Select faces within a selection Checked for similar answers.

What would be the easiest way to select the faces within the already selected faces.

thank you

Surprisingly, the [hover-L] and [CtrlL] operations select contiguous faces by visibility, not underlying geometry.. so.. in Edit Mode..

H hide the selected perimeter faces
With the cursor over an inner face, L. Or, having selected an inner face, CtrlL
AltH unhide the perimeter faces again

Hiding geometry is more useful than it might seem, at first.


Multires Normal Baking Leaving Blank Image I know there is a question with this same wording, but the solution given is not working for me.

I have a "Venom" head that is modeled and ready to bake out a normal map.

I have tried setting the multires "Preview" to 0 through 5, while keeping "Render" and "Sculpt" at 5.  Note, while the multires is set to "not visible" below, I tried with and without visibility enabled.

Regardless, the Normal Map only bakes a blank normal map.

I solved this after messing around for about 45 minutes - posted anyway in case someone else is as boneheaded.  The multires needs to be set to "Render".  Once I did this, it worked fine.

EDIT: To clarify, the multires modifier "render button" (the button that determines whether or not the modifier is used during renders) must be "on" when baking the normals.


Fastest way to turn a ring of unconnected vertices into an edgeloop? Let's say I have these two rings and they even match in vertexcount.

Is there a tool I have overlooked that will bridge them properly into a nice and clean faceloop?

Turning each ring into an edgeloop is good enough, too.

Select all the inner faces with Circle Select or Lasso tool. Press F to create a face, then X and Only Faces to remove the face and leave just the edges. Select the outer vertices and repeat FX. You should now have two loops - simply select all and Bridge Edge Loops.

As an alternative to Bridge Edge Loops, select two adjacent pairs of vertices and remove the two edges between each and join opposite ones to make a ‘C’ shape that almost joins. Select all and Grid Fill. Select the vertices around the gap and F to create the face.

Animated gif showing the process :


3d Grease pencil fill When drawing in a 3d space with grease pencil, is there a way to fill a curved / endless plane. for example, If I draw a rectangle, with 2 square corners on one end and a radius on the other. And then Duplicate and drag over.  is it possible to fill The gap between the 2 grease pencil objects? I have not yet found if this is possible.

To convert any Mesh object to 3D Grease Pencil object we need Animation Nodes with Extra Nodes(Builds available for Linux, Windows),

(1) First we have to get all the individual polygon (face) vertices using Mesh Object Node and Separate Polygons Node. Separate Polygons Node is needed because all
polygons are joined i.e., they are sharing some vertices,

(2) then convert a polygon vertices to a close (cyclic) grease pencil stroke with fill using GPencil Stroke Output Node.

(3) Because a mesh has many polygons (faces) so we are going to use the Loop Group Node (Loop Input) to convert all polygons to fill grease pencil strokes (cyclic).

(4) Now we have all strokes as output from the Loop Node, with GPencil Object Output Node we can convert them to a grease pencil object.

Happy Noding :)


How can I parent a rig to another rig? I have a rigged object that I'd like one of my characters, who is also rigged, to be holding even as his arms move. How can I attach this object to his hand?

When animating a character they may need to pick up objects and move them around. The ChildOf constraint is useful for this. The advantage of using the ChildOf constraint is that you can animate the influence to allow the character to pick up and put down the object.

As you can specify an armature and bone to parent to you can also parent different object bones to different character bones, allowing you to have the character hold a piece in each hand and stretch them, or hold the doll body in one hand and lift the doll arm in the other.


How to Remove these small box(edge) structure from face in blender? I want to remove this small box structure from the face and want the face as sown in second image

On the left menu of your 3D view (activated with T) click Tools tab > Shading panel > Faces > Smooth. Also I think you have to recalculate your normals: enter  Edit mode, select all, and press Ctrl+N


Blender as python module, 'Context' object has no attribute 'object' I understand that running blender without a GUI does not provide bpy.context for the 3d View. Can anyone help me with a work around. This results in a 'Context' object has no attribute 'object' error.

for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
    for object in scene.objects:
        if bpy.context.mode == 'OBJECT':
            if object.name != 'Lamp':
                if object.name != 'Camera':
                    print("deleting " + object.name)
                    bpy.ops.object.delete(use_global=False)
                    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cone_add({'scene': scene, 'active_object': object})
                    print(bpy.context.object)

Variables are not always available in the context, typically you can access them directly, in the case of the active object you can access it from
scene.objects.active (most collections that have an active member work this way).


how to set up background image for edge modelling a head? I'm looking to try out edge modeling a human head in a method similar to the one shown in this video. I plan on using this image here, but I can't seem to be able to find a way to set it up like in that video. The method he used to add those reference images is gone in 2.8, and I don't know how to achieve the same effect.

What should I do? What's the best way to set up a background/reference image for edge modeling a head? Are there any ways to do it like in that video?

Just add a background/refeence image.
You can then control its appearance in the properties panel.

Add > Image > Reference/Background

You can adjust the appearance, position, opacity


Object not visible in render I have a model which you can see here (camera perspective).

In the second image, you can see how the render turned out.

I'm at my wit's end trying to figure our why it's not showing up in the render. If anyone needs more information, just ask and I'll get it to you. I've already checked the normals and they're not the cause.

In object mode press W -> clear all restricted render. That will make all objects visible in the render. Also you can select and object and hit Ctrl+Alt+H to unrestrict render on the selected object. If there are objects that you have that you do not want rendered you can click the camera button next to the objects name in the outliner which is usually the top right window. This toggles camera visibility.
Version 2.80+ : Press F3 to bring in the search operator  and type clear all restrict render.


How to hide all subdivision to optimize viewport I'm working on a scene that is entirely based on subdivision loops, As time passes by the scene got detailed and the view-port got laggy.
I turned off subdivision views to optimize it, but that meant I'll have to go through hundreds of assets. Its there a shorter and safer way to turn off all subdivision?

first select all the meshes with subdivision and select one active object(indicated by yellow)

then turn of subdivision surface modifier on that mesh.

after that click on that eye thing and right click

then just click on copy to selected and you shouold be fine


Dotted line on curve? I'm making a video, and I have two identical objects that start in the same place and then separate. I want to have a dotted line connecting them which appears only when the two objects start separating and continues to grow as the objects continue to separate. This takes out using the array modifier.

Make a curve, attach empties as hooks to each end of the curve, parent then those hooks/empties to the objects.
That way when the objects move apart the curve will follow and grow.

For the curve to have some thickness, make it 3d and add some bevel.

CYCLES rendering

To create the dotted lines for the curve, use a checker texture to control the transparency on a material .


how to display only texture (100%in color) in evee viewport ? 2.8 I need to see the texture in 100% color without any lightning on the model. How can to disable all the lightning so the model is displayed only textured?

I have found another way:

In the upper right of your 3D viewport are settings for the viewport shading method. Select the white sphere (Solid mode) and then choose Flat and Texture.


How to render a cycles scene in luxrender? I'm doing a project in cycles and I want to render it but its too slow on my CPU. So I want to render the scene in luxrender but without starting the project all over again.

Luxrender in version 1.6 (latest iteration) offers a basic material converter. Check out the release notes on the Luxrender Site here (scroll down to the last entry): http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/New_in_1-6

The button to convert all materials is in the render tab:

to convert elements individually, do a space bar search in the 3D viewport. Hit Space and enter 'convert' gives you these functions:

Disclaimer: If this makes your renderings FASTER I'm not sure. It depends on the scene and the aim. But it gives you a quicker starting point.


sculpting - Everything is edgy and sharp, but I want it smooth So I get interested in sculpting lately and tried some of the tutorials for beginers on youtube.
The thing is, in every tutorial I have seen, brushes are more smoother and more "plastic" than in my blender. Like on the screens below, when person in tutorial uses "F Clay Strips" brush, he get nice striped line, me instead, get a line of triangles and pixels without stripes at all. Same with "F Crease" brush, instead of nice concave line, I get a line of sharp polygons, which is really hard to work with it.
I want the same visual effect, as in tutorials, but instead everything is just too sharp and too edgy, compared to the models from tutorial video. what can I do about it?
Even If I use subdivison modifier it's still too sharp.
And smooth shading option in dyntopo makes it too smooth instead...

Everything is edgy and sharp like razors.

Your main problem is that you don't have enough polys. The tutorial model has been subdivided much more than yours. They still have jaggies, but theirs are smaller.

You have couple of options, useful in different circumstances.

You need to start with a good base topology. It looks to me like you started from a UV sphere? You should definitely, at minimum, use a roundcube, as that will give you (1) only quads, and (2) no pinching at the poles. If you have time, start from a cube and just extrude and model until you have something that looks like a blocked out version of what you want.

Once you have a workable base, you could try:

Using Dyntopo

If necessary, subdivide the model by applying a subsurf modifier. You don't need to use smooth shading, in fact, I wouldn't recommend it. Flat shading lets you see the poly size better. You should set it to constant detail, find a size that's about double the resolution of your current mesh, (each quad becomes 8 triangles) and use Detail Flood Fill to triangulate the mesh at the right level. Then, sculpt as much as you can before repeating the process. Double the resolution, flood fill, and sculpt. repeat until it looks how you want it to. Eyes or hard surfaces should be kept separate.

Once you have finished, you may wish to Retopologize. Essentially, this involves carefully constructing a low(er) poly mesh over top of the sculpted one, and baking the normals from the HP mesh onto the LP one, giving better performance and cleaner deformations (e.g. facial animations.)

Using MultiResolution Modifier

My preferred approach is to use the MultiRes Modifier. Instead of changing the detail level on Dyntopo, you just click subdivide whenever you need more detail. This involves constructing a much less rough base mesh, with all of the important features blocked out already. This will take a while, as it's essentially just normal modeling until you get it to where you need it. Once the Mesh is complete, you go into sculpt mode, click the Subdivide button on the MultiRes Modifier, and start sculpting. Repeat until you have the level of detail you need. I like this approach because when you are finished, you do not necessarily need to retopologize. You may be able to simply use the lower res model, still stored by the MultiRes modifier, as your base. This also makes sculping multiple things in one scene easier, as those objects not being worked on will be set to the low Preview subsurf level.

