Move origin of all objects to same Y value I am making a Font in Blender. I have modeled it as OBJ files for my 3D Rendering Engine, however I discovered the centers are all incorrect... the origins are at the origin of the world i modeled them in. So I centered all their centers to center of mass. Now, the centers are overall in the centers lines of the shapes. That's good, but now I want to set all their origins to be at the same Y value, preferably 0. Is there a way I can do that?

MY QUESTION
I want to set the origins of all objects to the same Y value without altering their X or Z values

if I could write a script to do it, I'd love to, although I've never written in python before, so I'd need to know for instance how to loop through all objects in the scene and how to access and set their origin

Just copy this script into your scripting window and press "Run Script"

import bpy

for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    obj.location.y = 0

Good night.


How can I prevent my text object from flickering? I have a short animation involving two text objects and blender internal. They have a shadeless black material and simply pop on screen in front of another shadeless material, this one white. The objects are not close enough together for any intersections.

The final render shows the text flickering in and out of existence. I also noticed that other curve objects like the rope of my price-tag, display a strange fragmentation where they come close to intersecting (but don't). I am really mystified by this one.

If someone could try to reproduce my issue the blend file is attached and I'd appreciate any comments trying to narrow down the issue. Thanks!

-Jesse

Blend:

The problem seems to be because of your camera's clipping options.

You have these starting from 1mm and continuing to 10km, while limits closer to the actual visible range of your scene would be more sensible.

I'm cutting some corners about the actual math involved, but basically the way these settings work, is that the range you have set is divided into different distance steps to the camera, within possible computing precision, when determining what things are in front or behind other things. There is limited precision in this rendering code for this distance information, so bigger range for the camera clipping means bigger steps in comparing distances, so objects with only a small distance between them might end up in the same distance step and go in the wrong order.

Having smaller clipping range makes also these steps smaller, so the rendering code is able to differentiate between smaller distances as well. Note that there's a lot more of this precision near the "near" plane than near the "far" plane, so increasing the "Start" value might have even more impact than reducing the "End" value, even if the amount you change it is far less.

A range from 1m to 300m or so would be ok for your scene.


Particle Info not working on Blender 2.8 with Eevee The documentation for Blender 2.8 (https://docs.blender.org/manual/es/dev/render/cycles/nodes/types/input/particle_info.html?highlight=particle%20info%20node)

I am trying to use the random property of a particle info node to affect the color and emission shader. It works when I render with cycles, but not when I render with Eevee.

This link (https://docs.blender.org/manual/es/dev/render/eevee/materials/nodes_support.html) does state that the particle info node is not currently supported in Eevee, so that answers part of the question.

https://developer.blender.org/T59459


Grid material that extends with mesh? For clarification, I am trying to create a Supergrid:

Put a 2m x 2m grid texture on a mesh.
When I move or scale the mesh, the grid will increase as the mesh does
(the 2m x 2m does not stretch or distort, but instead increases the number of lines which represent the 2m grid)
The grid is shown equally on XYZ faces of a mesh.

A bonus would be changing colors, as boxing out a whole level in one color could be confusing.

Details:
I was trying to set up a grid material(s) for blocking out game levels.
A short effort to make a simple material seems to have drained my day without a solution,
if anyone could help I would greatly appreciate it.
Something similar or exactly like Supergrid for UE4.
Skip to 1:10 for basic function.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NxUq_rD8PVM#
I was trying to use a grid node created by Anton Nevesolv.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gsZoJBeAWGc
Though, this might not be ideal for creating the desired results?
If we take the above grid and use it in a cube material node,

then attach the Object socket of a Texture Coordinate node to the vector of the Grid node,
then use the eye dropper on the Texture Coordinate to assign a plane as the mesh that will represent the ground of a level,

This seems to work similarly to what is happening in Supergrid for UE4.
However, the sides of the cube becomes lines instead of a grid.
The same things happens if you use an image of the grid.
However, if you change the texture coordinate from Object to UV, we get a nice grid on all sides of the mesh, but now it wont slide in relation to the ground plane, and it also distorts when scaling the mesh.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have been trying for hours and I don't see a solution in sight.

This will work for mesh with planar surfaces aligned to the world axis.
That can be this kind of settings, based on world coordinates as input:

It adds the object location to object coordinates so that the result is sensible to the mesh location. Then, it takes a cross product with the normal, in order to avoid limit values to appear when calculating the grid (you'll can test the difference, using it or not).
The grid itself is just a comparison to some value, of the fraction part of the scaled coordinates. More precisely, if the value is around 0.5 (again to avoid limit cases we may encounter if comparing to 0 or 1).

Edit

If you want the grid to be stable from the object position, change the input like that (the object location is substrated from the surface location in world coordinates):

Is you want the grid to be aligned to the object (if its origin is in a corner), change the node group shifting it 0.5/scale (see below on left).
And to avoid limit cases, keep only one positive test (below on right).

Updated blend file:


Hair Dynamics not colliding with emitter 2.75a I'm currently working on a character model, and the tutorials I'm working from use a slightly older version of Blender (2.73, I believe?).

The Hair Dynamics tab in 2.75a is substantially different, and appears much less intuitive. When it bakes the hair dynamics, there is no collision with the actual emitter mesh (i.e., that character); it simply falls into the mesh.

I've tried adjusting the physics parameters in the emitter mesh for soft body and cloth with no result, and all the tutorials I've found on YouTube thus far are for hair particles colliding with meshes other than the emitter.

How do I enable the hair to collide with the emitter mesh?

The previous hair system calculated mass much differently, so by reducing the mass significantly (from 1.0 to 0.1), the hair didn't fall through the mesh in as many places. Tweaking the mass seems to help fix the issue, although weight painting the hair strands is required and tweaking the collision properties of the emitter.


Material options missing? So, i want to add some water to my scene. But i´ts the second video i am watching with options displayed that are missing in my blender. Am i missing something? It´s about the materials...

this is how it should look.

and how it looks on my blender. There are far less options. Where is Lambert for example? Can someone suggest another video/way to do it?

The difference in the material's options are in the renderer engine. On the video you are seeing, the author is using Blender Render (also named Blender Internal), and you are using Cycles. If you change to Blender Render

the options will be the same, yet I would suggest you to search for a tutorial using Cycles. About Lambert, is a kind of algorithm for reflections, or how the way the light gets diffused in the object. See the follofing image for examples on other kinds of similar algorithms, and you'll understand what i'm saying: http://what-when-how.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/tmpcd00152_thumb.png


How to get reflections from video I’m making a car and compositing it onto a scene, how do I get accurate reflections of trees and stuff on the car if the trees are on the video?

using cycles render engine ->
Set up the mirror object. GO to material-> Select a Glossy Shader
using internal render engine->
simply use the mirror option in materials


Strange residues after separation of mesh I have modelled this large building (see below). After joining all the elements of the building to one big mesh I separated a part of the building. In this building there are floors and these floors / planes are also separated now. But you see in the encircled area that somehow there are residues ( "borders" of those planes). What are those residues ? It looks like that these residues are the borders of those planes / floors ???

This is the blend file before separation

OK, I think you were in face selection mode, and you have unconnected edges. That is what you are seeing now. Because the edges were not part of a face they will stay unselected when using face select mode.

PS You also have a LOT of duplicate vertices, 83,559 to be exact, Not related to this, but probably not going to help you.

To delete the unconnected edges, switch to edge select mode, and select one of the loose edges.
Then from the 3D view header Select > Select Similar > Amount of Faces Around an Edge, or just simply ShiftG then A. Now delete all the selected vertices with X > Vertices, or Delete > Vertices.


Damped track : is this behavior expected? A camera following a nurbs path and a damped track constraint :

At several locations of the curve, the camera rotates curiously.

But the tool tip of the constaint indicates "points toward a target performing the smallest rotation necessary".

Is the behavior shown in the gif above expected ?

The erratic motion appears to actually be due to the Path Animation 'Follow' setting - it seems to be interfering with the constraint. When the Follow setting is disabled the erratic motion no longer occurs and it snaps back to the rotation based only on the constraint.

The Damped Track constraint isn't really ideal for camera tracking - best to use the Track To since that is capable of maintaining the expected orientation of the camera (ie, so 'up' points towards the global 'up'). I believe Damped Track is better suited to bone or object rotations where it perhaps makes more sense (but only if the 'initial' rotation is not being modified before the constraint is evaluated).


Blender scene animation exported to Three.js without bones or skinning? I have a mountain range scene very similar to this:

The mesh is a simple plane extruded to form a low poly mountain range, the animation uses 3 shape keys, a base and 2 for random vertices displacement. This is then keyframed 7 times over 250 frames to make the surface look like it's continually subtly shifting.

My intent is to use the Three.js output to embed the 3D animation into a web browser. However, it seems the only examples I can find use "skinning" and "bones".

Is it possible to do without bones or is there an alternative that isn't embedding as a video?

Not sure if this is what you need, but it's a plugin for blender to export json for threejs.

https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/tree/master/utils/exporters/blender

It has the instructions on how to install it.

To animate my stuff I use shapekeys.
Try this tutorial :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKB4aPUkCJw

Hope that was helpful


How to get the little 'modifier' menu see screenshot i just downloaded the Bevel Curve Tools addon. i just wanted to know what the HotKey is for the modifier tab that pops up get whenever i create a new curve. See image below

That menu that shows the initial parameters appears only for newly created objects (it's kind of a constructor for your object).

Nonetheless, if you just created the object, closed the menu and immediately realized you wanted to change a parameter, you can adjust it by pressing F9: "Redo last". This won't create a new object but recall the construction menu where you can do adjustments.

If you have already moved the object, then this won't work, as the last operation is no longer the object creation.


Make an object a mask (render as transparency) I need a plane to act as a mask. I want objects in front of it to show up, objects behind the it to not show up, and where the plane would have rendered to be transparent pixels.

You can think of it as the plane being a green screen and then keying out the green. (I tried implementing this as a green screen in the scene, but this cause problems like green light bouncing off the plane and imperfections around the edges.)

