Texture assigned to more than one object renders differently I've been looking at this question -
copy the size and scale a texture is mapped by, from one object to another - but concluded it's not the problem. The question deals with UV map disparities relating to scale and origin. I believe my problem is different?

I've tried assigning the material this way too: Adding textures to more than one object to no avail.

I have two cubes, one created by duplicating the other and scaling. Both have the same material assigned. The first cube had the material assigned when I duplicated it. I have unwrapped each using Unwrap > Project from view

I've explored whether it's a lighting issue - though essentially by deleting any previously set-up lights and adding some fresh default ones.

Have I assessed the problem correctly? (It's not a material/texture scale/origin issue)
Any ideas what the problem might be related to?

Note: Blender Render

Images below - the stand with the vases on it should be the exact same texture as the wall behind.

The object which has another appearence of the texture was scaled in Object mode, while its UV map was left as it was from the original one. Apply the transforms, redo (or change) the UV map and the texture will act in the same way on both objects.

What happens when duplicating unwrapped object

The original object was unwrapped.
Then the duplicate was created. It derived the UV map from the original object, and that UV map was the same as there.
After that the duplicate was scaled to fit the scene specifics.

The difference consists in that the duplicate was scaled in Object mode, and most likely was scaled non-uniformly (e.g. by Z axis more than by X). These transforms weren't applied to the object data. Hence the mesh was different from one unfolded in the UV map, and that's where the difference came from.

Generally, if you scale by one axis in Edit mode, you'll get non-unform texture distribution too. However you will be able to change that by unwrapping once more.

For details about the possible cases when you need applying transforms refer to Why is it important to apply transformation to an objects data?


Every emission object is darker than it should be I'm not sure why this is happening. With my scene i have an emission plane as the main light source for the scene:

As you can see, the material preview shows the shader correctly, but in the actual render it is much darker. This applies to final renders as well. The same thing happens with the world material, even if I make it 100% white, it appears as a shade of grey.
Jacking up the strength just emits that same color of grey stronger, not whiter.

In your render settings check your clamping (set direct and indirect to 0) also check exposure, should be 1.


I imported a blend file into unity which contained 3 animations but I can only see one Here is my problem:

I thank you for your help.

I usually animate inside unity. There you can manage the animations with the animator. Or you could try to save the animations as individual files. Some professionals save all their animations into one animations, they can separate them in unity. I hope some of these will answer your question.


Weight Painting Mirroring Issue I'm trying to weight paint my character. I have applied automatic weights and am touching up areas. In the Context section on the right side windows (not the 'N' window but the one to the right), there's an option for mirrored weight painting along the x-axis. Unfortunately when I toggle this, it paints both the left and right side for the selected bone. How can I paint weights for one bone so that it corresponds with the same bone opposite the x-axis?

TLDR: weight paint x-axis mirror paints correctly but connects it to original bone rather than corresponding opposite one.

That mirror option is for a center bone that should control left and right side of a mesh at the same way (like a hip bone, a torso, and so on ...).

To have R side bone matching the L side (like arms or legs) this is one procedure:

Weight paint the L side (i.e. arm.L, the name of the vertex group must have an appropriate suffix, like .L or .l or .left).

Then select the option copy vertex group, then mirror vertex group, then rename appropriately (like arm.R).


NLA editor, I can't get two baked animations to work at the same time I have two animations that are baked one on top of the other. How do I get both to `work at the same time? One is a walk cycle and the other is a simple movement forward for the walk cycle. I have chosen both baked animations at the same time and get the same result.
  I'm fairly new with nla editor, but I have done some research and only found examples that have baked animations beside each other, but not stacked.

Do animations need to be baked for a final render? If not I think I will use them rarely.

Also too does anyone know of any well explained videos of animations using dope sheet and nla editor. I would like it to include; how to render and save a completed animation, just as if I wanted to save it and play it on windows media player?
  If you would only like to answer the first paragraph that is totally fine.

I am now writing later in the after noon. I don't seem to be able to go into tweaking strip actions mode. When I try it says I have no active strips to enter tweak mode. Well as far as I know if the strip is yellow it is selected.
  I don't know why I would even want to bake a strip. I am not able to see any other animation when working with a baked strip.

In your NLA-Editor's properties panel (on the right); if you select your "movement" action, you can see the Blending mode. In the screenshot you provided it is set to Replace. Replace tells blender that any other tracks' keys on the same channel that are below it are overridden by the top track. You can set this to another type, for instance Add to add the location of the movement-action to the values in the idle-action.

A better way (in my opinion) would be to pay attention that the channels of your actions do not unnecessarily overlap. That means that your walk-cycle should not have keys for body-movement, and your movement-action has only keys for body-movement. If you have that you will have more flexibility in arranging the tracks later on. (In case that you design your walk-cycle by selecting all bones of your armature, and then do "insert key frame", then you will end up with a key in every possible channel, making it very hard to handle in the NLA-Editor. Better remove the unnecessary channel in the action editor then). For example, for a walk-cycle, i would only animate the up/down movements of an in-place walk cycle in one action, and make a different action for movement that effects only the x-direction of the root-bone of my armature, but nothing else.

Baking is mostly not needed for animations, as long as you have enough channels (and bones) to realize your animation. Sometimes, however, when a rig is too simple to support overlaying actions well, it might be necessary.


Object not following path I have set two particle systems to move along a path while emitting particles. However, I'm having two problems. Firstly, the particles are moving slower than the emitter object and therefore is creating a gap between them. Secondly, one of the particle system is not following the path accurately.

This is my set up:

As you will see, one of the particles systems is following the path consistently, while the other isn't.

PS : Crank up the particle count for both the particle systems to 10000 or higher to view an accurate representation.

UPDATE: PPS : How do I delay the start of the path animation for one of the objects?

Problem 1: Fixing particles

To fix this go to the particle system tab under Velocity and turn the Object option up to 1.00.

Problem 2: Path follow

To fix this, go to the start of the animation, select the path, go into Edit mode and, with all points selected, click Toggle Cyclic in the Tool Shelf. You should now see a gap in the path, which is the start and end. Determine which one is the start(the path lines are leading away from it) and select it. Press Shift + S and select Cursor to Selected. Click Toggle Cyclic and go back to object mode. Select the object to follow the path and press Shift + S again, this time choosing Selected to Cursor

Problem 3: Delay animation start

The only easy way to do this is to use a Follow Path constraint instead. It allows you to offset the animation. You could also just rotate the path with the object around the Z axis to start at a different place.

Also, I would but the animation end up to 100 for a smooth loop, if its going to be looping that is.


Dynamically change pivots of an object Is it possible to rotate one object (A) around another object's origin (B) without transforming A's origin to B's? I need this because I want to rotate A around several objects successively. I know this can be done with the "Follow Path" constraint, but it is a complicated method. Also note that the "Pivot" constraint can be used only once and cannot be changed dynamically (or at least I don't know how it does).

Thanks.

I found the general solution to "dynamically change any constraint" which subsumes "dynamically change pivot". It's simple: Change the "Influence".

Flowchart:

Create (stack) as many pivot constraints as required and target them
to the respective objects (or empties).
Set "Influence" of all the   pivots to "0" before creating any
key-frames.
For the first rotation about (suppose) the x-axis, key-frame the
x-rotation and set Influence to 1.
Scrub frames till a, rotate as required and key-frame x-rot.
Now to blend this with the second rotation, scrub a few (k)
frames back till a-k, key-frame the first Pivot's Influence (now
at 1) and also key-frame the second Pivot's Influence (at 0).
Scrub forward to a+k frame and switch the values of the  first
and second Pivots' Influence; key-frame both.
Scrub frames and setup the second rotation as before (Step 4.), and so on.

I endorse this method over other simpler Transformation methods since this is parametric and has few dependencies.


How do you bake out a world space/position normal maps? Cycles doesn't seem to allow me to bake it's World-Space Normals or Position Map. I just tried to bake it the same way I'd bake a Normal Map but with their own Material and Image. Then some setting switched around.
That'd be cycles render, bake type diffuse, only color on the Influence, and selected as active is false. New Mat with the Texture Coordinate plugged into a Vector Transform and then just a Material Output.
I need image data of the world space normals and the position map so I can use the tri-planar node in substance to get a seamless sphere material.
But I can't figure out how to bake out my maps. And the bake is "successful" but the image data is just pure black. I know I got my material setup good because in the render mode it looks alright. Any help appreciated.

An object-space normal map, on an object without any rotation or parents, is also a world-space normal map.  So you can just unparent, clear rotation, and bake an object space normal map if you want world-space normals.
When I want to output arbitrary data, I generally use emission.  Run geometry/position into emission for world space position.  Remember that position is in Blender units-- save to .exr (which supports floating point values) if it goes outside of 0,1 range, or remap.
If you want some other way to bake world space normals, consider remapping the channels of geometry/normal from -1,1 range to 0,1 range, then emitting and baking.  Unless your application expects them in the -1,1 range, in which case, don't remap them, just remember to save as an .exr to support the negative numbers.
Whenever you're baking any values like this, remember that you want to bake to non-color data:


Which render engine renders faster? Blender Internal or Cycles? I wonder which render engine is faster? I mean, you have 2 identical scenes and render it using BI and Cycles. Which image will be generated faster? What will be the time difference?

Do you know any site (please post a link) which shows the results of such comparison?

Blender internal is much faster is the jist of the situation. However the topic of which is the fastest is much more complex than that.

Blender internal renders completely differently, using a 'biased' method. This means it is biased as to which light rays it follows (the important ones). This is generally faster and cleaner than cycles renderings but less realistic. It uses short cuts to simulate the flow of light. Its lighting model is more simplistic and easier to compute.

