Alpha modifier, or properties, that affect the child of the group "as a single object" I try to transfer my UI design workflow into Blender and I have one major blocker.
In UI design we overuse the ability to group object and modify/animate the properties of this group like scale/position/rotation and alpha (or opacity).
The only way I found to do this is for opacity is to make controller that control the child individually and that really not the result I need. I need to control the opacity of the group as it's a single object.
Is there a way to do that without going into complex, time consuming and not easily iterative process of a compositing phase ?

For Cycles, we can use "Transparent depth" and test if it is 1 or more and use it to drive the alpha value.
The disk below is a non transparent sphere behind the planes.

Less than means 1 if no transparency depth else 0.
Multiply that with your wanted alpha value and plug it to the alpha channel of the shader.

If you're using objects that have several layers (for instance replace the planes by Suzanne(s)), don't forget to tune the light path max bounces for transparency in the rendering settings (as if not, some transparent part may be rendered as solid):


Why do my spotlight's dimensions differ between rendered and non-rendered view? In an animation scene of mine, I render most of the scene in Cycles and only the volumetric light in BI using a fully linked copy of the original scene where only the layer with the spotlight is actually rendered and the other layers are used as a mask. The problem is that the rendered search light does not match the preview of the cone that I see in non-rendered 3D view (with the "show cone" option enabled, obviously).

To illustrate, here's what it looks like in solid view:

And the exact same frame in rendered view:

As you can see the cone is much narrower than in solid view. In other frames, the rendered cone also appears to point at a slightly different place than the solid view.

Any ideas what might be causing this? Where should I check? Could this be some sort of cached setting (I did tweak spot sizes and directions after creating the linked scene)? Where would I reset this?

I'm currently using Blender 2.69.8 Fastest Build from graphicall.org but also had this problem with the original 2.69 release.

[originally posted as part of the question "How do I properly set up a spotlight cone?"]

This is because you have scaled the spot light in the 3D view. Scaling the spot light seems to effect the render in strange ways (the cone seems to get larger but the illuminated portion does not).

You can clear the scale with AltS. Then you can make it the proper size again, now using the settings in Properties > Object Data.


Key for remove doubles Every time I remove doubles, I go space bar, remove doubles, and press enter. What is the "legit" way of doing this? Is there a faster short cut key? If not its fine.

Since 2.8 it's named Merge by Distance.

Mesh > Clean Up > Merge by Distance
Shortcut: Alt + M > By Distance


How can I make the length decrease constant between each object when using array modifier and object offset? I'm trying to make a wicker weave for a chair I'm modelling, and am using an array modifier with object offset to model part of it. The issue is that the step size between each instance of the array isn't constant, so I'm getting this exponential looking curve at the edge, when what I really need is closer to a straight line (which I've annotated in the attached screenshot). If anyone has any idea how to make the step size constant or knows an alternative way of doing this, that would be much appreciated! Thanks, Rowan

2.79
Natively in 2.79 you can use Dupliframes under 2.79 for this step. Create first keyframe, last keyframe of location and scale and enable under Object Properties > Duplication > Frames

Or you can use script (by Chebhou). It generates separated objects, that shares the same object data, so you can easily edit original data (shape) to affect all those objects or simply change object data to completely different one. Like if script generates a cube you can switch to Torus object data or what ever under Data Properties. But I see script works in 2.79 ...
2.9+
For 2.9x you would have to use something like Animation Nodes like Ligazeton's example. Or probably in experimental build you can try Geometry Nodes.


No longer able to mirror objects I'm still fairly new to blender and the last few days I had been following sculpting tutorials and was able to mirror objects with no problem. But today when I was trying to mirror them it is not working. I also get this pop in the bottom saying "failed to set value". I tried to look up how to fix this but did not get the answer I was looking for and I have even updated
to the latest version and I still cannot get the mirroring to work anymore. Any suggestions on figuring this out would be awesome.
Thank you so much.

Your view is showing $Y$ and $Z$ axis (Green and Blue lines across the screen respectively), but the modifier is set to mirror only on $X$, which would be perpendicular to this view, therefore impossible to see.
You can add mirror in $Y$ on the modifier.

It helps if you use a different view, that clearly shows the axis you  want to work on (like top view)


refraction and caustics in cycles I'm trying to model this Fiji bottle with 'fake' refraction, it looks fine in the viewport:

But in the rendered result it looks very grainy and the refraction is lost:

Should i give up trying to achieve this in cycles?

I'm just posting this so I can post the pics - if it ends up being no good, i'll delete this answer. Here are a just a couple of things you can try.
Firstly, make sure both Reflective and Refractive Caustics are enabled in the Render Properties tab:

Also, in Material Properties (for each material used), make sure "Multiple importance" is selected, and "Homogeneous" is disabled.

Lastly, if you're using a denoiser, try turning it down by about half and see if that's what's causing it.


Can I refer to another object's properties from a Cycles node shader? Drivers? If so, how? I am trying to develop several shaders that need to take into account the position or orientation of another object in my scene.  Seems like a generally useful thing to be able to do.

Here's an example of something that almost does what I want (for a simplified case).  Here is a Cycles shader node tree that will shade an object green for points that are more than 1 unit from the origin and red if they are less than 1 unit from the origin.

And here I'm moving a cube with the material close to the origin to see the effect.

Here is the crux of what I am looking for...  Rather than having the origin be the source of the red colored region, I would like an Empty to be the center of the red colored region.  And I would like to move the Empty around rather than the other objects to control the effect.  Thanks!

The .blend file for my example can be found at...

http://readyposition.org/PositionBasedShader.blend

I can use a geometry node to get things like normal and position from the shaded object.  But I'm unsure of how to get properties from the other object.

I have just started down the road of using drivers.  I figured I could create a custom property on the shaded object and add a driver that sets it to the other object's properties.  Then I'm hoping I can use an Attribute node to get at the custom property.

However, I'm at a loss how to best do this via the UI.  In particular...

Can I add a custom property for a vector quantity (e.g. position)?
Can I create custom property groups so I can add drivers to x, y, and z at once (as the built in property groups for things like position, rotation, and scale have)?
Do I need to do x, y, and z separately and then convert them to vectors with a Combine XYZ node?
Can I even refer to a custom property via an Attribute node?
Do I need to resort to Python?
Can this be done at all or do I need to find some other way with multiple passes?

If someone can provide an extremely simple example for Cycles it would help me a lot. How about a shader for a UV Sphere where the sphere is green where it is within 1 blender unit of an Empty and red where it is more than 1 blender unit from the Empty? Can even just be in x to make things simpler.

As you have said you can use drivers  were you get X,Y and Z separately from using drivers then combine them and use the result :

here is one of the drivers :

and this is the what changed in the node setup :

and this is the result : I'm moving the Empty object 'which is not visible'

Note : i didn't use driver directly on the 'combine XYZ' because it was clipping negative values


Hiding a part of an object in the Object Mode How can I hide parts of an object in the Object Mode? I need to model different parts (each part has to be a single object) in a big box surrounding them (external object). My task is to model a room and the things contained in it; therefore I need the positions of the different objects in reference to the room's walls and ceiling...

To clarify: this is the room from outside (a simple box)

whereas this is the same room from inside

I want to add some features to the room in the inner part but do not know how to hide just some parts (walls and ceiling) of the first object modeled.

E.g. If I want to add the stairs going from the ground floor to the first floor (visible in the 2nd picture) I need to hide walls and ceiling to be able to use right/left/top view. Though being these modeled as part of a single object, making invisible the whole object would hide also the ground and first floor which I definitely need...

you can  use the mask modifier for this task :

create a vertex group of the vertices that you want to hide
add a mask modifier  and assign the vertex group
you can click beside the vertex group to switch the effect
the mask will also has effect in the render you have to uncheck 'show in render'


Artifacts in render, but not in preview? I have spent hours figuring out how to do this piece of my object. Starting over with a new mesh a number of times.  I punched the holes manually, after learning the evil that is boolean modifiers.  But I just can't seem to shake my bad luck with this piece!

Many artifacts show in render, but in render preview it looks nearly flawless.  I don't have the option to leave out smoothing..it looks too poly without it.  I have no idea how to fix this. Here is the rendered version:
1
Also notice how the metallic piece to the right (up against the glass) renders just fine, despite the fact that it is made with the same material.

Here is how it looks in render preview:

The mesh in edit mode:

Here is a link to my blender file for you to go nuts with:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9lh6z9hyeqwneqn/sonicpublic.blend?dl=0

You have a duplicate of the cylinder with holes object called Circle.002 which is hidden in the viewport, but not in the render. If you enable it in the viewport, the effect becomes obvious:

Also I'm pretty sure you don't need so much subsurf. Usually I don't use more than two subdivisions, sometimes three.

With all objects set to one level of subsurf, your scene renders in about 2:48 for me.

With the original subsurf settings, it renders in 3:50.

The visual difference seems pretty negligible, but there is change some of the lighting/camera angle in between tests because I stupidly did the 1 subd test first, then had to reload the scene to get the original subserf levels..

There are also quite a few ngons (faces made up of more than 4 vertices). These usually don't play well with subsurf, and cause some distortion. Here is an example screenshot of some ngons (subsurf is disabled in the screenshot):

I also noticed that you are getting a lot of noise from the environment texture. Enabling Multiple importance sampling in the world settings should help reduce that:


How to make a solid shader in blender? I'm trying to get an accurate RGB 255, 0, 0 color.

Render engine: Cycles

Here's my attempt, what am I doing wrong?

I've tried using different color management settings, but still pixels jump from 255 0 0 to 255 1 1.

The slight deviation in color is caused by dithering. If you want to save accurate values for non-color data, then you have to:

Set Dither to zero in Output Properties > Post Processing when you intend to save an 8-bit image

Use one of the following options: Set the View Transform to Raw, disable Save As Render in the file browser or save as OpenEXR to by pass the color management. The latter is the best approach since OpenEXR can store the actual scene linear values.


Equalize subdivision of a mesh Say I have a mesh with inconsistent subdivision. There are some areas with really large faces and no details, and other areas with lots of tightly packed detail. For example, a building with detailed windows with window sills and trim on one side, and no windows on another.

I would like to subdivide or otherwise cut the large blank faces to be at about the same level of detail/face size as the detailed areas, but without further subdividing the detail. It does not have to be exact, and I don't care if it causes triangles, ngons, or other such bad topology. The goal is to able to standardize the mesh for purposes of vertex colors and the pointiness attribute.

Here is an example. On the right is what I have, on the left is what I'd like to turn it into.

The meshes are too complex to do it by hand. Is there any way to automate this?

For simple topology you may be able to dissolve edges.  Then use loop cuts again.
Loop Tools, which is an addon,  can also evenly space adjacent loops

Remesh Modifier does this well.  This is often useful for Text to Mesh.
Slightly off topic, but how do you work well with such a jarring UI theme? – NᴏᴠɪᴄᴇIɴDɪsɢᴜɪsᴇ 9 mins ago


What is the easiest way to create a planar grid of vertices? This must be very easy, but can't find it anywhere. I am trying to create a planar grid of vertices to specification (i.e. I want to say the size of the plane and how many vertices in X direction and how many in Y or Z direction). It would also be okay to start with a quad face.

I found very clunky ways of doing it, including subdividing faces or edges followed by grid fill, but they are very inconvenient in the sense that you can only do easily grids that have a power of two number of vertices. I want to be able to specify non-power of two dimensions (i.e. 1440 x 500), which is extremely tedious to achieve by subdivision.

Is there an easier way to achieve this without having to create the geometry by hand? Ideally I would like to avoid scripting.

Ok, as I expected, it is actually trivial. In blender >= 2.77:

Add > Grid

You can then specify the number of subdivisions and the radius of the grid as options.


Blender Cycles True Displacement I want to use the displacement node in cycles node editor, i was wondering whether subdividing an object or using sub surf modifier makes any difference, if so which one I should go for in order to get a TRUE displacement effect when Experimental render set enabled.
thanks

Cycles doesn't support true displacement yet in Supported feature set. The displacement input of Material Node will only do bump mapping in that case.

With Experimental feature set the True displacement option is available under Material settings in versions 2.78 and up (for older Blender versions see edits of this answer):

This will not change the number of vertices or polygons in the scene and will not raise memory much (only the extra displacement texture). From left to right on 20k polycount sphere - No displacement, Bump, True:

For adaptive displacement you need to use a Subdivision modifier for each object and set the Adaptive tag and set the micro-polygon pixel size under render settings:

This will subdivide all the polygons of the whole object adaptively to meet the desired micro-polygon pixel-size. Each object can be adjusted differently with the Dicing Scale ratio.

Objects/polygons further away from camera will be subdivided less and objects/polygons closer will be subdivided more.

This will increase the memory size of the scene while rendering significantly (based how much you need to subdivide). The sphere above with 20k polys took 201MB of VRAM with no adaptive and 2271MB for adaptive micro-polygons of 1px size (the default render setting).

  I was wondering whether subdividing an object or using sub surf modifier makes any difference

Subdividing with subdivision modifier and subdividing in edit-mode take the same amount of render memory.

But the adaptive subdivision will save memory, because objects in distance will be less subdivided.

Now you will get true displacement effect with both subdivision methods (material or displacement + subdivision modifiers).

It is worth noting that the experimental render kernel takes more VRAM than Supported kernel.


Any extrusions (including solidify modifier) only extrude faces in global y axis, rather than using normals I'm trying to create a shirt for a model by extruding some faces out a bit, but no matter how hard I try, the faces won't extrude properly. I've scoured the internet already, but haven't had any luck finding a solution. I'll add the download for the file if you want to see for yourself.

As you can see, the normals on my mesh are correct. There aren't any duplicate verts or faces.

But when applying any extrusion or solidify, the generated faces only scale out in the y axis.

Here's the link to download.

Download Romy.blend from Dropbox

You need to apply the scale of your object with ctrl A. Then your Solidify will work correctly. If you choose to extrude instead, then use alt S afterwards, i.e. shrink scale.


Video Quality Loss after Rendering in VSE I rendered an animation in a 720p-png format and the images looked HQ. After re-rendering them into video in VSE the video lost its quality and looked blurred. (I tried higher bitrates and different formats but nothing worked). How to keep my video quality as good as images?

Rendering with the file format AVI Raw should help you retain your Quality ;-)

But if you don't want to have your file sizes explode try H.264 instead.

You can reduce your Bitrate to 5000 for your 720p video. Change your GOP Size to half your Frame Rate.


Problem Duplicating Textures I have a material that contains several procedural textures. I need to duplicate an object that has that texture applied, and then change one of the texture parameters in the duplicated object without changing the original. I need to do this with python but I can't even to it with the  UI. Because setting the Material option under 'Duplicate Data' allowed me to create a new instance of the material properties I thought selecting Textures would do the same, but apparently not.

So how do I and what does selecting 'Duplicate Data: Textures' in user preferences actually do? (I'm running 2.69)

File used to generate the screen shots below, below.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/234662328/Limestone_1.blend

Normally, Cycles Texture will not be defaultly linked by another material. The problem you met is because you put the texture in the node group, which can be shared as sort of "public datablock", while there is currently none for that in the Duplicate Data setting yet. Probably we should suggest some genius developer to improve this? lol

To solve this, just simply make a single user for the node group.

Finally back to your question: the "Material" and "Texture" checkbox there perfectly work for BI. As for Cycles, Material does work, but for the Cycles Texture, I don't think it's gonna work that way, since it needn't. As I said, Cycles texture is kind of "material-independent", unless being part of a node group, in other words, an independent datablock shared by materials.


How to Make an Eye Target Bone Move Eye Bones? (Flat Eyes) First let me start by saying something that might help get rid of any confusion.  I made all the bones look like curves.  I will be calling these "bones" rather than calling them curves for this post to also help get rid of any confusion.  Please refer to the photo to help you understand what I'm doing.

So, I need the character's eyes to look at the target bone.  There are some things that I do not want to change so please don't share a method that will require me to change one of the following:

1.) The pupils are flat cylinders that I want to move around on the lens.  I want them to be cylinders, I know there are other ways of creating pupils on a character but this is what I think is best for this character set=up.

2.) I want the eye bones to be close to his eyes so I can move them easily when I don't need the target in certain situations.  Actually, controlling the eyes with individual eye controls and being able to switch between that and an eye target is a common thing in rigs.  Anyways, I want to keep the eye bones.

3.) I want the target bone to move the eye bones, but parenting is not how it should be done because if you want the character to look far left or right and move the target to where it the character would be looking, the pupils will actually go out of his lenses.  So there needs to be some kind of thing, if the target is far away from the eyes and the target moves a lot, it will only move the eyes a little, but if the target is close to the face, it will move the eyes almost as much as the target gets moved.

You see what I'm trying to do?  I just want the character to look at the target when I'm animating with the target, but the target moves the eye bones.  When those eye bones move, that moves the pupils on the eyes.  That way I can choose to animate the eye bones themselves, and/or the target, to move the eyes.

Does anyone know how to do this?  Thanks.

I assume that your "curves" are custom shapes for your bone rig. You can add a simple "damped track" bone constraint to the pupil's bone, pointing to the target; then you can animate the "influence" parameter to control the pupil either with the target bone (influence 1.0) or the pupil bone (influence 0.0).


Equally extrude these vertices inside the shape I'd like to extrude these faces toward the center of the shape equally - say a 5cm. Try as I might, I can't figure it out. Lots of solutions show inset for faces, but this is just a shape of vertices. There must be a way. I'm in 2.8

The way I do this is by selecting all the vertices and making a NGon by pressing F. Then
I use inset and delete the innermost face.


Blender Cycles - Can't see Glass through Glass I've run into a predicament with an archviz project. For some reason, I cannot see the light bulb shining through the glass encasement in a chandelier. The light bulb uses a fake glass material (with some added translucency for a smoky effect) and the chandelier encasement uses a glass material with some light pass transparency hacks. The only way I can get the bulb to show through is by using "Transparent Depth" to blend between the Glass and Transparency nodes, but then the light does not pass through into the room anymore (it's trapped by the glass encasement). Both the glass encasement and the bulbs have a thin depth to the walls. All node setups shown below. Any advice from Cycles experts would be so appreciated... I've been unsuccessfully trying to solve this for hours...

Thanks so much!

-Adam

I thank and praise the Lord Jesus Christ for answering prayer and showing me the solution!
The issue was not with the glass encasement material after all. Mixing between glass and transparent shaders based on shadow, diffuse, and glossy outputs from the Light Path node was correct. The problem was actually with the glass bulb and filament materials!
In the original setup for the glass bulb, a transparent shader was being mixed in TWICE (this essentially was the setup for architectural glass, minus the translucent shader with its mix node, as shown on BlenderGuru). However, the way the 2nd transparent shader was being mixed in (via light path node) was conflicting with the material's ability to be seen at full illumination THROUGH the outside beveled glass encasement.
Outside of the glass it looked fine, but inside, it's strength was being clamped. This was the same problem for the filament material, which was mixing in a transparent shader in the same way. The solution for the glass bulb material was to delete the 2nd transparent shader, and for the filament, it was to remove the transparent element completely.
New setups are shown below:

EDIT: I should note that I no longer add the "glossy" ray in the Light path node-- I only add shadow and diffuse together. If you add glossy, your glass object will not reflect in mirrors, which is a highly undesirable effect. :-)


Rotating wheel with rigid body dynamics In my scene I have a wheel shaped cylinder with rigid body dynamics attached to it. I also have a floor with passive rigid body dynamics. Now what I want to achieve is to have the wheel spinning while it falls down to the plane, to then get grip and roll off the plane. I already tried these three scenarios.

