

In the end this is a very open ended theme that depends heavily on your game idea and ties closely in with your game development environment.


Can't bake Cycles material to texture - "no active image in materials slot" or bake doesn't work? Ok, Ive looked everywhere for this and tried following solution explained here - Export cycles material to unity

in order to make my MATERIALS (I don't have textures - just basically diffuse materials that Id like to preserve in color/roughness/low poly look) when exporting to dae for use in Unity or Xcode.

If I try to bake without following the steps above I get error - "no active image in materials slot". But right now the bake turns black.

I followed everything mentioned and learned to preserve my material I need to bake them to textures - so I

created a new blank image in UV editor
unwrapped "U" my object to the image like here: (color doesn't come thru to image but I assume thats ok?
Set Bake settings like this:

Here is the material Im trying to get to stay put as its color/diffuse/etc once I export to dae:

And the results are all wrong. Textures are weirdly transparent and baking hasn't affected anything:

What am I doing wrong here? Ideally Im trying to go the easiest possible route keeping my MATERIALS going to Unity/xcode. How can I do this? Desperate here

Guessing a bit, but for this to work, you need to have an active (i.e. selected) Image texture node in the node editor. Did you remember to select it (make it active) before hitting Bake?

Also: I see you have selected multiple passes to bake. I think you need separate textures for each. (Select an image in the texture node, make sure it is still active, select a Bake type, hit Bake.)


Draw 3D with Python more in front I have an addon with that I draw in 3d space (lines). The vertices are where I click with the mouse cursor.

I use the region_2d_to_location to get a point from the mouse coordinates in 3d space. But I want to draw a bit more "in front" like 2 or 3 units in direction of the view camera (hope this is understandable:-))

I guess I have to manipulate the last parameter of the region_2d_to_location function, but how to calculate this location dependant on the current view?

I guess I can use the

bpy.context.space_data.region_3d.view_rotation

and then kind of multiply a vector like (2,2,2) with it to draw in a distance to the origin. Any ideas on how to do this with this Quaterion?

Thx to @batFINGER, here is the code that works (@ is important for multiplying Quaternion and Vector in Blender 2.8):

rot = bpy.context.space_data.region_3d.view_rotation

# Instead of adding it to the vector that is returned by region_2d_to_location_3d
# I pass it to the method as last argument
dir = rot @ mathutils.Vector((0,0,-1))
dir = dir.normalized() * -2.0

vec = region_2d_to_location_3d(region, rv3d, (x, y), dir)


How can I make a grip that is like the one on Count Dooku's lightsaber from Star Wars I am attempting to model Count Dooku's lightsaber from Star Wars. However, I can't figure out how to make that triangular grip on the middle portion of the lightsaber on my model as shown in the ref image below. The triangular black portions are especially giving me trouble as well as the bumpy texturing on the grips. I would appreciate some help in solving this problem!

Reference image

My model so far

Edit: I think I forgot to clarify. I actually have two problems. The first is actually getting the triangular shape of the grip onto my model. The second is the black texturing portion. You guys seem to have solved the texturing portion of it - thanks for that! But, I'm still having trouble with modeling the grip section. I've tried using knife project but the base corners of the triangle don't stretch out to the sides if I attempt to project from a top view!

The grip texture is quite easy to do.
It's just a brick texture with Bump/Displacement.

Use the Brick Texture node. Set Width and Height the same, to get that square pattern.
Connect it to the UV map and rotate it 45° using the Mapping node
Add Color ramp to control the height difference, and use it with Bump or Displacement node

You can use it with the Bump node, to fake the 3D appearance.

Or use the Displacement node, for a real 3D effect. It requires a lot of geometry. Also, don't forget to enable true displacement in the material settings.


Clothes rigging/movement issues 2.79 Creating a character to do an animation but have been very unsuccessful in getting clothes to act like they are on the character. Created him in Make Human. Exported with just s shirt on so I could use that to make his robe/gown. Copied shirt and created gown. Tried many videos and even though none were that similar to mine I tried them all and it partially works when gimbal moves. Anyone else make and rig clothes in similar manner?

Look up weight painting, its much more intuitive than creating vertex groups. I would recommend DanPro's videos at Youtube. They are based on Rigify, but the weight paint section applies.

Also, there is an issue with importing, since the character's default position is lying in his back. Most 3d programs use the y axis as up/down, but Blender uses Z axis. See if your importer has a setting to make up for that.


How can I replace edges by gaps? I have a solid door. I want to divide it along the current edges:

Here's a non-destructive proposal using Modifiers:

Add an Edge Split modifier set to angle 0
Add a Smooth modifier limited to the width axis
Add a Solidify modifier
Add a Bevel modifier


Applying a camouflage material to multiple objects without merging them I have a turret model that I would like to apply a camouflage-like material I created in Blender. I can apply this material to individual objects, but that applies the material individually to them, taking their dimensions into account, and not to the turret as a whole (see included image where I demonstrate this by applying the camo material the main body object and then one of the body supporter objects). What I am looking to achieve is a seamless texture that spreads across the entire model - just like one would get if they spray painted a turret with camouflage colors in real life. One way to achieve this is to merge all the objects in the model into a single object, but that seems extreme to me. Is there any other way to do this?

In the link above, the answer refers to using 'Object' texture coordinates.  If you use Object coordinates on multiple objects, you'll still have the same issue you currently have:

However, the power of Object coordinates is that you can use any object, and you can use the same object for everything that uses the same material:

In this example I modeled a cube that I called "Texture_Cube" and I use that in the Object field of the "Texture Coordinate" node.  You can see all of the objects now have the same texture coordinates:

Here's the full node graph:

You don't have to use a giant cube like I did; you can use anything, even an Empty. You can also do fun stuff like rotate the object and it'll rotate your textures.  Hope this helps!