Cycles is 'unbiased'. It shoots light rays everywhere and you have to wait for the image to become acceptable in terms of random noise. If noise is okay in your image, it may be possible that cycles can render faster than blender internal. Most people dislike noise in their images, and to clean up all the noise it can take a very long time, especially for certain light rays like reflections and refractions.

Comparing the two in terms of performance is not really a useful exercise because they will give different results. It will be comparing apples to oranges best case. You use cycles if you want very close to realism. Blender internal can be used for less realistic rendering. Blender internal can be made more realistic if you have a great deal of skill.


How do I fix the pivot point of my vertex The pivot point of every vertex in the mesh of my object is out of position for some reason how do I put it back to where the geometry of my vertex actually is. I tried origin to cursor but it will say you could not do apply this in edit mode.

As illustrated in the picture above the pivot point is far from where the vertex is located.

This is because the armature modifier is not taken into account (this is intended behavior), so the pivot point is at the non modified location of the selection.

This becomes obvious when toggling Modified edit cage (the triangle icon on the modifier):

To make things more manageable, try disabling the modifier in edit mode:

Also see Why is vertex snapping with auto merge enabled not merging vertices?


How to align the edge How to align the edge in straight line. I tried align with S Y 0, The shape of my mesh got disturbed. Any way to align the edge without disturbing the mesh.

How its working S Y 0

The underlying geometry is quite interesting and needs to be cleaned manually.

You need to join vertices with J key to create clean lines. New edges are highlighted with red in the image below.

Next you need to dissolve remaining out of place edges shown in the image below. This can be done by selecting the edges, pressing x and selecting Dissolve Edges.

The remaining line is quite clean.


When I stretch my object its open I have a problem in Blender. When I stretch my object, it opens in
one spot like that  on the picture.
Do u know how I can connect the parts together ?

When learning Blender, it is very easy to press one wrong key and have things change in strange and confusing ways. My guess is you accidentally pressed V, which ripped those vertices, causing the issue you now have when you later scaled or moved those vertices.
To solve this, you need to merge them again. First go to the menus at the bottom of the 3d viewer, and select Active Element from the pop-up menu that appears when you click the third field from the left. Now transforms are calculated according to the position of the active selected item, in this case the last vertex you select.

Now select the 3 vertices that have split open, by pressing RMB over one, then Shift + RMB over the other two. Select the one where you want the other two to merge to last.
Now press Alt + M, and from the pop-up, select At Last. The three vertices are now merged into one vertex, at the position of that last vertex.
A good habit when modelling is to try to reduce problems like this by occasionally selecting everything by pressing A, then pressing W > Remove Doubles, pressing Ctrl + N to recalculate normals. Also whenever you switch between Edit and Object modes, press A until you are sure nothing is selected, otherwise the next time you edit that object, you may be changing things you don't realize you have selected.


Mesh not deformed correctly and armature not attached to it even if the weight colors are good I'm trying to animate a character with blender 2.71. But before to reach this step I need to fix correctly the armature. The problems is that the mesh is deformed correctly but when I move it the armature seems to be separated from it. Another problem that I have is that even if I have configured correctly the weight colors,the mesh in some regions aren't deformed correctly. You can understand better where are the problems by checking the pictures located here :

pictures list

It seems that you parented the bones to wrong objects, here you have the upper legs bone parented to the lower leg mesh.

It would be way easier to join all the objects to a single one and weight paint againt.


Utilise GPU just for animation/physics, not rendering I realise that the GPU can be used in Blender to accelerate rendering, but can the GPU be used to just perform animation/physics simulation?

I'm currently using Blender to import some OBJ files, apply some physics modifiers to them, run an animation/simulation and export the resulting OBJ file, i.e. I'm not using Blender for rendering purposes at all.

I did some performance tests and it seems like a GPU can only utilised for rendering and does not affect the animation/physics simulation performance. Is this correct?

Does anyone know if it's possible to utilise the GPU for physics simulation with any software?
Note: I require soft body (cloth) collision physics, not just rigid body.

No, unfortunately GPU based processing for operations besides rendering is not available at the moment.

It is possible (check out this demo by Nvidia), so perhaps it will be in Blender sometime in the future :)


Converting parent animation to keyframes I currently have an empty object as the child of an animated object which gives it motion of its own.
I was wondering if there was a way to remove the parent object while keeping the motion on the child.
Thanks!

Edit:
thanks for your response! Ill try to be more specific.
the problem I'm running into is the rotation.
Ive included a gif of what I'm looking for.
Im trying to remove the cylinder while keeping the empty on its path.
The empty is parented to a nearby vertex on the object

I don't know what complications there might be in your scene, but in a simple scene I just made this works:

If the child is sharing the same location, rotation and scale as the parent:
go to the start of the animation, select the child and press I to make a keyframe on whatever channels you want to transfer.
Go to the Graph Editor and select the Parent. All its keyframes are probably selected already (if not, press Alt A). Press Control C to copy the keyframes.
Select the child and you should see it in the Graph Editor because it has a single keyframe.  Press Control V.
Now you can go to the viewport and press Alt P, and unparent the child.

If there was an offset - a different rotation or location for example - of the child compared to the parent, you could make a note of the offset at the beginning of the animation and before deleting the parent and correct all the keyframes accordingly after doing the above.  For example, the child is on X -1 and the parent is on X 0.  The difference is minus one. Go the graph editor, select just the X location channel at the left, select all the keys of that channel, then press G, X, -1 to Grab/move the keys one unit down.


Can't add material to mesh Ok ... i just installed Blender today, watched some tutorials but i got stuck at this step because on none of the tutorials has this happened :
when i select an object and i go into properties menu, under material, i have no + button to add a new one

nevermind, it was just me being dumb ... the button is there, i just needed to scroll up


How to cut an object along a curve? I want to divide this model into separate pieces to prepare it for the next stage of a project. The divide needs to be made down a curved line (which I hope is visible in picture).

,

I figured out how to cut it down a straight line a couple weeks ago, but apparently a curve is a different beast. Is there an operation for this, or do I have to manually make a bunch of straight cuts (or something equally painful)?

Although all the above answers are correct they all include unnecessary steps, you don't need to convert your curve to a mesh, nor do you need to extrude or joint anything, you can cut you mesh model directly from a curve using Knife Project operator.

Follow these steps:

Create curve object for cutting
Select Curve object
With curve still selected Shift select the mesh to be cut so it remains the active object
With both still selected press Tab to enter Edit Mode on the mesh object
Adjust the view as necessary, the cut is view dependent.
Use the Space Bar menu to search for the operator Knife Project
Adjust settings if necessary from the redo panel (tool shelf or F6 key)

Take care of the resulting topology afterwards, this will generate NGgons and overall improper topology unsuited for most end uses without further refinement.
Also adjust your viewpoint prior to cutting as the operator is view dependent.


Find Blender PNG (or other format) Metadata in Adobe Has anyone had luck reading metadata saved in Blender PNGs in Adobe products, or for that matter, any other products?

Reason: I rendered an animation on 5 computers using the non overwrite/placeholder method, but unfortunately on one computer I loaded the wrong version of the file (doh!).  So every 5th frame or so is slightly inconsistent from the rest (different lighting, different hair particle configuration).  Not pretty in an animation.

Luckily (or so I thought) I edited the metadata fields within Blender on each computer to put the name of that computer in the metadata, specifically in the note field for each PNG.  However, in every application I've tried, from Windows, to Photoshop to Premiere to Adobe Bridge, nothing can find that metadata.  I've searched for the computer name, for a note field, and tried to create a not field in Premiere.  Nothing, anywhere seems to see it, but documentation says that PNGs support metadata within Blender.

I realize I'm using mostly Adobe products and while I'd love to be able to use them for this task, I'm open to other software suggestions for sure.  Even within Blender if it is possible.

Can anyone give me a tip on finding this data and filtering it so ultimately I can delete all files created by one computer so I can rerender just those files?

Thanks heaps and bunches!

I just tried XNViewMP and it seems to be able to read Blender's metadata on both JPG and PNG Files.

JPEG seems to be using several comment fields, as opposed to PNG which uses dedicated ones for each information. It does save a File field with the name of the original Blend file it was rendered from, so if you had them saved under different locations while rendering from different computers you should be able to identify which files were from the wrong file from there I think.

XNViewMP has some search functionalities, maybe it can search EXIF info, not sure. Anyway it uses EXIFTool to extract this information, so if that fails maybe you could go there directly if XNView doesn't work for you.

Edit: Just to be clear, in XNView, open your image view and under view mode while previewing the image file right click on the image and select Properties then check the ExifTool tab


Is there a way to "unprotractor" a mesurement with the ruler/protractor tool? I sometimes accidentally protractify a measurement when using the ruler/protractor tool. Pressing ⎈ CtrlZ does nothing (I guess being a model operator it doesn't have undo implemented).

Is there any way to tell a given measurement line to go back to measuring distance and not angle?

Grab the angle point, and drag it out of the viewport window, and release. This will make it go back into measurement mode.


Compression & Color change I was using blender to render some animations for a personal blog, and I was hoping to embed the videos seamlessly into the post. I know that my website uses a background of 0xE3E5E7, so I set that as my background color in blender. When I render the animation to PNG, the background color stays at 0xE3E5E7, but once I compress it to mp4, ogv, etc. the background color changes a little bit, and sort of ruins the seamless integration I was hoping for.

I've tried using the Movie Sequence editor and using RGB curves to manually change the color balance so that the compressed video comes out right, but after about half an hour of trial-and-error, I wasn't able to actually get the output video to hit the desired color (it would get close, 0xE3E4E7, but it would never hit exactly).

Additionally, I've tried increasing the bitrate so that the compression wouldn't be much of an issue, but the problem still persists.