Rotating the wheel using an animation. In this scenario the animation doesn't play anymore once the dynamics kicks in. Checking the "Animated" option in the rigid body settings eliminates the gravity effect.
Using a shape key to rotate the wheel. This doesn't work either because the shape keys deform the object in the transition.
Using bones but this gives the exact same result as using animation.

I'm sure there is a ways so I am curious to hear your suggestions.

UPDATE:

Animating the "Animated" checkbox works partly. So the "How can I add motion to an object" does not work as I tried it already earlier. Rotation is lost eventually and I need it to work like a motor.

In the rigid body world there is a rigid body constraint 'motor', this is assigned between two rigid bodies.

What you need is:

The original wheel - active rigid body
An object to push on (a simple cube) - passive rigid body - constrained to the original wheel (hidden inside for example)
An empty - rigid body motor constraint: angular motor - also constrained to the original wheel

Now the wheel is motorised and will drive itself across the ground plane.

Hope this helps!


How to get adjacent vertices of a vertex? (with Python) How can I get a list of vertices that share edge with a given vertex over script? I need this to work in edit mode.

Yes, this is possible using BMEdge.other_vert

This script runs in edit-mode.

import bpy
import bmesh

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

for v in bm.verts:
    for e in v.link_edges:
        v_other = e.other_vert(v)

        # print some info
        print("%d -> %d via edge %d" % (v.index, v_other.index, e.index))


Per face vertex coloring In blender you can color the vertexes. But is there a way to color the faces so the faces have only one color instead of the colors being interpolated based on the colors of the surronding verticies. This is avalible in maya ( https://youtu.be/TxlASKUMgfo?t=1m10s ).

Adjacent faces can have different plain colors, and a vertex can have a different color for each face it participates to.

In 2.79, it's possible to select the faces in Vertex Paint mode, and use 'Set Vertex Colors' (Header > Paint menu or Shift-K).

Likely the integration in Blender of a separate script that was used before.

Edit:

To view colors in the 3D editor when 'Material' display mode is selected, the option 'Vertex Color Paint' must be enabled for the material used (Properties editor > Material tab > Options panel).
The 'Face Selection Masking for Painting' button must be down in the 3D Editor header (Vertex Paint mode).


Can I merge multiple materials into one? I've downloaded and imported to blender 3d models of buildings as one object from open street map. Almost every wall of the buildings imported with it's own material and it will take me ages to texture them seperately. Can I merge some of the materials? The only thing I can come up with is selecting each building on edit mode and assign it each time to the same material, which is also would take me ages to do. Any better idea?

If I got what you ask, you can make material links from all objects to one: all will get last object's material assigned.

It works like this: select all object but one, and then select that last one object too (it will be the "active" object in the selection).

Then use the menu "make links => materials" (or CTRLL and choose "materials". See this image below:


Motion track while knowing distance between points Is there a way to 3D track points while knowing the distance between them?
Example:
I track nine points in a grid like this:
. . .
. . .
. . .

The distance between each point is 1cm exactly. Is there a way to solve camera motion with this data?

If the tracking is accurate, and there are at least 8 good tracking points, and the camera motion contains enough parallax information to solve the scene, then yes, it is possible.
You can set the scale using known distances.
Select two trackers for which you know the distance in the real world, type that value in the Distance option for orientation. Then press Apply Scale.

Then set up the tracking scene.
Please read also the detailed post on this site on motion tracking:
How can I get better results when doing camera motion tracking?


Angle measurement shows only integer values, is it possible to increase the precision In Blender 2.92, the measure tool shows distances to the precision of 6 digits after the decimal point, but only integer angle values. This question suggests that previous versions showed two digits after the decimal point.
The linked question has three answers:

copy and paste that value, but I do not know how it is supposed to work;

use N shortcut then "mesh display", but in my version nothing like that shows;

use an extension;

use a script.

Is there a simple way of increasing the precision to at least one digit after the decimal point?

The shipped add-on MeasureIt Tools allows you to set precision:


Edges won't join / UV unwrap issue Blender 2.8 Started unwrapping my model, and ran into a couple issues. I think i found problem, but could use some help fixing it.

The unwrap is extremely warped in various spots of the mesh. While attempting to troubleshoot the issue I found edges are not properly connected to each other in between extrusions(you'll see what I mean when opening the file). I attempted to join those edges with no luck. It seems there is something I'm missing. Problem area is marked in blue circle.

You may find that you get better results when UV unwrapping your model if you use the Conformal method.


Storing many instances efficiently Theres a few aspects to what I am looking for in terms of solution.

We deal with extremely large scenes, and take huge advantage of instancing, dupligroups and particle systems

However, when you have thousands of objects (not particle systems) in a scene... blender starts to go slow.

Our initial idea was to convert the instances / dupligroups over to particle systems... that way its one object which has many instances, instead of many objects.

We have looked into trying to convert dupligroups / instances into a particle system, however... we cannot seem to alter it via the python api (https://developer.blender.org/T48022). Is there a efficient way of storing thousands of objects with locations / rotations without actually having the slowdown that normal objects would have? Is there a way of being able to create non-object instances via python?

I also work in archviz and would love to hear a solution for this,in my experience having particles does speed up the viewport a little at the expense of slower selection for objects with many particles.

Only alternative I can think of would be using perhaps duplifaces, though you would probably be limited to distributing single objects as opposed to say group instances.

There would have to be a special dummy mesh object where each face would store the location and rotation of each instance, though I am not sure it will bring any viewport performance advantage. You would also probably need a script to create said mesh from existing instances, although creating from scratch would be a little bit easier.


Why did the texture I painted in texture paint mode disappear? I was following a tutorial on how to use the Texture Paint feature on blender so I could paint on a terrain I am modeling.
I was successful to paint the whole terrain with beautiful, exuberant vegetation, and crystalline water running through the valley.

So I saved my file, and I went to sleep.
But now I've reopened the file and everything seems like I left it yesterday, except that I can see no texture in the terrain...
The weird thing is that the textures i used are still there...
I don't understand, I barely understand the interface, please help.
I'm not even sure if the texture is there or if it was never "saved" or something...

I am now going through the second part of the tutorial for possible answers but I (and hopefully many more) will be grateful for your help.

You need to save the image texture to an image file F3 (Menu: Image / Save As Image) otherwise all changes are lost. Blender indicates an unsaved texture in the UV-Editor with an asterisk at the Image Menu Item.

Another option would be to pack the image into the .blend file.


Random Particle Image Textures I was looking at this post (How to add a Particle Texture?) and was wondering if it were possible to set the particles to random image textures such as playing cards.

Currently, I have a particle emitter that just shoots out card shaped cuboids. Do I
need to add each individual card texture to the particle texture tab and add texture randomisation there or do I need to set up the Dupli Object (render tab of textures) to randomise the textures? Ether or I'm not sure how to achieve texture randomisation. Is there a way to do this?

This setup is a bit fiddly but it gets the job done :-P

The particle system needs to be set to render a UV unwrapped object, in this case it's a simple plane.

(The billboard particle sadly doesn't work in cycles 2.79b. In Blender Internal there is already functionality to randomise with tiles in the billboard particle settings.)

I am using the object random input in the material to get a normalised random scalar (0 - 1). I can then use this to scale and offset the uvmap to select one of 4 images in a texture.

The input value (2) is the number of horizontal and vertical tiles and can be changed if needed.


How to turn off transparency on mesh, cycles render recently I happened to make an object transparent by luck, I don't remember how I did it. Now I am trying to figure out how to reverse the object back to its solid state. The viewport is set to texture which should show the mesh. How do I make the object visible again?

I deleted a transparent material and assigned new material. That didn't work. I also checked if transparency mode was turned off in the background image and render settings.

It looks like you set the Maximum Draw Type to Wire on that mesh. Set it to Solid or Textured (the latter is the default).

I can't be absolutely certain that this is it, as your screenshot doesn't show that part of the UI, but since you're not in wireframe viewport shading, I'm guessing that this is the problem.


Scaling vertices into a straight line My background is in 3DS Max and I just started using Blender this week. Something I really liked about Max was the ability to quickly scale vertices into one uniform line using the scale too in order to be absolutely sure they were lined up for functions like extrusion and welding.

When I try to do the same thing in Blender, the vertices continue scaling along the axis in the opposite direction instead of becoming a straight line. The top screenshot shows the selected vertices (just as an example) and the bottom screenshots shows my attempt to scale them into one flat line across the x-axis; instead, they just end up scaling further down. Can someone help me with this?

You got individual origins set as Pivot center for rotation/scaling,that's why you're getting this weird behaviour. Switch it to Median Point if you want vertices to make straight line in common middle.Check also other options. I find Active element very useful in similar cases.


Plane rendering in render preview but not when performing an actual render I'm trying to render a forest with a river. The terrain is basically a plane with tree as particles. The trees and water are redering as they should but the land is not rendering.
I'm able to see the everything correctly in the preview render tab.
I'm using cycles render engine for rendering.
The link to my blender file is https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Te_Zb7Lwh6hWL2xsyqKG_MV18AAZ1bqP/view?usp=sharing
This is the preview screenshot

This is the rendered image

As @Leander said in the comment, I had disabled rendering in the objects property. Enabling it worked.


How to add bezier curves (start and end) to a 'follow path' animation? I added an object to a curve as a follow path animation but the animation seems too linear, I can only change the parameters of the curve as I see, how can I give it a proper start and end? (like a soft bezier curve)?

It is possible that there is an easier way than this as I am still learning Blender --

Use the offset on the Follow Path Modifier instead of Animate Path to control the movement. Then in the Graph Editor for the object you are controlling on the path you will have a curve to work with. Hope this helps!


Rotate HDR picture from background with Blender Render/Internal, not Cycles I tried to rotate it with cycles and nodes, it works, but I am not yet an experienced in making materials with nodes in cycles, so I would prefer to stay in blender render, and if possible rotate the HDR background image as it is done with nodes in cycles, but with the Blender Render. I cant find a way to do it.
thanks in advance guys.
sorry my bad english.