In short, is there a way to cause an object to not effect light in the scene and all of it's visible pixels to cause transparent pixels on the render?

You can achieve this using a holdout shader, just don't forget to enable transparency in your render settings:


Hiding lamp in glossy material I have plane with glossy material and point light.

You can see the white dot in the plane as point light.

How to retain glossy plane but so that point light is not seen on the plane ?

EDIT: I have tried to modify point lamp material but lamp is still on glassy plane.

If I understand correctly this is the result you are after:

To achieve this you will need to mix Emission with Transparent (pure white colour- #FFFFFF) shaders in Lamp material by Light Path > Glossy Depth as below:

  Note: If you change Glossy Roughness (should be 0) even a bit, light will still be visible.


How to make this glass more realistic? I have made this image :

As you can see there is something wired going on with the liquid of inside the glass, in fact, I'm doing a fluid simulation here, it looks like the mesh of the fluid doesn't match the mesh of the glass, so I think that's why we have this cloth look here, any ideas on how to make the liquid more realistic ?

Also, I thought the color of the liquid would be more visible in the shadow, but it's not that much, do you know how to fix this ? (I'm using the glass shader, with Cycles).

Refracting and reflecting materials need basically three things to look good:

Proper shape.

Light bounces all around and INSIDE an object. You need to pay attention how every single edge look like - for example just looking at the top edge of your glass I can say you need to give more definition to it. It should be sharper and inflated when compared to the side of a glass.

Also glass surface is never perfect (the only exception would be optical lenses when you are justified to model it as perfectly shaped objects). So what you do is just add a little bit of displacement to the glass, just enough to barely see that distortion effecting reflections and refractions... and you think it's barely visible, just divide it by half and usually that's your sweet spot. Unless of course you are aiming for roughly formed glass.

So first thing - grab a real glass and watch it as close as you can, then recreate every detail you can spot (which usually would be couple more edge loops and that slight displacement).

Proper lighting.

I can't think of a scene (except very very specfic ones) which looks good with one spot lamp. Try three point lighting at least, some high contrast lights or environment based lighting (rich surroundings that reflect and bounce light all around your scene or - which is best to start off - environment hdr light map).

Something to reflect.

Again - hdr map as a lighting source helps here, but if you can build a rich scene that fills the space it would be just as good, if not better. For a quick scene however your best bet would be hdr.

There are some specific shots with bright color and couple white light sources (like catalogue shots for glassware etc.) However those scenes are much harder arrange and they are actually target the synthetic looks of perfect and not very realistic look of clear glass. However if you look closely you still find that those shots still work because of proper setup and contrast.
And when rendering glass objects contast is very important, unless you aim for a milky, rough surface glass - you need very convincing highlights as your starting point and just the right amount of darker contrasting parts that will define your shape.

As an example you could look at these - not perfect or anything, but in the right direction I think:

Single area lightsource:

Two color high contrast light source:


Blender Lamp not illuminating or reflecting in viewport My blender spotlight is not illuminating over my shapes, It is properly placed but for some reason it does not display the proper effect.

This is what the image is supposed to look like:

(Do note this is for the Blender Internal renderer.)

You absolutely can see lighting and shadows in the viewport. Your issue is you have the Viewport Shading set to Solid. In Solid you do not get lighting or shadows.

Switch the Viewport Shading to either Textured, or Material. (Rendered will show the lighting too, but that is not what you want.)
Now in the properties panel under the Shading section set the Material Mode to GLSL.


Does Blender have a transform modifier (such as scaling, rotation, translating)? Does Blender have a transform modifier? I mean a modifier that can do scaling, rotation and translation, just like s, r and g respectively, as you would normally do with a mesh. However, s, r and g do this permanently to a mesh, but I am asking for a modifier that you can undo or change easily, and will be permanent only if you apply the modifier. If yes, then can the modifier use different pivot points, such as , active element, 3d cursor, median point and individual origins?

Alt-S will undo scaling (ie. set scale factors to 1.00)
Alt-R, and Alt-G will, in the same way, undo rotation and translation respectively.
In that sense, S,R, and G are not permanently changing your mesh objects.
If you want to make transformations permanent, Ctrl-A and Apply rotation etc.
Does that answer your question?


How to model component pieces of a geometric solid? I'm trying to make a model of the first atomic bomb's high explosive lens configuration:

The shape is a truncated icosahedron composed of extruded octagons and pentagons.

Modeling a single solid truncated icosahedron is easy — there are lots of tutorials out there under "how to model a soccer ball" (make an icosphere, apply a single subsurf to it, tweak the center of the vertices a little).

But I'm struggling to see how I can turn something like that into a model that is composed of the 32 separate 3D octagons and pentagons.

So far I've tried making a truncated icosahedron, extruding it, deleting the all of the shapes except one pair of inner/outer octagons, connecting their edges manually (since extrude won't for such a complex shape)... which is a very slow and tricky process (it's a lot of vertices/edges to wade through for each shape).

Is there a better way that I am missing? If I had one octagon and one pentagon, would it be then easy to have them tile around the sphere in this way? (I haven't been able to manage it with Array or Mirror; the angles seem just a little too eccentric for the transformation defaults).

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I accomplished this. I have removed some of the facets to show the inner side.

This is how:

Make a football (as you said, subsurf an icosahedron, dissolve all vertices on middle and edges).
Add the edge split modifier with split angle 1. This will make each ngon (pentagon and hexagon) separate from its neigbours.
Apply the modifier.
Go into edit mode and select all faces.
Extrude all faces but right click directly. This will make them double but select all faces that will form the outer shell.
Scale out the selected faces.


How to Override Poll for Clear_Parent in Background mode I keep running into a poll context error for when trying to parent_clear-
  File "c:\Users\Willard\Desktop\blender\2.82\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py", line 199, in __call__
    ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), C_dict, kw, C_exec, C_undo)
RuntimeError: Operator bpy.ops.object.parent_clear.poll() failed, context is incorrect

My script works fine and avoids poll errors when running blender with the interface.
for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        for region in area.regions:
            if region.type == 'WINDOW':
                override = {'area': area, 'region': region, 'edit_object': bpy.context.edit_object}

for s in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    if s.type == 'MESH' and s.parent_type == 'OBJECT':
         s.select_set(True)
         bpy.ops.object.parent_clear(override, type='CLEAR_KEEP_TRANSFORM')
         bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
    else:
        pass

for o in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    if o.type == 'MESH':
         o.select_set(False)

    else:
        o.select_set(True)

bpy.ops.object.delete()

While running the script in background mode I receive the failed context error. I'm not sure how to override that context that I believe is failing because the script is running off the screen

Don't use the operator.
It is pretty simple to clear parent (set to None) and keep transform with simple API calls.
Python console code., clear parent on context object.
>>> mw = C.object.matrix_world.copy()
>>> C.object.parent = None
>>> C.object.matrix_world = mw
>>>

Similarly, via API calls,  to remove non meshes from scene
>>> non_meshes = [o for o in C.scene.objects if o.type != 'MESH']
>>> non_meshes
[bpy.data.objects['Empty'], bpy.data.objects['Camera'], bpy.data.objects['Sun']]

>>> while non_meshes:
...     D.objects.remove(non_meshes.pop())
...
>>> non_meshes = [o for o in C.scene.objects if o.type != 'MESH']
>>> non_meshes
[]


Using Inverse Kinematics and/or Pole Targets to move hair bones in unison? I have a model whose hair is composed of several strands that I have each connected to a bone as part of the whole armature. What I want is for each "hair bone" to rotate at the tail in correspondence with the bone above her head (which I have unparanted). The goal is to use one bone to move all the other bones in unison so make it easier to bob her hair up and down as I animate her.

My first thought went to using that bone above her head as a Pole Target, but my understanding is that you need one IK bone for a pole target to work, and the thing is I have several "hair" bones, not just one.

What do I do?

After some heavy research, I found that one simply can't assign multiple bones to a parent bone under the guise of copy rotation or any other such restraint option; it's a 1:1 bone ratio situation. But! Not to worry: I just created a few different bone groups, assigned each hair strand to a group according to its location on the head, and that did it. Still... I wish I could get the hair bones to rotate on its head instead of its base. It seems like I can do that but it'd take some wonky manipulation that doesn't seem worth the cost.

At any rate, this feels like a limitation Blender shouldn't have. I should be able to control multiple bones with one bone like a type of Pole Target bone without the inverse kinematics.


Cycles is not rendering caustics, even though "No Caustics" is disabled? I am having difficulties with the Glass shader because there are no caustics and the shadows that show up in the glass shaded object look as if they are blobs of ink.
I do have the 'No Caustics' option disabled, and from the research I've done, this one checkbox is the only one that people seem to be mentioning when it comes to caustics.

Does anyone have advice on how to deal with this issue?  Here's a screen capture of the scene setup that I'm working on.

Lamps (with the exception of mesh lamps) will not cast caustics if they don't have Multiple Importance Sampling enabled on them.

Make sure any lamps in your scene have this enabled:


How to change Chain Lenght in Inverse Kinematics? I'm new in Blender. I have a character and I have some problem with his leg. Chain Lenght is 2 in left leg but it's 0 in right leg. I wanted to change it for 2, but my character fell apart.
I watched a video tutorials and I did everything like the video. His left leg works properly, but his right leg does not move properly.

bones in the basic position

left leg in motion

right leg in motion If I move this leg, the whole character moves badly. I think the fail is in chain lenght but I can't fix it. What should I do?

Sorry for my english. :)

You can tell from the yellow dotted line that runs from the IK bone (the yellow one) that there is indeed a difference in the IK chain length (the dotted line runs to a different bone for each leg). If you go to the IK constraint options, there is an option for chain length. Make sure that this option is set to the same number for both legs (it looks like it should be set to 2). Leaving it at the default value of 0 will give a limitless chain, and any number over 2 will include the hip bone, both of which will cause the problems you are seeing.

This is the value you will need to change:


How to cut a piece off a mesh using another mesh/edge as the cut shape I want to cut off the bezier curve mesh so it has the same shape as the circle on which it is placed but i can't figure out what tool to use. I tried the boolean modifier but this didn't work. I need to keep vertices on top so i can fill the face later.
Any help is much appreciated.

I’ve run into this type of problem before. I recommend extruding the circular background, and then using the resulting edge-to-faces to cut the wave tube. You may have to move the circular background a bit to make it offset, so it doesn’t just cut half the tube.
Use Boolean or the Boolean modifier for cutting. Selecting the mesh to be cut (I think, maybe it’s the other way around and you select only the mesh that’s DOING the cutting)


Spin tool curves objects I am trying to use the spin tool to make some basic pipes. When I try to rotate it 90 degrees, this happens:

The first few faces go away from the pivot point. I tried moving the pivot point, but it does the same thing. For reference, this is the expected behavior:

I am running Blender 2.8 Beta.

Thanks :)

P.S. First time posting here. If I got any formatting or anything wrong, just let me know.

You need to imagine drawing a circle with a centre at the pivot. As your pivot is above the plane, that circle starts in the way you are seeing. Move the pivot parallel to the plane you are extruding and you will get the behaviour you are after.


Is it possible to calculate the center of an incomplete sphere? An in-Blender solution would be preferred so I don't have to switch programs, but other tools are welcome too.
I'm testing out face rigging via Blender's built-in Rigify plugin, and it suggests defining a pivot based on a spherical shape. However, I only have a small-curvature concentric-ring mesh per eye on my test model (it's imported from a program that generally doesn't use complete spheres for eyes). Is there a way I can calculate the center of the would-be sphere using just the irises? Thanks!

The shipped add-on tinyCAD has a 'Resurrect Circle Center' operation, which finds the circumcenter of a triangle of 3 vertices.
If you select 3 vertices from your sphere-section, which lie on one of the sphere's great circles, it will place the 3D cursor at the center of the complete sphere, and draw the great circle in the plane of the vertices.


Why do people not connect all their cycles nodes? So I downloaded this blend file to figure out how to bake out textures. In the process I see that he has some very complex node set-ups all to end up seeing them not connected at the end. Why have such complex node systems just to not connect them?

This is not the first time I've seen this. Please someone explain this logic to me.

the disconnected nodes are the original materials (textured, with normal maps, diffuse and glossy shader), the connected nodes are the baked materials (baked texture plugged to emission shader)


Can the orientation of objects emitted from a particle system be controlled? When emitting objects from a particle system (boids) the objects appear with random orientation, while they move it would look much nicer if e.g. a spacecrafts nose would point into flight direction.

It seems to have a leader at the first position of the Boids Brain panel helps but then the particle tend to clump, when separation is added they start to move with random orientation.

The mesh should be rotated in Edit Mode so that the nose points into the emitting direction, then the will always point to the flight direction.

The rules to prevent clumping:


automatic weights feature seems to be broken I don't recall since which version of Blender but I've noticed that literally all my character models and armatures no longer work with automatic bone weights feature. None. Every single time get this error:

  Bone Heat Weighting: failed to find solution for one or more bones

Actually, Blender fails to find solution for any of the bones.

Here's an example blend with a simplified armature and mesh to be parented to the armature ready. Try it yourself:
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/42650

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but Blender didn't complain few versions back. What might be the issue?

One of the requirements for automatic bone weighting is to have a single mesh; your is made of many separate parts. I selected the main (body) vertices, then inverted the selection, hid the selected spare parts, then the auto weight went allright. Then you will have to manually weight the spare parts (or join them with the main mesh, manifold and unbroken). Auto weighting is an useful shortcut, but we cannot ask it for the complete job.


What happened to my camera and how to set it back to default? My camera became all distorted and if I add a different camera, it does the same thing.

The sensor size is the zoom and focal length is what it sounds like. you can use Shift + F to move it in first person.

The problem is that the default isn't same for everyone or every scene so it is hard to say what it is in your case.


Is it possible to set the vertex shader without overriding the fragment shader? I'd like to make vertices of an object randomly move around a little. To do this, I created a vertex shader.

I assigned the vertex shader to the object's material with shader.setSource() like so:

import bge

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()

VertexShader = """

uniform float time;

void main() {
    gl_Position = gl_ModelViewProjectionMatrix * gl_Vertex + sin(time + gl_Vertex.z);
}

"""

# dummy fragment shader
FragmentShader = """

void main() {
    gl_FragColor = vec4(1.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0);
}

"""

mesh = cont.owner.meshes[0]
for mat in mesh.materials:
    if mesh.getMaterialName(mat.getMaterialIndex()) == "MAleaves":
        shader = mat.getShader()
        if shader != None:
            if not shader.isValid():
                shader.setSource(VertexShader, FragmentShader, 1)
            shader.setUniform1f('time', bge.logic.getRealTime())

However I'd prefer to use the blender material shading instead of the fragment shader. How can I do this?

While I was digging through the docs one day, I stumbled upon the gpu.export_shader(scene, material) function, which seems to allow exporting the shader code of blenders internal materials. Note that this call eats non BGE types. Here is an example which extracts the code for a simple material on a lovely blue cube (*.blend below)

It should be possible to combine this extracted fragment shader with your own vertex shader (e.g. copy from console and paste in your BGE script).


Pointiness factor from bump maps I have a material I am creating that has a bump map and I am trying to add grunge to the edges of the holes created by the bump map, any ideas how I could achieve this? thanks for any help you can offer.

I want the grunge to be along the lines and around the edges of the darker portions

It propably depends on the geometry you're working with, but you might have a chance in abusing the fact that normal maps are indeed just encoded direction vectors, which are assigned to the R, G and B color slots. If you try a node setup like this (so feeding the normal output into an emission shader and previewing that) on your texture...

... you'll see the famous mostly blue normals texture:

Add two more nodes afterwards to split up the three channels into its components. One is a SeparateRGB node, the other one an invert node. You'll need the invert just on the B channel, not on the other two:

The result of that separation will be this:

Whereas the original texture which I was feeding into the whole chain was simply this:

The background is, in the R channel or a normal map, the perturbation amount of the normal in U direction is stored, whereas in the G channel the V perturbation is recorded. B is - I believe - a factor of how unperturbed the normal is. That's why you need to invert it, as you're interested in the bumpy areas only.

With your provided texture, the setup produces this:


Cycles: envirement background for lighting different then render background I know from here that it is possible to set an image as a world background. But I'm creating a stylised render and my background should not affect world lighting, that should be white.

How can I have a white background color for lighting (becouse of GI) and an image visible as a background in fnal render?

Regards

The easiest way is to check the Transparent setting in the Film section of the Render panel. Setup your world lighting with white lighting.

Then in Compositing you can load a still image with an image node and composite it behind your transparent render with an Alpha Over node. This way your scene will have white lighting, but your background can be a custom image.

If your background image dimensions are different than your render settings, you may need to run the image through a Scale node to get it work properly.

Option 2

The second option is to add an image plane behind your foreground elements. The trick is to use an Emission Shader for the plane material, then use an IsCameraRay Light Path to mix between the Emission Shader and an empty (ie no light data) shader socket. This lets the camera see the background, but effectively makes the plane invisible to the rest of the scene lighting.


Bounce Objects Inside other Object I want to make objects bounce around a constraint.  My first thought was to place the objects inside a sphere and have them bounce around; however, the objects just fall through.  Even though I use the Physics to make the Sphere Rigid.

The effect I am trying to do is like Bingo Balls bouncing inside the globe before being extracted.  Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thank you,

If you are working with rigid body objects, you could try and set the container object Collisions > Shape to Mesh, inside the RigidBody properties.


How can I convert empty images so that they would show in the render? I've made a noob mistake and set up a whole scene with empty image objects.

Is it possible to convert them so they would show in the render? I know I can delete everything and start importing everything from scratch as planes, but that would take too much time to start all over again.

DanielEngler has created an add-on to convert Image Empties into mesh objects.

After installing and activating the addon, simply select an Image Empty and click on the "Add Image Planes" button in the Empty to Image Plane tab of the sidebar in the 3D view.

Related discussion on BA


Best way to smooth out object Hey guys. Hoping you can help me out. I've got a section of pipes that was poorly modeled to start and I am trying to see if blender has any tools to help smooth these out for rendering. I am just trying to render this model and the rest of the objects look good except for this. I am fairly new to blender, sorry.

I have already tried the subdivision surface and smooth modifiers. Any other ideas?

The pipes are made from faces that are disconnected, this keeps each face as a flat surface.

In edit mode, select everything A and remove doubles W->Remove Doubles. You may also want to use ⎇ AltJ to turn all the triangles into quads to cleanup the mesh.


Cutting a part into two objects using a plane I'm still way down on Blender 2.72 learning curve. I've tried to get an answer just working with a basic cube and a plane and I'm not getting the expected result.

Object mode>select cube>shift select plane>modifier (boolean difference)> select cube (again)>apply
At this point, I would expect to see three objects: two pieces of the cube and the plane.  However the plane is apparently fused to a piece of the cube and the other object is the original cube.
Accepting this result and another bunch of commands and I might get to my result.  Do I really need to do this?  Have I overlooked a very simple answer?
BTW, I'm expecting the two pieces of the cube to be manifold.

I've spent a lot of time searching, but I can't seem to find the magic keywords or phrasing.

Partial answer: Don't select both the cube and the plane before going to the modifier.  Select the cube, specify the boolean modifier, specify difference, select plane, then apply.
This results in a part of the original cube (depending on the normals of the plane?) and the plane as the two surviving objects.  I would expect this result if I had started with a cube and another smaller cube and done a difference or an intersection. In other words, slicing with a plane (0 thickness) shouldn't result in loss of the original volume.


Blender 2.8 Lag issue on grease pencil with multiple layers. Possible temporary solution There is a good amount of lag when drawing extensively.
Adding lines isn't slowed down thankfully but erasing is
a notable problem as well as sculpting.