I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to render compressed video without color degradation or a way to filter an existing video to output something with a precise target color.

Observation is a Start

There's much knowledge in between your observation ("color changes a little bit") and the "whys" your observation manifests. Seeing as how this is a Blender forum, and most folks are intermediate to advanced, I will delve into some of the whys with the hope that you expand your colour knowledge and help to educate others.

First, unless we have done some dark alchemy via OpenColorIO, our image will be exiting Blender as an RGB based tri-colour model. So factoid number one: RGB is a relative colour system. But what does that mean?

If we take a flash light and cut some plastic of red, blue, and green transparency, we could cover our flash light with the plastic. This would deliver a coloured light of course. But what colour? That is precisely the question to ask when someone starts speaking in terms of values like 0xE3E5E7, which is nothing more than a hex value representing a numerical value relative to the RGB colour space in question. In this case, Blender assumes sRGB / 709 primaries. That is, the absolute colours referenced are relative to the sRGB or 709 specification. If our colour spaces are not aligned, despite having identical RGB values, the colours we look at will not be the same.

Into YCbCr

When we render the colours to a codec format, in most instances we are performing a transformation of the data into the codec model's format. Typically, most codecs will store data in a very different model compared to RGB, often being YCbCr. The YCbCr model extracts / isolates the luma from the curved RGB values and stores it in Y. The Cb and Cr values then represent two axes that stretch along yellow-blue (Cb) and green-red (Cr). A very different model with a unique transformation.

Second, the codec format typically requires a scaling of the ranges to meet broadcast specification standards. This is nothing more than shrinking the values to a smaller range via a scale, and then offsetting the values slightly.

Third, due to the human eye generally being less receptive to colour as compared to intensity, a codec will often scale down the Cb and Cr channels to make the codec smaller in size.

Fourth, the codec will likely compress all of this data even further using some form of lossy encoding standard, although it may also be lossless.

When Encoding Doesn't Match Decoding

Needless to say, the above steps outline a varying number of potentially complex transformations to get your RGB data out of the RGB model and into the YCbCr model. If any one of those steps is incorrectly handled by encoding or decoding, your results will vary quite dramatically.

So the simple question is "Given all of the above maze-like transforms that happen, can I get anything close to my original RGB image?" and the answer is unequivocally "Yes!" Can you do it with a simple click of a Blender render button? The chances are likely "No."

Let's assume we do a perfect encode of our material, what then? Then we are relying on the exact inverse of all of the above transformations to end up back with our perfect RGB values1. As you can guess, this only happens when an artist checks their work and the player is perfect. Even then, to achieve real-time playback, a piece of software may hand off the YCbCr stream to the graphics card, and you guessed it, they will often decode things incorrectly for any number of reasons.

Advice

If you are interested in achieving a perfect encode, the best advice is become a knowledgeable artist in the realm of colour and pixels. You have taken the first steps in noticing that things aren't quite right.

If you encode to a series of images and then encode again to your codec, you stand a much better chance of testing your pipeline for accuracy. In particular, because most encoding software may have different design constraints2, they may make different design decisions that result in different results. Therefore, the safest way to handle video is to encode the YCbCr yourself and then pass that raw data to an encoder and test the encoded values.

If they match, it is out of your hands and into your audience's set of qualitative evaluations at their end to decode it, if this is your goal. If they don't, something went wrong and you can correct it.

The above is a quick outline as to the sad reality of the complexities of your initial, seemingly simple first observation. Controlling the output on the other hand, is relatively easy and will get faster and faster with more knowledge. This is likely beyond the scope of this Stack Exchange answer though, so I'll leave it at that3.

Quantization errors may be present depending on the many encoding options you choose. Broadcast scaling for example, will necessarily degrade your image due to a reduced number of bits storage.
Many video encoders and decoders may target speed of encoding or decoding for quick encoding or speedy playback. Of course this will come at a cost, often times being accuracy due to lower bit depths used to encode or short cuts to achieve playback speed.
Feel free to contact me if you want to explore this area. It is possible to encode your data to a bitwise precise encode, subject to quantization / specifications. I should be relatively easy to find.


How to search for the 'double click' shortcut? In preference, i tried to find any hotkey which using 'double click' , but how can i do this properly ? i tried to use keyword 'double' or 'dbl' but nothing shows up, in fact i check manually there's some hotkey using double clicking. Does anyone know ?

Thanks

I don't think you can search for a hotkey using double click in the latest version of Blender (2.79b). I created one using double click but even searching dbl-Left Mouse didn't work (which was displayed in the key binding area). Maybe it has something to do with not being able to assign a double click shortcut by double clicking.


Whether someone has done a user defined version of Blinn-Phong (not Blinn and not Phong separately) reflection model in the node editor? Actually, I am interested in working with Blinn-Phong reflection model in my rendering process, but unfortunately, there is no such a reflection model in Blender.
(Yes, It has Blinn and Phong reflection models separately, but I need the third one, Blinn-Phong)I've read somewhere that the Blender CookTorr reflection model is actually the Blinn-Phong model but I could not understand how to set the specular exponent (shiny) of the Bilnn-Phong model using CookTorr input parameters (Hardness maybe?)
Since I am new in using Blender, I want to know is there any possibility to define Blinn-Phong reflection model as a user defined reflection model? If yes, should I use Blender "Node Editor" to define a new material?
Has anyone done this before? (Blinn-Phong is a well-known reflection model, isn't it?)
If yes, it would be appreciated to let me have a look :-)
Thanks

Q. I want to know is there any possibility to define Blinn-Phong reflection model as a user defined reflection model?

A. Yes

Q.If yes, should I use Blender "Node Editor" to define a new material?

A. Yes

Q. Has anyone done this before?

A. Yes, quite so.

I will try not to write a 2718 page treatise here.  Cycles render engine is designed as a photo realistic (PR) physics based renderer. Blender render is a respectable renderer different than cycles.  I am trying to give you some terms for further research.  Your public library probably has electronic titles on Cycles and there is the general internet and there are just a few video tutorials on video websites.

If we look at the node system for Cycles we are delivered fragments with geometric surface normal information, camera information and more.  Vector operations resulting in scalars such as dot product are available and are quite relevant to shading.  So you have the freedom to write original or not so original shaders.  Your results can be physics based or artistically styled.  Many relevant math functions are available such as sine, cosine, modulus. Your image is as unlimited as your creativity.

Know that dot product and vector product are your BFF when shading.  Just remember to get some sleep once in a while.  Try to take breaks every 8 hours of writing material nodes.


Mapping out sculpted details from a high-poly I need to bake a map in order to separate different colors and materials on the low poly model.

The padding part is easy because it is a separate object. But the scratches are sculpted and I don't know of anyway to create a uv map of those details(alone from the rest of the object). Is there a way for me to do this without painstakingly painting every small detail manually?

EDIT FOR CLARITY

I need to generate a map from sculpted detail (from the Highpoly) in order to have different material proprieties on the same object (the lowpoly).

I dare to post this answer, because the following tool is free and in my opinion everyone should know this great piece of software. Please forgive me! :-)

After some testing the best working solution I found so far can be archived by creating a heightmap in XNormals. Therefore I hope that you are on a windows system, because XNormals is a pure windows tool.

Export your highpoly and your lowpoly  and a cage as seperate Fbx scenes.

Import them to XNormal (just drag the highpoly and the lowpoly into the list).

for the cage, a checkbox in the lowpoly object has to be enabled and you have to select it by clicking with RMB in the sceen and select "Browse external cage file"

In the baking option select your texture size you want to export, your export location, and check heightmap as renderer.

To render, press the Generate Maps button and after some calculating something like this should appear:

After adjusting your heightmap, close the window  and it will export it to your predefined export location.


What is "bpy.ops.object" really? I'm a little confused about the structure of bpy.
Take bpy.ops.object.some_operation(), it seams to work on the selected object. Or is it the active object?
How about bpy.context.active_object, is that the same? Or what about bpy.data.collections['Collection'].all_objects or bpy.context.scene.collection.all_objects or bpy.context.scene.objects?
How do they exactly relate to objects in Blender?
I can't really find a clear description anywhere and it leads to my code sometime missfiring, even though seemed it has worked for me previously.
I know it's a noob question but I would really appreciate any clarification on the matter.

A try to give a very short overview:

The principle is globally the same for all "object" types depending on their nature.
Above that, give a look at the documentation (probably you've already), which is very structured, module by module and allows to navigate through all data and ops hierarchies.


I can't find where to change the strength of the sun in version 2.70a I have viewed the tutorials of lighting and shading, but the version used in the tutorials must be older than that I use.

I'm not aware of a recent change of the energy slider in the lamp properties in the Blender internal renderer. From the image you posted you are using the blender internal renderer.


Split a plane into smaller plane objects I just started using Blender and I'm trying to cut a plane in equal squares and have each square be its own separate object. My main goal is create the plane and add a displace and decimate modifier to create a low poly terrain. By cutting the plane in equal squares I'll be able to tile them in a 3D maze game I'm working on. If anyone know a better way to approach this it would also be greatly appreciated.

Manual and slow approach

Select the object and go into edit mode, using Tab
Subdivide the plane into any number of smaller faces using W -> S repeatedly
Click face select  or do Ctrl + Tab -> F
Proceed to select each face in the plane, the press P + Enter to split the plane into separate objects

UPDATE: Automatic and fast approach

Instead of having to go through each face manually, you can do everything in one sweep like this:

Instead of starting with a plane, create a Grid object with Shift + A -> M -> G. Then go into edit mode, using Tab.
Select all faces with A and do Ctrl + E -> D (edge split). Now all of your faces are disconnected.
Select all faces with A and do P -> L. This separated all the faces by loose parts, into separate objects.


