Cycles renders black areas in glossy concave mirror I am trying to render a parabolic trough collector (essentially a concave shaped mirror). But the rendered image has an area that is rendered completely black. I have tried different variations for shading and they are listed below along with the results:

Glossy BSDF, Roughness=0: Render Image #1
Glossy BSDF, Roughness=1: Render Image #2
Principled BSDF, Metallic=1: Render Image #3
Principled BSDF, Metallic=0.462: Render Image#4
Principled BSDF, Metallic=0: Render Image#5

Rendered Images can be found here (the image name can be read from Google Photos Image info bar)

From what I read on the internet, this is most probably caused by mirror reflecting it self (owing to it's curved shape). And the advice on most of these threads was to increase the value of indirect clamping. But changing the value of indirect clamping does not seem to have any affect (I went up to 100) on the render. For reference, the uploaded pics were rendered at indirect clamping value of 5.00

Using Principled BSDF and reducing the metallic value seems to to give somewhat better result, but the dark area still exist, although the intensity is quite low. However, due to reduced metallic value, the mirror effect gets suppressed.

Any help in this matter will be highly appreciated

The .blend file can also be downloaded from here

Regards,

Uzair

It seems that it was a problem with the mirror object mesh. The curved surface was created in SolidWorks, and exported in .stl format.

I created another mesh taking reference from the imported .stl file and the problem was resolved.


Python code, copy dimension from one object to another I require some help please. I select one object (A), then shift to select another (B). Then I require some python code to copy the X dimension from (A) to (B).
The X dimensions for both objects are the same after the script is run.

Swap A and B

For the most part, blender works the other way. The last selected object is the active object,aka  the context.object or context.active_object used by operators. An attribute of the context object can be assinged to all the other selected objects, in the list context.selected_objects

Hence select B [C, D, E, F...] then A, A has context. The x dimension of A is set as the X dimension of B and other non active selected objects.  (and lazily A too not that it matters in this case as it is same)

import bpy
context = bpy.context
x = context.object.dimensions.x
for o in context.selected_objects:
    o.dimensions.x = x

Note: if an objects data has a zero dimension, for instance default plane in Z. there is no way of scaling to make its z dimension non zero.


Can I disable alpha when baking textures? I have a particle system that adds some details to a texture. However when I bake the texture down, any area that is transparent makes the bake transparent, even though there is another object beneath the transparent one.
It appears that the default Bake Mode Full Render setting renders as if the Alpha setting under Shading (render tab) is set to Transparent.

When baking objects on to a texture, how can I disable alpha and just get the color as it would be in a render (reflections/refractions of the sky instead of Alpha pixels making holes)?

Note: I am making the particle system real and joining it first, so that it correctly renders and does not make the black silhouettes.
Id prefer an internal render solution if possible, but a cycles one is ok too!

Turn off transparency in the Render properties. In cycles it can be found under film and in blender render it can be found under shader. Or you could just add a plain as a background.


How can I create a staggered, repeating procedural pattern? I read "How do I create repeating patterns in cycles with procedural textures?" here on Blender Stack Exchange, and "staggered texture mapping" on Greg Zaal's website.  I thought it seemed possible to combine the two ideas to have staggered procedural tiles, but can't seem to make it work.  Can anyone please help?

Here are the nodes for creating staggered texture mapping for procedural textures.

First the Y axis gets multiplied by the number of lines you want to have in the pattern (the Lines value node).  After adding .5 that gets rounded creating stripes (along the X axis in this example).

If you were to look at the output from that node at this point it would look all white, that is because the values start at 1 and increase by 1 with each stripe.

The next three nodes take the stripes, multiplies it by the reciprocal of the input value (lines), then by 0.5 to lower the values. Then the X axis is added in.

At this point there are only stripes, next the Modulo math node causes the texture coordinates to repeat.
All that was for the X axis.

The Y axis is simple, it is just the Modulo of the reciprocal of the lines.

With the nodes pictured at the top you can get a pattern like this.

After adding the Subtract and Absolute nodes from Jerryno's answer,  every other tile will be mirrored and you can get a pattern like this.

This blend has the nodes packed in to a node group, which can easily be added to any project.

Blend File

As you can see, manipulating the texture coordinates of generated textures is quite powerful.


How to set similiar lighting I wanted to make this nice scene in Blender

And i achieved this

Present lighting is HDR, the first one is blured version, second and third are normal pictures
I also have 3 sun lamps, one is shining from windows at the front, second from window above the sink and third from behind, they are a bit yellow.

Postprocessing looks like this

I am not able to achieve so realistic look, but the biggest difference comes from lighting. How to get closer to it?

My advices:

Your scene and that scene has different type of hdris.
Install hdri addon like gaffer (it's free) and change/rotate different hdris until you find what looks most similar.
If you want the most similar look you wil have to use exact same hdri image, if it's possible but in most cases it isn't possible.
That scene has hdri of clear noon sky and you have hdri of evening or something like that.
So both images represent different time span of the day.
You image looks darker so after you change the hdri, you should increase the strength of hdri before tweaking the sun lamp
The image you are using is already post processed image

So you will have to concentrate on post processing as well as lighting of your scene

Blender has good composition system but i would recommend adobe lightroom for this. I use it's free android app to do the post processing.
He has used some soft area lamps


Center (snap) hole in object Trying to center a hole in a door, on the vertical axis only.

What is the fastest way to proceed?

I've read this answer from Cegaton Can I snap to the center (midpoint) of an edge? Someone asked if this this operation could be done if the two sets to be aligned belong to the same object, in edit mode, the answer was positive. However if I do as described, (snap selection to cursor), the hole is collapsed to the 3D cursor.

You can do this in 3 stages, that do involve the cursor but in a different manner:

Select the outer border vertices of your door and snap you cursor to this selection (ShiftS > Cursor to Selected). This will move the cursor to the center of your door object.

Now, select the geometry delimiting your hole.
Open the Properties Panel (N), and copy the XYZ values from the 3D Cursor location to the Median (which represents the center location of your selection). This will move your selection to the cursor, while maintaining the shape of the hole.

EDIT: Or instead of copying values, you can use the snap tool to move the selection to the cursor (ShiftS > Snap Selection To Cursor (Offset). The offset option makes sure the selection moves while maintaining its shape (thanks @Mr Zak!).

Result:


Light bounces differently in the viewport cycles render compared to the final render The view port render looks different to the final render. Any ideas why?

I forgot to click on "Show Emitter" under the Particle panel. That's what was causing the problem.


Bones not parenting properly? I have made this low-poly character mesh, and so far added bones from the torso to the head.

So, my next step is to add the legs. Unfortunately, when I extrude from the torso bone to the top of the legs, the hip/leg bones don't parent to the torso bone. When I move the torso, the legs just stay totally still and they disconnect from the torso.

Even when I parent the bones manually, both in offset and connected mode, the torso simply does not move the leg/hip bones. It does move the others though. This is a re-rig of an old model I made, and I did not have this problem, but i don't remember exactly what I did so I'm not sure if I'm forgetting something. This leads me to believe that there might be a parent limit on bones, but I highly doubt it. Does anyone know a solution to this?

Extruding from the base of a bone doesn't automatically create a parent relationship.

Select your extruded leg bone
Select your back bone (keeping both selected)
Press CTRL + P
Select keep offset

The bones won't move each other in edit mode because edit mode is for positioning/creating bones. However, the leg bone will now be parented in pose mode.


Can Blender unbridge (unloop) a mesh? I am following a coffee cup tutorial where I have to bridge two extrusions. I did that but the edges are intersecting giving crappy results.

I saved AFTER the bridge - so if I have to recreate it I will - but was hoping to learn HOW to fix.

Attached are two images showing the problem. Thanks!

The bridge edgeloops has an option that can help. The operator options are available by pressing F6 and can also be found at the bottom of the tool panel on the left T.

The twist amount defines which top vertex bridges with which bottom vertex.


Why has my view snapped to this object? I was messing around in blender when I noticed that my view was snapped to an object. When I moved it so did my view.

What is this feature and how can I enable/disable it?

This is a feature called View Lock, wich is enabled by pressing Shift + Numpad ., and disabled by pressing Alt + Numpad ..

You can also access it from the menus like so:


Repeating an operation (similar to screw) In 3DSmax (I forget the name but I'd know it if you saw it) you can define a (simple - as in TRS only) procedure that will be repeated n times. Like screw.

Suppose I wanted to extrude and slightly scale down, extrude and slightly scale down, rather than doing it 15 times say, I could just use this?

How can I do something similar?

(If the scalar is < 1 then it will form a curve shape)

Actually it'd make more sense just to attach a cone. So this question is two fold, how may I glue faces from a different shape together, and is there a more general version of screw? (In 3dsMax is was a dialog with a table full of input boxes)

You can always resort to F3 to view the history and repeat extrude region and move alternating with resize. it will always extrude the same distance and resize the same percentage relative to the size of the face that's been extruded.

F3 > extrude region and move, F3 > resize and repeat.


Open .blend in different mode? So I was in sculpt mode and I accidentally hit tab causing the mode to change to edit and this crashes blender. I cannot reopen the files because I assume they were autosaved in edit mode causing huge a lag spike. I tried disabling load UI, I tried append, I even loaded a recovery file but thats useless because it was from 5 hours ago. Whenever I load up the .blend or the .blend1 file it just eats up my RAM before crashing. Is there a way to force the .blend file to reopen in sculpt mode or am I screwed?
I'm using 2.8
I have 32GB of RAM and an 8-core CPU with a 1080ti GPU on Windows 10 64bit

You could create a new, empty project, go to Sculpt, then try to DragDrop import your broken .blend file. Then Choose "append". Or Choose File->Append... Then navigate to "object" Folder ("Mesh" didn't work for me). Choose your Mesh.

https://imgur.com/yq0lEMP


Cannot revert blender to its default "Blender" interaction mode It only load up with 3DS max as default. I need to change it from Max interaction back to Blender every single time I open the software. I remember in the early days I changed it to 3ds Max as defualt when I was still learning Blender and now cannot remember how I did that, find any details about how to revert it and how to open it with my desired interaction method. The splash screen also does not automatically appear. I am not sure about the splash screen, but as for the interaction method I have uninstalled several times including removing any registry and leftover keys and files from the uninstall. I have tried changing it and saving startup file. None of this works please help.

Go to File->User Preferences.  In the Input tab, you can check the Show Splash checkmark on the bottom right of the window if you want the start up screen to come up each time.  In the Input tab, the first option will let you set the presets from Blender or 3Dsmax or Maya.  Finally, press "Save User Settings" to save what you did so that every time you start up blender, those same settings will be used.


How do I join the vertices of two separate lines I can't seem to be able to connect these two lines I created using the

It looks like you are trying to connect two separate objects, that won't work, you have to make it one object to be able to connect them.


Weird rotation problem I block poses in constant interpolation, but when I set it to beizer interpolation, it shows weird rotation. Maybe it is bad rig.

So as switching to Quaternion would remove the animation, I guess the easiest way is to create additional keyframes so that Blender knows better how to interpolate.
For example it begins to mess up at frame 9:

So move and rotate the bone correctly and create a keyframe (i):

Keep on doing it at frame 10 and 11, then you can come back and see if you can delete some.


How can i make my material more prominent? i'm trying to make a scene based in a spacecraft and a planet, but as you can see, some parts of the spacecraft seems really dark, and they appear in the render almost as if they dont exist.
How can i make them more prominent, or give them maybe more lighting? But at the same time without interfering with the background planet? maybe with two different layers and a new point based light? or self-illumination, if that's the case how can i do that on Cycles? Is it possible to make it appear, with a good reflection based on the background too?

Reference

Consider reflective glossy surfaces as dominates the NASA spacecraft.  Which is making me hungry for Jiffy Pop.
Viewer visible light fixtures are an option.  Viewer means the person seeing your image. You must judge the technical and artistic merit.
Viewer invisible lights are an option.  Plane with EMISSION material.  Diffuse materials are to complement. Specular at your own risk. Consider parenting the light plane to the spacecraft.  To make them invisible to the user set the object option ... Visibility Panel ...  [Camera] to unchecked false.
Consider scaling the diffuse component.
Consider light groups for Blender Render.


Mesh opens at the back Being relatively new to Blender and 3D modelling in general, I recently made a low-poly female character using video tutorials by PXstriker (Linked below). The model itself is made using the mirror modifier, as to only need half the work.

After I started rigging and posing this model, I noticed that the model rips open at the back, particularly near the legs. Whether the mirror modifier is applied to the mesh or not doesn't seem to make a difference.

Is this a normal problem using the mirror? I've looked around google and other tutorial sites, but nothing similar to the problem seems to be mentioned.

YouTube Channel Link: https://www.youtube.com/user/PXstriker/videos

Front view of the model:

Back view of the model, mesh is visibly opened whenever the legs are posed:

As said in the comments, mirror modifier has to be 1st in the list (up), if it's not, click on the up arrow at the upper right corner of the mirror modifier. Be sure to check "merge" and "clipping" options.

If the problem still appears, edit your mesh, select all vertices that should be in the center. Scale them to zero (align) on the X axis (S X 0), then move them on X axis to make them stick (G X -move mouse-) repeat this on the other X direction (G X -move mouse to the other direction-). All center vertices should now be in the center, clipped and merged and will move with the armature as they should.


Is there a way to build an object through intersection? I am really stumped by this logo I am trying to animate, and I am not sure what to search for or how to phrase a search query. I have been trying to use the Boolean Modifier with this approach, but the problem is that the object I am trying to animate is gone after the mesh I am intersecting the object with moves away from the object.
The setup that I have got so far:

Start with a torus, and then add a sphere that is slightly big as
the thickness of the torus.
Create a circular path such that the path roughly goes through the
center of a circle made from a cross-section of the torus.
(Basically, the path is inside and centered around the torus).
Constrain the sphere to follow the circular path. Now I have a
sphere that goes around a torus.

Now I want to do this:

As the circular sphere goes around the torus, the intersection of the
sphere and the torus is revealed.

As the sphere moves away from the newly revealed part, it stays there
and does not disappear.

A nice bonus is if there is a way to add a glow to the object only when it
is inside the sphere.

You almost have it.  In your last photo if you select the sphere and press Ctrl + A and apply its position, it'll move the object origin back to the center.

Then you can just rotate it around the Z axis.

Whatever material properties you set for the torus will only be shown for the visible portion, including volumes.


How to change the angle of an edge in a cylinder As you can see from this image, all of the edges in my model above have different angles (per Mesh Display > Edge Info > Angle). I'd like to adjust them all so that they all have the same angle.

Is there a way to manually set an edge angle? And if not, is there an easy work around to set all of these to the same angle?

I'm basically trying to get it back to having the same consistent angle from the base the whole way around the object, without recreating it from scratch.

The add-on LoopTools can change a non-circular loop to a circular loop.  Add ons need to be installed.  33 second task.  Search info here at BSE.

Example. LoopTools changes a beformed cylinder into a more regular frustrum. We need only to select in Edit Mode the Top and Bottom loops. Regular Cylinder is easy variation.

You need to be able to specify one or more starting points in your mesh so the equal angle bend can begin.  This a design goal for you to state, not a difficult technical issue.  This is not quite so obvious in your image since the shape is a cylinder rather than a more common case of a plane.