Until 2.8 is optimized for performance,
there is a possible solution I don't think
would take too much time to implement.

When animating, I have a huge workflow problem when
I start building up too many lines and layers.

Some scenes are finished and don't need to be edited further.
Therefore, they don't need to be actively rendered real-time in the viewport and take up more resources while I work more on the project.

For those key frames, that object could be converted to some sort of "smart proxy"-esque low quality version to have representation WHILE not tax the program. Maybe there could be a select an object and some keyframes and click
"covert to proxy" then all the frames are rendered and then become low quality temporay pngs then can represent that spot.

Rendering lines in the 2D animation tab in the viewport seems to be hugely slowing down work flow. I think this would save resources and be less taxing on the software

I know what your saying, I run into a tonne of lag when animating grease pencil in full scenes. My favourite way so far to get around this is to finish of the main parts of the scene that effect your character and view (e.g Camera animation and interactive objects, then save the scene then strip the scene right down and save it again using a file name that is relevant to the file (GP animation etc.) then do your grease pencil work. Once finished save and go back to you main file create an empty and then "Proxy" the GP collection into your scene and append it to your empty. Move the empty to the desired position and render. Hope this helps


How can I combine work that I've done in the "video editing" and "2D Animation" tabs in the same project on a render? I have a 2D animation and some work done in the "video editing" tab. When I "render animation", the only thing that renders is the text and music that I have done in "video editing"; it does not include the animation that I've done. How can I render both tabs into one video?

In order to add a scene into the VSE with a scene strip, you'll have to make a new scene for the VSE contents, as shown in this gif(from this post: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/184931/37272):

To render from the VSE you'll need to check this box:


How to deform individual particles along the same curve guide that they are all traveling on? So basically I'm trying to achieve this

The particles I intend on using will be flat elongated planes that have enough subdivisions along the body allowing it to be deformed gracefully along the same path that has been set for all the particles to travel upon so as the particles travel they bend with this path fluidly.

Thanks in advance for you help.

That can be done using Animation Nodes.

The principle is to make a duplicate instance of an object for each particle.

This base object is associated to a curve modifier.

The tricky thing is that you can not place the duplicates at the particle position, because this will not fit with the modifier (we need to follow the curve axis specified on the modifier, but stay constant on the other axis).

So, we keep the particle position for the modifier axis only (here Z) and for the other axis (here X, Y) we take a constant random position.

Last part: we want a vector of random fixed positions for each particle but the particle life cycle varies. So we consider all particles from the beginning and hide the died one at the end.

1: Get the particle system considering alive and died
2: Instantiate a copy of the base object for each of them
3: Take random positions for X and Y but keep the particle Z
4: Get the dead particles amount
5: Place the objects
6: Hide the dead


Transparent image like a decal on mesh with principled BSDF shader I have done this before, but that was before the principled BSDF shader existed. Now I'm trying to do a similar node setup with the principled BSDF shader instead of the diffuse BSDF shader, but the result is not 100% perfect! The background of the mesh with the transparent decal image, differ slightly compared to the surrounding mesh. I want the background around the decal to be fully transparent and look just like the nearby meshes.

The principled BSDF shader to the left in the image below has the green color for that background and that is the green color I also use on the rest of the object with the same settings.

Is there a better way to achieve this with a better node setup or just adjust my node setup in some way? I have tried to adjust the value of the mix shader, but without any improvement.

I find this questions easier to understand if you don't think in terms of transparency and think in terms of Masks to control how elements mix.

Using the Alpha channel in a mix node will make White areas use one element, and Black areas use the other. Any shade of gray will be a partial mix according to its brightness.

What that means is that the alpha channel of a given image can be used as a Mask to control the mix of color or the mix of shaders.

When you use one or the other is something you have to decide.

If you want to use the color information of the image over the color of a given shader, in a way that all other properties of the shader are homogeneous, then use a color mix node and have the mask be the factor for the color of the shader.

(click on the image to enlarge)

Or you can use the mask to control the mix between two different shaders. Note that doing this will make the masked areas have different characteristics.

(click on the image to enlarge)

Lastly if what you really want is the mask to control the transparency of the object, then use the alpha information as the factor that controls the mix of a transparent and other kind of shader.

(click on the image to enlarge)


Object created from Sapling addon not exported properly to FBX I just made a tree in blender, with the sapling add-on, for my unreal engine 4 game. I exported the mesh and i imported to the unreal engine 4.. there are no textures imported and it looks something like the picture -.- HUGE leaves and a normal size tree in different places... also in the unreal engine 4 log it says that it must be something with my exporting in blender.. anyone know how to help?

I found the problem after an hour of work :D The sapling add-on wasnt creating meshes.. it was creating curves..  So i tranformed the the curver into a mesh and the i exported it and it was done :D


Review of Mesh and Weightpaint Hello dear Community,
this might be the completely wrong forum for this. If it is I'm sorry.
I got myself a Human Mesh from MakeHuman and cleaned it a bit and applied a Rig for this very character.
However, I seem to be unable to weightpaint this character.
Most of the deformation seems to be off.
So I would have a bit of advice and review here.
What could be the problem?
Too much influence or too little?
The current version of my Mesh (google drive)
Shoulder Deform/Twist

Pelvis & Leg Pinching

Shoulders
The arms and shoulders look fairly good to me. When you pose the arm above the head you need to move and rotate the shoulder bone up, too. You can do this manually or add drivers to the shoulder bones so that they are adjusted automatically when you pose the arm.
Shoulder Clipping Driver Solution (In 2 Minutes!!!) by Royal Skies LLC - adds an extra bicep bone and driver
EVERY Shoulder & Collar Bone Driver (In 3 Minutes!!!) - more drivers for automated posing
To smooth out deformation you can add a Corrective Smooth modifier to the body mesh.
In the screenshot, there are no extra bones and no drivers. I've just moved the shoulder bones manually.
Comparison of corrective smooth modifier on/off. No extra bones, just moved and rotated shoulder bone
Hands
You need to add twist bones to your forearms for the rotation of the hands. Else there is massive compression at the wrists as you can see in the screenshots.
Pelvis and Upper Leg Area
Your rig has no pelvis bones. When you add them the deformation around the buttocks and thighs will get better. But the model will look a bit chubby because of the compression in the pelvis/thigh area. If you don't like this you can add a driver to the thigh bone that moves it down when the leg is rotated upwards. Additionally, you can add 2 more deform helper bones that pull the "flesh" (mesh) away when the leg bends. Just keep in mind this requires some manual weight paint. It's easy to do but you need to backup your work before you re-bind the mesh to the armature with automatic weights else it gets overwritten. You can transfer the weights with a Data Transfer modifier.
Pelvis and bended knees
Elbows and Knees
To prevent the "scissor effect" add an extra knee bone. This simulates an offset of the pivot point for the shin bone. To improve it more add 2 helper bones that simulate the deformation of the muscles and fat.
See Advanced Rigging In 60 Seconds! and Knee Clipping Drivers for details.
I've done this here for the right leg/knee. For the left knee, I tested a different method. (Advanced Deformation Series Part Two Intersection Rig (Knees and Elbows). It adds an extra bone and rotation constraint to move the pivot point of the shin bone. It doesn't look that good but I might have done something wrong because of the bone rolls.
A 3rd method I found is this knee rig (Riggy Bits #1: Simulating Volume in Joints (Part 1: Theory and Example)) that has several bones to simulate the moving pivot point in 2 directions and preserve volume. It uses bendy bones that only work in Blender and not in game engines.
Waist
Just subdivided the lower spine bone to improve bending, so she can do sit-ups exercises for example.
Toes
Added a bone to each leg to bend the toes. The automatic weights might need little manual weight paint corrections to bend the toes properly.
[upper body / elbow bones
lower body / knee bones and helper bones (right side of the body)
Note about bone rolls
Please note the bone rolls of the bones. In your rig, the leg bones bend around the Z-axis. In most other rigs (Rigify and tutorial rigs) it's the X-axis. As consequence, you have to swap the X and Z-axis, and the sign (-/+) for some driver variables and bone rotation constraints.


motion tracking : how to extract 3d position from selected 2d tracker I already solve my camera and created 3d scene successfully. Now i want to do 2d track the original clip and by using solving data, i want to extract that specific point into 3d coordinate (as empty object or plain axes). How can i do this ?

Thanks

Use Link Empty to track, which will create an empty in the 3D environment that correspond to the tracker


How to stretch or compress a spiral cylinder I have a cylinder-like spiral object as a .STL file (figure). We want to animate compressing and stretching this cylinder (figure). How can this be done?

Edited:

I would try it with 2 shapekeys:

In the Properties panel > Data > Shapekeys, create 2 shapekeys, keep the second selected.
Go in Edit mode, enable the Proportional Editing mode, Linear option, select the top vertices of your object, adjust the influence circle, pull up so that your object looks like your second image.
Back in Object mode, play with the shapekey Value, push it up to 1 if you want the object to be fully spread.
You might need to make some vertices adjustments for one or the other shapekey in Edit mode, in that case deactivate the Proportional Editing.


How to consolidate or collect all the texures used in a project? I want to collect all the textures used in my blender scene so i can save pack them into a folder for archiving purpose (so later i can load it into other machine ) ?
What the fastest way to do this so i don't have to go through them one by one ?

One way is to go:

File > External data > Pack all into .blend.
Save the file (Ctrl+S) - this will actually pack the textures.
File > External data > Unpack All Into Files > Write Files to current directory.

This will create a folder containing all textures that were packed.


How can I convert a hair-particle system into 3D, editable objects? Is it possible to 'apply' a particle system so that it becomes workable 3d objects instead of being hair or emitter objects? If that's possible, then I should hypothetically be able to apply another hair-particle system to those objects, right?

I want to use this to make realistic feathers, if possible. The first hair system would be the shafts of the feathers, and the second would be the barbs.

In the modifier panel click the convert button.

That should do the trick.