Insides of my house are not visible when I tap play button (P) in blender game engine In the object mode, I can see clearly inside my house. But in play mode, I can't see inside it. I am attaching screenshots. Please help. I am new to blender.
In object mode, I can see clearly backface which is in red.

But when I press P button, it seems like there is no base and backside! Please help with it :(

Go to the material tab, and under the heading 'Game Settings' there will be a 'Backface Culling' checkbox, which should be checked. Uncheck that and you should be good to go.


How can I make curves "stick" to a model? I have here a gingerbread man I modeled, and I used a path and Bézier curve to create the frosting. But the frosting is hovering over the gingerbread man, so I need to know how to attach the frosting to the gingerbread man. I have already tried using the curve modifier, but it won't give me the results I want.

Starting with  version 2.78 you can Draw Freehand Curves.

First create a curve > bezier object in object mode.

Enter edit mode (Tab). You can delete the existing curve segments by pressing A to select all vertices and pressing Delete.

In the Options tab enable the projection depth to surface, that way the drawn curves will stick to the surface of other objects.

Then go to the Create tab and select Draw Curve to draw a curve directly in the 3D viewport.

For more info watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAsUGy7XGOA


How to implement deltaTime with blender's physics engine? From my experience, it doesn't seem that deltaTime is implemented with blender's physics. I may be wrong as testing this was extremely difficult. Please let me know if I'm wrong and deltaTime is implemented.

Why does deltaTime matter?

Generally, games don't lock your framerate in order to have your game run as quick as your PC is able to. If the framerate is locked, the game will run at different speeds if your framerate is under the cap. To fix this, we uncap the framerate and we implement deltaTime into our code. This way, the game runs at the same speed, and you can run the game at any framerate. If we uncap the framerate and don't use deltaTime, then the game would run faster when your framerate is high.

Why is this a problem?

If deltaTime isn't implemented in blender's physics, then the results would be different at difference framerates. For example, friction wouldn't work properly as someone playing with 120 framerate would take friction twice more than someone playing with 60.

Do I have any idea as to what we can do?

Ofcourse, we can simply have blender implement deltaTime into its physics. Alternatively, (what I tried to do), we can remove blender's physics and code our own physics engine. I've ran into a million problems with this, and I don't think it would make sense to go this way.

I was not able to come up with a solution (yet), but I'd like to share some progress I made. Maybe framerate-independent realtime physics is not possible, but let's keep the mindset "There is a way, we just haven't found it yet" for now.

Testcase

blackhole mentioned, that it's extremely difficult to test whether Blenders Bullet Physics run in RealTime or not. So I looked for a simple real-world example which could serve as a reference for comparing an expectation vs. what Blender is doing. I have choosen a simple free-falling cube, which is placed at a height above an object so that it should hit the ground after exactly 2 seconds (no friction, air resistance or other fancy stuff).

Here's the setup (*blend below):

When pressing "SPACE", you can observe the framerate dropping - I put some sleep in a Python controller.

Parameters of Interest

The first four of the following list are new since 2.77 as far as I know.

bge.logic.getClockTime()
bge.logic.getFrameTime()
bge.logic.getRealTime()
bge.logic.getTimeScale()
Objects "Timer" properties
Render -> System -> "use Frame rate" Checkbox
World -> Phsyics -> "FPS" value

There are several versions of Time available, which I personally find confusing. I used getRealTime (system clock) to measure the time of collision of the falling cube.

Observations

Some of them are obvious to more experienced BGE users (than me), but I'd like to write them down nevertheless. The time of collision

was at least one frame delayed. (2.016 seconds at 60 FPS)
went down (=cube fell faster) by a factor of 2 in case I put 30 FPS in physics and uncecked "Use Frame Rate" - the simulation was running at 60 FPS then.
went up once I added some expensive logic which let the framerate go down (sleep, triggered by SPACE)
varied with the "margin" setting in the objects collision bounds settings.

Whatever I tried so far, I did not find a solution which let the cube hit the ground after 2 seconds when I let the framerate drop by the sleeps. In case frame-independent realtime physics are possible in Blender, there should be a way of making that happen. The new setUseExternalClock and setClockTime might be an option. Maybe my *.blend helps along the way.


Python path for allowing animation of viewport and render visibility of objects EDIT: It turns out I formulated this question out of a misunderstanding of my own old code. See @batFINGER and @scurest answers.
I'm working on a script which automates some animation, which includes turning on and off objects' viewport and render visibility with Object.hide_viewport and Object.hide_render. These objects will be created with the script.
In the Object Properties tab under 'Visibility', there is a button besides the 'Show in Viewports' and 'Show in Renders' buttons that allows these settings to show up in the Dope Sheet and be animated. I've attached a photo of these buttons, highlighted in red. How can I access these 'Animate property.' buttons with Python? As in what value do they change? Nothing shows up when hovering over this button with Python Tooltips on, nor does anything show up in the scripting info view when I click this button. Or is there an alternate way to do this?
Thanks!

Keyframe Insert / Delete.
Further to the answer of @scurest

Mouse over the property after setting to refresh the panel
Every object in blender has a keyframe_insert and keyframe_delete method.   It does everything required, eg if the object has no animation data or action it adds them, then adds the keyframe.
Set the value, insert the keyframe. eg hide the object at frame 10
>>> C.object.hide_viewport = True
>>> C.object.keyframe_insert('hide_viewport', frame=10)
True

Can pass the frame, or it defaults to the current frame of the scene.


Working with VRML 1.0 files in the current version of Blender I have a set of VRML 1.0 files that have been exported from SolidWorks. I need to import these into Blender, work on them, and then export them back into new VRML 1.0 files.

My predecessor had been working with Blender 2.49b, which apparently had a VRML 1.0 option under the File → Import menu. I would like to use the current version of Blender, but it does not seem to have this option; it seems to only support VRML 2.0 instead.

Is there any way to enable VRML 1.0 support in the current version of Blender? Is the previously built-in functionality now available as a plugin?

If not, I would appreciate pointers to any activity related to the removal of VRML 1.0 support from Blender (such as discussions or commits). I've looked through the
release notes for recent versions, but they didn't tell me when this support was dropped, so I'm not sure where to start looking. If necessary and practical I'd consider doing some work on the VRML 1.0 import/export code to get it working.

I had been hoping that VRML 1.0 supporting was implement in Python, as the VRML 2.0 support is, so that it could be pulled into a Blender plugin. Unfortunately, it's not. I just took a look at the source for Blender 2.49b. VRML 1.0 support is implemented alongside several other "exotic" formats in /source/blender/blenkernel/intern/exotic.c.

The Blender exporting code is in the write_vrml function, but I was initially confused looking for the importing code. It turns out it's implemented as read_inventor, because VRML 1.0 is a subset of the Autodesk Inventor 1.0 ASCII format. That's good to know; maybe the support I'm looking for is available somewhere under the Inventor label.

It's definitely not built-in to the current version of Blender, though: there are no interesting hits for "VRML 1.0" or "inventor" in the source.

Blender doesn't support VRML1.0, Your best option would be to find a program that supports it and re-save as a different format that Blender does support (VRML2.0 or X3D)

If you search for VRML 1 to 2 there are many hits and links that look useful.

The successor to VRML1 was released in 1997, over 15 years old. Support for formats that are long out of use is limited, at some point its probably best to use file format converting applications.


Why does the material show 'unexpected' transparency effects? Some of the trees leaves have issues with transparency, why is this?

The material settings:

Image (by Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz, source :

For this particular problem it seams like your shader, and image's alpha are not the problem, but rather z-fighting. When there are doubled up faces with transparency  the z-fighting will not have the characteristic black look, but rather strange transparency artifacts (much like your render).

To fix the doubled faces, check your particle settings to see if there any duplicated leaves. If there are more particles then places to emit them, then they will get doubled up.

Here is a cube with 8 vertices, the particle system number for both is set to 32. The only difference in the two is for cube on the right I gave the particles some randomness.


What is the recommended angle to set the Pole angle to when setting up an IK rig? Is there a specific or recommended degree to set the pole angle at when setting up an IK? I've read that 90 or 180/-90 or -180 are good degrees to set it to, but does it matter? Can any degree be picked so long as everything is aligned and straight to a person's satisfactory? Or are there any repercussions from doing this?

In the ideal case, you should have the pole value set to zero, reaching the desired behaviour by tweaking the bones roll in edit mode, and it's a habit to choose positive X axis as main bone rotation. The more your rotations happen on a single axis, the easier is to edit the animation with the graph editor, and this is the reason why - 90 and 90 degrees are considered "good values" (they "swap" the main rotation from X to Z axis). In a Pro rig the pole set to zero lets the animator to tweak it for special purposes and reset the default value easily. Aside from theese considerations, if the rig is used by its creator, you can set that value as you want, without any other bad repercussion (as far as I know).


I'm having problem with adjusting the pivot of an Object How to translate or rotate Pivot of an object and keeps the pivot in the adjusted direction, please help if anybody knows about this.

The pivot point of an object is its origin: you can set the origin where you want: a common procedure is to select a vertex (or a group of vertices) where you want the pivot to be, then press Shift S - "Cursor to selected", then in object mode select the object and choose the option "Origin to 3D cursor".


2.8 Where have the 'other' tabs gone? Anyone know where the other tabs have gone in Blender 2.8?

They don't exist in that way now, the bulk of the info concerning tools are in the topbar. Add-ons are not yet ready for reintroduction in 2.8, and when they are done with the API then we will get an idea of how they will be accessed. Quite possible we will get special pop up panels if we want since they are now solving the window parenting issues.


Seam on edges of displacement map on rope I've been following BlenderGuru's tutorial on ropes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1drRNphACMc). It's a bit outdated but I've managed to get past some of the differences introduced in 2.8.
However, I have ran into a problem. My rope seems to have weird seams on the edges where the cylinders connect. I've checked and I don't have any double faces or vertices and the UV map lines up properly to each edge using 'Selected to Pixels'.

Is there something added in 2.8 that I need to change? I'm really not sure what the problem could be.

so the problem here is that your texture isn‘t seamless which you can fix by making it seamless in an imageprocessing software like gimp
here is a youtube tutorial how to do that
https://youtu.be/qAXRDfDaJMk


Is there a way to copy the mesh of a cloth sim at a particular point in time as an individual mesh? Can I take a cloth simulation, animate it and at some point during the simulation pause and copy the mesh in that position as a static mesh? I want to be able to copy the object with its vertices in a certain frame's position and be able to edit that mesh as its own unique object.

Create a copy of the cloth mesh, run the animation, stop it where you want and apply the cloth modifier.


display face for which I know its coordinates I am pretty new to blender. I have my 3D mesh and I have coordinates of a face (I mean corresponding vertices), and I don't know where it appears in the mesh. So my question is like this how can I display or even just color a face from its coordinates on a 3D mesh? I hope I was clear. I would be thankful for help.

One way you select the face by way of the co-ordinates of the constituent vertices is to make use of the 3D cursor. If the properties shelf is not visible on the right hand side of the 3D viewport, unhide it by pressing the N or clicking on the small + sign in the upper right hand corner of the viewport. Find the panel in the properties shelf window labeled 3D cursor, and if necessary, click the small triangle to the right of the label 3D cursor to open it. Enter the co-ordinates of one of the points in the entry bars to the right of the labels of the three axes, and the 3D cursor will move to the selected vertex; select the vertex. Next, enter the values for the co-ordinates of a second vertex just as you did the first in the co-ordinate slots of the 3D cursor, and navigate to the new location of the 3D cursor. Add the second vertex to the selection. You might now be able to determine which face you want from the selected points; if not, enter the co-ordinates for a third vertex, and if necessary, any other vertices for which you might have co-ordinates, and proceed just as for the first two, but in almost all cases, three vertices will be enough to give you the location of the desired face. One thing to watch out for, is that Blender keeps track of several different co-ordinate systes, global, local, normal, gimbal, and view, and you will need to make sure you are using the right co-ordinate space.

Another approach would be to take the x co-ordinates of the vertices you have, add them together, and divide by the number of vertices, to obtain the median value for the x co-ordinate, and then proceed to do the same for the y and z co-ordinates of all of the vertices. Enter the median values you calculate into the bars defining the 3D cursor location, and the cursor should in be in the desired face. Again, you will need to make sure you are using the co-ordinates relative to the correct co-ordinate space.


What'd be the best way to make a rim? So I'm making a lid to a jar and want it to have a slightly rounded rim that would visibly notch into the indent of the jar itself (think how a cookie jar's lid sits nicely) Though I'm unable to make a nice looking rim what'd be the best way?

I've tried extruding and scaling though that wound up insanely difficult to tweak due to the size of the tweaks (Should I just scale up the whole lid and then scale it back down when I'm done?)

I've tried making a bevel object but couldn't get it to line up not look right.

I also need to make an inside to the lid but that's fairly easy (to make it look like it has thickness)

What method'd be best for a complete novice?

Here's the model in question, if you want I could update with a version in wireframe/edit mode or add info if that'd help just tell me what you need to make recommendations!

I think this sort of thing is much easier to work in the flat, keeping the vertex count low, and working under a Subdivision modifier

So, I've made a nice pot, and a lid. But the lid doesn't have an inside, and needs to fit a recess in the pot.

In Edit Mode CtrlD steal (duplicate) a profile loop, lying in the XZ plane, from the original pot, and P split it off into a new object.
Do the same with the lid.
Join the new profiles CtrlJ into a new object.
Assign a Screw and Subdivision modifier to the new combined profile, to make it back into a pot-with-a-lid.
You can now edit the profiles in place -  if you don't show the modifiers in Edit Mode, you can flip back and forth Tab to Object mode to see how your work is going.

The picture shows the original profile in the vicinity of the rim, and 2 steps in the edit - using E extrusion on vertices to draw out new edges. Still in Edit, to make the inner dome,I created a new Circle mesh (unfilled) to add to the profile, moved and scaled it into the right place, deleted most of it, and O (Connected) proportionally edited it to keep it smooth inside. (Always keeping everything flat in XZ)

You have the choice of if or when to apply the modifiers, add bevels, whatever you like.

In short, this recommendation is: edit the profile, not the pot.


How to mask off part of image plane In my scene, I have an image plane with a picture of some kitchen tiles. I also have a cube which has been UV unwrapped and has the same texture as the image plane, but positioned so that the front face of the cube fits to one of the tiles.

I want to have the front face which has also been separated by selection so that I can open it like a lid and 'see' inside the cube.

The problem is that the image plane cuts into the cube. How do I mask the area where I want to see through to the cube behind?

Image plane

Scene

Please also look at my BLEND FILE if you can help.

Materials only solution

Create a cube
name it cookie cutter  (Optional)
Give it this material:

Apply this material:

to the background plane, and position cookie cutter to make the hole.

Note: When the camera looks through the cookie cutter at the plane, the plane will be transparent, so make the cookie cutter narrow. It may also be affected by other objects, so be careful.
Texture + Material Solution

Apply this material to the background plane

In the top image node, give it a black and white image, where it is white, there will be a hole.

Note: This is very robust, but can be a huge pain if you start moving your objects.


I Can't Open Blender 2.75 or Higher When Installed, Console Flashes and Closes Instead Whenever I try to install some of the more recent versions of Blender and run them, all I get is a console flash and a blank, gray Blender window before both of them close themselves entirely.

I've been poking around the previous versions and found that I can install and use versions that are based off the .exe installer, but the not .msi installer. This also applied to their .zip equivalents. So far I'm currently running on Blender 2.74 and it works well, but I want to update to version 2.79 so I can be up-to-date with everything.

All of my drivers are up to date, and I did run a debug method from the command panel and got an "Exception Access Violation" error from it. I looked up how to fix it and someone suggested to uninstall the Intel HD Display drive. Mine was Intel UHD Display, but since it worked for that person I figured to give it a go. Anyway, I deleted it, it turned off Night Light mode and kind of messed up the display a bit. I'm doing a system restore to fix it now, but I still don't have any leads on how to get the newer version of Blender working.

Blender v2.74 works well, so it seems that at worst I'd miss out on bug fixes and certain new features.

Any tips?

Original Poster here, I figured out how to fix the problem.

The first thing I did was check exactly what the error was. I found this out by running Blender with the Command Prompt ('cmd' in Windows search, 'cd' into the directory with blender, then ran it) and got the same error, 'EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION'

I plugged the error I got into Google, worded as "blender exception access violation" and ran into a different question asked by a user of this site, linked here, and found my solution.

It was the my display driver that needed to be updated. The thing is, I didn't realize this because neither of my driver updating services told me it needed to be updated until today. I use DriverEasy and Intel Driver & Support Assistance. Driver Easy, which I had used to update so many outdated drivers, said that I was completely up to date on my drivers. Intel didn't even say anything was wrong when I first ran the test, so the fact that it decided to tell me things needed to be updated now was something of a mystery, but it doesn't really matter now.

So I both downloaded the installer and the .zip file, and they both work!

So to everyone who was struggling with the same thing I was, and you know your computer should be able to normally run it, check your drivers. Preferably through multiple certified and trusted driver-updating services. Some of them will catch updates that others won't recognize, and some check more drivers than others.

So now my problem has been solved!


Show/Hide object orientations in Blender 2.8? I can't find the option to show/hide the local axis/orientation in the Blender 2.8 UI.

In short: armature properties/viewport display/axes


Blender Game Engine toggle FullScreen with script My 'FullScreen' script occurs an error.
Each time the object is clicked it activates the 'FullScreen' and then deactivates.

import bge
from bge import render

# Functions
def main():

    cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
    own = cont.owner

    # Action
    if bge.render.getFullScreen() == False:
        bge.render.setFullScreen(True)
        return
    else:
        bge.render.setFullScreen(False)
        return

# Action
main()

I test it and yeah it enter 'FullScreen' and then deactivates.

I assume that you was using a always sensor wich will trigger twice combined with a mouse click sensor.

To make it work the logic:

The script:

from bge import logic, render

left_click = logic.getCurrentController().sensors['MouseLC']
mouse_over = logic.getCurrentController().sensors['MouseOver']

if mouse_over.hitObject and left_click.positive:
    if render.getFullScreen():
        render.setFullScreen(False)
    else:
        render.setFullScreen(True)

If you want bge in front all instuctions.

import bge

left_click = bge.logic.getCurrentController().sensors['MouseLC']
mouse_over = bge.logic.getCurrentController().sensors['MouseOver']

if mouse_over.hitObject and left_click.positive:
    if bge.render.getFullScreen():
        bge.render.setFullScreen(False)
    else:
        bge.render.setFullScreen(True)

if you dont want left_clikc and mouse_over

import bge

if bge.logic.getCurrentController().sensors['MouseOver'].hitObject and bge.logic.getCurrentController().sensors['MouseLC'].positive:
    if bge.render.getFullScreen():
        bge.render.setFullScreen(False)
    else:
        bge.render.setFullScreen(True)


Having quite a bit of trouble with Baking I'm relatively new to Blender (3D modelling in general), and am working off of YouTube for the most part. I am trying to bake a head of hair and glasses (all in on object) so I can create a texture file for the model I am creating. The only tutorials relevant to my situation are outdated and therefore I cannot follow them, so here I am as a last resort.

This is what it looks like when I bake.

And this is what the actual rendered image looks like (in Cycles).

I don't think it is an issue with unwrapping, but I have no idea. Any help would be greatly appreciated, this has given me bigger headaches than I would like to admit.

The hair looks to me like a problem with the normals, to recalculate normals select all the hair polygons on edit mode and click on Mesh -> Normals -> Recalculate Outside. Regarding to the colors, maybe you are changing the viewport color texture instead of using real material colors, for that when the object is selected check the materials. Also don't trust totally the render view, if your environment light is black and your hair is black your texture will end up being practically all black, try changing the light environment to white, its so easy, just clicking on the world icon and move up the color light environment slider to have white light environment. Maybe any of this helps or makes you dominate something new :-)


How do I re-hide the bar with "View, Tool, Item"? I clicked the arrow that popped this out, so now how do I put it back?

It's named Sidebar.
There is three ways to hide it:

Drag the corner of sidebar to the right:

View3D > Menu > View > Sidebar (visible if checked):

Shortcut: N, as mentioned on previous screenshot.


How can I animate radial symmetric object? I want to make some kind or door animation for my unity project
and I have hard time animating and putting in keyframes.
I saw this tutorial on youtube and followed the steps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GdiOhqi_XY
now I want to animate them, but It doesn't work.
right now ovelapping of objects doen't matter. I just want to animate my gate as if opening and closing.

You can use displace modifier or shape key.
method 1:displace modifier

change the value or insert keyframe.

method 2:shape key

select the object and press the add button twice.

go to edit mode select all and move it.

exit edit mode and change the value or insert keyframe.


X-Ray Mode is Not Working I'm new to Blender and still learning how to make a simple character, but when I started creating the Armature the X-Ray Mode is not working probably. I enabled it and I can't see the bones. That makes it hard to create the character skeleton.

here are screenshots of whats happening:

Any help is appreciated ...

Your issue is you pinned the mesh settings in the properties panel, so you can change the settings of any other objects. Simply de-pin it so you can change the settings of the other objects:

Then, give the armature the X-Ray, because the object that has the X-Ray box checked is the one that will show through any other object. In this case, you want to to uncheck X-Ray on the mesh and check it for the armature.


Is it possible to have multiple physics simulations in blender game engine? Ok, I need to preface this with the fact that what I'm intending to do may not be possible in blender. I was needing to know if it is possible to create multiple rigid body systems within the blender game engine. I'm currently attempting to partition large portions of space in order to circumvent floating point limitations for a space flight simulator I am working on. Can anyone see any possible work around using Python? The only solution I can come up with is to partion space into octrees and have rigid body simulations in each with active objects to handle encounters/ collisions.

If the areas do not interact at all, can you even see them at the same time? Could you completely forget about the "other" ones while you're over in one small part of the universe?

If not, and you always need to be able to see them, you could try doing things with multiple scenes. Each simulation takes place near the origin, and the camera shifts to provide the correct view of it.

I will echo GiantCowFilms: I doubt floating point is the issue here. If I remember correctly, a 32 bit float has enough precision to work at ±1cm at the radius of earth (6000km)


What is the difference between Bone Layers and Bone Groups? What is the difference between Bone Layers and Bone Groups? Please use blender 2.8 or later for your answers.

Bone Layers (technically Armature Layers) is a way to hide visibility of rig controls.  When accessed from the Property window, it's a bit confusing.  It's much more intuitive when seen in the "N" panel (see below)
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/armatures/properties/skeleton.html#armature-layers

Bone Groups are a way to organize your rig controls by color (also allows selecting entire categories of bones).  Below, I've got IK controllers hilighted and you can see the color set associated with IK- RED for bone color, BLUE for selected bones (the left hand), LIGHT BLUE for active bones.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/armatures/properties/bone_groups.html


Texture baking is grabbing some textures from the wrong areas I'm currently trying to bake my textures onto a model for exporting it to Unity3D. Lighting is set up as normal, and a joined copy of the model has been created via duplication, in the exact position as the original version.

However, it seems that during the bake process, the roof texture is being flipped with the chimney texture;

https://i.imgur.com/Pv2IgAw.png

It looks like it's almost baking the texture map that's looking down the chimney, rather than a straight flip? Following this then, the side of the chimney is displaying the roof tiling texture.

The above is with a ray distance of 1. Setting ray distance to 2 seems to magnify the effect, while setting it to 0.5 seems to make it slightly better. However, going much lower than this results in a lot of artifacting.

Would anyone have any ideas on how you can work around this?

I am not very experienced with texture baking, but it sounds like your problem is due to the pieces intersecting each other when the rays are traced.

If I understand correctly, baking a texture basically creates virtual cameras a certain distance away from the mesh and renders from them, onto the object. This is only because you are trying to bake detail from one mesh to another. If the meshes are the same poly count there should be no reason to do this, so that might be an easy way to fix your problem.

However, in your case, Blender is using the face normals to determine the direction of the rays. This could be inaccurate and it can be more precise if you create a cage mesh so that it can draw a ray from the cage mesh through the vertex of the master mesh, until it hits the low poly mesh to determine where detail should be draw.

It is also possible that the UVs overlapped or were messed up when you joined objects.

Sorry that this isn't a direct answer, but I hope I gave you some ideas.


Create a hexagon pattern How can i make a pattern like this to be repeated an undefined number of times? I've tried to use the array modifier and so far I couldn't figure it out.

Your question is not clear enough, but if you're talking about a 3D object, here is a way to do it (maybe there's a simpler?):

Create a 6 vertices circle, subdivide it once, extrude it inwards and merge.
Extrude it up on the Z axis.
Extrude a 12 vertices cylinder from one of its face.

Delete 5/6 of the shape so that you only keep 1/6.
Put an empty at the same point as the origin of the object.
Use it as the object of an Array modifier / Object Offset mode, Count = 6.
Rotate the empty 60° on the Z axis so that the shape make a 360° star shape.

Apply the Array modifier. Delete the empty.
Repeat the star shape 7 times, use the Snap option / Vertex mode to make the shapes stick to each others.
Only keep the centre of this shape, it will be your pattern.
Remove any doubles.

Give it an Array modifier / Relative Offset mode, on the X axis. Choose the amount of iterations with the Count value.
Give it a second Array modifier / Relative Offset mode, on the Y axis.


Viewport rendered with some objects display in solid mode I am trying to find out if it is possible to display some objects in object mode when we are in rendered display mode.
I have created a studio spot with settings on viewport display, and i want keep the color (viewport display material) when i am on rendered display mode.

I can't use emission material for it because they will influate lighting of my scene.
Anyone have a solution, or some other idea?
Thx community !

You can use an Emission Shader, but you need to prevent it from contributing to the lighting : in Object Properties / Visibility / Ray Visibility, uncheck everything except "Camera".


How to create a flickering light source using cycles? I tried doing this using the 'Noise' option in the F-Curve Modifier, but i did not see and significant flickering. Am I doing something wrong? Or is there any other way this output can be achieved.
Also, is there any way to rapidly and randomly change the shape of a object --like a sphere or icosphere -- to further assist the flickering effect?


Why is there white splotches on my render? I used principled bsdf on everything

Your glossyness must be turned up a lot in your Principled shader for the skin. Try also messing around with the sub-surface shading, since it will give some more realistic results for the skin if tuned properly.

If you only gave one material for the entire head, try making some masks and give each part of the head (skin, hair, eyes) a different material, since in the real world they all have different surfaces.


Writing to file script failed I keep getting an error from this scrip and am unsure where I am making a mistake.

import bpy
import os

for ob in bpy.data.objects:
    file_object = open('blender_coordinate.txt', 'w') as f:
       f.write(ob.name)
        f.write(', ')
        f.write(ob.location)
        f.write(', ')
        f.write(ob.rotation)
        f.write('\n')
    file_object = close()
    return {'Finished'}

Here is the error i am recieving

  File "Text.py", line 5
    file_object = open('blender_coordinate.txt', 'w') as f:
                                                                                ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

location: <unknown location>:-1

Python script fail, look in the console for now...

I am still new to scripting and appreciate any help.

It seems that you mixed two methods. You can either use :

file_object = open('myfilename','w')
file_object.write(ob.name)
file_object.close()

or

with open('myfilename','w') as file_object:
    file_object.write(ob.name)
    #no need to close

The second option is better (see https://www.pythonforbeginners.com/files/with-statement-in-python).

Both options only require you to import bpy


Imported High Res texture but wrong resolution visualization in UV Editing I have this weird problem. I made a large image texture 18000x12000 pixel subdivided in 3x2 squares of 6000x6000 pixels each. I want to map each face on a cube, so I have to move the faces in UV Map editor, pretty simple.
However in UV Map editor I see a lower resolution of my image. The pixels are not squared anymore and I see a vertical smudge in the vertical transition of my square faces but I need the thing I see in Photoshop.
In the red box is how I see same thing in Photoshop.

I can save each squares alone but it is a step I would not want to take if possible.
Edit: For anyone who want to test it here a sample file. Just zoon in in UV Editor and confront it with the real texture in Photoshop
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11q7DyFVX4XEim2ZU4AOlbUdY-RkGqmq-/view?usp=sharing

This is a technical limitation of how the image editor works and your GPU. The cause is that you GPU cannot draw the texture in a single go. Blender downscales the texture so it fits on you GPU and can be drawn.
The current limitation will be addressed but no effort has been made yet.


