Soft body to Soft body collision Is it possible to have two (or more) Soft body objects collide in Blender?

I have tried enabling self-collision, but distinct objects don't seem to interact with each other at all.

"Self Collision" is for the same object to collide with itself, not other objects/simulations.  Each soft body modifier acts as a separate simulation, they can't interact.

So, select all the softbody objects that will collide, then "Join" them (Ctrl+J) into one object.  Now the separate parts within the same object can use "Self Collision".

(Combined objects are not much more difficult to manage, just different.  You can still manipulate the separate parts within the same mesh like separate objects, just select a vertex of a part, then "Select Linked All" (Ctrl + L) to select the part for manipulation.

Or you can keep a copy of all the separate objects in a hidden layer that you manipulate, then join them when you're ready to simulate.  You may have to combine/finagle the materials some, but that's for another question. )

(Also, depending on what you are trying to accomplish, you may find "Cloth Simulation" to work faster and give better results than Soft Body, especially with self collisions.)


Sampling Substeps in fluid-simulations I'm new to Blender an i'm learning something about fluid-simulations. In the physics settings of the flow-object is a setting called: "Sampling Substeps".
I have played arround with the value to find out, what it does. But in my eyes, nothing is changing when changing the Value.
So What does it do?
Have a nice day:)

The Tooltip suggests that it's useful for fast moving flows. The documentation is more precise, and indicates it's mostly useful for fast moving sources - so you won't see any effect unless your source is moving.


my texture turn to solid color when rendering. Looks ok in material mode. All other textures on the model look good just one surface I have unwrapped it several times. replace the nodes and textures. I was trying to do a bake of the outside walls when this started to happen.

I figured it out ! There was a old baked UV map under the object data tap. I had made it when trying to bake textures for the walls. Deleted it and all is well.


Wavefront export with [Vertex/texture-coordinate/normal] face definitions I downloaded wavefront obj model from this site http://tf3dm.com/3d-model/edward-kenway-23504.html.

The model I downloaded (According to this wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavefront_.obj_file) has "Vertex/texture-coordinate/normal" face definitions. I use blender v2.66 to import and export the model. The problem is when I export the model its face definitions are different. For example:

Before import/export:

usemtl EdwardKenwayHead
s 1
f 15420/12835/15421 15421/12836/15422 15422/12837/15423
f 15422/12837/15423 15423/12838/15424 15420/12835/15421
f 15419/12839/15425 15420/12835/15421 15423/12838/15424
f 15423/12838/15424 15422/12837/15423 15424/12840/15426
f 15424/12840/15426 15425/12841/15427 15423/12838/15424

After import/export:

usemtl EdwardKenwayHead
s 1
f 1/1 2/2 3/3
f 4/4 1/1 3/3
f 5/5 1/1 4/4
f 4/4 3/3 6/6
f 6/6 7/7 4/4

Is there any way to export wavefronts with "Vertex/texture-coordinate/normal" face definitions in Blender? (v2.66) I already have C++ & OpenGL loader models with these faces.

By the way. Before export the model's size is 2.8KB and after export it is 1.8KB - good optimalization!

There are several objects included in the one file, all vertices listed are numbered in the order they exist in the file, each object then uses a range of these vertices for it's faces.

You will find that the objects and it's related items in your exported file will be in a different order than the original, therefore each object uses a different range of vertices. You should find that the total number of vertex lines, face lines etc. should all match up, just that each object is using different numbers.


Does Blender support threading for data processing? One of the most time taking part while working with images in Blender is to get pixels to numpy arrays and then to assign them back. As Blender supports multi-thread render I've thought it could be possible to make an image processing faster using  concurrent.futures like this (the script adds 10 images, 10 numpy arrays and assigns arrays as images' pixels):

import bpy, concurrent.futures, time
import numpy as np

def test(counter, multi):
    t1 = time.perf_counter()
    x = 1920
    y = 1080
    px = x*y*4
    images = bpy.data.images
    counts = [i for i in range(counter)]
    all_images = []
    for i in counts:
        num = np.ones(px, dtype = 'f')
        name = 'imgtest_'+str(i)
        new = images.new(name, x, y)
        all_images.append(new)
    if multi:
        def pixels(img):
            img.pixels[:] = num[:]
        with concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor() as executor:
            executor.map(pixels, all_images)
    else:
       for img in all_images:
           img.pixels[:] = num[:]
    t2 = time.perf_counter()
    print(t2-t1)

test(10, True)
test(10, False)

But it gives almost no time benefit. Also I've tried to split pixels lists to slices and process them with threading, but it doesn't speed up processes as well. I've never used threading before. Am I doing something wrong here or does Blender just not support threading for such tasks?

First of all, Cycles render is an additional application with its own kernel, written in c/c++. It is ''glued'' to Blender by several Python scripts, well I think so.

Secondly, you can use Python modules like threading and multiprocessing to process data simultaneously. They are built-ins in Python interpreter, so there shouldn't be any problems if you'll decide to distribute your script.


Blender 2.82 Mantaflow will not fill volume Using Mantaflow with the new Blender 2.82 release.

Trying to fill a 3 meter long tank with water, but the fluid sim only sloshes on the bottom of the tank without filling up, even after 800 frames @ 30fps… Inflow shoots from outside of the tank but within the Domain cube. Tried setting Liquid radius from 1.00 to 2.00, but still no fill. Tried resolutions at 64, 96, and 128 – no difference.

Tank is extra thick in order not to have FLIP voxel leak into the domain.

Do I need to up the Particle Sampling or the Narrow Band Width to get the tank to fill up?

TIA.

Was able to make it work by tessellating the tank effector to a high mesh.  Large, open, poly faces don't have enough vertices to calculate the containment.


Why does Blender make bubbles? It's not that important for me now, but I'm curious: I was learning gradient shading and played around a little. I seperated a face from the mesh, made it a new object and then reconnected them... And Blender made bubbles... Any idea, what Blender wants to tell me? Neither have I applied particles anywhere in the file (even when the modifier is shown) nor have I included anything else that is not about the cube and its shading. The bubbles occured after the separation and some of them stayed after reconnecting.
Here's the file to see it yourself:

There is in fact a particle system on that cube, just delete it with the minus button.


How to change X location axis for particle system? The carrots aren't properly placed to the ground. These carrots were created via particle system.
I want to rotate my particle system X location axis 90 degrees.
Is it possible?

There is a rule to give the proper orientation:

The particle object is considered along its Y axis and this is the axis that will give you the Z (say Z for now, but see below) on the mesh the particles are.

So if you want the carrots to be up (Z), you'll need to change them in edit mode so that what will be Z as particles is Y for the carrot mesh.

On the image above, all particles are well oriented, but the monkey that is used as particle object is oriented along Y, with no rotation.

Once you have this rule in mind, you now can play a bit with the particle orientation options:

As shown above, the orientation options are accessible if you check 'advanced' on a hair particle system.

The main option is 'orientation axis' (10 possibilities). Each of them is to indicate in which direction of the emitter the Y axis of the particle will be.

For instance, 'normal' is to say the Y will be along the normal of the emitter faces. 'Global X' is to say Y will be along X world axis, whatever the emitter orientation is. 'Object Z' is to say Y will stay along Z of the emitter even if it is rotated.

I let you experiment about the other options.

Now, as said previously, you need to orientate appropriately you model in edit mode:

In the image above,

On the left, Suzan oriented as usual: but it's top is along Z
On the right, Suzan rotated in edit mode so that its top is along Y (Y is the axis we want)

Also, the particles will be emitted from the object origin. So eventually, you'll need (still in edit mode) to adjust the geometry to that the origin is placed conveniently to your needs.

Other options that may interest you:

Randomize is to random above the Y axis (so randomly rotating using X or Z axis too)
Phase is to give an initial orientation around the Y axis
Randomize phase is to random around the phase
Scale and scale randomness is to adjust the scale and to give randomness to it (so that all carrots are not exactly the same)


Extruding inwards along edges? I have this shape that I want to extrude into. Here's a picture of the situation:

I want to extrude so that it fills in evenly so I can pull it out, add a mirror mod and have the blade looking all nice, however i cant seem to figure out how to extrude along edge normals. How can I do this?

You are looking for the inset tool. create a face from your edge boundary by selecting all vertices (like in your screenshot) and hit  f. Then hit i and drag with the mouse to create the faces.

Or, if you want to extrude to the normal of the face, use  f, then  e instead.


How to maximize a view from quad view (ex. front ortho)? After I toggle the quad view, how can I maximize the front or any other ortho views? Just the CTRL + Up only hides some panels but it doesn't maximizes the view completely like the perspective view gets maximized.

In Quad View, you have to toggle off the Lock button first, then move the mouse cursor over one of the four views, press Ctrl Alt Q again.


Molecular add-on particles won't interact with a non-animated rigid body I'm trying to make molecular add-on particles to interact with other rigid bodies and it appears that they can interact with an animated rigid body, but not with non-animated rigid body. Does that make any sense or I'm doing something wrong?
As soon as I'm animating the glass jar and move it with the keyframes, the particles are moving along in it (strangely squeezing into one corner and each other due to the gravity, but then distribute evenly again when it stops, but that's not my current issue), but as soon as I remove the animation and try to tip over that jar with a cube, they stop interacting with the jar and stay in one place, while the jar falls over.
I read people are rather having the other way around issues, does anyone have the expertise to see what's wrong there?
Thank you in advance!

It seems like some cache conflict.

Notes:

The glass jar should be Physics Properties > Rigid Body > Collision > type Mesh (not Convex because it should behave like filled object, but it didn't, hmm ...)
it is always better to Apply Scale (Ctrl+A) to avoid weird behaviour of boundaries
only make a difference if Substeps is changed from 4 to 1
(but changing it back to 4, it explodes in some point of anim, because of some previously cached data, that I'm not able clear from file even I change amount of particles, that always helped in crisis like this.

Bake to Keyframes
What I can recommend is to select glass jar and Bake to Keyframes (if you played all animation so rigid body was cached, baked avoids caching RB. Since than I don't have an issue with molecules.
Also it solves cube (that is pushing the glass) to affect particles.

After bake you can use Decimate function (with cursor hovering in Graph Editor) to simplify F-curve.


What are animation nodes? So, I've come across this term while using other software as well. However, with respect to Blender, what are they? How does one use/access them and if possible could a simple animation be demonstrated using this?

It is an addon that adds a procedural node based modelling and animation tools and workflow to Blender.

You can learn more about it at the official GitHub repository

From the official description

  Node based visual scripting system designed for motion graphics in Blender.


Motion blur for a spotlight projecting an image I made a model of a projector, where the projection part is done with a spotlight with material like below.

Now when I move the spotlight away at a high speed, I'd expect some form of motion blur on the projector screen but the image is sharp as if the projector was stationary.

Just to convince myself that motion blur in the scene works at all I've added a light-emitting ball that moves in front of the screen at a rate similar to the spotlight.

Without motion blur

With motion blur (note blurry ball but sharp image)

How can I make a projector that responds to motion blur?

That's a real problem. Motion blur only records the difference in position, rotation, size of faces (all visible objects contain faces). From this it calculates speed vectors and blurs regions accordingly. That means objects will be blurry, even their reflections, while lamps (no faces, not directly visible) will show an unblurred spec.
The same unfortunately goes for animated texture coordinates. There used to be a 'hack' where you would render subframes and combine them, but that multiplies the amount of rendered images by at least 4, usually 8 or more. Let me know if that's an option, then I'll research it again.
Sorry that's not a solution, but it should contain some answers and it was too big to put it in a comment.


Creating a procedural worm texture I'm exploring procedural textures and I am looking to get close to something like this:

How can I achieve this kind of worm texture?
The closest I got is with the musgrave texture:

I would like the (black) islands to be disconnected.

UPDATE:

To make things clearer, this is more like what I would like to achieve:

I have no idea if it is at all achievable, but it's an area worth exploring.

Maybe not exactly the same, but closer to what you're trying to achieve are the following two node setups. The basic idea in both cases is the same. Try to achieve a similar look with combinations of the default procedural textures, and then use either a colorRamp node or a math node set to 'GREATER THAN' to filter the texture.

Using the colorRamp node, the Musgrave Texture will already be enough as an input. Take a closer look at the ColorRamp node. I pulled the white and the black values very close together. What this means effectively is that all pixel values coming into this node, which are below something like 0.6, will be converted to pure black. everything above something like 0.7 will be converted to pure white. The rest becomes greyscales. Basically, this is a bit like an extreme brightness/contrast correction.

Greather than (this is an option in the math node) is only able to output values of 0 or 1, so black or white, nothing inbetween. For your example, this seems to work, but for others there might be too much aliasing in the image. The texture I tried to build using two distorted wave textures overlaid over each other. I just added it so it becomes more clear that you can also stack procedurals, combine them using pixel math, and then again filter the output. The result is less of what you wanted, but the idea might take you further from here:


Object not showing correctly on camera or view but it renders Suddenly, after trying some weird effects, shadings and deleting them, my object started displaying in the viewport as only mesh, disappearing in the camera but still renders completely fine.
I can't do further work without previewing.
Any guess on this?

Edit: For clarification, this is the normal Animation view,  I didn't change anything from the default windows organization.
Also I'll include another screenshot for you to see that it's not about the object position or anything.

Maybe you have accidentally deactivated something in the Object Types Visibility settings in the left 3D Viewport, for example Mesh or Text or anything else which applies to your text object. In this case it won't be displayed in the viewport but renders normal.


How to display background images in perspective? I am trying to find out how to approach a relief type project.
I have a background image and a flat plane mesh to sculpt on, but I actually don´t see any changes looking straight on top. When I tilt the perspective a bit the image disappears.

Is there a way to make the image appear at all perspectives?

Background images will only be displayed in

  Camera Prespective view (Numpad 0)

Any of the Preset Orthographic views

  Front/Back (Numpad 1 or CtrlNumpad 1)
  Right /Left (Numpad 3 or CtrlNumpad 3)
  Top/Bottom (Numpad 7 or CtrlNumpad 7)

Background images will not show in perspective view.

To switch between Perspective and Orthographic view use Numpad 5

Background images are used for reference only and will not be part of the final render.

Alternatives to background images are to use an empty as image or using a plane with the image mapped to it.

To use an empty as image use Add> Empty >Image

Select the image in the properties->Empty->Display tab

Alternatively, you can use the image as background for the world. Set the Texture coordinates to Window.


Hair particle edit mirror doesn't work I tried to x mirror my particle edit but it doesn't work.

If you just add random particles, they are all over the place, not mirrored, so the mirror function doesn't know what to do. You'll need to delete all particles in particle edit mode and use the add brush while symmetry is alread turned on.
usually you would place a couple of hairs far apart, comb them and use interpolated mode on the add tool, so you have a running start.


Constrain point to surface Is there a way to lock a vertex from object1 to the surface of object2? More specifically I am talking about the end of a spline which should be locked to the surface of a mesh (not only a single face of the mesh).

Use a hook modifier on the control point. Fortunately there is a easy helper operator for that.
Select the control point, CTRL + H > New Object, then go back into object mode, select the empty, add a "Shrinkwrap" constraint and select the target object.


where do i find option to change light bounce? i'm sure this is a simple question but i've just started with blender. I see that I can change the number of light bounces to reduce render time, but I can't find that option in the newest version?

It's still where it always has been, in Properties > Render > Light Paths > Bounces:


The Period "." in Blender number pad emulate I emulated the number pad. But I do not know what key to use for the "." button.

I'm not sure either, though I have a feeling not all keys on the numpad are emulated, just the numbers. If you filter the key map by KeyBinding/numpad then you can assign whichever functions you like (in this case probably 3D View / View Selected) to alternative keys.


Low Spec Computer Normal Baking Tips? I'm doing the quick normal bake from high to low poly for a 300K vert mesh, but my system is struggling to keep up with the higher poly mesh.

My inclination was to do some dyntopo sculpting and alteration in the higher poly in order to achieve the finer details before texturing.

I believe I don't have any pre-render optimization settings set. Oftentimes when I undo (something I do often when sculpting), the wait for the undo result is between 10-30 seconds, and thus throws off the pace.

Any way for lower spec computers to better handle higher poly meshes, particularly in sculpt mode?

Blender is genereally faster if you do not view the UVs of a high poly object while at the same time working with the mesh in 3d. UV mapping a high poly object might not be necessary, it is better to avoid doing that at all and work with UVs only on the lower poly versions that you bake the normals for. You can also hide parts of the mesh while working - in edit mode h to hide selected, Shift+h to hide unselected, alt+h to unhide. You can hide objects you do not need to see in the object mode as well it might be easier to do this from the Outliner or use local mode(Numpad /) to concentrate on one object. Spliting your object into smaller objects where possible and working on parts at a time might also make a difference. Obviously viewing objects in textured or material modes is slower than in solid or wireframe modes.

It's worth considering that the best cure for slow hardware might still be upgrading the hardware - no matter how much we don't want to hear that. If it's earning you money it's worth it, if not, than do you really need to work with such high poly meshes or is it possible to settle for less?..


How to lock the position of one of my bones? I want to move some of my bones without moving the entire rig. Is there a way to do this without unparenting the bones?

Maybe you should explain more precisely what is your case. But for example, you could unparent your bone in Edit mode, then in Pose mode, give it a Child Of constraint (press the Set Inverse button to keep the bone at its original position). When you'll need the child bone to be unparented, you'll simply create 2 Influence value keyframes: at frame X-1 you'll keyframe an Influence of 1, and at frame X you'll keyframe an Influence of 0.


Why had my rendering stopped working? It was working fine until I got into making the plane look glossy, then it just stopped showing any changes as I made them. I tried working on the shape and made it into glass and it morphed a little in the rendering but does not look like its supposed too. I am using a Mac computer OSX 10.6.8. I just got this program tonight and am studying the lessons trying to learn it!

It looks like your plane has multiple materials on it but out of sight :

Your changes on this material are not visible because it's not assigned to your object (plane).
Remove the other materials or affect this one to your geometry :
1. Select your plane, Tab to go in edit mode, then A to select All
2. Select the checker material from the material list
3. Click the Assign button


How do i convert this equation into the node editor? How do I make this in the node editor?
I don't get how to go around y=(-x)

Labelled  'Layout > Reroute' nodelets not necessary, but often helpful.

Alternatively, if you have complex expressions to convert, you might consider using @Rich Sedman's Node-Expressions add-on, which could generate a group like this:

It's best to be quite explicit with your bracketing.. In this example, when I didn't bracket the unary minus on x, the negative was applied to the whole expression, rather than binding to the variable. This is expected Python.. but maybe not obvious.


Multilple Images Texture how can i add another layer of another image texture(in this case a PNG image) onto an object that already has an image texture on it?
for example: i use a plane as a floor and it has a wooden texture on it but now i want to add a dirt PNG on it as well.

In order to do that , grab those image textures and mix those with a mix rgb node . Then set the mix mode to multiply and factor to 1. In case it's a png image then don't forget to use alpha as factor. Alpha value won't work in eevee . So set the blend mode to alpha hashed.
Hope that helps.


Multiplying mesh multiple times in Blender I'm trying to create a mesh in the shape of acoustic foam. This foam is used to cancel out echoes and is also used in transportation:

To create such a material, I add a cube, then I select the upper 4 vertices and click Alt + m, then "At center".

This creates a pyramid.

How could I now multiply this pyramid in order to form such a foam object?

Thank you!

To create a "matrix" of objects, just use the Array modifier twice with the Relative Offset set to x=0 y=1 z=0 and x=1 y=0 z=0 as shown in the screenshot:


How to choose which origin vertex to snap from? In the picture below I am moving the higlighted cube to the left along y and have closest vertex snapping enabled. This is in object mode. As you can see, Blender has circled the vertex that it is snapping to but has automatically selected the top left vertex of the translating cube as the vertex from which to snap.

How can I instead select the vertex pointed at by the red arrow to be the one that is snapping to the circled destination vertex? Sometimes this seems to change automatically, but I can't find a setting or any documentation on how to do this.