Two things to note:

If you're using an object, the objects will be linked when converted.
The original emitter will continue to emit particles. Make sure to either delete the emitter, or delete the particle system.

By the way, CGCookie has a tutorial (archive) on creating a feather if you're interested.


How to make edges smoooth/rounded? This is a small part of the object I want to smoothen so fixing the vertices will take time,
is there a fast way to smoothen the lip of edges of my cylinder?
Exactly like this.

Things I tried but didn't worked:
Subdivision surface modifier,
Bevel modifier,
Bevel node- doesn't look good,
Edit mode Bevel
I provided the blender file below so you'll see the object I'm talking about.
Thank you!

Your topology is not good so the bevel won't work properly, what you can do is:

First apply the scale, otherwise the bevel will be deformed on an axis:

Go in Edit mode, you have a lot of triangles, a quick way to fix it is to select all and X > Limited Dissolve (the default settings will work fine):

Delete the top faces with X > Faces:

You need to delete some rebel vertices along the edge with X > Dissolve Vertices:

Enable the LoopTools addon, select the top edges and right click > LoopTools > Bridge to create new faces:

Select the top edges and CtrlB to bevel. You can tweak all the settings in the Operator box (bottom left of your 3D view):


Multiple questions (mesh/3d view) First off, please ignore my name, it is just for fun.
Second, I would like to ask a question (two questions technically about the same idea) regarding modeling and then I would like to get help with a specific setting that I use very often and has no shortcut key.

1.) Mesh:
When we work in mesh modeling and we assign to the mesh different materials, would those material's setting for the type of preview render count toward the final view of the object (after we exit mesh)? What I mean is that influencing the outlook of the materials if I set e.g. flat or sphere? If this influence it, then what type of preview would be best to leave when we working in the mesh and give different materials to different parts that might be round/semi round, flat and so on? I know there are multiple questions in this, but I just want to understand it better because I see absolutely no change in whatever preview I choose in my final object. Perhaps my PC is not good enough to show it, I don't know.

2.) Key binding:
If someone knows how could I add a shortcut key for toggling Material View, that would be helpful. Something like Z toggles Wireframe View If there is some key that is not bound by default at my left hand zone, then that I would like to be added (doesn't matter if is with shift/alt/ctr the shortcut). I use all default settings, I have got used with that except the background colour that is a bit lighter then standard so that I can work better in wire frame.

Thank you for all the answers, sorry for my bad English.

I'm unfortunately unable to answer your first questions. Hopefully someone else can explain for you in more detail how that works.

Regarding the keybindings, I have a solution for you. If you don't use all of the standard shortcuts to change Methods to display/shade objects in 3D view, you can easily change one of those shortcuts:

Go to File > User Preferences...
Go to the Input tab
In the list, open 3D View > 3D View (Global)
Scroll down to Context Toggle Values (there should be three of them)
Open one of them that you don't use
Change the bottom Value to MATERIAL (keep the first SOLID if you want to be able to toggle between them)
Click on Save User Settings

If you use all of the shortcuts under Context Toggle Values, then continue from step 3:

Scroll all the way down to the last shortcut in 3D View (Global) and click on Add New
Open your new shortcut (named none)
In the box that says none, type wm.context_toggle_enum and press Enter. The RNA box should have changed to WM_OT_context_toggle_enum
In the Context Attributes box, type space_data.viewport_shade
In the upper Value box, type SOLID
In the lower Value box, type MATERIAL
Set the shortcut to whatever you like. I would suggest Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Z, to not interfere with undoing/redoing (press on the button that says A and check the checkboxes for Shift, Ctrl and Alt)
Click on Save User Settings

And that's it! (I've tested this with Blender version 2.76b.)


How to pull up the selected edge and scale to the center at the same time? in this video, after putting 3 loop cuts and making them wider and then deleting their faces, he/she will select the topper edge of each part, and pull it up and scale towards center so that the edge will go under the upper surface all at the same time. I mean the part of the video which some yellow lines appear. I wanna know how he/she will pull up the edge and scale it to the center at the same time.
Thanks in advance.

I stand corrected on my comment, the 'Normal' orientation is not needed here, (although the combination of 'Individual Origins' and the 'Normal' orientation is very handy in situations like this.)
With Pivot set to 'Individual Origins', amd Orientation left at 'Global':
Having Alt selected the horizontal edge loops, and used CtrlShiftNumpad + from initial pairs to select every other cut between tiles, they are V ripped to separate the faces.
Then in Face mode, all faces are S scaled down a bit to make selection of tile bottom-edges a bit easier. With that Edge mode selection, and the cursor near the middle of the view...

GZ raise the bottom edges to tilt the tiles without splaying their bottom corners, and then GG slide, with Alt held to release the clamp.
The tiles can be scaled back again if you want to reduce the cracks between them. Various tile-bottoms are moved up and down a bit, using GG again, for a chirpy randomness. Maybe CtrlShiftB bevelling the corner-vertices makes the tiles a bit cuter.
After Solidify, Bevel (by angle) and Subdivision Surface modifiers..


Other programs support .blend Is there any program that import blender objects and animate them with it

Cuz i have made a 3d logo with blender and it is kind of difficult to animate it  (with my little experience ) with blender so is there any chance of another program??

You can use After Effect with Element 3D and then export the blender file as an OBJ


Ristricting child translation to single axis Object A is the parent of object B. How can I restrict the translation of object B to the X-axis, when object A is translated randomly (along the X-, Y- and Z-axis)?

I tried locking the Y- and Z-axis for Object B, but that doesn't seem to work.

Use a child of constraint on B, set the Target to A and select only Location X.

A's location on the X axis will affect B, all other transformations will not.


Creating game models for android I've been exploring game development for a while now. I have created a small prototype but the models that I downloaded from the internet were too heavy for its small computational power. I have discovered how I could avoid the use of shaders by baking textures and shadows in blender. But I'm still not proficient in optimizing downloaded models for the internet. Basically many models on the internet contain too much detail on the surface but if I will just use textures, I don't require so much detail.

Can someone help me in to understand how I should convert downloaded models, remove extra detail and make it optimized for my use.
My goal is to not have so much detail, I want to show models only from a distance and from only one view. What other optimizations can I employ in this case? Reasoning suggests that we are just using one view I should be able to somehow remove other useless details? How should I do that.
This problem seems very common for android/iPhone developers, which makes me believe that there should be an automated solution to do this and create some low poly, low detail, baked textured models. Is there??

I don't have much experience in this field so I'm using my intuition to guess what could be done. Please point me in the right direction so that I can learn the topic better.

Often, when you make a model for a computer game, you start out by making a high poly model. Then, from this, you make a lowpoly model that is going to be used inside the game. This is almost always a manual process and it is called retopology. After that you can bake both diffuse texture, ambient occlusion and normals from the highpoly to the lowpoly texture. You will find many many tutorials on this.

In your case, you already have the highpoly model. So do a lowpoly version and start baking.

There are numerous ways to create the lowpoly version.

Create the lowpoly mesh from scratch, extrude new vertices and snap them to the faces of the highpoly version. Fill with faces.
Create a grid of new vertices, and use the shrinkwrap modified to make them fit the highpoly model.
CGCookie have a plugin for this, Retopoflow (previous contours-retopology): https://cgcookiemarkets.com/all-products/retopoflow/
BSurfaces allows you to paint with strokes to create the lowpoly model.
The decimate modifier can automaticly reduce the complexity of a highpoly model. But almost always it must be manually corrected with one of the other methods.
more...

A quick youtube search found this (looks ok):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaqYqkjimD8

Blender cookie have many tutorials on this subject, but not all are free:
http://cgcookie.com/blender/page/2/?s=retopology&s_type=tutorials

A super fast tutorial on making a highpoly model super lowpoly:

Step 1. Make your lowpoly model match the outline of the highpoly. Like this:

Step 2. Simple UV-unwrap of the lowpoly (go into edit mode, select all faces and hit U). Mark appropriate edges as seams with Ctrl-E to cut it up. Assign a new image to it.

Step 3. Bake normals to the lowpoly texture like this. Select highpoly, also select lowpoly (select the lowpoly last). Set settings like in the screenshot and hit bake. Save the image as the normal map.

Step 4. Change Bake mode to AO and hit bake again. Save out image.

Final result when combining these two maps into one material in blender. Of course, this will require a shader with a normal texture, but I am pretty certain that JME has it.

This mini-tutorial is very short but it should make you search for more help (or ask questions) on more specific topics (like: how to UV-unwrap a model).

As for your other question. I don't know of any technique to make this more automated.

The dolphin submarine is of my making.


Cycles render Blender 2.79b - Texture/Material being rendered solid black EDIT: So after restarting my pc, and messing around with options I got the texture to show up but it was still broken ( as if it was deepfried ). I retried with a new project and started out with blender render which worked fine, I then switched back to cycles, reapplied the texture and it works fine now. I don't know how but I won't complain.

I am still a beginner with Blender. I imported a csgo model along with it's texture. After I applied the texture, it's visible in texture/material mode but renders completely black when I preview render. Any help is appreciated.

Dropbox - .blend

Dropbox - .tga (texture file if missing)


How can I determine the coordinations of the deepest point of a pit located on a 3D object? I am trying to find the deepest point of a rough pit located on a rough 3d object. The pit is full of irregular vertices.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1muCjhRDHhwo3AnY194BAvkaCpPIdyWhx

I cannot determine which one of them is the lowest. Could you please help me?
Thanks!

Local minima

Calculus is full of finding maxima and minima of equations.  Numerical methods , generally iterative, can be employed to find turning points based from  Newton's Method or Gradient Descent to name a couple.

Turning points occur where the derivative (tangent) is zero.  Inconveniently the mesh isn't defined as an equation.  For every vertex there is a normal, that is perpendicular to the tangent.

Vertex selected in "ding" in icosphere test

As a simple test case, for each vertex:

Create an imaginary plane from coordinate and normal.
For all vertices of neighbouring faces if the distance to plane is greater than or equal to zero then it is "below" all neighbours and considered a local minimum
The test is looking at all neighbouring verts being above, for a really rough mesh this may need to be relaxed slightly.

Simple edit mode test script.

import bpy
import bmesh

from mathutils.geometry import distance_point_to_plane as dp2p
context = bpy.context
context.tool_settings.mesh_select_mode = (True, False, False)
ob = context.edit_object
me = ob.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
bm.select_flush(True)

for v in bm.verts:
    # define "vertex" plane
    p_no = v.normal
    p_co = v.co
    # neighbouring verts
    nvs = set(nv for f in v.link_faces for nv in f.verts)
    v.select = all(
            dp2p(nv.co,p_co,p_no) <= 0
            for nv in nvs)

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)

Result of reversal of test. dp2p(nv.co,p_co,p_no) <= 0 as a useful way to find concavities

Once a point is selected its local depth (depth from surface) could be calculated (estimated) by selecting out from point until distance from plane stops increasing, and choose the max.

As mentioned this is a very simple test. Once a vicinity is known a more robust method like raycasting could be employed.


Evenly create gaps between objects? I've got a bunch of randomly-sized pillars and they are all connected. I want to create an even gap between all the pillars, almost like a city. I can't find a way to accomplish this.

Scale center points

You can manipulate the center points of the objects by enabling the little icon with the double arrows next to the pivot center select.

By setting the 3D cursor as pivot you'll be able to Scale not the object, but only it's center point location on the needed axis (X firts and then Y in the example shown below):


Transparent material from 2.79 is solid in 2.82 I just switched from 2.79 to 2.82 and I face 2 problems. In 2.79 I could simply select a material to be transparent and set the parameters (alpha etc.). I do not find these options in the 2.82 materials menu. Are they gone? Even worse: When I import old files from 2.79 formerly transparent materials are now solid. Do I have to switch back to the old version? I only need simple transparency, no imported images or more complex stuff.

Cycles still works the same.
But in Eevee, you need to enable transparency per material.

Set Blend Mode to Alpha Blend in the material settings.


System is Slow when using booleans Just started doing some of Blender Tutorials and was wondering why things are slowing down. Not things like pan and orbit, they're fine . But moving booleans around is painfully slow. Like when you try to reposition them to change the effect. This is not a complex model. I have a  newer Dell laptop Core i9-10980 2.4 GHz Nvidia Gforce RTX 2070 Super and 32 gb of ram. I thought this would be more than sufficient to handle the software. I was on the phone with Dell and they checked everything out and there was no difference running Blender afterward. Is there something in the preferences that I need to set?

Using the Fast modifier instead of Exact (default).


How to assign different colors to splines viewable in the viewport? When importing a .dxf architectural drawing I get all lines drawn in a dark green color. (however they had been assigned unique colors in autocad)

Is there an option to change the appearance of one or more line colors to achieve a better organized scene? (preferably in the viewport without any additional modifiers.)

In the past I've imported several .svg files but they always seem to turn out as a black outline in the viewport.

I wasn't able to find much documentation about this subject.

Machine specs:
Windows 8.1
Blender 2.78a
Renderer: Cycles

I see that if you give the curve object/spline a tiny bit of Depth, then you can set a material to it and see it in viewport. I have exaggerated the Depth here and set it to 'Full' but you can see here what is going on. If the spline does show a color in the imported material, possibly it will show after giving it some depth.


Why does my frame range start automatically revert back to 0 after I set it? I want to do as described here: How Do You Start Animation At A Specific Frame?

Whether I use the setter below the timeline, or the one in the render panel, immediately after I set it--clicking anywhere else--it goes back to 0.  Also trying to set it via the arrows, you can't get past 1, and that also reverts to 0 as soon as you click elsewhere.  Even if I type it in the render panel and the next thing I do is click the anim button (while the typing caret is still there), it has gone back to 0 before the render begins:

Is there some context in which this is normal behaviour?  If so, how can I change it?

Never mind, I forgot to mention I'm using an add-on, and with that disabled, this doesn't happen.  So it must be overriding it.


Rounding edges of extrusion Afternoon, pardon my noob question but I've only started learning in the last few days.
I'm looking to roll the edge of this around neatly
[
So they're neatly curved, but not as in the bevel tool which rolls them in. Maintain the up and down sides but making them circular.

I'm working on the headlights here.

Tried the 'spin' tool but I think I lack the skills at the moment to get it to work right. Suggestions and some steps would be really appreciated! :)
Thanks so much.

Maybe this is a good place to contrast direct modelling, where you make curved profiles yourself, and subdivision-surface modelling, where you construct a framework, and anticipate how Catmull-Clark subdivision will make curves for you.

Bottom Row: Direct modelling
On the bottom row, the corner-verticals are selected, and then bevelled with enough segments to give you the curve with the required resolution. (If you bevel with 'Clamp Overlap' on, and take the width as far as you can, you will get a perfect circular arc. There will be duplicate vertices where the bevels meet: you can remove those with M Merge > By Distance)
Then the sharp top and bottom edges of the extrusion are narrowly bevelled too, with a couple of segments, to give smooth-shading some guidance. Without that bevel, the smooth-shading would interpolate normals straight over the transition from the horizontal to vertical faces, with a very unnatural looking result. (You can also guide the smooth-shading by splitting the normals, with Auto Smooth.)
Advantages / Disadvantages:
Up to step 3, so far, so good, for lower-poly modelling. The geometry has a lower resolution, so you can see curves are segmented on close inspection, but the shading makes them look smooth. Long thin triangles have been created in the base plane, but so long as it is flat, so smooth-shading doesn't have to interpolate normals across those, that's fine. This is the kind of topology that Booleans, and CAD packages, often generate.
The direct approach has advantages, up to step 3: it's quick, and limits the number of edges propagating across the model. The disadvantages become apparent at step 4, if you want to use a Subdivision Surface modifier. The triangles have broken the flow of face loops. If you do need to subdivide the geometry for higher resolution, that does not play well. Also, a lot of Blender's (and other applications') tools are geared to selecting, inserting, and sliding loops of consecutive quadrilateral faces. The triangles make the model harder to adjust, further down the line.
Top Row: Subdiv. Modelling
Here, a couple of extra loops are CtrlR cut down the length of the extrusion, and the corners are scaled back to give it half-hexagon ends.  Again, at step 3, the sharp edges are bevelled, to hold the normals. Some loops are cut across the extrusion, too. These are optional, but can be used to control the curvature that's generated by the Catmull-Clark subdivision modifier at step 4. Step 4 in both rows shows the result of 2 levels of subdivision, optimally displayed, and the 5th copy shows all the edges generated by the subdiv.


Blender CUDA Rendering I am using Blender 2.66a a nVidia GT 520 and Ubuntu 13.10. I wanted to enable GPU rendering. But in the System Panel there is no 'CUDA' Option.
 I know that this Card supports CUDA, because I have tested it on Windows 7 (dual- boot) too and it worked.
I installed the proprietary GPU driver using

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

Any ideas why it doesnt work?
Thanks in the preface

I agree with @Matt, especially if you are on a laptop. Whether you are on a laptop or a desktop PC, I would check the following settings in Blender. Also, when using GPU rendering in Cycles, make sure to check the settings in the Properties tab -> Performance -> Tiles. By default the two numbers under the "Tiles" settings usually are 64 x 64 (pixels). If you are able to get your Nvidia GT 520 video card to work, try bumping up those numbers to 200 x 80 and see if that helps. The other thing i recommend checking is the "Sampling" menu in the Properties panel. If the final render has a high sample number (i.e. - 800 or above), that can also cause render time to be slow.


Mesh Disapearance in Material mode Just when I went to Material mode to check if my textures were fine, half of my mesh seemed to disapear and once selceted the mesh, the half disapeard looked like in Wireframe view.

I tried changing in the Properties Panel and in Camera settings the Clipping End value but it doesn't help.

By the way this happens when I am looking through the Camera and when I am just in 3D view, and also the problem don't appear in Solid / Texture / Render mode.

p.s. There are no Modifiers on them, and this is happening in Cycles Render.

Alright guys the problem got fixed by itself after I restarted the file

Make sure that the maximum draw type is set to textured and not Wireframe:

[


Average normals at vertices before exporting I'm not 100% sure if I'm using the right terminology since I'm fairly new to 3D model editing. Please try to go easy on me :)

I am currently writing a program in OpenGL. I'm using Blender to edit my models, and I'm exporting to OBJ (Wavefront) before loading them into my program. It turns out that all the vertex normals are the same as the face normals; that is, the vertex normals along two triangle edges might look something like in this image: (ignore the text; I'm borrowing these images from opengl-tutorial.org because they clearly illustrate my question)

I have some shapes that I would like to render smoothly (my shaders interpolate between normals, if that pertains to the question), so I would rather the normals look something like this: (where the arrow pointing up is actually two overlapping normals from the same vertex)

Probably the simplest way to get these "curve normals" would be to average the two normals for each face connected to a vertex. Does anyone know how to do this in Blender?

The smooth button does it for you.
(Left side) Object Tools -> Smooth (under Shading),
Then when you go File -> Export -> Wavefront (.obj),
 make sure you click on the Include Normals checkbox.


Deleting edges and face problem I simply want to delete those things that are selected, edges and face. I removed doubles, tried every option which offers when I press "x" but with some options nothing happens, and with some all mesh above this gets messed up.

hit the 1 key to go to Vertex select mode. Deselect everything, tap B for Box select and drag box around bottom vertices to select those.

Then hit X and select vertices to delete.


Rendering results are corrupting between blocks I recently updated Blender from 2.74 to 2.76b and I've been getting buggy rendering results with Blender render. Images are corrupting between rendering blocks and strange vertical cracks are shown in result.

Editing is ok in 3D view with rendered viewport:

I've uploaded a minimum set of .blend file to demonstrate this:

http://1drv.ms/1KPbZef

When I render this project as an image, I get following result:

Then, how can I fix this? Is this bug, or just misconfiguration?

Just switch to perspective camera:

And your Render will look normal:


2 issues with Multires Modifier I have two problems. They are both visible in the gif.

1.) The Sculpt level 0 shape/silhouette hardly resembles the Sculpt level 1 silhouette. I doubt I can bake a good normal map to level 0 if the silhouette is so different. Is that supposed to be that way or can it be avoided?

2.) After I did some sculpting on different multires levels I begin to have stray vertices coming out from the mesh in some places, only visible on certain multires levels. If I smooth them back in then it messes up the other levels (then the other multires level show strange vertices too), if I smooth them back in then I get the same issue on the other multires level again. Anyone know why that is?

Edit: Q1  was solved by MrZaks tip to click "apply base" and the stray vertices Q2 were gone when I cleaned up the topology inside the mouth.

Kudos to MrZak:
Q1 is solved if you just press "Apply Base" in the Multires Modifier.

Q2 I am not 100% sure but the stray vertices stemmed from a messy quad structure inside the mouth. After I cleaned that up they were gone.


Can Blender do mathematical reservoir simulation for petroleum engineer? Can Blender do reservoir simulation like Petrel Schlumberger and CMG do for petroleum engineer?
I'm a student of petroleum engineering, and I love Blender more than my girlfriend.

Like this :

No. Blender is not designed to run scientific simulations. You will need to find another tool for the job. There are no tools designed for that in Blender and if you wanted to script them in Python using Blender's Python API you should also consider that Blender mostly stores data as 32 bit floats that might not be ideal for any scientific applications where precise calculations are important.


Shortcut to change Type of Sequencer View There's three buttons in the VSE header that let you turn on/off the preview and sequencer:

Do these have a keyboard shortcut?  And if no, is it possible to set one up?

The default shortcut to change view type in the sequencer is CtrlTab

The one shortcut cycles through each display option.


UV Unmapping Specific Mesh I'm trying to add an image to the top side of my cube. I have marked the seams and unwrapped it, and when I choose to add the image to the cube, it gets wrapped up on all sides, rather than the specific location. How can I fix this?

Thank you.

There are several solutions, if you only want to show the picture on the top face you can simply give a material to the top face and another one to the other faces... if you want to keep the same material on all the faces, for example because you want to use the same red background, just scale down the UV of these faces in the UV Editor so that you only have red


Green and red color on my baked normal map appearing Hi, it is me again. This time, I am having an issue with normal map baking. I have random red and green on my normal map that which are creating strange white shapes on my model. I tried a lot of things like playing with the ray distance and margin. I also make sure that my high poly model is not overlapping my low poly model.
Now, I am stuck with this, do you have any idea?

By the way, I am doing this character for a video game, is normal map baking on low poly character the better method or should I do it an other way?

Thank you!

Sometimes the ray distance might not work and will create errors like these. I had the same problem where I will adjust the ray distance and I'll still get these red and green errors. So when this happens, there is the cage method.

Duplicate the low poly mesh and make sure it overlaps the low poly and high poly model and rename it "Cage".

With the Cage selected, go into Edit Mode and face selection mode. Press A to select all of the faces.

Press Alt + S to scale it in the normals. Make sure to hold down Shift so to scale it slowly. Scale it so it encapsulates the entire high poly mesh.

Now, depending on your model, you may have to go into Edit Mode with the cage object so that no detail in the high poly is poking through the cage.
Example: In this image you can see a part of the high poly poking through the cage. So edit the cage so that it covers it entirely.
From this:

To this:

Now go to the Bake panel, click the check box next to Cage and select your cage object.

Bake and see if the green red errors disappear. You may have to edit your cage object again to cover up certain areas the high poly model. Keep editing and baking until your normal map is error free!


How to add drivers in node inputs in python? I am trying to add a driver in a node entry in the World.
The following script fail with
"TypeError: bpy_struct.driver_add(): property "inputs" not animatable
"
I can't find sample of similar code. Any help?

import bpy
scn = bpy.context.scene

wd = scn.world
nodes = wd.node_tree.nodes
wd.node_tree.nodes.clear()

DR1 = nodes.new('ShaderNodeMath')
drv = DR1.driver_add("inputs",0)

Drive the default_value property of a particular input channel.

>>> n = C.scene.world.node_tree.nodes.new("ShaderNodeMath")
>>> d = n.inputs[0].driver_add("default_value")

>>> d.driver.expression
'0.5'

>>>


Animation Nodes move certain mesh vertices I would like to move certain vertices from an animated mesh object along its normals to create a new mesh (or use face normals and create new point). Is it possible to choose certain vertices and also to vary the length of the normal vector.

I am new to Animation nodes and I have no idea how to do that

the "Object Mesh Data" Node has a hidden input called "Vertex Normals". Press n to open the properties panel in the node editor and activate the output by clicking on the little eye icon.

you can then use a vector math node to scale the vertices along their normals. shuffle the vertex list and remove all but the first vertices.

That's it.

Parameters to control the output:

Scaling factor of the first vector math node: there you can control how far away each point is from the base mesh
Node Seed of the shuffle list node: shuffles the list in another order, other vertices get deleted from the end of the vertex list
end of the slice list node: controls the amount of vertices that don't get deleted

Bonus
node setup with splines (like in your reference image):

Let me know if you need anything else or a deeper explanation


How to exclude objects from cloth's collision? I have a bed in a room with lots of objects. I'd like to put a sheet over the bed by simulating the sheet as cloth falling over the bed (which has collision enabled).

Problem is, I have many other objects around the bed which has collision enabled.

I tried to hide everything except the bed and the sheet, but the sheet is still affected by the collision of the other objects.

I would prefer not to move the bed out of the way, nor disable collision on the other objects because I need it for other simulations.

Is there a way to specify or exclude objects that the sheet can collide with?

Yes. This is possible with Collision groups.

Make a Group of the objects you want the sheet to collide with. (select objects and press CtrlG)

Set that group in the cloth collision settings for the sheet under Cloth Collision > Collision Group:

Now the sheet object will only collide with the objects in the group Bed.


Is it possible to call a function contained in an addon (__init__.py) already installed in blender Is it possible to call a function contained in an addon (__init__.py) already installed in blender, through a script of another addon always installed?

The function in question is a simple (self, context) with no input

Yes.  Actually the next version of the glTF export addon (for upcoming Blender 2.82) will contain a new ability for 3rd-party addons to place glTF extensions into the exported file.  The code for this feature looks something like this:

    if bpy.app.version < (2, 80, 0):
        preferences = bpy.context.user_preferences
    else:
        preferences = bpy.context.preferences

    for addon_name in preferences.addons.keys():
        try:
            if hasattr(sys.modules[addon_name], 'glTF2ExportUserExtension') or hasattr(sys.modules[addon_name], 'glTF2ExportUserExtensions'):
                extension_panel_unregister_functors.append(sys.modules[addon_name].register_panel())
        except Exception:
            pass

In the code above, all addons are searched (via preferences.addons.keys()), but of course you could limit your search to a specifically-named addon, if desired.

Once an addon is found, hasattr is used to look for a specific class name within that addon.  It will call a register_panel function within that class, to register the custom extension's options into the glTF file export UI.


Understanding rigid body physics I'm following this great tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gM8yEMFMjg to learn how to fill a mesh with a particle system but am having trouble replicating the simulation (at 6 min 50 sec if interested). I'm using Blender 2.8

To put it very simply, in my scene I have two meshes as follows

The larger mesh has Passive rigid body, displayed as wire, and with normals set to the inside

The smaller mesh inside has Active rigid body, with sphere collision shape

When I run the simulation, instead of the smaller mesh settling on the bottom of the larger mesh, it flys out into space ignoring its container completely. How can I get them to behave?

Here is a link to the file https://drive.google.com/file/d/19teuR5pLl0xqDDRli7tOwsv7u0lYx-Ij/view?usp=sharing

I'm no expert, but I'll see if I can help quickly.  Is the outer mesh with normals pointed in the right idea?  You might need to give it some thickness somehow, perhaps by using a solidify modifier on its surfaces.  Or maybe the whole thing is trying to behave as a solid (even though you say the normals face inwards) ...if the tutorial got you here, then that sounds wrong.  But just because it is being displayed as a wireframe doesn't mean it isn't a solid.  (I don't think; I've been away from blender for a minute)


Change imported model orientation This is what I get when I import a character in Blender :

As you can see the character is not in the right position. I would like to see it "standing".

Can I rotate the camera like this ? (here I just rotated the screenshot I took)

Or is my only solution to rotate the character itself ?

You can easily fix this, no need to move the camera to compensate for the orientation of the mesh. You can rotate the mesh by adjusting the rotation in the properties tab, you can also use the mesh tab. You can also do this for many method for multiple objects. Just select the object that need to be fixed and rotate them via r x 90

You can also fix this when you import the mesh. I am assuming you are importing as .obj but this should also work for others. When you import the mesh set the Foawrd axis to -Y and the Up axis to Z.


UV Unwrap Order Of Operations (Cloth Sim) I am making a shirt for a character I have made, and I want to get a UV unwrap so I can properly apply textures and such after it is made. I am going to be using a cloth simulation to get the shirt to drape on the body properly. I have already created the base mesh for the shirt, and marked out seams for where I want the UVs to unwrap. My question is this: Do I need to do the UV unwrap BEFORE doing the cloth sim and baking it in, AFTERWARDS, or does it not matter? Thanks in advance for any help with this topic!

Although the end result should theoretically be the same, you should probably unwrap the base mesh prior to running the simulation.

It will be much easier to get a clean UV map with a proper layout from a plain undeformed base mesh then from a wrinkled and highly subdivided result of the physics simulation.

However, unless you apply the result of the simulation, you can always sweep the timeline backwards at any time, and return to a point before the first frame of the simulation, where the mesh is still intact.

So you can theoretically still UV Map a mesh if you already ran a simulation, as long as you can still revert to the base mesh shape.


How to save (not as a blender file) I know where the "save" button is, I save but it`s a blender file in my files. I need it to be a 3d object that I can view in my laptops 3d viewer. It was that way when I first saved it, now it saves it automatically as a blender file. Can some one help?

You want to export your model, rather than save the file.

You need to know which file format your 3d viewer uses and select it from the menu.  Not all of the export formats are enabled by default.  You need to go to user preferences (CTRL-ALT-U), switch to the addons tab and look for the right exporter

You can find most of the exporters by selecting the import-export category.

If the exporter you want isn't there, then search for the question 'how do I export files of type


Texture showing in preview render, but not in finished render I added a plane, UV-unwrapped it, and added a Checkerboard image texture. It shows perfectly fine in the render preview, but when I render it, it doesn't show /:

I checked the nodes, etc. I'm using Blender Cycles (:

you have hidden some objects from the viewport but not from the render
change from this

to this


Transform Constraint I have 3 animated cubes, two of which, Cube 1 and Cube 2, start stacked on top of each other and off to the negative X of the other one, Cube 3. Cube 1 moves forward along the X axis. Cube 2 moves along the X axis under Cube 1 (transform constraint) while rotating around its Z axis. Cube 3 moves from Y=0 to Y=2 for every full (360°) rotation of Cube 2, then it jumps back to Y=0 as Cube 2 begins another rotation.

I would like to change this behavior so that, within one 360° rotation of Cube 2, Cube 3 would move from Y=0 to Y=2 and then smoothly back to Y=0, behaving like a pendulum.

See the animation in my .blend file; I hope that helps you understand me.

That sounds like a job for a driver. Remove the constraint on Cube.002, right click on it's Y location value and select Add Single Driver. The Y value will then be filled with purple.

You edit the driver value in the graph editor with it's mode set to Drivers. More info on editing drivers is available in the blender wiki.

You want to use the Z rotation of Cube.001, displaying the debug value shows that it varies from -180 to 180. You want to ignore the negative part of the value so abs(var) will remove that, then divide that by 180 and multiply it to get a larger range of movement. That leaves you with a calculation of (abs(var)/180)*100. Changing the 100 used will change the distance Cube.002 moves. You can add a value at the end to move the range of movement away from 0.0.


How to copy keyframes from one Action to another? I am looking for a way to copy all keyframes from Action A to Action B with time offset X using python.

Any ideas?

Here is a script that copies actionA (hardcoded to "CubeAction", change to suit) to actionB and adds a frame offset to each key.

import bpy
# change how action is picked
# actionA = bpy.context.object.animation_data.action
actionA = bpy.data.actions.get("CubeAction")
if actionA is not None:
    # copy the action
    actionB = actionA.copy()
    offset = 10 # frames
    # iter thru fcurves and move keyframes by offset
    for fc in actionB.fcurves:
        for kf in fc.keyframe_points:
            kf.co.x += offset

Note this can also be done pretty simply in the NLA, by moving an action strip to the desired frame start.  This way you can keep all your actions as starting at frame 1.


How to select a specific vertex in UV unwrapping? I'm trying to UV unwrap one of my objects.

My problem is that I can't select a vertex in the UV window when it is at the edge of a Cut (Marked seam). Instead, it automatically selects the vertex on the other side of the cut.

[][1]

The red arrow indicates the vertex I selected. the blue circle indicates the vertex that gets selected.

Can someone tell me what the problem is here?

Just after I posted this question, I found the answer myself.

I had this Button enabled

"Keep UV and edit mode mesh in sync"


How to bend a mesh evenly? I am working on the mesh that I'm trying to bend 250 degrees around itself.

I tried using simple deform modifier but as a result I keep on getting following result.

What should I do in order to 'block' or make all the lines follow the bend so that when looking from the top view none of the line would surpass?

The problem was in the construction of the mesh. I added loop cuts to each of the lines and then bended it using the simple deform modifier.

Final result


Snap to alignment with other vertices (implicit grid) I could not find anything like what I'm thinking, though it is hard to search for 'snapping' without getting a lot of mixed results.

What I'm looking for is an add-on or behavior where the vertices of your mesh form an implicit 3D grid system, so that you can snap to the closest grid planes automatically.

Example: Given a usual triangle, say you want to move the bottom right vertex to the top of the triangle (only z). You move that corner vertex upwards and once it aligns with the top vertex in the z-axis, it would snap to that z-value.

Most of the snapping I've seen is to the vertex/edge/face itself, this is more snap to align with closest.

I'm not completely sure if I understand your question, but this is how I would go about your example.

  Example: Given a usual triangle, say you want to move the bottom right
  vertex to the top of the triangle (only z). You move that corner
  vertex upwards and once it aligns with the top vertex in the z-axis,
  it would snap to that z-value.

select the bottom right vertex of the triangle;
switch snapping mode to 'vertex, closest, move';
press g to move the vertex;
press z to lock the z axis;
hold control to enable snapping while moving;
move the cursor to the top vertex of the triangle.


Rigging problems afoot I'm totally a rigging noob, so I followed this quick and easy tutorial to rig my cartoony 3D model, and it was all peaches and cream for now, until i parented the model with the armature. The feet twist unnaturally just by connecting the armature, without even moving the mesh. Everything else seems just fine, as far as movement and weighting goes, but the feet! I took a few screenshots before and after connecting the armatures together, and I really want to get this fixed. I tried adding loop edges, resizing, adjusting the position of the foot armatures, nothing is working. I also read about Ctrl+a -> Scale, which I tried, and its not fixing the problem either. I don't know what else to do. I don't want to be a rigging nooblet forever!

Will I have to remake the mesh or the armature at all?[![][1]Before rigging][1]

After rigging

Nevermind, fixed it! I checked the bones again after I checked another thread and fixed the bones' rotatopn to 0 (it was set to values like 90, and 177.23 or so) and it realigned the feet. I must have rotated them while building the armature by accident.

(how do I mark this as Answered...?)


How to create a curved surface for Savonius VAWT? I recently saw this .gif on wikimedia commons.
I have now decided to try 3d modelling the Savonius VAWT, but my question is, how can one create such curved surfaces? They aren't possible to be recreated using the primitive objects already available, so the question is how to add this quirky curve?I am a beginner and have learned a lot from the Blender Stack Exchange Community, so I'm requesting further assistance.

To me they just look like three half cylinders, rotated by 120°.
Add a cylinder, select the top and bottom face and half of its shell and delete them.

Then select the remaining faces and move them so that the last straight edge is located on the center of the scene. Make sure the 3D cursos is located at the center as well. If it is not, hit [Shift+S] and select "Cursor to Center". Make the cursor your current transformation center by pressing [.]

Duplicate the vertices by pressing [Shift+D] and immediatly press [Esc] to cancel translation. Rotate the selected vertices by pressing [R] and moving your mouse or by typing the desired angle of 120 degrees on your keyboard. If you chose to use the mouse, you can hold [Ctrl] to make Blender increment the angle in five degree steps. This makes aiming for 120° easier. Hit enter to apply the rotation. Duplicate the selected vertices again and rotate them in the same manner.
The result should look something like this:

If you want to give it some thickness, go to the modifiers tab and select the solidify modifier:


How to resync the linked proxy to incorporate changes in the main file Let's suppose I had a rig(Root) parented to a mesh X in a file named blend_1. Now I link the whole collection in which those two are to another blender file(Blend_2). Now, I make a proxy for Root, Then I make two actions and while animating  I discover that there are weight painting issues in Root, so I decided that instead of Root being a parent to mesh X I want it to be parented to mesh Y. So, I unparent mesh X and parent the Root to mesh Y in blend_1, But the problem is those parenting changes are not incorporated in blend_2.
Is there a way to resync proxy such that my current animations for the Root can be used on the mesh Y as well?
I am using blender 2.91

One way I found- roughly speaking- is to close both the files and open them again hereby resyncing.
Another more appropriate way is:
Outliner change Display mode  to blender file
Then you will see the linked file-> right click you will get options to relocate, reload.


Compositor has a different effect when editing Render Result vs external PNG image? I get a different resulting image for each of these three situations:

I edit the true Render Result directly with "Render Layers" node in the compositor. (The Render Result image was never saved externally.)
I save the Render Result as a PNG file, and then edit the externally-saved image with an Image node in the compositor.
I save the Render Result as a PNG file, open the image with an Image node in the compositor, and connect the Image node to the Composite node. The external image is now loaded into "Render Result" (kind of like a pseudo render). I then edit "Render Result" with the "Render Layers" node in the compositor.

The second two situations gives me different results from the first.

What I want is the first result, but then I need to re-render if I accidentally close Blender during the process or want to make additional changes with the compositor in the future (since the "true" render is deleted upon closing Blender, and all I can save is the PNG).

Is the saved PNG missing some kind of information that the "true" Render Result image has? How can I remedy this?

(Note that I tested this by using a "Glare" node. This node seemed to have no actual glare effect for situation #2... it only darkened/lightened the whole image. It had a sparkly/glowy effect for situations #1 and #3, but they were very different.)

(I'm new to Blender.)

This issue is that the exported image has been conveted using color management transforms.

In short words, the renderer will determine a light value for each pixel, with range from 0 to infinity in a linear way. When you export an image every value will be converted to fit the 0.0 (black) - 1.0 (white) range, and applies a transform, determined by the settings on the color management section.

The values of the two images (rendered and exported) will be different. In other words: the original values are unbound and linear (also known as Scene Referred), the values on a PNG are limited and a "gamma curve" has been applied so the values are no longer linear (they have been converted to Display Referred)

See this answer for more detailed infos Render with a wider dynamic range in cycles to produce photorealistic looking images.

Saving the image as EXR files, will allow you to retain the original unbound and linear light values!


Why can't I rotate anymore an object? I can no longer rotate a object. Can anyone please help me? I don't know what shortcut I pressed because now I can't rotate any object in my scene.

Look in the Outliner and make sure the "Arrow" icon next to the object hasn't been pressed (Grey). If so just click it (White).