In conclusion, use Dyntopo if you want a fast, easy sculpt for a static render. Use the MultiRes modifier if you want a clean, reusable model that supports animation.


Operator Search: 'Free Data' not available in Blender 2.9 anymore? I have a problem with caching my data when I try to run 'replay mode' for a fluid simulation in 2.9. In the 2.8x versions, you can 'free the data', when you search for free data in the Search tool by hitting (Spacebar) but I can't find it in 2.9 versions:

Q: How to run the 'Free Data' operator in Blender 2.9?

The default behavior of the Operator Search dialog in 2.9x is to only list the operators that can be found in menus. In order to search for all registered operators, you currently have to enable the Developer Extras option in the preferences.

Open the preferences Edit > Preferences
Switch to the Interface tab
Enable Developer Extras

For more information take a look at the design tasks T76227 and T74157.


Sverchok. Duplicating an object along a path Using Sverchok, I'm trying to duplicate an object along a path/axis. The object is a circle, and while its radius will vary slightly as it's stretched along the path, it should remain perfectly circular throughout.

With help, my solution almost works, but there are odd moments when the circle deforms, and I can't figure out why. I'm attaching an image of my Sverchok setup, because I'm new to some aspects of this and haven't yet figured out how to save and upload it as a file - apologies.

EDIT: I think it's because the value for 'COUNT' is sometimes incorrect, but I can't quite see what to plug in there - the floor or ceiling of the modulus perhaps...

--

Note that this follows on from my previous question (How to construct a stretchable array?), and I'm greatly indebted to the contributors there for prodding me along.

I thought it would interesting to see if I could use a node-based solution to solve this problem; accordingly I've modified the parameters of the problem slightly.

Edit:

The file at the following link provides a very close approximation of what I'm eventually trying to achieve - but the stretched shape is deformed as it stretches (the arcs become ellipses). That said, its very subtle so it might not be worth improving... https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/7oOZkavB

I propose a more immediate way to do this, using the polyline Node and converting the Path to its 3 subparts using "Separate Loose Parts" Node. and picking the Profile curve as the Bevel object. A lot less complicated and uses Blender for the heavy lifting.

Note the heavy zfighting in the part where the "extrusions" overlap.


How to combine two middle-grey images and keep the same value? (i have answered myself, problem solved)

If two middle-grey (0.5 value) images are used and combined in Overlay mode the image will get darker. How can i keep the same value and add the details of both textures?

Here is the ambiant occlusion map with a middle-grey:

And here i add another texture in overlay with a middle-grey this can be a bent map for the lighting or a curvature map, as you can see the image becomes darker and it becomes very dark if i increase the factor:

To combine two textures with a middle-grey and keep the same value connect your previous image to an overlay node and the new in the second slot.

Because Blender uses sRGB and not a Linear color management you need to correct the gamma by connecting it to a gamma node in the image slot and for the second slot connect a math Divide node with 1 on top et 2.2.


Move multiple strips in the Video Sequence Editor I'd read elsewhere that in the dope sheet I could type A to select all, and then G and a Number. But that doesn't seem to do anything. Is there a Insert frames command, or something like that? Can I select all my video strips and move them 'jointly' to the right (to a higher frame) without screwing up the keyframe transitions?

I want to add a title sequence to a video compilation I've made. Sadly, I started my videos at Frame 1. I feel like this should be simple, but I can't figure it out. I'm a Blender noob.

I'm running Linux 15.10 and Blender 2.76b.

Thanks!

Most keyboard shortcuts work on different windows in blender.

A will allow you to select all.

Then if you press G and drag, you can move all the video strips together with the mouse:

To move the strips a specific number of frames use G, then type number of frames you want to move and press Enter. Postitive numbers will move the strips to the right, negative numbers will move them to the left.

The transitions and keyframes will follow the video strips automatically.


Texture problem, color is off in some places? I dont understand why the textures are different here? Its the same texture and no matter what I try the spots are much brighter. Im relatively new to blender so am I missing something?

http://imgur.com/SDLv9Mq

EDIT:Sigh I just cant get this screenshot function to work on this site. So the link is a screenshot. Sorry for the inconvenience.

It looks like that normal map is wrong space (not tangent space).


Same image sequence one offset but not the other plane A assigned material A that has an image sequence.
plane B assigned material B with the same image sequence.

When i change the frames offset of the image sequence in material B both are changed

How to offset only one without effecting the other?

Make sure that materials is different. If it is not true, you will see a number near material name:

In this case press on digit to make independent copy

Next step - image node. Click on digit here:

Also mesh data can be linked:

So do you understand the rule? Remove all digits to make independent copy of material, image, mesh data.


Why Does My Collection Not Add My Cube Correctly? I'm new to blender and I was working on something when I tried to make a collection, and I realized instead of moving my cube inside of the collection, it put one cube inside of the collection and made a duplicate outside. Does anyone know why this happened?
edit:
I pressed shift+m when making the collection and it linked the object, thank you to the person who answered!

You've pressed ShiftM instead of M when creating the new collection. ShiftM will keep a linked version of the object.


Problem: Can Not Make Blur Affect Emission So I have 2 emission materials (yellow and white). I want them to be blurry together, so they wouldn't be so distinct on 3rd image. I did as was said in some tutorials: I've put index 1 for both materials and activated index pass, I made the same nodes in compositor, but it still didn't have any effect on render. Both in 3D View and in Image Editor. enter image description here
enter image description here

Firstly, your blur is set way too high - 100% will blur everything over the entire image. This results in the mask becomming a uniform grey that has little noticable effect when added to the image. Try toning the blur down to, say, 5% or less for a more subtle effect.

I've set up a scene similar to your example - with two materials (each with pass index of 1), one yellow, the other white. I've added some monkeys around the border to illustrate the lack of blurring for other materials.

I presume the effect you are going for is something like the following :

Here are the compositor nodes I used to achieve this :

The main difference is to use the mask as the input to a Mix node (rather than Add) to mix between the blurred version and the original image. In this way, anything that is Material Index 1 is blurred but everything else is left untouched. I'm sure there are other ways to achieve this but this was the closest I could come up with to your original setup.

Obviously you can adjust the Blur node to affect the amount of blurring - either by changing the percentage or by reducing the 'Size'.

EDIT

Another way of achieving a similar effect is to use the Defocus node and drive this directly from the ID Mask :

My original post used a Blur node in a similar way but it seems that the Blur cannot be dynamically controlled in this way - but the Defocus node can.

Also, I notice that your emission materials are outputting values much higher than 1. This could be causing oversaturation, masking any blur. Try reducing your emission to 1 and see if that helps. If it does then you may need to use a Light Path node to limit the emission for camera rays - or include nodes in the compositor to limit the light before passing into the blur/defocus.


Blender error: out of memory I have never used Blender, so I'm totally new to the software, but today a friend of mine asked me to use my computer to render a picture for him since he doesn't have a powerful PC. So he gave me the file and told me what to do:
For both the two star-shaped bushes and the small ball-shaped bushes, I had to:
1)Select the object with the right click of the mouse
2)Click on the icon with the stars (the particle system)
3)Click on Display modifier in the viewport
4)In Emission, increase the number up to 100k
Then, I had to set a resolution of 6000 on x-axis and 4080 on the y-axis and start the render.
The resolution must be so high because the picture is going to be printed on 6mx4m rollups.
My PC's specs are:

i7 920 @4GHz (4 core, 8 threads)
12GB DDR triple channel @1600MHz CL9
nVidia gtx 1070 AMP!Extreme 2GHz on the GPU and 9000MHz on the 8GB of GDDR5
SSD 850 pro
HX750i 750 W PSU
Windows7 Ultimate x64
I have downloaded the last 64bit version of blender.

Every time I try to render, I'm getting the "out of memory error" before the render even starts (I get it when it starts to apply textures, I think, but I'm not sure).
I would like to know if there is anything I can do (is my PC not good enough or is a picture problem?).
I will attach a screenshot of the image (the original is 3,9 GB and when I open it, 11GB of ram are used). If you need more information about the picture tell me where to find them and I will report them.
I also tried to render with my GPU but I get the same error even if both AIDA64 and GPU-Z tells me that only 2GB of GDDR is being used.
Thanks.

Only 25 million faces and lots of particles in 6k resolution... why would you be running out of memory?

As pointed out in the comments you have no RAM left in your system.

Working in 3D is very easy to create situations where your scene is much greater than the resources on your computer.

You really need to reassess where you need to optimize. The trick is to think of where it is that you need great detail and where you can get away with less. The art of 3D is part precision but is mostly optimization.

For example, textures that are going to be just a few pixels on the screen can be rougher than those that are going to be featured in close-up.
Do you need that many particles or would a surface with a bump map would give you the same?

Not every strand of grass in the distance has to be a particle, The ones you don't see don't have to exist, the statues don't have to be as detailed if they are going to be so small, etc.

When Rendering on GPU you have even less resources than when you render on CPU, so it is unlikely that you will be able to use it to render such an ambitious projecet.

You need to slice the project in different layers that your computer can handle and composite later.

Here's a link that details how to do this: https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/how-to-render-a-complex-scene-without-crashing


My circular arrays don't array My Array Modifier seems to make fine arrays in Constant Offset or Relative Offset. However when I try to use Object Offset nothing gets arrayed.  I have followed every tutorial I can find to see if I am missing a step; no luck.  I have tried on several machines; they all behave the same.  When I rotate the Empty it spins all day long while the object remains still and never produces any meshes. The object and the Empty have the same Location, Rotation, and Scale, but do not seem to be associating with each other. Using 2.79b on a Windows 10 platform.

Please make sure that :

Object Offset is checked
Under Object Offset, the Empty is selected (either via the object list, or via the picker)
Count isn't set to 1.


Un-hiding faces and double sided textures Typically if you look at the back of a textured face you don't see anything but a transparent square.

Is there any way you could make the front and back of the face textured without flipping the direction of the face?

Also, how can you unhide the faces that you previously hidden with H?

In BI both sides of a face should be textured by default in the render.