Armature with constraints can specify an angle, and circular arc.
A subdivided curve with a Curve Constraint may be useful.
Proportional Edit may be useful
If you want manual labor, you change change the pivot center for rotation scaling to be the cursor and move the cursor to the current selection.


How do I get a cycles render that is similar to the default OpenGL viewport render? I want the whites to be "white" and not grey, and the shadows to not be so dark. Is this just a matter of setting up appropriate lightning? Or is there a shortcut to getting the viewport results (but with more control, like alpha channel)?

Bad render:

I'd like an more illustrative or "cartoon" style render. With subtle shadows, etc. Perhaps I should just do this in Illustrator -- but I saw the great tutorial on this and wanted to try out Blender. :D

Here is a comparison of different render engines/techniques:
Cycles
Using just a toon shader:

This render is with large mesh lights, which give soft transitions. With some small point lamps you can get a more sharp result:

Manually defining a vector to create a sharp gradient/cartoon kind of shading:

Light sources do not affect this shader unfortunately, you must manually define the vector with the mapping node.
BI
Toon shading:

The spots are basically the same, except very dark gray (not quite black).

Other scene settings:
Single sun lamp with a light gray shadow, AO enabled in World settings.

An effect very much like the second cycles example can be achieved with the Emit value set to 1. You can also get finer control over the colors/intensity of the toon shader by enabling ramp:

Note that this one uses light sources properly, so it can be used in animation.
OpenGL
When you have GLSL enabled, the openGL view will actually render the BI toon shading settings in real time. You can even render shadows:

To make the sky transparent when rendering openGL renders, set the Alpha to Transparent in Render settings > OpenGL (render settings > Shading when BI is the current render engine). This is under Render > OpenGL options in the info panel as of 2.71.
To render an animation or still with OpenGL, select it from the render drop down, or click the button on the header of the 3D view:


Can I save a render region? I'd like to be able to define a Render Region and recall it, if possible. Is there a way to do this? As it is now, a drawn Render Region is only temporary, and only one can be drawn at a time.
You can see the drawn render region below, and as I work on the project, I render the animated faders again and again. I'd love it if I could get the render region consistent from time to time instead of having to redraw it.

You can make a script like this:
import bpy

max_saves = 4  # if you have that many saved regions, trying to create a new one will throw an error
               # remove old saves to create a new one

save_name = "restore_render_regions_{}.py"

out = "import bpy\n\n"

for name, scene in bpy.data.scenes.items():
    out += f"scene = bpy.data.scenes.get('{name}')\n" \
    f"if scene:\n" \
    f"    scene.render.border_min_x = {scene.render.border_min_x}\n" \
    f"    scene.render.border_max_x = {scene.render.border_max_x}\n" \
    f"    scene.render.border_min_y = {scene.render.border_min_y}\n" \
    f"    scene.render.border_max_y = {scene.render.border_max_y}\n" \
    f"# --\n\n"

for i in range(max_saves):
    filename = save_name.format(i)
    if filename not in bpy.data.texts:
        break
else:
    raise MemoryError("Number of saved render region states exceeded the limit - increase the limit or " \
        "remove old saves")

file = bpy.data.texts.new(filename)
file.write(out)

Running it will create another script named restore_render_regions_{0}.py with saved region coordinates, so you can run the automatically generated script to restore the coordinates at any time (the Texts are saved with the file).


Object is weight painted in edit mode When I go to edit mode my object is weight painted. It did have a armature, but I deleted it. How do I delete the weight painting. I can't apply my modifiers either, because of some shape keys.
Please help!

After deleting the Armature modifier go to the Mesh Data header and delete all vertex groups (click the black down arrow-->Delete All Groups) in Vertex Groups panel. Do the same with shape keys in the Shape Keys panel to be able to apply your modifiers.


How do you delete a mystery object? If you encounter an unexpected object in your blender file, how would you delete it?

For example, there is a mysterious egg shape object that I didn't notice until now because it was covered by a plane.

I can't select the object since it appears to be part of another object.
I can't press P to try and separate the object by selection because blender warns 'no object selected'.

I have no idea where this shape came from, nor how to get rid of it.

Blender File

It's part of the ring object. The ring has a cube in it, which is being subsurfed and distorted by the modifiers, resulting in the "egg" object.

Select the ring ( RMB), enter edit mode (↹ Tab) and delete the cube at the top.


How can I select all creased edges with specific weight at once, can be with python Technically simple thing, how can I check for exact crease weight edges and then select only them? Like only that one edge on the cube ?

AFAIK There isn't a command for this, but here is a simple script which selects all Edge Creases with values above 0.5:

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object
me = obj.data

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

for e in me.edges:
    if e.crease > 0.5:
        e.select = True
        print (e.crease)

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

Bmesh module solution (avoids toggling into Object Mode):

import bpy
import bmesh

obj = bpy.context.object
me = obj.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
cr = bm.edges.layers.crease.verify()

me.show_edge_crease = True

for e in bm.edges:
    if (e[cr] > 0.5):
        e.select = True
        print(e[cr])

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me, False, False)


Is that normal to have larger render time with GPU? I am using Blender 2.79 on Ubuntu 16.04.2. I have gtx610M(closed source drivers installed) and Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3210M CPU  2.50GHz processor

I have a very simple scene. A cube placed on a plane.

I've rendered this scene with 128 samples. 32x32 tiles. With CPU I got it rendered in 25.56 seconds. But when I switch it to GPU I get it rendered in 1 minutes and 7 seconds. I tried increasing the tile size to 256x256 and then I got it in 54 seconds.

Can that be natural? 1 minutes of GPU rendering time for this scene is obviously larger than normal, how about the CPU? Is 25 seconds ideal?

GPU's are generally a better solution for your renderings. They offer more processing power and that can be harnessed to render your scenes.
Here your GPU might not be supported or your drivers not in place, If its not any of these, then its your GPU that is and. Get a newer one and it should work :)


Add an image to an object I want to put a 2D image on a 3D object in Blender. How do I do that?

I have found the "textures" tab in the "properties" window, but I can't figure out what to do with it.

Preferably, I would like to click and drag an image off my desktop right onto the object.

First off you can just drag an image right onto the object to add the image.
Now before you get too excited, there are some things you have to do to get it to work before it will render like that.

First, you have to be using the Blender Internal render engine for the drag and drop to add the image to the object.
To actually get the texture to render you have to use the material, and the texture panel. (more on why it "no clicky-worky? no typy-worky?" later.)

My answer explains how to set up a material and texture for the BI. Only difference is you have already imported the image, so instead of clicking on the Open button, click on the drop down button to use a image already in blender.

Now for cycles

My answer explains the procedure for using images in cycles. Just know that you drag the image in to the node editor, not on to the object.

Now to your "no clicky-worky" problem, I think that stems from the different render engins, cycles and the blender internal. See this question for help on that.


How to set a certain scene if object fall below a value? I would like to set a certain scene if a certain object falls to below zero or less.

This is the current aspect of my script:

import bge

# get the controller
controller = bge.logic.getCurrentController()

# get the game object that the controller is attached to.
obj = controller.owner

# get actuator attached to the controller named switchScene
act = controller.actuators["switchScene"]

# Detects player's z position is equal or minor then zero
if obj.worldPosition.z <= 0

# set scene name
act.scene = "Main"

This is the error that the terminal returns:

Python error compiling script - object 'Player', controller 'Python.003':
  File "Z.py", line 13
    if obj.worldPosition.z <= 0
                              ^
 SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Thank you.

You have a syntax error because you forgot the double point at the end of if statement.
You can change state of an actuator with current controller actívate or deactivate.

Your script should look like this:
import bge

# get the controller
controller = bge.logic.getCurrentController()

# get the game object that the controller is attached to.
obj = controller.owner

# get actuator attached to the controller named switchScene
act = controller.actuators["switchScene"]

# Detects player's z position is equal or minor then zero
if obj.worldPosition.z <= 0:
    # set scene name
    act.scene = "Main"
    # scene actuator mode: change to = 0
    act.mode = 0
    #change scene
    controller.activate(act)

Related : Python API controller.activate, Python API KX_SceneActuator
EDIT
Hi again.
About chicOrtiz comentary:
That error its because you dont have an actuator named "switchScene" conected to the current controller in the logic editor window (panel). as shown in the next image:

So i decide to make a blend example and found our next error.
We need to set actuator mode before set the scene. So the script should be:
import bge

# get the controller
controller = bge.logic.getCurrentController()

# get the game object that the controller is attached to.
obj = bge.logic.getCurrentScene().objects["Cube"]

# get actuator attached to the controller named switchScene
act = controller.actuators["lascene"]

# Detects player's z position is equal or minor then zero

if obj.worldPosition.z <= 0:
    # set actuator mode :
    # 0 = ?restart? ;   1 = ?restart?? ;
    # 2 = set Scene ;   3 = set camera ;
    # 4 = overlay   ;   5 = underlay
    act.mode = 2
    #set camera, it has to be in the same scene.
    act.camera = bge.logic.getCurrentScene().objects["Camera_main_scene.001"]
    #Set actuator Scene
    act.scene = "Second_Scene"
    #active actuator
    controller.activate(act)

Note: About if you need to use bpy or bge,
if you want a game always use bge
if you want animation movie, addon, etc use bpy
bpy and bge cant work together in anyway (in my understanding)
bpy only used inside blender (internal, cycles) dont bge


How to accomplish realistic piles of dirt in Blender? Got a question about how to accomplish realistic piles of dirt in Blender. Look at the design sketch below. See the dirt falling from between the cracks of the fingers?
I remember seeing this add-on a year or so ago but I forgot the name and couldn't figure out the right keywords to search. It did something like randomly drop particles where you wanted them. In the demo they were dropping fruit in a bowl I believe.
My main questions.

How should I approach the piles of dirt? I tried experimenting with a particle system and couldn't get the piling up effect. Should it just be one object with a dirt material? It needs to be quite realistic for my client.

Same question with the dirt in the hand. I imagine it could just be a textured object but I'm worried it will look bad towards the bottom as it becomes falling particles. However if I fill the hand with particles that's a LOT of data.

I think you get the point. I need help wrapping my head around how to best approach the dirt in this design where realism is the goal. Thank you!

The addon you are talking about is probably Molecular (Sand sim with Molecular)
Simulating everything will take a beefy PC and huge amounts of simulation time, and will only look good if you got the settings right before hand, but if you do its very rewarding.
You maybe want to look into techniques like
Particle Dirt

Particle Dirt

Displacement and bump mapping with PBR textures

Displacement and bump mapping

Even tessellation / Micro Displacement (adaptive subdivision)

Sculpting

To shorten your time and gain more control


Scale a 3D beveled bezier path vertex on 1 axis, not 3 I'm trying to create a complex beveled bezier (bezier curve with a spline object as the bevel). It needs to have the same Z+Y scale throughout the object but the X axis needs to scale to widen to fit the letter shape.

In edit mode with a vertex selected and using Alt+S I can scale the control point and get the scale I want one the X axis ... but ... I am also getting Y/Z scaling.

Is there a way to lock the axis with this scaling mode or another way for me to scale the way I am looking for? The image show a single control point scaled but I'd want to scale the others to fill the C shape on X without changing the other 2.

I haven't played with using a Taper object but given how I'm trying to fit a very specific shape, scaling the points would seem to be the best way to have precise scale.

When you scale a control point you're scaling its radius around the curve, which is inherently circular. The only way to get a flat profile is to use a second bevel object with a thin rectangular shape. Once you apply that bevel object, scaling the cp radius only affects width in the way you want.

In my example, I found a better result with a low curve resolution (4-5), and then applying a subdiv modifier with level 3.


Usage of the blender logo and copyright I have created my own logo. I want to have the blender icon as eyes in my logo. As a tribute and to show that I'm using Blender as my main 3D software.

Wondering if this violates the copyright with blender.

I read through Q & A here: https://www.blender.org/about/logo/
But I'm still unsure if I can use it in my logo.

I also could not find other tags that match "Tradermark, logos, copyright etc". Perhaps somone with access could make a tag for it?

On reading the linked “about logo” page I’d say ‘no’. Mostly due to the paragraph :

  You will visualize and promote your own branding more prominent than
  you use the Blender logo. The Blender logo only can be used as a
  secondary brand, which means it has to be clear for an average viewer
  that this is not an official Blender or Blender Foundation website,
  publication or product.

IMO, by making the Blender logo part of your logo (the eye) there is no separation between your logo and the Blender logo so it isn’t clear as a “secondary brand”, making it appear to be endorsed or affiliated with Blender.


Does Blender have an asset library plugin? Is there an addon or plugin to have a visual asset library to drag and drop onto the 3D view area other than the file open/browsing dialog?

This one seems very great : https://blendermarket.com/products/asset-management/ (I haven't try it yet).


common game property I've multiple planes acting as sensors(buttons) in my game. I want to keep track on the order in which these buttons were clicked and also the total number of clicks. This information has to be processed to give some output. How can this be done? I think this can be done by adding a game property with all the objects sharing this common property and incrementing the property value on click of the plane.
How can we have a single common game property for all the objects?

Properties belong to a single game object. They are not shared by default.

There are several ways to implement the requirements you have.

Here is one:

a single object handles the clicking -> button controller
the buttons do nothing regarding the click processing (maybe some feedback animation). Each button provides a meaning (e.g. via name or via property).

The button controller can be an empty as it has no further meaning within the 3D scene other than processing the clicks.

The button controller triggers a Python controller on mouse button and mouse over any sensor. Then a button is sensed the controller identifies the meaning and adds an entry to a button tracker. The button tracker tracks the button clicks. It can be a simple list.

example:

import bge

def recordClicks():

    if not allSensorsPositive():
        return

    hitObject = getHitObject()

    meaning = hitObject["meaning"]
    getTracks().append(meaning)

    print("clicks are", getTracks())

def allSensorsPositive():
    for sensor in bge.logic.getCurrentController().sensors:
        if not sensor.positive:
            return False
    return True

def getHitObject():
    for sensor in bge.logic.getCurrentController().sensors:
        try:
            return sensor.hitObject
        except AttributeError:
            pass

def getTracks():
    tracker = bge.logic.getCurrentController().owner
    try:
        return tracker["tracks"]
    except KeyError:
        tracks = []
        tracker["tracks"] = tracks
        return tracker["tracks"]

The clicks are recorded in property "tracks". It is a list (not view able by show debug properties) containing the clicked objects in the order they are clicked.

The clickable objects should contain a property called "meaning". The best is to filter the mouse over any sensor with property "meaning".

Configure the Python controller with Module mode and "demo.recordClicks".

Unfortunately you did not mention what to do with the tracked clicks. So this example just prints them to console.


See-Saw With Hinge - Rigid Body Physics Simulation Not Working Properly I am making a rigid body physics simulation with Catapult supported by a Hinge. A Cube with a substantial mass drops on the catapult which also has substantial mass. I am expecting the catapult to rotate as the cube drops on it. But the catapult doesn't budge an inch! The Hinge does part of the job by holding itself & the catapult in place.

What am I doing wrong for the catapult to perform real physics ? Thank you for the help the Blender community stars may provide!

Problem areas identified with the above animation: The Constraint Axis & Hinge physics configuration needed correction. Also, no object in the simulation is to be set as animated if physics has to take effect.

The Solution to the above and just about all catapult/see-saw type physics simulations lies in two important steps :

Properly Set up the physics :

a.) Set the falling object/cube as "Active" Rigid body.

b.) Set the Catapult (or see-saw object) as "Active" Rigid body. Do NOT Set this as "animated" unless you want this simulation to be controlled through the animation system or key frames.

c.) Set the Hinge as a "PASSIVE" Rigid body.

Set up Of the Catapult & Hinge constraint :

a.) Select The Hinge first, then shift select the catapult. This Will create an "empty object like Axis" which is the constraint. Set This constraint type to "Hinge". This can be selected on the Left Panels Menu by pressing "N" or under the "Constraint" Physics menu.

b). Set Up Proper Axis For The Hinge Constraint. An easy way to do this is to set all rotations of this constraint to zero. Then based on your object's orientation, select the proper axis for it to work. Trial & error may be required but with the above suggestions it should take not take more than a minute or two.

-- Thanks to @m.ardito for always trying to help and provide hints. Thanks To @Rich Sedman for providing a useful explanation. Thanks To @Mr Zak & @cegaton for providing help on question editor image tool.


Question about False Color in Render Properties Following Blender Guru's Donut Tutorials and currently at the end of Part 1.
I'm really unsure about the false color concepts, grey is the ideal color so we have to tweak all the settings till its mostly grey?? Based on what I have read, this works like a heat map; so red and dark blue should be avoided at all cost??
Using cycles with basic settings.

Generally, just try to avoid pure White and pure Black areas

White represents High end clipping - you lose details for anything brighter
Black represents Low End clipping - you lose details for anything darker

Three things to remember:

You can always increase clipping later, but you can't recover clipped details from exported JPG/TIFF/PNG
Keep as much details for editing and only clip colors in your final photo
You can have as much clipping in your final photo as you want, there's no right or wrong

How to correct an overexposed photo (with pure white areas)

Here's a detailed chart of the values for the coloring for the false color:

Source: https://sobotka.github.io/filmic-blender/


Programmatically assigning EnumProperty items in a CollectionProperty I have a CollectionProperty which contains an EnumProperty, and I need to programatically assign each EnumProperty's items attribute.

You can assign a value to something like IntProperty, BoolProperty, StringProperty etc.:

class Item(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    asdf = bpy.props.StringProperty()

bpy.utils.register_class(Item)

bpy.types.Scene.collection = bpy.props.CollectionProperty(type = Item)

# create a new item, assign its properties
item = bpy.context.scene.collection.add()
item.asdf = "asdf"

, but my siduation with EnumProperty is different here. The items attribute is taken in through an argument:

class Item(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    asdf = bpy.props.EnumProperty(
        # items argument required to initialize, just filled with empty values
        items = [
            ("", "", "")
        ]
    )

bpy.utils.register_class(Item)

bpy.types.Scene.collection = bpy.props.CollectionProperty(type = Item)

# create a new item, assign its properties
item = bpy.context.scene.collection.add()
item.asdf = [
    ("asdf", "asdf", "asdf")
]

So when you assign a value, you're just changing whatever the active enum value is. And it gets mad at you for trying to assign an array of tuples to a string.

The (best?) way to dynamically assign items appears to just be to delete it, and then re-assign it.
This works with a normal EnumProperty:

del bpy.types.Scene.collection
bpy.types.Scene.collection = bpy.props.EnumProperty(
    items = [
        ("asdf", "asdf", "asdf")
    ]
)

, but it works differently when its part of a collection...

Calling the collection through bpy.types.Scene.collection returns a tuple, and attempting to execute del bpy.types.Scene.collection[0] throws AttributeError: 'builtin_function_or_method' object has no attribute 'asdf'.

How can I assign my own values to the EnumPropertys' items when they're in a CollectionProperty?

I'm definitely open to the possibility that I'm coming at this the wrong way, I've been getting acquainted with BPY for the past couple days and all the jargon's making my head spin a bit.

In case someone still need this, here is a minimal working example for blender 2.8:

import bpy

def add_items_from_collection_callback(self, context):
    items = []
    scene = context.scene
    for item in scene.my_items.values():
        items.append((item.some_str, item.some_str, ""))
    return items

class MyEnumItems(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    @classmethod
    def register(cls):
        bpy.types.Scene.my_enum_items = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=MyEnumItems)

    @classmethod
    def unregister(cls):
        del bpy.types.Scene.my_enum_items

    asdf : bpy.props.EnumProperty(
        name="asdf",
        description="asdf",
        # items argument required to initialize, just filled with empty values
        items = add_items_from_collection_callback,
    )

class MyItem(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    @classmethod
    def register(cls):
        bpy.types.Scene.my_items = bpy.props.CollectionProperty(type=MyItem)

    @classmethod
    def unregister(cls):
        del bpy.types.Scene.my_items

    some_str : bpy.props.StringProperty(
        name = "asdf",
        default = ""
    )

class MY_OT_add_item(bpy.types.Operator):
    ''' add item to bpy.context.scene.my_items '''
    bl_label = "add item"
    bl_idname = "my.add_item"

    def execute(self, context):
        # create a new item, assign its properties
        item = bpy.context.scene.my_items.add()
        item.some_str = "asdf" + str(len(bpy.context.scene.my_items))
        return {'FINISHED'}

class MY_PT_simple_panel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Simple Panel"
    bl_idname = "MY_PT_simple_panel"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_category = "simple panel"
    bl_context = "objectmode"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.operator("my.add_item")
        layout.prop(context.scene.my_enum_items, "asdf")

classes = (MyEnumItems, MyItem, MY_OT_add_item, MY_PT_simple_panel)
register, unregister = bpy.utils.register_classes_factory(classes)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

in 3D View > Side bar > Simple Panel, click add item to add a new enum item for asdf


Blender 2.83 - water flow I'm trying to find any video or a website on making water flow (simple outflow from a sewage pipe as it is for a game, it then goes to a river or lake so i probably don't need any sink or ground for water to fall into) for Blender 2.83.
Anything is pre-2.83 and in that version baking is gone. I've found a tip in the comments here but that doesn't work either.
Anyone knows where to look for, or would that be better to go back to previous version? I don't suppose it would be back in 2.90, is it?
(and honestly - tags are more frustrating than helpful)

Scroll down to Cache inside the physics settings. Switch the Cache Type to modular. Replay (the default cache type in 2.83+) will allow the simulation to run when you are playing the animation, modular actually bakes it onto the disk.  You can also switch it to Final to bake everything at once, but note that final bake.
A lot of people have this problem when they watch tutorials done in a previous release of blender and don't know what to do because some things changed. Reading the documentation should clear everything up. It is written very clearly. https://docs.blender.org/manuel/en/latest


Is it possible to move an FCurve from one bone to another? I have 2 bones at the exact same location and in the same armature. I also have an action and a set of FCurves which are all assigned to the same bone.

Now i need to "move" the fcurves from that bone to the other bone. I first tried to simply edit the fcurve.data_path:

original path: 'pose.bones["mHipLeft"].location'
my edit      : fcurve.data_path='pose.bones["HipLeft"].location'

But this did not move the FCurve to the other bone. Possibly i made it wrong, or i forgot an update somewhere?

I also looked into the Blender API and i searched in the release/script folder but i could not find anything about "move an fcurve".

Now the only other idea that i have is to Create new FCurves, copy the data and then delete the original FCurves. But this looks like a lot of trouble. So before i go this way maybe someone knows an easier solution for this?