Although I do not know exactly how to do it the way you are asking, I do know of a way that should make it snap to the correct vertex.
Move the highlighted cube to the far left of the other object.  When you choose to snap then, it will choose the closest vertex, which would then be the right one, as said by @Robin Betts.


How to create a seamless animation loop in Blender? I have a small animation of a character in Blender 2.8 that is suppose to loop, however no matter what I try to do, there is always a little "hiccup" where the animation ends and starts.
Things I've tried doing:

Changing interpolation to Cyclic;
Copying start frame and placing it one frame AFTER the animation end;
Manually adjusting curves in the graph editor to make the transition more smooth.

After all of that, the animation simply does not loop correctly. The place where it starts/ends is very noticable. Despite the begining and end frames being identical, it being cyclic and having the curves adjusted.

Is there a tool, or a function or something I'm missing to create loops in Blender, or is this simply not possible to achieve?

Blend file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nngunwosevrh5w9/loop.blend?dl=0

I usually key the first frame on frame 0 and output from frame 1 onward. This has to date never failed me.

Maybe your problem has a different source, share the file if you can.

Edit:
I rendered out the image sequence, then composed it. First, I assumed your hickup was just a slight buffering error from your video player, but then I compared the first and the last frame from the output, which were identical, causing a 2 frame hold.

Your first and last frame of the loop must not be identical, or you will get these slight stutters. An easy solution to that problem is to either:

push all keyframes one frame forward, so they are outside of the render area,

or shorten the render interval by one frame.

So I pulled the last frame and rendered a video. Seems gone now.

https://youtu.be/kwSuWkUF8k4


Can I access a mesh's local vertex positions in Cycles Nodes? I'm looking to use a mesh's local vertex data (absolute distance from 0 or origin) for the FAC on a color ramp thus allowing me to grade the color based on distance from the Origin. Is there a way to get this data from a node in cycles?

This is to make a coal with an Emissive Color ramp that will have a Dark black\red for the tips of the coal and a brighter warmer orange/red for the bits closer to the heat.

You can easily use use the Object texture coordinates from the Texture Coordinates node to achieve this.

The socket will output XYZ values in object space, than can be used as RGB values or mapped with a Color Ramp node.

All you have to do is use a Separate XYZ node to get the Z component of the coordinates, and optionally a Math node set to Absolute so you can easily have symmetry along Z, if that is what you wish to achieve.

Taking this a step further, you can calculate the distance as sqrt(x^2 + y^2 + z^2) (and remove the Absolute node) as follows :

Feed this into a 'Multiply' Math node to allow you to scale it as necessary and link this into the Color Ramp.


Is it possible to use a frames marker name and append it to the file name upon export? I am batch rendering files and it would really help me if I could add the marker name of the frame being rendered to the name of the output file. So for example my marker is called 'front_view' and the file name for that rendered frame would be 'front_view_objectname.png' or at least 'front_view.png','back_view.png' etc.

I searched online and couldn't find an answer.

No, this isn't supported, however there are some options you could try instead.

Stamp the marker name into the file and read the marker name back out later. (JPEG, EXR, PNG support writing stamp data into the file)
Write a pre-render handler to impliment this with a python script, so before rendering, change the name based on the marker (I didn't check this works, only some settings can be changed while rendering). (See: http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_71_release/bpy.app.handlers.html)
Render marker ranges - See: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/15373/55 triggered by a python script.


How to invert the colors properly in Blender? When I invert the colors in Blender, I don't get the same result at all as Photoshop. The middle-grey background should not change, but it gets brighter in Blender while it stay the same value in Photoshop.

Blender will generally linearize colors when importing 8bit images. Photoshop does not. Normally, Blender's behavior is correct but in this case you are encoding data here, not colors. You can inform Blender of this and disable the de-gamma step by setting your input color space to "linear" or "raw" instead of "sRGB".


Edited picture-setting to new color I have edited with Ctrl+left mouse click a small area of pixels (see the snippet below)
which yielded the small dark rectangle in the l.h.s. half of the blue bottom picture.
Now I wanna to set this to white color. How shall I proceed ? I have also added the "Mask.001"
node but it seems to have no effect to the output. (Perhaps I have weight 1 on the other
layer picture and I have to change this somehow).

EDIT

EDIT2

The issue is that your mask is not the correct size for your image, and you need to change the Mix Node settings from "Color" to "Mix".
You need to change the settings for your mask node to "Fixed" instead of "Scene Size."  Then, type in the x/y dimensions of your image.  I also changed the mix node to "Mix" instead of "Color."

If you don't know how to find the dimension of your image, open it on Windows Explorer, right-click on it, and press "Properties."  You can find the dimensions under the "Details" tab.
Hope that fixes your problem!  Let me know if you have any other issues.


Render layers and volumetric scattering when I try to render separate layers I have no transparent background reason for volumetric scattering.
is there a way to solve this?

Could you be a more specific? Attach simplified blend file with issue via https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/. Add screenshot with highlighted issue and ideally some reference how should it looks like for you fixed? Thank you

Here is something that seems to be working ... not perfect, but hard to say what is your story.


How to add single vertices onto the surface of a mesh? When Ctrl + Right Mouse Button clicking to add a single vertex, how do you make the vertex snap to other existing geometry?
In the depicted example I need to add some edges between the spheres, and to achieve this I'd like to quickly add verts onto the surface of the spheres. The verts does not need to become a part of the sphere mesh, it only needs to land onto that geometry.

I don't think it's possible to use ctrl+RMB and snap at the same time. However, if you would use E to extrude a vertex and have Snap to Faces enabled at the same time, you can do what you trying to achieve, I think.


FBX export group instances to unity issue I have issues with exporting a group of meshes into unity.
I want to build a room in blender where the walls (img #1) are constructed separately and can be used as group instances in a new layer or scene (img #2).
All parts of a wall is parented under an empty. And so is the final room with the wall instances.

Problems occur when importing to unity, I select the walls (the group instances) in the room layer and tick "selected objects" and export.

Unity will import the three instances but with default position/rotation (img #3).

Also, when looking in the unity outliner, something seems off with the parent/child relations (img #4)

The goal is to export the room as is, like img #2.

Blender file:

You could try removing that empty object, in blender you use empty objects to avoid those z-axis issues between blender and unity. Also when exporting to FBX you could set what is your up-axis

EDITED:
From your shared file I exported one by one to FBX and them imported into Unity, without that axis issue, try that, BTW don't forget to set your forward and up axis... If it doesn't work let's go chat


Blender render passes If you set up render layers in blender and you have them all ticked wouldn't blender render all of those layer for you all at once one after the other with all the associated maps that have been ticked ready for comping in an external application other than blender?

I feel like blender should do this already and thought it did?

I'm using blender internal

There are two parts to the render layers settings. First is each render layer that you create, each of these results in a new rendered image that can be added into blenders compositor. Second is the passes that are used to make up the render layer, these are available as sockets in blender's compositor.

When you save the render result you will normally save the combined result as a 2d image, most image formats will only support this one flat output. However if you save the render result as OpenEXR multilayer, then you will get each render layer and associated passes in the one file. Depending on the level of OpenEXR support in your other application you should get access to each of these outside of blender.

Another option is to setup a File Output for each pass, this will let you save each chosen pass or layer as a separate image that can be used by any application. To do this you connect each desired socket to a File Output node in the compositor, use the properties panel N to access all settings for the file output node.


AttributeError while changing the display units using python script I have two questions both related to python scripting:

1) I want to set the units to mm, for that, I change the scale to 0.001 in both Scene and Display in the properties panel. When I copy the commands and run it as a script I get an AttributeError saying:

  "AttributeError: 'SpaceTextEditor' object has no attribute 'context'"

In one of the answers, I understood that this just clicks the button in the properties editor and since we are running it from a script the line can be removed. But the next line, where you set the scale length, also throws an error saying:

  "AttributeError: 'Scene' object has no attribute 'system'"

2) I want to scale an Ico sphere along the three axes, I change it in the properties panel but the code generated does not take into effect the changes in these values. Please find the code below:

import bpy
bpy.ops.object.delete(use_global=False)
bpy.data.objects["Camera"].hide = True
bpy.data.objects["Lamp"].hide = True
bpy.context.space_data.context = 'SCENE'
bpy.context.scene.system = 'METRIC'
bpy.context.scene.scale_length = 0.001
bpy.context.space_data.grid_scale = 0.001
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_ico_sphere_add(size=1, view_align=False, enter_editmode=False, location=(0, 0, 0), layers=(True, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False))
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_ico_sphere_add(subdivisions=3, size=1, view_align=False, enter_editmode=False, location=(0, 0, 0), layers=(True, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False))
bpy.context.object.location[0] = 20
bpy.context.object.location[1] = 50
bpy.context.object.location[2] = -14
bpy.context.object.dimensions[0] = 2  # changes not taken into effect (40 on UI)
bpy.context.object.dimensions[1] = 2 # (20 on UI)
bpy.context.object.dimensions[2] = 2 # (35 on UI)

I am new to blender and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Error messages are pretty helpful in this case.

  "AttributeError: 'Scene' object has no attribute 'system'"

Means that you can not access the scene's system property because there is none. In other words: the actual 'Object' (Scene in this case) has no attribute called .system so you can not access Scene.system.

Suggest using the auto complete feature (Ctrlspacebar) of the command line when searching for attributes:

>>> bpy.context.scene.u
                       nit_settings
                       pdate(
                       sers
                       ...
>>> bpy.context.scene.unit_settings.system
'METRIC'
>>> bpy.context.scene.unit_settings.scale_length
1.0

Note: Lines from the Info Area not always yield the 'correct path' to the attribute/property.


How can a grid mesh be unwrapped to overlayed quads? I have a grid mesh on the floor and want to UV map it to an image of 2x2 tiles.
I remember that there was an option which allows it to map all quads over another, but I no longer know what the name of the menu items was.