What is the best way to procedurally texture an object without the hard edged seams I am getting? I have a simple image I made which can be tiled to produce a relatively nice texture. I followed some tutorials with chainmail and using the blend function it looks nice, but for other textures I cannot blend them. My nodes are set up for Texture Coordinates -> Vector Transform -> Mapping -> Image Texture (set to Box, which is what gives the best result but has hard edges) -> Principled -> Material output.
Is there a way to made it seamlessly wrap around a complex mesh like a body. I don't mind some mild stretching as a compromise.

For your textures, if the Image Texture Blend option doesn't fix the problem, I don't think there's any easy way to hide the visible seams. You could try to fix it in Texture Painting mode with the Stencil or the Clone brush, but it will really depend on the texture I guess.
So I probably misunderstood your question, but for the specific texture you're showing, a kind of grid, you could use your current topology:

Duplicate your object, hide the original. As suggested by Lemon, if you want a more dense and uniform net, use the Remesh tool/ Voxel option in the Properties panel > Object Data > Remesh:

If you want the topology to be rotated 45°, select all and CtrlE > Unsubdivide with an Iteration of 1 (Operator box), like that:

Go in Edit mode, switch to Face Select, select all, press i twice to inset the faces. Keep these faces selected, give them a material (here orange). Ctrli to invert the selection, give the strokes another material (here red):

Unhide the original torso, it must overlap its copy, go in Edit mode, select all, unwrap (Smart UV Project mode), in the UV Editor create a new image (size 2048 x 2048 for example), in the Shader Editor create an Image Texture node, don't plug it for the moment, load the image you've created. Make sure you're in Cycles, select the copy, shift select the original, go in the Properties panel > Render > Bake, choose Bake Type > Diffuse, disable Influence > Direct and Indirect, enable Selected to Active, give a bit of Extrusion value, click on Bake:

Once the map as been created, plug the Image Texture node into the Principled BSDF (or Diffuse), the map is now displayed on the surface of the original torso. If you use a Subdivision Surface modifier You may need to give some corrections in Texture Painting mode:


Why is everything white when rendering? I don't know what I've done wrong, but it's the first time that this is happening to me. I made an animation with different color falling solids and when I render it, everything is white. Here is my file so you can look it up maybe.
PS: I know it may have something t do with texture/material but I am too much of a noob to solve my problem.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NKckJdAOTi7XXVRXuomuJoq2ppG-QDpV

What gets rendered is the camera view.

Your camera is aimed to a place where there are no objects.

Please read:What's the quickest, easiest way to point the camera somewhere in blender?


Airplane Rounded Body I am trying to make an airplane body from what was a square, and this is what I have so far:

I tried to added a Subdivision Surface, but that doesn't make it look right:

I have also tried to add a Bevel, but that doesn't look right either:

What is the best way to achieve a rounded body?

First of all, model the differences in the x dimension; the tail is never as thick as the fuselage. go into edit-mode and scale the faces of the tail on the x axis. (S+X) you may need to hit O to maintain a good profile while scaling.

Next go in and select the top and bottom side edges of the tail and in the options on the right (N) turn up the Mean Crease to 1.00. This will make sure that as the side is smoothed, the profile is not lost.

Based on your second screen shot, I would say that you have included the entire side of the fuselage as one N-Gon: you need quads for sub-surf to work efficiently. You can go in and break the large n-gon up by selecting opposing vertices and hitting J. Now you can successfully add a subdivision surface modifier without getting unexpected results.

I will add screen shot when i get home :) hold on; they're coming.


Creating a large landscape with accurately varied elevations I am teaching a Blender class and my advanced students are animating a scene in Charleston Harbor set during the Civil War.  Since I am a CAD guy, creating a scaled version of a harbor chart using AutoCAD and Inventor was easy for me but creating a varied elevation was not.  I extruded the landscape to an elevation of 20 feet it is  flat.  I'd like some help finding an easy way to give the mesh a varied height based on the harbor chart shown below.  I plan to use the chart as a texture over everything.

You can find the text I am using at http://www.cdschools.org/cms/lib04/PA09000075/Centricity/Domain/81/BlenderBasics_4thEdition2011.pdf.  On pages 32 & 33 of that text it shows a process similar to what I have in mind that divides a plane into squares and changes the height by selection and movement of vertices upward.  That would work for this but I don't know a way to make an accurate measurement of  height for movement of a mesh as large as the one I am using (8 x 10 nautical miles).  One can scale an object by typing the scale factor.  Can I move vertices up in that manner?

Is there a way you can show me that allows me to paint height areas rather than to drag them up?  It would be great if I could add the harbor chart over the land areas as a texture and use it as a guide for changing the elevation of pertinent areas.

A map with 3D elevation can be generated from images.

In Blender 2.76, here is a workflow for generating elevation maps.

Obtain elevation data as an image. For example, potential sources are http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/basic/ , http://eros.usgs.gov/elevation-products , or http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ .
Import the image as a plane. This may require enabling the 'import as plane' add-on.

Go into edit mode and subdivide the plane lots of times - 10 to 16 times works well. The more times you subdivide, the finer the elevation will be, but the slower blender will respond.

Apply the displacement modifier to the plane. Choose the image that was imported as the texture.
Adjust the displacement modifier to get a good scale for the displacement.

For some visual effects, in Blender cycles, a color ramp can be used to color based on the altitude.

A blend file with a south-east use map imported is here:


Decimate Selection down to a specific vertex count I have a vertex loop that was produced from a boolean intersection. I was wondering if there's a way, in Edit mode, to decimate the loop from the 50 vertices it is to say, 12 or so. It's not very curvy, it won't lose much shape, just a lot of unnecessary vertices.

Decimate Geometry

As your question's title - Decimate Geometry is what you're looking for. Both can find in Blender 2.79b and Blender 2.80 beta.

It collapses those selected geometry by the determined parameters, you can always redo this operator in the invoked panel to see which parameter suit for your case.

Select your target geometry in edit mode and with the mesh dropdown > Clean Up > Decimate Geometry

What if I need a beautiful edge loop?

As another answer point out, you could create a circle with desired vertices. Move it to the edge loop you want to decimate, delete the complicated one and join the circle created. And choose both the edge loop of the opened edges, use Bridge Edge Loops operator to connect them.


Surface shown in Eevee but not in Cycles I'm trying to model a cylinder (basket) on top of a wooden surface. For the material I use an emission shader with a picture image. Here's how the bowl material is set:

(The wooden surface is similar, both taken from a picture I have, using projection UV).
When I try to render that using Eevee, the results seem reasonable:

But when I switch to Cycles (my intended renderer), the materials are not shown:

What am I missing? I didn't use any special nodes or anything for this, but here's how the node graph for the basket looks like:

Thanks.
Context: I have a short clip I camera tracked, and I want to replace the surface and the basket.

Thanks Nathan, your comment gave me the courage to dig deeper. Eventually, I found 2 issues.

Because the wood surface was actually generated as the ground when I used 'Setup Tracking Scene', it was set as 'Shadow catcher' in the Visibility section of the object properties.
When I added the cylinder, I added it to the 'background' collection, which was marked as 'holdout' in the same section.

Again, thanks Nathan for your tip, I added a cube above the surface, made it glossy and it rendered fine, which led me to that extra investigation.


Blender Internal Animation Render Crashes with New Font I realize this sounds dubious ... possibly a bug... probably user error.

When I add a new font to a blender project that came with pre-packaged font it causes the BI animation rendering to crash Blender.

The message in the upper left says, 'Frame 1 ... Raytree Building', then Blender exits with no further warning or error message.

... on tinkering around a little more it's a specific true type font that I just imported ...

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Answering My Own Question:

Blender is short on official documentation ... it appears that free type fonts are supported and of those Blender can be picky about fonts with ligatures, or connections between letters.

So far all the fonts from http://www.dafont.com, recommended on that site, that I have tried worked.  That said I've only tried 4 that were very close to the original.

With that information I've been able to BI render the animated title sequence.


I have a rigged object that I want to cut in half and be able to move around, but the armature deforms it I made this elephant and rigged it, and now I want to cut it in half and be able to drag the two halves away from each other. However, whenever I do this, the armature distorts and deforms the object, and it looks horrible. Is there a way to apply the armature or something so that when I bisect the object and move each half the two objects don't become distorted? Thanks!

One possible solution is animate your rig until you get to the point where you need it to split in two. When you get to that point, go into Object Mode, select the rig, Shift + select the character mesh that is bound to it, and then duplicate them both (Shift + d). You will have a copy of both armature and character mesh, which means all vertex weights will be inherited, as well as all keyframes, up to that point. Put an invisible material on the half of the new character mesh that you don't want to be rendered, and also put one on the opposite half of the old character mesh. When you add new keyframes to the new rig, it can look as if the character is splitting in two.


Scaling a cylinder along both X and Y axis I am trying to scale a cylinder along both the X and Y axis at the same time, so as to attain the same value.

I have tried to apply a mirror on both the X and Y axis, but this doesn't scale along the Y when I scale along the X axis. Using the mirror, I get the following result:

I am looking for an equal scale on both the X and Y axis.

You can exclude an axis by pressing ShiftX/Y/Z. So to scale on the X and Y you would press S, ShiftZ and then drag the cursor.

With a mirror modifier:


Is there a way to import many objs and then move them 32 units additively? I'm trying to make a scene from a game and the map is divided into chunks as per usual. But the problem is when i want to import the map i have to import each chunk individually and then move it manually 32 units on the y axis so they form the map. But this would take many many hours to do because the map has over 1000 chunks. It think it's probably possible with some sort of script but i'm a beginner with scripting and haven't found a way to do so.

batFINGER shows how to load objects from a .blend file here.

To move the objects, you could use

selected_objects = [obj for obj in bpy.data.objects if obj.select]
for i, obj in enumerate(selected_objects):
    obj.location[1] = 32*i

This moves the selected objects so that their y-coordinates are 32
units apart. Essentially this idea and a number of other examples are showcased
on the Blender Developers Blog
here.