If you mean in the viewport, you can switch the viewport shading to Textured in 3D view > Header and set the shading to GLSL in 3D view > Properties region (N) > Shading. Also make sure that Backface Culling is disabled in the same panel.

Note that you will need to add lamps to the scene, or enable temporarily Shadeless in Properties > Material > Shading.
Shadeless is good for editing purposes where you want to see the texture everywhere (no shadows or shading). Note that this will affect the final render, so remember to disable it when you are done.

For unhiding faces, press AltH, or 3D view > Header > Mesh > Show/Hide > Show hidden in edit mode.


OpenCL build failed on AMD R9 290 - Insufficient Private Resources I'm running Blender on windows. Recently I tried to use GPU rendering with my AMD R9 290, but upon rendering, I get an error reading "OpenCL build failed: error in console."

Meanwhile, in the console:

Device init success
Compiling OpenCL kernel ...
Build flags:
OpenCL kernel build output:
Error:E013:Insufficient Private Resources

OpenCL build failed: errors in console

CPU rendering works fine.

I'm running Windows 8. Driver version is Catalyst 14.4.

The solution is the update the drivers. Version 15.07 works fine with 2.75a.


Exporting rigged game characters to a game engine If I created a game character using Blender and it is rigged using the bones, lets say the bone was sticking out of the game character. if I exported the entire model to Unity, would the bones be visible at all?

Bones used in rigging are not normally visible in any end product, be it a game or animation or whatever.
Most (all?) renders and game engines will not render them in the final product, although you may see them in the editor for the game engine (e.g. unity editor while making the game, but not the actual game itself).


Edge outline in sculpt mode How to disable dark edge outlines in sculpt mode ?

You can change the viewport shading options:

Turn 'cavity' on or off.

Or change the 'valley' line size.


Trouble creating a volume from a plane My friend and I are trying to create a landmass for a nautical table top game. We want to create an STL file to 3d print. The piece is seaside village on a hill at the edge of the board.
This being my first blender project I sculpted the land from a plane and then added the buildings as cubes. Now I want to cut the edges of the landmass to be flat and filled in, and I am have a lot of trouble.
The first image is the model. The second image represents where I would like flat faces for the STL. These are cubes added for the purpose of a Boolean difference.
I have tried a couple of things.

Cutting the plane and manually filling all the vertices. Was impossible to get all vertices filled.
Extruding the edges down and then filling to bottom before trying a Boolean difference with cubes on the bottom and back (see the second image). Blender had a meltdown with the landmass disappearing entirely but the buildings remained (not sure why since they were already joined as the same object).

Please let me know if you have any thoughts.
Thanks!

It's not working properly because you simply joined the two cubes. Now they are a single object, but in Edit Mode still two separate meshes with their own volume, but overlapping in some parts.
In order for the Boolean Modifier to work, the volumes you want to subtract from the landscape have to be either separate without overlapping or you have to create one continous volume for the overlapping cubes.
Since the overlapping is necessary in your case, you have three options, all require you to separate the cubes beforehand and make them two objects again:

Work destructively by first subtracting one cube, apply the modifier and subtract the second cube.

or:

Give the first cube a Boolean Modifier and join it with the second cube by setting it to Union, then choose the first cube for Difference in the Boolean Modifier on the landscape.

or:

Maybe the simplest way: put two Boolean Mdifiers on the landscape, choose one cube for the first modifier and the other cube for the second modifier.


In making a mask, how do I remove the outer area and lay the inner area atop video? This is only my first time in making masks in Blender and I wish to learn this for my future motion graphics.
See photo below. How do I erase the shaded area surrounding the bezier on a maroon rectangle and later drop the inner area on top of video?

Assistance apprecitated. Thanks in advance.

Compositing

Solution with compositing like you suggested with the screenshot.
Using the mask as an factor input mentioned in the comments above.
(I just use the colors as a placeholder, you can use renders, movies, images...)

Video Sequence Editor (VSE)

Another solution would be to use the Video Sequence Editor (VSE). You can add both the render or what you want to cut out and the video. The video under the 'overlay'. On the strip you want to overlay you can add a mask modifier. Don't forget to change the blend type of the strip above to 'Alpha Over' or 'Over Drop' otherwise it will replace the image below.

Inverting the mask

To invert the mask, go to the mask editor (image editor and then select the mask view). In the right panel (N-Panel) there is the option for the mask layer. On the right of the 'Opacity' input there is the invert switch (white and black rectangle). By clicking it you can invert the mask.

(Tip: If you don't see a change. In the composition may enable auto render. In the VSE press 'Refresh Sequencer'.


Bug separating an array of cubes in blender 2.90? I'm new to blender, but looked at several videos and tutorials and tried to do it in 2.90.0.
Starting from a simple cube, created an array in 3D (3 arrays in X, Y and Z), fixed distance, leaving some space between them.
Entered Edit mode (array selected), here something was already strange, tried to see everything selected, was not possible until I´ve activated the Object Data Properties selector in the array modifier.
Then hit P and selected By Loose Parts, but nothing happens. Just keeps where it is.
When the Object Data Properties selector in the array modifier is NOT selected, then all the array does not select in Edit Mode.
After trying again and again, starting over, new file, etc. I´ve download version 2.83 LTS and made the same thing, and it worked. Tried 2.90.1 and this version also did not work.
Did something change in a way which is not documented and I´m missing something?

I too downloaded the new version and there is no more apply button. Instead, there is a drop down next to the camera icon and you can select apply or press Ctrl +  A it seems.
I was able to separate pets in edit mode then.


Cycles render output solid black images I am using blender version 2.73 on windows 8.1. I rendered an animation into a png sequence the first render worked fine. I then changed the scene, and tried to render it again. This time, I am getting nothing but a bunch of black images. They are not just dark or poorly lit, they are solid black. When I view the scene in rendered mode, I can see the image fine, but during the final render, I get nothing. Cycles doesn't seem to go through the usual rendering process of doing each frame section-by-section, it just instantly creates a bunch of black images in the output folder.

This is a screenshot of the scene.

I get this message in the console after the render

  Saved: C:\path_to_directory[image number].png Time: 00.00.00 (Saving: 00.00.00)

This is repeated once for each image.

Here is the .blend file along with an image texture and bump map used.
Dropbox Download Page

You have an image in video sequence editor. remove it or disable sequencer in post processing (render tab).


How to apply the same texture to multiple faces? If I have a mesh with multiple faces like that, with different shapes as follows:

How can I apply a texture to every single face like the one below and hide the fact that is a texture repeated for many times (i.e. between faces there is a method to smooth the transition between two equal texture)?

I'm very sorry if my question may be confusing but I can't explain it better. I hope someone can help me

The trick is not so much on how you apply the texture to the faces, but on the texture it self.

What you need is a "seamless" or "tileable texture", and how to make one is not really a question about blender itself, but more a question of image editing or photo editing.

First you must correctly unwrap your mesh, see here how to. You may want to get rid of that NGon on the top too.

Then either search the internet for "Seamless Rock Texture" or  "Tileable rock texture" or create one yourself using some tutorial like these https://www.google.com/search?tbm=vid&q=gimp%20seamless%20texture

Edit

You can't really do heavy texture editing inside Blender, there are some basic tools like painting or material based effects, but for for heavy work you are always advised to use a image editor.

Anyway, upon closer inspection it does seem like your texture is already seamless and tileable, I had not noticed before, so you don't need to do any editing for now. All you have to do is correctly unwrap your mesh as described in the link above.

Still have in mind that your texture is not very big and will still have noticeable patterns when repeated over an extensive surface. That can only be fixed with a better texture.

How will you be rendering the image, Cycles?
You may also reduce or mitigate the repeating effect with some UV distortion using nodes, but don't expect miracles, You could use some of the procedural textures like Musgrave or Noise, or whichever suits you best to distort the UV coordinates and create a disturbance in the texture. Here is an example of how this could be done.

Edit 2

If you want to export this for another game engine don't bother with Cycles for now. Switch to Blender Internal render using the menu on the header of the window.

First step open your image in the image editor
Then unwrap your mesh over it
Add a new material to your mesh in the properties window
In the texture tab of the properties window add a new texture to your material
Choose image texture type and add your image from the dropdown


Is it possible to bevel a text mesh Is it possible to apply a bevel to the edges of a text object after it has been converted to a mesh?
Less anyone be reticent to provide bad news, after looking at the topology, I'm doubtful myself.

This is what I'm doing:

Convert text to mesh
Using Shrinkwrap modifier, project the mesh-text onto the uneven surface of another mesh
Apply the modifier and extrude the text mesh.
(Credit to a tutorial on youtube.)

The result looks pretty awesome for my skill level. (Easier for me than using curve modifiers.) But there appears to be no practical way to apply a bevel to the edges of the text.

Here's the workflow from the Text Object itself.

Here's the workflow after Text has been converted to Mesh.

Use Limited Dissolve 1st. On the "Tool Shelf" You may need to slide the angle limit around. Alternatively on the delete menu, you can select Dissolve Faces directly, depending on the circumstance this may give you a more accurate dissolve for this purpose.
Ctrl+B - With the Top Edges Selected to Bevel.


How do I edit a character's face vertex to skim the eyeball's curvature? I want to contour my character's face to its eyeballs. I wish I didn't have to do 1 vertex at a time as that is what I am doing now visually, I move a vertex towards the eye then I would pull back till I see it again. It's very tedious and takes a lot of editing and was wondering if there's an easier way to accomplish this.
It would be very useful if I could prevent when manipulating multiple vertex to stop moving, like a forcefield, into the eyeball. This would save me hours of work.
Example: If I have a row of vertex for the eyelid and translate them in y, they would head for the eyeball but all the vertex would stop from entering the eyeball giving the selected vertex a perfect contour against it.
In edit mode, how do I manipulate the selected vertex of the face to prevent entering into the eyeball?

You can select the edgeloop you want to be snapped to the eyeball, turn on the face snapping function, check its "Project individual elements" option, then, using an appropriate view, press G and Enter: the vertices will snap to the eyeball.


Blender 2.8 manipulators Is there any way to set these manipulators on the keyboard ? How can i set Move, Rotate and scale to W E R keys ?