Between the tiles are joints (in case this makes a difference), detail view:

Starting with an unwrapped grid (without the joints), press U in Edit Mode to bring up the unwrap popup and chose Reset:

After scaling down all UVs to the size of a single tile they can be distributed by repeated Random Deselect from the Select Menu in Edit Mode


Trying to Bake Texture, but it's saying that it's a uninitialized image? I'm trying to bake a principle shadier for a animation, but every time I try to bake it, it tells me that I don't have a image and it's not baking correctly. Don't know what to do.

Create a new blank image with transparency (choose your size, maybe 2K resolution). In the current shader tree, include a texture image connected to a diffuse shader.

Your procedural shader network should be mixed with the image node->Diffuse with a Mix shader node. Lastly that node should connect to material output.

Your viewport should still be showing your procedural shader only.
Now go to the render properties, scroll down to bake, and choose (diffuse). Press bake.

If you make a screen capture, of your setup that would help as well.


When i click to do stuff with retopoflow nothing happens cursor just moves around? Thanks for your time and don't mind my poorly made rock.

Never mind I had to press control while clicking for results.


Restart image sequence for each new particle? I have a plane, with an animated image sequence as a material. I then have the object (below) as an emitter, emitting these planes as particles. The image sequence is a cyclic texture, so that it repeats again and again.

In short, rather than having the texture the same for every single plane, as it is below, how can I have it start again for every new particle as it appears?

Blender Particles has both an object and group feature.  You appear to already be using the object feature. With a bit of practice new particles can be added in 88 seconds or less.  We happen to show Materials and Texture for Blender Internal Render.  Cycles has a similar settings in the nodes.

Particle System panel showing location of group information.  Also showing some groups in the outliner window. Image above.

Material/Texture/Image Sequence/Offset and Start. Image Above.

Here is a video tutorial for creating a group.  It may or may not be the same version of Blender you are using.  You may choose a different tutorial on the topic of [groups]. I just did a quick search.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2Q6KcSho48

or the manual

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/3dview/object/properties/relations/groups.html

One way to achieve your goal is to create a [group] of particles.

Each plane in the group can be different. Blender can use any of the planes in the group. This feature is in the particle settings use group. See image above.  I suggest you put at least 9 image planes in your group for variety.
This proposed answer does not use Python. If the OP has Python experience then the OP can do some of these tasks with Python.
The planes in the group will be different because you will take the steps to have different [start and offset and image selection quantity] values for them into the image sequence.
A suggestion is to create another plane as a duplicate of what you already have, then change the [start and offset].  The offset is within the image texture settings.  See image above.  Change to suit your needs.
If the original plane is in the group, then all duplicates will also be in the group.
Please verify and improve these suggestions and suit to your needs.


Loop Cut failing some of the faces I'm trying to fix some shading issues by adding some geometry near that hole. The problem is that Loop Cut tool doesn't let me add a loop cut in the front faces, only at the back, why?

As you can see, I was able to add 2 cuts near the hole, but only at the back faces. I need the loop cut along that front face (by the yellow line).

Am I missing something here?

Edgeloops are made of quads

If the tool doesn't suggest an edge is becuase those faces are not part of the edgeloop.

Cutting the faces with a boolean operation to create the hole transformed some of the quads in n-gon, that is currently breaking the quads flow around the section.


Why the texture does not show on my object? Here are my files for the stuff I show below: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0fraun9z3psbges/AACu2uOLH4eCNEiU-cFfv3-la?dl=0

manual.obj has usemtl 2imagesconcatenated
manual.mtl has newmtl 2imagesconcatenated and
map_Kd imageBlendedBefore.png
material is applied:

the UV Map is selected (and with Viewport set to Material):

When the viewport is set to Texture:

When viewport is set to Rendered:

I would like to see my texture applied to my object. What am I missing?

The .obj file is improperly set

Should be

f 1/1/1 2/2/2 3/3/3
f 2/2/2 3/3/3 4/4/4
f 3/3/3 4/4/4 5/5/5
f 4/4/4 5/5/5 6/6/6

instead of

f 1 2 3
f 2 3 4
f 3 4 5
f 4 5 6

and vt values should be between 0 and 1


how do i insert a keyframe at the frame where the object reaches a path control point? I have an object constrained to follow a path. The path is a Bezier curve with many control points. This is working fine. Except the object takes the bends in the Bezier curve at a constant speed. It should decelerate as it approaches the bend and accelerate as it moves away from the bend.

I decided to solve this by adding keyframes and tweeking the f-curve.  If I add a keyframe at the frame where the object reaches the control point, I can tweek the curve at that point.

I am doing this by scrubbing the timeline. I guess when the control point is and place the keyframe at that frame. If I guess wrong by too much, the object will slow down and speed up at the wrong times.

Is there some way to exactly match the point in time when the control point is reached?  If not, is there some other clever way to solve this problem?

Not sure if it helps, but if you don't mind loosing the constraint itself (you can easily restore it if needed anyway) you could bake the action into keyframes.

That way you get an already drawn graphic of the object positions along time, and you get a better visual feedback of where the object is and when.

Keep in mind that this will not automatically give you keyframes and the exact curve control points, but the position graphics might give a rough idea of where tight turns are.

That way you can then easily accelerate and decelerate the animation by nudging frames back or forth in the graph editor.


Materials: How to get this transparent screen look? Alright Im trying to get something along the lines of a mix shader with image texture combined with emissive but transparent - these screens:

I have no idea how to go about this in cycles. What would create this material?

EDIT: this is what I have but not as desired:

This effect could be achieved with 4 nodes.

Add a emission shader (that your image will plug into)
Add a transparent shader
Add a mix shader

Plug your two shaders into the mix shader and slide the FAC value to taste.

After rendering I would bring the image into a compositor and add some glow around the hologram image to make it a little more believable.

Pics taken from Unsplash.com

Photo by Javier Ramos on Unsplash
Photo by Justin-Lim-500765-unsplash


How to export to other format with the materials I'm making a Transparent Glass Cup in Blender 2.8
I'm using the Principled BSDF --> Transmission set to 1, Roughness set to 0
If I'm not mistaken, if I export it to .obj/.fbx file, the glass cup will no longer transparent and I will need a texture for it to make it transparent again.
Is there any way to do this?

What you should export out is a 'Transparency Map'. Otherwise known as Alpha Map as well
Its a black & white map, where black means 0(fully transparent), white means 1 (fully opaque)
After preparing a transparency map, you can connect it to the transparency/alpha slot in any engine, and it would work the same.


strange shadows after removing doubles I imported one voxel model from another program. When I tried to parent the armature, it showed error so I remove doubles from the model.
After removing doubles from the model, parent error was gone. But strange triangles appeared on my model. Shape of mesh didn't changed.
I searched the internet to fix this problem then recalculated normals, but nothing has changed.

This is how my model looks like after removing double.

This is my original model before removing double.

You have Smooth Shading enabled. Select the object and switch to Flat Shading and it will look like before (Object > Shade Flat).

The other software split the connection between faces, similar to how Blender's Edge Split modifier works, to make the faces appear flat shaded. This is because the vertex normals are depending on the face normals of the neighboring faces. If the faces and edges are split from each other this doesn't happen, because there is only one face the vertex is part of. If you now interpolate the normals for the shading of the face, it will remain flat shaded even when you use Gouraud/Smooth shading.

A better approach that doesn't require the separation of faces and therefore duplication of vertices, is to simply not interpolate the face normals over the barycentric coordinates. That is what Blender's Shade Flat does.


How to reset Bounding Box without effecting the object? I got a problem with an upright object which with tilt bounding box.

Because its bounding box is tilt , I can't symmetric sculpt properly.

Although I can use mirror modify to get symmetric effect, still wondering is there a way to reset the bounding box without effecting the object inside?

This is the object I made.

Its bounding box is tilt.

Your object has been scaled and rotated in object mode but the rotation has not been applied.

In object mode press ⎈ Ctrl+A to apply transformations.

read: Why is it important to apply transformation to an objects data?


Middle Mouse turns on Perspective Blender 2.8 is really great. Many thanks for the rework of the UI :)

I have one "tiny" problem. I am working mostly in orthographic view and I rotate a lot during modelling. Every time I rotate I have to press the middle mouse. This press activates perspective view what is annoying especially if zoomed in. (It only activates, it doesn't deactivate). I didn't find how to disable this in the keymap.

If Auto Perspective is set in User Preferences > Navigation ...

.. then the view will revert to perspective on leaving any of the standard orthographic views.


Why constraints ruins material set up? I'm creating a scene with planets, and I wanted one planet to track to the camera (but not in 100% percent). But when I want to render it the "fresnel node" is acting weird. Why constraints ruined my set up, and how to avoid this?

Of course I want planet to rotate in directon of my camera, but fresnel must behave the same as before (it should outlines the object, not creating some line via center of object). I tried different constaint settings, nothing worked.

Simpler Example (both screens are from camera perspective):

The solution is to disconnect the normal input connected to the fresnel node.

The cause is the order that things get calculated. In your example the normal value is calculated to fulfil the material needs, then the constraint is applied and the result is sent to be rendered. Without the normal input, cycles uses the normals of the object during the render, which means the normals are calculated after the constraint is applied.


How do I delete extra Faces? The Gemstone was created by starting with an oversize Cylinder which was renamed Gem.
Each facet or Face was created using Boolean Difference between the Gem and a Plane.
This was done 91 times for this gemstone design.
All input values were double precision.

Instead of 91 Faces the gemstone has 94.
These extra Faces seem to always be on an edge.
The pavilion should have 42 faces but I count 44 as shown in the pavilion view.

In addition to extra Faces there are sometimes extra Edges which can be removed by Dissolving.

When the gemstone is rendered in an animation Black areas appear then disappear and reappear in another area. Sometimes the rendering will have extra Faces sticking out of the gemstone.

How do I delete these extra Faces?

You have extra faces here:

In edit mode use Mesh>Vertices "Remove Doubles" (or choose "remove doubles" from the toolbox>Remove:>Remove Doubles.


Is there a way to stop Blender from performing an action once started? For example, sometimes I accidentally switch to Material view for objects instead of Textured and since my computer is very slow, it takes WAY too long until I can do anything again. So, I'd like to be able to hit a key and have Blender stop trying to display Material view.

It depends, some actions you can stop, others you cannot. However you can always stop blender by closing it Alt + F4 or killing the process. Some things can be stopped in blender. If it is possible to stop an action you can do it with the ESC key.

Actions that cannot be stopped:

Changing shading style in the viewport, e.g changing to textured or materials can take some time if you have a lot of textures, there is no way to stop this
Applying/Modifying modifiers, e.g when you accidently increase the numbers of arrays to 400 blender will take a long time to compute this depending on the complexity of the object. Same goes for other modifiers.

Actions you can stop mid process:

Rendering, you can always abort a render at render time
Baking textures, similar to render: e.g baking a normal map.
Baking fluids: Smoke and Liquid simulations can be canceled just like renders.

You can also cancel these actions with the GUI by clicking on the X:


Cycles - Bake - Black patches I have been trying to figure out why my object is rendering so dark. I have been messing with diffuse and other settings through reading other help forumns. I still can't figure out what the issue is and now I am getting a big black box in my painting. Can anyone explain to me what I am doing wrong?

The blender file is here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Q6TLXFYbRHifzNpNDP_BfoBC_qcXwLb9

The object (s4studio_1) in front of your "photography" generates black "patch", it causes graininess (noise) as well.

The object is disabled from Global Viewport, but not from Rendering (Bake).
Disabling the object from Render solves the issue.

The darker appearance of photography can be solved by changing value of Mix Shader from 0.7 to 0.5, but for more info of mixing Diffuse/Glosy try this
Confusing problem when I'm trying to mix Diffuse with Glossy shader

BTW: Lightning your scene by strong "Ambient Oclusion" (1.75) doesn't seem to be a good way for some natural result. Your four lamps are not (visibly) lightning the scene anymore. Deleting them you can see any difference. In this screen only World color (HSV 0/0/0.8) and Sun strenght 3 does the job.


Move objects toward center If I have multiple objects surrounding the center of the scene, how would I move all of them toward the center X units?

Example:
I have 4 gears in my scene lined up 3 units from the center in each direction. I would like to move them all towards the center without changing their size/proportions X units, until they begin to touch.

How would I go about moving all of these objects the same distance towards the center without distorting them?

Check Manipulate Center Points, select all, press S and scale them down.

You can change Pivot Point to 3D cursor if you want.


How to you scale, move or rotate outside blender window Trying to figure out how you can continue to move, scale or rotate once your cursor hits the edge of the program window.enter link description here

By default, the cursor is supposed to automatically wrap around to the other side of the screen when it goes off the edge, allowing you to continue the operation as long as you wish.  I think this behavior is controlled by the setting:

Preferences -> Input -> Mouse -> Continuous Grab

Make sure that's checked.

As an alternative, once you reach the edge of the view window, you can press and hold down Shift (to switch to fine adjustments) and move your cursor back to the other side of the window.  Then, release Shift and continue your operation.  Note that Shift must be pressed while the cursor is still within the view window, or it may not register.


UV unwrapping and Glass texture I am currently making a syringe in Blender. One problem I have is the material. It looks very unrealistic. Yes, I know that they are normally made out of plastic, but this one has to be glass. Here is my Node Setup:

Also, more importantly, I have the unwrapped a texture onto the glass. If I am moving only the faces with the texture around, it only allows me to put the texture until a several point/line. A video about my problem.

At the end, I want the whole texture look like this, except the main thing, where the fluid is in the glass. Currently it looks like this:

Here is the .blend file

You desperately need an HDR background (in the world settings).

You can find free HDRs all over the internet but I personally prefer Greg Zaal's because he actually releases high quality, free ones:

http://adaptivesamples.com

Add an HDR with an environment node in the cycles world settings something like this:

A single ground plane will help a bit, but this is how you need to really get better looking glossy materials if you don't have an entire scene already filled in.

You can read about this technique and other material techniques here:

http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/making-better-materials/


blender "Align selected light to view"? Similar to Maya Blender 2.82 Is there an equivelent to "Align selected light to view"?
Similar to how Maya allows to look through a light to focus on the object.
If not, what are the steps to to this?

Ctrl+Num0 let you do that (kinda) :

Ctrl+Num0 set the active object (may it be a light, a mesh or whatever) as the active camera, then automatically switch to camera view. So, it do what you want to do.

But, don't forget that this object is now considered the active camera! So you need to select the preexisting camera and press Ctrl+Num0 again to come back to normal.


diff and version manage blender work Are there solutions / best practices for dealing with the Version Management Problem when working on larger blender Projects?

Explanation: Version management means to keep track of who did what, when and why. Blender is a huge GUI driven application, but the work done in blender is typically comparable in complexity with the task of developing software. In such a setup, it is no longer possible to keep track of changes just by looking into the GUI. To be able to work effectively, we need tool support to answer the mentioned questions on a daily basis.

are there better solutions available than just checking in the blend file as a binary blob into some SCM system (Git, Mercurial, SVN, ...)?
maybe there are specific filters or exporters available which allow to transform the blend files into something which can be version managed with the tools known from software development?
branching and merging: are there tools or known methods to integrate changes done by different people working in a team on a common project, but possibly on different branches or development lines?

Of course binary diffs in images and video footage are also relevant, but there isn't much to be done with these, beyond just noting that you're using a new version of some externally linked binary media.

For best practices I would recommend to learn from larger projects done with blender.
You could look how Big Bug Bunny was organized.

First don't have a team editing one large .blend file, have different folders for textures, material libraries, scenes, characters and so on. Each of these file can be versioned in a Version Control System (VCS).
Have different scenes which only reference all the used models (link instead of append). This makes it versionable. When someone decides that a model of a character
looked better a week earlier, you could restore this character from the VCS.
To track the changes made on an individual item the VCS comment / history should be used.
Unlike in software development you wouldn't be able to create branches and merge them back into a head revision. Technically this is because the files are binary and no meaningful difference can be extracted for merging. You usually need a branch when your software is deployed to a production environment and develop new features in a branch and fix bugs in the production version or vice versa. When the new features are scheduled for release you would merge features and bug fixes. But this doesn't happen when creating an animation, when a movie is out it can't be bug fixed nor would new features be added. Having that said it is probably not as painful as in the field software development not to have the ability to merge.
In order to debug settings that were unintentionally changed and lead to undesired effects. The settings could be compared between two revisions of a file as described here: Get a diff between two .blend files

Which VCS should be used?

This basically depends on the support of your platform used, the experience the team members for details see:

SVN, Git, Mercurial, and CVS – Comparison of Version Control Software
Using Mercurial Version Control with Blender Projects from iKlsR's comment


How to add a mirror modifier to all objects of a certain collection? I'd like to add a mirror modifier to each object of a certain collection.
The problem is that the modifier will be only added to the last object which even gets the same modifier several times and I don't know why:
 def add_empty_collection(self):
    for obj in bpy.data.collections['my_collection'].all_objects:
        print("obj_: ", obj)
        bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT') # Deselecting all
        obj.select_set(True)
        bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='MIRROR')
        bpy.context.object.modifiers["Mirror"].use_axis[0] = False
        bpy.context.object.modifiers["Mirror"].use_axis[1] = True
        bpy.context.object.modifiers["Mirror"].use_axis[2] = False
        bpy.context.object.modifiers["Mirror"].mirror_object = bpy.data.objects["target"]

Q: How to add a mirror modifier to all objects of a certain collection?

You're better off using bpy.data.objects to manipulate them. This way you don't need to rely on what is selected, all you need is the objects name.
import bpy

mod_name = 'My-Mirror-Modifier'

for obj in bpy.data.collections["My-Collection"].all_objects:
    if obj.type == 'MESH':
        mod = obj.modifiers.new(mod_name, 'MIRROR')
        mod.use_axis[0] = False
        mod.use_axis[1] = True
        mod.use_axis[2] = False
        mod.mirror_object = bpy.data.objects["Light"]


"Dll load failed" error when trying to install Animation Nodes in 2.81b and 2.8 Not a top notch programmer here, just an artist.  Recently tried using AN with 2.8 and 2.81b but have been getting this error (Image Attached).  Too much to type and I'm not sure exactly what's wrong.

What's the fix for this?  Did I just install this wrong or is it something deeper?

It does work with 2.79 so I'm a bit confused.   Thanks.

You need to install vc_redist.x64.exe which is a package for Microsoft Visual Studio that Animation Nodes requires to work.  Once you have installed this, you will need to restart your computer and then attempt to enable the add-on again.


How can I cut off tip of a cone? I have a cone and I want to cut of top piece of it. How can I make cut face flat?

While this is a duplicate question, I see no answer that deals with using the operator settings to do this in one step. So, one way would be to just add a cone primitive to the scene. Add > Mesh > Cone and increase the Radius 2 slider.


Fog in Blender: Through World node or Object Node? I recently started to work with the volume shader in Blender 2.83.
I've got two questions:

What is the difference between connecting Volume Scatter to WORLD NODE and OBJECT NODE?
Which shader is better for fog? Volume Scatter or Principle Volume.

There are many ways to do fog in blender, and each one has different outcomes, the question is not what is better, but which one works for the desired outcome and or the computing power you have access to.

Using volumetrics (volume scattering) will yield the most realistic looking fog.

There are two ways to do it:

1- Adding volume scatter to the world  volume will mean that the whole scene is surrounded by suspended particles (like smoke or haze).

2- Creating a mesh that is used as a Volumetric Domain, instead of surrounding the scene but just the areas that you need the volume scattering. Again, this is done by adding a volume scatter node to the volume of the mesh.

The main difference is that when you add volume scattering to the world you will never see the end of the fog (well, the end will be the clipping distance of the camera), whereas using a volumetric domain the fog is contained within a certain shape and sometimes the end is noticeable and unrealistic.

The problems with of using the world are that you cannot combine volumes and textures. Once you add volume to the world it occludes any color or sky or HDR imagery. Also it requires more computing time and resources. Another limitation is that it won't work when using a "sun" lamp, but will work wiht point, spot or area lights.

Having a volumetric domain requires less resources, since the area to calculate can be smaller, and will allow you to use textures in the world. If you want to use HDR or sky textures, this is the only way to do volumetrics. WIth a volumetric domain you can use a "sun" lamp.

It is important to understand that whenever you add volume scatter in any form, there will be more noise in the scene, a clean image will require more samples to render. Using volume scatter will also result in more "fireflies" (bright pixels), to minimize that please read through the many posts on the subject that exist in this site.

The lights in the scene, will also seem darker, so the energy values will need to increase. Another thing to keep in mind, is that every light on the scene will show in the atmosphere affecting the overall contrast of the image. Hiding light sources will require extra effort.

A different way to do fog is by faking it with a Mist pass. A mist pass doesn't require much computing power and can be combined over the rendered image in the compositor.

The mist pass works by making objects in the distance seem brighter and less defined. The mist pass has control for start, end and density.

The mist pass is useful to create more realistic scenes without much effort by recreating the atmospheric haze that we experience in the real world, where objects far away seem to have less contrast.

The downside of the mist pass is that there is no interaction with the mist and the lights, so it will not create volumetric shadows or "god rays".


FBX Export is not working (KeyError: ((nan, nan), 2) Hello everyone I got this error yesterday (Imgur Link: https://i.imgur.com/5mImN4c.png) and I spent the whole day trying to find a solution on the internet. Like you may think I ended up finding nothing.
Things that may help:

I uninstalled Blender and reinstalled Blender on Steam after this error occured in belief this may help
I want to export this as an FBX to export the map to Unity
The few assets like the Desk, DeskLamp, Speaker, Monitor are from the Internet
I don't care about materials (I just assigned a few to test out some things)
I tried other files and they work fine

If you need more information just ask. I do anything to solve this problem.
Also please keep in mind I'm new in Blender thats why I don't know a lot of things.
If you want to try it yourself here is a link to my Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1s2akLn8_H_YpLr2XRFUPI7L4Kv5y9oJG?usp=sharing
Thanks to everyone who is trying to help me.

Don't use FBX format when you are able to avoid it. Its license makes it difficult to support in open source software so it is not supported well in Blender. Use alternatives like Collada, or Alembic instead when possible.


Spin Tool starting rotation not 0 degrees I'm trying to use the spin tool but it always starts off its axis at
(.847, -.466, .255). I want to start it off at (0,0,0).

Just click one of the blue Plus signs.
And then change the Angle back to 0.

Yeah, it could behave a bit better :).


Is there an alternative to point density for rendering with GPU? Finally working with some clouds. Rendering is horribly slow with my i5 CPU, would be much better with a GTX 970, but if I try that then shaders that use point density no longer work. Is there a good alternative to point density that is renderable with a GPU in Cycles?

As of version 2.77, Point Density rendering is now supported on GPU. Additional color capabilities should appear in 2.78.


Laying (linked) pentagonal tiles - trouble snapping I am pretty new to Blender, having previously used Form•Z Free (which is pretty good for modelling when it doesn't crash).

I am looking to tile a 'floor' in Blender 2.8, using a pentagonal tile (this is a Kershner (1968) type 6 pentagon, derived lengths and angles given by the excellent java applet at https://www.jaapsch.net/tilings/applet.htm)

Trying to rotate and align the tiles (which are linked instances, and need to be, for subsequent transforms) is proving really difficult.  I managed to get the 3D cursor to a vertex, and I can change just 1 vertex to be the origin, but if I then change the origin - every tile moves according to the new origin values.

There must be an intuitive way of getting the tiles to snap together correctly - (I am struggling with both move and rotate)

The file - to play with as you like!

Just in case you are unsure about how they tile...

You can get there using vertex snapping and some manual rotation.

Make your base tile a single face pentagon. Remove double vertices (there are some).
Don't use object instances yet, you'll convert them all in the end. Just copy new tiles now.
The main angle is 71°. Type the equations directly into the rotation field.
Enable Vertex Snapping > Median. Origin points will now snap to vertices.
Put your origin to different vertices if needed.

Convert tiles into instances

Select all objects and go Object > Set Origin > Origin to Geometry. This will keep them in place.
Select all tiles and turn them into instances Object > Make Links > Object Data

The main face angle is 71°

Type equations into the Z rotation field.

Use Vertex Snapping > Median to snap origin point to vertices. Move the origin point if needed.

Make all tiles into instances of one. But make their origin points centered first.


Cross section in cycles in blender 2.7 I'd like to take a simple cross section in Blender 2.7 using the Cycles renderer. I would think this would be easy, and there is even a tutorial about how to do it, but that tutorial is for Blender 2.4, and does not work with 2.7. Can someone post a simple tutorial about how to create a cross section in the latest version of blender. Here is that I have come up with so far, but the edge is not sharp and I cannot figure out how to adjust it:

If I would be trying to achieve a cross section like effect, I wouldn't use the compositor but a mesh with a boolean modifier. In my opinion it's much more flexible.

To accomplish this add a cube to our scene and position it to intersect with your object in the place you want gone. Then add a boolean modifier to  the object, select diffrence for the mode, and chose your masking cube. Be sure to disable renderability/hide the cube you masked the object with.

I have created an example in which the object being cross-sectioned is suzane in a box. You can download it here. Here's the example render and viewport screenshot.

While this method works with almost any render system, the blender internal and cycles have trouble with multimaterial objects. In that case just split it into separate objects with one material each.


How to make all polygons face outwards in an existing model? I need to export some .blend files into COLLADA. Unfortunately, all polygons are designed double sided. In order to properly use culling within my 3D application, I need all polygons to face outwards.

Whenever I switch to the "Object Data" menu and uncheck "Double Sided", everything looks fine. But after exporting to collada and re-importing to Blender, "Double Sided" is checked again.
Maybe there is another way to let all faces face outwards?

in Edit Mode press Recalculate Normals in Toolbar (press T to show it):

It's usually better not to see backfaces. You can turn them off in 3D View Properties Panel (press N to show it):


Multiplying an object on a plain I've made a piece of grass.
I'd like to now multiply it over my whole plain (which is a hill) for my game.
Copy and pasting an individual piece of grass would take me forever, I'm hoping there is a better solution for this.
Thank you if you can help.

The common solution for this is to use a particle system.

Select your mountain
Go into the particle system tab in the properties
Set Physics to No, Render to "Object" and set your grass object as "Dupli Object" (if you got more than one grass object create a group and use this group instead)
Hit play for tiny second all your grass particles should now appear.
Toy around with other setting or have a look into the blender documentation
Go to the modifer tab and hit convert on the particle system to make all the particles into real objects


Possible to make Vertices from overlapping Edges? I tried to figure out how to make vertices from two overlapping edges. I want the exact point they overlap to become a vertex, but I can't seem to find a solution to the problem.

Install the TinyCAD addon, then select all, press W > TinyCAD > XALL, all edges intersections will give vertices, but you'll probably have to recreate faces.


How can I programmatically insert a new grease pencil object (svg) at coordinates/rotation I'm trying to create and place a series of sketches from a tablet to a blender file. I know where they should go in 3d-space. I am trying to construct a python script to input a file name and coordinates then place thing at location.
From some code I found (https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/166492/2586). I think this is very close. The script leaves off at allowing the user to draw. Instead I want to import a file.
import bpy
context = bpy.context
space = context.space_data

# Create material for grease pencil
if "Bright Material" in bpy.data.materials.keys():
    gp_mat = bpy.data.materials["Bright Material"]
else:
    gp_mat = bpy.data.materials.new("Bright Material")

if not gp_mat.is_grease_pencil:
    bpy.data.materials.create_gpencil_data(gp_mat)
    gp_mat.grease_pencil.color = (1, 0, 0.818649, 1)

# Add grease pencil object
gp_data = bpy.data.grease_pencils.new("Bright Pencil")
gp_ob = bpy.data.objects.new("Bright Pencil", gp_data)
context.scene.collection.objects.link(gp_ob)
if space.local_view:
    gp_ob.local_view_set(space, True)

for ob in context.selected_objects:
    ob.select_set(False)
gp_ob.select_set(True)
context.view_layer.objects.active = gp_ob
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='PAINT_GPENCIL')

# Assign the material to the grease pencil for drawing
gp_data.materials.append(gp_mat)

next instead of bpy.ops.gpencil.draw(wait_for_input=False)
can I do something like bpy.context.image_paint_object or bpy.ops.object.load_reference_image
or otherwise import an SVG image and set the rotation of it? can I add a frame number for animation?

Import method
It sounds like the easiest option for you would be to load a series of SVG images using the SVG Import Add-On (so you don't need any coding). Currently the SVG Import creates Curve objects - which can be used as-is, or optionally they can be converted to Grease Pencil strokes (via [right-click] > [Convert to Grease Pencil]).
Scripting method
Alternatively - if you wish to do things via a script continuing from the GreasePencil object and Material creation you have illustrated above, then you will need to add Layer, Frame and Stroke/s. (note: my gpencil == gp_ob):
#Get/Set Layer
if gpencil.layers:
    layer = gpencil.layers.active
else:
    layer = gpencil.layers.new('mylayer', set_active = True)

#Get/Set Frame
if layer.frames:
    frame = layer.active_frame
else:
    frame = layer.frames.new(1)

#Draw some Strokes (and optionally add a closing stroke) to form a triangle
stroke = frame.strokes.new()
stroke.line_width = 6
stroke.draw_cyclic = 1 #close - automatically draw a final last stroke back to start point
stroke.points.add(count=3)
stroke.points[0].co = (-1.0, 0.0, 0.0)  #point coordinates - i.e. x, y, z
stroke.points[1].co = (1.0, 0.0, 0.0)
stroke.points[2].co = (0.0, 0.0, 1.0)

p.s. As good practice, you should also reference where you get your code snippet/s from.
ref: Blender Version 2.83


Alt + left-click not working anymore in Blender 2.8? I don't know why but it seems Alt+LMB is not working for edge loop selection in blender 2.80. Is it a bug? Or is there's a new shortcut for that?

If you are using Linux Mint this will be an issue as Alt is used for moving and resizing windows.
Go to System Settings > Windows & then go to Behavior tab. Inside there you'll see Special key to move and resize windows and set it to Super and Alt + LMB will work just as fine.


Objects pass through their moving container's walls during rigid body physics I want to create an animation using rigid body physics, but I encounter this problem..., the objects pass trough the wall...
What settings should I apply?

I checked the normals, the scale, object weight, I tried to increased Steps per seconds and solver iterations, but still have same problem.

You're going to have to increase the Steps per second a bit more. The motion of the box is too fast, and the spheres may find themselves suddenly "out" of the box (or inside the wall!) in the next solver's step, when in the previous they were inside.
The solution is to have another step in-between so that the collision is not inadvertently skipped, and in this intermediate solver's step the sphere is just next to the boundary, and it feels the collision force kicking it back in. This is what "Steps per second" does.
Increasing the solver iterations further can also help.


Need help with exporting from Materialize I created a bump map and a metallic map in a program called Materialize, but when I exported them to blender they looked 3d but actually are just flate planes. Also, the colors changed a bit. Can someone explain what I am doing wrong?

https://imgur.com/a/AFGauSC

Your program creates several maps - including a height map. Don't use it as a bump map. If you want to use bumps, get Materialize to generate a normal map for you (bump is a cheap cheat)
However if you want to use actual displaced geometry, use the height map, transfer it to a Displace Vector with a Vector -> Displacement node and plug it into the Displacement slot of your Material Output Node.
There are a few more options you will want to consider, too long to explain them here, the keyword to google for is: true displacement subdivision.


How to swipe transparency? So I am making a video in blender, and it was originally an Adobe After Effects thing:

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

So I'm using indirect lighting in the world tab, and the emit in the materials tab.
But I cant get the text/circles to disappear after it shows up.
At first I tried the mask option of the transparency option, but that showed up on the floor object.
Then I tried using the Boolean modifier, but when the circle hit the cube used to make it disappear, the cube would get the same material settings, which included the emit property.
So I really need help!
Any advice?

With the boolean on the circle set to 'Difference' I did not find that the circle lost it's material:

Note: Make sure that he circle has some volume so it isn't completely flat. Select all the faces of the circle and use 'Extrude' (E) to give the circle some volume.

The cube that is used as the masking object can then be set to not render by selecting it and pressing Ctrl+H.

Resulting in:


2.8 mesh select mode hotkey changed The hotkey for mesh select mode (vertex, edge, face) while in edit mode Ctrl + Tab has been reassigned in 2.8. Is there another hotkey assigned for this?

1,2 and 3!

I found them by looking in the User Prefs and searching for "mode", got the feeling I will be searching here quite a lot.


X3D not including textures in file I have created a character and textured it for Full Color 3D printing through shapeways.  I choose the X3D export option from the 3D print toolbox addon and the export works fine.  But when I upload to Shapeways there is no color at all.

I am positive that I zipped the .png files and the .X3D file without any errors, but the colors still don't work.

I then opened up the X3D file and searched for any hint of a texture, and there was absolutely no mention of my texture names.

Is there some sort of option I am missing to allow textures to export with the X3D file?

Here are my .blend file and textures: Beck

And here is my .X3D file that I exported: X3D file

Well, I discovered my error.

I was using Cycles and not Blender Internal.  Unless there is some setting I am unaware of, Cycles does not save the texture data in the exported .X3D file.

So just simply switch to Internal render and then add your textures.


Viewing scene render (hidden and unhidden) rather than hide in viewport So, I have a lot of objects coming in and out of view for my animation. I find it VERY HARD to get an idea of what the render will look like when the viewport defaults to the eyeball (hide in viewport) and not the camera (disable in renders). I have the items keyframed in and out in the renders but, I cannot see this final result until I render it and that just does not work.
How can I change this?
(Thanks to whoever down-voted me trying to learn a program?)

Enable both restriction toggles.

Disable in Viewports
Disable in Renders

Two options

Change or Keyframe them both.

Add a driver. Go to the Edit > User Preferences and enable Auto Run Python Scripts.

Add a driver to the Viewport Visiblity property, by clicking on its screen icon with a right click an choosing Add Driver. In the drivers popup (or in the Driver Editor), set the Type to Scripted Expression, enable Use Self and enter the Expression self.hide_render. This will change the value of the Viewport Visibility property to whatever value the Render Visibility is changed to.

It is now "connected" to the Render Visibility via the driver and any changes of the Render Visibility will directly be copied on the Viewport Visibility and be visible in the Viewport. (This also works for keyframed values.)


how to bisect_plane with use_fill = True in Blender 2.79 using python? I need to cut mesh in 2 pieces using filling cutted edge. But there is no parameter use_fill in bisect_plane in blender 2.79. I have a function that make cut:

def cut_figure(obj, plane_co, plane_no):
   bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(obj)
   geom = bm.verts[:] + bm.edges[:] + bm.faces[:]
   ret = bmesh.ops.bisect_plane(bm, geom=geom, plane_co=plane_co, plane_no=plane_no)
   #next line will call TypeError: bisect_plane: keyword "use_fill" is invalid for this operator
   ret = bmesh.ops.bisect_plane(bm, geom=geom, plane_co=plane_co, plane_no=plane_no, use_fill = True)
   bmesh.ops.split_edges(bm, edges=[e for e in ret['geom_cut'] if isinstance(e, bmesh.types.BMEdge)])

I've found bpy.ops.mesh.bisect method but it is not so usefull.

Boolean Modifier

Can use the clear_inner or clear_outer property of the bisect plane operator, and run twice, grid fill the returned cut(s).

However it may be much simpler to script this approach

add a plane at cutting coordinates
scale the plane such that it completely encapsulates mesh to be cut (sphere in example image)
give the plane thickness with solidify modifier, once again making sure it completely encaps cuttee mesh.
add a boolean modifier (difference)  to the object to be cut, using plane as target.
apply the modifier and save result.
redo with the plane normal flipped (other half).
the resultant filled face will be an ngon(s).


What are these things? Can someone tell me what these weird red textures are that's just floating above my object? I can't select them and they are not in my collect list.

They look like annotations or similar which may have been made with the grease pencil.
If you select the annotation menu you can find the eraser mode.


How do I make an object always be a duplicate of anything? I can duplicate objects, but I need one to be an exact copy of the mesh at all times. That is, whenever object 1 moves because of an animation, gravity, logic, etc, the second will do the same. Other than just making a full duplicate so they have the same logic, how can I do this?

If you duplicate the object in question using ALT+D as oppose to Shift+D The objects will be linked. Anything done to either object should be reflected with the other(s).

Edit:
Do note wiki.blender.org is a viable resource when looking for information like this.
The entry found here directly pertains to your question.


Edges from Bones Script Can anyone verify that this script works in 2.78?

import bpy
# ACTUAL FUNCTION THAT TURN BONES INTO EDGES
def boneToEdges(armature_name='metarig'):

   myRig = bpy.data.objects[armature_name]

   # which armature to work on
   #myRig = bpy.data.objects['Armature']
   #myRig = bpy.data.objects['metarig']

   # this actually return STRING NAME of bone
   boneNames = myRig.data.bones.keys()

   # the actual data to each
   myBones = myRig.data.bones

   for i, bone in enumerate(myBones):
       #print(bone.name, bone.vector)
       # every bone has HEAD and TAIL

       #loc = bone.vector
       head_loc = bone.head_local
       tail_loc = bone.tail_local

       createEdge(coord1 = head_loc, coord2 = tail_loc)
boneToEdges("MyArmature") # Change the name to your Armature Object Name.

Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVVFO-Lw4XA&t=155s
http://blendersushi.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/python-skin-bone.html

It doesn't work as you have it posted, you're missing some code. I can confirm that this code works in 2.78:

import bpy
def createEdge(coord1 = (-1.0, 1.0, 0.0), coord2 = (-1.0, -1.0, 0.0)):

    Verts = [coord1, coord2]
    Edges = [[0,1]]

    profile_mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new("Edge_Profile_Data")
    profile_mesh.from_pydata(Verts, Edges, [])
    profile_mesh.update()

    profile_object = bpy.data.objects.new("Edge_Profile", profile_mesh)
    profile_object.data = profile_mesh

    scene = bpy.context.scene
    scene.objects.link(profile_object)
    profile_object.select = True

# ACTUAL FUNCTION THAT TURN BONES INTO EDGES
def boneToEdges(armature_name):
    myRig = bpy.data.objects[armature_name]

    # which armature to work on
    #myRig = bpy.data.objects['Armature']
    #myRig = bpy.data.objects['metarig']

    # this actually return STRING NAME of bone
    boneNames = myRig.data.bones.keys()

    # the actual data to each
    myBones = myRig.data.bones

    for i, bone in enumerate(myBones):
       #print(bone.name, bone.vector)
        # every bone has HEAD and TAIL

        #loc = bone.vector
        head_loc = bone.head_local
        tail_loc = bone.tail_local

        createEdge(coord1 = head_loc, coord2 = tail_loc)
boneToEdges("Armature") # Change the name to your Armature Object Name. "


How do I randomize the movement of trees made with the sapling generator? I've made a couple trees/bushes with the Sapling add-on and then distributed them over a landscape with a hair particle system. The original trees have a "swaying in the wind" animation and when they get duplicated through the particle system, although the size and rotation of the trees is randomized, their animation remains fairly homogenous: they all sway in the same directions at the same rate.

Is there a way to randomize this through the particle system, or do I need to make multiple source trees with different animations attached to them?

I still want them to look like they are being affected by the same environment/wind but as it is now it's too synchronized. I've already given the different tree types and bushes different wind speeds and amounts of "gust variation" through the sapling generator options, but this doesn't seem to be effective enough.

If you need the forest to look more realistic, you would need more animations! One animation for all the trees is simply not enough.

My suggestions:

Add at least 3-4 different animations.
Make trees swap their animations randomly (e.g. tree1 runs animation1 then animation3...)
Don't randomise the rotation because that would look fake (wind blows generally in one direction)
Also be careful with the different wind speed as if you overdo this you might get unrealistic results.
You can simulate the wind 'gust' by starting the animations on all trees (seed points) which are at a certain position (say in X) and delay the animations of the other trees based on their Y position.
To make this even more effective you can actually simulate the wind by creating a huge box or a sphere(s) and animating them, passing through the forest in a certain way. This would be a non-renderable object which would trigger the wind animations on your trees. This could be even further enhanced if you increase the wind speed based on the proximity of the tree to the sphere centre, for example.
Also don't forget that even if you nail the whole wind animation, if you only have one tree model (despite different scale/rotation), it just wont work. You need more variation, only then you can play with randomness.


Reset OpenGL lights? I recently changed the lighting in the viewport in the system preferences.

How can I rest the positions of the lights? The Reset to Default Value does not work. it simple sets them all to a top light.

How can I reset the direction of the lamps without restoring factory defaults?

You can find the defaults by opening a new instance of blender and loading the defaults (without saving the default.blend) and using python to get the default values:

import bpy

for light in bpy.context.user_preferences.system.solid_lights:
    print(light.direction)

Which will print:

<Vector (-0.8920, 0.3000, 0.9000)>
<Vector (0.5880, 0.4600, 0.2480)>
<Vector (0.2160, -0.3920, -0.2160)>

So to set the light directions to the defaults, run:

import bpy

bpy.context.user_preferences.system.solid_lights[0].direction = (-0.892, 0.3, 0.9)
bpy.context.user_preferences.system.solid_lights[1].direction = (0.5880, 0.4600, 0.2480)
bpy.context.user_preferences.system.solid_lights[2].direction = (0.2160, -0.3920, -0.2160)


How to lock the view to the XY, XZ, or YZ plane When I'm in top, bottom or side view, I would like to lock the view to the 2 dimensions of the viewing plane (XY plane, XZ plane or YZ plane), so that - when working in that view - I don't accidentally turn the view into 3 dimensions. How can this be done?

There's the Toggle Quad View option, which has such functionality.
It splits your viewport into multiple views, that cannot be rotated.

View > Area > Toggle Quad View
Shortcut: Ctrl + Alt + Q


Creating an edge between two vertexes I'm trying to model a bar front, but I'm having problems extruding the right part of the face.

I keep trying to add a vertex between two points of a sized up cube object but it isn't allowing me to connect the two, giving me the error invalid selection.

Any ideas on how I can do it please?

Its the triangle shape I'm trying to get

Bar front I'm trying to model

Make smart use of modifiers here. You have a repeating shape, use an Array modifier instead of modelling it all one by one by hand.

For the face keep it simple. Just use the Poke Faces Alt + P operator on a simple unsubdivided face.

Move the resulting vertex down to vertically align with the bottom vertex of the face, then move it forward to make the protruding "pyramid" shape.


Removing weights does not work flawlessly I want to remove weights by painting 0% weight.
However, I'm having a hard time doing this.

Here is a video that shows how I desperately try to paint an area black.
I have to try it again and again until finally something happens:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrBMwwcDY4A
These are my brush settings:

Thank you.

The falloff seems to be the important factor here:

Once I sat it to the bridge-like preset, it worked fine.


Can I reuse a character to multiple characters in one scene with the link feature? I want to link each character to a scene several times, as shown in the image above, and give them different animations.
We also adopted a link function to flexibly respond to character design changes.

However, as shown in the GIF below, the most recently created armature proxy controls all characters. I want each character to have its own proxy armature.

Is there a solution for this?

Thank you in advance.

AFAIK it's a limitation of Blender. And it will be fixed for 2.8 if I'm not mistaking.

EDIT: and I'm not.


Change spacing when using ctrl to move specific amount of units When I want to move/rotate/scale with a defined spacing or amount of units I use the ctrl key but it moves one whole blender unit, does anyone know how can  I change this spacing so that it moves 0.1 blender units?

While moving/rotating/scaling press Ctrl+Shift to transform by 0.1 of blender unit.

You may do the same thing as above but without holding Ctrl button enabling the Snapping Tool (just click on the magnet icon and set the snap element type to Increment). Hold down the Shift button while moving/rotating/scaling to transform by 0.1 of blender unit.


Active object selection - separate edge Somewhere during modeling something I did something that I am unable to find how to fix. When active selecting my car mesh in object mode I get this strange orange edge stripe, that I cannot account for. In edit mode I tried already selecting the edge and clear sharp and clear seam. Also mesh cleanup -> merge by distance but there seems only one edge. Because the mirror modifier the orange line appears also on the other side ;-)

What could cause this effect? And more important, how to get rid of this line that doesn't fit the outline of the car.

First tried to find out if it was an interior face, but it is only an edge I could delete. However I need the extra geometry for shading purposes.
Then I was pointed to Non-manifold fixes from Gleb in a Bendernation post and with the addon '3D print toolbox' I found a way to fix the geometry by cleaning up 'distorted' faces. Some extra geometry was added and the result is that the orange line isn't visible anymore.


What is the easiest way to smooth the intersection of two planes? What is the easiest way to smooth the intersection of two planes as shown in the picture below?

I would like to achieve something like:

For example, a method I would like to do is to fit a parabola to three lines of two planes and use this parabola to make round corner?

I know this is probably a trivial question, but I am a beginner.

Create a plane, enter edit mode (Tab) and select one of the edges.

Extrude (E) and pull up in the z axis.

Select the edge at the intersection and press Ctrl B to activate the Bevel tool. Moving the mouse will show the effect of the bevel.  Control the amount of cuts with the mouse wheel.
(or you can use the controls found on the toolshelf)


How to make nice race game camera? I have recently begun to make a racing game, but I need the camera to follow car like in other games - currently, when I steer my car the camera immediately follows it and I can see only the back of car, but I want it so that while you steer, you can see side of car too, like here:

How can I create something like this?

This can be achieved by using the Slow Parent option.
Set an appropriate offset, and the parented object (in this case it is your camera) will always have that much delay to reach its target position. This provides for smoother parents and a side view when turning more reliably than using the Camera actuator. When using the Camera actuator, It does not behave as expected when the object it is following moves in the direction of the camera (for example, when the character is backing up)
using this method, you can have one camera for driving forward, and one camera for backing up, and both will reliably look where they are meant to.


Shortcut to open editor type menu I would like to be able to change the currently active editor type through keyboard shortcuts only (rather than having to click twice). – is there a way to assign a shortcut to the menu? (in the menu you can simply press the underlined letters to select.)

is it maybe possible to simulate clicks on buttons with python?

it could also be nice to have a radial menu for this.

It's Shift+F2-F12 buttons.

You can change hotkeys in User Preferences (Input Tab) They are in a window section:


How to make a smooth surface for OBJ files? I created a 3D Mesh model of a building using some images and the results look nice.
But if I look closer at the model surface, it's made out of much finer small surfaces.
If you see the images below, the left is the actual surface image (walls) and the right is my OBJ model.
And I think this is the main reason for having such a large file size and makes my project slow especially when I am trying to merge a couple of buildings in a single project.

Is there any way to smooth the surface so that number of faces can be minimized?
I just need to have a model that will look good enough, not in crazy detail.
But will this affect the original texture(image) allocated to each surface?
Thank you,

While the model you want to decimate is selectet, go to modifiers > add modifier > decimate. now you can play around with the settings until you are happy with the resolution.


Grease Pencil animation rendering only the background I need to render an animation where the PNG files from the rendering will be saved. I'm using the demo file that is provided by Blender (https://download.blender.org/demo/test/ForYou.blend) - Grease Pencil Automation (ForYou.blend).

The problem is that when i'm running the animation rendering it creates the PNG files with the background only and the animation objects are not captured (same goes to a case where i create video file).

Any help will be really appreciated. Thank you

In order to render a grease pencil animation, you have to use OpenGL render.  Using the blend file that you provided, if you open it, up there are two views,
directly under the view that you want to render there is a plus

If you click that and then scroll to the right by dragging the middle mouse over the bottom section(the panel menu) you will see the OpenGL render button.

The one on the left renders the current frame and the one on the right renders the animation.  Just make sure that you deselect everything before you render as it is just rendering the viewport at a higher resolution.


Painting on image doesn't show instantly on the object I'm having a issue in the Texture Paint Mode and I can't find what's wrong.
Here is my problem : When I paint on the "Image editor" windows it doesn't instantly show the stroke on my object in the 3D viewport, sometimes I can see the beginning of the stroke but it disappears almost instantly too.
So I have to wait the end of the stroke to see what I did and it's very frustating.
I have to precise that this is happening since I update to 2.83, never had this problem in 2.82.
I need your help guys, thanks in advance.
EDIT : After further analysis, it only happens in Solid Render viewport

That is by design: Solid render mode will not display textures.
Textures will only be visible in Material Preview or Render Preview mode


How to model a flial? How can I rotate them correctly? I want it with a patricle system so i can quickly add more spikes if needed

In the Properties panel > Particles, enable the Advanced option, then activate the Rotation option and choose Normal in the Initial Rotation dropdown menu. If you enable the Scale and Rotation option under Render, the scale and rotation of the peak object in the global scene will be reproduced, it can be handy.


I can't seem to use any of Sverchok's mesh filter tools. Did something change in Blender 2.8? With reference to the tutorial at: https://sverchok.readthedocs.io/en/latest/nodes/analyzers/mesh_filter.html, none of the examples shown appear to work in Blender 2.8.
Am I missing something obvious?

I don't know what you are doing and how your layout looks like, but node tree checcked now:


How to scale vertices in only top view but not impacting how they look in front view? Hello everyone please look at the picture when I scale the shield in top view(constrains to X axle) the front view was also changed, is there any ways the scale only limits in top view but not changing everything in other views?

Thank you

select the vertices, edges or faces you want to scale
use axle restrictions.

press to individually restrict:

x
Y
z

If you wish to restrict 2 axes, press:

SHIFT + Z to scale in X, Y, and restrict Z
SHIFT + X to scale in Y, Z, and and restrict X
SHIFT + Y to scale in X, Z, and restrict Y