How to create a cylinder with a given circumference? I have a face on a mesh and I want to create a cylinder where the faces around would perfectly fit on this given face, not taking in account the height of the cylinder.

I know the number of "vertices" (8).
I have the size of the face I want to stick the cylinder on (0.399833).

How can I do that?

EDIT : Here's an image. I need to merge the two faces.

OK, I assume you need the box to stay the same size and want an octagon that has the right size or else Bastian's answer would be best. I also assume that you want a really clean result because one could simply scale around the cursor (with the cursor sitting on a vertex of the box and the box snapped to the box using the magnet), getting it roughly right and then zoom all the way in to do the fine adjustment.

I tried to use snapping while scaling it but somehow Blender steadily refuses to bend to my will. So I use a more predictable approach.

I set the magnet to vertex and closest. Then I go into the editmode of the box, select the right face and duplicate it. I rotate the face by 45 degrees (R45Return) and then move it holding ctrl so the magnet snaps it to the edge of the box. It's sometimes easier to roughly position the face first without snapping so that Blender gets which verts are supposed to be closest. I repeat to snap rotated faces until I have the octagon.

After that I hit remove doubles and fill the edgeloops and delete the inside face so the mesh stays manifold. I also select all verts and hit ctrl-N to recalc the normals

An array modifier would of course work, too.


how to correct topology after boolean operation? So I have used the boolean operation to create a spherical hole inside a cube and was wondering how I could correct the topology. The result of this was:
So I was wondering how I can edit the topology so I can use subsurface modifier or if it is better if I Use a different method to create the hole. If I should recreate it a different way than what would be a good way keeping in mind that this is from a cube.
Thanks!

First triangulate the model.
After that, add a subdivison modifier, with simple and one with Catmull-Clark selected. Then do loopcuts, where you want to have sharp edges. Slide the loopcuts till the edges, but not on them, just a little bit before.
You have to play a little bit with the strengt of the modfiere.


Edge Split Modifier Separating Faces? I'm making a lightsaber, and I'm pretty much finished, I just want to smooth it out a bit without loosing my sharp edges. I added a edge split mod, but some of the edges become disconnected from the rest of the object after the sub surf modifier is added. How can I fix this?

The edge split modifier affects the angle above which a corner will be treated as sharp by the Shade Smooth setting. It does that (I assume) by telling Blender that the faces are discontinuous (i.e. split) at those edges. So if you then apply a subsurf to those faces they get rounded off at free edges, which is what you are seeing.

If you want the subsurf for other reasons, then just move it above the edge split modifier in the stack. Use the little white arrows in the top right of the modifier panels to do that.

It looks like you might want to try the bevel modifier in order to get the effect you are after. Subsurf and edge split will still be useful to you, but bevel might give you a bit more control over the fine details.


wrong rotation transform on rig Why when im rotating the X axis in positive values the feet "goes up"(in this example is the feet but is all the armature as well) as you can see the values in X rotation are 2.600(positive) BUT i have another armature where the foot "goes down" with the same axis with the same positive values

why this happen. as you may guess this inversion happens with negative values(for example -2.600) as well and affect the Z axis too i want my armature rotate like in the second picture, all the bones that ive been testing they behave like in the second picture, only my armature behave like this, like is the weirdo of the class

It's a bone roll problem.
The bone rolls differ in your rig. Bones have 3 axes and a roll value. These values determine in which direction for example a limb bends when the bones are rotated around one of the axes in a positive or negative direction.
Select the armature, go in Edit mode, and check the bone roll values. Activate the display of the bone axes to see what happens.
You can select a several bones and use Recalculate Roll (Shift+N) + Active Bone to assign the roll value to all bones. Blender takes the value of the active bone, the last one you selected.

Important! Note that a roll of 180 is not the same as -180. For centered bones make sure the X and Y positions of the head and tail are 0, not -0. I had a blender version (2.91?) that used -0 and the (calculated) roll then was -180 but for 0 it was 180. The result is a mess when several bones have different signed values (+/-).
Here is an example in Pose mode of roll 0 (top) and roll -180 (bottom). For both, the local rotation is in the positive direction of the x-axis of the bones. In the first example, it bends forward, while in the second it bends backward. With a roll value of 90, it would bend to the right.


How to X-Mirror weight paint of "Weight Gradients" to .R/.L bones in Blender I'm having trouble X-Mirroring or Topology Mirroring vertex weights of a mesh when I use the Weight Gradient tool (AltR click and drag) in Weight Paint mode. I have symmetrical bones on my character, with mirrored names (Left bones have .L , Right bones have .R). However, the problem persists and I have no idea what is wrong. Could it be a problem of having different "Bone Groups" on each side? or something else?

CHECK 1: Is your armature containing all the bone hierarchy correctly to "DEFORM" from either side to side? It looks like you don´t have vertex groups correctly assigned from one of your sides. First, identify which side is the one working (I would assume it´s the bone.L side that´s working).

You want to mirror that weight paint groups onto the RIGHT side, go onto:

CHECK 2: Once you identify, which one is the current working side, you´ll want to MIRROR it onto the other side. For that you´re going to use a MODIFIER VERTEX WEIGHT MIX.

The basics are simple: Create a vertex group from your weight paint mode while selecting your character. Then go to your vertex groups (here on the pictures you see a green.L side and a pink.R side) and create vertex groups for your LEFT and RIGHT side of the body (or whatever you want to mirror weights from). Then with the modifier you´ll want to select those vertex groups. One will transfer ONTO the other. So make sure you create a duplicate of the VERTEX group that is CURRENTLY WORKING (you don´t want to loose it in case something goes wrong).
Once you identify the correct .L or .R weight working you want to transfer it to the one that´s NOT working with 1 as influence. While in weight paint mode you may want to click the SHOW VERTEX button to make your life easier.

So once you create your new vertex groups (green.R, purple.L on my picture) you´ll want to transfer the weights. So go out to OBJECT MODE again, use the MIX WEIGHT MODIFIER, now select your vertexGroup.L and vertexGroup.R and set the transfer mode to ADD (because your left side or your right side need to influenciate fully the side that´s not working).

Finally the last option to check is the button: MIX SET (Vgroup A and B).
This means that when the transfer is over, the state in which your group is going to be ending up influenced by the vertexGroup you choose will dominate (will be the one you choose here).
If you leave alone this option alone, you end up with a simple mix (a+b). Try other options if it suit your purposes.

The final process will yield a Vertex group that is working, one that´s not working (this is expected) and another one that has the mix of both Vertex groups (this is expected).

Fill the names of the vertex groups. Hit apply. You now have mirrored (transfered mix) weights.

Well, that about explains it all. Every parameter covered. Let me know about the bounty. Cheers.


How to add glitter effect in 3D render How do you get a glittering effect when navigating inside a 3D-view as shown here SketchFab Post ?   As you can see, for some reason the particles around her appear when in motion & almost disappear when stopped. I am just looking for the basics, don't need a highly detailed description.

It's very easy,

Go to the compositor
Make sure you check use nodes
Add a glare node in between "render layers" and "composite"
Set it to "fog glow" and try various settings till you get desired effect(s)
"Threshold" controls pretty much how much glow there is
The lower it is the more glow
"Size" controls how blurry is the glow
I normally use only those two settings

Voila !!! Magic lights.


What is the fastest way to texture bake a full scene? I am familiar with the concept of baking in cycles to use it in the bge.
Can I somehow bake the whole scene without having to select one object each time?

If yes which is the fastest way so I won't have to waste a lot of time?

I don't care if the CPU will work overtime.

Depending on your intended volume either by doing it manually or making a script that handles the bake.

You will need to manage at least the following:

texture resolution for each baked mesh object
which objects to bake (you probably don't want to bake glass / transparent objects / illuminating surfaces / gfx like light halos etc
setting up lightmap bake UV layer (most likely you have the default UV used for getting the texture itself tiling correctly)
setting up an image texture node for every material in the object being baked and make a new image for it and make the node selected
saving the texture on disk with naming convention that allows you to read the images into a new, realtime baked materials that correspond to the mesh objects when you start BGE

If you plan on making more than 1 or 2 levels, to me it definitely calls for script assistance.


Is Color Management applied to ColorRamps? While I like aesthetically to render with "Filmic" active it seems to be difficult to work with ColorRamps. The following radial gradient might be a "mask" for a Mix Shader but it´s hard to get a simple fading from pure black to pure white. Am I right that gamma correction is applied to a ColorRamp Node before it is pluged to let´s say a Mix Shader? And if so how to disable this?

To answer the subject line, no.

But wait, there's more!

None of the UI in Blender is colour managed. That's right. With the exception of the HSV picker, which has a rudimentary bit of management flopped on it by way of the view transform, none of Blender is colour managed. One idiot can only bang on this drum for so long before they get a bit exhausted.

In your particular instance, the colour ramp is mapped from 0.0 to 1.0, which means absolutely nothing under a scene referred model, other than an arbitrary range of values up to 1.0. Filmic uses values that extend up to around 16.0 scene referred, so the colour ramp would need a colour transform selection on it to make it useful in this context.

So it is up to you folks! Filmic was crafted with the hopes of exposing the most basic concepts of colour management to the experienced pixel pusher with the hope that they will take up the torch and put pressure on the software. That is, it is up to you folks to put the pressure on the developers to get the damn software to work properly before adding further fluff.

Another interesting tidbit: Blender won't display correctly on every Apple product since 2015! Curves? Same problems as you cited here. And many, many more including problems of wide gamut references, mangled up blend modes from the display referred Adobe PDF specification, etc!

Good luck!