Right click on the icon, then choose assign shorcut. Then you have to save the user preferences (Edit>>Preferences). In this menu you will find the keymap too.


How to make camera copy the current 3d view? Sometimes I find the perfect view by moving the scene with middle mouse button in 3d View. Is there any good way to create a camera based on the actual viewport position, size and rotation?

Ctrl+Alt+0 works, but is not even close enough to be a good solution in my case.

Short answer is "no." ctrlalt0 is as close as you're going to get. It's not perfect, but it'll get you pretty close. From there, using gandalf3's recommendation to "Lock Camera to View" is probably the best way to refine it from there.


Particle pixels problem I have a big problem with some small pixels inside the bark texture. I tried many times to remove it but nothing.

Here's the render I'm having trouble with:
Here's my Blender file: https://mega.nz/#!gwViVRDI

Thanks

I think the problem you're having is what's sometimes called "fireflies." These are not in the texture, these are part of the render. The short answer is "render more samples." "Progressive" can be useful for this. Just let it render the whole image for as long as you can stand. It'll get a little better with each pass, and you can cancel whenever you want and still have a full image.

This is usually just a consequence of the probabilistic nature of the Cycles renderer. I'm going to mark this question as a duplicate, but I want to at least point you in the right direction.

One strategy that's not well documented is to render the same image more than one time, but with a different "seed" value for each image (set in the render settings). Stack these results in an image editor (careful with opacity math) to average them together, and the fireflies will be much less apparent.

Check out this other answer about why fireflies happen.

Also look at this question about how to reduce noise.

And lastly, this question about why Cycles has to cast multiple rays per pixel.

Hope that helps!


Texture appears pink in Blender Render The tree on the left is always purple, whenever I try anything, like changing the material, texture etc. it always turns out purple.

It's fine in cycles:

I've been following a tutorial by CG Geek on youtube and have had no problems up to about 1:01:39. But now when I try to follow along my left tree always appears purple as shown in the picture. The tutorial is here.

You're trying to use a cycles material with blender internal. This probably happened because you created your material with cycles selected and changed to blender internal. Materials are specific and can't be used with both renderers.

You can choose to change the renderer to cycles (1)
You can unassign your material and create a new one (2)
You can remove nodes from your material and modify it to be blender internal (3)


How to make this particular blender material in Cycles I've seen this material which has been made using blender rendering's engine, and I'd like to give it a fresh look in Cycles.

Here is a screenshot of the nodes and the previewed material :

However, I tried using Layer Weights but the layers(white then blue) were not correctly applied to the subdivided Icosphere.

Plus in Cycles, I don't know how to use the alpha output since there is none on the material output node when using Cycle rendering engine.

I am a bit of newbie towards this, usually, I try things on the node editor, and they work out fine but this time, I really don't know what to do.

So if someone could explain to me, how to make this particular material using Cycle(even like if it's a bit more realistic), I'll be glad to take it as well as an explanation of the process during the making of it.

Thanks for any help!

If you want to do that in cycles the set up would look like this:

The layer weight node controls the falloff for blue and white respectively in combination with the color ramp to clamp the falloff.

Of course the transparent node is to cutout the center, you might also want to play with the roughness on the glossy shaders, it will give you a different look .


Repeating objects along a path Is it possible to repeat my track object along a path? I tried using the method shown here Extrude along path using an array and then a curve modifier, but this happened when I added the curve modifier and chose the path as the curve object.

In your scene it looks like the origins of the object might be messed up. When using the Array and Curve Modifier it is important to note that the origin of the curve and the origin of the mesh must be at the same spot. Also the mesh should have it origin at it geometry not somewhere else.

Here is how to fix it:

First let's make sure that your objects are not rotated or scaled by applying the transforms:
Ctrl A -> Rotation & Scale
Select the curve item in object mode
Place the 3d cursor at the curves origin, Shift S -> Cursor to selected
Select the mesh in object mode
Set the origin of the mesh to the geometry, Ctrl Shift Alt C -> Origin to geometry
With the mesh still selected move the mesh to the 3d cursor, Shift S -> Selected to Cursor

blend file


Blender Game Asset Creator Tutorial: 5.5 - Unwrapping The Cone In the final unwrap of the section, after sharpening edges, the tutorial asks to unwrap and "follow active quads". I receive a "no active face" error. I feel like I'm missing a fundamental principle here. any help would be appreciated.

You receive this error because you don't have an active face (quad) selected.

Select one face from your mesh to make it an active face. It must be a quad (four vertices).
Select all faces by hitting A. You will notice the active face looks a bit different than other selected faces (it's lighter).
You can now unwrap with Follow Active Quads option.

This is how an active face looks like:


How Can I Select A Single Edge Among Linked Duplicates? I duplicated a bunch of cubes to model buildings and I used the linked duplication method, Alt + D but when I tried to select an edge of a cube in Edit mode (while in Edge Selection Mode), it selects multiple edges at once.
It does not select all of the linked object edges but almost half of the same sided edge is selected. How can I select a single edge of a single object? Deselecting does not work.

Actually I don't really know that in linked selection method is it even possible or not!
But I can tell you another way to achieve what you want.
You can use (shift+d) method to duplicate.
Then select all the duplicates and join them as a single object with (ctrl+ J). You can also move them individually in edit mode. But you can't move them separately in object mode,  they are all now one single object. Hope that helps.


Make a grid of planes fill camera view I'm making a layout tool for video editing.
How can most efficiently fill the camera view with a series of white planes with even spacing?
I want to have a variable (arbitrary) number of planes, with the gap either -remaining the same or -varying based on number of planes.

Currently I have a:

Plane object (that I can scale)
Curve object to spread an array

Here is the sort of result I need, but there's a lot of manual filling to get it evenly spaced.

Here is the modifier setup I used.

Update

I have accepted the answer by @leander but wanted to add a color solution for the faces. I am driving the unique colors from the segment number of the array. Then I put that through an array with up to 7 unique colors (its a non-variable limitation), using the Window X coordinates.
I wish that there was an easy way to define the Ramp Locations by variable.

Update 2

After using the above solution, I also discovered that I could just add a single large plane then use a brick texture to place a series of box objects across the screen.

Just like Blender Sushi Guy demonstrated with nodes, the same math can be done with driver expressions.

Add a driver to the Constant offset off an array modifier.

Add a driver to the scale (or position) of the stripes.

Create an empty to control the stripes.

To have one less variable, I set the camera as orthographic with a width of 10.

no       number of bars
gap      size of gap between bars
width    width of bars
10       total width

Fixed gap size, varying stripe width

We need to set the width, and the position of the first stripe, based on the number of stripes and the gap size.

Size (X)

(no + 1) * gap + no * width = 10

width = (10 - (no + 1) * gap) / no

Constant Offset (X)

(We have to divide through the width, since the modifier bases its offset on the width.)

[(10 - gap) / no] / width = offset
[(10 - gap) / no] / [(10 - (no + 1) * gap) / no] = offset
[(10 - gap) / no] * [no / (10 - (no + 1) * gap)] = offset
(10 - gap) / (10 - (no + 1) * gap) = offset

Fixed stripe size, varying gap width

We need to set the gap size, and the position of the first stripe, based on the number of stripes and the width of the stripes.

Location (X)

(no + 1) * gap + no * width = 10

gap = (10 - (no * width)) / (no + 1)

Constant Offset (X)

[(10 - gap) / no] / width = offset
(10 - gap) / (no * width) = offset
(10 - (10 - (no * width)) / (no + 1)) / (no * width) = offset


How do you create a KX_PolygonMaterial? I try to attach a PyOpenGL Shader to an object using the setCustomMaterial() command but It raises an error: 'KX_BlenderMaterial' object has no attribute 'setCustomMaterial.
So I need to retrieve the KX_PolygonMaterial component of my object instead of the KX_BlenderMaterial but the function for getting each one of those is the same

obj = bge.logic.GetCurrentController().owner
mat = obj.meshes[0].materials

The corresponding api page describes the object KX_MeshProxy and its function materials saying: "list of KX_BlenderMaterial or KX_PolygonMaterial types"

How can convert the BlenderMaterial to PolygonMaterial ?

This code should return a PolyMaterial yet it still gives me a BlenderMaterial back; ALso I tryed checking "texture face" but it doesn't solve the problem

mesh = bge.logic.getCurrentController().owner.meshes[0]
poly = mesh.numPolygons
for p in range (poly):
    P = mesh.getPolygon(p)
    PolyMat = P.material
    PolyMat.setCustomMaterial(Material())

Apparently KX_PolygonMaterial doesn't exist anymore.


Applying weight paint caused my mesh to rotate 90 degrees I have been working on a hospital gown for a character that I made. I exported the rig from Makehuman so maybe that could be causing an orientation problem. Whenever I try to parent the gown mesh to the rig it automatically scales my mesh up and rotates it -90 degrees on the X-axis. I tried applying rotation and scale and then finally "all transforms" with "Control + A" but nothing is affected.

I got it to work while typing the question. I guess I just didn't have it selected because in Makehuman the mesh has its origin at the very bottom. So I thought I had it selected when I applied the transform. But yeah, I box selected all the meshes that I needed and the rig and apply all transform.


Selecting GPU with Python script Alright, so i have a slightly strange system configuration. I'm running Zorin OS 12, which is roughly equivalent to Ubuntu 16.04. I am also running Mesa, but i use AMD's OpenCL. It works just fine with various miners i tested.

Now i want blender to actually render on the GPU. Blender detects it when i use the split kernel, but for some reason, whatever i do, it always falls back to the cpu.

Here's the script i use:

import bpy, _cycles
bpy.ops.wm.open_mainfile(filepath="/home/xxx/xxx.blend")

for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
    bpy.context.scene.render.engine = 'CYCLES'
    bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].cycles.device='GPU'
    bpy.context.scene.cycles.device = 'GPU'

bpy.context.user_preferences.addons['cycles'].preferences.compute_device_type = "OPENCL"
bpy.context.user_preferences.addons['cycles'].preferences.devices[0].use = True

bpy.ops.render.render(True)
img_path = "/home/xxx/Bilder/test_1.png"
rendered_image = bpy.data.images["Render Result"]
rendered_image.save_render(filepath=img_path)

I am really at a loss here, but i think this could work. I mean even if the GPU for some reason does not work, it should not just fall back to the CPU, but give me some sort of error, right?

uname -r

4.15.1-041501-generic

clinfo

 Platform Name                                   AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing
 Platform Vendor                                 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
 Platform Version                                OpenCL 2.1 AMD-APP (2527.3)
 Platform Profile                                FULL_PROFILE
 Platform Extensions                             cl_khr_icd cl_amd_event_callback cl_amd_offline_devices
 Platform Host timer resolution                  <printPlatformInfo:5: get CL_PLATFORM_HOST_TIMER_RESOLUTION : error -30>
 Platform Extensions function suffix             AMD

EDIT

For reasons unknown to me, installing Radeon RenderPro for Blender has fixed the problem!

https://pro.radeon.com/en/software/prorender/blender/

Right now, I am using Blender 2.90. Here is my Python code to detect and use GPU in Blender.
import bpy
bpy.data.scenes[0].render.engine = "CYCLES"

# Set the device_type
bpy.context.preferences.addons[
    "cycles"
].preferences.compute_device_type = "CUDA" # or "OPENCL"