You can rotate the HDR background image in Blender Render (Internal render engine) by using the Mapping Size property in the Texture panel.  Use the X axis if you have a normal setup and increment or decrement from the default 1.00 setting.  You range of change is limited to +/- .9 before you will receive distortion.


BGE - Model is white instead of it's given textures I am trying to make a game in BGE, but when I play, the models are all bright white.

I read on a forum that you have to change the shading to GLSL, but it stayed white.

.blend file:

I can guess only, but maybe the 3D view is in solid shading mode. Try to switch to textured mode, you should see textures then.

So, change the mode from

which results in:

to:

which results in:

EDIT: After seeing your file, I think the behavior you described comes from another few problems:

The ground material's Emit setting is set to 2, which makes the material emissive and therefore it's not interacting with lamps.
There are no lamps in the scene.
The texture on the ground plane is just plain white, you can just use the material color for that. The player object has that texture too.


How do I render a specific part of the viewport? How can I render a specific spot in the render mode like this?

I want to know how to render a specific part of the scene I am rendering in the view port and is this still possible in blender 2.81?
If so please tell me. I have tried everything and still cant figure it out.
I know its a really stupid question but I really want to know

The functionality is called Render region. Press CTRL + B and then draw a rectangle around the area you want to render.

Remove the region with CTRL + ALT + B


Empty bpy.data.node_groups I need to change the value of an RGB node programmatically. The data path of the node in question is bpy.data.node_groups["Compositing Nodetree"].nodes["RGB"], as can be seen in the screenshot attached.

However, if I enter that path into the Python console, no node groups are returned. I.e. bpy.data.node_groups.keys() is empty.

What is going on here? How can one access node groups?

You can access the compositing node tree via:

bpy.context.scene.node_tree

And your RGB node this way:

bpy.context.scene.node_tree.nodes['RGB']

As for why the tooltip shows a data path that you can't really access?

Don't really know, might be a bug.


Curve modifier won`t allow for input of object? When I try to pick my bezier curve as the object for my curve modifier it will give a modifier is disabled  message when I press apply.

The curve in edit mode

[1

It's named "curve" because it was originally a curve, but somehow it got converted to a mesh.

You need to use "Object -> Convert To... -> Curve from Mesh" to make it back into an actual Bezier curve again. Then you'll be able to use it in the modifier.


How can I model a snug mesh around a complex object? I’m quite new to blender and I’d like to model some attachable camouflage like the one shown in this picture on to a vehicle.

Ideally I’d like it to be made from one mesh over the vehicle. In my head it is essentially a tea cosy for a tank.
Could anyone advise me on how to model it?
I will be using a cycles render engine
Edit: given some of the comments, I thought I'd add another picture that shows the 'tea cosy' after some wear and tear. It is close fitting, 'leafy' fabric camouflage that is attached to a tank.

Edit: So as Batfinger says I missed the coat thing, so it should probably be done with hair particles on a cloth, I'll try to rework my answer.
The first thing that comes to mind is to use a Particle System > Hair, with a leaf as object. Here is what it could give, with the Particle System settings: In Render, choose Render As > Object, and for Instance Object > choose the leaf object.
Give your leaf the same material as the tank hull, on the bottom of the Texture Coordinate node, don't forget to choose Object > Tank so that the leaves will take the color of the area where they are emitted.


Video won't render properly, only audio? I recently created a 3:45 minute video, it's like a montage, a lot of short clips put together. It's my first time using blender but everything seemed to go smoothly, except that now that I want to render, the only thing I get is a black screen but the audio is there. If it's any help, whenever I change my proxy from 25% the preview window doesn't show my video anymore. It won't play my video unless I have it set to 25%. This is what I used to edit, since my laptop had an easier time loading the full FPS of the clips with this low proxy. However, whenever I try to make a proxy for 50, 75, or 100%, the progress bar goes maybe to 5% and then disappears. Being a first time user, this is a bad experience as I put so much time into this and now I can't render. Is there any way I can fix this? I'm clueless

You have once let Blender create the 25% proxy files and then moved your footage or *.blend file to a different location afterwards so that Blender can't find it any more...

You have to look for the original footage - your clips source video files and put them back in place where they originally were. There's a menu entry in the File menu helping you to find lost files. Or just look at one strip in your VSE and see where it points to and if your source footage is still there or if you can put it back there again. There already are some questions with good answers about this here on BSE...


Shadow catcher plane transparency problem in compositing I'm new to blender and need some help with compositing. I tracked a video footage to camera solve and placed a 3d car in compositing. Shadow catcher plane showing world background on my footage floor under the car instead of showing shadow on floor. Shadow catcher plane is casting shadows but cropping my footage floor where shadow catcher plane is placed.

To alpha over your rendered car and shadow above your footage, the background needs to be transparent. Go to Render Settings > Film > Transparent and enable it.


Cut mesh with circle pie chart like mesh for animation What I want to do is to cut open a mesh like a cake for an animation.

So to do something like this:

to create something like this:

The second image is a render taken from the Cycles Demoreel 2015 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDRTjzLNK0g )

EDIT: My question now is: How can I create such a thing.

I have not found any way to have an animated circle that can cut a mesh like a boolean tool. I didn't find any option rotate or midify a cylinder or any other mesh to get the same effect of the second image.

There's a lot of ways that you can change the shape of the cutting mesh.
For versions where you only alter the shape, you can animate whether the boolean even affects the cylinder , so you have a full cylinder to start with. You simply switch it on for the first frame of cutting.

You can use shape keys which is a very cool answer, you could use hooks, you could use an armature.

But why not go overboard with this and boolean Napoleon the boolean?

From Haunt's bag of tricks:

The yellow box is just ever so slightly larger than the orange one. When they align, it swallows the orange one whole in effect making it cease to exist...  sort of.

If I rotate the yellow one, it reveals more and more of the orange box. I simply subtract the yellow box from the orange box and I subtract the result from the cylinder. The possibilities are endless.

Although this only works for a 180° cutaway.

TLDR: yellow eats orange, orange eats cylinder. YUM!


Object appears jagged in final render? When I try to render a glass material, in rendered view it looks good, but when rendered, I get this wavy effect and black outlines.

Polygon detail:

The scene is just a glass object with a glass material, background with a texture with a Diffuse shader and a lighting setup of two plane emissions.

Glass: 4 levels of subdivision surface modifier.
Background: 4 levels of subdivision surface modifier.
2 plane emissions, with no modifiers.
80 samples.

What is causing that and how can I fix it?

Here's the file if anybody wants to explore it.

The subsurf modifier on the glass object is disabled in the render.

Make sure the camera icon the subsurf modifier is selected:


Armature Not Deforming Mesh There are about 102 questions about the armature not deforming the mesh, and I have tried every single one of them. And It's still. Not. Working.

I have utterly no clues as to why the armature isn't deforming the mesh (I've included the file, so you all can play around with it), and the entire mesh has a series of vertex groups - of which all of the bone names match.

I am honestly so confused. The only bone I can get to deform anything at the shoulder.l and shoulder.r. Absolutely nothing else.

If anyone could help, that'd be greatly appreciated!

Here's the link!

Hi Misha welcome to Blender SE.  There's two things preventing seeing the deformations in your armature:

You have the manipulator set to 'Manipulate Centre Points' (see picture below).  That will prevent any rotations from happening in a chain of parented bones, who's pivots are all dependent on their parents' tails.  Uncheck this box:

Your armature modifier settings have all their deformations based on the Abdoman bone.  This means the Abdoman's vertex influences are determining the deformation of the entire model.  I suspect you don't actually want this, unless your gearing up for a more complicated modifier stack.  Just hit the 'X' next to the Abdoman bone to clear that out.

After that you should see that your model now deforms the way you intended.   Happy Blender-ing!


How to correctly enable Cycles from add-on? My add-on requires Cycles to be enabled as I append some classes to existing Cycles types at registration.
I made a function to check if Cycles is enabled:
def cycles_check():
    import addon_utils
    is_enabled,is_loaded = addon_utils.check('cycles')
    if not is_loaded:
        print ('Cycles is required to use Photographer, enabling the add-on automatically.')
        success = addon_utils.enable('cycles')
        if success:
            print ('Cycles is now enabled.')
            return True
    else:
        return True

It "seems" to work: if Cycles is disabled when I enable my add-on, it enables it and my add-on can register properly. I can see Cycles in the render engine lists.
Cycles is required to use Photographer, enabling the add-on.
module changed on disk: 'C:\\Blender\\daily\\blender-2.92.0-6fb7d0f55927-windows64\\2.92\\scripts\\addons\\cycles\\__init__.py' reloading...
Cycles is now enabled.

But... Cycles is actually not properly enabled. The add-on in the preferences is not checked, and the Cycles Device property is missing, which breaks the UI but also crashes Blender if I start a render.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:\Blender\daily\blender-2.92.0-6fb7d0f55927-windows64\2.92\scripts\modules\bpy_types.py", line 808, in draw_ls
    func(self, context)
  File "c:\Blender\daily\blender-2.92.0-6fb7d0f55927-windows64\2.92\scripts\addons\cycles\ui.py", line 2217, in draw_device
    col.active = show_device_active(context)
  File "c:\Blender\daily\blender-2.92.0-6fb7d0f55927-windows64\2.92\scripts\addons\cycles\ui.py", line 114, in show_device_active
    return context.preferences.addons[__package__].preferences.has_active_device()

I found a solution looking at how bpy.ops.preferences.addon_enable(module="cycles") was using addon_utils.enable, it needed default_set=True as an argument, which forced the add-on to be checked in the preferences and fixed the errors.
def cycles_check():
    import addon_utils
    is_enabled,is_loaded = addon_utils.check('cycles')
    if not is_loaded:
        print ('Cycles is required to use Photographer, enabling the add-on automatically.')
        success = addon_utils.enable('cycles', default_set=True)
        if success:
            print ('Cycles is now enabled.')
            return True
    else:
        return True


Correctly filling a convex and concave mesh from curves I need to make curving concave and convex meshes, while at the same time, expressing the mesh data as only quads. (Quad meshes work well with subdivision, smooth shading, and bevel, but triangular or n-gonal meshes don't work with all 3.)

The nature of being both concave and convex thwarts making quads going completely vertically or horizontally and similarly messes with the almighty grid fill. I had no luck converting this mesh from a filled 2d curve, since the curve is filled with triangles that cause shading artifacts. So I tried manual work, revealing it is indeed impossible to fill with quads in a purely vertices/horizontal manner. An n-gon fill doesn't work, and the last image shows that grid fill has issues even at its best. I also tried smoothing vertices on all methods, and it got the grid fill method pretty close.

I could use workarounds, like using flat shading on the flat side of the axe with an autosmooth modifier, but I want subdivision and smooth shading.

(When extruded out) how can I fill this mesh in a way that doesn't cause smooth shading artifacts?

You should retopolgize this mesh. It is pretty simple with method I will present (if this kind a mesh will suite you).

First of all you should make a plane and position it at the bottom of the blade.

Then extrude it all the way up.

Select loop and extrude to the end of axe scaling down each loop.

This gif shows the retopo flow:

If you need more detailed description, let me know in comment what do you need.
Edit:


Baking camera property drivers to keyframe I know its possible to bake the values of drivers to keyframes using Object > Animation > Bake Action but is there a way to bake a driver that is controlling a Camera's properties? I want to delete these drivers while keeping the same Camera animation.

Edit: Link to Blend

link to comparison video

Quick script to bake camera data.

Bake a bpy.types.Camera object's drivers to keyframes.

Bakes all driven properties of scene.camera.data from scene.frame_start to scene.frame_end in frame_step steps.
Assumes there are no array type properties on camera
Leaves drivers intact, will need to be removed. (Currently code used to remove camera drivers crashes my version of 2.8, and doesn't work on 2.79) Keyframes trump drivers.  Remove manually if happy with result.

Test script

import bpy
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
cam_ob = scene.camera
cam = cam_ob.data
frame_step = 1
ad = cam.animation_data

f = scene.frame_start
if ad:
    while f <= scene.frame_end:
        scene.frame_set(f)
        for d in cam.animation_data.drivers:
            cam.keyframe_insert(d.data_path)
        f += frame_step


1 leg armature is controling both legs I am having a problem where the left legs armature is controlling the deformation of both legs at the same time. I thought this was originally a mirroring issue but the arms work perfectly fine. The right legs armature does nothing. I told the program to armature deform with automatic weights. I am a beginner to blender so if you could use screen shots with your answer that would be great.

thanks in advance

It's because your mesh is mirrored.  You will have to apply the mirror modifier, and you will probably have to redo your weights.

Hope this helps.


Boolean difference not working properly I'm trying to cut a piece out of an object I made by extruding a plane several times. As usual, I'm using a boolean difference, but for some reason (and it's not the first time this happens to me), the result is "incomplete", since not enough material is removed (see picture). When this happened in the past, I could solve the issue by using the "fast" setting on the modifier. Here, it makes it even worse (not material was removed at all, no matter the setting).
Can you please help me?

Many thanks!
P.S.: Link to project

The normals on your main object are all flipped.
To see them, enable the checkbox on the Viewport Overlays dropdown. (Red means they're flipped!)

Select the object and then press Alt-N > Flip. You should find that the boolean works properly when you've corrected them.


How do I change to Left, Right, Front, Back Ortho Perspectives? I'm new to Blender and I am trying to model an old truck. The tutorials I have been working with all say to have it in Ortho perspective and choose the view i want it in. I changed it to Ortho and it automatically goes to Camera Ortho. If I try to adjust the view to top, back, front, etc. It changes back to camera perspective. The tutorials show that each window should be dedicated to a specific angle (top ortho, back ortho, etc.) I've read that perspectives automatically changes in the newer version when you move the camera. Is that why? I can't seem to figure it out.

Also, for some reason the background images only show if I enter them in as "all views" The tutorials tell me to enter them as "front, top, back" etc., per the view the image is. But when I tried that, it wouldn't show up. I must be doing something wrong.

I have found a few answers on the forum that are tangentially related to this, but hasn't been working for me at the moment. Thank you in advance for any advice or links you provide.

Lets try to clarify a few things:

Camera Settings vs. Viewport Settings

Camera and Viewport are two different things:

Viewport is mainly for temporary navigating and inspecting the 3d scene
Camera is mainly for defining final rendering perspective
You can switch Perspective/Orthographic for both Viewport and Camera separately → 1.
You can change focal length for both Viewport and Camera separately → 2.
You can set the Viewpoint of the Viewport, without changing the camera → 3.

And here the two of them get mixed up a bit:

If you set the Viewport to Viewpoint>Camera, it will adopt the Camera's parameters without changing them, but will switch back to its own viewport parameters on rotation/change of viewpoint. → 3.
If Lock Camera to View is activated while in Camera Viewpoint the viewport will be linked to the camera parameters any viewport change will directly be applied to the cameras position and parameters.

Viewport Background Images

Background Images assigned to front, top, back, etc Axis are only shown if the viewport is in the corresponding viewpoint (front, top, etc.) and set to orthographic mode.
(you seem to be in Camera Viewpoint with an orthographic Camera instead)


Bone snapping to control bone while making an Inverse Kinematic Rig Good evening. I have made a humanoid rig and wish to add an IK Controller to the bone "UpperArm.R". I wish to make the bone "CTRL_1.R" bone as a controller bone. Whenever I do so, the control bone snaps to the bone "UpperArm.R". A blend file has been provided. Please look into this. Thank you.
Blend File: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RswoL_7QxSEs98YIJ_Ud3OiYzzdGmSnu/view?usp=sharing

Your problem has a very simple answer. When ever you add IK control to a rig, the  default chain length is usually $0$ and the bone tries to point at the rig's origin, thus creating some weird posture.
You can solve this by adjusting the chain length to the number of bone you would like to be influenced by the inverse kinematics(IK).
Try $1$ or $2$ and get a feel of what work best for the rig.


Texture diffuse not showing up They are both the same menu way do they have different options? How do i get the left options to look like the rights?

Watch out your upper right angle: one is a Cycles material, the second is Blender Internal. They are two completely different render engines, which require different materials.

To switch render engines use this menu:


Cycles, weird shadows appear on baked textures I am having a bit of a trouble with the cycles bake. Every time i bake my texture's , a bunch of weird shadows appear in the baked textures as you can see from these pic's. The weird part is that i did pretty much the same thing to a model last night and it worked perfectly. Keep in mind that i am still just a beginner when it come's to cycles rendering.

Could this be a lighting problem or something like that?

--Before Bake--

--After Bake--

Dark areas on textures normally have one of the causes listed below:

You have overlapping geometry
You are baking combined textures, which means that you among others also bake the shadows.

According to the screenshots you provided we have both cases here.


How to make objects follow an elevated curve yet stand straight? For a project I need to model a railing that follows a spiral staircase. I wanted to use a curve for this, but the poles always stand perpendicular to the curve. I want them to stand straight. (I used a random curve for the tests below.)

I had found a promising workaround using "instancing" (see: https://blenderartists.org/t/how-to-use-array-modifer-curve-to-create-landscape-and-fence/1202336). However, this seems to only work for perfectly symmetrical objects like round pillars because it doesn't seem to rotate the objects at all, making them all face the same way. I have to use a base model that requires alignment with the path in the Z-axis. (I realise I'm better off doing the handrail seperately)

Any help will be sincerely appreciated. If anyone knows of any solutions or addons please let me know, because the lack of options in Blender's array modifier is growing more and more frustrating..

Vanilla Blender can do it perfectly fine!
I found a bug which we can abuse to get the wanted effect ;)
The setup is incredible simple as well. Just make your curve with your array and curve modifier like normal. Then it obviously is not looking like what we would want, but then notice what happens if you scale the curve object in object mode.
To get the wanted effect, just scale the curve in object mode along the z axis to 100 or 1000 of its height. Then go into edit mode and reduce the height by scaling with 0.01/0.001 respectively. This is the result:

EDIT:
In my first test Tilt needed to always be 0.0, but further testing showed, you sometimes need sligthly different Tilt values, but I'm not sure why. That will solve your deformation issue though.
If you only use flat bezier handles (scaled to 0 on the z axis) a tilt of 0.0 everywhere is perfectly fine.


How to select a graph in graph editor I am doing an animation and in graph editor i need to interpolate some graphs. I select the graph point by point but it is not comfortable. Is there any shortcuts to select the graph?

To select a single "curve" in the graph editor, select a point and hover over it and hit L to select all the points, hit A. To select an area of points, hit B and use the box select tool.


The bar at the very bottom of the screen has gone away? The bar at the very bottom of the screen went away while I was trying to make an intro, its the one with all the frames and options of view, marker, frame, playback, start, end, and the play button. Please help me, how do I get it back!?

Click on a transparent '+' button in the down right part of a screen.

Maybe you accidentaly collapsed menus. Hover your cursor over the bottom bar, then press RMB and uncheck the Collapse Menus box.

If you want to have many different windows (editors) opened at once you can add them by:

clicking on the corner of the window and dragging it in any diection:

using a Split Area option (press the RMB while hovering cursor over the border of the window)

With multiple windows opened you can change the editor type for each of them by clicking on area type button as I've shown above. In your case change the editor type for one of them to Timeline.


Imported object being lit from wrong direction I've got a problem where some imported objects are lit from the wrong direction.
See center object below.
Normals are ok.
I assume there's some sort of transform linked to the object, but I can't see how or where to reset it.

