Do I need to separate an object in order to give it different materials and textures? So I have a certain object that consists of multiple parts everyone of which has a different color/material. Do I need to separate those parts in editing mode or can I just add different textures to one object?

No you do not need to separate the object.

Just go into edit mode and select the faces you want, then click the + button in Materials and add new material to selected faces by hitting assign.


How to make an object from basic volumes? I'm new to 3d model and I want to create an object from basic volumes like spheres, cylinders, cubes, etc. For instance, I want to make a cube by fitting speheres in. Is there an automatic way of doing this in Blender or any other program?

Edit details: Your answers were so helpful. In addition, what I'm really trying to do is fill an irregular form with other irregular forms. For example, let's say, a
house (a cube with a pyramid on top of it) filled with little bottles (like little cylinders). (It's for a 3D printing project). Is this possible to do?

It's not really automatic but this can be done with the array modifier. Take your object that you want to make a cube out of and then apply three array modifiers. The result:

Going from here we can fill more complex things with the Boolean modifier. Take the mesh you want to fill with stuff and enclose it in the arrayed object. It will look something like this:

Then we use the Boolean modifier to cut out the shape. Giving this:

From here we apply the stack. It't not perfect / ideal / fast, but hopefully this is enough to get you somewhere until someone else has a better idea.

Final:


Reset origin of objects after file import (from Cinema 4D) After import of a house model into Blender, all objects have a reference I don't know how to handle. I setup all to Meters and yes, I can scale it down and move manually and find a camera which works. But all models has values like -13000 but only as origin as it looks like. Every movement and rotation becomes horrible. How to fix the origin issue in Blender for file import??

It occurs on obj, dae, 3ds files and others.

Download project

After you bring any object into a new file, whether by appending from another blender file, or by importing a file from another format, the first actions you should take are to apply rotation, scale, and location. If the object's origin point is not where you want it, you can set the 3D cursor where you want the origin, and use CTRLSHFTALTC to move the object origin to the 3D cursor.


Adding image texture to procedural texture without colour alteration I have a node setup consisting of a procedural texture, and an image texture. Alone, both are fine when plugged into the Base Colour input of a Principled BSDF. However, I have not found a way to combine the two without one texture affecting the other.

The most promising setup I have is to add the two textures using Vector Math, then plug that node into the Principled BSDF node. However, this causes the colour in the image texture to change from orange to yellow. The only other colour data in the image is alpha transparency.

I suspect the transparency might be the cause of this issue. If this is true, how do I go about adding the image texture on top of the procedural one, without altering either texture's colours?

EDIT: Example setup:

You are using a VectorMath node there, rather than a color blending node.
As Craig D Jones said, MixRGB is correct for color blending (like 'photoshop-layer' blending rules).

It's unclear what your goal is, but you appear to mean you want to just 'alpha over' the two inputs, when you say 'without affecting each other'.

One way to achieve that would be to pass the color data to Diffuse BSDFs, then use a Mix Shader to combine these (with 0.5 giving the middle result of some from each), and then take that shader output into a 'Converter > Shader to RGB' Node.

The 'Shader to RGB' node is under 'Converter', 3 items from the bottom of the menu, assuming you are editing an Object's Material nodes. It is not available in World nodes.


How to change root (first) bone in armature This seems like a common question but I can't find anyone talking about it.

I made a very complex armature, spent a couple days on it, only to realize the root bone (I call handle) is in the wrong place. It is in the middle of the spine, I want the "butt" bone to be the new root bone so that I can bend the spine normally. Messing with parenting in edit mode doesn't seem to work or is too complicated for me.

Here is the .blend file:

And a screenshot:

How do I fix this ?

Just “add bone” from menu to add a new bone that isn’t the child of anything. Then Ctrl+P make it the parent of the existing root and choose “keep offset.” The root is “the bone that has no parent.”


Blender Mirroring Rotations I use the method of Ctrl + C and then Ctrl + Shift + V to copy and paste my rotations of the arm to the other side, but it doesn't seem to work. The origin point of the character is at 0, 0, 0. The arm seems to be veering to the left (character's perspective) and is not where it should be (towards the center like the right arm). Any help would be appreciated.

Well I solved my own issue! I just went to edit mode and reset the roll of the arm and hand to 0. This made it all weird, but when I fixed the pose it mirrored perfectly!


Animating a material change along an axis of a mesh Imagine a long cube, like a bar, that has a dark material, and you want to animate changing its material to a light material, but do it gradually from one end to the other, like filling up a tube, or like a progress bar that fills from one end to the other.
How can you do this in Blender?

Something like this ?

The principle is to mix your materials (the mix shader factor) upon a coordinate of your object.
Here I set the first key frame to -3 meters for X and the last one to 3 meters for X (I dont know why these values work, I had to try to find them...).

Edit : the blend file

Edit 2 : to make the transition sharper, add a "math/less than" node, as shown here


NurbsPath causes object to rotate when specified in Curve modifier. Not seeing why I'm following a 2.79 tutorial with a 2.8 release.
At one point the video is trying to curve the blade using a Path and the Curve modifier.

I've tried moving the origin points of the blade object and the path to the same place in 3d space but it's still rotates the 3d object 180 degrees in Object mode.

I'm not sure what I'm missing here. Can someone help?

You rotated the path in object mode!
Apply rotation to your path and blade if needed.
Check the origin, in your case looks fine, path and Blade should be at same location.
Also in your case looks fine, but paths arrows should look in the direction you want to let follow objects.


Isolate or hide specific parts of an object in edit mode I am just modeling an Audi R8 in Blender. I've already modeled more than half of the car.
I've also modeled the front and now I want to model the back. But this is a bit difficult because when I am in the "Back" View I see all the stuff I modeled on the front.

So is there a way to blend out separate parts of an object in edit mode?

You can hide parts of a mesh in edit mode and you can hide whole objects in object mode:

press H to hide the selection
press SHIFTH to hide the elements which are not selected
press ALTH to unhide everything

You can also access these functions in the viewport in the menu via Mesh->Show/Hide.


My human mesh twists strangely while moving armature Please help, I want my character to move like a normal human would but when I move his arms or legs it twists kind of weirdly. If someone could just simply tell me what I need to do, it would be much appreciated.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/34858

hope this helps im pretty sure its a issue with the bones axis rotation i was have a similar issue  all in all this video helped me more then anything

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYiAd_08-0k&t=77s


Problem with Curve Modifier in Animation Nodes I instance a curve on the vertexes of a circle mesh. I create a plane with a curve modifier and instance it. I loop through the curve and plane instances, assigning each plane a curve to the modifiers["Curve"].object attribute.

Using the normals of my circle mesh, I scale the locations of the planes planes. The resulting motions of the planes are not identical, because they all have the same deformation axis set for the curve modifier (x).

Here is the blend file.

Is there a way to get get the planes to deform uniformly?

Start by evaluating some points on the spline, add and subtract a normal vector to get vertices on both sides, and the compose a mesh out of those vertices using the polygon indices of a grid:

Then you replicate that mesh along a circle as follows:


No animation after 250th frame Iam new to blender. Iam making a dominoes falling animation.
I have set start frame 1 and end frame 350 but after 250th frame it stops falling and there is no animation happening

The length of rigid body simulations depends on the Cache.
In the Scene Properties > Rigid Body World open the controls for cache and set the start and end to suit your needs.


How to play a video strip backward in blender 2.8? If I select a specific strip from a clip in video sequencer and in strip tab under video -> playback direction -> backward, something funny happens. Can someone tell me whether there is some other way to play the video strip backward.I

Check out your FPS readout in the Preview pane and the cache indicator in the Sequence view.

If your FPS is flashing red numbers that are lower rates than the source video, your machine's struggling to keep up.

Play in reverse Shift-Ctrl-Spacebar usually lags for me until the clip is mostly cached. You'll see the clip cache build as an orange bar below the tracks in Sequence.

Look into cache allocation via Blender's Preferences ... System ... Sequencer Cache Limit and into Proxies. These and other tips will help you squeeze more performance from your machine.


Intersecting Three Cylinders You would think this would be very simple, but I've had no luck so far, so I'm posting here. I'm trying to generate this shape (courtesy WolframAlpha).

This is simply the intersection of three mutually perpendicular cylinders of equal radius. I can intersect two cylinders in Blender just fine.

But when I try to intersect a 3rd...

I get this.

I've already made sure the normals on each shape are correct, and I've even tried accomplishing the same by cutting a cylinder out of a larger cube, then subtracting that cube from the correct two-cylinder intersection shown above. Blender's boolean modifier always seems to get it disastrously wrong. Given how easy this is to try yourself, I was hoping one of the lovely people on here could provide a working example, or, if not, at least explain what's going wrong. Cheers!

Of course one solution would be to model it another way, but it is worth noting that Boolean algorithms do not work well with matching geometry - if faces, edges or vertices are very close to each other or if the edges intersect. In those cases slightly moving one object or another in a way that would not change the result sometimes helps, sometimes trying another Boolean algorithm also solves the issues. this happens in all versions of Blender and in most other 3d software as well.


Should "Intruding" be used here? I would like to create a sunken area.

I wonder what would be the best way to achieve this.
Should "intruding" (the opposite of extruding, I guess) be used here?
Scaling would not easily work because the neighbouring vertices would also be moved. I would have to introduce 2 extra ringcuts to avoid moving the neighbouring vertices.

Could anybody tell me the best way to achieve what I want?
Thank you.

I don't quite know how to interpret the image, but here is a possibility:

Switch into edge or vertex selection mode. Press ⎈ CtrlR to add a loop cut through the face ring in question, making sure to slide the new loop all the way down to the loop below it.

Press S and then ⇧ ShiftZ to scale the new edge loop while locking the Z axis to get something like this:


Is there a way of updating blender with all of my files contained? I want to update blender to the latest version, 2.77, I'm currently using 2.75, and I know you can update blender by reinstalling the program, but my only concern is that would my files be imported into the next version.

And if not, how would I do so?

Your .blend files will still be accessible. Blender is backwards compatible way past 2.75.


Return list of associated vertex index, weight values for a given vertex_group I am currently porting some code from the 2.49 API to the 2.6 API and looking for a nice way to replace this function call

vert_list["bone"] = b_obj.data.getVertsFromGroup("bone", 1)

This function returned a list of vertex tuples (index, weight).

Edit: A nice side effect of this function was that it also threw an AttributeError if the had no associated vertices group. Empty VertGroups are not allowed by our exporter.

I coded up a working sample for what I think I need based on the 2.49 API to show how I intend to access these values. This has been simplified with hard coded values.

import bpy

b_obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
b_verts = b_obj.data.vertices
b_arm = bpy.data.objects['Armature']

b_vert_group = b_obj.vertex_groups['Bone']
b_group_index = b_vert_group.index
b_list = []

for b_vert in b_verts:
    for g in b_vert.groups:
        if g.group == b_group_index:
            b_list.append((b_vert.index, g.weight))

What I am wondering is if anyone has an alternative way of accessing these values or perhaps someone would give a more pythonic version.

Most of the samples I have encountered relating to vertex groups are geared towards assignment rather than access. Even if I don't get an answer it might help someone else down the road.

No, there are no built-in functions which do this in a more pythonic way, however, unless you only ever want to access a single bone, Id suggest collecting all vertex groups at once.

def mesh_to_weight_list(ob, me):
    """
    Takes a mesh and return its group names and a list of lists,
    one list per vertex.
    aligning the each vert list with the group names,
    each list contains float value for the weight.
    """

    # clear the vert group.
    group_names = [g.name for g in ob.vertex_groups]
    group_names_tot = len(group_names)

    if not group_names_tot:
        # no verts? return a vert aligned empty list
        return [[] for i in range(len(me.vertices))], []
    else:
        weight_ls = [[0.0] * group_names_tot for i in range(len(me.vertices))]

    for i, v in enumerate(me.vertices):
        for g in v.groups:
            # possible weights are out of range
            index = g.group
            if index < group_names_tot:
                weight_ls[i][index] = g.weight

    return group_names, weight_ls

Note, that this example could use pythons array module for greater effeciency but using lists since its an example.


Cycles special Water shader (Low Poly) I made a low poly planet with mountains and water on it, and I am trying to achieve something like this :

(Of course without the rocks in the space and the nice background)

I tried several shader combinations (Refraction, glossy, glass, transparent, ...) but I can't get anywhere close to it :

I watched several tutorials and found only realistic water shaders that are using glass, and if I use glass or refraction shaders I get bad results in the middle of the planet. How can I achieve nice looking shaders like the first one, I would love to get some help or advices.

Here is my blend in case you want to see my materials :

Ground surface have to keep own relief under water surface;
In original picture probably presents some specific HDR environment map producing specific light, hard to achieve with common light sources.
I'm not shure you need decimate modifier (but this not really important).

Well. I tried to reproduce original picture (but without HDR environment). Afraid it will took much longer time to write what I've done than time I had spent doing this scene :)


Why does increasing resolution and then downsampling to desired size increase render quality? Hey there Blender Community,

I've come across an odd problem with rendering. When I render an image at 256*256 the image is blurry. But when I render the image at 1080*1080 and shrink the image such that it takes up the same space on the screen as the 256*256 image, the quality is markedly better.

The difference is subtle, but here's the proof:

This is the 256*256 image:

This is a 1080*1080 image, shrunk to 256*256:

The resized image is less blurry, the shadows are less grainy, and the overall quality just seems ineffably better.

Why is this so? If nothing in terms of sampling has been changed, and the final product is the same size in terms of pixel space--why is the quality of one superior? And is there any way to achieve comparable quality without having to render and downsize?

I ask because I'm rendering a ton of images and video and am trying to find the optimal method to do so. Obviously, increasing the resolution of the render is going to increase the rendering time. Is there a way to increase quality without increasing time?

Edit: I've noticed this discrepancy in both cycles and internal, even with the sampling fully cranked in cycles.

2nd Edit: Below are what I believe to be the relevant dimensions of my render settings. Note, however, that these were held constant across the 256*256 render and the 1080*1080 render. I do recognize that my raytracing samples (constant QMC) are low, but varying this parameter didn't seem to accomplish anything meaningful for a scene this simple.

If you render at 256x256, each pixel gets only 16 samples of AA.

If you increase the resolution to 1080x1080, the same area is now covered with 16 pixels (4x4). So the area now get's 16 times more AA samples.

By rendering larger you get also less noise in the image on the Ambient Occlusion and that also helps with the clarity when sampled down to small size.


In mirror mode, why is it not balanced with the reference picture When I'm ready to put on mirror mode - Control A - Add Location. The eyes are always not lined up with the reference picture. How do I fix this problem?

There could be two reasons:

The reference image is symmetrical but not centered, in this case align the offset of the background image (x,y):

The reference image itself isn't symmetrical. This would require to cut one half of the image off and mirror the other half by a image processing tool.


Rotating both hands downwards I found my answer some days ago but I forgot how to reproduce it again, my character is in T-pose, and in the final Idle pose both of his hands must be down near his legs. I tried rotating around individual origins, tried R > Y > Y, there was that one option in the menu that allowed me to do what I intend but can't remember which one it was, it worked in pose mode and there was no need for mirroring every time because it happened automatically. Please help.

I don't know if is this that you are looking for, but there is an option to move the mirrored bones if they have names like arm.L/arm.Left and arm.R/arm.Right.

Its named X-Axis mirror and you can find it in the Options Tab when pressing T while in the Edit Mode.


What is necessary to work with inset face mode? I'm trying to inset another face near the center of this plate. After pressing I key the inset information appears on top of the screen but there is no dotted circle showing the preview before confirming and no additional vertices are created after confirming.

I have tried to reset scale using Ctrl+ A in Edit mode and Object mode as other answers suggests but it didn't work. Also closing blender doesn't seem to solve the problem.

I have 3rd mouse button emulation enabled.

In your image I can see that you are using Vertex Select. In this case, activate Face Select.

Inset Faces is a Face Tool. It needs you to select all the vertices/edges that make up a face.

You can use it via Vertex Select (or Edge Select) as well, however, you need to select the central vertex to select the tris (triangles or faces with 3 vertices).


Asymmetrical basketball I am creating a basketball based on this tutorial. Now , just before UV unwrapping this is my basketball:

At this point in the tutorial (about 12:30 min) this text is presented:

  A viewer pointed out that the valleys on a real basketball are not
  symmetrical on the sides like my model. If you care about that, then
  before proceeding here select the right half of the basketball in side
  view, press Y to split it, then rotate it 90 degrees in front view and
  remove doubles. Do this for the rubber too and fix any seams. Look at
  a real basketball to see how the valleys are not symmetrical.

Questions After looking at some images of basketballs I still don't understand the remarks about the symmetry. But I really don't understand the instructions about how to make this model a real basketball, especially the parts about splitting the mesh and removing the doubles. Anyone ??

here is my file

I have tried the solution of Carlo and this is the Front Ortho view

This is the Back Ortho view

and this is the right side

He is stating that he was inaccurate by mirroring the octave of the sphere in all three axis as on the Y is not symmetrical. This kind of ball, as in tennis and baseball is traditionally made by joining two complementary pieces

This is what you have at the moment:

Notice that the model is symmetrical on all the three axis while in the real traditional basketball (usually) isn't.

What you should see from one side is different from what you have on the other. Here's a pic of the different flows of the leather patches in the front and rear view:

As you can see each patch embrace the other, so one of them must be rotated by 90° from the other to join correctly.

The difference is only in which patch stop at their intersection. One time should be one and vice-versa.

About the tutorial:

What you probably missed is that the Mirror modifier should be applied before following the textual instructions, or you'll not able to edit the geometry.

At the end of the gif it looks as if nothing wasn't changed at all but is just an illusion caused by overlapping geometry: I showed how to perform the instruction only on one of them.


What does the "blend" value do on a spotlight in cycles? A spotlight has a setting in the properties window, lamp tab, then under the section "Spot Shape" called "Blend", what does it do?
The tool tip says "Softness of the spotlight edge" yet setting it to zero did not make the lamp's edge noticeably any sharper.

The image on the left the blend is to 0 on the right it is set to .5

TLDR Reduce the size of the lamp (something around 0.01 BU).

The blend value still does what it always did in the blender internal render, make the edges of the spotlight softer.

The reason you can't see much difference when you change the blend value is because of the lamp's size. (Independent from the blend value if you change the lamp's size the light and the shadows will get softer, or sharper.)

Simply set the lamp's size to something very small (around 0.01 BU). Not the angle of the beam, but the size of the lamp (top "Size" field). Now you can adjust the blend value. There isn't that better.

In the picture below both lights have the blend set to 0, but the size is different 1 BU for the pink light, and 0.01 BU for the green light.

For additional reading the cycles documentation for the spotlight is rather short, we have to go to the BI side of the docs to get more info on the blend setting.


How to avoid bone roll on "Rotation Constrained" IK bone? For 2d cutout animation sidefacing rig (XZ plane), movement and rotation in Y axis is restricted with constraints.However even after applying IK constraints to the IK chain and location constraints to the IK target there is still rotation in the Y direction . Also bones roll on movement.
How to avoid this ?

The bones in question were in not in "perfect alignment" with the view axis.
On aligning them to view and setting roll with ARMARTURE - BONE ROLL - RECALCULATE ROLL - VIEW AXIS , the bone roll was resolved.


Creating an awkward shape I've been trying to manipulate a standard cube into a shape with heavily rounded corners, which would look like the red on the right when viewed from above

I've tried doing this with a cube and also with the cylinder but having no joy. Also tried bevelling but it doesn't add enough of a curve

Any suggestions?

It's not clear exactly what shape you want, so this may not be the easiest approach (it's not too bad,) but you wind up with something that probably covers the bases.

Reading top to bottom, left to right, Y in the direction shown, Z up. Pivot set to '3D Cursor', at the origin.

Starting with a 12-sided cylinder, fan-filled ends, cut in half.
In Edit Mode, select all, and GX move the mesh out a little on X, select the open loop, and E Xextrude it a bit.
Still with that edge loop selected, SX0 scale it to 0 in X.
Assign a Mirror modifier in X, with 'Clip' and 'Merge' switched on
You should now find, in edit mode, by selecting all, you can move the halves apart/together to make the shape longer or shorter
Assign a Bevel modifier below the Mirror, with 2 segments, by 'Angle', about 33, not shallow enough to catch the vertical edges.

Assign a Subdivision surface modifier at the bottom of the stack.

Now by playing with the distance between the ends, and the settings in the Bevel modifier (segments, width, profile), you can reach a wide range of objects which answer your description.

You can improve the topology a bit by CtrlX dissolving every other edge in the fans, leaving all quads


Why are my PitchiPoy Knee and Elbow Directions wrong? I'm using the PitchiPoy addon for Rigify in Blender 2.72b to rig human characters. The knee and elbow joints are bending in random directions (this even differs between models) and I cannot find a system to this madness.

The PitchiPoy super_limb does not use pole targets for IK bones
I am getting different problems for different characters (eg. in one, the elbow is correct, in another it's bending sideways)
I've tried changing the roll of the bones in edit mode, but this had no effect
I've tried increasing the angle of knee and elbow hoping that's how Rigify figures out the bend direction, but this had no effect either

How do I control the default knee and elbow joint direction with PitchiPoy?
And why doesn't it use pole targets? I'd like to avoid changing the way this rig works by adding them for fear of breaking other things.

I'm using rigify/pitchipoy in 2.79, if you click on the cog shape at the top of the legs or the arms an extra option shows up under rig main properties called pole_vector.

It's bascially a boolean (set it to 0 or 1), set it to 1 and you'll see normal pole targets again.


How to add panel into 3D view port (beside object 3D) I'm just trying to get my addon panel to show up into the 3D view port, but I can't figure out the correct 'bl_' combination to make it work.

Setting bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D' will place your panel within the 3dview. You then set bl_region_type = 'TOOLS' to have it show in the tools region while the less intuitive bl_region_type = 'UI' places it in the properties region.

If you want to place a panel in the properties editor, you would set bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES' and bl_region_type = 'WINDOW', then you set bl_context to match the context you want it shown in - Object, Scene, World, Modifier...

Also remember that you need to register your panel class -

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


Problem selecting in edit mode Is it normal to have to select in object mode before moving into edit mode. At the moment if i have not selected something in object mode and i go to edit mode i can not select it. I have tried to save it to help but this makes no difference,

Yes it is normal. If you don't select an object you won't be able to enter its edit mode. You'll enter the edit mode of the object you've selected. In the 2.80 you'll be able to be in multiple edit modes at once, which is amazing. Try it out! NB: You still need to select objects you want to enter the edit mode.


Disable IK then re-enable with different pose So first of all I'm very-very beginner in Blender. Previously I have used Source Filmmaker. In SFM you had an option to apply IK rig to models and after that detach it. Now in Blender I have a model (not own) which has standard IK rig in it. My goal is to pose the model with FK only and after that re-enable IK rigs to that newly created pose (similar like in SFM). I can't do that because if I'm re-enabling IK it always puts back the actual body-part to its default position. Am I missing something? Thank you in advance for your help!

You may be able to achieve something similar to this with the auto ik setting, but I'm not sure as I don't really use it.

IK/FK switching while preserving pose is difficult in blender as it currently stands.

The only way I've seen it done is by having 3 sets of bones, one for the FK pose, one for the IK and one to actually deform the mesh. A driver is then created to determine which chain controls the deform chain. Scripts are then provided to snap the FK chain to the IK chain's position and vice versa.

The above technique is used in the Rigify rig that comes as an addon with blender.

Also as an aside, why do you want to enable IK after posing? This will cause the rig to use IK interpolation(straight line between poses) between poses rather than FK? Most of the time you will actually want FK interpolation(arcs between poses), the only time you normally want IK if the end of the chain is explicitly fixed (e.g. a foot planted on the ground), and in these cases it is often easier to pose by IK anyway.


How do I make a octahedron in Blender 2.8= I have been searching a lot on how to make an octahedron, but everything doesn't seem to work in the newest update, so I'm just asking if there's been some new way added to make them.

Or you can just bevel the default cube.

Select all vertices
Bevel the cube (check Clamp overlap)
Remove double vertices Mesh > Clean up > Merge by Distance


Ctrl Z works separately in edit mode and text window. In object mode it affects both. Anyway to fix this? I'm programming a script that requires blender to be in object mode to see the results. I like to undo the results, modify the script and try again. When I CTRL Z to undo the results, it also undoes my script changes!
If I'm scripting something for edit mode, CTrL Z allows me to undo my mesh changes, but does not affect the script file. Any way I can change this behavior? What am I missing?

If you press Ctrl + Z in object mode it undoes all of the changes you did when you were in edit mode at once(so be careful with that) AND all of the changes you did in object mode individually. When in edit mode it undoes all of the changes in edit mode individually but none of the changes in object mode. You can't change change it in the preferences. Dunno about console since I'm not a expert in Python.


User Theme Settings File blender has some presets by default ( xml files )
and user can save his own settings for theme ( Save User Settings )

now, 3 simple question

1- is it possible to create an custom xml file to load when blender will open ?

2- where is saved settings file ?

3- where is default blender theme file ?

1-Yes,You can import edit your theme or import one from and XML file then press Save user setting.

2-Blender save user setting here "C:\Users\Username\Application data\Blender Foundation\"

3-There no file for the default theme.


Will getting a better Graphics Card Help with Frame rate issues? I currently have an AMD Radeon R9 200 series.  I'm willing to spend ~$400 on an upgrade. I've heard Blender cannot really use AMD cards (or really any other cards that aren't Nvidia) very well. Will upgrading to an Nvidia card help with the 3D view frame rate? Its getting difficult to time more complicated movement with only a 10 fps preview (and yes, everything is simplified, no physics, Solid view, yadda yadda).

I know using quick render is an option, but that's a lot of wasted time in the long run.

Also,

if I have an Nvidia card, could i change this from CPU to GPU? Would that also help better my Frames per Second?

Thank you all very much!

Thank you all for your answers! The actual rendering isn't much of a problem since I often send the final renders to RenderStreet(A render farm). Viewport is the main thing I'm concerned about, and thanks to you all, I see I mainly need a better CPU ALONG with GPU, BUT that I also kinda have to wait for the big 2.8 update for the viewport overhaul.

I wish I could checkmark all your answers, cause they all helped!

Yes, with Nvidia you can render using GPU and also you can use it for OpenSubdiv compute.

Is not true that computed device is only for rendering. GPU is used also for drawing viewport using OpenCL.
Only if you have 2 and more graphics cadrs, one is marked as "(Display)" this card is used for drawing viewport, other ones are only for rendering (and preview render in viewport)

BTW: for 400USD I highly recommend Nvidia 1070. The best ratio speed/price/power comsumption and 8GB VRAM allow you to render complicated scenes without "CUDA: out of memory error".

EDIT: one important thing here: if you have very slow CPU, fast GPU don't raise fps too much, because they must work synchronized. CPU is "the boss" and send calls to GPU. Other words: CPU must tell to GPU what is going on and GPU work with this data.


Swapping away from Sequence Render I rendered an animation and then placed it into the video sequence editor to test it, and rendered that as a video.

Now I want to render a second animation (in other words, keep working), but when I press render animation, it's still using the sequence render option? (Rendering it as pngs). I was wondering how to switch between sequence render and animation render properly?

You can turn Sequencer render on and off, as well as the compositor, by toggling these properties in the Scene Render Properties panel.

You can choose to render in frame sequence or a video codec here. All you do is feed a different source to the render engine.


Is there a way to map the frame rate to keyframes? Is there a way to change the frame rate during an animation, using keyframes?
i wanna try making certain actions with different frame rates (close ups with 24fps while more action heavy shots take 12fps) without having to render the animation multiple times then stitching footage together or making a different project entirely.

Wait i just realized i could just use the steps interpolation in the graph editor


Why is the string property added to f-curve read-only When I create a string property for the object type, I can modify that property in the active object. But when I create another string property for the f-curve type, it said it is read-only.

The script:

import bpy
bpy.types.Object.objprop = bpy.props.StringProperty(name = "objString")
bpy.context.object.objprop = "mod_objString"

bpy.types.FCurve.fprop = bpy.props.StringProperty(name = "fString")
bpy.context.object.animation_data.action.fcurves[0].fprop = "mod_fString" # error occured on this line

error:

some testing in the built in python interpreter:

Edit:
The blend file (although it is almost empty but just in case):

Assigning to Existing Classes
Custom properties can be added to any subclass of an ID, Bone and
PoseBone

Neither are bones, so leaving that aside, can see below ID is subclass of Object not FCurve, and as such is the property is not "wired up" as a property on the fcurve.
>>> issubclass(bpy.types.Object, (bpy.types.ID,))
True

>>> issubclass(bpy.types.FCurve, (bpy.types.ID,))
False

another test for this would be trying to assign ID properties to an instance.  This is how a non default value of a property is stored in blend file.
For example, for an Object type
>>> C.object["foo"] = 1

but not for an FCurve
>>> D.actions['CubeAction'].fcurves[0]
bpy.data.actions['CubeAction']...FCurve

>>> D.actions['CubeAction'].fcurves[0]["foo"] = 1
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: bpy_struct[key] = val: id properties not supported for this type


Mirror object around a circle? Ok so I am trying to get a simple cylinder to mirror around a circle to make what would look like Gatling gun barrels. I have tried to mirror the object around a empty point and than use an array modifier but I am having some problems getting it to circle around the object. Can someone please point me in the right direction on what I am doing wrong. I know that using a mirror on an object and than using an array modifier around an empty point works I have seen it done I just cant seem to copy the results.

There's no need to include the mirror modifier in your setup, as the array modifier can do it all on its own. The important thing to note is that you want to use an 'Object Offset' and turn off 'Relative Offset'. You'll use the target object's rotation, which should be equal to 360/count. In this case, the empty was rotated 60 degrees, since the count is 6.

For some hands-on experimentation, have a look at the .blend


Python 2.8 - plane bevel disappears on object join In the following code I am joining several objects.  'Plane1' and 'Plane2' have beveled corners.  But when I join them to 'Cube' the bevels disappear.  Why?

Below are two code snippets; the first creates the plane and the bevel (in case procedurally I should do something different), the second has the join operation that causes the bevels to disappear.

Here's the code that creates the plane and the bevel:

def add_plane_obj(ObjName):
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add(size=SizePlane1,enter_editmode=False,location=(-2,-2,BaseZ))
    bpy.context.active_object.name=ObjName
    bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()

def add_plane_resize(ScaleX, ScaleY):
    bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(ScaleX,ScaleY,1))

def add_plane_material(MaterialsIndex, MaterialName, R, G, B):
    bpy.ops.material.new()
    try:
        bpy.data.materials[MaterialsIndex].name=MaterialName
    except:
        pass
    bpy.data.materials[MaterialName].diffuse_color=(R,G,B,1)
    bpy.context.object.data.materials.append(bpy.data.materials[MaterialName])

def add_plane(ObjName, MaterialName, MaterialsIndex, R, G, B, ScaleX, ScaleY):
    add_plane_obj(ObjName)
    add_plane_resize(ScaleX,ScaleY)
    add_plane_material(MaterialsIndex, MaterialName,R, G,B)

def bevel_plane(BevelWidth):
    bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
    bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='BEVEL')
    bpy.context.object.modifiers["Bevel"].segments=15
    bpy.context.object.modifiers["Bevel"].width=BevelWidth
    bpy.context.object.modifiers["Bevel"].use_only_vertices=True

add_plane('Plane1','RSwhite3', 0, WhiteR, WhiteG, WhiteB, ScalarX, ScalarY)
bevel_plane(BevelWidth1)
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT', toggle=False)

The following code causes the bevels to disappear after executing the join on 'Plane1' and 'Plane2:'

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT', toggle=False)
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
bpy.data.objects['Cube'].select_set(True)
bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = bpy.data.objects["Cube"]
bpy.data.objects['new_name'].select_set(True)
bpy.ops.object.join()
bpy.data.objects['Plane0'].select_set(True)
bpy.ops.object.join()
bpy.data.objects['Plane1'].select_set(True)
bpy.ops.object.join()
bpy.data.objects['Plane2'].select_set(True)
bpy.ops.object.join()
bpy.data.objects['Circle'].select_set(True)
bpy.ops.object.join()

As well as an object being selected, one object is known as the active object, this object has its properties shown in the properties panels and may be affected by some operators that will ignore the other selected objects.

In your case, when joining multiple objects, the modifiers of the active object are kept while modifiers on other objects are disposed of.

You could set the plane as the active object before the join or add the modifiers after the join. Most likely you want to apply the modifiers to the plane so that the bevel on the plane is kept and is not also added to other parts of the joined mesh.


How to blur a single object, Layers dont exist anymore? (2.92)(Permanent interface changes confuse every new user) I've tried to find a solution for 2.92. As the title suggests I am not able to do this simple thing.
I want to blur a single object, not motion blur with he camera I mean simply blur an object.
I have looked around forever and as usual every video is either too old or the blender version has changed and the buttons are somewhere else, or the way layers work has changed or something else... It is REALLY hard for newcomers to learn properly since it gets so frustrating after searching for up to date tutorials.
So all i could find out (thanks to Stackexchange) is that the render layers don't exist anymore and that i have to work with collections now, i created a collection, put my object in there but all tutorials only talk about render layer nodes in the compositor, but that doesn't let me pick the collection, I also changed the pass ID to greater than 0 and if i pick the pass node i cant connect it to my collection since its so confusing to find out what combo works atm..
Can someone please explain to me where i can find actual up to date infos about blender or a place in general where changes are shown or explained, I wouldn't have any problem with old tutorials if there would be a clear way of checking how to replicate the steps in the newer version.
This is really sucking out the fun of learning.
All help is appreciated.

I am by no means used to work much with the compositor, that said, I hope what I am going to show here is not too far from what others would do.
Object Index method:

Activate the Object Index in the View Layer Properties:

Make sure the object in question has its own Object Properties -> Relations->Pass Index:

Render the image with F12 if only that one object needs special treatment, otherwise give each object that needs it its own Pass Index like in step 2.
Go in the Compositor and activate Use Nodes:

simple example of a cube and sphere, whereas the sphere has pass index 1 and cube has pass index 2

Using the ID Mask node you can get the mask for the specific object or objects(same pass index objects are in the same mask)
Multiplying the rendered image with the mask we obtain the separate object and adding a Blur node we can then blur the specific object:

This would be blurring a specific object

Cryptomatte method:

Activate View Layer Properties->Passes->Cryptomatte->Object:

With the object already having its own pass, you can then render and get new output sockets on the Render Layers node in the compositor.
Connecting those to a Cryptomatte node and later the Blur node you get this:

The Cryptomatte node needs to be set up first
With the Pick output used, you can easy use the eyedropper Add to select the wanted object and switching to the Matte output this will show the mask created.
Switching now to the Image output you get only the selected object from the entire render.
Routing this image through the Blur node will then result in the same as above Object Index method.

UPDATE (Compositing the blurred object back into the image)
While not 100% sure, I believe this should be the result asked for:

All the difference is an Alpha Over node


wheres the settings box in lower left corner? when I create a sapling or geometry, I noticed on the tutorials I watch a settings dialog appears where you can change vertex, branches of a tree, etc, how do I get that box?
-thanks.
-Steve.

Press F9  just after an action that allow some "left bottom box" customization


Rigify in Blender 2.79 I don´t like the rigify in Blender 2.79. I think it generates too much complicated controls and whenever I had to rig a character I have to open the file in an older version, play the rigify generator and then i re-open in 2.79 to continue the work. Especially for the fingers rigging, the old one is way better than this new version. Is there any other method to use the old friendly rigify in version 2.79? Thanks

The Rigify add-on still has the option to run in legacy mode (2.76b feature set) if you check the option under the User Preferences > Add-ons > Rigify. This also still rings true in the Blender 2.8 Beta.


How can I convert a low resolution image to a mesh? I have a low resolution Image I want to recreate as a 3D object. I was thinking of making 7 separate "layers" to depict foreground and background elements. Basically, once the layers were complete they would stack to create a 3D picture. Each layer would have its own textured color. I would combine them at different depths.

I am bit unsure how to proceed with the process of this. Would it be best to create each layer, extrude to the right depth and then snap them together and join them into a single object? The idea is to 3D print this as a personal project. Reference is attached.

Maybe you should model the whole scene (make some quick low-poly models) and then use the Remesh Modifier. Set its mode to Blocks. Apply the modifier and then paint the model.


Blender 2.78c Cycles particles change color by age Thank you for your time reader!

I want to change particle material colors by their age.
All threads and accepted answers I found dont work for me.

The setup I found in other threads is this:

The color ramp works.
If I switch the colors the particles become white:

After some trial and error it feels like no values are coming out of the particle info node.
For example if I turn the divide value up/down - nothing changes at all.
If I take an "add" node I can see clearly that all particles change independent from their age.

Does someone have an advice for me?
Even a method to see what (if at all) values come out of the particle info node would help me.

Thank you a lot for your precious time in advance :)

Blend file:

Here's what's going on, from Blender Docs about Particle Info Node:

  This node currently only supports parent particles, info from child
  particles is not available.

So your only option is to turn off Particle Children and crank up Particle Number to make it 'similar'.

Also if you turn on Parents in Particle Render section some of them will be white but only a few.

I've checked also in Blender 2.79RC2 but it's not working there either.


Cannot copy paste collections anymore I ran into a problem when installing the new blender 2.83.
When copying a collection and pasting it, either in the same file or in another file, it doesn't work anymore. I get the notification that the data blocks have been pasted, but I see nothing in the collection outliner. (they appear in the blender file layer in the outliner, but they are not working)
I can append collections, but it takes too much time compared to copy paste in v 2.80. I can also Select all the files separately and copy paste them, but then all my work of organizing them into collections is basically gone.

I don't know why it changed, but it only adds one more step.
Open another Outliner set to Blender File and drag-n-drop collections into any scene.
Example: Copy-pasting 'Monkey Collection' from another file.


object rotation and alignment to a face in another objects I want to rotate the Plane which I called face1 in the image attached to align with face2 in the cube. I want to do this in python. I tried several times using the normal of face 2 but did not work. I created vectors using vertices of face 2 but did not work. I don't know what I am doing wrong.

I want to align the two faces with all tangential axes, not only a vector. It is better to share the same position. But the important part is to rotate face1 to have same tangential axes.

Regarding the way to align them, I would like to know both ways, if the results of aligning both faces in these ways are the same. In what I'm trying to do, it does not matter which point to rotate around, I guess.

Consider face1 a face part of a different object than the cube. I want to align two different faces, each from a different object together. So, the object1 that face1 belongs to should move as well. (Thank you quiliup)

This is how I got what I wanted:

I got 3 connected vertices of face2 (polygon5) from the cube (v1, v3, and v5).
the vertex (v1) connected to both other vertices (v3 and v5) is going to be the origin of my new local coordinates.
each vertex is represented by a vetcor (from origin to vertex) in Blender.
I chose vector v1-to-v3 to be x axis, vector v1-to-v5 to be y axis, then the cross product of both (normal between the two) to be z axis.
Construct the 4x4 rotation matrix.
give face 1 the same rotation.