# Set the device and feature set
bpy.context.scene.cycles.device = "GPU"

# get_devices() to let Blender detects GPU device
bpy.context.preferences.addons["cycles"].preferences.get_devices()
print(bpy.context.preferences.addons["cycles"].preferences.compute_device_type)
for d in bpy.context.preferences.addons["cycles"].preferences.devices:
    d["use"] = 1 # Using all devices, include GPU and CPU
    print(d["name"], d["use"])
```


2.91 - where can I change animation size I just want to change the output of the rendered animation (CTRL+F12)

it used to be accessible, but I cannot find it anymore
where can I post a feature request so that the dev's make it even more hidden and cryptic ?

I tried looking in blender of course, then outlook, and thunderbird, I tried "device manager" in windows, and I tried to search for these settings on my android phone....one never knows
next step, I'll apply for a trip on mars, these settings got to be there...everywhere but in blender since v 2.8
thanks

It's right there, where the red circle is.


How to hide the main menu and the toolbar of the 3D View? I'd like to hide the main menu and the toolbar of the 3d View:

How can I do this?

View menu > Area > Toggle Fullscreen Area.

Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+Spacebar.


Boolean Difference with Offset? Is it possible to create a Boolean difference with a defined air gap (offset) between object A and object B (see picture below)?
This is particularly interesting for 3D printing operations, where one physical object needs to be set into another. So to achieve this, normally you give a tiny gap between both objects, so they can smoothly be joined.

If this is not possible the classical way, are there any automated workarounds to achieve this, without manually rescaling the (sometimes complicated) subtracted shape? Maybe even with another tool than blender?

Make a duplicate of your object and add a Displacement modifier without any textures.

Unlike scaling (which is shape agnostic) it will give you a true uniform offset all around your object based on mesh normals.

Optionally make this object Display As: Wire, and parent it to the original object.
Now make the Boolean operation on the offset mesh rather than the original one.

When moving the original object around, the offset one will move along with it because it is parented

You can independently control offset amount from the Displacement modifier Strength setting.


Is there a way to get the shrinkwrap constraint to move the target to the object rather than the reverse? In the image below there's a cuboid that has a shrinkwrap constraint to a distorted cylinder. As I rotate the distorted cylinder in the x-axis, the cuboid moves up and down following the uneven surface of the cylinder.
What I want is to flip this over and have the distored cylinder move up and down as it rotates over the stationary cuboid. That is, I want the same shrinkwrap constraint to move the target instead of the object. Does this make sense? Is there another way to go about it?

This probably won't be the most efficient answer, because I don't really understand what end result you are trying to achieve, but you can add something called a driver.
Drivers let you "drive" values based on other values. So you could have rotation of one object drive the global position (or any other value) of another.


How to hide "gaps" between parts of my detail? Blender 2.81
I created this detail from little several parts (see first pic.). Joined them with Ctrl+J. See one whole detail in Solid.
But in Render i see lines ("gaps") between all this parts (3rd pic.).
How to get rid of them?

It sems you have have overlapping vertices, which creates a seam in the topology when rendering.

Notice the black line between the edges which cause problem in edit mode are darker than the other ones.
Select all your vertices with  A  in edit mode and vertex select mode, and Press  ALT  +  M  (or right click > Merge vertices) then choose "by distance" in order to eliminate double-vertices.


How to add these stripes to my fender? I'm working on renders for a corvette I modeled via a course from cgmasters. On one of the front fenders, I want to add Grand Sport stripes like shown here:

The car paint is blue, and I want to do white stripes. My rough guess is that I would create the stripes as an image, then UV unwrap the fender and apply the image to the wrap. I feel like I may be missing something though. Any help is appreciated.

Note: I tried this method of adding a texture as a decal and shrinkwrapping it. But because this is something that needs to stop precisely in some places, I cannot get it to work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxMY2lMoLw

As you said you can simply unwrap:

Create your stripes with a transparent background and save it as PNG.
Make an unwrap of the part of the mesh that will display the stripes and give this UVmap the name you want.
Duplicate your basic car material and assign this copy to this part of the mesh.
In this material, mix your basic node(s) with the one(s) you specifically want to give to the stripes.
Add an Image Texture node, load the PNG, and use the Alpha output as the factor of a Mix Shader.
In the Image Texture node, use Clip instead of Repeat so that the stripes won't repeat.
Plug an Input > UV Map node in the Vector of the Image Texture node and load the UVmap you've created in this UV Map node.
Now adjust the UV in the UV/Image Editor until the stripes is correctly displayed.


Strange route fulid simulation I want to make a animation of water going down an pipe like string, but the water behaves really strangely. For detail, here is the screenshot and my settings.

The pipe is made by screw tool.

Do you guys meet situation like this? Any suggestions?

Edit: I tried to scale to make objects much smaller and set resolution to 100, but it do not work at all.

There may be couple of things to check on.

You should apply the screw modifier as non applied modifier don't take effect in some simulations.

The inflow velocity dons't match the orientation of your obstacle,In your case it would be -0.5 in Y and -0.1 in X for instance.


All inactive with circle selection I tried to use free camera with Shift+F but I it didn't work. After that circle appeared around my cursor (and I can scale it with mouse wheel) and I could change objects. But all tabs became inactive (I cant even choose file to save my project) and I can't do anything except closing blender. I can easily remake project but for the future please help is it a bug or feature?I tried deselecting all with A+A and deselecting Circle Selection with C but it didn't do anything


I can't make nonmanifold wings mesh manifold for 3d print I pulled all of oldschool runescape's meshes so I can 3d print them. They made models with just faces so it's required a lot of work to get some to print but this one eludes me.
Currently I'm working on one of the bosses in the game and got the rest to print flawlessly but separated the wings because it messed the whole print up.

file in question --heads up, it opens quite large on the x&y in blender>>> https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Hk_TxdC7_Nh3enrIli80tvHG0e4WpoFb

I've used the 3d-print plugin to search for manifolds and 'make manifold' either deletes everything but the flaps of the wings or the spine structure depending on if I've used mesh>normals>recalculate inside/outside or merge by distance.

Any tips would be appreciated though I fear ill have to model from scratch.

I presume you already understand what non-manifold geometry is, but if anyone reading this doesn't, there's a good explanation here.

I opened up your model, entered edit mode, pressed 2 to enter edge select mode, then went to Select > Select All By Trait > Non-manifold. This is what Blender highlighted (its the same for both wings).

I presume that the complexity of this mesh and the awkwardly placed non-manifold geometry is what is tripping up Blender's algorithm for eliminating that geometry. Let's take a closer look at what exactly going on.

The faces that are highlighted are purely flat planes. Notice how the same face is highlighted when viewing from both sides? You'll need to add thickness to those.

You'll notice that there are a couple of edges that are highlighted in the center of the wing. In these areas, the faces are coming together down to an edge, a flat edge. Once again, notice how individual edges can be viewed from both sides of the mesh. I've forgotten to deselect a couple edges that are just on the perimeter of your object, but I think you get the point.

I don't see any quick one press fixes for this... there are multiple non-manifold faces that Blender didn't even highlight, particularly at the base of the wing.

Edit:

Alright, I've managed to waterproof the mesh up to the part where it needs to connect to the rest of the body. Waterproofing the mesh was simply a nightmare...Let's just say I had to take apart the mesh and reassemble it, adding in extra edges and faces where necessary.

I wasn't sure how its meant to connect to the rest of the figure (and thus how the mesh should be shaped) so I just left it open there. The bulk of the work is done though, the only open parts of the wings are shown below.


Animating separate objects with the same armature I am making an animated character with body armour, which is a separate mesh than the character's mesh. I animated my character with a simple walk animation, but the piece of armour is not moving, watch this clip. How do I attach the body armour's mesh to the character's mesh, so that it moves along with the animated character chest?

The blender file is here.

The body and the armour are separate objects and you only have the armature moving the body, you also need to have the armature linked to the armour as well.

One way is to parent using automatic weights or manual weight painting, the same as you would for the body.

As your armour is most likely to be a single rigid piece you might want to parent the armour to a single bone so that it stays as one solid piece. To do this select the armour, shift select the armature and press CtrlP then select Bone. The bone used will be the selected bone in pose mode, you can change to pose mode and select the right bone before parenting.

EDIT: As you want to export to unity I would join the two meshes and use weight painting instead of parenting.

Select the armour and then the body and press CtrlJ. This will join the two objects into one mesh. Selecting the body last means the armour will be added to the body, keeping the armature setup as it is.

Go into edit mode and select one of the armour vertices. Press CtrlL to select the rest of the connected vertices. In the vertex groups find Chest and click assign with the weight set to 1.0. This will make the entire armour piece move as one piece as the chest bone is moved.


I'm solidifying a mesh and want to bevel just the cap. How can I avoid that the bevel also rounds the outline of the mesh? I have a flat mesh of the letter 'A'. I would like that the front face has a nice bevel. However, I would also like that the shape of the letter (when seen from the front) stays the same. With the bevel modifier, this is not the case. It will round the shape of the letter (as indicated with red circles on the picture below).
I'm already using a Angle limit method on the bevel, or else it would add a lot of unnecessary vertices.
I'd like to stay in a non-destructive workflow, and would like to avoid applying the modifiers.

I found how to do it. First, in edit mode, you select the edge of your flat mesh, and go to Edge -> Edge Bevel Weight. Then you press 1 on the numpad or drag your mouse to set the weight. The edge will become blue.

Then, in the Bevel modifier, you change the limit method to "Weight".

And this has the desired effect! I thought that it would work the same as the "Vertex Group" limit, but with the vertex group, you add unnecessary bevels in a lot of places because you're almost selecting all of your vertices.


Is there any possibility to adding a value beside expression in driven property? Is there any possibility to adding a value beside expression in driven property? Formulas would be only in drivers window or not?

If I need add expression like:

self.location[0]+object.location[1]

< both value dependant

A shortcut to entering driver expressions is to start with a # - so entering #frame*0.1 will create a driver expression that sets the value to 1/10th of the current frame. You can then edit drivers using the graph editor in driver mode.

Using the # prefix works for some things that are available globally, like the current frame and some math functions - sin(), log(), noise.random() etc. To get a driver to depend on a transform channel or property, whether it is it's own property or another objects, you create driver variables and use them in your expression.

To see a full list of functions available within drivers, enter bpy.app.driver_namespace.keys() into blenders python console.

You can also define your own functions and add them to the driver namespace as shown here.


How to retrieve the objects of a group How to get all of the objects assigned to a group in Blender Python?

for group in bpy.data.groups:
    # How to get all objects in group?

Each group in blender has an 'objects' property which stores all members of that group as a list.

In the context of your script this would loop through each group in the blend file and print the name of each object in that group:

import bpy

for group in bpy.data.groups:
    for object in group.objects:
        print(object.name)

Although, if you simply wanted to access the list, no looping is necessary, you can simply use:

bpy.data.groups['GroupName'].objects

You can then access objects with:
 ...objects[0].name


How to use a standalone blender (not using global preferences) Sometimes you need to use Blender without the standard shared preferences (addons, startup file, ...) for testing or to be sure to use the default settings without changing your usual preferences.

So the question is : How can you use different settings without modifying the global settings?

The global settings are stored in :
%APPDATA%\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender for windows
~/.config/blender for linux
where there are folders for each version (2.72, 2.73, ...)
These setting can be ignored if you create a config (startup file, user preference file, bookmarks, recent files), a scripts (addons, presets) or a cache (BVHs, temporary) (or both) folder in the version folder of your installed or unzipped Blender : C:\blender\blender-2.74-rc1-windows64\2.74 \config
If the folder(s) exists and is empty, Blender will use the default settings. Global settings can be copied there and then modified without changing global settings.

Thanks to jesterKing and iKlsR


Delete object by location How can I do something like,

bpy.ops.object.select(object at location x,y,z)
bpy.ops.object.delete()

In the event you want to include some objects whose origin points are close but not exactly the location given. Please note this does not specify object type so any object (camera, armature, light, etc) within range will be deleted.

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector

target_loc = (1.0,1.0,1.0)
target_deviation = .1

objs = [obj for obj in bpy.data.objects if (
        (obj.location[0]-target_loc[0])**2 +
        (obj.location[1]-target_loc[1])**2 +
        (obj.location[2]-target_loc[2])**2 <= target_deviation**2)]

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action = 'DESELECT')
for obj in objs:
    obj.select = True
bpy.ops.object.delete()


How can you edit simple tubes? So i learned how to create simple tubes. Now i wonder if there´s a way to edit them further and use sculpt mode for example. Using the subdivision surface modifier on a path i can´t apply it. Is it possible to transform the path into a cylinder? I know you can simply create one, but that´s not the point.

You can convert a curve to a mesh 'as viewed' in at least two ways:

Alt+C -> Mesh from curve
In user preferences, under addons, enable 'Corrective Shape Keys', then there will be an operator available for converting this and other types of objects to clean meshes with modifiers applied. In the spacebar menu, it will be named 'Duplicate and Apply All' (I like setting  a shortcut to Ctrl+Shift+D, YMMV)


Can't get model manifold for 3d printing I got the following model:
http://doekewartena.nl/temp/sw_test01.obj

Which is kind of crazy. When I upload it to shapeways it tells me it is not manifold and it is unable to repair it.

I did remove all doubles. I fixed the holes I could find. I did the check with the 3d printing add on and there it is manifold.
So now I have no clue of what to do next.

Is the model just to complex itself?

Non-manifold doesn't necessarily mean double vertices (although there are quite a lot in your mesh). It could also mean that you have vertices inside your mesh. Import it into blender, tab into Edit Mode, then go to "3D Viewport - Menu - Select - All By Trait - Non Manifold". Try to delete the vertices and then try to verify on shapeways again.

Your second question: I don't have much experience with printing, but I think your model is way too complex and it also contains ngons.


Create a sail with cloth and curves acting as softbodies I have a query!

Here is a quick prototype of a sail i want to build. I it comrpises of 2 bezier curves to hold the sail and a traingle plane that I want to be cloth.

I would like the curves to be maybe soft bodies and  attach to the "boat" and hold the sail while it is  an active cloth sim. The bottom bezier holding the corner I would like for it to move with thecorner of the sail.

any suggestions?

I'd suggest ditching the curves all together. They make the simulation hard to achieve, don't add anything to the scene realism and only add complexity to the simulation.

Just subdivide your sail enough for the desired level of detail. Add a new Vertex Group and assign it only to the 3 corner vertex (or any other undeformable parts that may be attached to cables).

Add a Cloth physics type to the sail, and pick the group for the Pinning option.

Then add a new Force Fied type object of the Wind kind, point it towards the sail and adjust its speed and turbulence.


Texturing for baking I am making a complex scene and I expect baking will be only way to render it on my computer in a quite satisfying time. I read that texture has to be UV unwrapped for baking process, but it concerned some previous versions of Blender. My question is, will "smart UV unwrap" or "sphere/cube/cylinder projection" that I use frequently, allow me to use texture baking in my scene?

Absolutely. As long as you have a good uv-map (minimal, if any overlap), you should be able to pull off a decent bake (in that regard at least).


How to measure the dynamic range of an HDRi? In this question the issue of photorealistic images and the need of a Wide Dynamic Range is discussed. Rendering with a wider dynamic range to produce photorealistic looking images will need high quality HDRi's (when using HDRi's). In this article Greg Zaal talks about resolution and dynamic range of HDR images. Greg Zaal says:

  For an interior shot, 12 EVs is usually enough, but for an outdoor
  shot where the sun is visible, you might need up to 24 EVs to capture
  everything depending on the time of day and the weather.

Now how can I measure the dynamic range of an HDR image ?

ATTENTION: The add-on created by @aliasguru is now stored HERE on Github and it is updated/improved by @aliasguru. Thanks !!

To properly answer your question, I'll lean on the photographic term of F-Stop to define what this range is.

What we know:

An F-Stop is a halving and doubling of light, relative to the exposure referenced.
A scene referred system has scene linear levels of light ranging from zero to infinity.

Therefore, to get from the question of dynamic range in stops to data values, we need to do a little math and figure out what our maximum and minimum values are in a given image, then convert that range to F-Stops for our solution.

We know that 2^FStops * middle_grey_peg will give us a numerical value for a given number of stops above or below middle grey in scene linear. So how would we go back from scene linear to F-Stops? Invert the formula for log(scene_referred / middle_grey_peg) / log(2) and we get the number of stops up or down for any given scene referred value.

If we subtract the two, we'd get overall dynamic range.

We can simplify it by skipping the middle grey value:

( log(scene_referred_maximum) / log(2) ) - ( log(scene_referred_minimum) / log(2) )

The result will be total dynamic range, expressed in stops.

I'm sure someone here can come up with a clever way via Python to get the minimum and maximum RGB scene referred values from a Cycles render or EXR image?

In theory the following code appears to work on EXRs, but your mileage may vary:

import bpy
from math import ceil, log

image = bpy.data.images['your_exr_goes_here.exr']

print("Total dynamic range in stops:")
print( ( log(max(image.pixels)) / log(2) ) - ( log(min(image.pixels)) / log(2) ) )
# Equivalent to (log(max) - log(min))/log(2) of course.


Some parts of my mesh won't allow texture to be applied Super beginner here.  I looked through the previous posts, but couldn't find this.  I have a series of parallel faces (in this case a shower wall) that I'm trying to apply an image texture to.  There is a shelf in the middle that has faces above and below it that won't accept the texture, yet it appears to that it has been applied.  For these faces above and below the shelf only, the texture won't show in material preview mode.  I have UV unwrapped all of the faces (I realize they are too small based on the image I'm using, but I was just using this to check, and truth be told I don't know what I'm doing with the UV editor very well yet).  Any idea why?

I went in and re-UV-unwrapped it and it appears to be working now. Also the image I had in the UV editor was the wrong material from what I'd applied to that area. Not sure exactly what the relation is to the image in the UV editor vs. the one used in the background of the material, but this alignment appears to have worked


Custom mouse jumps to center when it reaches the edge of the game window Recently, I've started teaching myself Blender Game Engine with video tutorials. Mostly I utilize Logic Bricks, but I'm attempting to branch out into Python scripts.

I have successfully created a working custom mouse overlay using the following code:

import bge

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
own = cont.owner

over = cont.sensors['over']

own.worldPosition = over.hitPosition

Unfortunately, when the plane I'm using reaches any edge of the game window it jumps back to the center of the viewport. It's very distracting and not the effect I'm going for at all.

What is the proper logic to prevent it from defaulting back to the center of the game window?

Check that the mouse over sensor is actually outputting a value:

import bge

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
own = cont.owner

over = cont.sensors['over']
if over.positive:
    own.worldPosition = over.hitPosition

The problem is caused by what's sometimes called the 'false' logic pulse. A sensor will run the python script twice, once when it is turned on and once when it is turned off (the frequency option makes it turn on every frame). Thus, when the mouse leaves the window, the sensor outputs a 'false' signal (detectable because over.positive is not True), and the values within the sensor are not guaranteed to be sensible. In this case, the default values of the hitPosition are the center of the screen.


Easy way of snapping Objects and Faces to vertices? I`m trying to migrate to blender (2.8) but can't figure out how to simply snap a face or faces or objects or edges etc based on vertices (see example below of how it is done in 3dsmax) as the gizmo concept seems to work differently in blender. What is the best workflow to achieve this behavior in blender? thanks in advance!

You need to enable "Snapping".

Switch to the edit mode.

Enable snapping by selecting clicking the magnet icon. Select what you want to snap to.

Grab the mesh and let it snap into position.


Texture not shown in 3D Viewport I know this question has been asked multiple times, however none of the answer I found applied to my case.
Please refer to my screenshot below, where I have the sphere thing (I call it Container) with UV unwrapped, painted, with assigned image texture in Nodes. In fact, it was normally displayed until yesterday.
The display method is in Texture. In fact, when I switched to Material, or Solid, the object would still be in wireframe as shown. The whole thing can still be rendered normally.
Hope it's just a wrong button clicked.
Thanks guys, appreciate any help.

Go to Object tab (with Sphere selected) and switch Maximum Draw Type to Textured.


Quickly fill in quads? I have a large set of quads ready to be made, but there are several of them and I want to know if there is a way of getting them filled in. CtrlE Does not work, because both sides are part of the same edge loop.

Bridge edge loops (W, E) will work provided the end edges that close the loop are not selected:


Add a texture to a cut meshface in animation EDIT NOTE: The other thread had two question in it. One was answered, the the other was not. I split the question into to separate questions and the other one can be found here.

I want to animate cutting open a machine with a mesh with a boolean modifier (or something that does the same). I want to apply a texture to the cut face .

What I want to create is something like this, but the red colour would be a texture:

What I mean with apply a texture to the cutface is something like this

So the cutface of the material of the machine wouldn't have a red, orange, whatever colour, but would show a dashed texture. And while one part of the machine would be dashed in one direction, another part would be dashed perpendicular to it. A third part would get dots or any other pattern.

Example videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOBsRID1SrE

The author wrote in a comment: "For this video I made a cube and added a thin solidify modifer to it to create a surface. Then I used a two boolean modifiers: one to intersect the surface with the monkey and one to get the difference between the monkey and the cube. I used an absolute offset for the striped texture."

Kindof what I want to get, but not really. It looks like a nice effect and easy solution for a single object, but if you have multiple objects they would all get the same texture overlay.

I maybe think about this in the wrong way, but what I would like to have it that so I can specify that obejct X has has the matrial Y and if cut, the new face should have texture Z.

I have tried the solution of the other post (using a second material but giving the material a texture and UV unwrap it) but it didn't work because the cutface is created dynamicly and I have no idea how to UV unwrap it without applying the modifier)

My Question:

If not clear, my questionis: How do I do this?

How can I add a texture to a cutface that is created with something like the boolean tool and can be used in an animation.

As requested In your last comment -

The example you mentioned is much more straight forward as it is a simple dissection and rotation of mesh that's been split in the Z axis...

Create the casing and use the solidify modifier to give it's walls thickness all round, and "apply" the modifier so that thickness becomes permanent mesh.

Give it material and texture at this point.

Duplicate the casing and move the copy to a spare layer (layer 9?).  It's often preferable to show the duplicate as a complete mesh rather than two stationary split sections.  Shading can change at the edges when split and smoothing is also used, whereas the duplicate hasn't been affected.

Slice the original in half vertically, say at 180 degrees and perpendicular to the camera, so you'll have a clear view of any workings that are inside.

A Boolean modifier could do this but I elected to slice this one manually so the results will be predictable and possibly cleaner.

Doing it this way also means there won't be surfaces covering the cross-section gaps between the inner and outer casing walls.
These are easily filled in from Edit mode with the F key.

Once filled they can be textured with your chosen cross-hatch pattern.

The front section's wall gaps probably won't need filling in because you'll only get a glimpse of them as the section is swept away.  (a matter of choice)

Normally the mechanisms within would be left intact and working, probably in a separate layer for convenience.

Animate the front section as required.

-=====-

What I usually do is switch off (make invisible) the front and rear sections of the casing so they don't interfere with the duplicate in Layer 9 which will be visible while everything is stationary.  Keyframe all three in the Outliner's Eye icon at frame 1.

At the frame where the animation starts, switch off the duplicate (eye icon in the outliner) and keyframe that.

At the same frame switch the front and rear sections on - keyframe those also.

The front section will be seen to swing out and be swept away, leaving us with the internal view and inner workings.

////////////////    /////////////////    ////////////

ANSWER for the 22 sec mark...

This method just uses a mask which slides right to left and hides only the front of the casing, not the rear.

The casing has to be "parted" front from rear section so masking can differentiate between the two.

As you're requiring edge thickness for the cross hatch pattern, the edge has to be emulated as the front casing is progressively 'peeled back'.  (Masking cuts targets away, edge thickness and all)

A textured plane shaped for the job is placed at the leading edge of the mask and animated to move identically with it.  To this end the mask's keyframes were simply copied to the edge plane.
(Parenting is unavailable because the mask would then render it invisible)

Shapekeys were used to tweak it's width so it appears to be rotating along with the edge of the front casing as it's peeled back, as well as trimming it's ends to the right angle and length over the course of it's travel.

If it's preferred, extra masks shaped accordingly can do most if not all of the trimming functions for you.  Rotating the edge plane physically as the casing is rolled back would take care of perspective.

Example here

Inviso Masks" -  (own term)

... only works with the viewport and rendering with OpenGL as far as I'm aware.

These are simply planes with absolutely no Specular, not much Diffuse, (dull grey) and their Material slot Opacity set to 0.008.  (a tad above the default 0.004 Alpha threshold)

They are also selective and can discriminate between objects with little effort.  Simply parent objects to them.  (child = object to be hidden).

Remove the parenting immediately and use the "Keep Transformation" option in both instances.

To immunize objects from invisibility - simply parent in reverse.  (child = the mask)
Again - remove the parentage immediately and "Keep Transformation"

IMPORTANT - Deselect all objects when checking them out.  Be in Object Mode and Press A

Chroma-key and other forms of selective masking would need some extra imagination and multiple rendering.


Wrong bone placement on object and pose mode during the eyes rigging I'm trying to learn how to rig eyes and I realized that while I'm on edit mode,the bones are placed correctly,but if I switch under object and pose mode,they aren't. Why ? How can I fix that ? I attached 3 pictures to show you...

This is likely due to a scaled Parent bone.

Like objects, each bone may have a parent bone that it follows by default. This parent is indicated in the Relations panel of the Bone Properties:

As noted in the properties, the default behavior for Child bones is to inherit the Rotation and Scale of the parent. The effect of this, as you've seen, is for some bones to seemingly move in Pose Mode from their original location in Edit Mode.

To fix this simply select all bones in Pose Mode and press ALT+R and ALT+S to reset their scale and rotation.

You can easily find the parent of any bone, if there is one, by selecting a bone in Edit Mode and then Select > Parent:

Anytime you extrude a bone the newly extruded bone is automatically parented, and connected to the bone it was extruded from.


Grab brush or snake hook I am on a sculpting expirience and i can not really find any difference on these two brushes , grab[g] and snake hook brush. Also what brush is better for extending a mesh? ( i read blender manual,still cant understand the difference).

With dynamic topology, to extend the mesh with additive geometry, use the snake hook brush. Use the grab brush, if you want to make small tweaks to geometry without changing the topology.


How do create a mesh on the base of a set of orthodontic brackets I designed like the regular bracket on the picture e How to.create mesh in the base of a bracket without harm ing the brackets base dimensions

k

Import your models (or design from scratch) your bracket objects into a .blend file. Each bracket should be a separate Blender object. You can name the brackets whatever you like. I recommend some syntax which let's you know the intended tooth, and some of the clinical parameters of the bracket's prescription. Eg, "UR3_tip11_tq0" for an Upper Right Canine, with 11 degree tip and 0 degree torque.
Orientation of the Bracket
Correct orientation of the bracket is critical to the convenience .
The 'Z' axis should point toward the facial aspect of the bracket
The local positive 'Y' axis should point toward the incisal, and be perpendicular to the wire slot, NOT aligned with the vertical alignment slot. This is important for the bracket being displayed correctly when first imported.
The 'X' axis should be aligned with the horizontal wire slot, the positive direction does not matter, and is determined by #1, and #2 above.
The local object origin, should be in the middle of the bracket, on the surface which touches the tooth.
Here is an example of the Upper Right Canine (first image) and the lower right canine (second image). A few things are important to notice. The positive Z-axis (blue arrow) points outward to the facial in both situations. The positive Y-axis (green arrow) points toward the incisal, which is down in the first image and up in the 2nd image. The X-axis (red arrow) is parallel with the wire slot, but can point in either direction (left in first image, right in second) based on the requirements of the first two constraints. Both these images show the local coordinate transform selected (the white arrow).
Assigning Custom Properties
Custom properties allow to display clinically meaningful visual guides to placing the bracket with respect to the bracket's prescription (eg. tip, torque, in/out etc'). Currently, only prescribed tip has any effect on how the visual aids are displayed while using the orthodontic bracket placement tools.
Adding a custom property
There are 2 ways a custom property can be added to a bracket. The easiest way is to add a property via the object tab of the properties panel. The "Custom Properties" panel is at the very bottom of that tab, you may need to scroll down. You can "Add Custom Property" which will create a blank property that you can edit the name and value of.  From here you must add the following custom properties to your brackets for the visual aids to display correctly.
quadrant - must be lower case, can be UR, UL, LL, LR, 1, 2, 3, 4
tip - any positive or negative number, in degrees
bracket_gauge - the length of the virtual bracket placement gauge
Other properties will be supported in the future, and you can add any information you want to it! Brand, author, system etc.
Using python to automate
Going through and adding and editing these properties one by one can be time consuming. The following simple script will at least add the custom data properties, which you can then edit in the properties panel above.
for ob in bpy.data.objects:
if not ob.get('tip'):
ob['tip'] = 0.0
if not ob.get('torque'):
ob['torque'] = 0.0

Then for base create chain like structures and copy pate it for planner base surface:


Why is unchecking emitter not removing text? I am trying this tutorial where I wan to dissolve text. At 30 frame I added key-frame and 31 frame I removed emitter checkbox. I replayed the all keyframe and found that the text does not disappear. How to make the original text disappear?

Blendfile: http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=46274

That setting only applies in the render. If you turn on rendered shading (⇧ ShiftZ) the text should vanish on cue.


Set Vertex normals to vertex color in Python How do i set the vertex color to vertex normal for all vertices of an selected object?

My approach here somehow prints only a few vertices and spares out the rest :(
How can i fix that and include ALL other planes, too? (see images below)

import bpy

current_obj = bpy.context.active_object
mesh = current_obj.data

if mesh.vertex_colors:
    vcol_layer = mesh.vertex_colors.active
else:
    vcol_layer = mesh.vertex_colors.new()

print("*"*40)

for poly in mesh.polygons:
        for loop_index in poly.loop_indices:
            loop_vert_index = mesh.loops[loop_index].vertex_index

            #color = [1 , 0, 0]

            #vcol_layer.data[loop_index].color = color

            #vcol_layer.data[loop_index].color = mesh.vertices[loop_vert_index].normal
            color = mesh.vertices[loop_vert_index].normal
            vcol_layer.data[loop_vert_index].color = color

            print("painting vert",loop_index, "to color ", color[0], color[1], color[2])

mesh.vertex_colors.active = vcol_layer

mesh.update()

Outcome for a sphere (paints only 1/4 of vertices??):

Outcome for a foliage-mesh (all planes are joined into one mesh)
Still paints not all vertices????

Please help me out, how to include all vertices :)

You must set vcol with loop index, not vertex index, because those are loop data (i.e. one color per face corner):

import bpy

current_obj = bpy.context.active_object
mesh = current_obj.data

if mesh.vertex_colors:
    vcol_layer = mesh.vertex_colors.active
else:
    vcol_layer = mesh.vertex_colors.new()

print("*"*40)

for poly in mesh.polygons:
        for loop_index in poly.loop_indices:
            loop_vert_index = mesh.loops[loop_index].vertex_index

            #color = [1 , 0, 0]

            #vcol_layer.data[loop_index].color = color

            #vcol_layer.data[loop_index].color = mesh.vertices[loop_vert_index].normal
            color = mesh.vertices[loop_vert_index].normal
            vcol_layer.data[loop_vert_index].color = color

            print("painting vert",loop_index, "to color ", color[0], color[1], color[2])

mesh.vertex_colors.active = vcol_layer

mesh.update()

However, since you are merely using vertex normal, it’s much simpler (and efficient) to loop directly on loops - and vcol are clamped to positive numbers, so you'll likely want to encode negative values with something like col = nor * 0.5 + 0.5:

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector

current_obj = bpy.context.active_object
mesh = current_obj.data

if mesh.vertex_colors:
    vcol_layer = mesh.vertex_colors.active
else:
    vcol_layer = mesh.vertex_colors.new()

print("*"*40)

for loop_index, loop in enumerate(mesh.loops):
        loop_vert_index = loop.vertex_index

        #color = [1 , 0, 0]

        #vcol_layer.data[loop_index].color = color

        #vcol_layer.data[loop_index].color = mesh.vertices[loop_vert_index].normal
        color = (mesh.vertices[loop_vert_index].normal * 0.5) + Vector((0.5,) * 3)
        vcol_layer.data[loop_index].color = color

        print("painting vert",loop_index, "to color ", color[0], color[1], color[2])

mesh.vertex_colors.active = vcol_layer

mesh.update()


Knife tool doesn't cut obscured edges I'm using Blender 2.66,  I find that the knife tool (K) doesn't work the way it used to.

Dragging across an obscured edge, even if selected, doesn't cut it.
There seems to be no way to activate the option to do a midpoint cut or multiple cuts.

Knife will cut through obscuring faces, if Z is pressed while cutting, either on solid or wireframe mode.

Midpoint snap can be activated by pressing Ctrl while cutting.

Further options are displayed on the 3D View area's header, while Knife tool is active.


Automatic bump mapping In the image, I know that setting Normal to a value (other than 0) in geometry will create a bump map from the texture onto the material. It works well and I'm doing this for the hair of a human model. What is the difference between positive and negative? Does one bump in one way and the other the exact opposite? (So if 1.0 bumps it outwards by a certain amount, -1.0 bumps it inwards by the same amount).

But my main question is the Bump Mapping Method and Space. What do these do exactly? I looked up on here and it doesn't specify their purposes, only shows the available options. What is the difference between these options? I found that Original method (which will for some reason disable Space) looks the best to me but I want to make sure that option is the most appropriate for the situation I am in.

As far as I see, if normal is positive light colours bump outwards and dark inwards, if negative - the other way round.

The rest doesn't seem easy, but here are some links. I think "Method" is mostly about quality:
http://kishalmi.servus.at/3D/bumpcode/

"Space" should tell in which space the normal vector will be stored. But the results look strange.

Anyway - why not use cycles?


Message from one scene to another (not an overlay) Is it possible to send a message from one scene to another? According to the manual page, it should be possible if the object field is left blank. I have a collision sensor which sends a message when player hits a flag at the end of a level. I want to have another scene which charts my progress through the levels and adds a 'level complete' icon to the display.  However the message sensor I am using in the progress scene is not receiving anything. I have tried adding the progress scene as a background scene to the level scene and I can see the property I am using to check does change but is reset as soon as I enter the progress scene and the message is not received. I have also tried using a blank overlay scene in both scenes to track the message on an empty but no joy. Hope that makes sense and thanks in advance for any help with this!

I've done some tests and you can not send a message to a scene that did not loaded.

In the example 1 the scene1 send a message when mouseOver the scene2 recive the message and add  1 to count, i use a script to print the value.

Scene 1 logic:

Scene 2 logic:

from bge import logic

obj = logic.getCurrentScene().objects['Suzanne']
print(obj['count'])

Behaviour when:

scene2 IS NOT an overlay nor background

scene2 IS overlay or background

In the example 2 i dont use any message. I store the value in an attribute of bge.logic module.

Scene 1 logic:

from bge import logic

if not hasattr(logic, 'count'):
    logic.count = 0
else:
    logic.count += 1

Scene 2 logic:

from bge import logic

if hasattr(logic, 'count'):
    print(logic.count)

Behaviour when:

scene2 IS NOT an overlay nor background


What's a good strategy for texturing large objects? I'm wondering about the best way to go about setting up textures for a house meant for a game.

I've read some things that say I should create a single large texture (2056x2056), paint all my details into there and then shrink it down to a smaller size for use later (512x512).

Another option is to create several materials with tileable textures for the brick, wood, shingles etc. and apply them to the faces that need them.  This would allow me to save a lot of memory on textures since I could reuse them on other models.

If I go the one-big-texture route, would I run into problems if I try to make something really complicated like a castle?  A 2056 square image might be okay for a one room house, but I'm worried that a castle would require an image that would be to huge to handle.

You should only use as little as possible textures (regarding the number) per object for games. Explanation below.
Textures should always be in a power-of-two square size: 512x512, 1024x1024, 2048x2048...
You should always aim for a texture resolution as high as possible, downscaling can be done within the game engine via quality settings or as a batch process, e.g. with a free software like Irfanview. Upscaling is hardly possible. On the other hand, the higher the resolution, the more human resource goes into the creation process.
Textures should not only include a diffuse channel, but also normal & bump as well as Ambient Occlusion. (Depending on the game engine even light/shadow maps, reflexion maps etc.) Most game engines will utilize the unused Alpha channel of a texture, so your put your diffuse channel into RGB and the bump map into the Alpha channel, for a smaller number of textures.
E.g.:

Diffuse+Bump.png

|_RGB = Diffuse

|_Alpha = Bump

A texture of 2048x2048 for a whole house may work for a game, where the camera is far away, e.g. Anno type games. If you have a first or 3rd-person camera this resolution will be very blurry when getting closer to the house.

If it's not possible to cover a large object like a castle with one texture you can use multiple textures. However this shouldn't change your strategy to use as little textures as possible over using small, recyclable textures for multiple objects.

Use single, per-object textures for the following reasons:

Project organization: Handling textures per object is much easier regarding changes, integration and management of your project
Game engine integration: Depending on the game engine you may have to assing textures manually to each object
Level design & workload: Handling many files is always slower than handling fewer, bigger files. Using multiple-object-textures over different game levels will nullify the advantage of less disc & memory space.

You can also create a free account on Turbosquid.com and look up their "Game Ready" specification, sadly this document seems not to be available ATM without login in:

http://support.turbosquid.com/entries/171903-Game-Ready-Certification-Specification

Here's an overview of texturing in Unreal Engine 4:

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Content/Types/Textures/index.html

As well as materials in Unreal Engine 4:

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/Materials/IntroductionToMaterials/index.html

Pay attention to the image under "Material Expression Nodes and Networks" to get an impression how UE4 handles UV's and textures.


How does rotation and scale affect a point lamp? I am designing a scene in Blender, for the lighting I am using a point lamp which has rotation properties.  I tried to rotate it to check the effect of the rotation on the quality of shadows, but I do not see any effect.

It doesn't - rotation and scale have no effect on a point light.

A point light emits light uniformly in all directions, so rotating it does nothing.  Note that if you change the lamp to any other type (Sun, Spot, Hemi, or Area) rotation will affect the direction of the light.

Scale also has no effect on the output of the lamp.  This can be demonstrated by trying to apply the scale of the lamp wth Ctrl+A, which will throw an error: Objects have no data to transform.

Note that if you change the lamp to an Area lamp, scale will affect the size of the lamp.  Scaling a Hemi lamp to very small values has a strange result, it seems to take much longer to render and produce drastically more noise on the first few samples, but not really change the actual lighting pattern.