Any tips much appreciated.

Fixed: Face and vertex normals were okay.
However, Blender tries to auto generate vertex-per-face normals and get all mixed up.
Once you turn this off, all works just fine.
Thanks to this post for the solution: How to unify face and vertex normals


Root of hair moves with hair dynamic I just finished to create all particles of my character's hair and comb it. After baking the particle dynamics, when I play the animation the hair's roots are moving even though they are supposed to be fixed to the head. Is there a parameter that can be the cause of that issue ?

Thanks

I found it, the solution was to go to "Particle edit" mode, select "particule select mode: path, then Select -> Roots and finally Particles -> Weight set with the strenght set to 1 in the tool panel.


Python text block selection box in add-on? how I can have a text block selection box in my add-on panel.

this is the solution code that will make script search box.

import bpy

class OBJECT_PT_HelloWorldPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
    bl_label = "Hello World Panel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_hello"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "object"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        scene = context.scene
        layout.prop_search(scene, "Script", bpy.data, "texts")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)
    bpy.types.Scene.Script = bpy.props.StringProperty()

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)
    del bpy.types.Scene.Script

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


'NoneType' object has no attribute 'ui_type' when running blender using CLI My code runs fine when I run the script directly in blender. However if run the file headless in the terminal I get this error and the animation renders the default cube instead of my animation:
'NoneType' object has no attribute 'ui_type'

Here is my CLI command:
'/Applications/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/Blender -b /Users/myname/Desktop/folder/videoRender.blend -a"

Blender text editor code:
import bpy, sys, os

bpy.context.area.ui_type = 'SEQUENCE_EDITOR'

#create image sequences and import screens of there are more than one file
if (len(files) == 1):

    # set duration to 300
    duration = 300

    for index in range(5):
        filesFolder = folder + "/" + str((index+1)) + '/renderedFiles/'
        bpy.ops.sequencer.image_strip_add(
            directory=filesFolder,
            files=files[1],
            show_multiview=False,
            frame_start= (filesCount * index),
            frame_end=filesCount * index,
            channel=5
        )

Thanks to @batFINGER, his solution to ditch the operator worked! Here's the answer: Simple python script to stitch images into movie failing with incorrect context.


Why use bone as target for IK? I have seen numerous tutorials about rigging and animation of armatures. Whats bugs me is why everyone of it uses a extra bone as IK target and not something that is not related to the armature? like a spehre or other primitive mesh that is not part of the mesh?

Imagine the case where I don't want to render the animation in blender but want to export it then  there would be two useless bones along with the Armature which are not used in animation anymore.

Just why use a extra bone why not animate with a seperate object or mesh for IK?

The real reason is Bone targets positions can be stored in pose library. Also the scene is cleaner if everything is under armature.

But if you want to export the armature and another rig setup suits that better its ok. You can use anything you want for IK target.


How to make my standalone game not require blender installation? I am making a game and I want it to not require Blender to be installed in order to play it. Currently it needs 'blenderplayer.app'.

I am using Linux Ubuntu 14.10, Blender 2.72b. How can I do this?

Use the "Game Engine: Save as Game Engine Runtime" add-on:

Then you can save the game as executable, which can be run without needing to install Blender:

You will end up with an executable, and a directory named after the Blender version. The executable will be for the same OS as you performed these actions on.


Strange problem with Cycles Normal Map baking I am trying to bake a normal map with Cycles, but no matter what I try, the results are always strange, and I am at my wit's end.

I keep getting weird results like this:

These are my bake settings:

High-Poly model:

Low-Poly model:

Any and all help much appreciated! This model is a project for a game development college course I am studying, just to clarify. :)

You need to activate smooth shading for your low-poly model.

Select your model, go to "Tool Shelf - Tools - Edit - Shading" and hit the "Smooth" button.


Having a problem with Normal Baking a high poly model into a low poly model. (with file included) I'm having this issue where, yes i can bake the normal map, but when i apply it onto the lowpoly model with the normal map something weird happens in the middle of the model. I have no idea what to do.

And when i do put it into the model it looks like it has more blurry and less detail than the sculpted one even though the textures is 4k, but maybe thats just me.
I will put the file here. You can look and try for yourself. A detailed description of what i need to do would be highly appreciated!
File: http://www.mediafire.com/file/t0aom5cg990xbi9/nihilanthtest1.blend/file

I've tested with a 32 Bit Float image and it works fine:


Proper mapping in Shading view I have obtained some very nice 3D models complete with textures. I have been trying to replicate the exact colours and contours of the model as posted by the artist but am having problems connecting the textures with the appropriate nodes. I have the following textures:
1. AlbedoAO - Connected to the base color of the principaled BSDF
2. Normal - Connected to the normal of the principaled through the normal map node
3. Gloss - Emission??
4. Illumination - Emission??
5. Metalness - Connected to the metallic of the principaled although I don't see a difference.

Could someone please point me in the right direction? Am I correct in my mapping? Thanks

So far you are correct in your mapping.  if the emission texture is black and white, its a map to tell the shader where the object should emit light, (it would be used as a factor between the principled node and an emission node.)  If it has color, it's a color map for your emission.
I hope this is helpful.


How to make the top part of a render less saturated/more pale? How to make the top part of the render less saturated/more pale?
The Mesh needs more of a pale color in top part to match the background. How?

You can do in compositing nodes.

Here is an example:

Node Hue Saturation Value can make your image more/less saturated, but you need to add a mask to specify on that part of image the effect will be affects. You can draw a mask, draw an image or like in my case, use a box mask node and blur it.

If you familiar with masks, you can draw a mask with feather, and use it, it gives more control of areas witch must be saturated:


Which is more efficient for performing simple actions, Python, or Logic bricks? Basically, I am trying to find the most efficient way to do simple actions, such as moving objects. I started thinking, what is the game engine actually doing with the logic bricks? is it handling them any different then it would handle a python script to do the same thing? And, if it is handling them any differently, which is faster and more efficient for the game engine to compute?

Since BGE is written in C in the blender sources it will most likely be a few micro seconds faster than scripting in python that needs to be parsed.

You can test your timings with the "timeit" python module.

in the python console just type:

import timeit
help("timeit")

for the pydoc in blender.


grouping texture nodes changes the coordinate space I have a procedural texture that uses the UV coordinates in some math.  In order to get access to the X and Y coordinates, I use a Split RGBA node.

If that Split RGBA node is outside of a group, the values that come out of it appear to range from 0 to 1.  If I group that Split RGBA node then the coordinate values seem to range from -1 to 1.

If you use the attached .blend file and ungroup (Alt-g) the NodeGroup.007 you will see the pattern of circles change from a red quarter-circle and green centered circle into a yellow quarter circle.

How do I make these nodes work properly whether grouped or ungrouped?

Based on Gandalf3's comment I have to change the socket to blue to work around this bug.  Unfortunately, based on Setting Group Node Socket Type I conclude there is no procedure to change the type of an existing socket in 2.74.

We must add a node to the group that has a blue (vector) input.  The texture Output node is suited to the task.  Connect that input to the blank input on the Group Input and a vector input is created to match it.  Wire the blue input into the various places that the yellow goes, and then delete the yellow input from the node group.  You can delete the Output node now.  Shift-tab out to the rest of the nodes and connect the coordinates to the now-blue input of the group.

When constructing groups in the future, a solution is to shift-drag across the connection between the vector output and the Separate RGBA node's input. This creates a blue Reroute node. Including the reroute node during the creation of the group codes the input as blue (vector).


Shrinkwrap Modifier - Can't select Vertex Group I created a vertex group to project an object on via the shrinkwrap modifier. But I can't select any vertex groups in the drop-down.

Any ideas anyone? Thank you very much for taking a look!

You are supposed to create a vertex group on the object which hosts the modifier, not the target object. You currently can't set a target vertex group with the shrinkwrap modifier.

The vertices will be projected against all of the target object's geometry.


How to propel an object, rotating freely in zero gravity, towards a collision with a fixed plane? I downloaded a model of an astronaut from the NASA website, and I'm trying to create an animation with it to import into a Premiere video project, but I'm just a beginner at Blender and am having some trouble.

So I want the astronaut to enter from off-screen, hurtling through space, spinning forward in zero gravity towards a fixed object ... think something like the monolith from 2001. I then want him to collide with the monolith and be bounced back a meter or so.

First off, I know how to keyframe an object's location to get it to move from one point to another, but I haven't figured out how to just start it in a direction and let physics do the rest. The best I've come up with is a very convoluted solution where I have a cube run into it to push it forward—but even when I do that, with gravity turned off in the Scene menu, the astronaut object does not behave naturally. It does not rotate on its axis when the cube collides with the lower half, it just moves forward without changing rotation.

So if I could give the physics of this scene to behave more naturally, I'd be thrilled. Beyond that, I would like to add an armature to the model, and have the appendages be animated throughout, though with my current bizarro setup (and after selecting the mesh, the armature, and pressing Ctrl+P "Parent with automatic weights"), the mesh gets knocked clear off the armature:

If anyone could advise me on this problem, or point me to an existing thread on this topic, I'd appreciate it—thanks!

Put the origin at the bottom or at the top.
then it will rotate as you want to achieve


Is it possible to blend from 1 to zero in Vertext Paint mode? I want to paint vertices like the image (It is done in Photoshop). The first row is red with alpha 1 and the 6th row is red with alpha zero. I want to blend from 1 to zero in specific area.

Similar to the answer to Smoothing vertex_colors values this can be achieved by assigning the 'fixed color' vertices to a Vertex Group and using a script to 'smear' the color from those vertices over the rest of the mesh.

You could use the script in the linked answer but for ease of use I have packaged it into an add-on which is avialable for download from Vertex Color Blend Add-on. To install the add-on, simply Download the file and use the User Preferences Add-ons 'Install from file' option and click the checkbox to enable it.

Once enabled you should have a new option in the Paint menu for Blend Vertex Colors

Go into Edit mode on  your mesh and add a new Vertex Group - name it something like 'FIXEDCOLORS' and assign the vertices you want to have fixed colors to it. Ensure no other vertices are assigned to that group.

Use Vertex Paint to paint those selected vertices the desired colors - it doesn't matter if other vertices are also painted as those will be ignored by the 'blend' process.

Select the Paint/Blend Vertex Colors option and you should get a popup as follows :

Set the Number of steps and initial red, green, blue settings as desired and the Vertex Group to the 'FIXEDCOLORS' vertex group created earlier and click OK to apply.

After a short delay your vertex colors should be updated to blend the 'fixed' colors over the mesh.


AO Bake has random black pixels on some faces This is what my baked AO texture looks like (not in all places -- for most faces it looks fine):

What is the cause of this?  What can I do to resolve it?  I do not have any overlapping UVs and my mesh is manifold.

Here is the mesh if you would like to take a look: http://pasteall.org/blend/34604

Thank you all for your help!

The problem was caused by other objects overlapping the object that I wanted to bake.  When modelling I used the boolean modifier with some other objects and hid the old objects after applying it.  By deleting the old objects the bake worked perfectly.

Thanks to Leon Cheung and MarcClintDion for their help!


How to align one vertex to X, Y or Z of another vertex sometimes I need to complete tasks like in this video, any easier way to connect this vertex to edge?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVCdgss5gKI&feature=youtu.be

And also, sometimes I need to align one vertex in 3D space by using X, Y or Z of other vertex, is there any combination of keys which can do it?

To do that quicker,

first method

set the pivot point to active element and start your cut from the existing point (as this will keep this point active).

Then scale to 0 using the wanted axis :

second method

Use 'offset edge slide' Shift+Ctrl+R.

During the movement place the mouse along the shortest edge and hit E.

After that you'll need to remove doubles or merge the vertices.


stuck in a selected option I'm new to blender and somehow I got into some mode or something (not sure what or how) but I can't find a way out of it. there is a constant orange dot in object mode (even if I press A to deselect everything) and if I change to edit mode a blue line around the object appears(pic) and nothing else except within that selection can't be adjusted or selected. how do I get out of this selection?

thanks

This orange dot is the origin of the object which will be visible in all modes (Object, edit and pose(armatures) modes), so it's not the vertex, as shown below:

If you press A to select all vertices then you will find the vertices highlighted as shown below:

You can select 1 vertex using RightClick then move it using G as shown below:

The edges are blue because they are marked. There are five types of markings you can apply to edges. The following is the basic colour scheme:

Red - UV seam
Pink - Edge crease
Blue - Sharp edge
Green - Freestyle edge
Orange - Bevel weight

To clear the mark edges yourself from Edit Mode, go to the Edge menu (Ctrl+E) then choose Clear Sharp as shown below:

Then edges will be orange again as normal as shown below:


What is the correct way to texture a cave for a game engine It is not a good thing to make a high quality cave walls for a game engine.
If I create in  Blender a wall for any room, I can create high poly model and then bake a texture for it, then I can use it for low-poly version of this wall.
But it is possible for "small" objects. It could be one wall of big room, but what should I do with long caverns? I cannot UV them and cannot use Blender modifiers in Unity engine to make distortion of the walls and so on...
So I ask anybody, who can give me an advise - what is the best way to create cave texture?

Depending on what kind of game engine you are using

big objects like a cave are consider terrain as i know

so your best solution here is to sculpt and material paint the cave in the game engine

but you can split the cave into smaller objects and work with them

I have seen this used ..even if it give bad lighting results


Can nodes use an objects x/y position? I have a blender file where a sphere is orbiting a force field. I want it to be more red when it's closer to the center, and more blue when it's further. I already have the math figured out, I just need to know how to get x/y coordinates in nodes.

Here's the file:

Use the object info node connected to a separate xyz node:


Couldn't get the mix shader Couldn't get the mix shader and the proper node editing only few options are available what to do

That is because you are in blender render mode.You need to switch it to Cycles render mode.


Can I avoid an undo when operator is called due to a property change? I am writing an add-on that creates a mesh with several randomly generated aspects. The mesh is generated from default property values when the operator is initially called. These properties are added to the tools panel for the user to modify.

In some cases I want to modify the already generated mesh both to avoid wasted recalculation and to retain the majority of randomly generated features. Ie - it might look the way I want it except for some minor aspect I can change without effecting the overall appearance.

To do this, my property update functions set a flag to indicate whether the property change necessitates a complete regeneration of the mesh or if the existing mesh can be tweaked instead.

I am seeing that there is no object to tweak when the operator's execute function is called after a property change. It appears that an undo is performed before the operator is called again.

Is there a way to avoid the undo operation? Or a way to store the mesh and access it when the operator is called again?

As an example:

# ------------------------------------------------------------
# Operator for adding a Thing
# ------------------------------------------------------------
class ThingAddOp(bpy.types.Operator):

    ...

    # set a flag indicating a complete regenerate is required
    def update_regenerate(self, context):
        self.do_regenerate = True

    # set a flag to indicating a simpler update can be done
    def update_modify(self, context):
        self.do_modify = True

    # flags used to determine if Thing should be regenerated or modified
    do_regenerate = BoolProperty(name='Must regenerate object', default=False, options={'HIDDEN'})
    do_modify     = BoolProperty(name='Can modify object', default=False, options={'HIDDEN'})

    ...

    def execute(self, context):
        thing_add(self)
        self.do_regenerate = False
        self.do_modify = False
        return {'FINISHED'}

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.mode == 'OBJECT'

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        return self.execute(context)

    def draw(self, context):
        ...

# ------------------------------------------------------------
# Creates a random Thing
# ------------------------------------------------------------
def thing_add(props):
    if props.do_modify:
        # At this point there is no object to modify!!
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT', toggle=False)

        # only resize because the user liked the randomly
        # generated object but wants to resize the base
        # without changing the other apsects of it
        size_base(props)
    else:
        create_base(props)   # creates a base with a given size
        create_spokes(props) # creates randomly oriented spokes
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT', toggle=False)

Operators automatically push their actions containing the properties used onto the undo/redo stack, by calling an operator with different options you are adding it to the stack each time.

To prevent calling the operator each time an option changes you could move the properties for the options to outside of the operator, maybe to an AddonPreferences instance? This can then be accessed by the operator and a panel or directly in the User Preferences when enabling the addon. See Cloud Generator addon for an example of properties added to bpy.types.Scene and used by both panel and operator.

You could also try having the operator take a single argument as a string (comma separated list you can split?), a CollectionProperty or BoolVectorProperty, which I think would integrate better with the undo stack. A panel displaying the operators options could then combine the options into one property to be passed to the operator call.

Having said that, you may also find that calling the operator with defaults and only allowing the user to change options within the Redo Last to be a workable solution. See the sapling addon and it's large array of options only available in the redo last. Also the space tree addon in contrib has a similarly large list of options. You can adjust properties in the redo last panel, see the results and only have one undo step.


Cursor to selected not working while an armature is applied I have a rigged/posed mesh and I want to parent something to one of its vertices. When I go into edit mode on the mesh and select a vertex and use Cursor to Selected, it doesn't move the cursor to selected for seemingly 0 reason.

I guess your problem is that Blender put the 3D cursor on the original vertex position, i.e. its position without the modifier, it doesn't take the armature modifier into account, which can be annoying sometimes when for example you try to modify a mesh that is affected by an armature: The cursor won't come at the vertex or vertices position, it will stick at the original vertex position, not convenient to grab the XYZ widgets. To make it clear:

Let say you've parented the cube to the bone With Automatic Weight.
Move or rotate the bone in Pose mode.
Select the cube, go in Edit mode. Display the cube's Armature modifier on your right panel. If you enable the Adjust Edit Cage to Modifier Result option, in Edit mode you'll see the mesh fitting to its modified position.
Select a vertex.
Press shiftS > Cursor To Selected.
Contrary to what is expected, the 3D cursor doesn't move to the selected vertex. Actually it sticks to the original vertex position, i.e. its position without modifier. It's Blender's choice, it might have some reasons(?).
If you disable the Adjust Edit Cage to Modifier Result option, you can clearly see what I mean, the 3D cursor stays on the original vertex position.


Material that is not affected by the color reflected from other objects? I used blender cycles to render it. There is color reflection on the cloud from the ground. i want to make the cloud full white. could someone help me?

This is partially answered here:
How can I avoid colored light reflections?

this will get rid of indirect lighting, and your cloud won't reflect the ground, but neither will anything else in your scene.

Another option would be to use a different render layer for your cloud, that way you can keep the indirect lighting and your cloud will still be full white.

Finally you could use an emissive material, and then fill in shadows with a world normal comparison since you are going for the flat look. Or if you prefer a silhouette look just use an emissive.

Nodes:


Blender cutting face to fit a hole I have a hole like this in my mesh

I wish to fill these 2 holes by cutting larger faces to fit, that way I don't have to do the UVs myself since these large square faces already have UVs. Example:

What is the easiest way to cut these 3 faces to fit the hole? I've tried the knife tool but it's not really working out, it does not snap to the points behind and sometimes, it doesn't even cut the faces.

Select the top vertex and press G > G to initiate vertex slide

It will move the vertex along the edges they belong to without distorting UVs.

You wont be able to snap that way though, but your model seems to be using some sort of grid metric so if they are halfway distance you could input 0.5 instead.


Create a curve on a mesh I'm currently at this:

And I want to get to this:

Pardon the awful drawing, lol.  Is there any way to do this without using modifiers?

Switch on Proportional Editing. Use sphere falloff.

Select the two middle verts and scale them on the Z axis only. Adjust the radius with the mouse wheel.

Switch off proportional edit, select one row of verts and adjust the thickness.

Did I mention there's another way of doing this? No?

Well, there's another way of doing this:

Create a circle with lots of verts.

Go to side view and rotate the circle a bit with R

Duplicate the circle with  SHIFTD and mirror it with  SZ-1 RETURN.

Move the circle up a bit with G

Deselect with A, use Box Select B to select the right verts and delete them.

Select the two edgelines with  A and bridge them using  SPACE B R I

Did I mention there's yet another way of doing this? No?

Well, there's yet another way of doing this.

Put a Cylinder around your bent faceline. Use an excessive amount of verts, 512 or more. Scale or model it into the desired shape.

Give it a Shrinkwrap Modifier with the settings shown in the picture.

Apply the modifier. Delete the circle.

Just in case you get bored...

There's another way of doing this!

Add a UV Sphere, few segments, lots of rings.

In Top View and Edit Mode, select as shown. Delete.

Select the left half and move to the right. Or select the right half and move to the left. Throw a coin if necessary.

Share and enjoy.


Can't find backface culling setting in version 2.78 I'm using version 2.78c and I just noticed I 'lost' the backface culling setting (I haven't used it in a little while). I can't post a screenshot of the shading area in the properties panel (blender render mode only), but the only check boxes available are:

Textures
Shadows
Subsurface scattering
Environment map
Ray tracing
World space shading (which is unchecked by default).

There's also a drop-down for alpha, which I'm leaving at the default.

Every entry brought up in Google says 'Turn in on the in the shading area' - but it's not there and I can't find anything in user preferences that might control it's availability. Where has it moved to? I need to be able to check normals, and tasks like that.

Thanks in advance,
Frank Alviani

Press N key while in 3D View port (hover mouse there) and you will find Shading tab close to the bottom of this panel, which will show on the right side of the view port.

Edit:

Honestly I didn't ever paid attention that both of them panels are called 'Properties'.

The one you are looking for is here (from your screenshot):


Motion Tracking Markers don't show up! I just got Blender 2.8 (ok, I got it a long time ago but it's my first time trying it out).
I watched a tutorial on Motion Tracking ("Camera tracking basics (in blender 2.8)" on YouTube), and I followed all the directions; Exported the video to image sequences, imported into "Motion Tracking" on "VFX" mode, added trackers (the only difference is that I used the "Track Markers" (CTRL+T) button on every point, because it's not a complicated scene. The movement is very small and almost on a 2D plane, not a 3D plane.
So I added 8 points (as seen in the image), and checked that they all matched the movement correctly.

(Amazing, it stabilizes my video when I press "L"!)
BUT, now when I go to the Layout panel, add an object constraint, and toggle "Motion Tracking" in "Viewport Overlays", nothing happens! The camera doesn't move, no points show up.

And I'm stuck and need to go to sleep. Could someone educate me as to what's going on?
All I want is to add some text to a scene, so I could walk past it, etc.
How can I achieve this? Please help!
Thanks in advance,
BeardWix.

What you are missing is solving the scene if you want motion reconstruction in 3d.
In the solve tab press Solve Camera Motion

Once the scene is solved, open the scene setup and press Setup Tracking Scene.

That will add a camera tracking constraint to the camera that is linked to the track information and camera solution.
To view the video through the camera view, press Set as Background
Additionally you could also add empties to the scene to match the trackers. Press Link Empty to Track


Jagged Points On Mesh I’m trying to duplicate the lower part of my mesh to the other side of the model. So I select it, and mirror it to face the correct way, I join the vertices on the model. Seems nothing is odd, but once I add the modifier, I get 2 jagged vertices appearing. I cannot figure where they’re coming from.

Thank you.

You found one of the ways of testing your mesh. Using the subdiv modifier, looking at pic 4 the verts look like they are not connected. Grab one of the verts and move it around see if it's connected. Also like Jachym said check your normals are in the right direction.


Other side of the world seemingly reflected in Fresnel layer; only shows in render, not in viewport I am very confused right now. I am making an Earth. The scene has two layers, atmosphere and ground/clouds. Rendering them individually gives me the results I want for each layer. Specifically, here is the atmosphere layer:

But when I render both layers together I get something hideous like this:

Do you see that hideous fog on the image? That is actually a mirror image of Africa and Europe, somehow being reflected onto the fresnel. I have no idea what is causing this, and would greatly appreciate any insight.

You can download the blend from here: http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=47222

UPDATE1 Turning diffuse bounces down to 0 worked. I am not happy with this solution.

UPDATE2 Keeping diffuse on and turning glossy bounces does NOT work. Neither does turning off the "Glossy" option under Ray Visibility in the Object tab. Again, I am not happy with this solution.

I had that problem too. Here is how I fixed it. I went to User Preferences and I click on system and disabled Mipmaps

Hope this helps


Using python, how do you get the "roll" of a pose_bone? The system I'm making reads from pose bones for guidance, but doesn't use blender's built-in rigging system.  I can get the head and tail coordinates, but I also need to know if the bone has been rotated around its axis.

EditBone has a property "roll" that sounds like what I need, but PoseBone lacks this property.  I need to take into account the possibility that the bone has been rotated in pose mode.  Is there a way to derive this value from the properties that PoseBone does provide?

Bone Matrices.

A bone is defined along its local Y axis.  The roll is a rotation around the y axis.

Let's say for example sake, we add a default single bone armature, and give bone a roll of 45 degrees.

Edit Mode

>>> C.active_bone
bpy.data.armatures['Armature.001']...EditBone

>>> C.active_bone.roll = radians(45)
>>> degrees(C.active_bone.roll)
45.00000125223908

If we look at its matrix

>>> [degrees(a) for a in C.active_bone.matrix.to_euler()]
[90.00000250447816, -0.0, 45.00000125223908]

The 90 about X explains why it is standing up, and the roll we set is about Z.

If the matrix is set to Identity (zero position) the bone would point in the Y direction.   A bone vector is (0, bone.length, 0) where default length is 1.

Pose mode.

Ok off to pose mode.  The edit bone settings are the zero settings, aka rest pose.  We set the pose bones matrix_basis when we alter loc, rot, scale in posebone properties panel. With no pose set each pose bone will have a size 4 identity matrix.

>>> C.active_pose_bone.matrix_basis
Matrix(((1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0),
        (0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0),
        (0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0),
        (0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0)))

and a familiar set of results from the PoseBone.matrix.  Note the matrix here is a 4x4 so as well as rotation has translation and scale.

>>> [degrees(a) for a in C.active_pose_bone.matrix.to_euler()]
[90.00000250447816, -0.0, 45.00000125223908]

Ok lets rotate (roll) the pose bone with RYY45 ie rotate bone by 45 degrees about its local Y axis.

>>> [degrees(a) for a in C.active_pose_bone.matrix_basis.to_euler()]
[0.0, 45.00000466733367, 0.0]

and

>>> [degrees(a) for a in C.active_pose_bone.matrix.to_euler()]
[90.00000250447816, -0.0, 89.999995674289]

Notice how we get 90 now for the rotation Z roll, which takes into account 45 for the edit bone roll, plus 45 for the pose bone roll,

Alternatively  Using Bone.AxisRollFromMatrix

Arbitrarily placed bone with 41 degree bone roll

>>> degrees(C.active_bone.roll) # in edit mode
41.33893447974762

switch to pose mode

>>> pb = C.active_pose_bone
>>> pb
bpy.data.objects['Armature'].pose.bones["Bone"]

>>> b = pb.bone
>>> b
bpy.data.armatures['Armature.002'].bones["Bone"]

pose bone locally rolled 30 degrees

>> [degrees(a) for a in pb.matrix_basis.to_euler()]
[-9.504621014570856e-07, 30.00000424992064, 1.5754678639128658e-06]

edit bone roll from pose bone

>>> axis, angle = b.AxisRollFromMatrix(b.matrix, axis=pb.y_axis)
>>> degrees(angle)
41.33893106465304

Combined roll

>>> axis, angle = b.AxisRollFromMatrix(pb.matrix.to_3x3(), axis=pb.y_axis)
>>> degrees(angle)
71.33894214476285


Volume Scatter goes Black I've followed some tutorials on Volume Scatter material in Cycle like this one :
http://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/make-atmospheric-lighting-blender/

But I can't go any further because of this :

This is the render of a Volume Scatter material applied on a simple cube.
Whatever the object, whatever the shape. If I turn on the volume on the complete scene, everything goes black.
CPU or GPU render, it's the same. I tried every single option in the render & material, it does not change anything... I'm out of option.

I was really fancy to use that awesome feature, if someone has a solution, I will be super happy !

Thanks !
Happy blending !

Your cube is black because your volume scatter node is plugged into the surface input of the material output node.
From the manual page on the shader,

The Volume Shader output must be plugged into the Volume Input of the Material or World Output node.


Why half of those particles (red balls) going through the collision (white plane)? The particles are falling on the collision but half of them are upside the collision and half are down the collision plane.

Particles are not objects in blender, they do not have a geometry, even if you attach an object to them, the geometry is not simulated physically with the particle system.

The spheres will always intersect the plane as long as the particle is flush on it.

If you want your particles to be physical, you need the Molecular addon: http://pyroevil.com/category/scripts-addons/molecular-script/

Alternatively you would need to run a physics simulation using rigid bodies.

Or in this case the collision margin of the plane needs to be the -radius- of the red sphere. Note that this will still make the red spheres intersect each other since theres no way to stop that from occurring with the vanilla particle system.


How to make a sun in Blender? How do I make a nice sun in blender? I am not looking to change a lamp into the sun, I am looking for an actual sun that can be seen in my scene.

Back in High school I had a project on making a sun but I forgot how its done. Blender has had a dramatic change since then anyway so any help on making a sun in blender would be nice thank you.

Also, if there is different processes to doing this in blender render vs blender cycles please I would appreciate both ways explained.

I would do this in Cycles using volumetric lighting.

Here's the basic setup: just one light on a landscape.

Then add a cube around the scene with some volume scatter and volume absorption as materials.

for the background you can use a color ramp like this: