How to use the paint tool on a Collada (.dae) file? Is there a way to use the paint tool on a .dae file. I am trying to do a custom camouflage on a plane, but the model doesn't let me texture paint on it? Please help.

There are a couple of steps that can be taken to find the problem, as well as make the painting work easier.

Ensure you have the mesh you want to paint on selected. From the screenshots above it appears the plane is made of a number of different objects. You will need to have only the main fuselage/wind object selected to be able to paint on it. In the second screenshot, you have all of the objects selected. Texture paint will only apply to the active object (the last selected one) so you can't paint on a group of objects at the same time. It will also be helpful to isolate the object you are painting on in the view (although this may be personal preference) which you can do with the / key on the numberpad or with Shift+H. This will make it easier to see what you are painting, as well as lighten the load on the viewport in the case of slow painting.
Make sure the object has a UV map. It looks like you tried to add UVs to your object, but since they are all selected, you may want to ensure that the main mesh has a UV map suitable for painting. If you open the UV image editor with the main object selected and in edit mode, you will be able to tell if the plane has been unwrapped properly.
It appears that the plane already has a texture applied, so it would probably be best to add another paint slot or another texture so that you don't permanently damage the textures that are there already.

As mentioned above in the comments, once a file is imported it becomes the same as any other blender object/file. Therefore all standard blender procedures will work with your object.


Render image does not change despite changes in nodes I´m doing an blenderguru tutorial to learn how to texture, and, despite I´m doing exactly what he says and using  the same textures, my renders keep on looking wrong. In the images I attach I show the nodes and you can see in a white square the map for metalic section (he uses that map also). But, as you see, the render keeps on showing the texture wrong (black part should be metalic gray and white stains should be rusty metal. No matter if I put that metalic map or invert it (mostly black),the render image always looks like that one. Any idea? (render mode is set in cycles).

Thanks a lot]1

What you see in your viewport seem correct, considering your node tree.

However, there's something that does not look correct in your node tree, that being the maths multiply node between your color texture and your principled shader. Remove that, and it should have a more logical result.


How do find all instances of a mesh via Python? All answers I've seen here before say to check whether an object has multiple users to know if it's instanced or not, but what if you have multiple objects with multiple instances of each?
How do you sort through them in Python?
(What I really want to figure out is how to perform operations in script which are normally forbidden on instances in Blender, but first steps first.)
PS. Not talking about collections here, but objects/meshes!

For all meshes and their instances, you can loop over the mesh objects and collect objects that correspond to the same mesh using a dictionary:
import bpy
from collections import defaultdict

result = defaultdict(list)

for obj in [o for o in bpy.data.objects if o.type == 'MESH']:
    result[obj.data].append(obj)

for mesh, objects in result.items():
    print( "Mesh " + mesh.name + " has " + ", ".join(o.name for o in objects) + " object(s) for instance(s)")

Or, to find instances of one mesh:
import bpy

obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']

instances = [o for o in bpy.data.objects if o.data == obj.data]

print(instances)


Overlay more than one transparent images in one shader I'm trying to use the Shader Editor to put four transparent images onto one object.

My approach to this was to add all of the alpha channels together and then to use that combined alpha to mask the image textures.

However when I do this, depending on different combinations of setting for the MixRGB node, the textures come black our just have the fuzzy edges.

I've also tried setting the textures to premultiplied but no luck.

It is easier if you don't think in terms of transparency and think of masks.
(read: Change Color Associated with Transparency? and Add a transparent image on top of a material)

When working with shaders, RGB information and Masks (based on alpha channels) follow separate paths.

So let's break this in two parts.

RGB

Combine the RGB information using the alpha channel of each one of the image being overlaid as a mask (fac), to control the mix over the background image. Note that you don't use the alpha of the very first image in the chain, you overlay the 2nd image using it's alpha channel to control the mix over the 1st one.

Alpha

Then you can use the sum of all of the alpha channels as a mask to control the mix of color or shaders. You can use a Convert>Math node and set it to add mode.

To mix the colors and use them as a shader color:

To control the mix of other shaders:


Merging seam borders when using 360° Spin Tool /Users/stephanepras/Desktop/Split Glass.png

I made a nice glass by spinning a profile 360° around Z axis with Spin Tool. Then when playing with Smooth modifier I see a split appearing along the seam!

This means both borders of the seam (i.e. the 0° and 360° vertices) never merged, despite I clicked AutoMerge Editing. Of course if I "Apply" after having used Smooth modifier, I get a glass with a slit…

How can I "weld" both sides of the seam after a 360° spin and avoid that ?

I would not use Spin Tool for this particular purpose, closed surface of revolution.  Remove doubles, a necessary step, did not solve the problem.  My problem was a hidden internal face problem.  Hidden faces are bad.

My initial actions produced an internal face with Spin Tool.  The face of the initial mesh.
I had to remove edges and one internal face and then bridge edge loops to get the mesh in good form.  The extra work seems unnecessary.  Consider sleuthing down an internal unwanted face.

Perhaps the best evidence is that loop cut seems to have difficultly with the resulting mesh. What appears visually as a loop has failed with Loop Cut.  It has simply created difficulties in your situation.

Finally I [deleted face only] before the spin tool and got the correct results. If felt if I were smacked in the face with a whipped cream pie.

I would use Spin Tool for corners of edited cylinders.

Consider Screw Modifier firstly.  (Array Modifier if you feel adventurous)
I applied the Screw Modifier.  Loop Cut worked as expected.

Followed by Smooth Modifier.

You might also just use proportional edit to achieve your [spin/lathe] shape.


Extrude along normals issue Is there way to avoid Blender doing this? Using Extrude Region (Vertex normals) or Extrude and than AltS does the same thing. Is there any chance this could be improved in case this is how it suppose to work?

When operating Alt S, you can enable Even Thickness mode by holding Alt or pressing S once (see the tip on the 3D View header).


Extruding faces along normals to do a roll What's the best way to extrude the selected faces (along the normals) on the car seat to do the roll?

How to extrude the faces normal to them and then once normal to one side, and then in the opposite direction to make something like on the picture but following the seat edge?
I thought about Shrink/fatten but it does not work.

You can easily CtrlLMB  to extrude towards the mouse. (if you are talking about making the curved back)

If you are just trying to make the edge rounded (a Subsurf modifier will help will the smooth roundness) add an edge loop on the out side edge. The pink line in the image below is the new edge loop.

Then switch the Transform Orientation to Normal and move the new edge along the normal Z.


My image won't render. Every time i go to render, all I got is a grey screen I have tried many methods and none of them worked! I tried blender render and cycles render, checked that everything was able to render, and i even tried re-doing the project all over! Anyone have anyway i can fix this? Ill add the blend file.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/3gdy6rf3zg6xvkg/thing.blend  (File was to big for other options, so mediafire I guess)

Reason number 7 on this post:

OBJECTS ARE NOT WITHIN THE RANGE OF CAMERA CLIPPING

You have a scene with huge objects. Each of your figures is tall as a skyscraper.

The camera clipping distance is set to a short range that does not encompass your scene.

Increase the End clip distance.

But as a piece of unwanted advice: in Blender it is better to work in a scale that matches the real world. Physics, and other simulations, depth of field and lighting will behave differently depending on the scale.

READ ALSO: Why does part of my model disappear when I zoom in on it in the 3D Viewport?


Unwrap model with UVs at proper size? I have the model of house with seams on it.

When I'm trying to unwrap it (U > unwrap) It unwraps wrong.

Some polygons are bigger then others, and I don't know what to do.
How do I unwrap it proportional?

this happens because either :

have edited the mash after unwrapping
have scaled the object after unwrapping

to resolve this :

apply scale :  Ctrl+A and select scale
unwrap the mesh again


Change Background Color of the 3D Viewport When I work in edit mode and wireframe I have difficulty to visualize the loops of the object. How can I change the background color of the viewport or the color of the wires?
Thanks,
Dov

You can change the background color by going to: User Preferences > Theme > 3D View > Theme Background Color > Gradient High/Off

Note: CTRL + ALT + U opens user preferences immediately.

You can also change the color of the wire by using Wire and Wire Edit in the same menu.


Is it possible to see Vertex Weights in Edit Mode in the 3D View? Is this documentation simply out of date? Is it possible to manipulate vertex weights in Edit Mode in Blender 2.8?

It looks like you have the exact same thing in 2.8, but to see the weight for the selected vertex you first need to assign it some weight, either in Weight Paint mode or with the Assign button under the Properties panel > Object Data > Vertex Groups list. As Robin says: The panel is displayed only when you have a vertex which has been assigned to a vertex group selected, even with a 0 weight value.

To see both the wireframe and the weight you can enable Vertex Group Weights in the Viewport Overlays.


Convert follow path animation to keyframes I have multiple cameras on the scene, each camera is parented to a path using follow path method. So when I play the animation all the camera moves at same time. But I need to convert this path animations to keyframes so I can change the timing of animations.

So how do I convert follow path animation to keyframes?

Well, the answer provided in the comments is the answer to your question though I am not sure this is the best way to adjust the timing of a follow path animation.

The path animation is animated using the 'evaluation time' value when the corresponding curve is selected. Make sure to delete the modifier which is associated with the curve by default in order to set custom keyframes. If you are just planning to offset or adjust the speed of the animation you can also play with the values of the modifier

Below you can see where to find the value and how to delete the modifier.

This way you can offset the animation in a non-destructive way.


Where should normals be facing I read that normally, Normals should be facing outward; that is, the normals pointing out of the object. I have a character modeled and when I use Ctrl + N  to reclaculate normals, all normals points inward. I would've thought pressing Ctrl + N would make all the normals point outward.

If I use Shift + Ctrl + N  or check the Inside tickbox, then it points outwards. Isn't that the reverse of what should be happening?

And how do I decide if normals should be outside/inside anyway? What things should I consider?

EDIT

The blend file

It's important to have the normal pointing outward of your model, otherwise back face might be visible at render time and give bad visual effect.

The reason blender still allow normal to be calculated inside is for specific use case like rendering a room from the inside.

However, when there is something wrong with a model, blender might have a bad time computing the normal and you might have to flip them manually if some if them are wrong.

I can help you more if you post screenshots or share your blend file.

Update new that I have seen the blend file :

You faces were indeed inward, you can see that by going in edit mode and activating the face orientation visualization tool ( red is the back of the face, blue is the front, so red should never be in render sight ) :

The reason Blender is having trouble computing the orientation is because your model is "open" at the hands, neck and bottom, that kind of hole should not appear in your final model. If you don't want to add more geometry I would suggest using the solidify modifier, it will simply add some thickness to the planes and red faces won't appear anymore.

Or if you want simply want to have the faces in the correct orientation as a quick fix just select every faces and perform a flip normals operation.


Radial Gradient as a texture I'm trying to make a radial gradient to put a sunburst on this guitar body similar to this:

What I have so far is this node set up:

EDIT

So.....according to this reasoning if I set this up like this I should be able to get a blend between black pink and white in a radial pattern which still isn't even close to happening......any other thoughts
Worse still is I did find a clear shot of a sunburst guitar to do a UV projection but its the back and so the s curves are completly ragged and thats not going to get it.......sorry, had to use the answer section because the comments don't seem to have a way to post a picture.

You'll have to give the color ramp something to work on through its "fac" input (using e.g. the "fac" output from your gradient node).

But your example does not have a simple radial gradient, but one that follows the body curve. In that case, it might be easier to make an image with the gradient you want and use UV mapping on the sound board to place the color.


Wood displacement for 3D Print I want to print a sign with my FDM printer in wood look. (Tried to laser cut it with not so beautiful results).
With my wood filament, I want to achieve a wood like surface pattern like a topology map with different heights like in the drawing.

I tried to play with a displacement modifier and some wood texture from blenderkit but al what I get is a noisy plane which looks just random.
Like this

So the question is how to achieve this pattern for a mesh or a curve pattern, best with a displacement modifier.

I edit this answer to be better than previous and to actually work for 3D-printing. This is going to be a long one. This works for procedural textures and for ones made with a displacement map. You could try to start from step 6 If you have a good displacement map but for some reason it didn't work for me.

At first I have a plane with 5x Subdivision Surface Modifier and a Displacement Map image connected to the Material Output Through a Viewer. Color Space Non-Color

Next I add an Image Texture node but don't connect it. Select New and adjust Width and Height to be 8192 px. This can be lower if you are ok with lower quality. Check the 32 bit Float box.

Render Engine Cycles. Device CPU (You could use GPU but for me Blender crashes when I try that). In Sampling Render 1 (You don't need more. It just slows down.) In Performance and Tiles Tiles X and Tiles Y should be the same as the image size you created earlier. In my case it is 8192 px x 8192 px. Color-Space Non-Color

Under Bake select bake type to Emit. Make sure the lonely Image Texture node is selected and press Bake.

Go to Image Editor and select Image and Save As. File Format OpenEXR and Color Depth Float (Full). Save As Image.

Give your plane a Subdivision Surface modifier with Level 5 or 6. 6 is better. If this is not enough you can always add More. Modifier type should be Simple. Give it also a Displace modifier and press New.

Press Show texture in Texture tab.

Press Open and find your saved image

Deselect Half Float Precision and go back to Modifiers panel.

Change Displace Modifier Coordinates to UV and Decrease the Strength. If the displacement is wrong you can change the direction to RGB to XYZ but this shouldn't be the case if your images are in non-color format.

Select your object and Export Stl.

Check Selection Only and Apply Modifiers.

Now you have a stl with your displacement.


subdivision problem glitch When I'm adding subdivision modifier my object freaks out. I'm new to blender and don understand why :o if somebody knows why, it would be greatly appreciated.

here is with subdiv modifier

here is without

In the picture below, you can see the effect of extra edges placed where you need a surface to keep its shape, that is, have sharper corners or edges.
The bottom row has a smoothing modifier on it.  So you have to cut more edges (or use Loop Cut as edna said), where you need an edge or corner to be sharper.


Strange behaviour - object is hidden behind grey "wall" I bought a model that has .obj, .fbx and .max formats. I use Mac, so I'm not able to use .max, so I decided to import .obj in Blender. After I imported the file, I saw that a part of it hidden as if there was a gray wall or a portal to another universe. It's hard to explain it, better check the gif:

I'm totally new to Blender, so I have no idea what it is.

The problem with the "portal" was with the setting "Clip End" of the camera.


How can I calculate the acceleration of an object? Is there some easy way to calculate the acceleration of an object at every point in time, between the two closest keyframe?

I'm thinking that the easiest way would be to calculate the velocity of the object and then calculate it's derivative. However, for that I need the time difference, which I don't know how to calculate.

Is this even possible (currently :D)?

However, for that I need the time difference, which I don't know how to calculate.

You can use the second order finite differencing to approximate the acceleration. And by using a central differencing scheme you can achieve second order accuracy.

In Blender,
you can use FCurve.evaluate function to get the position of one object:

action = bpy.data.actions[0]
curve = action.fcurves[0]
# Evaluate object's position at time t
position = curve.evaluate(t)

And you can use central second order differencing to calculate the acceleration at time t:

def D(curve, t):
    h = 1e-4
    return (curve.evaluate(t + h) - curve.evaluate(t) * 2 + curve.evaluate(t - h)) / (h * h)

Note that you have to use backward or forward differencing scheme at boundary of an action curve since the value at t + h or t - h may not be defined there.

Also note that you will see an extraordinary large acceleration at jump point, which may be a problem when you build animations from the calculated acceleration.


Add baked texture to render (Cycles) Hi I'm having a problem with baking textures. I have done one but I don't know how to add this texture to an object to speed up rendering. The texture is visible in Viewport Shading: Texture. But rendering is as slow as before. Is it possible to turn off shadows and other things for only this object with baked texture?

Once you have the texture baked you need to assign it as an emission material to the object.

This is pretty simple:

Go to the node editor
Disconnect any nodes you have plugged into the surface socket on the material output node (you needn't delete them).
Add an emission shader and an image texture node.
Select the baked texture on the image texture node and plug it into the color input of the emission shader and plug the emission shader into the surface output.  Make sure the strength of the emission shader is 1.00.

Note that if the camera is animated, baked glossy sharers will not look right.

For further reference, see Andrew Price's Introduction to Baking in Cycles.


Does anyone know why I can't screen cast play mode in BGE? I want to make a video that kind-of advertises my game, but the screen cast option just quits when I push P to play the game. For my old version, I would play the game during my screencast, but in the saved video the game part was cut out.

When I upgrade to 2.78, however, pushing P didn't even do anything which tells me that they have it set up like this on purpose.

Is there a way I can fix this? Do you know why it does this?

Can I record game play any other way that doesn't involve downloading a screen recorder to my computer?

Here are some possible options:

You use BGEs internal screenshot function, either in python or with logic bricks. Here is a logic brick test setup which quits the game after 120 ticks and makes a screenshot on every frame:

The good thing: You end up with high quality PNGs without compression artifacts. The bad thing: On my laptop (and probably any other non-high end machine), this heavily reduced framerate as I would expect from every software-based screen recorder which tries to compress/dump a massive amount of frames. Edit: The release log of 2.77 says, it already uses another tread. However, my laptop still can't handle Full HD output without losing framerate.
You buy one of these hardware game capture devices, which will capture the HDMI output in a standalone system. Ask amazon for "game capture HDMI". The good thing: It doesn't eat your machines resources. The bad thing: You may have no control about compression. And it is not for free, obviously.
Your graphics card supports hardware accelerated screencapture. Modern NVIDIA cards have shadowplay.
You try one of these broadcasting softwares and stream to another machine, where you record your gameplay. With this solution you outsource the file operations to another machine.
On recent Win10 OS, you can use Win-Key + G and follow the User interface. Microsoft has built a screencapture feature which dumps recordings in the users "videos" folder.

For work, I stuck with solution 2 because my laptop could not handle the others.


Adding some mesh to existing rigged mesh I have done rigged mesh with maked animation. Now, I have to add some mesh (new part of character) to the finalized rigged character. Can you please help me? :) I tryied find solution, tried "everything" and nothing help me, becouse the new part not corespond weight painted character. And when I reset all and maked new parent with aumotatic weight paint everything is absolutely wrong... :(
Thank you.
Robert.

There is a data transfer modifier, which can transfer the weights between meshes. Depending on the meshes you might need to go in and change some things manually afterwards, but it sure takes care of most of it.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/modifiers/modify/data_transfer.html
I would go with the Nearest Vertex sampling method. Topology option would not make sense in your case as the topologies are different.
The meshes should be joined after the data transfer modifier is added and applied


Controls display very small I have a Surface Book running Windows 10. Blender opens and operate fine, but the display is very small -- so small I have to put my face an inch from the screen to see what the controls are. I've gone through the gamut w/ Windows and they concluded that it was "a third party problem."

Has anyone else encountered a similar problem or know how to fix it? See below for screens.

Blender:

I don't know about LMMS, but in blender you can open an User Preferences editor and increase the DPI setting in the system tab, and this will make all the fonts andbuttons bigger across the program. You might need to then drag on the boundaries to give enough room for the new scaled up interface, but you'll get a clearer view.


obj to glTF batch exporter I have a set of obj exports comprising of a million files(each file between 100-200kb). Is there are a way to pick up files from a folder and export them to glTF? What I am talking about is batch importing obj files to batch export to glTF. I am new to blender and would really appreciate if anybody can guide me on this.

You can do batch export from Blender in the same way as described in Export multiple objects to .obj, but with the glTF export API. That said, I think a standalone CLI converter might be easier to use in this case, like obj2gltf.


Where is transparent view in blender 2.81 So, in blender 2.8, you would jump to Transparent view by hitting z > 2. But in blender 2.81 beta, there's no such option and every build I get, there isn't either so it's not a bug.

The shortcut Z to show the shading pie menu still exists in Blender 2.81 and 2.82. However it's 4 to enable Wireframe mode, 2 is for the Material Preview mode.

You can also enable Wireframe mode by clicking on its icon.

If you're referring to the X-ray mode, it can either be toggled through Alt+Z or by clicking on its icon.


Cut a circular hole in a curved surface (using snap to face) I'm following along some tutorials from CGcookie and one way they describe for cutting a circle out of a curved surface is to shrink-wrap a circular mesh to the surface and then join the circle to the rest of the mesh. However, the author also states that this can be done with the "snap to face" tool in Blender, instead of using the shrink-wrap modifier.
How can this he done with the "snap to face" tool?

You want the "use_snap_project" feature:

If you turn that on, while snapping is enabled you'll get all selected components projecting onto other objects.


Changing workspace with python I want to make a python script that allows me to change my workspace with a keypress, and I have a wacom tablet with buttons on it that I can map keys to it. I was thinking about mapping unused function keys to my tablet and having my python script listen for the key and change my workspace accordingly

(for example, the 3rd button on my tablet triggers f5 which a python script would listen for that and change my workspace to shaders)

Is there a specific command for changing the workspace in Python?

(Note: I am a noob at python, I use Lua more)

Here is a quick solution, which allows you to change the workspace from Python:
bpy.context.window.workspace = bpy.data.workspaces['Layout']
All the available workspaces are stored in bpy.data.workspaces, so you need to pick one from those.
Now it is just a matter of putting your favourite into a Python script and register it as an operator, so you can map a key to it :)
Good luck!
EDIT:
As promised, a simple addon file: github blender-workspace-swapper
It does not contain keymaps yet (to be fair, I am not sure how those are created for addons, maybe someone else could help?), but calling the operator via the operator search works.
Alternatively, calling it from the python line like this:
bpy.ops.workspaceswapper.swap(targetWorkspace="Animation")
If the workspace does not exist, it will append it from the startup.blend in the config folder (make sure that one exists).


How to select/extrude all the upper faces of a lot of buildings in one only step Hello to everyone (specially to Mzidare :D),

I found this blender tutorial How to Create a City Covered with Fog and I tried to do it.

The problem I have is that I can extrude a single building vertices/faces correctly but not all vertices/faces of all the building at one time by pressing A.

If I do it,the extruded part is shown above the old one. I switched the mode selection to face and also to vertex. But it didn't work.

The author of the tutorial,Gleb Alexandrov,did not explain it very well,because he talks very fast. At the beginning of the stage 2,he says :

"hit Ctrl + A" ; instead, I imagine that's "press A to select everything" and then he says
"press E to extrude". And finally he says
"press A and recalculate normal".

I'm stuck on point 1. If I select only the upper vertices or faces of one building only it works for me. But this takes a lot of time to select every upper vertex or face and Gleb didn't do it. Instead, he selected everything.

Is there a solution to make faster ? Check the attached short video to understand. Many thanks.

What I did

Your problem is that your buildings seem to have already been extruded once, instead of being flat 2D shapes as in the tutorial.

Either delete all but the bottom faces and star over. Select one of the top faces then use Shift+G > Normal option to select all faces pointing up. Then use Ctrl++ once to grow the selection and add include side faces too. Then delete them with X and extrude as per tutorial instructions.

Or select only the top faces for extrusion, don't select side faces like you did in your video or you will end up with a very bad dirty topology and a model full of errors.

Select one of the top faces then use Shift+G > Normal option to select all faces pointing up, then extrude


Attempting to convert a model with "bones" - how to find the coordinates of each rotation point? I should explain that I've only just downloaded and installed blender maybe a week ago? There is a model I am going to use for a project and I have to convert it to a special format for the engine I'm using. It doesn't support bones or any rigging. To actually do rigging I apply a transformation to the drawing space according to where the model should be (for instance, move a submodel so that its rotation point is at the origin, rotate, and then move back and then do whatever transformations were applied to higher models in the hierarchy). So I do have the models themselves (the geometry and textures) converted into the proper format. That I do not need help with. I have another program for that but it only views polygon data (for the same reasons as above). I'm trying to determine those "rotation points" in blender. I have no idea how to use the interface. I figured out how to load the model in the window last night and I managed to delete some stupid cube that was sitting in the default window. I'm essentially wanting to know what menu or what button (preferably with screenshots) I go to in order to step through all the rotation points one by one so that I can convert it to my setup?

It is quite possible that my setup is slightly different than how bones work. I apologize if so. It's how I've thought about for quite some time when dealing with models. Hopefully it isn't too confusing for you people who have used Blender for more than a few hours.

For those asking what engine I'm using. It is game maker 8.0 pro. Yes I have read the manual thoroughly. It does not support bones. No, I cannot convert the codebase to something else as it is literally years old. No, I would prefer to not use a 3rd party library to load in the original model with its default rigging.

With the armature selected switch to Edit Mode, select the bone you want, and the location of the point it rotates around is displayed in the Properties panel (N) under Head:

To automate this open a Text Editor window and run this code:

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.active_object

if obj.mode is not 'OBJECT': bpy.ops.object.set_object_mode()

for bone in obj.data.bones:
    print("Bone: {0} origin is at {1}".format(bone.name, bone.head))

It will output into System Console. You can rewrite it to output to a file in a custom format your engine will understand.

The values will be relative to the armature centre of origin and with Z axis pointing up.


Black dot rendering a 360 Video I recently started rendering a 360 scene and when it is finished rendering it shows a black dot in the scene. There is no mesh making that black dot and it has never happened before. I attached a picture to further explain.

Your camera clipping plane is cutting through your geometry. Under Camera settings > Lens > Clipping, set the Start value to a smaller value.


How to snap a part of a mesh into a part of another in Blender? Is there the possibility in Blender to select some vertices (or faces) in mesh1, select some vertices (faces) on mesh2 and then snap the meshes by the vertices (faces)? I am thinking in complicated meshes generated by 3D scanning into an STL file.

This script only work on meshes with no rotation or scaling though.

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector
objAct = bpy.context.object
objsSel = bpy.context.selected_objects
midptAct = Vector((0, 0, 0))

# Calculate mid-point of selected vertices of the active object
for v in objAct.data.vertices:
    if v.select:
        midptAct += v.co
midptAct /= 4

# Calculate mid-point of selected vertices of the each selected object then move the object
for obj in objsSel:
    if (objAct != obj): # since the active object is also inside the selected object list
        midptSel = Vector((0, 0, 0))
        for v in obj.data.vertices:
            if v.select:
                midptSel += v.co
        midptSel /= 4
        obj.location = objAct.location - midptSel + midptAct # moving the selected object

Select the vertices you want to perform snapping in both mesh.

Select both mesh, and press Run Script, then the selected mesh will snap to the active mesh

Is this the snapping you are looking for?


Weight painting seems to be ignored on my rig I'm trying to animate my character model using Rigify, but moving one foot will always bring the other foot with it.  I was following this tutorial.

My Blender project file can be found here.  As you can see in the project, the feet are weight painted, and I set the FK/IK to 1.0, as shown in the video.  What am I missing here?

Found 2 issues here :

First, you forgot to apply the mirror modifier.
Second, you can see that it is not the "foot" weight that influences the other side, but the "toe" weight (and this is a side-effect of the mirror modifier I guess) :

So make sure to apply the mirror modifier before parenting the armature, then try again. You'll be able to tweak the weight painting more efficiently.

And a side note, you'd better to pull up the Armature modifier before the Subsurf modifier (you'll get better performance while moving the rig, so the animation will be less painful;)


Decay effect/texture Could anybody help me with achieving the same effect in blender as in the following image?

But with both ends of the the gray material as noisy as the bottom one.
It's supposed to be a tooth decay.

More details:

And this is what I have in Blender at the moment:

Current stage of the tooth after the responses:
(using another tooth)

Idle Chit-chat

The best way I could think of doing things is to create two separate meshes: the tooth and the decay. Using my method, I created this:

Teeth Creation

I started by modeling a simple tooth. I included the mesh for this image, but deleted it later. Do not worry about it. I also set shading to Smooth in the Tools bar. I then added a material and set the Diffuse color to hex FFF2FE. I did not change anything else in the material.

After that, I added a sphere. I set the shading to smooth. I moved it down to Z: -1.4334 and scaled it so X, Y, and Z were all 1.189. This makes it so just some of the sphere is visible near the gunky area in the reference photo. I added both a Subdivision surface and Displace Object modifier. I set the settings to these:

Important! Before you can set the settings in the Displace modifier, click + New to get a new texture. Name it "Disp."

Next, I went to the Textures tab in the Properties panel. Make sure that  is selected at the top of the tab. Select Displace from the top drop down menu and Disp if it isn't already selected in the next drop down menu. If it is not already set, set the Type: to Clouds.

With the sphere still selected, go to the Materials tab and add a new material. Set the Diffuse color to hex C29F75. Change the Specular intensity: to .1.

Lighting and World setup

Move the lamp infront of the tooth. I used X: 0.0194096, Y: -4.1363487, and Z: 2.4681318. In the Object Data Properties panel tab, set Samples: to 5. Go to the World tab. Set the Horizon Color: to hex 595A66. Check Environment Lighting. Set the Energy: to .4, and in the drop down menu, select Sky Color.

Last Words

I assumed here that you were using BR. If you use Cycles, refer to Duarte Farrajota Ramos's answer. I might tweak the lighting to get a better result. Finally, here is the .blend file:


Textures not showing up on objects unless selected in UV editor When I assign a texture to an object's material and use UV unwrap it doesn't seem like Blender assigns the texture to the faces as they're not visible in the 3D view. If I use the UV Editor to select the texture then it's visible. Is there a way to make sure a texture and its UVs are properly assigned in the Default window layout without having to switch window layouts for every object?

I'm not quite sure what you mean, but when you say "without having to switch window layouts for every object" it sounds like you're changing window layouts, just to do the UV Mapping, which is not necessary. I'm guessing that you're using the Default layout for unwrapping and the UV Editing layout for assigning the image, and you're right to guess that there's an easier way. (this will help)

In the header of every window, there is a button all the way on the left which will let you change the window type. What you probably want is to change one window to the UV/Image Editor and another to the 3D viewport, but in the same layout. This will let you see both at the same time. (All of the layout is totally customizable; the various layouts that have names are just presets, you can even change those or add custom layouts). In fact, I usually use the Default layout and I'll change the top-right window (which is usually an outliner) to a small 3D view, and then just change the big main window to whatever I'm doing at the moment, even another 3D view.

Another problem that you might be encountering is that Blender decouples the viewport texturing from rendered texturing. The render will use the image in the material settings, but the viewport will use the image that's selected in the UV/Image Editor for that UV set. (You can have multiple UV sets on a single object, but each UV set can only have one image). This means that you can see one texture in the viewport, and a completely different one in the render. This also means that if you haven't chosen an image in the UV/Image editor, then it won't show up in the viewport, even though it will render.

Hope that helps!


Blender to unreal engine Here's my video made with blender and unreal engine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPkYeqT0Jyg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG3--iTjPq0

I have a problem with plane meshes and I don't know weather it has something to do with Unreal engine or Blender. I need double sided lighting that plane would be displayed on both sides. And even if I select double sided in Unreal engine I still have transparent walls, floors and ceiling so I have to use solid shapes which takes much more time in building lighting and baking maps. For example I model a flower and I don't want to use solidify modifier but then when I export it to Unreal engine and I can't find backface culling option there and I can only see one side of leaf.  [the tree is taken from another unreal project and i have no idea how they made it.]

This is a problem with the normals. Game engines will always display on only the side where the normals are pointing out. As far as I know, Blender does not allow  double sided normals, so make two planes, one for each side.


how to make object to follow curve with bending rather than it staying rigid This may sound silly but I just to simply follow tutorials back before 2.7 and I simply added my curve and my object, in this case a icosphere elongated on one axis to make like a slug type shape. So I would simply make the ico follow the path and the ico would "bend" and the body would literally follow the path, bending and twisting and all, as simple as that. Now it was a while ago but I remember for certain I did not use any modifiers or soft bodies or stuff. simple follow path procedures.

Ever since 2.7 I have to create a curve, add the object, set the follow path and animate it, but now the object remains rigid, yes i can make the object pitch up and down and sideways as it follows the path but the body itself remains "rigid" rather than moving and molding to the path, does anyone know how to achieve this "organic" movement when following a path? and just to make sure I made myself clear and make sense...

like if I make a curve with a sharp u turn, and I create a straight rectangle to follow the path, at the U shaped corner, the rectangle will not just follow the path and pivot in a center point tilting as it follows the path, the straight rectangle should actually bend to create a U shaped rectanlge during that instant that it is in the corner, and then shape itself to whatever shape the curve follows up with after the U turn.

You want the Curve modifier. That will cause the mesh to distort to follow the curve. Don't forget to make sure the mesh and curve's origins are at the same location. Then animating it moving along the curve is as simple as animating it moving along the same axis the curve modifier is using.


How can I mirror an object relative to a chosen point, in 3D space? So all of Blender's mirror functions are axis mirroring.

I only know point mirroring / point reflexion from math in 2D. In 2D it's equal to a rotation of 180° around a chosen point.

Is there any way to do it in blender in 3D? Is point reflexion even possible in 3D?

EDIT: After putting more thought into this, it seems I'd need to mirror each point on the closest point on a surface similar to the object itself.

EDIT2: I played around with some python and vector math, but the results where horrible, so to say. It seems that this is not (easily) possible, except when splitting the mesh into several objects.

Top: standard mirroring

Bottom: Imagined point reflexion (made manually)

Blender allows you to manipulate center points instead of the whole objects.

Set Manipulate Center Points, then mirror the objects: the geometry will not change.

CAVEAT: Since it will manipulate individual origins, you have to separate all the components of your model before mirroring.

If you want to "reverse" the order of the object, set Pivot Center to Bounding Box Center, then mirror the objects along the desired axis.

Shortcuts for these examples

Toggle Manipulate Center Points: Alt + ,

Set Pivot Center to Bounding Box Center : ,

Set Pivot Center to 3D Cursor : .

Mirror along X-Axis: Ctrl + M, X


Rest position doesn't get stored I've been working with a model with some poses. After I was done posing, I decided to jump into doing some texture work with it.

Since Blender can't help me with the textures, I use 3D-Coat. So I decided to use 3D-Coat and exported the model as OBJ, however, when I loaded it, it had some vertices moved around, so I went back to Blender to check and I exported it still posed.

I then cleared all Rotation, Location and Scale to put the armature how it was and it worked. So I exported again to OBJ, and once again it exported it as it was posed.

I removed every single Shape Key and tried to use the cleared armature as the Rest Pose, but it didn't work and it comes back to the last pose.

How can I fix this issue? Thanks in advance

Apply armature modifier and then export the model. Use a duplicate though or after exporting, back to previous step with CTRL+Z.


How can I separate faces without the edges? So I am doing this tutorial from Cinema 4D, and I am trying to do it in Blender.

My question is: How am I supposed to separate the faces of an Icosphere from each other as shown in this tutorial? (part 1)

You can get the same functionality with Extrude individual Faces (the easiest way to access this function is by pressing space and just typing it in).

If your Pivot Point is set to Individual Origins and you are in Face select mode, you can then also scale the individual faces down independantly with S.

With Select > Inverse and X > Faces, you can delete everything in-between.

Steps:


Can you shrinkwrap some vertices in edit mode? Hope the title makes sense.

I have a highly detailed mesh and I want to shrink wrap a very small part of it (that's connected to the rest) around a cylinder.

The best way would be to assign the fragment to some Vertex Group and use that group in Shrinksrap modifier.Like this:


What is the difference between Unwrap and Smart uv project? I'm trying to baking my high poly onto my low poly mesh. Should i use Unwrap or Smart uv project?
What's the difference between them??

"Unwrap" is when Blender will determine where each and every face should be located on your UV Image Editor, For example, If I were to unwrap an entire cube or sphere, it would look something like this:
As you can see, all of the faces of this sphere are stacked upon one another, fitting the entire frame of each face with the texture. But all of this can be solved if you Mark Seams on your object.

Smart UV Unwrap is when if you were to chose this option, you would be given 4 options to change and edit the way blender is going to analyze your mesh unwrapping;Angle Limit, Island Margin, Area weight, and Correct Aspect. You can tweak these options to see what you would prefer most and what you like best.
Ex.
In my opinion, I would go for the "Unwrap" because if you "Mark Seams" you can control the way blender unwraps your mesh in a much easier way instead of having to work with all those options in "Smart UV Unwrap."


Why do I get a solve error above 100+ in MovieClipEditor while following the MatchTrackBlend DVD tutorial? I'm continuing to work my way through the original Match, Track, Blend(MTB) DVD, but I've smacked into a baffling problem in Chapter 16: Creating a Clean Plate.

As you can see in the image above, I've tried to replicate as closely as I can the markers that Sebastian Koenig chooses for his tutorial (I've also tried to copy his camera settings).

However - my camera solution is often crazy, varying between 8 and 240. Not changing any variables and just clicking on Solve Camera Motion will usually return a new, often very high value.

Shortly after 6.40 in the video, Sebastian sets the solver to refine K1 & K2 and while I've tried the same, it only seems to restrict the average error within 16 units or so.

Obviously MTB was made for an earlier version of Blender - but could there be settings from an older version which are more effective than the current Tracker defaults? And if so - what are they!? I've certainly experimented with affine, etc.

Help and advice, very much appreciated. The DVD has been mostly fantastic, and I've learnt tons... just a shame to hit a brick wall on this useful lesson!

--Rev

PS: Bonus question! Obviously I haven't finished the Clean Plate tutorial, but I took a look at this vid - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_MXkTP73CI Is there a chance the plate cleaning / clone painting tech has made it into Blender yet?

Most errors will be fixed by inproving the trackers' accuracy.
There are a few tools you can use:

On the tracking window's dopesheet sort your trackers by average error.
This will show you which trackers are not tracking correctly.

On the graph window look for places where the graphs are clearly different than the rest.

To fix those issues Retrack, reposition, resize, affine, use a different kind of motion model algorithm  or tracking preset or do whatever you can to improve the accuracy of those trackers to to bring down the error average..


Key map for an addon activate the class more than one time? I am creating an addon I have created key map for that addon,but the problem is when I press the hotkey that I set up it activate the class more than one time,while if I press it from menu it happen only 1 time.I tried to find a solution but I couldn't find it,
here is the key map portion of my addon:

so what is the problem?

When you have an addon listed in the preferences you click the tick box to enable it, by enabling it the addons register() function is run. When you disable the addon the unregister() function is run.

Most addon scripts will end with a section of code similar to -

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

When you run that addon script in blenders text editor the register() function will be run, and as you run the script again the register() function will again be run. At this stage your keyboard additions have been added twice as the unregister() function has not been run to remove the first entry.

There are two ways to solve this, first is to add an unregister() function call to the end of the script, as it will throw an exception the first time it is run you will want to add in within a try block.

if __name__ == "__main__":
    try:
        unregister()
    except:
        pass
    register()

Now no matter how many times you click "Run script" you should only have one keyboard entry.

This is useful as you develop using blender's text editor but I would recommend you remove it before sharing your script.

The second way to solve this issue is to save the file to disk and use an external text editor. When you save changes to the addon, disable and enable it in the preferences, this will run the unregister() function for you before the new register() function is called as you enable it.


Is there a way to align multiple vertices to another vertex? I need to align some vertices up with the vertices that is extending out the furthest on the X axis. I want to know if there is a way to make them all aligned in one step. Instead of messing with each vertices X position. Is there a way to do that?

Set pivot point to 'active element' and transformation orientation to 'normal'.
Duplicate the edge you want them to be parallel to, move it with G and Z twice (along normal) and extrude it (E+Z) to create a clear normal.
Select your unstraight edge and afterwards the created polygon, so the polygon is the active element.
Hit S to scale, Z twice and move the mouse or just press 0 to make it completely straight.
Delete the temporary polygon.

Works always, no matter how your object is weirdly rotated in 3D space.


TextureAtlas flips normals on half of the deep linked duplicates I have a strange effect on my model. I modeled the Portal Companion Cube and since there's a lot of similar objects, I created deep linked duplicates of them to make easy adjustments to all of them.

Since I wanted all objects on the same UV Map I use the TextureAtlas add-on to keep the separated objects but edit the UV all at once. But I noticed that half of the objects that I duplicated flipped their normals as soon as I pressed "StartManualUnwrap". Fixing the normals in that mode doesn't help since I assume what the Addon does is create a merged copy of the object, to the change doesn't translate back to the original.

What I don't get is why only half of the objects are inverted whereas the other half is just fine. AFAIK the deep link means the geometry exists only once and all instances link to it, so how can it be different?

I also tried to unlink them all, but the effect remains. The only way to get gid of it is to merge all objects and fix the normals. But that way, I lose the option to bake all objects separately by mesh name in Substance Painter.

So what fixed it for me was:

Select all objects and duplicate them by pressing Shift + D.
Make everything a single user object (hit U » Object & Data).
Apply the scale and rotation with Ctrl+ A » Scale & Rotation.
Go through each object with wrong normals and fix them (Tab to enter edit mode, select all by pressing A and then Ctrl + N to fix the normals)

When I then selected the Texture Atlas group and started the unwrapping everthing was fine, no flipped normals anymore.


Why do I have a crease in my model? I am new to Blender, and I can't make my mug nice and even. This happened, and I don't know how to fix it:

You have diagonal edges coming down from the top and entering the mesh. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the origin of your problem.


Script changes to driver expressions and variables Scripting newb here.

I have thousands of unique objects named plane.001, plane.002 etc. They all unique meshes with a single shapekey apart from the basis. The shapekey has a driver on its evaluation time and the variable type of the driver is distance, with an empty as the first target.

I'm trying to write a script that changes the second target of my distance variable to the same object that contains the driver. Since I simply duplicated the original object thousands of times, they all have the original object as the second target.

I'm hoping someone will throw me a bone here, show me a viable script and explain what's going on. I do have experience with programming languages but I'm very much an amateur.

Thanks a lot lot lot!

import bpy
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

for obj in scene.objects:
    mesh = obj.data
    if not mesh or not hasattr(mesh, "shape_keys"):
        continue

    # shape key collection
    shapekeys = mesh.shape_keys

    # animation data
    ad = getattr(shapekeys, "animation_data", None)
    # no animtion data no drivers
    if not ad:
        continue

    #select the driver part of fcurves in drivers list
    drivers = [fc.driver for fc in ad.drivers]

    for d in drivers:
        #variables of type distance
        vars = [v for v in d.variables if v.type == 'LOC_DIFF']
        for v in vars:
            # set the target 2 to obj that has driver.
            v.targets[1].id = obj


selecting mirrored edges I have been following a modeling tutorial, and they had me mirror the legs of the character and merge them at the groin.  Then they want me to select the top loop of the new merged legs, and I can select the edges on the original leg, but the mirrored leg won't let me select anything.  Is there something I'm missing?  I'm fairly new to blender and im sure I'm just missing something.  Any help would be appreciated!  Thanks in advance

You cannot select mirrored edges. To be able to do anything to the mirrored side, you must apply the modifier first, then go back to edit mode.

In 2.79 and before, the "On-clipping" function was not available, but in 2.80+, it allows you to select the mirrored side. It doesn't allow much editing though.


What identifier of operator must be entered for assign shortcuts I have a couple of questions:

To configure a border selection to a left mouse button click and drag, I used the following example of parameter "Tweak".

After making these changes when I run this command, the subobjects selection occurs, those who fall within of the action zone the frame.
But now there is no possibility to make the deselection of certain parts of geometry (subobjects) by frame selection.
What do I need to do to deactivated part of geometry (subobjects) via hotkeys Alt +LMB?

And one more question:

In another post, is said that: The RNA value comes from the operator named above. Were you have entered "rotate view" needs to be the name of the operator to be run when the key/mouse combination is pressed. The standard operator to rotate the view would be view3d.rotate.

To get the value of a custom operator, you need to use the value of bl_idname defined in the operator you wish to use.

I do not understand exactly where and how should I use the value of "bl_idname" to get the value of the main operator?

Identifier of operator for the transformation tools (move, rotate, scale) has following view: "transform.rotate", etc.

However, to assign hot keys such tools as Move, Rotate and Scale must enter the following value: "view3d.enable_manipulyator". Why "enable_manipulyator"?
If I want to assign a hotkey to the "occluded geometry" button, What values do I need to enter?

Please make different topics for each question

For border select you will have to create several entries for selection and deselection with tweak mouse with all the desired modifier keys, like Alt+Tweak+Left or Shit+Tweak+Left, ect. for example.

After that you have to additionally expand the Border select modal key map bellow any of the entries (they are all the same) and manually configure all options for selection, deselection, and canceling the operator.

I use a similar setup myself, and it is a sort of a chore and a bit hit and miss manual work.

Word of advice, don't directly use Left Mouse or Right Mouse in your keymaps, when possible use Select Mouse or Deselect Mouse so the custom keymap remains dynamic and responds to general switch of selection with left or right click. Also make sure there are no conflicts as they may inexplicably make some key assignments nor work

Best way to know an operator name is to Right Click a button and choose one of the following options and search for hints there

Copy Python Command
Copy Data Path
Online Python Reference
Assign Shortcut (does it automatically)
Edit Source

Some times it's also useful to search for that operator in the keymap list and see if there's one already assigned you can copy from.
Some buttons don't use an operator directly though, some times they need contexts, or toggle variables or call menus.

For toggling occluded geometry the operator has to be wm.context_toggle and the context is space_data.use_occlude_geometry


How can I animate multiple properties of the same object at once? I am trying to animate a vehicle coming to a stop and I want the tail lights to start glowing at a certain point. To have a realistic effect, I was using the compositing screen layout with more than 10 nodes and about 30 values and checkboxes. So, I was wondering if there is a way to keyframe all these values at once instead of clicking on each value and insert a keyframe.

You can use the Cycles Material Output node to control the strength of your emission shader where its value is controlled through an Animate Float node.

Where the Delay node controls the frame at which the animation will start.


How to make object spin/rotate constantly in 3d mode outside of animation and game engine Is there anyway to make an object spin/rotate constantly in 3d mode without animation or using the game engine?

Shoot, I had no idea or forgot that Blender allows keyframing animation of individual objects while other objects in scene can be manually transformed/manipulated during playback.  No wonder my question was so confusing.  So sorry but thanks for the help.


Create a Matcap from Textured Model Sometimes I see great materials, but they are not spheres, so I can't use it directly as a matcap. However, in some instances, the shape is simply enough (cylinder) that I could probably recreate the mesh and project the image onto it.

With the textured mesh, is there a way to generate a matcap?

matcap generator

This is a great matcap generator .blend from Ben Simonds.  I'd imagine you could simply apply a texture to the sphere and render it out.

Then, apply the matcap to your model using reflection coordinates, and go to textured view mode to see the results.


Mesh mirror itself without a mirror modifier as the title says "Mesh mirror itself without a mirror modifier".
I had a mirror modifier on but not anymore but the mesh keeps mirror itself and i don't know what is causing it, in my modifiers tab i only have and armature and subdivision modifier. Any idea what is causing it?
I have applied the mirror but the problem is that any new change i make it mirror it

My english is not that good sorry

You may have enabled the "X mirror" option, which is an Edit mode option rather than a modifier. It's located in the tool shelf (T) of the viewport under the "Options" tab. The first one here:


Cant see explosion in cycles When I look at my explosion in the 3D Viewport I see this:

But when I go into render mode, I see a black rectangular prism. How would I go about making it so when I render I see the explosion

In blender cycles, you have to use attributes in the node editor to make flames and/or smoke visible.

This Image shows is an example of how you need to set up your smoke.
To add flames and make them look good, you can follow this video tutorial.

https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/make-fire-cycles/

Much fun!


Why Is The Face Not Linking Up? Why is it doing this I just put on a mirror modifier and cut the upper faces
anyone know why?

Simple fix->
Make your subsurface modifier first in your modifiers panel instead of mirror. This should do the trick.
Just click the button on the top of the mirror mod, and it will move to the top.


How to pack images into blend file Is there a way to pack all my images into the blend file so I can transfer it more easily?

I'm using the version 2.8

You can use the Pack All Into .blend function. Open the project, go to File > External Data > Pack All Into .blend, and wait for the packing of your images/textures (it depends on how many textures you used in your project). Then save again the file (maybe with a different name, e.g. project_packed). So when you open the file on a different computer, you don't have to re-loading the textures.


Mesh Curve not exporting properly to unity I tried to export a curve which i turned into a mesh into unity. However the curve appears in an extremely bizzare shape in unity. How do i get unity to import it properly? (P.S. im a complete amatuer)

It turns out my model was 2d so it was invisible from the upper side. I just needed to rotate the model the other way to see the model. There was nothing wrong with the shape of the model. Thanks to stacker for his help.


Error - "should be zero or 1 controller arg" I'm trying to use some python filters in the UPBGE and keep getting this error. There is one large file called "filters.py" with numerous filter scripts that I am using and whenever I try to use one of the filters using the python module controller (filters.filter) I get this error: "filters.filter takes (X) args, should be zero or 1 controller arg" where X is the number of arguments next to where the filter is on the list in the script (i.e. def filter(value1=1, value2=2, etc). So...how do I get blender be able to recognize more than "zero or 1 args" and get my script working?

Do you have at least one controller logic-block setup with Python script? That controller needs to be on a sensor (usually an Always sensor). if that's not the problem, take another look at the API for the functions or objects associated in the script (maybe provide a link?)

I've had trouble running UPBGE, so I've no experience with it.


Shear matrix using vector Why does the shear matrix example not use two matrix inputs as per several of the other example nodes in this matrix section? (for example rotation matrix and transform matrix)

https://animation-nodes-manual.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user_guide/nodes/matrix/shear_matrix.html

Just wondered why vector/vertices is used instead.

Shear transform is a bit different that other transforms like Rotation and Scale. Angles and lengths between points is not preserved for instance. According to Wikipedia Shear is defined as:

  In plane geometry, a shear mapping is a linear map that displaces each point in fixed direction, by an amount proportional to its signed distance from the line that is parallel to that direction and goes through the origin. This type of mapping is also called shear transformation, transvection, or just shearing.

So we usually use Shear to distort a group of points. Try to use Shear as the local transform of an object and you will see some unexpected distortion. I am not entirely sure why, but it has to do with how blender interrupt the transformation.


Radial vector displacement I'm struggle with vector displacement shader. I'm trying to do something like reverse cone but I can't figure out how to add radial direction. I would like to use RGB curves like screw (lathe) modifier but in shader. My actual setup:

The strategy in this example is to generate the displaced position Q of the shading point P (in an originally planar Object space), and subtract P from Q to give the displacement vector.

The displacement is masked. If P is outside the input Radius (r2 in the tree) from object 0 , it is not displaced. A soft border has been put on the mask to prevent unsightly tearing of the surface.

Q's Z is a mapping of the mask-circle. The circumference of the circle is mapped to Z = 0, the center to Z = (Input) h. The circle is 'drawn upwards' from its center.

Q's X and Y are more easily calculated in polar coordinates. There are 2 groups in the tree, for converting  between polar and Cartesian coordinates, so the mapping need only be of r, the radius of P. (Pr -> Qr)

First, Pr, the radius of the shading point, is remapped from 0->r2 to -1->1, so it uses the full range of the Vector Curves node. The result of the curve in the node is then mapped to 0-1. The result, Qr, is recombined with the original theta to get Q's X and Y, and plugged into the 3D vector Q, the displaced position of the shading point. That is then subtracted from the original shading point. The Y and Z components in the Curve node have been set to map to 0.

A shader-generated pawn

I'll try to get this into Blender-compatible tangent space (unfortunately, that's not standard), so it can be, say, tiled onto deformable surfaces.

EDIT:

OK, some progress, this has been shuffled into Tangent Space:

.. which involves working in corner-to center displaced UV coordinates, and subtracting radii, rather than entire displacement, and adding the Y -> Normal coordinate in as an absolute component.

This answer is getting long, so I won't illustrate the tree again, it's in the Blend. But there's still a problem: this does not scale elegantly. The Normal displacement (which is absolute)  is not proportional to the face size (which is relative, from the UV mapping). Again, I'll try to fix this, unless you or someone else gets there first. I hope eventually we can get to a single switchable tree, which would be more generally useful, and strip this answer back.


How do I add a list of paths in the Blender preferences manually? In the Blender preferences I would like to add paths to external resources, but I don't really know how to do it, I am aware that I can register a StringProperty property this way in the preferences:
class MyAddonPreferences(bpy.types.AddonPreferences):

    bl_idname = __name__

    path: bpy.props.StringProperty(name="PATH",subtype='DIR_PATH',description = '')

So I can access the path chosen by the user in this way:
preferences = bpy.context.preferences.addons[__name__].preferences
path = preferences.path

However, this is limiting if the resources can be multiple and chosen by the user. For example I would like to be able to add some other path of your choice with an "Add" or "Remove" button.
Basically I'm trying to memorize some path in the addon preferences.
I have no idea what the best way to do it is

You would have to declare a CollectionProperty and assign its type to a previously declared PropertyGroup to hold multiple generic entries. Demo based on the code provided in the docs:

bl_info = {
    "name": "Example Add-on Preferences",
    "author": "Your Name Here",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "location": "",
    "description": "Example Add-on",
    "warning": "",
    "doc_url": "",
    "tracker_url": "",
    "category": "Development",
}

import bpy
from bpy.types import Operator, AddonPreferences, PropertyGroup
from bpy.props import StringProperty, CollectionProperty

class CUSTOM_PG_filepaths(PropertyGroup):
    # name: bpy.props.StringProperty()
    path: bpy.props.StringProperty(subtype='FILE_PATH')
    display: bpy.props.BoolProperty()

class ExampleAddonPreferences(AddonPreferences):
    # this must match the add-on name, use '__package__'
    # when defining this in a submodule of a python package.
    bl_idname = __name__

    filepaths: CollectionProperty(
        name="File paths",
        type=CUSTOM_PG_filepaths)

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.label(text="This is a preferences view for our add-on")
        for i in self.filepaths:
            if i.display == True:
                layout.prop(i, "path")

filepath_list = {
    "geo": "//asset.obj",
    "anim": "//asset.fbx",
    "render": "//asset.exr"
}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(CUSTOM_PG_filepaths)
    bpy.utils.register_class(ExampleAddonPreferences)

    paths = bpy.context.preferences.addons[__name__].preferences.filepaths
    if not paths:
        for key, value in filepath_list.items():
            item = paths.add()
            item.name = key
            item.path = value
            item.display = True

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ExampleAddonPreferences)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(CUSTOM_PG_filepaths)

If you'd like to allow the user adding an arbitrary amount of filepaths, you can display the contents of the PropertyGroup in a custom UIList which will look like the material list, see:
Create an interface which is similar to the material list box

Alternatively you can just add a simple operator to add a new item:

class OBJECT_OT_addon_prefs_example(Operator):
    """Display example preferences"""
    bl_idname = "object.addon_prefs_example"
    bl_label = "Add-on Preferences Example"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    def execute(self, context):
        preferences = context.preferences
        addon_prefs = preferences.addons[__name__].preferences
        item = addon_prefs.filepaths.add()
        item.display = True

        self.report({'INFO'}, "New Filepath added")
        return {'FINISHED'}


Object selection problem in 3D view I have a problem with selecting. When I select some objects (for example a camera), then press A (deselect everything), B and select multiple objects, I'm not able to, for example, set the material for this objects, because Blender still thinks that the camera is selected.

I'm new to Blender, so it's very likely that I just clicked something wrong.

This is because there are really three selection states:

Deselected

No outline or origin shown:

Selected

Orange outline and orange origin:

Active

Yellow outline when also selected, yellow origin:

      Active + Selected                  Active + Deselected

There is only one Active object. This object is the one which will be edited, if any changes are made in the properties region or edit mode etc.
In your screenshot you'll notice that the camera is still active, even though you deselected everything. To fix this,

The Active object is normally the last object clicked with  RMB. To set the active object without deselecting all other objects you can use ⇧ Shift RMB.


How can I randomize rotation on z-axis with hair particles? So I have all these boxes I made, but I wanna randomize it so it doesn't look so repetative.

It doesn't seem to wanna rotate correctly on the z-axis, it just rotates weird on goes through the ground. Any ideas?

For random rotation: Enable the Advanced option, activate Rotation, play with the Random value.


UV Maps and inconsistent shading issues I'm having some difficulty with a texture sheet I created for my model.  I created UV maps but rotated some 90 degrees so that they would fit on a 4096X4096 Texture sheet.

Now I'm getting inconsistent lighting when I export. Are all the islands supposed to be oriented in relation to one another?

Not sure why rotating various parts of a  UV maps of a mesh would effect lighting issues.

That indeed sounds strange.
What do you mean with export? As .blend file? To another program?

"Are all the islands supposed to be oriented in relation to one another?" - No except that they shouldn't overlap.

Did you bake your textures previously? (then that might have been the problem, because the lighting is set before you rotated)

Uploading some screenshots or a .blend file might help to solve the problem ;)


How can I make Blender put less strain on my CPU? I am using GPU rendering and my CPU is really bottlenecking blender down to only 50% of max GPU performance, while blender is taking up more than 90% of my CPU usage. How can I put less strain on my CPU so it will stop bottlenecking my GPU?

If 90% of CPU load bothers you, ie its not comfortable to work with other programs, you can set priority to the Blender by Task Manager.

Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch Task Manager.

Prior Windows 10, right click on Blender process->Set Priority->Low. In the Windows 10 select details tab, and again right click on Blender process->Set Priority->Low


How to apply the effects of weight painting instantly? I am having problems when I weight paint. I can paint and the color shows as expected, but the corresponding mesh movement only happens after click on an item in the tool shelf,  eg. belly How can I apply the movement instantly?

cheers jan

Select your mesh and in the properites panel, modifiers tab, enable thoose little two buttons on the armature modifiers: in this way you will be able to see the effect of all weight paint strokes in real time.


How can I make a 3D wireframe object hollow? For instance, if I want to make a wireframe snowman out of three spheres, I would like to trim the spheres so that only the outermost surfaces are shown. That is, if sphere 1 and sphere 2 overlap, I'd like to delete the overlap region of both spheres. And is there a way to do this automatically with, say a python script, given the coordinates and radii of the spheres? Thanks in advance!

It isn't necessary to use python, you can use Boolean modifiers to do this.

Add a boolean modifier to one of the spheres for every other sphere which intersects with it:

Then apply all the modifiers either by click apply for each one, or by pressing ⎇ AltC > Convert to mesh.

Result:


How to bake normals using modifiers only? I have an UV-unwrapped base mesh that I want to bake tangent normals into. Only detail I need is a few bevel modifiers and a subdivision surface. How can I bake the smooth version without using cage objects etc?

You can bake world normals instead of tangent ones


I am trying to fill a bottle with liquid I'm trying to fill a bottle I designed with liquid on Blender.
I've looked at tutorials and they all use the type "obstacle" in the fluid tab in physics.
My blender software does not show this obstacle option I'm wondering how I can do this.
I'm using the latest version of Blender.
Here's a screenshot of my problem, The list only shows Flow, domain, none and effector.

You will need to use Type: "Effector" and Effector Type: "Collision".

Here the steps for a basic fill the bottle setup:

Have a cube big enough to cover the bottle and the source of the liquid, maybe even some spilled liquid, who knows ;)
Make sure the cube has it's scale applied! Ctrl+A "Scale"
Go in the Physics Properties and activate the Fluid, Type: Domain.
Select the bottle, make sure the Normals (please see at the end of the answer for a deeper explanation) are correct, better check early then wonder about the wonders Blender can give you later. Switch on the "Face Orientation", which can be found in the "Viewport Overlays" drop-down-menu at the top right of the viewport.

With the bottle all blue (correct Normals) you can also apply Fluid physics to it and select the Type: Effector, with the Effector Type: Collision.
As for the settings needed here, i ended up testing a bit and ended up with these settings, you may need to adjust them depending on the thickness of the bottle though.

Pretending that you use a sphere as source, it needs to be scaled down to make sure it goes in the bottle, scale it in edit mode, or if scaled in object mode, make sure to apply the scale Ctrl+A "Scale"
Setting up the source is done by activating it as "Fluid" and setting it as Type: Flow, with the Flow Type: Liquid. The settings are rather plain, but can be adjusted later. Important to note is that if you want to fill a bottle, you may want to animate the inflow. Check the Use Inflow and press I over it to set a keyframe. Move to one frame before the time you want it to stop and press I once more to add a keyframe. Now go to the next frame and uncheck Use Inflow and press I one last time, effectively closing the hose.

Domain, bottle and source done, you need to adjust some details in the domain to get a result. I found it easiest to check if i like the simulation by activating the X-Ray Alt+Z.
Being able to see through the cube(domain) and the bottle helps, so now you can go in the Physics Properties of the domain and scroll all the way down to find the Cache panel. Here to get a fast feedback set the Type to Replay, means the simulation will run when you press play (usually with Space). Adjust the time frame for how long the simulation will be calculated. The liquid simulation will run further in replay even if you only simulate for 50 frames but have 100 frames running. Later for the baking, you may need to increase the length of the simulation that will be calculated to ensure that it is covering the entire filling and settling. Here roughly what it looks for me.(excuse the cheap bottle :p)

Now comes the tough part, you will need to re-simulate and adjust a lot, so a tip i wished i had heard before: Should you suddenly have the liquid fall through the bottle and ignore it completely, set the time to 0, then go in the Cache section of the domain and switch the Type to Modal and then back to Replay, if that does not do the trick it helps if you change the Frame Start from 1 to 2 and back to 1. I wish there was a reset button somewhere but at least this seems to help. You can also delete the cache, by opening the folder, going out of the folder and deleting it.
Let's pretend you got the simulation set up now and want it to be finalized, go in the Cache section of the domain and set the Type to Modal.
Go back to frame 1
Scroll up in the domain to the settings area and click on Bake Data, this will run through the set frame-range and generates the particle simulation (we are not finished yet though)
Now you can play the animation again to see if all is still as you saw it in replay.
With the particles baked, you now most likely want to see some liquid. For that you need to scroll down a bit to find the Mesh panel, which you need to check/activate in order to be able to click on Bake Mesh. Leave the settings and maybe change to preview if you have a rather long simulation to get a fast result. Later you can play (yes have fun) with the values to get the best (to your liking) result to commit to the final baking. Note: That the liquid will only be simulated for the set time, after that the domain will show up again, so if you want more time for the liquid to settle, you have to give the simulation more time extra!

There is also one Type Final in the Cache, where you can Bake All, but it still does not change the fact that the simulation will only show the simulated liquid for the time it's set up. For that, you can duplicate the domain, select the new one, go to the last calculated frame and Apply the modifier, giving you a stopped in time version that you can use instead of the simulated one once that is run to it's last frame. A simple switch from simulated to the new final state object should suffice in most situations. Animating the Visibility in render will do the trick.

Here the final result with the simulation playing to frame 49, where i then switched to the finalized copy of the domain (frozen in time 49).

I'd recommend to let the liquid settle a bit more though.

Finished, i hope this helps getting started.

Version used for this was:

Added info regarding Normals:
A bit deeper info regarding the "Normals" as in "Face Orientation", since this is a point often underestimated. NOTE: The faces will only be in color if "X-Ray" mode is not active

With "Face Orientation" switched on, faces will be color coded blue for what pretty much all should look like when viewed from outside the object and red as for the inside the object. I tend to imagine it as the meat of the object, as that would be red. You could say if you stand in front of a blue face, you are outside, if you stand in front of a red face, you are inside the object, thus seeing parts of your object red even though you are a distance away from your object, means those red faces are oriented wrong.

Normals do affect not only the shading and thus the look in the render.That said, Normals will affect the subdivision surface modifier (or rather how the object looks if subdivision is added to it), the simulation of cloth, fluids and particles as well even 3D-Printing, since essentially only the inner part of the object (go in the object and look, it should be all red) will be printed/filled by the slicer software.

Should there be Normals that need to be corrected, it's usually the easiest to select all and press Shift+N which "Recalculates the Normals" in case you only need to Flip one or a few select faces, you can press Alt+N to open the popup menu and select "Flip".


Adding/removing items to CollectionProperty in PropertyGroup and UNDO I've added PropertyGroup with CollectionProperty of custom type and define operator for adding/removing items to this property. And User list (bpy.types.UIList) to check changes in this CollectionProperty.

Everything works fine, but undo functionality work with this operator, except changes for adding/removing CollectionProperty items. I wonder is this bug, or i should check my code?

Partial code for PropertyGroup(is this to complex data for UNDO?):

class FaceGroupsPropGroup(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    reg_index = 2

    @classmethod
    def register(self):
        bpy.types.Mesh.face_groups = bpy.props.CollectionProperty(
            name="Face groups",
            description="Face groups",
            type=self,
        )
        self.fusion_mstates = bpy.props.CollectionProperty(type=FusionStates)

        bpy.types.Mesh.fgroup_active_index = bpy.props.IntProperty(name="Active index",
                                                                   default=0,
                                                                   update=self.index_update)

        bpy.types.Scene.fgroups_live = bpy.props.BoolProperty(default=False)
        bpy.types.Scene.fg_smooth_iterations = bpy.props.IntProperty(min=0)
        bpy.types.Scene.fg_fatten = bpy.props.FloatProperty()
        self.name = bpy.props.StringProperty(name="Name", default="Group")
        self.wm = bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(name="World matrix", size=16, subtype='MATRIX')

        self.color = bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(name="Color",
                                                   subtype='COLOR_GAMMA', min=0.0, max=1.0,
                                                   default=[0.0, 0.0, 0.0], update=self.on_color_update)

        self.strokes_ids = bpy.props.IntVectorProperty(name="Strokes", size=6, default=(0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0))

Your operator should define bl_options = {"UNDO"}:

class MyOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_options = {"UNDO"}
    ...

See https://docs.blender.org/api/2.79/bpy.types.Operator.html?highlight=bl_options#bpy.types.Operator.bl_options


Making a pill capsule filled with powder I'm trying to create a realistic capsule that has a translucent shell and a powder interior (see image). Ideally, I'd be able to change the color of the powder interior easily. Can't seem to figure out how to get it looking realistic. Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Transparency is very difficult to get right, especially when there's something inside of the transparent object. https://blend-exchange.com/b/6V8odJJx Here is a link to my own recreation of your image. I used a Voronoi texture that's run through a colour ramp to get the right look of the inside of the pill. Doesn't need to be too detailed unless you zoom really close to the object. Then I duplicated the shape in object mode and extruded it to have a bit of thickness. I then added a new material and changed the transmission, alpha, roughness, and specular settings until I got something that looked decent. Make sure to change the IOR as well, it's automatically set to glass.
Here's an example of my attempt, it's by no means perfect but its a good jumping off point.


Wireframe mode doesn't select everything I had this feature until I must've clicked on something. But on wireframe mode, when i'm trying to select trough everything, it doesn't..react same way as if it was in solid mode.

You probably disabled X-Ray mode.
It's enabled by default, but can be switched off/on.


Child of Constraint not working The influence of the bone I created is set to 0, the animation does not work when I set it to 1 again.

video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w2DARNBwQw&feature=youtu.be

Thank you for describing your question very clearly.
constraint is set to 1. Go to the frame where you want the constraint to be zero. Type zero on the constraint modifier, while you mouse hover on the number press "I" to INSERT a keyframe. Your number field will change color to yellow, thus effectively inserting a keyframe (0 zero) on that specific frame.
You are doing all right, just needed to set the keyframe to zero since all keyframes after the frame you need are set to 1.

If you find this is the answer, thank you for your consideration to vote me as the answer by clicking to the left :the icon with a check mark and upvote this answer.

BFCT_Schiller


Video faster than audio after rendering? So I'm trying to edit this funny video from 2 years ago... And when I render the video the video is a lot faster than normal but the audio is normal. Also everything seems fine in preview.. I have audio sync, audio shredding and frame dropping on and the frame rate is correct. So any ideas what might cause this?

EDIT: Ok it seems to have something to do with the beginning of the video because if I render a random part of the video that doesn't include the beginning it will be fine but if I start the rendering from the beginning it will all be messed up... Any ideas on
 how to fix this?

Thanks in advance,
~Jere

You are not in playing back at real speed. Go in the Timeline Window > Playback menu, and enable Frame Dropping option. It will respect the real speed but at the price of some frame droppings.


blender finger mesh doesnt follow bone I'm having this problem this is my first time rigging a bone into a mesh. My problem would be that the "left mid finger" whenever I rotate the bone the mesh doesn't quite follow. Any help would be appreciated.

Here is the link for my thesis character.
http://sta.sh/01wwlon92de8

The problem is that the upper bone of that finger weighting is wrong. To solve this, select your mesh then then shift+select your armature and choose parent with automatic weighting and the problem will be fixed as shown below:


Creating a twisting cable with multiple parts I need to create several fiber optic cable cable illustrations. There are many parts to these. I can create them in Blender with no problem, but I would like to make the fibers twist. The problem for me is, I'm twisting a lot of objects that will need to easily change. 60 fibers, 72, etc. This is an example of what I want:

Any suggestions on where I should start would be greatly appreciated.

Curves are certainly versatile, but for some cables you might try other techniques. An alternative involves rotating an array of cylinders around and empty...

...and adding a simple deform

Update: If you modeled the smallest cables and then joined Ctrl Jthem to the outer tubing, you could array them together. You could color the small cables first, but you probably have to 'Apply Array' to color the few outer cables. Most of the other thicker tubing seems easy to model, the only except being the blue ribbon for which curves might be appropriate.


Using PolyPen in Retopoflow 2.0 I have watched tutorials and demos but I cannot get the hang of the PolyPen. I end up with 2 triangles instead of a quad! :-) There's got to be a little thought trick that would make the tool work for me.

Thank you,

Sabia

I was able to find the answer to my question by looking at a tutorial for the previous version of Retopoflow.

You need to right click on bottom edge of the existing geometry where you want to place your quad. That edge will be the top of the new quad. Then hold down Control and left drag the mouse diagonally. You'll see a temporary triangle. Click on the empty corner at the bottom of your new quad where you will place a vert. Voilà. You can make tris this way as well.

Check out the tutorials for the old version and the current version to see this in action.

Enjoy. This addon is a blockbuster!

Sabia


How to get xyz coordinates from f-curve We are doing research on monitor human activities to avoid adverse events. In part of it, we did an experiment in our MoCap lap to detect the human motion to monitor his activities. We have f-curves from that motion. But we need all the xyz coordinates values for that motion for that given time (just say about 2-3 minutes) to do a scientific analysis of the data.

Do anyone have an idea how to get xyz values from f-curves?

This question is similar to this one answered by christopheS.

So in the same principle, I just add some more information.

An object has animation data
This data contains curves
A curve is defined by an 'action type' (which is defined in 'data_path') and an 'array index'
Action type and array index will give about what the curve is. For instance an action type equal to 'location' with an array index of 1 is a curve about the Y location of the object
The curve contains keyframe points. Each as a 'co'(ordinate) vector where co[ 0 ] is the frame and co[ 1 ] the value

Additionally you can ask the curve value using 'value = curve.evaluate( frame )'.

The code here is commented, so please tell if it is enough explanation or not.

import bpy

print( '---------' )

# Action types, in order to filter the wanted curves if needed
actionTypes = ('location','rotation_euler','rotation_quaternion','scale')

# Get the object from which we want the animation data
obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']

# If it has some animation
if obj.animation_data:
    # Iterates over the wanted curves
    # The data_path gives the action's type
    for curve in [c for c in obj.animation_data.action.fcurves if c.data_path.endswith( actionTypes )]:
        # The array_index give the corresponding X, Y or Z index of the curve
        print( curve.data_path, curve.array_index )
        for key in curve.keyframe_points:
            # The curve's points has a 'co' vector giving the frame and the value
            print( 'frame: ', key.co[0], ' value: ', key.co[1] )
    pass
else:
    print("no data")


How to smooth/fillet a shape imported from SVG I'm trying to import a SVG shape and smooth it out to be 3D printed as a necklace pendant.
Import SVG > Solidify > Subdivision and i get weird results.

Similar problem with:
Import SVG > Solidify > Smooth
I also tried remap but could not get good results.
What's the best way to get around this problem without retracing it in blender?
blender file
SVG file

This is probably happening because of very narrow triangles going back-and-forth across the surface.
I might try using Beautify Faces if you are willing to convert it to mesh, but if you don’t want to do that, try the Remesh modifier with various settings.


How to move wedge directly away from center? See attached picture. How do I move the wedge(s) directly away from the "circle" center, along the same plane?

One way is with the Manipulate Origins option:

Center the origin of the wedge(s) by pressing ⎈ Ctrl⎇ Alt⇧ ShiftC> Origin to Geometry.
Enable Manipulate Center Points (⎇ Alt,)
Set the Pivot Point to 3D cursor (.). Ensure the cursor is in the center of the circle.
In object mode with the wedge(s) selected, scale them outward (S).

This works for multiple wedges at once:


Image texture problem I want to create an underground hallway. I added a cube in an empty world, resized it along the Y axis, downloaded concrete textures and put them in nodes.
But the texture looks stretched.
Is there a way to fix this?

The texture is distorted, because you scaled your mesh, and you're not using a UV map.

1) Apply object scale
Because you scaled your object, your scale is probably messed up.
Just go to Object->Apply->Scale
Shortcut: Ctrl+A

Apply scale

2) UV unwrap your mesh
You need to UV unwrap your mesh, so the texture is properly positioned.
In Edit mode, select all through  Select->All
and then go to UV->Smart UV project

Unwrap your mesh

3) Connect your UV map

Add a Texture Coordinate node, and use the UV output.
Add a Mapping node, to control the scale and position of your texture.

Connect your nodes as in this image

Done.


Limited Dissolve - All Boundaries What does the all boundaries option in limited dissolve actually do? The only information I was able to find was this less than helpful thread.

As from release notes, Limited Dissolve without All Boundaries will:

  Limited Dissolve will have no affect on edges or vertices selected on the openings, but will limit the mesh appropriately on the edges/vertices away from the openings.

Limited Dissolve will affect only on edges / vertices which are located inside of closed areas (i.e. not closely to boundary loop).

All Boundaries checked will make tool to dissolve vertices located on the boundary loop if those vertices have no more than 2 edges connected to them.

Taking into consideration some examples, this will look as follows.

Unfolded cube with edge loops in the corners

Loops were removed by both options;
All Boundaries removed several faces of the mesh. Those were faces which haven't any further extruding out; their boundary vertices had only 2 edges connecting them - the ones which the actual face consisted of.

UV sphere with several edges deleted

Edge loops in the top (and bottom) part of the mesh were decreased in both cases, surrounding faces were converted into Ngons;
All Boundaries option changed boundary loop (where mesh is opened); faces which had 1 vertex not connected to anything else were converted to tris, and that vertex dissolved.
If sphere weren't opened, there wouldn't be any differences between All Boundaries turned on or off.

Generally All Boundaries may seem a bit strange because it dissolves geometry fallen under the threshold on the flat surfaces and around opened loops; thus if there isn't any supported geometry remained, the result won't be as expected:

Unexpected result of dissolving with All Boundaries turned on; the plane subdivisions were removed and hence was removed that part of plane because only 2 edges were touching vertices in the corners of the mesh after dissolving.


Is there a way to keep hair childeren and edit the mesh? Editing a mesh after adding hair particles will mess up the hair (I assume it's because hairs are placed based on vertex order/indexes which change when the mesh is edited).

This can be avoided by disconnecting the hair from the mesh, but this will remove child particles.

Is there a way to keep hair (including child particles) in the same state while editing the mesh?

You could use a second mesh for the hair. This hair only object would sit just under the main object with the hair coming up through it.

This would allow you to alter the main object in any way you want without affecting the hair emitter.


Rigged model deforms horribly when doing anything in edit mode I'm following this tutorial that models a puppy.

After modeling the puppy in the tutorial it's shown how to add a meta-rig. I set up all the bones then realized I needed to do some more modeling.

When I try to do this in Edit mode it goes ballistic and explodes in all directions. I have read something on this forum that sounds somewhere close to this problem. The suggestion is that you can click the "remove rigid body tools" button under physics in the tool side panel. I did that, but it didn't work.

I even went as far as to delete the entire rig to see if that would work but that didn't work either. Any help would be appreciated.

I have learned that if you have shape keys and one of the shape keys is selected other than the basis, it will do as I described in this post. If you simply click the basis on your shape keys panel and you will be able to edit your mesh/model at will.


Scene renders black with ambient occlusion turned off in cycles I am relatively new to blender, mainly i have been using BI renderer. i started using the Cycles render engine, but when i turn off the ambient lighting (ambient occlusion), the scene is black. actaully, when i examine the images there is 'some' light but the image appears black.

Here is the file:
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/41397

Any thoughts on this? Thank you.

You have lots of options when it comes to lighting. Your question is quite vague so we don't know what your intentions are.

You can increase the intensity of the light source, but that will only make the spot brighter, as there is no other light in the scene. The contrast (ratio between bright and dark values) will be too high.

If you use gray tone for the background surface. You'll get a brighter scene. Think of the background as a giant sphere that surrounds the scene emitting equal amount of light at every given point. The contrast will decrease, as the dark areas will not be in complete darkness. Changing the strength, or the color, of the background will let you control how bright the level of global illumination.

Ambient occlusion is different, as is "fake lighting" and has more to do with the interaction of objects. For a better explanation read this post.
The default settings for ambient occlusion are way to bright for most scenes in cycles. So you might want to bring it way down (or you might not want to use it at all). With ambient occlusion objects will be darker at the places where they are closer to other objects.

For a more nuanced control on lighting and the direction of the shadows, consider using other light sources. Like a large plane with an emission shader: