Clearing Transforms Doesn't Make Rest Pose (IK problem?) I have a problem where my pose position and my Rest Pose position are not the same, even when I have cleared all transforms for the pose position.  It has something to do with the IK bones - perhaps roll settings.  How can I make the pose position look like the rest position?
Here's an GIFF of the resulting problem:

As I told you, there's a difference between the Rest and Pose position of the bones because of the fact that the IK bones will stick to their controller as soon as you switch to Pose mode, and if the controller head is not placed exactly where the IK bone's tail is placed, it will make the IK jump. How to fix it?

First select the IK bone and make all the other ones invisible. Then select its tail and press ShiftS to put the 3D cursor on the same position.

Then unhide everything and this time make only the controller visible. As you see the controller's head is not at the exact same position as the 3D cursor:

So press ShiftS in order to put the selection on the 3D cursor:

Now when you'll switch from Rest to Pose they won't be any difference (actually there's still a bit difference because of the target position, you can fix that by making sure that the target is well aligned with the IK.

As a side note, always bend the elbows and the knees a bit so that Blender knows how to bend it when you switch to Pose mode:


Export BGE Soft-body Distortions to 3D view? Is it possible to get BGE soft-body simulations into the normal viewport? I know you can get the animation of the object itself, (with record animation to keyframes) but how to get the distortions of the softbody?

It does not appear to be possible.  You'd probably have to write a script to export it, but:
"There are no python bindings to control soft bodies, and no logic brick support, except for apply force and add object actuator. " - http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Source/GameEngine/BulletSoftBody

(I can't yet reply to your question to clarify.  What are you trying to accomplish?  You have another question about multiple soft bodies colliding, is the problem related? like I said, combining them into one object works, but a drawback is they have to all have the same settings... but with more detail to your problem, there may be a way.)


Rendering with wireframe I'm making figures to illustrate some details about how meshes work. I'd like to render my scene normally, but overlay all of my meshes in wire mode.

The only solution I've found which works is giving a duplicate mesh a wireframe material, which gives me something like this:

Is there some way I could get the same effect without having to duplicate my mesh?

There is a simple addon for this called Setup Wire Materials.

  A script to setup and apply materials for a wire render… It will replace your own with a clay and a wire materials, as seen here and here.


Edit Grease Pencil Strength i've just started studying Grease Pencil and did some basic animations. After some work i've noticed that all my strokes were painted with a semi transparent strength.

Can i change the strength of my strokes after i've drawed them? i'm sure is not a matter of material opacity.

edit: i've obtained what i'm looking for using the modifier Noise for grease pencil , but i'd like to make it permanent, moreover, when i click apply Blender Crashes

thank you.

You can go to the Sculpt mode, and use the Strength brush.


Blender keeps on saying "Not responding" So, I am trying to make something.

Whenever I try to press something, blender freezes and says "not responding". Like every two seconds. I cannot use blender if this keeps on happening.

I feel it's because of the file size since it may be too big?
I'm not sure what's the problem but it's just really annoying if it constantly appears like that.

Tried to restart my computer, log off, tried to reduce the file size but idk how really. Nothing works. I tried for hours...

When I first started, it rarely happens. Now, it happens VERY often.
What should I do? Please help!

Info:

File size: 14.8 Mib

RAM 8.00 GB (7.87 GB useable)

System Type: 64 bit operating system, x64 based processor

Windows 10

OS: Microsoft Windows 10 home

System Manufacturer/Model: LENOVO 80XA

System type: x64-based PC

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7200U CPU @ 2.50GHz, 2701 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

BaseBoard Manufacturer: LENOVO

Lenovo Flex 5

What happened:

-I tried to press the tabs such as "Shading" and more, the freezing happens.

-I also found out when you press the folders on the right side, the freezing happens

-When I selected a "large" thing, like in the UV editing, I tried to resize the but it freezes.
(I did try to select one vertices (I think that is what it is called) and it worked without any problem. Now the problem appeared again. IDK it happens so randomly...)

-Even when I exited out of Blender and get back in, I press the file and the freezing happens. Then it goes in.

I was having this same problem yesterday. I use an older system (AMD Phenom 9850 with 8GB Ram, Windows 10 x64 Pro) and I was using the video editing functions, but things were horribly unstable. When working with Blender, I close every application I can to reduce the CPU/Memory load, and this helps tremendously, but yesterday it didn't help. Every few clicks and things would stop responding. Add a clip, not responding. Remove a clip, not responding. Save the project, not responding. It was terribly frustrating. I "solved" this by turning off Malwarebytes (malware protection) and pausing ESET (virus protection.) I hate that as a "solution", but it worked for me.


Cannot find Background Images feature in Blender 2.8 - follow up I'm new to this forum, don't have "reputation" pints to answer, that's why I'm doubling this post:
Cannot find Background Images feature in Blender 2.8
So, it's possible to import images and give them options similar to old background images, transparency, scale, dimension, foreground/background overlay... that's nice.
However, how can we limit the visibility to specific views, like before.
I want 6 vies to be assigned to Top, Bottom, Left, Right, Front and Back views.
Can anyone explain how to do it simple way like it was in 2.79?
Best,
Hazooka.

The options are still there.

Navigate to Top/Front view + add the image and check ✓ Only Axis Aligned
To limit visibility to orthographic view > uncheck ✓ Perspective


How to move vertices upwards while bone rotates I've been working on this low-poly mouse character to learn Blender again, but I've run into a problem with my legs that I don't think I know how to fix:

As can be seen, the bottom of the jorts leg clips into the top of the jorts.
I've thought of solving this problem by assigning the jorts to the leg bones, but that moves the belt area backward through the stomach. It was at this point that I realized what I really needed was for the jorts to move upwards as the legs rotated in that direction.
What I'm wondering is, is there a way to, for example, create a bone that moves upwards if a parent bone rotates within a certain range?

I suppose it wouldn't have hurt to just search around the tools a bit more. I discovered that the Transform tool works best for this. I created two bones for those areas near the legs and then mapped a certain rotation range of the thighs to the increase in Z I wanted the bones to have. Just remember that you want to set the Owner to "Local with Parent" if you ever plan on moving your object around, and do something similar with Target (for me I set that to Local Space).


2.8: How to enable Eevee on a Macbook pro? EDIT: So now I have my answer, 2.8 doesn't work with my OS (10.9.5), but it works with a more recent one like Mojave.

I wonder how to enable Eevee on a Macbook pro. For the moment if I choose Eevee as Render Engine, here is the result I get (image below, Rendered mode with no material). I also screenshot my Preferences if it helps. My Macbook Pro is a Retina, 15 pouces, mid-2014, the video card is Intel Iris Pro (GPU type), OS X (version 10.9.5).

Thanks a lot!!!

It's not something you have to enable, EEVEE is just here and you have to chose it as your current render engine, just like before.

Go in the properties editor, you'll find a drop-down menu for choosing your render engine at the very top of the render tab :

EDIT: As the OP is already in rendered view in EEVEE and without materials, then it looks like a bug.


bone/armature movements during game play I am trying to simply move a bone that has been parented to a mesh in Blender 2.69. I want to do this in real-time - while the BGE is running. I linked an Always logic block to the python code seen below. Can anyone point out to me why this code does not move the 'Bone'?

   import bpy
import bge
import GameLogic as GL
#"bge.types.BL_ArmatureChannel(PyObjectPlus)" in the documentation means that BL_ArmatureChannel is a subclass of PyObjectPlus.
import mathutils

# The owner is an armature, so 'alien' will be a BL_ArmatureObject instead of KX_GameObject
cont1 = bge.logic.getCurrentController() #makes: SCA_PythonController
cubeBone=cont1.owner #makes: BL_ArmatureObject
#get the scene for the mouse and other things
scene=bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
#get a keyboard
keyboard = bge.logic.keyboard

def main1():

    if bge.logic.KX_INPUT_ACTIVE == keyboard.events[bge.events.DOWNARROWKEY]:
        #cubeBone.channels['Bone'].location = mathutils.Vector([3, 5, 8])
        print (cubeBone.channels) #prints the channes available
        print(cubeBone.channels['Bone'].rotation_euler)
        print(cubeBone.channels['Bone'].joint_rotation)
        #class: bge.types.KX_GameObject(SCA_IObject)
        #cubeBone.channels('Bone').localPosition.z +=0.1
        #cubeBone.channels('Bone').rotation_mode'XYZ'
        #cubeBone.channels('Bone').rotation_euler([5,5,5])
        #cubeBone.channels('Bone').joint_rotation([0.0,0.0,0.1], True)
        cubeBone.channels['Bone'].rotation_mode = GL.ROT_MODE_XYZ
        cubeBone.channels['Bone'].rotation_euler=[25,25,25] #BL_ArmatureChannel.rotation_euler
        print("bone moved")
        cubeBone.update()
        print(cubeBone.channels['Bone'].rotation_euler)
############# end of main ###############################

main1()
cubeBone.update()

The Console prints out the new vectors that are changed, but the animation does not move.
I found this post: Controlling armature through python but there are mixed answers and they are not very helpful for noobs.
Thanks guys

I am not sure if you have tried this,

Connect a always sensor to a and controller to a Run armature brick,

if this is not your issue, just add a empty for each bone you want to manipulate,

have the bone use copy rotation on the empty,

Rotate the empty.

Now you can move bones in the bge (I do it all the time for heads tracking cursors etc)


How to rotate bezier control point (viewport not updating) I working on a procedural system that defines two bezier curves and bevels them together. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to rotate the handles on the control vertices of my bezier curves.

import bpy
import mathutils

# do some rotation
bpy.ops.transform.transform(
    mode='ROTATION',
    value=0.6
)
# or
bpy.ops.transform.rotate(
    value=0.6
)
# or
p = bpy.context.active_object.splines[0].bezier_points[0]
p.handle_left = mathutils.Vector((1, 2, 3))

# nothing updates the viewport
bpy.ops.wm.redraw_timer(type='DRAW', iterations=1) # nope
# or
bpy.context.area.tag_redraw() # nope
# or
bpy.context.scene.update() # not a method

Rotating the handles of bezier curves.

Running script in edit mode on default bez (blender 2.82)

There are some issues at play, eg what handle type you are using.  I have set the type of both to 'FREE'

For example, here is a script to rotate both handles of point 0 of bezier curve by 45 degrees about the local z axis passing through the coordinate point.

Running the script 8 times should see the handles return to initial position.

To rotate have used one of the methods outlined in https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/7603/15543 which is probably a better way to go for a "Procedural System" than operators.

import bpy
from mathutils import Matrix
from math import radians

ob = bpy.context.object
cu = ob.data
spline = cu.splines[0]
p = spline.bezier_points[0]

M = (Matrix.Translation(p.co) @
     Matrix.Rotation(radians(45), 4, 'Z') @
     Matrix.Translation(-p.co))

p.handle_left_type = 'FREE'
p.handle_right_type = 'FREE'

p.handle_left = M @ p.handle_left
p.handle_right = M @ p.handle_right

Running the script in 2.81 in either mode produces the desired result and updates in the UI.

If you are having issues recommend that you look for errors in the system console, or IMO better still, test in the python console.

# this one throws a syntax error
bpy.ops.transform.transform(
    mode='ROTATION',
    value=0.6
)
# or this one relies on settings for axis an pivot point, but does rotate
bpy.ops.transform.rotate(
    value=0.6
)


Cannot remap pan hotkey in UV editor For the life of me I cannot figure this out. I am trying to get the view in the UV editor to pan when the MMB is clicked, like it normally does. But nothing I do works. I already made a post about this :

How do I remap pan hotkey in UV image editor?

But still I cannot find the right shortcut key. Here are my current settings:

I have been trying for so long to get this to work. If anyone can help I would be eternally grateful.

You are probably adding it in the wrong window context

For the UV Image Editor the  operator is image.view_pan and is supposed to be added in the Image category

There also seems to be an entry for view2d.pan in both the View 2D and View2D Buttons List category

All set to Mouse Middle Press events


Cycles: Trying to bake all materials to one image, but it creates an image for each material? I'm doing the normal:

Create new UV map.
Unwrap
Make A New Image in UV editor.
Bake -> Diffuse Color

Again, instead of putting them all onto one image, it makes like 4 or 5 images for each material. All combined together, it would be perfect, but this obviously isn't.

Any ideas? Thanks!

I've solved my own issue. In Cycles, you must create a floating (not connected) Image Texture node and select it FOR EACH MATERIAL. I was creating a new material, not doing this for every existing one. Doh -- thanks!


Why wont my imported obj appear, it says its in blender but I cant actually see it basically, in the little sidebar on the right, it has everything and it shows that my object is in the blender, but when I look at the actual grid thing, there are arrows and I'm able to move an invisible something however the object I can't see it (its a Roblox Character)

Sometimes when a 3d model is exported then imported, it can be imported really far away and/or really small. Its origin may be displaced. What you can do is select the object and then in the top left go to 3d cursor so you are moving the 3d cursor. Then move the 3d cursor to a place were you can see. Then select the move option at the top left and select the object in the heirarchy. then right click in the 3d view port and select: set origin> Geometry to origin. The object should be at the cursor. If you cant see it still, try scaling it up as much as possible. Hope this helps.


Just getting started, what hardware? I am just getting stared in Blender and am enjoying the heck out of it so far.

I have two systems I could work from and I'm trying to determine which would be better

A 2.5Ghz i5 four core laptop with a 1060
Ryzen 5 3.7Ghz four core / 8 thread with a Vega 11.

I honestly don't yet know much about 3D modeling and assumed that the system with the better GPU would render faster.

I loaded a few test scenes on each system and did a casual comparison and was surprised to see the  RYZEN system pull way ahead on my first test.  However the next scene I rendered favored the Intel system.  Over several scenes it varied back and forth.

So can the individual scene render better on one type of hardware than the other?  If not, which system should be better?

The 2nd system would be better at rendering only using the CPU, but the 1st system would be better at rendering with CPU + GPU combined, along with running EEVEE better, since it uses a dedicated GPU. I'd suggest the 1st system, since the GPU should be able to pick up the slack of the weaker CPU, though you'll have to go into Blender's settings to enable Blender to use the GPU at all. (Also the fact that rendering with only GPU is faster than rendering with only CPU. Still turn both on though.)

Go to Preferences > System and tick off both CPU and GPU to enable this.


Add-On Dev: Open external file with default program I was planning to create some simple help-like text or HTML documents in a local folder of my add-on, and provide "help" buttons on the panels to allow the user to access them from each section that relates to that file.

Is there a way to open these files using the user's default program from within Blender?

You can add a wiki URL ("wiki_url") to the bl_info of your add-on. This will result in a link to the documentation in the add-on preferences. Alternatively you can use bpy.ops.wm.url_open(url="") in your code to open the browser.


How do I extrude an object into another creating depth? I am designing a fader and I want to have the groove be deep. I don't know how to extrude the grey long rectangle into the white face. They are two seperate meshes and I need to show some depth for when I render with light (the fader should look like it is actually sliding in a groove).

Select the object you want to use to create the groove, Tab into Edit mode and press E and extrude it to give it some depth (as deep as you want the groove to be). Next select the panel (the white face) and add a Boolean modifier to it selecting the extruded object as the input, change the operation to Difference and then apply the modifier if you are satisfied with the results. Finally, delete the extruded object and you can enter edit mode to tweak as desired.


How to draw out of XZ plane in Blender? I have started a new project in Blender and selected 2D animation mode.
Next I drew few shapes and then rotated scene a bit and found, that all my drawings were actually in 3D but constrained into $XZ$ plane with camera, looking at the plane.

What if I want to draw in other planes, say $XY$ or arbitrary plane, say another one parallel to $XZ$? Is it possible?

You have 2 options available in the viewport to control the placement of new strokes.
Hint : Hover your cursor over a setting to see more information about it.

Stroke Placement
You can choose to place the drawing plane on the World Origin at $(0, 0, 0)$, on the 3D cursor, a 3D mesh surface or another stroke.
Drawing Plane

You can Choose a plane orthogonal to the view, on the global XY, global YZ, or global XY plane or on the local XY plane of the 3D cursor.
By default the 3D cursor is not visible in the 3D viewport in 2D Animation. Enable it in the overlays :

To move or rotate the 3D cursor, you have to open the "N" panel with N, and go to View > 3D Cursor Panel. You can also change the tool in the left hand side and move it with the mouse in Object mode.


How do I move my blender models (made from a single model) to the 0.0.0 zone on the axis My model (well, models) is a bit off on X axis(the red one). How do I move the model so its perfectly centered (its mirrored and/or symmetrical, aside one object(car mirror))?

The reason I need to do this is because I am re modeling the cars taillights to look more realistic, and by adding a new mesh and mirroring it, its really hard to place them exactly on right distance and right area on the car rear panel...

My reddit username is Gatemaster2000

Reddit post crosspost archive link: http://archive.is/ZqY1c

Some thing like your problem:

Shift + S and select, Selection to cursor (Be sure to use it in Object mode)

It will moved to center as on your 3d cursor. (if your 3d cursor is not in center already try Shift + S and select, Cursor to center)

Now you may adjust the location of your model along z axis manually, I hope it will not difficult for you.

Best of luck!

Updated:
You may try to hit Ctrl + A and apply location and also please follow the steps as shown below:


Export "Project from view" texture as uv texture I've created texture for my model using the "project from view" and edited it externally. However, to use it, it needs to be exported from blender as a uv map (with the colors on)

As suggested I've added a picture trying to describe what I'm looking for. This is the best way I can put it. (UV map in bottom right is what I'm looking for. Where the texture from the gun would be pinned down on a UV map to match the UV map. This is for CS:GO where the guns need the texture to be painted on the UV map)

You can Bake the texture onto your UV map.

with your model selected in the 3d View, open the Uv/Image Editor and create a new image. Name it and dimension it however you like. Otherwise you can just leave the image blank for now.
With your model still selected in the 3d View, open the Node Editor. You don't need to mess with the material at all. Just add an Image Texture node using the blank image you just created. Make sure the Image Texture node is selected. It should have a brighter border than notes that aren't selected.
In the Render Panel of the Properties Editor, scroll down to the Bake section. The default Bake Type is Combined. If you just want the diffuse portion of the material, select Diffuse Color from the dropdown list.
Click Bake and the texture should appear in UV Editor aligned with your model's UV map.

Pink stripes mapped to original material with a separate 'Projected from View' UV map. Return to step one to bake as one texture map. Just be sure to have the original UV selected as active in the Properties Editor when doing so.


Interactive 3D House Interior in Blender I would like to ask if is it possible to make an interactive 3d house interior in blender or will I need another program to pair with blender? Thank you.

If you're using Blender < 2.7x you could do it with Game Engine.


Having trouble joining two edges I'm still a beginner and decided to model a lightsaber from a CG GEEK tutorial linked here.

I've been having some trouble joining two faces after running into trouble from double vertices in my mesh. I noticed it when I applied a subdivision surface and I've been having trouble solving it. The biggest detail that I've noticed is that the new vertices that were created when I tried to fill in the gap with the fill tool, aren't recognized as a face by Blender. Thank you for your advice.

Don't use the fill tool. Delete that big and ugly n-gon shown in the pictures, then select the edge loops you want to join (⎇ Alt+ RMB), and press the space bar and type Bridge Edge loops

Read: How to connect vertices in a mesh efficiently?.

Then, if you are using a subsurf modifier you need to select the edges you want to make sharp and crease them. Press ⇧ Shift+E and set the edge crease to a valud of 1.0

read: Keep sharp edges when using subdivision surface


issue after changing the color of the UV image with photoshop I am using texture paint and I have used different photos to do so, and the color of the skin is slightly different (in the green circles):
To correct this problem I have open the UV image in photoshop and use the split frequency technique to have one picture in greytone which corresponds to the detail (also know as high pass filter in photoshop) (here is a sample)
and then uniformed the color as you can see
Every thing work fine up to this point but when i import the modified UV image I get this strange result:
(the line matches with the wire frame).
Does someone knows how to fix it? or how to make a split frequency to get something similar to the high pass filter in photoshop but with the node editor?

On your 3rd image you can see that on each polygon border on your UV layout the color are brighter, this probably happened in Photoshop for some reasons. This is what causing the wireframe pattern on your last image.

To do the same thing in the node editor you should use a Color Ramp node, which will convert your RGB image to a grayscale image. Then you can control your skin color with a RGB node.


Can't save my render as an image I seem to be having issues when I try and save the output file as a .png, or .jpeg for that matter. I've set up my user preferences, File, Render Output to my desktop as well as render output in the editor window. What am I missing here? I'm obviously very new to this program and your help would be appreciated.
Thanks for your time

Push the render button (or F12), then F3 to save the image.


hair particle with object hello, I am testing particle hair, And I want to bend mesh along the hair Path,
How could I change the softness of the hair??
Thank you.

hello
I could bend mesh along hair with particle instancer,
duplicate a mesh which is used as hair object, and add modifier "particle instancer"
and choose the object which has particle system as Object. It worked like the picture.


What is srgb bt.709? I am the author of an add-on for Blender 2.8.

I have one user that is experiencing an error. I understand what is causing it, but I don't understand why.

My add-on is selecting the "Standard" option from this list:

The user, however, does not have that option. Hist list looks like this (note also the different Display Device):

We are both using clean installs of the latest Blender 2.8 beta (11 July 2019 build).

What exactly is "sRGB / BT.709"? Why does he have this option, whereas I do not?

BT.709 is an HDTV color standard, hence different options list. The user mentioned may use such a device. It'd be good if his device had a VGA input either. See color.org site for more info on the subject.


How to make an object transparent in the viewport? I would like to make one of my objects transparent in the 3D Viewport. When I look around I get tons of answers - all different, and some of them a lot more complicated than others and also older from versions of Blender. I can't get any of them to work. I just want the simplest way to make anything transparent; like descreasing the alpha channel or checking an x-ray parameter or something like that. Any ideas?
I tried bpy.context.active_object.show_transparent=True but I'm sure what it does, but it seems like what I want.
Here are some of the links I found:

Blender view-port transparent objects How to This illustrates the effect I would like and it is only a few simple commands, but I can't find the functionality he describes.

Show transparent viewport image (via script) - Very complicated and incomplete

https://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/scene-view-alpha-transparency.php - Very long and comprehensive.

Material Opacity in viewport? - Just what I want, but I can't find the functions.

I also think I read something about an x-ray setting. But this might have been an addon. But that would be fine for my purpose.

One option is to set the alpha value (fourth component) of Material.diffuse_color:

float array of 4 items in [0, inf], default (0.8, 0.8, 0.8, 0.8)

import bpy

# Get the object in context
obj = bpy.context.object

# Get the active material
mat = obj.active_material

# Set the alpha value of the diffuse color
mat.diffuse_color = (0.0 , 0.0 , 1.0 , 0.7)


How to imitate scaling a mesh in Edit Mode without Edit Mode (ie. keeping object transforms at 1, 1, 1 with modal control of the scale) I have a modal operator that adds and adjusts an array of elements along a curve, but I have a problem with scaling. I'm using the 'Fit to Curve' setting for the array modifier so it automatically adds the necessary duplicates of the object until it fits the curve.

If I scale normally this happens (it just scales in 2 dimensions and ignores the curve as an axis):

This can be solved by applying transformations after with a KeyPress (similar to pressing Ctrl+A) but you won't see the correct effect until that moment, so it's not exactly ideal for a modal operator you're constantly adjusting and where seeing the correct result live is kind of the point.

I figured the solution was to apply transforms constantly but then I'm just scaling the already scaled object and the modal scale grows exponentially and has other unintended side effects as well.

This is the effect I would like to achieve (right now I get it by going into edit mode and scaling the mesh directly):

The obvious problem is that I have to leave the modal operator, select the faces, press S to scale the object, then go back in to the modal.

I would very much like to be able to replicate the effect of Scaling in Edit Mode without going into edit mode or at least enter and exiting fast enough that the user doesn't realize it. The desired effect being: the object transforms stay at (1, 1, 1) but moving the mouse to the right increases the scale and to the left decreases it with no exponential growth.

I tried doing something like this:

val =  self.start_scale + (start_mouse_x - current_mouse_x) * multiplier
scale_matrix = Matrix.Diagonal((val, val, val, val))
mesh.data.transform(scale_matrix)

The advantage is that I avoid switching into edit mode entirely, the disadvantage is I have the same problem as if we were constantly applying transformations (I'm just scaling the current scale again and I get the same exponential growth instead of setting an absolute scale value).

So...

What's the best way of mimicking the Edit Mode Scale where mouse to the right makes the scale bigger, to the left makes the scale smaller and the object transform stays at (1, 1, 1)? The other important aspect being that the scale is not multiplying itself, but rather increasing/decreasing with a constant effect and NOT exponentially.

Use shape keys

Demo, set up with array (fit curve) and curve modifier. The cone is given a shape key which is 1 / 10 the scale of original.  Because the array modifier is using the mesh dimension this "emulates applying scale" in the modifier.

For set up above, when the shapekey value is dragged to  1, the "scale" is 1/10 making 10 x more cones fit the path.


Controlling the direction of face selection? I may be missing something really simple, but I'd like to know if there is a way to control which direction my selection goes when selecting with  Shift +Alt. A simple example is shown in the attached gif, it is just a sub divided plane object. I just don't understand why I can't control the direction (x or y) of the selection. It seems that I have to figure out the best way each time, and select the leftover faces afterwards.

It really depends on where you click with your ALTRMB.
If you click close to the vertical top or bottom of your face, it will select the vertical loop. If you click on the horizontal area, it will select the horizontal loop.


Transparency/Masking : See through an Outer Sphere and see Inner Sphere in true colours Summary

I want to be able to look through an outer sphere - BlueSphere, and see another sphere inside - RedSphere

This is the target goal I'm trying to get to:

Issues

Here is what I have tried, and the problems I'm having:

1)

If I set the spheres transparency alpha values to 0.75
  - then the inner RedSphere does not take on its "true" colour and shows as blue instead of red.

2)

If I set the spheres transparency alpha to lower values of 0.5

the spheres lose their crispness which I don't want
and the inner RedSphere still does not take on its "true" colour

{ can't paste a 3rd sample - need more reputation points }

Background

I am animating two spheres, one inside the other, superimposed about a common origin.

At the start:

the outer BlueSphere is at full radius
the inner RedSphere is at zero radius

As time progresses:

the outer BlueSphere shrinks
the inner RedSphere expands

So what happens is the expanding inner RedSphere "bursts through" the contracting outer BlueSphere.

So the effect I am looking for is to see the RedSphere appearing as Red as it expands inside the BlueSphere.

Thinking/Logic

So I figure that transparency is not the way to go.

The transparency settings are behaving correctly - as one would expect, in a "real world" situation - the inner sphere (Red) takes on the colour of the outer sphere (Blue) seeing as we are looking through a (transparent) Blue material.

Any ideas on what approach to take ?

It's almost as if I should be "removing" the part of the BlueSphere that the RedSphere "occupies" so that we see the RedSphere directly without any BlueSphere between us and the RedSphere.

Some sort of masking ??

Advice, comments, suggestions welcome. Thanks.

[requested edit]

Using internal render.

[ My End Solution - Thanks for the guidance ]

Right, so here is the way I got to my final result:

1) I created python drivers for each sphere

I used the frame_current scene property for input
Passed that to a scripted expression which used sin() as the scaling factor
Used some if / elif conditionals against frame_current to make the spheres visible only when I needed them

2) I created 3 layers

On Layer-1 - background

I put RedSphere AND BlueSphere
with drivers driver_Outer_RedSphere() & driver_Outer_BlueSphere()
limiting the display of each sphere to show only where each radius > halfway

On Layer-2 - foreground-1

I put RedSphere ONLY
with driver driver_Inner_RedSphere()
limiting the display of RedSphere to show only where its radius <= halfway

On Layer-3 - foreground-2

I put BlueSphere ONLY
with driver driver_Inner_BlueSphere()
limiting the display of BlueSphere to show only where its radius <= halfway

3) I rendered each layer to .PNG sequence [RGBA] (alpha channel for transparency)

Render Layer-1 - background

background : [sky]

Render Layer-2 - foreground-1

background : [transparent]

Render Layer-3 - foreground-2

background : [transparent]

4) I brought all 3 sequences into the Video Sequence Editor

Strip-1 - background

blend [cross]
opacity [1.00]

Strip-2 - foreground-1

blend [alpha-over]
opacity [0.50]

Strip-3 - foreground-2

blend [alpha-over]
opacity [0.50]

5) Rendered the 3 layer final sequence to H.264

So the "aha moment" struck me right at the end when I was in the Video Sequence Editor:

"Don't try to make the Outer Spheres transparent, and see through to the Inner Spheres"
"Instead overlay the Inner Spheres over the Outer Spheres, and limit the opacity of the Inner Sphere overlay"

So now I see my Inner Spheres in their true colours, but the colours are muted due to the .75 opacity - and hence it gives the visual impression that the Inner Spheres are in fact inside the Outer Spheres.

Thanks all for the input - it got me going in the right direction.

You might be able to accomplish the effect you want using Compositing and Render Layers.

https://www.blender.org/manual/render/post_process/layers.html

Put the red sphere on one layer and the blue sphere on another layer.  Make sure the red layer is transparent ( Can Blender render pngs with the background transparent? )

Some of the compositor nodes you would need have screenshots in Using scenes and render layers to composite an object isolated on white background with shadow .

  use an alpha over node in the compositor to put the red ball OVER the
  blue one. Both will keep their solid appearance.
  - Gez

When it comes time for the spheres to swap orders, you can have a second alpha-over node that puts the blue ball over the red ball.  Then route those two alpha-over nodes into a Mix (under the Add > Color menu) node and animate its Fac to switch from 0 to 1.  This animation can be keyframed, or if you want to get super-fancy you can rig a driver that uses python to compare the radius of the two spheres.

Unfortunately the layers property of an object can not be keyframed.  I do not think there is a way to keyframe the visibility of an object within a single layer.  It is possible to animate the hide_render property (the camera icon on the outliner) that affects its visibility on all layers.  This enables an alternative where you just have 3 layers and one of them is an identical blue sphere that is unrenderable until the keyframe where it has shrunk enough that you want it to appear (you could also get fancy and use drivers).  This technique does not require you to keyframe compositor nodes and slightly simplifies the node tree.  It also works better if you have multiple nested spheres in the scene.

Having two distinct blue sphere objects can illustrate some properties of blenders datablock sharing system.  If you animate the sphere and then create a duplicate for the other layer they will share the same action datablock and will animate the same.  If you duplicate the sphere before you give it any keyframes (so at that time the original has no action), the two spheres will not share the action datablock (although you can later link it in using the Action Editor mode of the Dope Sheet window).


Rendering of the imported .ply does not show textures I have a .ply file that I obtained from a 3D scan.  In textures view, I can see the textures but when I render it I cannot see the textures.

I think I have to add a material and a texture, but I cannot seem to get the colors from the scan I took. Any help?

Select the object of the imported model.
In the properties editor, go to the Material tab and add a new material.
For the new material, under Options, enable "Vertex Color Paint" checkbox.
Now the colors of the model should show in rendering.


Mapping an orthographic texture to a model I created a model, that is based on an orthographic projection. The orthographic projection also contains the image(s) that I want to map to my model. (Ship model left / Orthographic view and textures right)

I was hoping that there was a way to map this model directly as it is (Model made based off of the projection) to the orthographic view without having to individually map each part to the image. I was able to apply the side view texture to the corresponding side, but when I try to map any other angle, it replaces my old texture. This is what I was able to achieve:

As you can see, when I mapped one side, the top, and all other sides were replaced with what has left over from that side map instead of the part I mapped earlier (I used 'Project From View'). So I was wondering how I could map my model based off of this orthographic projection. Also, this is the only texture that I could obtain, so I won't be able to edit this image in order to change it to match a specific UV map. I would appreciate a precise step by step walkthrough (if possible) on how to accomplish this task.

Note: Using Cyles Render (can't use Blender Render for specific parts in this project) on Blender v2.76

The last piece which is missing in your setup is that Project From View like any other UV unwrap method unwraps all the mesh parts which are selected.

As you selected the whole mesh and unwrapped it, its UV map was created according to that point of view - for the whole object (so there are intersecting parts on that UV map island you have shown in your screenshot).
The problem is that you want only side of the object to be unwrapped according to that projection and it is very likely that you want the front part of the object to be unwrapped with Project From View executed once your view is oriented accordingly. E.g. this famous person uses UV map made with Project From View executed from the front view:

It looks relatively good from the front view, but the side view is distorted as much as it was visible from the point of view when unwrapping.
So if you want to use Project From View, select only adjacent parts of the mesh according to what is visible while unwrapping, or mark seams and unwrap according to them (the view point won't make any difference then).


What is the Alpha Convert node used for? What is the Alpha Convert node used for? I've never seen any tutorials on it. Also, if there are several good uses for it, examples would be great!

It's used for manually converting between Straight and Premultiplied alpha.
This is sometimes needed when using external images in compositing, among other uses.
See the wiki:

Straight Alpha
This is the alpha type used by paint programs such as Photoshop or
Gimp, and used in common file formats like PNG, BMP or Targa. So,
image textures or output for the web are usually straight alpha. RGBA
color are stored as (R, G, B, A) channels, with the RGB channels
unaffected by the alpha channels.
Premultiplied Alpha
Rendering will output premultiplied alpha images, and the OpenEXR file
format uses this alpha type. So, intermediate files for rendering and
compositing are often stored as premultiplied alpha. Compared to
straight alpha, the colors could be considered to be stored as (R*A,
G*A, B*A, A), with the alpha multiplied into the RGB channel.
This is the natural output of render engines, with the RGB channels
representing the amount of light that comes toward the viewer, and
alpha representing how much of the light from the background is
blocked.
Conversion
Conversion between the two alpha types is not a simple operation and
can involve data loss, as both alpha types can represent data that the
other can not, though it is often subtle.
Straight alpha can be considered to be an RGB color image with a
separate alpha mask. In areas where this mask is fully transparent,
there can still be colors in the RGB channels. On conversion to
premultiplied alpha this mask is 'applied' and the colors in such
areas become black and are lost.
Premultiplied alpha on the other hand can represent renders that are
both emitting light and letting through light from the background. For
example a transparent fire render might be emitting light, but also
letting through all light from objects behind it. On converting to
straight alpha this effect is lost.


Rendering Smoke on GPU causes: CUDA error cuCtxCreate: Launch failed So whenever I try to render a smoke simulation on my GPU I'm presented with this error:

After receiving this error message I can no longer render anything on this file. I ran a test with only a small amount of smoke in my scene and still received the same rendering error, I have tried turning on experimental and still didn't resolve my issue. Any help on resolving this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Graphics card:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M

I definitely recommend Ignac's suggestion - the TDR setting will mess up many animations if not extended.

As a side suggestion, I would download a program called 'GPU-Z' - blender will often crash before showing the actual amount of memory needed, which in my experience is double the amount stated. EG if you get a crash at 1228 MEM, it's because blender actually needed more than 2400 MEM. I usually see this during the 'Building BVH' stage.

GPU-Z will actually tell you how much memory was being used at the point of the crash. Very handy.

Hope this helps,
Regards, C.


How do i add detail when sculpting? Im trying to sculpt a monster in blender and i do not know how to add detail to it. It looks very blocky when using clay brushes etc. Do i need to subdivide my object for more triangles? thanks.

Dyntopo (adaptive sculpting) is the option to use to add detail without being constrained by the underlying mesh topology. As I can see from your screenshot, you are already using it.

Be aware of the Dyntopo option: "Relative detail". It makes the stroke detail dependent on the zoom level: «Zoom out big details, zoom in small fine details». So... just try zooming in!

There are other possible options, that you might find more suitable for you. For instance, "Brush detail": «You can increase and lower topology by simply resizing the brush itself».

Have a look at the manual for details about all the Adaptive Sculpting options: link to the manual.


create gaps between spline points with animation nodes Following this answer  curve intersection with volume in animation nodes, I've managed to create a spline which i use to distribute objects inside a volume.

Here is how:

But I still need to avoid having distributed objects along the spline when this one gets outside the volume along the gap
:

How can it be done? I've tried substracting those points (outside volume) from the ones that are generating the spline that is used to distribute the objects but as it now look obvious the spline will still be generated. So my second option is to do it inside the distribution objects loop but don't know how, any ideas?

EDIT

AS @Omar Ahmad proposes finding inside points is straight forward using BVHTREE but this way we cant control the distance between the volume faces and the points.

EDIT 2

@Omar Ahmad solution does the job but putting the tool to some tricky situations give inconsistent results like this ones:

I'll be trying the other solution proposed, far more complex, which I'm already struggling to replicate.

This answer will be using the technique described in my answer here. After getting the parameters of the intersections, we prepend it with zero and append it with 1 representing the start and end of the spline respectively. The prepended list represents the starting parameters of the sub-splines between intersection points while the appended list represents the ending parameters. We can generate those sub-splines by trimming as follows:

We can then loop over the sub-splines, evaluate a point in the middle and see if it is inside the object or not, if yes, we append the spline:

And that is it, you now have the interior splines which you can evaluate to get what you want. For instance:


Align object according to axis how I can cordinate/align a object according a axis(Z,X,Y)?

This is the top view, and as you can see, its not correct.

This is the front view, as you can see its slightly not according to the axis.

You can use align rotation of the snapping tool. But you have to align an object with straight axes onto your mesh and then rotate it back.


Unfold a set of edges I have a long curve of 425 vertices where there is two round parts :

I would like to unfold this curve to have a straight line where all edges length are the same than the initial curve.

Thanks !

I have created a script to do it.
There is probably a native way so I do not accept my own answer.

Here is the script :

import bpy
import bmesh

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

previous = 0
current = bm.verts[399] #index of one of the two extremity

points = [0]

flag = False
while flag is False:
    flag = True
    for edge in current.link_edges:
        nei = edge.other_vert(current)
        if nei is not previous:
            previous = current
            current = nei
            flag = False
            len = (previous.co-current.co).length
            points.append(points[-1]+len)
            break

for v in points:
    bm.verts.new((v,0,0))

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(mesh)


How to split/slice a polygon without subdivide? So I'm relatively new to Blender AND human modelling and was working on this low poly CG character. This torso was built from a cylinder primitive and now I want to split/slice at the very bottom face in two (then I can cut half of it and mirror, extrude the leg or whatever).

The face can't be subdivided and I just want to slice the face in two along the line (shown in the picture as a cyan line) connecting the center vertices.

This is Blender 2.66. What do I do to accomplish this?

You could use the knife tool. Press K and then click where you want to make cuts. Press ⏎ Enter or Space to confirm:

Or you could use the join tool. Select the vertices you want to connect with an edge and press J:


Cycles: prevent part of texture from being illuminated (AO, no shine, etc) I see this requested here and there and people like to lecture about how it "isn't realistic". Solutions that are offered are too niche for my use-case.
I have a throat texture and need part of it to not be illuminated AT ALL. I cannot base this effect off of geometry because the edge flow doesn't match the texture. I need to fake depth for the throat. I am only using a diffuse map and a normal map:

This looks pretty good tbh but that is because his mouth is at a downward angle. Notice that if I create a new BSDF material with a 100% black color and put it on a cube, the problem is obvious:

How can I prevent light from interacting with part of a texture AT ALL?

Ok, so I actually did this before but forgot, and since I don't see this solution anywhere else (until mods come and point it out to me), here is the solution:
Specular.
Create an AO map where the baseline color is "50% gray" (HSV: 0,0,0.5) and the completely occluded areas are 100% black (HSV: 0,0,0). (I make all my grayscale maps "grayscale" color mode but am always disappointed by how little effect that has on file size.) Plug that into the Specular property of your Principled BSDF shader.
Before:

After:

In case that is too subtle...
Before:

After:


White background for animation I'd like to create an animation (mp4 video) with a completely white background and use a hdri environment texture for lighting.

If it was just an image I'd have no problems, simply by setting Film to Transparent under Render options and then the PNG to RGBA, I could easily add a white background to the image subsequently using some photo editor.

But what about animations? If I do the same thing, so I set Film to Transparent, the video gets a black background.

Is it possible somehow?

To create a colored background with and HDR we want everything but the camera to see the world as the HDR, and the camera to see it as white. To do this we can use the Light Path node. use the Is Camera Ray attribute to see if the camera is what is looking at the sky, if it is, show white. If not, show HDR.


How to do apply a shadeless material bump map I applied a normal map to one of the object in my game, and because I am having some trouble with lighting, I was wondering if there was a way to have a shadeless material while still keeping the normal map effect.

To achieve this effect, I just turned up the "emit" setting in the materials panel.


Why doesn't the object fall into the other object? I want my small object to fall inside the shell of the larger sculpture. Why does it just hit the top plane of the object instead? Thanks!

the reason for this, is because your rigidbody is set to Convex Hull  which means it takes the outside of the mesh, and gives it collision box, and it just fills in all the holes.
If you want an object to fall inside a hole, all you need to do is change your rigidbody from Convex Hull to Mesh  as illustrated.


Exporting Node Textures / Texture Baking This is my first week using Blender, I started off watching a ton of Blender Guru's tutorials and created his PBR Dielectric and PBR Non-Dielectric Shaders.

I've been trying to use the shader nodes I created to add some texture to my model. I unwrapped the object and chose a base color just for reference. When exporting the model into Unity, there is no color nor metallic shine.

Now I understand I could easily just choose a color in Unity, but for this example I added in the PBR Shader for Metal, when rendering inside Blender itself, the object looks exactly how I want it to look in Unity. Is my understanding of nodes in general incorrect? Do they not export data?

I've watched a video on Texture Baking, but truly didn't fully understand it nor when to correctly use it. If I want to use my shaders do I actually have to texture bake the material? In the video I watched about Texture Baking the tutorial creator said something to the extent of: Once you've texture baked a material, the material won't react and change in any other lighting setting. Did I just completely misunderstand this?

Is it correct that If I Texture Bake an object, If imported into Unity, the lighting will have 0 effect on it? If so do I just need to make sure my lighting while I texture Bake is perfect for how I want my Object to always look?

I searched for almost 3 hours, couldn't find anything. I really hate being a nuisance, bothering people and asking a ton of questions but I've hit a brick wall. Thank you SO much ahead of time, for anybody who takes the time to give me any help.

-Jack

PBR and texture baking are simple when you organize your concepcts correctly.
First thing you have to UV Unrwrap your model because you're telling how blender and Unity will shrink-wrap the textures to your model.

When you are working with a PBR Workflow you'll have in most times 4 maps :

1 ALBEDO/DIFFUSE
Is a color map, represents the colors,logos,textures etc... in your object;
2 METALNESS (IN SOME CASES SPECULAR MAP IS ALSO USED)
How metal some object is,and where it's metal or where isn't;
3 NORMALS
Normal maps is a technique used for faking the lighting of bumps. Are commonly used to represent a HighPoly mesh into a low poly, or add details visible beacuse it says to render where the light has bumps or not.
4 ROUGHNESS
How rough a object is,how "reflective" it's...

Here's a example of maps :

Then rendered :

But you also could've been using AO,Emissive,Opacity and heigmaps.

They act like informations to the render know how to properly render your object correctly in any light circunstances. Your light in baking process is irrelevant.

But the light when you RENDER, will matter. The render uses your PBR maps to know how light will affect the object so you can get better results based on real life's physics.

Baking is the process where you make the maps itself.

Here's a example to texture Baking a NORMAL MAP :

There are 2 objects a low poly(not that low) and a High poly

When you bake the normal map,you'll got a map to use in low poly mesh to fake light bumps into it and get a smoother result.

Hope it will help you in a basic level, if something isn't clear, please let me know friend.

In addition ,Blender 2.79 will have a native solution for PBR Workflow in cycles, check it Later.

Principled Node - Blender Manual


A custom node group socket identifier Is it possible to add a socket to a node group with a custom identifier?
So it would be:
>>> bpy.data.node_groups["NodeGroup"].inputs["My Socket"].identifier
My Custom Identifier

It is necessary because the "mapping" depends on it. I know I can utilize the order of adding, but a custom string is better.

A gist for testing.

A script to edit identifiers.
It requires Blender Asset Tracer and Python with Tkinter 8.6+. Blender's Python does not have Tkinter.


Is it possible to create many random people faster than creating each one of them solely? I am trying to make a scene where I need a crowd of people. It's very hard and time consuming to create each character. Is there any simple way for doing it.

You may do it by randomizing the shape keys values using a script.

Create some shapekeys for your model (change head, body and other body parts parameters).

In Text Editor window click the New button.

Copy the script from here: How to set a random value for multiple shape keys? and paste it to the editor window. As you can see, all the shapekeys values changed randomly, creating the unique mesh.

Go to User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U) and enable the Corrective shape keys addon.

In the Shape Keys panel click on the arrow icon and choose Create duplicate for editing option. Now you have new unique mesh, with all the shapekeys applied. You can generate many of them very fast. The more shapekeys you have, the more combinations there are. Good luck :).


Shortcut for Cursor to Selection not working in Object Mode ShiftS + Pie Menu is working as expected. In Object Mode the 3D Cursor jumps to an object's Origin. In Edit Mode it jumps to the selected geometry.
The custom keyboard shortcut I assigned however, is only working in Edit Mode. In Object Mode it does not jump to the selected objects. What might cause this?

I've assigned the shortcut in the 3D View > 3D View (Global) section. This made it work... for Edit Mode only.
I've also tried placing it in:

Object Mode (Global)
3D View (Generic)
Object Non-modal

No luck getting the shortcut to work in Object Mode. It's strange because the Console shows the same command I've typed (beginning after bpy.ops.): view3d.snap_cursor_to_selected

(I'm using version 2.9 now, and had this shortcut working in 2.79)

An existing shortcut called Select Hierarchy at the Object Mode (Global) level was taking precedence over any key bindings I was setting at the 3D View (Global) level (and other levels/sections I had tried).
I resolved this by reassigning the Select Hierarchy shortcuts to other modifier keys:


Create empty through script using a cube as origin (0) It is possible to create an empty through a script but will have a fixed distance to a selected cube?
So lets say my cube is  at [3,5,6] I want to be able to select it run the script an the generated empty to always be 2 units away on +Y from my selection.
So in this case the empty will be at [3,7,6] in the world.
If for example a sphere is at [0, 11,0] generated empty using it as origin will be at [0,13,0].

See if this is what you want.
import bpy

#Get active(selected) object
act_obj = bpy.context.active_object

#Get active object location
act_loc = act_obj.location

#Add empty and set location based off active object
bpy.ops.object.empty_add(type='PLAIN_AXES', location=(act_loc.x, act_loc.y + 2, act_loc.z))


How do I create an oblong torus with a constant thickness? I've tried making a torus and stretching it and making an oval curve and beveling a circle on it, but with both methods the torus ends up getting thicker on the sides that are stretched out. Is there any way to keep the minor radius constant along the whole shape?

If you stretch a torus, both the major and the minor radii will be stretched, so the effect you see is perfectly normal. There may be some way to remedy that, but I haven't found it. I have come up with some workarounds though.

Method 1

Add a mesh circle.
Tab into Edit mode1.
Scale it along one axis, SX or SY.
Tab back to Object mode.
Convert the circle, which should now be an ellipse, to a curve AltC > C.
Put a bevel on it. If you want a circular tube, you needn't use a bevel object. Just set the bevel depth and resolution to whatever rocks your boat and set Fill to Full.
When you're happy with it, convert it back to a mesh AltC > M.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find out how to include the menus when I take screenshots, so this doesn't show the conversion between mesh and curve and back.

The reason I don't use a curve directly, is that neither Bezier nor Nurbs curves represent elliptical object very well. They approximate circles acceptably, but with ellipses they fail miserably unless you give them a ridiculous amount of vertices.

Method 2

If you have the Extra Objects addon installed and activated, you can use XYZ Math surface to create a torus object of practically any shape.

To enable this addon, go to User Preferences CtrlAltU > Add-ons > Add Mesh > Add Mesh: Extra Objects.

Add > Mesh > Math Function > XYZ Math Surface

For an elliptical torus with a major axis of 3, a minor axis of 1 and a circular tube with a radius of 0.25

X equation:
(3+.25*cos(u))*cos(v)

Y equation:
(1+.25*cos(u))*sin(v)

Z equation:
.25*sin(u)

U min and V min: 0
U max and V max: 2*pi
U wrap, V wrap and Close V enabled.

The normals will be pointing inwards, so you'll need to flip them. Tab into Edit mode and hit CtrlN to recalculate them to point outwards.

Method 3

Here's a third method that I discovered today, when reading this question. It uses the Skin modifier, which is something I've never used before. This seems to be the simplest method, and very straightforward, and that's the reason I'm making this late addition.

Add a mesh circle.
Tab into Edit mode1.
Scale it along one axis, SX or SY.
Tab back to Object mode.

Add a Skin modifier.

Add a Subdivision Surface modifier. As pointed out by PGmath in a comment to this answer, the Catmull-Clark algorithm doesn't produce a perfect circle, and depending on your need for accuracy in the shape of the skin, you may want to consider using one of the first two methods instead.

The radius of the skin can be scaled. Make sure the Skin modifier is still in the modifier stack, i.e. do not apply it.
Tab into Edit mode.
Make sure everything is selected (A once or twice).
Press CtrlA and then drag the mouse or use the arrow keys on your keyboard until you're happy with the thickness. Enter or left mouse button to confirm.

1Scaling in Edit mode is essentially the same as scaling in Object mode and then applying the scale.


How to close the inside face of a gear I created this gear (from the Blender additional meshes add-on), and I would like to fill the gap to make the inside like the inside of a cylinder:

I tried selecting the edges and typing F but that filled the top and bottom faces:

I added a cylinder inside the gear and tried F again but no success here either:

Not sure how to do this...

Blend:

If the rings on the top and bottom have the same number of vertices, you can select the top and bottom edges, then press the space bar and type bridge edge loops:


Blender 2.8 Grease Pencil - How to draw continuous lines How can i draw continuous lines in blender 2.8 grease pencil?
I can click on draw shape - select line but then i can only draw one line between two points i want to be able to carry on adding more points and for the line to be connected.

To draw a polygon (i.e. a set of connected lines), use the Poly function. It's right next to the Line button:


Mesh gets deformed when an array of spheres deformed along a curve :( So I took some edges from another model that I want to turn into a curve for spheres to follow. I did this by duplicating the edges, seperating them into a seperate object and then using the alt + c to convert to a curve.

As you can see, there are quite a lot of points on the curve in edit mode, not sure if this contributes to the weird deformed meshes I get, if so is it just a case of decimating?

So when I add a curve modifier (after using an array to make lots of spheres) I get this result, you can see the spheres get deformed round the tight bend of the dips in the curve, elsewhere they are fine.
Can anyone point me in the right direction to a solution!

Thanks in advance!

One of the easiest ways to make an object be duplicated along a Curve (path) is by parenting the object to the curve using (Follow Path):
1- Make sure the object and the curve's origins are at the same position, better to have the curve's origin at the beginning of the animation flow. Select the object then the curve, you need the curve to be the active selection.
2- Press Ctrl + P, choose Follow Path, this is different that Follow Path constraint, the only common thing is the name.
3- Select the object, go to Object menu, under Duplication, choose Frames and un-check Speed.
4- Select the curve, go to Curve menu, under Path Animation, set the amount of frames, the object will be duplicated according to this amount, check Follow, if you want your objects orientation to follow the curve.


Animation Nodes - curve and objects How can I distribute objects along a curve with animation nodes?

AN 2.1
Blender 2.8

Thanks!

The Get Spline Samples node was replaced by the Evaluate Range option in the Evaluate Spline. This option can be enabled by pressing the button next to the parameter type menu.


Enviornment texture not acting as expected Recently, I decided to get back into Blender, just as a fun hobby. After modeling some things, I tried to use an HDR image to light my scene. When I rendered the scene, the HDRi was not working properly.

As you can see, all the materials render fine, but the HDRi is not working properly. Below is the HDR image I used.

switch to perspective view instead of orthographic view (Numpad-5)


How to quickly select loops by skipping line by line I want to jump loop one by one as the GIF shows and select the loop.
But this is repetitive and boring.
Do you know how to do this type of work quickly in Blender?

This might work for you, depending on your topology:

Select 2 edges at the right interval
CtrlShiftNumpad + (repeatedly), expand the selection at the same interval.
Header > Select menu, Select Loops > Edge Loops


Fluid Simulation bakes, but cannot see water flow when playing video I'm very new to Blender. I used it to create a simple water simulation successfully with a domain, collision effector, and an inflow.
I'm using version 2.90.1
I've attached my blender file.
I'm trying to get Blender to run water through this tool I have. I have set one sphere(part from solidworks) as an inflow. The rest I set as collision effectors, assuming this is the correct selection to act as constraints to the water flow. I also tried Flow > Geometry.
My issue is after baking, I do not see the water flow through the model.
Does my part have to be modeled in Blender to be able to apply physics to it?
The model blinks as it's running the clip, but I don't see any fluid simulated.
I read on another post to set to final resolution, but I have not been able to find this option in version 2.90.1
Thanks :)

I would highly recommend some Fluid tutorial to start with.
Mainly to understand how domain works.

Q: Does my part have to be modeled in Blender to be able to apply physics to it?
Sure, it doesn't. For Inflow / Outlow also a Cirle object or IsoSphere with much simpler topo will works as well. Just for a 2D objects like a circle or plane enable "is Planar".
Q: The model blinks as it's running the clip, but I don't see any fluid simulated.

Blinking - your object has more than 2 km. In perspective mode I wasn't even able to move vertices, shading was blinking, face normals drived crazy. It's happening only in Perspective mode, workes fine in Orthogonal. I don't think it should work like that, its more like a bug.
Invisible simulation - your Domain dimension is more than 7.5 km with Resolution 32, so as you can see on screen - one division (represented as a cube in domain corner) is in width of your Effector - that is why no fluid is generated.

Just for a test - If you scale down the Domain and run Play (with Cache type Replay so you can see result without baking) tube is going to be filled by liquid.

Suggestion
I guess the object's real dimension is in centimiters (or milimetres) so I would start with scaling all down with Scale S 0.0001 to get like 20 cm and Apply Scale Ctrl+A.
Adjust Domain dimension into a rectangle necessary to cover liquid space and adjust Fluid > Settings > Resolution Division like 1024 to get enough details and let liquid get through thinner parts. Nicely summarised basics - https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/50869/2214
Note: Resolution Divisions number is a value dividing the longest edge of domain.
Test from FlipFluid - Resolution 64

Note: If you would like to keep the huge dimension of objects you would have to adjust Fluid - Settings - Time Scale from 1 to 10. Like now you operate in kilometers so your liquid moves slowly as giant waterfall.
League - Im not sure how exactly luquid should to flow inside the object, but you can see liquid league (penetrates) through some parts of the object. And all tricks I know to solve it failed for me for this Resolution. For Mantaflow you can try to enable Remove Air Bubles or increase Subframes. There is possible it is because of bad topology in some parts of the mesh.
Increased resolution (tested 128) solved the issue, but liquid seems to me too much detailed for that scale and calculation is too slow even for this segment.

Surface - blender's original fluid solver did not handle obtacles well Mantaflow has a feature Delete in Obstacle that erases all parts that goes through Collider, but surface is not following a surface yet. So I used Flip Fluid addon, that is still faster and with a three options how to solve surface arround obtacles. Check this tweet https://twitter.com/FlipFluids/status/1113907615271145480


Store material without an object When I search for how I can keep a material when removing an object, I only get answers to the opposite question: How to remove the material. I want to remove the object but want to keep the material. Is that possible?

The material isn't deleted with the object; the former will only have 0 users and hence will be deleted on reopening the file. To avoid that use Fake User option:

  Gives the material a ‘fake user’, to keep the material data-block saved in the blend-file, even if it has no real users.

More info on datablocks and fake user - What does "users" means in term of datablocks ?


blenderplayer and 3rd party libraries Blender player is a nice way to create stand alone .blend files that can be distributed to other people.

However, for most interesting programming, one would use in python libraries such as numpy, etc. All the python libraries out there is what makes python so powerful. Blender does not come with e.g. numpy pre-installed, .but 3rd party libraries can be installed.

However, when the .blend file is distributed, it still depends on those libraries... The problem is that now the end-user, which might not be tech-savvy needs to install the 3rd party libraries alone... Is there any way to fix this?

This question relates to the (unanswered :S) How to bundle python libraries into addon? in that a solution to it might be a solution to this one, but "how-to-bundle-python-libraries-into-addon" refers to plugins, not .blends for the standalone player, and further this question is more general, any way to distribute the 3rd-party libraries would be ok (e.g. could one put them in the .blend directory and set some paths to point there?).

I had the problem on a .blend file, and that was because I was using an old version of Blender , newer versions will have numpy etc. (my old version was using the system's python, now python comes with a nice python that has common  stuff like numpy included, so the question becomes less important.

To see if numpy was not there i did on a script from inside blender:

import os
import sys
print ('sys.executable',sys.executable)
print ('---')
print ('sys.path',sys.path)
print ('===')
try:
    print ('PYTHONPATH', os.environ['PYTHONPATH'])
except:
    print ('no PYTHONPATH')
import numpy as np
print('done!:)')

to which I got:

sys.executable /usr/bin/blender
---
sys.path ['/usr/share/blender/scripts/addons', '/usr/share/blender/scripts/startup', '/usr/share/blender/scripts/modules', '/usr/lib/python35.zip', '/usr/lib/python3.5', '/usr/lib/python3.5/plat-x86_64-linux-gnu', '/usr/lib/python3.5/lib-dynload', '/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages', '/usr/share/blender/scripts/freestyle/modules', '/usr/share/blender/scripts/addons/modules', '/home/ntg/.config/blender/2.76/scripts/addons/modules']
===
no PYTHONPATH
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Text", line 11, in <module>
ImportError: No module named 'numpy'
Error: Python script fail, look in the console for now...

)

Blender 2.79 gives:

sys.executable /home/ntg/software/blender-2.79-linux-glibc219-x86_64/blender
---
sys.path:
     /home/ntg/software/blender-2.79-linux-glibc219-x86_64/2.79/scripts/addons_contrib
     /home/ntg/software/blender-2.79-linux-glibc219-x86_64/2.79/scripts/addons
     /home/ntg/software/blender-2.79-linux-glibc219-x86_64/2.79/scripts/startup
     /home/ntg/software/blender-2.79-linux-glibc219-x86_64/2.79/scripts/modules
     /home/ntg/software/blender-2.79-linux-glibc219-x86_64/2.79/python/lib/python35.zip
     /home/ntg/software/blender-2.79-linux-glibc219-x86_64/2.79/python/lib/python3.5
     /home/ntg/software/blender-2.79-linux-glibc219-x86_64/2.79/python/lib/python3.5/plat-linux
     /home/ntg/software/blender-2.79-linux-glibc219-x86_64/2.79/python/lib/python3.5/lib-dynload
     /home/ntg/software/blender-2.79-linux-glibc219-x86_64/2.79/python/lib/python3.5/site-packages
     /home/ntg/software/blender-2.79-linux-glibc219-x86_64/2.79/scripts/freestyle/modules
     /home/ntg/software/blender-2.79-linux-glibc219-x86_64/2.79/scripts/addons/modules
     /home/ntg/.config/blender/2.79/scripts/addons/modules
===
os.path: /opt/pub/anaconda2/bin:/home/ntg/bin:/home/ntg/.local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games
===
no PYTHONPATH
done!:)

Blender does not come with e.g. numpy pre-installed

Yes it does, unless you configure WITH_PYTHON_INSTALL_NUMPY:BOOL=OFF and build it yourself.

Python modules can simply be imported from whatever is listed on the PYTHONPATH environment variable. If it doesn't automatically work by placing .py files next to your .blend file, you can modify PYTHONPATH to point to that location.

You can bundle 3rd-party modules with your game, but you do have to think about the following:

You have to adhere to the license of the module, so probably you'll have to include their license, give them credit, etc.
Be careful with binary modules. Make sure you test (so don't read documentation and assume it'll work, but actually test it) that they work with the version of Python that's built into Blender. On Windows this may be an issue, since (AFAIK) we build Python with different options than the python.org build, and as a result the pre-built binary Python modules may not load in Blender.
If you do decide to use binary (i.e. .pyd, .so, or .dll extensions) Python modules, make sure you include the versions for all platforms you want your game to run on.


How to create custom property for an object without UI I can create a custom property for my object by pressing "Add" on the "Custom Properties" tab. I would like to do this via script. I tried this way:

bpy.ops.wm.properties_add(data_path="object")
bpy.ops.wm.properties_edit(data_path="object", property="MyProperty", value="0", min=0, max=1, use_soft_limits=False, soft_min=0, soft_max=1, description="")

But I get a compiler error RuntimeError: Error: Direct execution not supported.

Is it possible to do this via script?

I'm using version 2.79. The purpose of the custom property is to use it to drive other properties.

You just do:

import bpy

bpy.context.object.data["some_property"] = "Some value"


Animation Nodes add-on does not appear after installation So, I was going to make a clock timer animation where a text object will count up over time. I was planning on achieving this by using the "animation nodes" addon but every time I try to import the addon from the zip file or the master file it does not show up anywhere in the addons window. It has that 'i' message thing in the Info panel saying that it has been added, but I can't find it.

I have also been using blender 2.79 (I know I should be using 2.8+, but I just didn't have time to install it yet)
Do I need 2.8+ to fix this problem? Or is there another solution?

The current Animation Nodes add-on only works with Blender 2.8x which is documented in the Can't install Animation Nodes issue.

  Animation Nodes needs at least Blender 2.80

  The latest version of Animation Nodes only works with Blender 2.80. Install a newer Blender build.


How to remove black color and use as transparent I have image which as black background and i want to remove the black background and use the image as transparent only color smoke.

Image

You don't necessarily use the Mix Shader with the alpha channel of the image. You can also use the color channel. So on the darker areas the first shader (Transparent) will dominate and on the lighter parts the second shader (Diffuse) will get a higher value. You can plug a ColorRamp before the Fac shocket to finetune the silhouette. Of course you can use images with white background, just swap the transparent and diffuse shaders.


How can I unwrap a mesh like this I have this mesh which is supposed to be edge of the roof of the building, I have marked seams like shown in the picture but the textures are appearing streched I don't know why I have applied scale and rotation, I have also tried cube projection, cylinder projection and smart uv unwrap but nothing seems to work

As Moonboots has already suggested use the Conformal method when unwrapping.

Then In the Object Data Properties panel > UV Maps select the Leak UV map and click on the little camera icon to make it the active UV map.


Is there a way to Import old 3ds max files into blender I have models from an old game called Trespasser that were made on 3ds max back around 1998, and I cant figure out how to see or use them in blender.  I can provide one as a sample if needed, but I would like to see these models, and use them if possible.

Thank you

I do not have 3ds max software, but I also did not realize they had a trial version, so I may do as suggested. I also did not see anything about this in the forum, so I do apologize about the duplicate question.

EDIT : I cannot install  3ds max 2015, for some reason, but assuming it has to do with me using Windows Vista Ultimate instead of 7 or 8. I am looking into other means.

Thank you for the help though, maybe I can figure it out now.

click file, immport and then choose which format do you have. I don't know, what formats 3ds max uses but I'm sure you can export it as .stl or .obj


How to Switch Cloth Object Ready for Sewing Simulation into Printable Template I'm making sewing patterns in blender, i.e. several pieces of flat fabric. Typically I create each piece as part of the same mesh object, and join them with edges so that the cloth simulator will sew them together on an avatar.

What I want is to have a linked copy of a sewing pattern, but this time with all pieces laying flat on a surface for rendering. I can't do this directly because laying the pieces out flat would change the mesh object around the avatar, so it wouldn't be positioned properly for draping.

The solution I'm looking for is to have each piece of fabric be a separate mesh object, and using separate sewing spring edge objects to cause each fabric object to sew together with the others like normal. But I don't see how to do it.

I don't think there's anyway to do what you want. Your best bet is to make an extra copy of the patterns.  You'll have two copies--one for the simulation and one to render as flat patterns.


Problem setting parent with automatic weights I've been following this tutorial here and around 10:16 he presses CtrP to set the parent to armature with automatic weights. When I try to follow I don't get that same menu. I've checked that I'm in the correct mode and the correct objects are highlighted. What am I doing wrong?

Select the object and the armature in this order; mesh, then armature. The armature must be the active object to get the options you are looking for. You have the mesh as the active object.
(lighter orange color is the active object)


light blinking objects in cycles render I have an object that emits light and I would like to apply the in-build modifier for a sine curve to create blinking lights in my object. However I can't figure out a way to not just work with the primary 3 colours (RBG) but a mix of those to create a unique shade. (I worked based on this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXaoXcJJquo) When I replace the keyframe with my chosen colourshade and then apply the modifier it does it automatically on red (first in list). Since the other 2 colours have their values but not the sine curve, my object blinks in different shades. If I then apply the same modifier settings to the other 2 colours, it goes through the blinking but only in grey/white and black. is there a way to join the colours or fix them somehow to then apply the sine curve modifier? or any other suggestions how I can let the object emit light once and then stay on (blink once)? but I'd like it to emit slowly and not like an on-switch. Thank you for any help!

In the additive RGB color model you create different colors by adding different intensities of the primary colors red, green and blue together.

If you maintain some ratio of red, green and blue but change their values you'll generally end up with darker and lighter shades of the same “color”. The ratio R:G:B = 1:1:1 – i.e. the same value for red, green and blue – is noteworthy as it creates shades of grey.

However, if you also change the ratio of the primary colors then you will end up with different hues.

Let's say you want to create an LED which blinks by cycling from black to some bright orange tone and back to black. For the color orange let's use the RGB ratio of 2:1:0 [1]. This means you need no blue and twice as much red as you have green. If you use sine wave modifiers you have to set amplitude and value offset accordingly.

When the ratio of the primary colors is changed, e.g. by using a different phase offset for each primary color, you'll receive a LED which cycles between different hues.

Edit:
In situations in which you're only interested in single color LEDs, LEDs which cycle between two colors or LEDs which cycle in a set of predefined colors it's worth to consider animating the Emission Strength, the Mix Factor of a MixRGB node and/or the Factor of a ColorRamp node instead of working with three modifiers for the RGB components. This will minimize the work should you later decide to change the color of your LED.

[1] Color values, except for colors entered in the Hex field, are not gamma corrected. Entering an RGB value of 1, 0.5, 0 in Blender will not result in RGB values of 1, 0.5, 0 (or 255, 128, 0) in the final image.


How do I hide the domain of a smoke sim? I can't find a way to hide the domain in a smoke simulation. The simulation is baked but I dont see a way to hide the domain.
Here's what the render looks like

And this is the physics settings

For a smoke simulation to work you don't want to hide the smoke domain, quite the opposite, you need to show it. The domain is where the smoke will be created.
What you probably are missing are the volume scatter and volume absorption shaders that are connected to the volume of the smoke domain. Or the settings for volume scatter are using high values making the domain look like a solid.


scene resource sharing Blender allows editing of more than 1 scene at a time. Can resources be shared between edited scenes, such as meshes and textures? What resources does a scene own and what resources does it only reference? I am writing an exporter for more than one scene at a time, but no resources appear to belong to a scene, so I am confused.

Say, Object1 is in scene1, can another scene also own Object1? I'd be surprised, since the object has a scene transformation matrix associated.

You can link one object to multiple scenes with Ctrl + L, that way the same object will be used and any edits will apply to others scenes. If you want to use a different object but the same mesh, that is possible with instancing using Alt + D.


How to get vertex back to its original position? Sorry, I'm really new and do not know how to word this very well. Somehow during this I grabbed and moved this vertex without realizing and now I am too far in to undo it. I need to find a way to get it back to its original spot in the loop without moving any of the others around it. I tried hitting W and messing with a few of the tools but I haven't found one that works yet. Hopefully there is a quick fix for this. Thank you in advance.

If its only moved on the y-axis... you could press "n" to get the properties window on the right side... and copy the y-position of another vertice in the ring to that vertice.


Particles (hair) size and random size in blender 2.79a not available in advanced After many years on C4D, I started to learn Blender and follow the beginner tutorial series of Andrew Price.

On part 7 about particles, he changes the size and the random size of the particles group that needed to create sprinkles on a donut.
He uses this menu, as shown in the doc blender doc

But for me, in Blender 2.79a the size / random size is available in the "render" tab while Advanced is unchecked. When Advanced is checked it disappears from the render tab and I can't find it anymore.

So if I want to tweak and randomize my particles, I have to check/uncheck.

Is it normal or am I missing a thing on 2.79 ?

edit : confirmed that in Advanced those settings are available in Blender 2.79.

It is normal and documented here:

https://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-blender-cvs/2018-January/103452.html


How to have consistent soft body physics in a specific area of an object using vertex groups? I'm trying to add soft body physics to a small vertex group within a larger object, thus applying the soft body behavior to that small area of the object.

My end result will hopefully be an exaggerated gooey collision response with a collision object piercing the mesh at specific areas, but have the rest of the object remain firm and unresponsive.

I have made two vertex groups, one group for the specific piercing area and one for the inverse, that both have gravity setting at 1. When I set the specific area vertex group as the Soft Body and Soft Body Edges group it causes the gravity 1 to make the specific area unresponsive to the soft body physics and the inverse group to giggle. This is the opposite result I want. I then change the inverse vertex group to be the Soft Body and Soft Body Edges group and, in tests, this has created the effect I wished for, but not consistently. In the test phase, with simpler meshes, this seemed to work. Now, with slightly more complex meshes, it is not working.

Any insights into how to secure the specific piercing area vertex group to be the only area responding to the soft body physics would be helpful!!

I know this is an old post, but I thought I would contribute anyway. First you have to go into weight paint mode and paint the parts you would like to be rigid and assign this to a vertex group. This means that the parts you want to remain firm should be completely red. The parts that you want to be jiggly should be green or yellow, not completely blue (if it is blue, then it'll act like a cloth). Then go to the physics menu item on your object and add a new active rigid body and soft body. Under the soft body goal, turn the default goal strength up to 1 (this will make certain parts of the object completely rigid). Then, in the same area, set the vertex group to the weight painted group you made earlier. Bake the physics and play. PS. I'm working in blender 2.78


How do I get a proxy object dimensions? I'm trying to get the dimensions (bounding box) from a linked object in python, but all the methods to commonly get the measures give me a zero vector.

bpy.data.objects['Linked_Object'].dimensions
# (0.0, 0.0, 0.0)

bpy.data.objects['Linked_Object'].bound_box
# ((0.0, 0.0, 0.0), (0.0, 0.0, 0.0), (0.0, 0.0, 0.0), (0.0, 0.0, 0.0), (0.0, 0.0, 0.0), (0.0, 0.0, 0.0), (0.0, 0.0, 0.0), (0.0, 0.0, 0.0))

I imagine is because the object is an empty, so it does not have dimension. I suppose there is a way to access the underlying information of the linked object but I cannot find a way to do it.

  I have to keep the object linked, I cannot make a local copy because it can be modified in the source file.

Any Ideas how to do it?

Thank you.

For a linked collection instance

Pertaining to 2.8x

Example below. Collection instance "Cube.001" is linked from library "Cube.blend" where it belongs to collection "Cube"

>>> C.object
bpy.data.objects['Cube.001']

>>> C.object.type
'EMPTY'

>>> C.object.library
bpy.data.libraries['CUBE.blend']

Notice the collection is linked too

>>> C.object.instance_collection
bpy.data.collections['Cube']

>>> D.collections['Cube'].objects[:]
[bpy.data.objects['Cube']]

The dimensions of the individual objects in the group can be found via

>>> for o in C.object.instance_collection.objects:
...     o.name, o.type, o.dimensions
...
('Cube', 'MESH', Vector((2.0000009536743164, 2.0000009536743164, 2.0)))

which could be used to make a "virtual" bounding box for the collection.

How to have a boundary box around a whole group instance?

Similarly for linking the collection and instancing from local blend.


Toon Material Animation I have a problem animating a Toon object. I generated the material with a "Texture Coordinate" - "Dot Product" - "ColorRamp" and "Emission". (https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/86182/48525)
If you animate the object with the toon material, light and shadow move along like a texture. (see below)
http://g-stalterei.de/blender/B100CS_problem.gif

The Blend File:
http://g-stalterei.de/blender/B100CS_problem.blend

Can I prevent this by animating the object from the "Texture Coordinate"? Or is there an easier way to generate a toon material in this look (just with lights and shadows)?

Thanks for your help!

The 'Normal' output of the Texture Coordinate node is in the Object Space of the shaded object. The 'Object' output defaults to the space of the shaded object, but can be overridden to another object's space, using the 'Object' field at the bottom of the node.

We need the dot-product of the direction of the normal at the shading point in World Space, and the vector from the lamp-object to the shading point, also in World Space (which is the normalized position of the shading point in the lamp-object's space, if the lamp-object is not rotated or scaled non-uniformly).

It's also nice to map the full range of the possible dot-product results from (-1,1) to (0,1) to feed the color ramp.

So this is a possible setup, with the rotations and scales of whatever object you are using as a lamp locked off to (0,0,0).

..with this sort of result:


Bending a mesh along spline which it's also following,not working I have some sleepless nights because of this and now I really have to ask you this =)
I’m working with Blender 2.80 Beta and maybe it’s also a slight Blender bug as I have seen others achieving this the way I wanted to achieve this (with the first mentioned solution of mine).

The idea: Similar to creating this “alien worm” based on this gorgeous showcase (at 3:27 - 3:39):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hGSDD9-Tkc

I used a long cylinder mesh with quite enough subdivision, (location: 0,0,0), rotated it to be the same direction as my path curves start and applied rotation/scale/etc (also to the spline itself), set the origins to the front of my worm mesh and the origin of the path curve to where the start is, parented the mesh to the spline and added a follow-path constraint (this part is all working and it’s following the path exactly), then I added the Curve modifier to the cylinder but this one offsets the mesh to somewhere else and it also doesn’t seem to follow the path in it’s offset location (I mean I could live with an offset). When having a circular path, it doesn’t go in a circle, it moves around in an “8”. The body bends sometimes but this bending isn’t looking at all as it should^^ I tried using a short cylinder mesh and add an array modifier to it, but have the same exact problem. tried other modifiers which all don't give the result i need.

Do I really have to rig it or is there an error in what I'm doing?

Here's an image (as requested, thank you!) of the project:

Thanks everyone for reading :)

All the best,
Oli

edit: I had a subsurf modifier in place (above the curve modifier), then I applied it and it's the exact same thing happening. the first image looks as if everything's going to work fine, it also bends along the curve, but as soon as i press play, the mesh goes up in the air and deforms quite strangely. I uploaded the simple project: dropbox.com/s/ypwgabfig436krc/SpaceWorm.zip?dl=0 Thanks a lot!!

What is strange is that for following the path I  parent it to the curve with option "follow path" and then to be able to add the follow path constraint I have to first un-parent it again and then add the constraint. Otherwise it never follows the path. maybe it's got to do something  with this, not sure

Even though the offset and bending of the object behave not correct,it's a little  bit better in blender 2.79 but also not as expected..

EDIT 2:
First "video" shows without parenting, but with follow path constraint

Second "video" shows with parenting (follow path) and w/o constraint:

Last one representing the total  fail when using a more complex path,  on the right side you can see the curves settings, went over quite everything, nothing works:

I don't know if this will work for what you finally want, but for what you described, I would simply use the curve modifier and then animate moving the object along the X axis. Here's what I did

add the cylinder, subdivide it, rotate it, apply rotation and move the origin, as you did.
add a Bezier curve.
in Edit mode, position the Bezier curve to create the path I wanted
add the curve modifier to the cylinder using X as the deformation Axis.

This will move the cylinder to the starting point of the Bezier curve.  Key frame it here.

Move the time to whatever is appropriate, move the cylinder along the x axis, and keyframe.


How to get world-space matrix of any pose bone? Is there a command for getting world-space matrix of pose bones, same as obj.matrix_world for objects? I found pose_bone.matrix, but it gives weird result for me.

Yes:
As the documentation says, a pose bones matrix is in object space, this means - unless the object has no loc/scale/rot applied, you will have to apply the objects matrix.

matrix_final = obj.matrix_world @ pose_bone.matrix

This test script adds an empty at the pose-bone.
# Assume we are in pose mode with an active bone

import bpy
from bpy import context

pose_bone = context.active_pose_bone

# we can get the object from the pose bone
obj = pose_bone.id_data
matrix_final = obj.matrix_world @ pose_bone.matrix

# now we can view the matrix by applying it to an object
obj_empty = bpy.data.objects.new("Test", None)
context.collection.objects.link(obj_empty)
obj_empty.matrix_world = matrix_final


Full script for fitting the camera view to the only object in a scene I have found an answer in this stackexchange website that is supposed to do exactly this:

 for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
     if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
         override = bpy.context.copy()
         override['area'] = area
         bpy.ops.view3d.view_selected()
         break

assuming a model imported from an *.obj file is selected now. When I run it, nothing happens. However, Shift-C + OpenGL Render does pretty much what I need.

The context: I need to render many models from many viewpoints, but all models have different scale, so I wonder if there is a command that could move camera so that object regardless of its original size fits given specific viewpoint, like, direction in spherical or cylinder coordinates, for example. view_selected() and view_all() seem to do that.

Okay, this is a working script in case anyone might need similar thing:

import mathutils
import bpy
import sys

model_path = '/input/path/file.obj'

scene = bpy.data.scenes.new("OurScene")
camera_data = bpy.data.cameras.new("Camera")
camera = bpy.data.objects.new("Camera", camera_data)
camera.location = (-4.0, -5.0, -1.0)
scene.objects.link(camera)
scene.update()
scene.camera = camera
bpy.context.screen.scene = scene
bpy.data.cameras['Camera.001'].clip_end = 10000
bpy.ops.scene.new(type='LINK_OBJECTS')
bpy.context.scene.name = 'model.obj'
bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath=model_path, axis_forward='-Z', axis_up='Y', filter_glob="*.obj;*.mtl")
bpy.context.scene.camera = camera
bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = '/output/render.jpg'
bpy.context.scene.world = bpy.data.worlds['World']

# look at origin
loc_camera = camera.matrix_world.to_translation()
direction = mathutils.Vector((0., 0., 0.)) - loc_camera
# point the cameras '-Z' and use its 'Y' as up
rot_quat = direction.to_track_quat('-Z', 'Y')
# assume we're using euler rotation
camera.rotation_euler = rot_quat.to_euler()

bpy.data.worlds['World'].light_settings.use_environment_light = True
bpy.data.scenes['model.obj'].render.alpha_mode = 'TRANSPARENT'
bpy.data.scenes['model.obj'].render.image_settings.color_mode = 'RGBA'

for obj in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    obj.select = False

for obj in bpy.context.visible_objects:
    if not (obj.hide or obj.hide_render):
        obj.select = True

for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        for region in area.regions:
            if region.type == 'WINDOW':
                override = {'area': area, 'region': region}
                bpy.ops.view3d.camera_to_view_selected(override)

bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)

sys.exit(0)


Creating a Landmine - PYTHON I'm trying to create a landmine for my game, I would like the player after placing it could view the radius of impact. This way I have been trying to get a python code that activates the show_physics_visualization button on a single object.
I Tried:

Import bpy
Bpy..data.scene ["Scene"] game_settings.show_physics_visualization (True)

My mine object is called MineForce.

Thank you.

As mentioned in the comments above:

Show Physics Visualization is for debugging purposes - and should not be part of the game.
Range indicators are part of your game. You can present them as you like. For example a cone with wireframe material would provide you the look you are looking for.


Slide object straight forward when object is facing a arbitrary direction i.e diagonal I'm having trouble figuring out how to slide an object straight out of it's socket when it's at an angle due to being on a cylinder. I have cubes that rotate around a cylinder and when the cubes come to a stop one of the cubes slides out a little. I posted a picture to better help illustrate what i mean & trying to accomplish. When i try to slide it straight out it becomes skewed and moves more up and left instead of straight..

You can change the transform orientation to Normal and move it on the according scale.

Also, you can select 'Individual Origins' and move them all at once across their own normal.


How to centre align a circle to be above another circle in other layer? I am trying to draw an eye in 2D animation.
I am unable to align the centre of the pupil to the centre of the eyeball :-(
Selection to cursor (Keep offset) is aligning the side of the pupil to the 3d cursor, I want it to align the centre of the circle to the 3d cursor, what am I doing wrong?

In Object Mode, the action Selection to cursor will move the object such that its origin is at the cursor. For your object, it's origin is not at its center, so it does not line up to the eye.
First, go into edit mode on your pupil and use Set Origin > Origin to Geometry. This will bring your origin to the center of the pupil, so when you then run Selection to Cursor, it will be properly centered.