Particle emitter / initial velocity of emitted particles I've created a pendulum that emits particles, which fall on a moving board.
The problem is that the particles inherit the speed of the pendulum, which is physically correct.
But I would prefer the particles to have no initial velocity or only z-initial velocity to get a more sine wave like pattern on the ground. Is this possible?
Here is a link to the original .blend: Blender File

one way to solve this you could increase your z - speed to -50 m/s.
and change damping and friction of your plane to 1.
then you get this:


Why is shape with shrinkwrap modifier flat? I have a sphere and stretched. I have made a curve and i want that curve to be shrinkwrap on it. I add the shrinkwrap modifier on to it but it lost the original shape. Its flat on the surface.

How can i get the original shape without going flat on the surface. Any suggestion or help

The Shrinkwrap Modifier allows an object to "shrink" to the surface of another object. It moves each vertex of the object being modified to the closest position on the surface of the given mesh (using one of the three methods available).

from https://docs.blender.org/manual/ko/dev/modeling/modifiers/deform/shrinkwrap.html

So it's totally normal that it's looking like this.

You can use  Vertex Groups:

  The vertex group to control whether and how much each vertex is displaced to its target position. If a vertex is not a member of this group, it is not displaced (same as weight 0).

But in this case it will not help in any easy way. Maybe some detailed Weight Painting could do the trick though.

This is what you can do instead:

Make Curve and convert it to a Mesh or just make this shape by Extruding single vertex. In this case second option would be faster.
Add to it Shrinkwrap modifier.
Add Skin modifier. Turn off Symmetry X Axis and check Smooth Shading.
Add Subdivision Surface modifier.
Go to Edit Mode and select first and last vertex.
With Proportional Editing turned on and fallof set to Sphere hit Ctrl+A and scale both vertices as you want.

This is whole setup:


Boolean modifier - surface vanishes Situation:
I am trying to animate boiling water. I based my idea on this youtube tutorial. Basically what it does is:

Bake fluid sim of drops falling into a fluid object
Rotate the domain by 180 degrees upside down
Add an object edging onto the fluid objects surface (so it overlays the fluid inflows / drops
Substract the fluid sim from the new object using boolean modifier
Only render the new object

Problem:
In some frames the animation shows very weird behaviour which i can't fix. For example in frame 12, 48 and 75 the "top" surface of my "boiling water" disappears for some reason. In frame 82 everything but the surface of my "boiling water" disappears.

What i tried so far:

Moving/resizing the domain: This made some of the frames work but therefore other break. I couldn't find a constellation in which all frames would be okay.
Adding smooth modifier: This fixed it for a lot of frames and left me with the few i mentioned above
Moving and resizing the "boiling water" object: This helped for some frames but also broke others
Recalculating normals of all objects (inside and out): This didn't change anything
Changing and rebaking fluid sim: Helped for some frames but broke others

Question:
What magical setting do i have to change to make this thing work?

My .blend file:

I figured out a solution.

Changing the solver of the boolean modifier from bmesh to carve did it for me.


How to use a Red/Green color map in Blender? (I have modified my initial question after finding out more about the normal maps.)
I am playing around with some ripped models and I am trying to figure out how to use the normal maps that come with them. They only have the Red and Green color channels and it seems the Blue channel needs to be generated. Is this something Blender can do easily? Can I use a material node setup to create the Blue channel at run time?

Edit:
I have found two plausible ways to fix the normal maps. The first is suggested by Christopher below and is  to invert the normal map and to invert the green channel afterwards to get the correct direction.
The second is from Substance in an article about Normals in Unity engine. It seems that the blue channel can be dropped because the normals are always of length 1, so the Blue channel can be recovered by:
B = sqrt( 1 - R*R - G*G)
which I have implemented using nodes below.
I am leaning towards the Substance approach, however, when I check the RGB values in Python, it seems that parts of the mouth have Normal vectors with length greater than 1, so this would be invalid for the approach suggested by the substance article.
Does anyone have any further suggestions about the correct approach?

Try inverting the image before connecting to the Normal Map Node to get back the purple (tangent space) colors (and map) you're used to seeing (color not shown).

However, looking more closely, I'm assuming the eyelids and nostrils are supposed to be protruding from the "outwards" face (hard to tell using the low res sample). If this is how you need it to be, you may also need to do a DirectX to OpenGL conversion:


Is it possible to add a loop cut and slide like this I am try to make a model of a knife, and i am using the loop cut and slide option.
this is what i managed to do before i ran into a little problem

now i want to make it so that the purple line that appears when i click on the loop cut and slide option is rotate by 90 so that i can place it like this

i am using a plane mesh to which i added some thickness

I see that you have a triangular face there.

Just make it quadratic and the edge loop would work.


How to hide vertices...but not object mesh...? New to Blender 2.8.  Working on a Blender Guru Anvil tutorial.  How do I hide multiple vertices...but keep the object mesh visible?  Andrew seems to get this to work in 2.7...but it's not working for me in 2.8.  See 3rd image attached.

In Edit mode, I'm selecting the top vertices (orange), I click "H"...the vertices and mesh both get hidden...not the vertices alone.

Thx!

M

Quite right ..  it works the way shown in the tutorial in 2.7 with these settings in the modifier:

..but it doesn't in 2.8:

.. which I would classify as an annoyance... there's always a chance there's a setting someone knows which makes this work?


How do I remap pan hotkey in UV image editor? I've made a number of changes to the hotkeys, and I have managed to remove the hotkey for 'pan' in the UV image editor (currently the MMB will set my 2D cursor position). Does anyone know where the key mapping is located for pan in 2D mode or UV image editor mode? I can't find it anywhere and would rather not do a "factory reset" on all the hotkeys due to the number of changes I have made.

This is what I see when I filter on 'pan' for user input:

The python for that is view2d.pan.

Hope that helps!


How do I re-enforce the edge-split modifier on a linked proxy object I am using Blender v2.74.

The situation

I am working with two .blend files.  The main assembly .blend and a separate subassemblies .blend file.  As it turns out, the two files are at two different scales.  The subassemblies .blend is at 1/10 that of the main assembly file.  I linked a subassembly of parths from the subassemblies file.  In order to translate, rotate and scale the subassembly, I converted the links to proxies.  When I do this, the edge-split modifier on the proxied parts loses its effect, and the smoothing result is not acceptable.

What I've tried

Since all the parts in the subassembly are children of on of the parts there-within, and since I was able to effectively convert its link to a proxy (with the disastrous effects) and have all its children follow the translation, rotation, scale I provided this parent, it made sense that if I were to make this parent part a child to an empty in the subassemblies file, I should be able to convert the link to it in the main assembly file to a proxy, and use it to translate, rotate and scale its children.

When I tried that, it enables me to translate, rotate, and scale the empty, but when I do, none of it's children respond appropriately as they did when their parent object (not the empty) is converted to a proxy and translated, rotated or scales.

The meat and potatoes of the question(s)

Why is this happening?  Why is it that when I convert a link to a proxy, it seems to ignore its edge-split modifier, even though the modifier remains in the stack?
Why wont the parents follow their empty parent?  Why does a relationship to a physical object allow for children following the translation, rotation and scale of their parent, whereas; one to an empty does not?
How do I get to work?  How do I either re-enforce the edge-split modifier on the proxy, or re-enforce the relationship between the parent empty and the child objects?

Going forward

In the meantime, I'll keep playing and hopefully solve my problem.  If I do, I shall, of course, post it here.

Yes, I know

In anticipation of some comments or answers suggesting I simply change the scale of either file:  I have thought of that, and while it would solve the scaling issue, it does nothing to resolve the translation and rotation issue coupled with the ghastly lack of proper edge-splitting.

As Promised

Like I said in my original post, I would keep playing and post here should I find a solution to the problem at hand.

Questions Answered

Still not clear why it was hapenning.
Not sure why the children would refuse to follow their empty parents.
I was able to get this to work the way I wanted by opening the subassembly's .blend file, and adding all the parts into a group and gave the group a name.  Next, in the main assembly's .blend file, I simply linked the group, and only the group, from the subassembly's file.  This brought in the subassembly with a lovely gimble for selecting the group.  I was able to successfully translate, rotate, and scale the subassembly by use of this gimble.  Worked perfectly, and all parts maintained their edge-split modifiers!

Any further details?

It seemed I have answered only one of three of my questions, but in all fairness, this was the most important of the three, since it enabled me to achieve my final goal.  Feel free to comment if you know the answers to the other two questions as I am still quite curious as to why it did not work correctly using my original method.

Final Thought

I sure hope someone out there finds this question and answer to be useful in combating any headaches they may experience such as the one I originally had.

Peace and all Good,
Sirach


Is it possible add a texture to a plane in the two-dimensional animation editor? So I wanted to make a 2D animation about this specific spite of Mario( made by Nintendo) flying through an obstacle course. I added in a similarly 2D plane, rotated 90 degrees so I could see it from that angle. I was going to add this texture to it, but I didn't know how because I'm a newbie, so I tried out making materials with this texture. I couldn't find out how to add the texture to the material itself, however. So then I tried making nodes work, but to no avail. I have literally no idea how I'm going to do this besides what already failed. The 2D editor has no UV mapper, either. How am I going to add this image to a 2D animation?

The 2D animation editor actually is the 3D view editor. The "2D Animation" startup file sets the world to white, adds a grease pencil object, and goes into edit mode. Other than that, it's just a different set of layout tabs for Blender.

Go ahead and, in the 2D animation editor tab, orbit around.

In respect to putting an image texture onto a plane, since it is actually the standard 3D space, look for UV and image texture material tutorials.

If you still need help, I might be able to provide a tutorial, but don't worry: There's nothing to be afraid of :)


How to make a 'rocky' material with procedural bump? If I have a modeled rock and I want to somehow to add details to it like the ones from an Asteroid (like, little holes) which kind of Node setup should I need?

My actual node setup (it's on cycles) is pretty simple, it's just a regular Diffuse color and with the Output, due to the figure itself, it reacts well to lighting. But I do want little details that can also react to light (like a bump, but random).

Reference:

I was able to get something pretty close to what I think you are looking for using a voronoi texture.

Here is my node setup (click to enlarge):

Here is a close up of the nodes that make the holes (there are actually two of these sets, one for the larger holes and one for the smaller ones).

The upper voronoi texture, set to cells, is sent through a less than node to "weed out" a few cells I then use that result to mask the lower voronoi, set to intensity.  If that didn't make any sense here is an image that will hopefully clarify it:

Cells voronoi texture.
Put through less than 0.4 node (converter > math) to "grab" 40% of the cells.
Used to mask intensity voronoi texture.
Color ramp node added to (mostly) eliminate the hexagons.  (Try playing with the color ramp swatches to see how this works.)

The main material is simply two of these setups with a noise texture for added roughness, all put into the bump of a grey diffuse shader.  The asteroid itself is simply an icosphere with a subsurf and two different sized displacement modifiers.

Here's the .blend:


Obtaining a smooth result after modelling Why is this difference is happening after I tried to Shade smooth this sword crossguard?  One side is smooth and the other on not.

As you can see I only applied a mirror modifier so far to model the other side of the crossguard.

This is a wireframe of the model.

You might have flipped normals on some of the faces.
Select all faces and hit CTRL+N to make the normals consistent.

Also, make sure to check the mesh for disconnected geometry; select the object in Edit mode and click Mesh > Clean up > Merge by Distance. Find a value where the geometry of your model isn't affected negatively. If any vertices are removed you'll see this in the viewport toolbar.


How many induvidual keys are used as hotkey shortcuts? kind of a weird question, so here's some context.

I'm left handed, and use the mouse (and tablet stylus) with my left hand (like a heathen, I know), and it forces to to be hunched over in kind of a weird position, leaning to the left, using the left side of the keyboard with my right hand, which results in a lot of weird finger stretching

I've been looking into getting a mini re programmable keyboard ( something like this ) to save my posture while blender-ing, sculpting (and using other programs), and avoid rebinding Blender's metric ton of shortcuts to something more ergonomically sensible. (I'd have no idea where to even start with that, lol.)

So, would anyone happen to know how many keys (out of the standard ~104) Blender actually uses, so that I know how few keys, and how small a keyboard I can reasonably get away with? (I realize I could try switching to a traditionally accepted righthanded mouse style, but switching my mouse hand at this point seems like more trouble than this sort of thing.)

I couldn't really give you a number, but I do know they have a documented list of all the shortcuts they use. It should be listed in your user preferences (because you can remap them), but you can also find a list if you search for the version you're using.

Please Take Notice: Many of the shortcuts changed for 2.8. If you're planning on using that version at any point in the future, consider taking a look at those shortcut keys, instead.


eye lighting + export image/video problem i try to bright up the light and it was super bright, the eye (glass) look great but lower makes darker, is there any other way to make bright light focus only the eye and not other object.

Another question is;
how can i export animation in image or video without chnaging setting, i am 100% unsure what to do. all i press is change the output and press animation to start uploading however fur wasn't in correct way and it very messy (it not the way i set up) how can i kept the same setting or fur

sorry for bad english....

A lot can be wrong with the particles to make it look bad in render. First thing I would look into to get a grip of what's going on is "if the particle system - the hair is baked". If not bake it.
As for the eyes, try to uncheck shadow in Object properties Cycles Settings of the cornea object with glass material. If that wont work, try to experiment with mixing glossy with transparent shader for cornea instead of glass. If mixed in right proportions it will let some more light into pupil object. You can also try to work something out using Light Path node to connect it's Is Shadow Ray with Mix Shader node to mix Transparent with Glass in a way that makes shadow of the object invisible. Give it a try, probably one of this ways will work for you.


How to scatter several rocks along a path? I've been following Blender Guru's tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EesfCLQD8jY) on how to create a martian landscape, but I want the rocks to scatter on just one part of the surface using a particle system.  Is there a way to do this?

This is the area I'm talking about:

These are the particle settings (for one set of rocks)

Short answer: You want to create a vertex group and put that in for particle density.

Long Answer:
If you assign the particle emission to to the land you'll get something like this:

Obviously we don't want the icospheres all over the plane, just a select portion. We can do this we two methods, weight pain or creating a vertex group. Weight pain will give you more control, but I'll show how to assign a vertex group because it's a little bit quicker.

So tab into edit mode. Hit "c" and paint the vertices you wish to be affected.

Now invert the selection with Ctrl "i" and go to vertex groups on the right and assign a group.
Now go back to the particle system, scroll down to vertex groups and select the group. I would recommend naming the group.


Sphere photos for Facebook I'm trying to make a 360-degree panoramic photo for Facebook. Example shown below

However, when I upload a photo made with blender it does not seem to detect that it is a photo made to do this. I set my camera up so it would render images based off the docs and this question.

How can I achieve what I want to do?

If it makes a difference I have Blender 2.78a and I am using the Cycles Render

For Facebook to interpret an image as a 360-degree panorama, it needs to have the following properties :

It must be in 2:1 aspect ratio. eg, 4000x2000 pixels
It should be in JPG format (it seems that the panorama settings are ignored for PNGs!)
It needs the EXIF tag 'ProjectionType' set to 'equirectangular'.

For more information see this Facebook link about Editing 360 Photos & Injecting Metadata.

To achieve this, once you have rendered your image (using an Equirectangular camera - which should be oriented level with the horizon rather than tilted) and saved it in JPG format, use a tool such as 'exiftool' (or another tool that allows you to manually specify EXIF tags) to set ProjectionType - eg, with the following command line :

    exiftool -ProjectionType="equirectangular" <filename>.jpg

This will add the relevant EXIF tag to the image (saving the original as an '_old' file). The resultant file should now be successfully interpreted by Facebook as a panoramic image.

EDIT : Here's an additional source of useful information - http://atterer.org/tech/android-exif-tags-xmp-pano-panorama-exiftool, including additional tags that should allow you to tweak the panoramic view as desired (NOTE : I don't know which of these are actually honored by Facebook, but worth a try) - replace the settings with your own image dimensions, etc. :

    exiftool -UsePanoramaViewer=True -ProjectionType=equirectangular  PoseHeadingDegrees=180.0 -CroppedAreaLeftPixels=0 -FullPanoWidthPixels=8000 -CroppedAreaImageHeightPixels=4000 -FullPanoHeightPixels=4000 -CroppedAreaImageWidthPixels=8000 -CroppedAreaTopPixels=0 -LargestValidInteriorRectLeft=0 -LargestValidInteriorRectTop=0 -LargestValidInteriorRectWidth=8000 -LargestValidInteriorRectHeight=4000 filename.jpeg


How To Cut A Sine Shape On A Cylinder Trying drawing a sinelike shape on a cylinder
I am trying to draw the picture below. I tried using boolean modifier on the cylinder but, I couldn't create an object that would like on the picture below.
Any tips on how I can remove a shape from my cylinder that looks like on the picture below?

I assume you are having trouble with that curve. One way to create it would be to use edge loops and proportional editing. You want to make sure your cylinder has a slightly higher resolution, so the curve will be relatively smooth.

Go into edit mode and add an edge loop in the middle of your cylinder.
Select it with alt + your selection mouse button and search for checker deselect (my search button is F3). A new tab will appear, which lets you specify the offset etc. You want to only select the tips of your future curve.
Now, enable proportional editing by pressing O and hit G to move the vertices. You can adjust the editing radius with your mouse wheel and move the vertices forward until you have something that looks like half of a sinus curve.
Repeat these steps with the other half.
Now, create another edge loop underneath that looks the same by pressing ctrl + R and then E. Go into face select mode and select the curve with alt + selection button.
Extrude it and scale it inwards while locking the x-axis by pressing shift + X while scaling.


How best to render a 3D grid? Hello I am new to Blender. I created a 3d grid using cylinders but it does not look nice. The grid lines are not regularly spaced. Can anyone tell me how to make it look better?

You can see the blend file here.
http://www.imsc.res.in/~aagrawal/Schematic2.blend

Another way to create a 3d grid could be to use a simple basic cube:

add a wireframe modifier for the cube
add an array modifier on X, fixed count (eg) 5
add an array modifier on Y, fixed count (eg) 5
add an array modifier on Z, fixed count (eg) 5

Like this:

At least you can play easily with modifiers until satisfied...

edit:

I'll try to explain (as I got it) what Mentalist suggested in comments: you can avoid the wireframe modifier, using a "wire" material, which allows to save a lot of geometry at the expenses of... geometry, ie: material wireframe width is not adjustable but also in this way you save so many vertices.

I'll also add the option to use a different base shape (a "3d cross" instead of a cube) to save quite more (unneeded) vertices, because using cube and arrays, all cubes share all their vertices... with the "3d cross" this is slightly better.


How do I model across a mirror modifier? I am modeling on a set of windows right now, and they are not symmetrical along the X axis, where I need the mirror modifier to mirror the other half of the superstructure. This is what it looks like. The problem basically arises when I need to make the windows non-symmetrical across the mirror.

One possible way would probably be to apply the mirror, make the adjustments, then separate the windows from the main superstructure and finally joining them with the superstructure afterwards?

Solution: Separate the geometry that will be non-symmetrical, and rename it.

Select the object (by right-clicking on it), then press Tab on the keyboard to enter Edit mode.
Then, select the geometry that you want to separate, and press P (hotkey for separating) and you are done!

Now you can press Tab again to go back into Object mode and see the separated geometry.

You can also rename a mesh by selecting it in the Outliner edtior (the object list in the far up-right in the default window layout), double-click the object's name and type in the new name instead of the one with a ".001" at the end given to the object by default.


Make Reference Images Visible in Animation I would like to make a reference image visible when I render my animation. I have animated the image as well. Is this possible to make visible in a rendered animation?

tap Shift - A -> add image as planes

choose rendered view (right most button)

optional: in shader editor connect the texture directly to the output, so the lighting is always as the original picture/movie

result:


Need guidance for creating no dependancies between two installs of Blender I want to have two copies of Blender on my machine that share no settings or preferences. One will be my development copy and the second on is the production version. I need them to be separate because I will be publishing my code to all the production systems and I need this process to be replicated locally for testing.

I'm asking this because I see that by default they are sharing '~/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.70/config'

They also share
'~/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.70/scripts

This is problematic because I intend to put my addons here for the production installations. Then my dev install complains there are duplicate addons.

I'd like this to be easier, especially since it will have to be replicated every upgrade to Blender.

At least on Windows, it is enough to create an empty folder config in Blender\2.70\.

Blender binary path is for example:
...\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe

and the version-specific folder is here:
...\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.70\

Add the config folder like this:
...\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.70\config\

Blender will note the local config folder on startup and prefer it over the user dir. If you save the startup file or user settings, startup.blend and userpref.blend will be created in your local config folder. Scripts located in the user dir won't be picked up.


how to use the slider of the shapekey value for moving the shapekey and the bone connected to it I'm trying to connect the shapekeys that comes from the manuel bastioni lab to the bones that come from rigify. Infact I’ve used two armatures to get the best from both these rigging systems and I have connected them into one only armature that I have called rig.

I want that when I move the value of the shapekeys expressions, the bone should also move and both should deform the mesh.

I’ve watched some tutorials where the authors move the bones and the mesh connected with the shapekey also move. But I don’t need this.

I wanna move the slider of the value of the shapekey at the same time the bone that I have previously connected with the addon and the mesh should be deformed.

In my case,I have created a driver,but it does not work correctly,because a cyclic dependency error.

So,what’s the solution here ?

I’m trying to convert the set of shapekeys of the manuel bastioni lab to a set of (bones) poses.

Update : I configured the driver like this,but it does not work :

update 2 : After having tried to follow the kraken suggestion,I have solved half problem,but not everything. Infact now with the child of contraint I'm able to move the bone through the shapekey value,but when I add a pose on the poselib it sticks but I can't clear the transformations. Just need to fix this...check the video below to understand..

video to show that the clear transformations don't work

I forgot to mention.  the Cube in the file is the parent of the sphere.  If you move the cube, the sphere follows.  If you change the constraint modifier of the sphere to .5 it will follow half as much.      This method can be applied to your bones so that one bone controls another bone which controls the face.


Missing Wrap Option in 2.76 Does anyone know where the wrap option in the texture paint settings has gone? It seems to be missing in 2.76. Was it removed from Blender, or has the button been relocated?

The wrap setting was moved to separate X and Y tile settings in tool shelf > tiling:


Surfaces not being illuminated I have problem with rendering in cycles render in this building.
I placed lots of different lamps and increased the amount of emission in the lamp, but it didn't work.
If I render, it shows this:

All the walls etc. only have a glossy shader with 0 roughness. This means light will be reflected specularly, without being scattered. In other words, every surface is acting as a perfect mirror.

See How do you make a lamp light up glossy surfaces? for a more detailed explanation of why this is a problem.

To fix this, try using a diffuse shader instead:

Though eventually you'll want to set up a mix of different shaders (probably a bit of both diffuse and glossy) with textures, etc.


Flatten option is not available in Blender 2.92 I am following along a this tutorial at the mark 49:05 time, he is using F3 to open Search menu, and types FLATTEN.
When I do the same, the search results disappear, and I have no FLATTEN option.

I tried ShiftT as mentioned here but that did nothing.
How can I access the Flatten option?

I am not sure about any flatten option but if you have mesh:looptools enabled in preferences you can select your faces and then right click->looptools->flatten to get the result it seems you are looking for.


How to separate arrayed objects? This question seems to be asked before but the answer did not work for me.

I arrayed an object using an empty and a cube.

Then I changed mode to Edit to use Separate by typing P.

As suggested I tried to select all object before doing this.

But when type A only one object has been selected in edit mode the original object I used to create the array.

After that I used P then the clicked the By Loose Parts and went

back to the Object Mode and select one object, vala, all the object in array has been selected.

What is the reason it is not working.

You need to apply your Array modifier, once done you'll be able to separate the objects.


Getting mouse position relative to movie clip In the clip editor, I need to find out the position of the mouse relative to the current movie clip. I know I can get the mouse position with event.mouse_x and event.mouse_y in my modal operator. I can also use context.region.view2d.region_to_view to get the mouse position relative to the view.

However, none of these tell me where the mouse is relative to the movie clip. Ideally (0,0) would be one corner of the movie clip and (1,1) the opposite corner. How can I find out the mouse position?

If you run this script in Blender's text editor, you can press L with your mouse in the preview window to get the position of the mouse in pixels relative to the bottom left corner of the video clip.

import bpy

bl_info = {"name": "Mouse Pos", "category": "Sequencer"}

class GetMousePos(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "mouse_pos.get_mouse_pos"
    bl_label = "Get Mouse Pos"

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        # Size of the preview region
        width = context.region.width
        height = context.region.height

        fac = 1.0

        prs = bpy.context.space_data.proxy_render_size
        res_perc = bpy.context.scene.render.resolution_percentage

        if prs == 'SCENE':
            fac = res_perc / 100

        rv1 = context.region.view2d.region_to_view(0, 0)
        rv2 = context.region.view2d.region_to_view(width, height)

        preview_zoom = (width / (rv2[0] - rv1[0]))

        # Resolution of the scene
        res_x = context.scene.render.resolution_x
        res_y = context.scene.render.resolution_y

        # Distance of video preview from bottom left corner
        offset_x = -int((rv1[0] + ((res_x * fac) / 2)) * preview_zoom)
        offset_y = -int((rv1[1] + ((res_y * fac) / 2)) * preview_zoom)

        print(event.mouse_region_x - offset_x, event.mouse_region_y - offset_y)

        return {'FINISHED'}

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

    keyconfig = bpy.context.window_manager.keyconfigs['Blender Addon']
    km = keyconfig.keymaps["SequencerPreview"]

    kmi = km.keymap_items.new("mouse_pos.get_mouse_pos", 'L', 'PRESS')

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

    keyconfig = bpy.context.window_manager.keyconfigs['Blender Addon']
    km = keyconfig.keymaps["SequencerPreview"]
    for kmi in km.keymap_items:
        if kmi.idname == "mouse_pos.get_mouse_pos":
            km.keymap_items.remove(kmi)

    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)

register()


How to arrange selected vertices in a perfect circle So how do I get the surrounding vertices to make a circle (centered) without needing to manually move every single one to the right spot? Also I need the outer shape to stay as a square.

I think the easiest method is to use the handy LoopTools addon which is already included in Blender. Just enable it in User Preferences -> Add-ons.


Broken quads, weird rendering? I have a bit of a problem, at the moment I'm creating a few rocks for game purposes. Im starting of sculpting them and then baking them from multires, and applying that to the lowest "subdivision", just plain hi-res to low-res.
Now the problem I have ran into is that when i use the lowest subdivision all my quads are "broken" and when rendered it looks all weird(I'm attaching a picture of it). And this is not a one time thing, this happens on every rock i create!

Now my question is, how do I solve this? without having to manually change every vert, which i tried but it took like 1 hour, and when i was done i noticed that changing them made a bunch of other quads get broken instead.

And is there a way to get around this completely?
And i have also noticed that this only happens with Cycles and not with blenders internal render!

Select your mesh.
In the object mode in the left panel of your 3D view there is bunch of options such as trnaslate and rotate and...
In Shading section you can see smooth and flat button side-by-side.
Click on flat then you'll see your mesh as it is.

If you want to use smoth shading option, your mesh should be hi-res (at least a little bit) or it will be like what you can see in your attached image.

Take a look at this (the same object all the time):


How do I fade a whole scene? I have a scene that I want to fade to complete transparency on the outside. The blue object in the picture (continues in the larger red/white object) should gradually no longer be visible from the beginning of the red towards the white. If possible, the whole thing should also work in eevee.

You can do this using shader node too(Procedurally)
Follow this node group:

Value node gives the fade effect. Play with the values to get the desired effect.
Result:

P.S. Make sure you join both the objects
P.P.S If you wanna change the axis on which the fading occurs, change the value of last greater than node with Y or Z output from separate XYZ node
BLEND FILE: https://pasteall.org/blend/e1e9617c0bed4c18b372d759462ffb94


Using 'Bake Sound to F-Curve' to Drive Animation -- Invalid Python Expression I am trying to use sound to drive my animation like in the second section of this tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAes-ITNaGA&ab_channel=quollism)
I have created a utility bone with 'bake sound into f curve' and I am trying to paste the property to my right arm bone. The utility bone moves as I would like but when I try to link it to the right arm bone, it does not work.
I have tried pasting the absolute path of the custom property while it is in Pose Mode, which is bpy.data.armatures["Armature.006"]["sound final"] but I am getting an ERROR: Invalid Python expression and my curve is still the default one as opposed to changing into the sound curve. I notice in the tutorial, it looks like the path is something like pose.bone["name"] but I am unable to get a path like that despite it being a single bone and in pose mode.
Is there something wrong with the Expression being var or my path?
Thanks so much!

driver path of arm bone:

what I want the driver path to look like:

Drive the pose bone custom property.
Please note, didn't see the image correctly, it appears you have baked sound onto armature bone (the structure). In most cases recommend using the pose bones, which belong to the rig object, not the rig. If you really want to use the armature bones, go to second part of answer
Check out examples here https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/drivers/workflow_examples.html#workflow-examples
Without checking the tute, you are going down the garden path.  Am assuming this custom property is on a pose bone of the object (pose mode), not a bone of the objects armature data (edit mode).
In example below have a property "prop" on a pose bone named "Bone".  This was set in pose mode, with bone selected in the Custom Properties Panel with Bone tab selected.  Consider this the prop I have baked sound on. Change names to suit your case

The object of interest is
bpy.data.objects["Armature"]

not
bpy.data.armatures["Armature"]

which btw is
bpy.data.objects["Armature"].data

In driver variables we do not use this as the data path instead choose the ID object, be it an Object or an Armature, a Mesh etc etc.. It is an Object type in this case.

For a single property type driver variable the path is relative to object selected as the driver variable target.  Hence in case above this is
bpy.data.objects["Armature"]

and the path to the custom property from here is
pose.bones["Bone"]["prop"]

This can be copied from the UI by right clicking over property and choosing "Copy Data Path" and pasting into path field of driver.  Result of paste.
pose.bones["Bone"]["prop"]

Using the Armature bone
On closer inspection it appears you have driven the armature bone. Would suggest changing this to the pose bone for most use cases.
If it is the case, then select the armature from Armatures when creating driver variable and use

bones["Bone"]["prop"]

as the path. As can be copied from

in object mode.


Vector for Camera Direction I know that one can use a Gradient texture and Texture Coordinates node to fade an object out the farther it is away it is along an axis. They can even use a Mapping or Separate XYZ node to change the direction of the fade.

However

Using a Mapping node can be tedious, especially in an animation. I was wondering if it was possible to fade an object out away from the camera direction via a straight up Vector/Input node output or a combination of Vector/Input nodes.

You could use camera distance instead, that way it dynamically adjusts transparency relative to camera position dynamically.

Just use the Input > Camera Data node instead. Some math nodes to adjst the factor may be needed.


Does a separate GPU for CUDA work with main AMD card, in Cycles? I'm trying to use an Nvidia GT520 as a render device, but i have an AMD HD7770 as my main GPU.
In user preferences i can choose CUDA as my compute device, and it detects my card, but when it's time to render, cpu usage is at 100% and it uses my main system memory.
My monitors are connected to my AMD card.
I'm using Windows 8 64 Bit, with both latest AMD, and Nvidia drivers, and rendering on Blender 2.72

Silly me, i completely forgot about the option in the renders tab, i thought the user settings was enough. Anyway it does appear to work, fur mark does show the GPU heating up.

It isn't very useful due to it's low memory and little processing power, but being on a separate GPU i can render lesser projects while doing other tasks.

I did NOT have to enable Experimental Feature Set. do not know if it changes anything.

Thanks everyone!


Should I be using loop cuts near edges to give my game models harder edges? The title pretty much explains it all. I've been modeling various different things for a personal game I'm working on, and I'm trying to keep the poly count low. That lead me to wonder if the method of using loop cuts near edges to make them more defined is the best method for something like a game model.

Haven't worked on game models, but this method does solves it for me. Another method is to probably increase the crease at the edges.


How can I align a text object to curve without deformation? Is there a way to make text follow the contours of a curve without distorting the individual characters? When I use curve deform modifiers, then I get very oddly stretched text, often making it unreadable.

I have already checked these questions, they don't help:

Array Modifier deforming mesh
Why is the curve modifier deforming strangely?

You can use the text on curve settings in the text panel.

The behavior of this setting requires practice.  Note the curve is in the XY plane, but the text is positioned in the ZX Plane.


Make the flame of a candle more yellow Here is what I have so far:

The issue is The candle looks like a light bulb... when I tried to make it more yellow via RGB Curves the whole thing got more yellow:

Can anyone help me out? Thanks!

A few options:

Using the compositor, changing the materials for the emissions shader, or harnessing the power of color magangement.

Each one will have a different effect, and can also be combined according to your artistic intentions.

Option 1: Using the compositor you want change the color for the flame so it doesn't look white.

(click on any of the images to enlarge)

To isolate the flame from the rest of the image you can enable the emissions pass on the render layers.

On the compositor you can see that you have a new image that contains only the emissions of the image.

You can then use this information to tint the image, so that only the flame is affected.

Plug the Emit information to a vector normalize node (to bring the values to a scale form 0 to 1), and plug the result to a color mix node's factor. That will allow you set the color you want the flame to be. Ony the flame will be affected by the color selected on the Mix node.

Note that the edges are a bit rough since the emissions pass is not antialiased, so you can add a Dilate/Erode node in Feather node to make the edges smoother:

Adding a blur filter to the emissions pass will allow you to create some glow...

Here's the blend file if you want to download it:

Now in my opinion that still looks like a colored light bulb instead of a flame, so we can try now

Option 2. Using more than one emitter shader for the flame.

The flame material for a candle is hardly ever just a single color emitter.

Here is a different example file to play with:

You can start with a node setup like this for the material of the flame:

(Click on the image to enlarge)

It can be broken in 3 main components:

First, a gradient for the different temperatures of the flame.
A first emitter that is mixed with some transparency. This is the one that will determine how the flame will look in terms of color, brightness and transparency.

The biggest issue is that with just one emitter is that if you make the flame brighter to illuminate surrounding objects it just becomes white, so you need to add

a second emitter that is unseen by the camera, but that illuminates everything else (The light path node prevents the second emitter to be seeing by the camera).

If you look at this example, this second emitter is 100 times brighter than the flame.

Then you can add more effects on the compositor:

Option 3: Using Tone Mapping in the compositor

With a single emission shader, using a gradient to create a more realistic flame.

Again, in order to see the color on the flame, the emission strength would need to be low, but that makes the surroundings very dark.

Bringing up the emission's strength will make the scene look brighter but the flame's gradient is way to bright now, past the 100% clipping point

Looking at the waveform monitor we can see that the flame is way over the 100% mark, so all detail and color is gone, no more information can be displayed on white.

Using a Tonemap node we can try to modify the dynamic range of the scene by remapping of the values to fit on a scale of 0(black) to 1(white):

The colors for the flame are back, but the image looks very washed out and boring because it has a much lower contrast and less color saturation. To fix that we can alter the image values with a color curve.

Lastly just add a glare node:

Option 4 Using color management (as suggested by this answer)

Using a custom 3dLUT (Look Up Table) for the device transform you can use a much wider dynamic range on the scene.

Again, with a single emitter shader on the flame, a LUT used on the color management will allow us to use luminance values much brighter than 1 and re-map them to fit a range between 0 and 1.

For more information read this post.

User @troy_s has created a set of LUTs and OCIO config that greatly enhances blender's cycles rendering and its ability to deal with a wider dynamic range, thus creating more photorealistic results. They can be downloaded here, along with the instructions on how to install and use.


Retargeting animation with gizmos, delete gizmos in action editor or export without them I am retargeting animation which works great. I select MODEL1 then MODEL2 and apply the animation of MODEL2 to MODEL1 in dopesheet -> action editor. Everything works great.

The problem is that MODEL2 has around 10 gizmos, which also are seen in the action editor as animations, they indeed hold the same animation, so I have it 10 times.

Because of this my file becomes really large. I need to export it as .fbx. I need to delete all gizmos. I tryed deleting them from the world before applying the animation, but that didnt helped.

The only way I can delete them if I select every gizmo one by one, unlink it and reload the file. That is very very time consuming. If one model has 8 animations, I need to select 80 gizmo animations manually. There must be a better way to do it.

Here are some images
World, thats the model which holds the animations which I want to use on an other model:

Here is my model the action editor and animations it got after retargeting:

I only need GhostCastSpell, the other things also hold animation data, depending which animation gizmo I select it does animate, but the model is offset.

After many different approaches I found a solution myself.

To seperate the animations you want, you have to put them in NLA tracks and when exporting to .fbx you must go to animations and uncheck all actions:

It will only export the animations from the NLA tracks

To add animations to NLA tracks you have to open dope sheet -> action editor in one window and NLA Editor in the other. Then you have to select each animation which you want to keep one by one in the action editor and add it to an NLA track on the NLA editor. You have to add them to the armature not the mesh.

Here is how it has to look:


Following path cause a lose of rotation axis I have simplified the scenario on bellow picture:

I have line Bezier Curve which I'm using as a path for camera to move along. When camera is on top, it is pointing down, and when it is coming down, I have turned it 90 degrees to see sight from the box.
But when camera is on that position you see I'm unable to rotate it using X-axis.

On the following picture I have used X-axis to rotate the camera landscape, but as you can see from the picture, it turns over the Z-axis:

When I'm using Z-axis to rotate, it does that as expected:

When the camera is on top, it rotates correctly. What I do not know on this?

This strange behavior is called gimbal lock. It is caused by the interdependency of the three rotation axes.
When the middle axis (Y in the case of XYZ rotation) is set to any value which results in a ±90° rotation, the first axis is aligned with the last. At this point, a change to the first or last axial rotation can only rotate around the last axis (Z in the case of XYZ).
A good example can be seen in this gif by Peyman Massoudi:

Notice how the red X ring is rotated to the blue Z ring.
The solution is to use axis-angle, quaternion or a different rotation order (e.g. XZY, ZXY, YZX,...) to rotate the object.


Material showing on wrong faces I'm following this tutorial and I have applied a material to the body mesh and when I apply the material to the faces to the side of the mesh, I can see the top/bottom material is showing on the top and bottom parts of the side faces.

This is the rendered view:

http://i.imgur.com/uvMBfQq.png

and this is the wireframe showing the selected faces which the side material is applied to:

http://imgur.com/zx4JW32.png

I'm not sure why this is happening, can anyone advise?
Thanks

You need more geometry. The subsurf modifier works by interpolation, meaning that is subdividing the geometry, the boundaries for materials are also interpolated. On the sides of the guitar you need to add supporting loops, those will help you define the edges for the material as well.

As an example of the issue, this cylinder has two materials, one for the top and bottom faces, and one for the sides. The subsurf modifier interpolates mapping of the materials clearly. Adding supporting loops will fis the mapping error:


How to move the gizmo of a section? How to move the gizmo of a section of to make a scale (NOT relative to the center of the selection)? When I do it with the cursor it crushes all in 1 single point

When you say section, I assume you mean selection or group of objects (more than one object).
First you move your 3d Cursor from the origin (0,0,0) to where you want to center your transform.

Then select your objects, set "Transition Orientation" to be relative to "Cursor", than any rotation or scale or move will be relative to that cursor point.

(please if this is your answer, please mark it as ANSWER so I can build credits)


Tweening for 2d strokes in grease pencil Is there any way I can tween my 2D strokes in grease pencil?

If the lines share the same points (ie: copied keyframe and tehn used sculpt to push the line around) you can simply use the "interpolate" menu in edit mode, and it will VERY cleanly add inbetweens


How to fit an object generated by the Array modifier into a frame precisely? I want to fit the blue pieces inside the white frame with an Array modifier.

How can I do that?

You can just calculate it. To make life easier let's enable MeasureIt add-on in the User Preferences(ctrl+alt+u) in the add-ons tab:

So let's say we have an array of 23 elements. Let's enter 1 as the Relative Offset to get an array without any gaps:

Then we need to measure the remaining gap so let's enter edit mode of the frame object and grab one corner vertex and duplicate it (Shift+d) and snap it to the end of the array object. This way the distance can be measured with MeasureIt easily. Note that you can choose units of MeasureIt in the Side Panel(n).

Now we know what distance we need to fill. So we want every array element to have a gap after it except the last one, so that is 23-1=22 gaps. We wll need to divide the distance into 22 parts, so let's enter the distance in the Constant Offset field and divide it by 22 in the field itself and hit enter and that is it.