This is inspired by: My attempt to construct transformation matrix using 3 vertices (didn't work, need help)

code:

import bpy
import mathutils

p = bpy.data.objects['Plane']
c = bpy.data.objects['Cube']

# You need to know which face of the cube is selected, in my case it is no. 5
# you need to know the vertices of face 5, in my case they are 1,2,3,5
# you need to pick a vertex to be origin, I chose 1
# you need to know which vertices connected directly to vertex 1 by an edge, in my case 3 and 5

x = c.matrix_world * c.data.vertices[3].co - c.matrix_world * c.data.vertices[1].co
i = x.normalized()
y = c.matrix_world * c.data.vertices[5].co - c.matrix_world * c.data.vertices[1].co
j = y.normalized()
z = x.cross(y)
k = z.normalized()

rot = mathutils.Matrix((i,j,k)).transposed().to_4x4()

p.matrix_world = rot


What do the tools in options panel( like Tag Bevel )in edit mode do? I was trying to get to know everything in Blender and I came across the options tab in Edit Mode and there's whole bunch of options like Tag Seam, Tag Bevel etc.

I know how to use all the suffix functions (i.e every tool without "tag" ).But I am wondering if this has any specific function/usability.

So, if anyone has any idea can you please explain all those options(Tag Seam, Tag Sharp, Tag Crease, Tag Bevel)? Thanks.

The options in the Options Panel for tagging edges are the same as the edges menu with only a slight difference that I can see. Most notably in Bevel and Crease, in that the weight added is always at 1.

Crease marks edges for use with subsurf, with a weight of 1
Bevel marks edges for use with Bevel modifier, with a weight of 1
Sharp will mark edges sharp for edge split modifier
Seam will mark seams for UV unwrap
Freestyle Edge Mark will mark edges for use with Freestyle

To use the Tag Bevel, Tag Crease , Tag Sharp, Tag Seam tool, it is as simple as selecting each edge with Ctrl + RMB


How to Select a data block's user in outliner? How to Select data block's user in outliner??

Nothing happens with my gesture on the gif.

And how to I know users in other scenes?

Okay, after looking online and trying to acomplish the same thing with python, I found that it has not yet been implemented. This can be seen if you right click on "Actions" just above what you were clicking on, and click "Select" or "Select Linked", Blender tells you this has not been implemented. It appears the devs forgot to add this to sub-items.

Basically, the button's there but it can't be done yet.


replace operators with low level functions While it is extremely easy to find operator calls (by inspecting the user interface and the info window), I have big difficulties to actually find the low level alternative functions which I can (or should) use in my scripts instead of the operators.

One recent example was:

operator call: bpy.ops.anim.keyframe_insert_menu()
RNA method call: obj.keyframe_insert("location",frame=frame)

Finding the operator was a matter of less than a minute. The low level function came to me as a comment about improving my code example.

So I wonder where I could find answers to questions of the type:

  "what function(s) can I use to replace this operator... ?"

For me the blender API is not helpful for answering this type of question and google only helped me in few cases.

Of course I could post a question here every time I want to know more about a specific operator. But maybe there is a better alternative (document, gotcha, tip, tutorial...) that I overlook?

Attempt to create a collection of information resources:

From API documents

Inspect the inherited Functions Section at the page bottom.

From within the Python Console

Inspect bpy.data...
Inspect bpy.types...

List of useful reference documents

Reference API Quickstart (Blender 2.71 API)
Reference API usage (Blender 2.71 API)


Particles not going down - Z Axis problem offset I am trying to solve a particle direction problem, don´t know what I did but its not going down, I saved it and the next day this happened:
it's not going down in the Z axis, it was looking like the first image:

Is there something I did wrong?


How to move 4 objects symmetrically outward/inward on the same origin? I have 4 cubes symmetrically placed at the 4 corners of a plane and I want to move them along the x/y axis outward/inward the center of the plane witch is also the origin of the 4 cubes?

Here is the Mirrored Object i would like to use:

Take one of the cubes symmetrically placed on the plane and mirror it on the x and y axis.  Go to the mirror modifier and set the mirror object as the plane (which they will be placed on at the four corners).  Now if you go into edit mode you can select the one cube and move it to one corner, and the mirrored cubes will move symmetrically to the other corners.  Good luck!


How To Fix Pixelated Cycles 3D Viewport Editor When I use Cycles in the Viewport editor, the model is super pixelated. When watching tutorials, other people don't have that. My computer is high end enough to be able to handle it. What other settings could  I be missing?

My Computer Specs:

GeForce GTX1070
Intel Core i7-3770K CPU @ 3.5GHz
16GB RAM

My Blender Settings:

Edit > Preferences > System > CUDA > GeForce GTX1070 CHECKED
Edit > Preferences > System > CUDA > Intel Core i7-3770K CPU @ 3.5GHz UNCHECKED
Edit > Preferences > System > Video Sequencer > Memory Cache Limit > 10,000
Edit > Preferences > System > Video Sequencer > Cache Limit > 3,000
Editor > Render Properties > Render Engine > Cycles
Editor > Render Properties > Feature Set > Supported
Editor > Render Properties > Device > GPU Compute
Editor > Render Properties > Sampling > Viewport > 8 (Samples)
Editor > Render Properties > Light Paths > Max Bounces > Total > 6

To echo @brockmann (who commented), eight samples is very, very, very low. If your graphics card is working with cycles render, I would at least use 512 samples and work from there.
Edit: I was unable to find questions on what samples are, so I guess I’ll explain it myself. A “sample” is one shot of data for rendering, and more shots mean better looking renders, just like more signal flares with more wind conditions will give you a better idea of where the ship is. In Cycles, a sample is a single ray of light, traced backwards out of a camera, through a pixel, hitting what it may until it gets to a light source, thus defining what color that pixel of the image should be. An “importance map” is made just before the rest of the rendering which maps out where lights are in the scene, so the backwards-traced rays will be more likely to go towards them and not oblivion. The blender manual at docs.blender.org explains it better, but basically, a light ray will bounce in an arbitrary direction if it hits a rough surface, and a more predictable direction if it hits a smooth one. Few samples will then return a lot of fuzz on rough objects. “Caustics” is another place where fuzz can be created, where light being bounced around by mirrors or glass can have a hard time finding a light source from the “importance map.” Thus, there is a lot of fuzz in your cube as only eight rays work on each pixel: it’s like calling eight random people in a country to find out how popular a TV show is. One set of eight might indicate no popularity, while another is more correct, while still another indicates that everyone watches that TV show. Lots of samples means lots of rays, lots of tested directions light could be coming from, and lots more actual representation of what kind of light is hitting that spot. More samples also means more computing time, but if you’ve got time for how long your computer (or GPU) takes, go ahead and do it.
NVidia is the best, so you can probably do a lot of samples


Remote rendering over internet (separate networks) Has anyone been able to find a solve to render using remote machines?

I have a couple of powerful machines in the office that we usually use for rendering and I’m looking for solutions to use them while working from home. Is there a service, add-on, or script that can facilitate this?

Thanks!

There is a nice trick to setup a local renderfarm without any external software:

  I found this to be working very reliably for me: Make your blend file ready for rendering, with all the settings, with the whole frame range you want to render. Make sure that in the Render Output settings, Overwrite is ticked off and Placeholders is turned on. Your blend file should be on some shared folder, where all machines can access it and can write rendered frame to the same output folder. Then, you can open this same file on each machine and run "Render Animation" command. The Overwrite/Placeholders combo is the key here. Before starting to render a frame, Blender checks if it is rendered already. If it exists, blender checks for next frame. Upon starting a render, Blender creates placeholder file immediately, so it prevents different computers from rendering same frame. Over a local network, this works perfect.

Source: https://blender.community/c/rightclickselect/H3dbbc/


Is there a way to use a MIDI controller as a sensor in the Game Engine? I'd like to use a MIDI enabled device, in this case a mixer with knobs and faders, as a controller for the game engine, to do a live projection and change some parameters in real time.

The only things I found on the web are dealing with reading midi files (like this) and not live interaction. Someone managed to get something going with a midi-to-keyboard mapper, but that defies the point of using a MIDI device, which sends a lot more informations than a keyboard does.

Is there a way to do this, short of coding it from scratch?

There is a script extension, Blender HID Mapper, that does the following:

  Create a HID Mapping script similar to the provided template and run it. Then you can control blender with your MIDI device like specified in your mapping.

Just install the most recent version of the script from this site, then write your mapping as you desire. The first link above also has a sample mapping script that you can work off of.


Symmetrize and Mirror I’ve been following a tutorial on YT, I've completed the base mesh for a character from a cube privative.
The next tutorial is setting up for sculpting. I'm in Sculpting > Sculpt Mode, I have Multi-Resolution Modifier and the Mirror Modifier, I'm ready to sculpt. Tutorials say click Subdivide, how do I know it has?
I read about Symmetrize and Mirror, what's the difference?

To know you've subdivided, you can look at your multiresolution modifier and it will say how many subdivisions you have done and will give you options for what to show for Level Viewport, Sculpt, and Render. It should also look smoother now that you've subdivided and have twice the amount of geometry.
Symmetrize does the same operation as mirror modifier, but you can turn mirror modifier off while with symmetrize you can only go back with Undo.


How can I use a curve node to shape the edge of this node texture? I'm really struggling to understand why the curves layer isn't creating rounded edges in this shader. My goal is to control the shape of tile edges with a curve node (to achieve custom/rounded edges), but I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.
Here's the basic setup:

Adjusting the Bump node's Distance value sort of resolves the issue, but that lowers the bump's visual effectiveness. Is there a way to achieve strong highlights/shadows and get a smooth, custom edge?
Edit: Also, how would one get ride of these hard edges at the corners?

Thanks in advance for your big brains and generosity!

Bump maps can be tricky but the distance on yours is way too high.  Basically no matter how you ramp the color it's trying to give it the appearance of jutting way out.

I decreased to .008 and then I was able to get finer control out of the curve node.


Creating rounded cap I was watching speed modeling video and saw haw cylinder flat cap was evenly rounded with a few edge loops very quickly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX9pjtqanx4&list=PLTU7oKhL-me_h85qGNvavQwFigm7GX0xV&index=1&t=1s second 19. Slowdown play speed to 0.25 to see it clearly.

Apparently, the author did it with some key shortcut. I would like to learn with technique.

It seems Extrude followed by a a CRTL-B bevel where subdivisions are set with the mouse wheel

btw it was also asked and explained in comments under the video...


Period key does nothing on Mac keyboard without numberpad I have an iMac with a wireless keyboard with no number pad. I am using Blender 2.78.

In one of the absolute beginner videos it says that if I turn on 'Emulate Numpad' then the keyboard's normal period '.' key should function to re-centre the view to the selected object (after I have used shift and middle mouse to pan across).

But when I press the period key it doesn't seem to do anything.

I have checked in User Preferences > Input and I can see Outliner > Show Active has a mapping to '.'

Is something set up wrong or am I misunderstanding what this key is supposed to do?

You can't tell just by looking at it, but it's set to Numpad period. Remap it to regular period and you should be fine. (Emulate Numpad doesn't change this one.)


How to scale an environment texture in the world section? Is there a way to resize the texture when using an image texture in the world section?
I have a texture that surrounds the scene (like a panorama).
It seems you can use it at a fixed size and rotation, with no way to tile or scale the texture.

It might maybe be possible to do this with nodes, but I could not find a way how to do this.

Assuming you have a panoramic background that surrounds the entire scene like you say, then scaling it doesn't really make sense. What you probably want to do instead is move the camera farther back and increase the Focal Length in Camera Settings > Lens:

For rotation, see Rendered environment map is misaligned to World


How can I fill the inside of this helmet? I'm new to Blender and I have this helmet model that I want to fill the inside of, but I'm not sure how to do it or if it's even possible. I've tried searching for videos or guides but nothing seems to cover what I'm looking for.
As you can see it's quite a complex model with lots of curves and angles so not very straightforward (at least to me).
Also if possible I'd like to create a separate piece that follows the profile of the Visor and would be able to sit behind it.
I basically want to make this into a solid object.

So my answer works better if you've kept a low-poly version. Always keep a low-poly version somewhere, before applying the Subdivision Surface.
You can:

Select all the external vertices + the small inner extrusions:

Press Ctrli to invert the selection:

Delete:

Fill the gaps, with Grid Fill if possible:

For the bottom, extrude inwards and close the shape:


How to make blurred smoke enough visible with an orange background I'm trying to learn how to make the smoke in blender and I found this tutorial. I tried to apply the tecnique to my specific situation. Infact I'm creating a 2D animation with a man that brings his hand / lighter to the mouth/cigarette and he lights it up. The author of the tutorial used a black background and with it the blurred/smoke is very well visible,BUT in my scenario,I'm using an orange background and my smoke is not clear. But if I make the background invisible,I can see it. I think that I should adjust some parameter but I don't know which and where it could be. Check the attached blender file to understand. Thanks.

In the pic below you can see where the smoke is,but with a lot of difficult :

instead,on this pic,you can see it very clear :

and here you can see the picture of the node tree...

The two things that are most likely to help are density and colour.

In your smoke shader, run the density factor through a math node. Use either multiply or power with a value that suits your taste.

Also, use a colour with better contrast against orange. Blue would be my choice since it's opposite to orange.

Okay, here's the changed portion of the node tree:

Notice the frames labelled "Smoke colour" and "'Density' multiplier". It is that transparency shader which lends the contrasting colour to the smoke against the background, effectively filtering the colour.

The density multiplier allows fine control of the smoke texture's rendering. By first multiplying the value various pixels can be moved above or below a value of 1.0. Passing this through a power (read: exponential) node then amplifies the gradient.

Updated .blend


How would I lock vertex transforms to a certain axis? I'm sculpting squares of terrain, and I was wondering if it were possible to lock vertex groups to, let's say, the x axis. I still want to modify the height of the verts, although I want to maintain the square profile of the borders.

Is this possible?

For sculpting, you can use lock to certain axes in the Symmetry / Lock rollout in the brush settings.


video editor i key wont set key frames Blender 2.8 will not set a video key frame location with i,I, l, L,\or|. I even changed the preference to another key. No luck. Also, my keyboard is working and I re installed Blender.
Any suggestions?

In the VSE you use these buttons:

Or you can use the right-click menu:


Can't see object in weight paint mode I can't see my object or model in weight paint mode

Maybe you have some modifiers on your mesh, such as "Mirror modifier", "skin modifier", "sub surface", etc.
Just apply those modifiers, check if they got out from the hierarchy on the right tab under your mesh.
Then select your mesh and your armature and go to pose mode: from there select Parent > Automatic weight > Automatic weight.
You should be able to see the weight on your mesh then.
Good work and have a nice day.


EEVEE renders blank frames I'm trying to render an animation frame by frame in EEVEE for a personal project, this is the third shot so it has the exact same render settings as the previous 2 shots but when I hit render animation, blender either struggles to render the first frame or renders a black, empty frame. every frame. The scene has is the smallest of the three shots I've rendered so I doubt it'll be due to an image texture/ model overload, but I could be wrong!
I've searched online and tried what I could find but nothing seems to be working. TIA for any help
Here is the blender file for reference.

Just disable your hidden side wall from rendering.


How to make muitifile addon? I'm trying to learn how to create a multifile addon, but its getting hard, I've tried out some ways but no sucess. the method that better worked was this.
but it is giving me an error on line 17 now
'TypeError: ("reload() argumment must be module")'
someone can help?

bl_info = {
    "name": "driven_shapes",
    "description": "",
    "author": "Your Name",
    "version": (0, 0, 1),
    "blender": (2, 78, 0),
    "location": "View3D",
    "warning": "This addon is still in development.",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "Object" }

if "bpy" in locals():
    import importlib

    importlib.reload("shapesplit")
    importlib.reload("driver_add")
    importlib.reload("ui")
else:
    from . import shapesplit
    from . import driver_add
    from . import ui

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

You are getting the TypeError because of passing a string argument to the reload function. reload function expects a module object as its argument.

You could create a mapping of the modules you want reloaded and then pass the mapping's value to reload.

You can refer to an example from Blender's UI module for a thorough example.

scripts/startup/bl_ui/init.py


The render is different from the camera view I am doing the Blender Guru doughnut, the view is like that on the left, but the render on the right is different from it, as if the weight painting has not been applied at all. What could have gone wrong?

Actually you've created a keyframe on the particle's Vertex Group Density, so even if you toggle it, it doesn't take it into account, you need to select the object, open the Timeline and delete the keyframe.


How to animate the Displacement of the Displace modifier I'm trying to animate a flag but I want to avoid using Cloth or any Physics simulation. I like the deformation I get by using a Displace modifier controlled by a procedural cloud texture. If I could animate the texture so it moves across the flag I'd be happy.
Is there a way to animate the coordinates of a procedural texture used by the displacement modifier?

Blend file here

It's actually pretty easy; Just create an Empty (While in Object Mode, press Shift + A>Empty>Plain Axis), map the displacement to the Empty's Coordinates, by selecting "Object" for the Texture Coordinates and then select the Empty for the "Object" field.

If you then animate the Empty, the Texture will move as well, thus modifying the Displacement.


Alpha image or model? what is better? Using an alpha image or modeling a leaf, flower, or other plant material. I've read a few places that using a modeled leaf has a faster render time. You also get more control and can add more variety if you model it yourself. But what do you guys think? This is for photorealistic renders.

For a close-up I would certainly model and texture the leaves, however, at a distance a simple alpha texture could get just as realistic of a result with much less computing power. For example if you are taking a closeup of some foliage and then zooming/focusing on a subject, modelling the extra detail would be worth the extra effort/render time. However if you just want some realistic shrubs/trees in the background, textures are the way to go. And if it is only for a very distant scene or the background is blurred, having textures for entire sections of foliage might help even more.

Basically, unless you can see the difference, there is no need for the extra polys in your scene.


Daz3d to blender? Model has white eyes! I don't know if this is the place to ask this question, but currently I am making a Daz model. I imported her to blender and she has white eyes. I keep finding tutorials on how to fix it but their basically like, "Step 1: Just do it." I don't know how to do it though. The only thing I could think of is that I few of the eye properties don't have the textures with them. Since this is the case what do I do?

*Cornea, tear, and eye reflection are missing the texture beside them

Thank you do much to anyone who can even slightly help.
If this is not the place to ask this sort of question where would I ask it?
If you know how to fix this please give step by step written/video/picture instructions that are detailed! (for example: Just fix the eye surface to transparent bsdf) I don't know where that even is!

edit: Only the eyes of the model are white. I thought there should be an eye surface texture but I don't see it.

Here is the blend file --- file:///C:/Users/Sequoia/AppData/Local/Temp/x1.blend

I imported a Genesis2 model from DAZ studio to Blender (2.7) using .dae format, and encountered this too.
Some parts of the eye need to be textured (e.g. iris, pupils and sclera) as you would expect, but the cornea (The outer jelly-like part) must obviously be transparent just like a real eye. The material it has by default makes it white which is what you encountered.

So - select the eye objects (LEye and REye) in the Object tree (usually top right of the screen)
In the materials properties for that object you should see a list of pre-assigned materials.
For both 'Cornea' and 'Eye Reflection' assign a new Glass material since they must be transparent so you can see the rest of the eye.
For that glass material I would change the IOR to about 1.1 so that it's really transparent.
Not sure if this is the right approach but it worked for me :)


Select text object by name and change font via script I'm needing to know how to access and change the font for a pre-existing text object.  Everything that I have seen uses a new text object.  I've tried looking at the bpy.ops.fonts structure, but can't seem to figure it out.

Thanks.

Example below is based on windows file location.

import bpy

my_name = 'ALGER.TTF'  #name of text object
new_font = 'G:\\Blender Working folders\\Fonts\\ALGER.TTF'  #file location of new font
for ob in bpy.data.objects:
    if ob.name == my_name:
        ob.data.font = bpy.data.fonts.load(new_font)


What kind of topological structures are there? This is a more open question about the best practices for topology. I couldn't find much about it in tutorials. I want to know what kind of topological patterns are used depending on the object that is being represented. I found this topology online where you have six diamond shaped quads ordered in a hexagon. Are there more patterns like this and what are best practices for topological patterns depending on the material you want to represent?

Your example shows geometry with Subdivision Surface algorithm on top.

Subdivision Surface works with quads, and when they're not there, it transforms the geometry.
Your image shows Subdivison Surface applied on top of triangles.


How do I see all vertices in edit mode? I have a simple example: start a new project, go into edit mode, click the cube, click Modifiers, and add a "Subdivision Surface" modifier. If I up the "Levels Viewport" above 0, I should start seeing new vertices, right? I see none, but I can get them to show in Object mode. What am I missing?

This is because of what modifiers are. They take the existing thing, and do a “last minute” operation before rendering it. This is great for deforming things in animations or doing a basic change (like beveling) that you may want to tweak much later without going through 32 Undos. The mesh’s actual data will not change unless you apply the modifier. You can turn on “show in edit mode” on the modifier header, but it will still have a ghost overlay of the actual mesh data you are working with.


Joining two curves in edit mode I'm trying to get rid of some gaps in my mesh.

In object mode it looks like this

So it is one object. When I switch to edit mode it turns out that splines are subdivided.

How do I join them?

Find and select the end control points
Hit F to join them with a new segment
Select the point which goes least in the direction you want, and X dissolve it.


How should clothes be modified to fit a character model? Starting with a prefab model of t-shirt I tried to scale it to fit better but the result isn't satisfying. Some parts of the models mesh become visible.

Is there any option or modifier that could add some spacing between body and cloth,
or should I try to tweak loop-cuts manually?

As satishgoda says in his answer.. the Shrinkwrap modifier is the way to go but it's best to not use a prefab in most cases. These are usually badly shaped or just have a different flow from the rest of your model. They can also prove to be very difficult to try and manipulate to conform to your object..

The best way to make clothing and fit it to your character is to select a part of the upper body in the shape of a shirt and duplicate it.

Here I have the upper body of a base mesh..

I next Tab into edit mode, select and duplicate the part of it that I would like his shirt to be and separate it from the body into its own piece with P > Selection. After this, I just scale it outward the tiniest bit with Alt + S to distance it a bit from the body then add a Shrinkwrap modifier to snap it back to the base mesh. This won't be perfect most times, (especially if you have bad topology) so it might require some tweaking on your part to adjust this..

After that, it's up to you now, you can join the meshes back together if you want to animate etc or you can apply the modifier and shape it a bit.. add pockets etc..


Is it possible to create realtime outline effect in Eevee, only with shaders? I know It's possible to do this with solidify modifier, or manually duplicating the mesh, fatten and flip normals (which is more or less the same thing as the solidify method). Like this one

And I want it to be rendered realtime in viewport. So no freestyle.
Blender has a rich shading system. So I wonder If the outline effect can be created only with shader nodes.
It would be nice to not have to solidify every object in the scene and add aditional geometry to the objects.

Here's a rough attempt in eevee.

A Shader to RGB and a color ramp in constant mode, with a limited range of colors, then used for color in an other diffuse shader, will take care of the toon look.
Fresnel used as fac to mix a black diffuse shader will create the outline (I added a color ramp to distort the Fresnel info a bit).


How do I close a object with the curve modifier applied to it? I was wondering if there was a way to connect the two end points of this strap I made on blender.

I can't seem to get an even fit.

Select one end of the curve, then the second end (holding SHIFT) and press F button. It'll connect two ends.

Now choose the merged end, select the handle and press S. Hold SHIFT to precisely match two ends of the mesh.

This may although change a shape of a curve a bit. You may use the other method, which leaves the curve's shape as it is. First select the mesh, enter the Edit Mode and enable the 'use the modifier while in edit mode' option.

Now scale the mesh along the desired axis to match its ends precisely.

You may also select the Curve, then go to the Curve Data header and check the Stretch and Bounds Clamp checkboxes in the Shape panel.


Hair not showing on certain objects everyone. I made a building using multiple objects and now I'm trying to apply hair to certain objects to make it look like grass growing on an old ruin, however, it doesn't work on all of the objects. I'm trying to apply it to the roof (the object selected in the image attached), but nothing happens when I try. If I make a new object, like the square in the image, it does it without any issue. So far I can only make hair to appear in the dome and the basement. ¿Am I doing something wrong? Thanks in advance

Apply your bevel modifier, then it works.


Discrepancy in text object sizes? I'm writing a Python script that is pretty sensitive to the x-size ("length") of text objects created with the function text_add(). (I'm also new to Blender and still very confused about where the standard output from the Text Editor goes; some people mention it should go to "the console", but it definitely doesn't go to my Python Console inside Blender - and I'm using version 2.79 - so the following code sample reflects this confusion).

Problem: a text object displaying 30 Is (capital I) is not six times longer than a similar text object displaying 5 Is - it's much longer. I'm running the script from the Text Editor, but it shows the same results from the Python Console. Since I don't know how to show these values in some Blender window (see above) I had to rig the example so it shows them in other text objects. The two text objects (the "short" and the "long" one) are renamed to T1/T2 after creation. Two "control" text objects (T1_Ctl/T2_Ctl) display the x-size ("length") of T1/T2. The following code could be run after loading the default blend file, deleting the cube, and opening a Text Editor window.

import bpy
# Set the scene units to millimeters and set the grid to a reasonable size
bpy.context.scene.unit_settings.system = 'METRIC'
bpy.context.scene.unit_settings.scale_length = 0.001
for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if (area.type == 'VIEW_3D'):
        area.spaces.active.grid_scale = 0.01

# Add a "short" text object
bpy.ops.object.text_add(radius=7, location=(-60, 14, 0), rotation=(0, 0, 0))
obj = bpy.data.objects['Text']
obj.name = 'T1'
obj.data.body = 'IIIII'  # 5 Is
# Add a "long" text object (presumably 6 times longer)
bpy.ops.object.text_add(radius=7, location=(-60, 0, 0), rotation=(0, 0, 0))
obj = bpy.data.objects['Text']
obj.name = 'T2'
obj.data.body = 'IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII'  # 30 Is
# Control text object - shows the length of the "short" text object
bpy.ops.object.text_add(radius=7, location=(0, 14, 0), rotation=(0, 0, 0))
obj = bpy.data.objects['Text']
obj.name = 'T1_Ctl'
obj.data.body = str(bpy.data.objects['T1'].dimensions.x)
# Control text object - shows the length of the "long" text object
bpy.ops.object.text_add(radius=7, location=(0, 0, 0), rotation=(0, 0, 0))
obj = bpy.data.objects['Text']
obj.name = 'T2_Ctl'
obj.data.body = str(bpy.data.objects['T2'].dimensions.x)

After running the script, the length of the short text object is reported as 7.686, while the length of the long text object shows as 51.436 (6.7 times longer), which means the longer text is almost 7 times, not 6 times longer.

Does anybody know what's happening here? Where is this extra "padding" coming from? How can I get an accurate length of a text object?

The reason for the discrepancy is the inter-character spacing (obj.data.space_character, where obj is the long text object). There are 5 additional inter-character spaces in the long text object, and if I add them to the short string length x 6 then the lengths almost match. There is still a small discrepancy (of 0.06 mm/batch of 5 Is) which I can't explain, but it's so small that it can be safely ignored for the purpose of this exercise.


How to instance a modifier? I want to add a modifier to a bunch of objects but after adding one, its parameters affect only a certain object, not the rest which have inherited that modifier via Ctrl L = Make Links: Modifiers.
So the question is how I am supposed to add a "single" modifier to a selection of objects or make an instance of that modifier? The idea is to control different objects via a single modifier that is shared among them. Hope it's not that convoluted.

In Max you normally do it by cloning and then paste-instancing a modifier through the Right-click menu in the Modifier Stack.

Sounds like you have to use drivers, as far as I know a Modifier belongs only to one object so it cant affect other objects as you imagine.
In your case I would create a controller object (an empty for instance) or just a property in my main object so I can control the rest.


Why are some of these vertices being ignored by edge loop selection? I have a mesh which has quad vertices but when I try to click to select the edges of the mesh, it stops where the red circles are. But as you can see around the edge of the mesh, the rest is selected. Shouldn't it be able to select the edges since its all quad faces, there are no Ngons or triangles.

Your topology has corners, which break the edge loop.

You can solve it by a small Inset, to keep your edge loop connected.

If you want to continue selection through corners, just click again :).


How do I enable cloth sewing for this imported SVG? I have a question about sewing 2D pattern to 3d cloth in the Blender.
My previous question was on this link:
clothing 2D pattern from Inkscape and simulate in Blender?
I imported an SVG file made with Inkscape.
By helping with this answers, I could import 2D pattern to Blender and fill the object line in both (front & back).
Now, I tried to follow second answer to my previous question, but in object properties, my patterns are recognised differently than the makehuman body model.
Therefore, in the object properties, some menus are not visible.
How can I solve this problem and how to sew these two patterns into 3D cloth?

This picture is human model from Makehuman

And this picture is my pattern selected.
If you see the pictures, on the right side pallet, the green icon is also different on right upper as well as "enable physics for" menu which is shown now on right below.

Check these settings:

you also need to add a new vertex group to define what should be "sewed"

once done, play the simulation (play button, spacebar or shift-spacebar).


Diffuse & transparency image import when I import image as plane, in the setting panel for diffuse and emission, there are not other options. Many tutorials mention a diffuse & transparency option but I don't seem to have it. Blender 2.77

thanks
Alister from NZ

These settings are render engine dependent, that means the options available depend on which rendering engine you are currently using, like Cycles or Blender Internal (Also called Blender Render).

On the info window you can change the render engine:

Transparency and emission options are material properties and the addon must be able to create a material with those properties for rendering system currently in use, so some options are only available for Blender Internal materials others for Cycles, since they use completely different and independent material definitions.

To see the options for each render engine read this post:

Long story short, decide which render engine you are going to use, then if the desired options aren't immediately available from the importer adjust you material manually afterwards.


Image Imported as plane not reflecting? I've got a simple scene with a Background plane, a glass, and a glossy floor.
For whatever reason, the Background plane doesn't reflect off the glossy floor, as seen here:

Here is my node setups:

There's nothing wrong with the plane, it is reflecting unto your glossy floor, it's the angle of the camera and the fact that the floor is a perfect mirror that is misleading you to think it is just showing through and not reflecting.

To see this, try to change the base color of your glossy shader:

Or, you can change the roughness value of your glossy shader to something above 0, and see that the reflected bits are rough:

Give it a go and let us know if this is truly the case or if something weird is actually happening.


Get an object scanned for use in blender i have a few objects as prototypes and would like to get them 3d scanned for use in blender, anyone know if this is possible and where I could get this done...thanks

There are many different programs available for 3D Scanning. I think these are probably the best (give highest quality results) and are the easiest to use.

RealityCapture, great for huge environments taken from drones but it's very expensive.
Agisoft Photoscan, probably the best value imo but still a tad expensive
Meshroom, free on github, I've had pretty good results with this
123D Catch, rubbish results but free and very easy to use. I have a feeling it's been discontinued tho.

All of these can export the mesh as .OBJ I think, blender can import this. Be prepared for a slow experience though, 3D scans can have millions of poly's.

You'll need a decent camera to take photographs of your object, a modern phone camera will probably work ok but a DSLR will be preferable. When you take photos make sure there is plenty of overlap between images.

To get the best results either make use of lighting equipment indoors to create an even lighting environment, or wait until an overcast day comes and go outside. Never 3D scan on a bright sunny day as you'll have very harsh shadows which will be 3D scanned and then you'll have a permanent shadow in blender.

It should be noted that you cannot 3D scan (with photogrammetry anyway) transparent or reflective surfaces as the software cannot determine which is the object and which is a reflection, you'll get nasty artifacts.

Once you've imported into blender you'll probably want to use the decimate modifier set to between 0.05 and 0.5 depending on how detailed you want the final mesh to be. In my experience I can set it to as low as  0.1 and not even lose any detail while reducing the number of verts by 90%.

If you want to get fancy, then you could retopologize the mesh and bake the normals from the high density mesh to the retopologized mesh.

CG Geek has a good tutorial on using meshroom. Gleb also has a few tutorials on 3d Scanning: Photoscan, 123D Catch, Visual SFM and Meshlab.


Bevel modifer troubles I'm teaching myself how to model in Blender and struggling a bit with the bevel modifier. Basically I want to round off the outer edge of the bill of my hat. I expected this to be pretty simple but it just isn't working how I thought it should.

Can you help me understand why the modifier is behaving this way?

Image 1: At first the modifier doesn't seem to do anything. This is how it looks with the offest set to .2" and nothing else changed.

Image 2: If I turn off "Clamp Overlap", the modifier starts to affect the edge, but it's also creating artifacts around the edge and striations across the surface of the bill.

Image 3: This is how everything looks if I turn off my subsurf modifier. Ideally I only want the bevel to affect the outer edge of the bill. Not sure how to achieve that.

Image 4: I suspect this is the root of the problem. In order to create the bill, I extruded the green edge and repositioned the vertices in order to create the pink edge. I've noticed that these edges are connected on either side by an edge, but they don't actually form a contiguous edge loop. Could that be the reason for my troubles?

Edit: Added the images below in reference to the advice from @jailton_so.

Blender modifiers are applied one by one in that order, which they are placed from highest to lowest.

Try moving them with arrows up and down on the right of their bars.


Texture files zig-zag across object, never looks like it should So here's my problem. No matter what texture I use or setting I change, my textures always zig-zag all over the object and it looks awful.

I've followed YouTube tutorials to see if I was missing something, but I don't appear to be.

I'm uploading a picture to show what I mean:

If someone can please advise me here as it's holding up my sponsorship logo.

Many thanks!

Convert your curves into a mesh in object mode ALT+C, but I would make a copy of curved mesh just in case. Then I would go to the topview in edit mode and U --> project from view. Then you can add your texture to the mesh


Unwanted keyframe in dope sheet There is an unwanted keyframe in my dopesheet. I can't delete it, move it, unselect it, etc. It doesn't seem to be connected to any object/bone.

It's the keyframe you can see to the far right.

It's similar in behaviour to what this guy posted on youtube(jump to 00:15):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RSKKb5HcBI#t=15s

What is this?

Extra info:
I tried installing a different build. But both Blender 2.71 and 2.72b behave like this(same .blend though).

I have seen this behaviour before.

This keyframe is related to an object currently not editable because of selection issues. If you engage the little phantom button near the arrow in the header of your dopesheet window, it should become editable (and disengage the arrow).


Object doesn't show in edit mode I just click tab to go to edit mode and the object disappears.
There aren't any armatures or anything else of that kind on the mesh. I'm using Blender 2.74 (latest one).

When your in edit mode, press ALT H. This unhides objects. What happened in your case, was that you accidentally pressed H (hide) while you where in edit mode with everything selected.


Automating Blender workflow with opening OBJs and rendering them with options I have never done scripting in Blender, so I am looking how to solve this task. I have 1000 OBJ files that I have to import in Blender one by one, and to render each one under the same setting. The workflow is roughly like this:

import the OBJ
rotate and scale the object (constant value)
create a plane at z=0
put a lamp at a specific location
render the image
move the lamp to a second specific location
render the second image

And this has to be done 1000 times (for each OBJ).

I am proficient with Python if it helps.

You will get the API calls for free by pulling down the Info Header as shown here:

Just perform the scene setup manually, select all lines A and copy'n paste the commands into a python file. You  might want to add the snippet from the comment by iKlsR.

bpy.ops.view3d.snap_cursor_to_center()
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add(radius=1, view_align=False, enter_editmode=False, location=(0, 0, 0), layers=(True, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False))
bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(6.39051, 6.39051, 6.39051), constraint_axis=(False, False, False), constraint_orientation='GLOBAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1)
bpy.ops.object.lamp_add(type='HEMI', view_align=False, location=(0, 0, 0), layers=(True, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False))
bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=(0, 0, 6.98471), constraint_axis=(False, False, True), constraint_orientation='GLOBAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1)
bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=(0, -6.91949, 0), constraint_axis=(False, True, False), constraint_orientation='GLOBAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, release_confirm=True)
bpy.ops.transform.rotate(value=-0.645382, axis=(-0.818828, 0.361665, -0.445779), constraint_axis=(False, False, False), constraint_orientation='GLOBAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1)
bpy.context.space_data.context = 'RENDER'


Why texturing in game engine looks different than in render mode? I am learning Blender, and at the moment I am trying to create very simple game. The point I am stuck at is texturing problem. I have created a simple maze and added two different materials for floors and walls. Walls are supposed to be white, and floors a bit blue with cloud texture. The look I got in render mode is:

And in game mode it is:

Why is that? Are only UV textures available in Blender game engine? I am using a procedural texture.

The game engine is rather limited in this regard, as it only supports UV and GLSL textures, along with vertex colours of course.

You can bake your procedural textures to UV maps, but this is a time consuming process. If you don't, however, you will not see them in the Game Engine.

Sources: Google, Wikipedia, my limited experience with the game engine ;)


color faces with wrong normals While hunting down some wrong-flipped faces I find it a bit tedious to differentiate the color of the wrong-sided face with the right-sided face.

It would be very handy if the wrong-sided faces would have the color red. How can I use a trick for that?

There are several things you could do to make finding flipped normals easier.

Turn on Backface Culling. In edit mode press N then scroll down to the Shading section. Check the box for Backface Culling. That will make all the backs of the faces clear, so if one is backwards it will be completely transparent.
Turn on the display of normals. In edit mode press N then scroll down to the Mesh Display section. Check the box for Display face normals. That will show little lines pointing out from each face, if a face is backwards then the line will point in.

You can make a simple cycles material to show the backwards faces. The two Diffuse shaders are used to get the red and white colors. The Geometry node has a backfacing socket, that plugged in to the mix shader makes the difference between the correct faces and the backwards faces.

This will display flipped faces as red while in material view, but if your graphics card does not support GLSL you will have to be in Rendered view.


Follow Path Constraint with Object with Array and Curve modifier not working properly I can't get the stars to follow the path. Tried everything I found in other questions to no avail.
here's the file

You've given a Follow Path constraint to your object as if it would act as a third modifier but it won't, it will just move the object along the path and the object will be affected by the modifiers independently. So I guess you have 2 possibilities: Either remove the modifiers, convert your star to mesh, give it modifiers again, and keep the constraint so that it moves along the path. Or, if you want to keep your star as a curve, remove the constraint and, in order to move along the path curve, just move the star on the X axis.


Is there a Chamfer modifier like 3d max in blender? I am 3d max user and i am used to chamfer and turbosmooth workflow in 3dmax.  The chamfer modifier in max takes into account the smoothing groups and bevel edges accordingly. Then adding turbosmooth on top gives you sharp and smooth edges.Is there a workflow or tool to replicated the same in blender?

The bevel modifier is what you're looking for.  The other answers don't mention that it can be set to use only bevel weights defined by the user.  Bevel weights can be set for each individual edge and smaller weight = smaller radius bevel.