And in the case when the only option is to copy the FCurves, then is it sufficient to do the copy in this way? (I found this in the addon library):

def copyFCurve(newCurve, oldCurve):
    for point in oldCurve.keyframe_points:
        newCurve.keyframe_points.insert(frame=point.co.x, value=point.co.y)

I found that this moves an FCurve from one bone to another:

def moveFcurve(action, fromBone, toBone):
    for fc in [fc for fc in action.fcurves if fc.group.name == fromBone]:
        fc.group.name = toBone
        for channel in fc.group.channels:
            channel.data_path = channel.data_path.replace(fromBone, toBone)


Is there any way to keyframe values within a SimpleDeform modifier? I am incredibly new to 3d animation and modeling after perfecting 2D animation via motion graphics for the past few years. I've found it best for myself to just jump into programs and play around to learn various functions.

I've started running through some of the modifiers; however, it would seem as though there is no way to add a keyframe when changing the value of a property within a simpledeform.

For example: I'd like the angle of a Twist modifier to be 208 degrees at frame 24, and to be 0 at frame 0.

Afterward I would like to be able to smooth out the f-curve between the two keyframes to create an interesting look where my primitive untwists.

Is this simply not a functionality of this program? If so, in what programs would I be able to do this?

Thank you in advance. I apologize if this is extremely basic I truly just don't have any idea what is going on after doing quite a few searches for this myself.

You can like most other fields in blender. You just need to remember the shortcut i while hovering over the field or simply right-click (on the field) > Add keyframe. The field's color is yellow when a keyframe is set to the current frame, and green when at least one keyframe is set to another frame. Remember to change the current frame in the timeline when you change keyframes.


How to select all edges/vertex between 2 something selecting edges is very time consuming and you dont want to user the shoertcut to select everything just a small part connected by 2 edges.

how to accomplish that, meaning, I select an edge at one end and another at another end an automatically select everything between?

thanks

Using 'Alt + Right-Click' will select everything in a loop of vertices. I'm not sure whether you can select 2 vertices and everything in-between, but another alternative would be using 'Alt-B' to view a filtered down part of the model?


How to only use a texture once? I have a burn mark texture and the problem is that when I put it on a plane and adjust the UV mapping instead of there being one burn mark loads show up. How do I get only one?

Simply add a mapping node between the texture coordinates and the image texture in your nodes. Then check the Min and the Max check boxes on the Mapping node.
Those two check boxes will limit the repeating of the image. Use Min to control the side to the left of the image, and Max for the right. With both checked neither side will repeat.


How do I rig this bridge in Blender? I'm trying to rig the following bridge, but can't wrap my head around this.

When I rotate Bone on its X-axis to hoist the bridge, the bottom part where Bone.002 is attached too comes loose from the part where Bone.001 is attached to.

Note: Bone.001 has a Copy Rotation Constraint and follows the rotation of Bone

What can I do to keep the parts connected?

Here is the .blend file:

There are several ways to do this, this is one:

The horizontal bones deform the two platforms, the two vertical bones translate the connecting vertical bars. For the vertical bones, I unchecked inherit rotation in the bone tab.
The bottom green bone copies rotations of the top right bone. This is the control bone for the whole setup, you could hide all other bones.

Take a look at the blend:


Creating a point at two intersecting lines I need a way to create a vertex on each line where the lines intersect(inside the red circles). The vertexes should not be free-floating. How would I do this?

The easiest way will be to delete the free floating vertex, then subdivide the edges once (the only edges ones that will be left in the circles after you delete the vertices) and fill in the faces.


2.8 beta - How to hide HDRI in EEVEE? I know how to get a transparent background for a render in EEVEE and I also know about the lightpath node trick to hide it.

However it seems like there should be a simple checkbox to disable it in the viewport on rendered preview. Am I missing something?

You can use the light path node to achieve this:

As you can see, it's showing up in reflections, but for the camera it just displays the other background shader. This also works for cycles.


Add more fractals without subdivide again I create a plane, subdivided it. And added fractals using subdivision panel.(w key)

Then I close the subdivide panel.

After some modification, I tried to modify the fractal intensity.

So I have to open subdivide panel again.

But, when I open the panel, subdividing is applied again automatically.

Is there any way to add or modify fractals without additional subdivision.

No, you cannot change the parameters of an operation after you have modified the mesh with other operations.

What you can do is reopen the dialog of only the previous operator with F6 if you've accdently closed it, but this is not quite what you are looking for.

(An operator is basically every command where you move or change something about a mesh, an object, a material, you name it)

What you want, if I understand you correctly, is to open the operator history with F3 and change the past and have everything that happened after the fractal subdivide to be reapplied on top of your change of the past. This is basically the same as if every operator was a modifier. Modifiers work that way, but operators don't. Once an operator is applied you can't change their old parameters (well, Blender keeps the parameters editable for the last operator).

Maya does almost what you want: It keeps the full operator history of a mesh and you can actually change it afterwards and all the subsequent operators are reapplied. BUT it doesn't work in complicated cases and can lead to crashes :)
Also it's common practice in Maya to regularly collapse (=delete) the operator history, otherwise Maya gets pretty slow.


Bridge edge loops gives weird results I've got two closed edge loops that I want to join using Bridge Edge Loops. One of them is an organic oval-ish shape and one of them is the edge of a cylinder, like so:

However, when I Bridge Edge Loops, rather than getting the semi-tubular result I expected, I get a weird result with crazy criss-crossed faces, like so:

What am I doing wrong?

Edit: added a picture of the edge loops and their normals, for clarity.

This is far from ideal but it's a quick fix:

Extrude one of your edge loops and place it near or inside the other one.

Then bridge them.

Select the middle loop, hover over "smooth Vertex" and hold RETURN until it's stretched.

Of course this creates more horrible geometry. It might be better to use a cylinder made of quads and use a Shrinkwrap Modifier to get an inner wall. Or use the Shrinkwrap to replace the original organic wall with one that has a nice topology.

Blender is not really equipped to handle a lot of chaotic tris. Quads make bridging and other operations much easier and more predictable. Ideally the vertex count of both loops should be the same and the verts should be evenly spaced.

A crazier way:

Hide everything except your edgeloops. if they line up on an axis, hover over the axis in the transform panel (Y in this example) and hit CTRLC

LMB drag the value up until the loops roughly align.

Bridge them.

Select the moved loop, hover over the Y axis and hit CTRLV. The loop will be back in its place.

Yet another way would be to bridge the hole piece by piece and not in one go.

I must admit that so far I haven't been able to recreate your troubles, so the solutions are a bit of guesswork.


Save doesn't work correct I have a big problem and I can't solve them. When I save the project it always save false. On the second picture you can see the project that I want to save. In the first picture you can see the false saved version. Before there was so much more text. Funny is that it always saves the same version no matter what I do. I am very sad because I lose a lot of work. Please help me out. Thank you for your help.

The objects were moved but their keyframes for the location weren't updated. Once you re-open the file they will snap back to their original keyframe location. To update the position of an object select the frame you want to edit in the timeline, then move the object to the desired position and press I. Select Location from the menu or a combination that includes the location.


Creating an implant for spinal surgery - workflow questions Pretty new to Blender here and with a pretty specific set of questions.

The situation: I'm a vet looking to operate on a dog's spine.  I want to put screws in a very specific location to avoid damaging the spinal cord (the corridor is about 4mm in diameter - I'm going to use 2.7mm screws with a 2mm hole drilled at exactly the right angle).

My strategy:  I have a CT of the spine that I have extracted into CT slicer, exported as an .stl file and made a 3D printed model of.  I am planning to 3D print guides on the left and right side of the spine that are shaped to snugly fit the spine with holes already placed to guide drilling before the screws are placed.  I have imported the .stl of the spine into blender.

My plan (halfway through completion):

Make a new cube (several thereof), size and rotate for the
approximate angle, place over the appropriate region of the spine
Add a Boolean (difference) modifier to the cube with the spine as the target
Slice the (now shaped) cube in half to give a left and right side that can be placed on the spine in surgery to fit
Make a new cylinder the right diameter and length for the drill guide.  Rotate and place into each guide, add a Boolean (difference) modifier to each guide with the cylinder as a target

My problem:

With a complicated 3D shape such as a spine, I need to carve the guides appropriately so that they can be slotted into place onto the spine from either side.
I have been doing my carving with Boolean modifiers applied to each guide and extra cubes as needed for targets to shave off appropriate areas
Sometimes the carving leaves the external mesh of the guides intact, sometimes it doesn't and I have to make new faces where old ones have been removed (not very straightforward but achievable by tabbing into edit mode, selecting edge loops via multiple vertex selection, using the C button to highlight select vertices then F to make faces where necessary)
Overall I'm getting there but this is an incredibly slow process given that I still need to print the shapes and test them for fit on my printed spine before going into surgery.

Surely there is a quicker way to do this?  I tried placing each guide on the spine and moving it along the X axis in incremental stages towards the middle (where it is supposed to be), applying Boolean modifiers along the way, but this invariably disrupts the mesh and leaves me with a million faces to recreate (and not confident I'm recreating them in the right places).

Carving as required:

Recreating faces when the carving doesn't work:

Hopefully this is captures the problem and a solution.

To create geometry for a fixure which can be lifted off a complex geometry like a spine, you can use a high resolution mesh and the shrinkwrap modifier. The resulting object should be 'water-tight' and able to be 3D printed.

Detailed instructions:

Import the spine geometry.

Add a plane which will be the dividing plane between the upper and lower clamps.

Select the spine and the plane. Use ctrl-J to join the geometry.
Add a cube for the upper portion of the clamp. Size it so it covers the area to the clamped. Keep it above the spline. This block should NOT intersect the spine geometry.

Select the cube and use tab to enter the 'edit mode'. In the edit mode, select the vertices on the bottom of the cube. Use subdivide to create a high resolution mesh on the bottom of the cube. With the bottom of the cube selected, add a vertex group and name it 'bottom'.

Use tab to return to object mode.
Add a shinkwrap modified to the cube. Project the shrinkwrap modified in the 'z' direction and only shinkwrap the 'bottom' vertex group. Set the spine as the target. This will project all of the vertices in the bottom group down onto the spine. Because the plane was added earlier, the shrinkwrap will either touch the bone or the separation plane. Since the vertices only project downward, the block can be removed by lifting off the spine.

You are done! Some other things to consider are increasing the mesh resolution in areas of interest to better match the scanned geometry and adding offset to the meshes to provide some fitting tolerance for installing and removing the blocks.

If additional clearance is needed between the scanned spine and the mold, the diplace modifier can be applied to the geometry. This will project the surfaces of the bones outward a little and give additional room. The image below shows the original spine in geometry as a solid and the displaced geometry in the wire mesh.


Backlighting causing flickering I am animating the camera to move forward through this DNA strand. It is backlit with a spotlight. I am using eevee in 2.83
I am getting very bad flickering in the backlight highlights in the image.
Does anybody know how to stop this?
Thank you

This is due to how the Eevee renderer actually functions. Eevee doesn't act like the real world. That's what cycles is for (raytracing). Eevee only works with direct lighting and reflectoins (such as on the dna strand) are 'guessed' by Eevee. It's hard to explain, but if you want to know more about why such artifacts happen in the Eevee renderer, check this video:
Next-Gen Ray Tracing Demo using Blender 3D - How Will It Work?


Soften edges of voronoi cells? the voronoi texture node with the cells setting can make some really interesting textures, but the edges where the cells are joined to eachother are so unnaturally sharp, it just doesn't look good, is there any way i could potentially "soften" these edges? for example, replace the edges with a fade. or just distort the edges using a noise  texture somehow? i have tried a few different things, but nothing has yielded the result i wanted.

If you have any ideas as to how to achieve a "softening" effect on the edges, please advice.

and thanks in advance.

Edit: those 2 methods i described are ways i think could potentially work, but i'm interested in any way that could soften or distort the edges of the voronoi cells.

It depends on what you mean when you say 'fade'. If you're looking to blend adjacent cells together then I think the only option would be as in the linked answer from Duarte's comment (How to blur a texture node in cycles material?). However, if you're looking to fade out one cell before fading in anther cell and you're using Blender version 2.8, then the new 'Crackle' option (which effetively gives you the distance to the 'edge') can effectively be used as follows :

The 'Crackle' mode of the Intensity  Voronoi produces an output that is 0.0 at the 'edge' of the cells and increases (towards 1.0) with distance from the edge. By subtracting it from 1.0 we reverse the direction and increasing the Power node gives a 'sharper' falloff.

An alternative is to exclude the Subtract and flip the inputs of the Mix node - and lower powers will now produce a sharper falloff.

For more detailed control you could simply use a Color Ramp :

EDIT: At Blender 2.80 the Voronoi node also gives you the Intensity and Cell color of the nearest 4 cells to that point in the texture. By combining the distances to the nearest 4 cells we can generate mix factors to allow us to mix between the difference colors of those cells and this allows a proper 'edge fade between colored cells'.

Here's the overall material :

Note the 8 Voronoi Texture nodes - all set to the same Scale, with one set generating the Colors of the 4 cells (closest, 2nd closest, 3rd closest, 4th closest) and the other set of 4 generating the Intensities.

The intensities are passed into a node group to calculate the relative mix factors from those intensities - to mix the respective cell color - and the mixing is handled by the other node group.

For the mixing, the Colors are combined using the following maths :

# Mix 4 colors based on the values of 4 factors

_color1 = Color1
_color2 = Color2
_color3 = Color3
_color4 = Color4

_fac1 = Factor1
_fac2 = Factor2
_fac3 = Factor3
_fac4 = Factor4

_factorSum = _fac1 + _fac2 + _fac3 + _fac4

Output = vdiv(vadd(vmult(_color1, _fac1), vadd(vmult(_color2, _fac2), vadd(vmult(_color3, _fac3),vmult(_color4, _fac4)))), _factorSum)

Note that I've used an add-on (Node Expressions) to convert the textual expression into maths nodes within the group (but I've included the Blend file so you can see the generated nodes for your own use if you don't have that add-on). This works by using Vector Multiply (vmult) to multiply each of the Colors by the associated Factor and then dividing by the sum of the factors. At its core this produces the following nodes :

ie, Multiply each color/factor, Add them together, Divide by the sum.

The cell distances are converted into mix factors using the following maths :

# Convert 4 cell distances into mix factors

#Define the inputs to the group
_dist1 = Distance1
_dist2 = Distance2
_dist3 = Distance3
_dist4 = Distance4

# Sharpness will control how 'sharp' the edges are. Avoid low values to avoid artifacts due to dense arrangements of cells (eg, where 5th Closest would have a significant influence at that range)
_falloffPower = Sharpness{3} * 10

#Factor of the 'current' cell will be constant
Factor1 = 1

#For the other cells, factor in based on how close it is compared to the 'current' cell - so that it is '1' at the boundary of the cell (so we get a smooth transition between cells)
Factor2 = (_dist1 / (_dist1 + _dist2)*2)**_falloffPower
Factor3 = (_dist1 / (_dist1 + _dist3)*2)**_falloffPower
Factor4 = (_dist1 / (_dist1 + _dist4)*2)**_falloffPower

Here the contribution of the 'current' cell is 1.0 and the adjacent cells are mixed in based on the distance to the 'edge' of the cell (using a similar calculation to that used to generate the standard 'crackle' output). The calculation is chosen such that at the edge of cells the contribution is always '1.0' - ie, the same as the 'current' cell. This ensures that when transitioning between cells (so the 'current' cells becomes '2nd Closest', for example) the contribution is the same, avoiding any 'hard' cutoffs in the blending between cells. The higher the 'falloff power', the quicker the contribution of the adjacent cells drops down to zero - resulting in a sharper edge.

Providing the Sharpness is high enough (so that the '5th closest', '6th closest' cells, etc. don't offer a significant contibution to the 'blend)) then this will produce a smooth transition between adjacent cells. This can produce the following result :

Note that one advantage using this method rather than using a Noise texture and multiple samples, is that since it's produced mathematically direct from the cells, it can be used for Bump mapping and Displacement. This means you can directly use it for 'tiles' or 'paving' or surface displacement to produce something like the following :

Blend file included


Where is the "default color" of a face, when a texture is applied? In the first image you can see the materials displayed in the SOLID view.
T stands for a material that has a texture applied to it.
W, R, Y stand for 3 materials that have no texture applied to them and only use BASE COLOR.
Now, in the second image you can see that the materials render correctly in LOOK DEV mode.
They also work correctly when rendered.
Why, in the MODELING view they are colored weirdly?
Where do I find that color setting?
If I didn't need to use transparency, I wouldn't care, but unluckily I'm in need of that, and transparency is not allowed in the LOOK DEV mode.
If at least it was all grey.

Viewport display (for solid mode) and the material itself are controlled by two different settings
Take a look in MaterialProperties>ViewportDisplay on the object, it could have been mixed up

By the way, if on MaterialProperties>Surface the "Use Nodes" button is off, it will use Viewport Display by default


Unknown Object in my rendering In my very first rendering I have an unknown object in my rendering image. its not found on any layer and I cant finde any unknown axis or objects on my rendered layers. Its a white circle behind a cup. could it have something to do with the light?

Alt+H has shown me the hidden circle.

Problem solved


Texture Painting is not working on ONE file only, other files work fine I'm currently using Blender 2.8

In the file i'm working on, i unwrapped a mesh (Smart UV Project) -> Add base color in the "Texture Slot", but then i am unable to paint over it.

Therefore, i tried creating a sphere in the same file and try texture painting it, it doesn't work as well.

So i created a new file and try that again, it works. Can anyone explain why Texture painting works fine in other files but not this particular one?
I am new to Blender so any help from you guys is very much appreciated!!

I found the solution. Maybe it is a bug that is causing the problem or i may have done something wrong, but you can fix it by just copying whole mesh to new file. And it works!


Understanding the bump node I see a lot of tutorials that explain how to use a bump node by demonstrating its use and giving a hand-waving explanation regarding what it actually does. Things like it "perturbs the normal".
OK, but how? I'd like to know, so I can understand how to control it more precisely.
The current problem I'm facing is that I'm trying to make a tile floor, and need to normal to follow the curve around the edge of the tile. The center face of the tile is a straight-up Z normal, but then edges have a curve to them before the tile disappears into the mortar.
But if I use the "Factor" output from the "Brick Texture" as the "Height" input to the bump node, I would expect that the normal is straight up Z where the tile/brick face is, and is simple scaled to zero where the mortar is.  Instead, if I view the output of the bump node, I see that the edges of the tile have X and Y components to them.  How is the direction of the vector being changed?
And what does the "distance" input do?
Yes, I've read the documentation.  The explanations are similarly imprecise and hand-wavy.  That's fine for a surface level understanding, but I'm hoping to gain more precise control so I'd like a deeper understanding.

Okay.  Let's say we're rendering a bump map fed by an image texture in Eevee.  I'll give a general run-down, but I may simplify some details.  You'd be best off just reading a bump map implementation in some shader code (OGL or HLSL).  That will tell you exactly what's happening, and it's a lot more accessible than you might think.
The bump node samples the image texture three times.  First, at the UV of the sample being evaluated; then, a slight offset in the U axis; then, a slight offset in the V axis.  The size of this offset depends on your zoom, texture resolution, and FoV; as you get closer, the offset gets smaller.  (I think it actually samples at a screenspace offset of +1 pixel, and then calculates based off of that, but understanding it in terms of UV is probably more intuitive and amounts to the same thing.)
Each time we sample the image, we get a number.  For each of our numbers, we subtract the bump node's midlevel, multiply by the bump's scale, and then multiply by our object's scale.
Then we calculate how big those UV offsets were in terms of world space-- we calculate the change in world space, divided by the change in UV.  In Eevee, that's pretty easy, because our video cards are designed to work on four samples simultaneously, because calculating these deltas is really important for texture filtering, which is really really important.
Now we know, in two orthogonal axes, how much our height changes over a given world space distance, which lets us calculate a slope.  For example, if our height changes 0.5 units in the direction of increasing U over 0.5 world space units, then we have a slope of 45 degrees.  If it changes 0.25 units over the same world space, we have a slope of 30 degrees.  (This is some basic trigonometry.)  We take our base normal and rotate it, in the axis of changing V, by the slope we get by looking at the change in height in U, and we rotate it, in the axis of changing U, by the slope we get by looking at the change in height in V.  Now we have a normal that's different than the one originally calculated from our mesh.
If you're okay with calculus, the tl;dr of all this is, we calculate the derivative of our height map and use that as our normal.
How we use this normal depends on the shader.  Each shader does something different with a normal; a normal is a fundamental part of almost every shader, and their differences have a lot to do with what they do with their normals.  So I won't go through all of them.  But we can consider a diffuse BSDF with a 0.0 roughness, which is called a Lambertian diffuse.  If we shine a light on this surface, what color do we get?  It depends on the angle of the light, relative to the angle of the normal.  The color we get is equal to the dot product of the surface normal and the reversed light vector (in whatever space, just so long as they're in the same space) times the color of the light, times the color of the surface, times the falloff fraction.  The output color (before color management) is the sum of the contributions from each light.


Where is "Film" setting to allow rendering transparent background? I have been working with blender 2.79 and trying to render a two dimensional video with a transparent background. When I look up examples they all seem to use a tool called "film". I can't find this anywhere can someone help me. Am I missing a setting?

You have to be in cycles render, then look to the render propreties tab


Why does rendered fire on transparent background look different than on preview? Why does rendered fire on transparent background look different than on preview?

Preview:

Render with transparent background:

It seems that the flame loses its  red color in my final render,

But it's weird that it appeared normal when I use a non-transparent background.

With background:

This are my nodes settings:

To closely match viewport and final render you have to give both the same render settings...which ends up for you waiting for the viewport rendering the same time as for the final render.
Second thing: The human optical perception can easily be tricked into "seeing" something, which isn't there or looks different, which is identical. Example:
Totally different greys are identical
If it doesn't came out totally different (for example a red rose turns blue) it is the result of subtle differences in the render settings playing games with your optical persception. So far the theoretical part of it. :)

If the alpha channel has a greater influence of the results, check the setting of the viewport regarding transperancy and the handling of the alpha channel.


Randomizing the starting frame of an image sequence on a per object basis I'm trying to have the frame offset of an image sequence be randomized on a per-object basis.
Essentially, make it so that for every instance of the material, it starts from a different frame.
I know it's possible to make duplicate materials and change the offsets to random values by dragging the mouse, but I'm having hundreds of these and doing that for all of them would be a massive pain.

The only workaround I have in mind is to use drivers.
Try plugging the random output to a Math node where you add 0 to it (just to have the value in some place you can address with a driver) and set a driver to the offset value, pointing the driver to the value in the Math node where you plugged the random.
I didn't try it yet, so I'm not 100% sure it will work.
If it doesn't let me know. Another alternative is to use Python.


Adding reflection to a plane while keeping a perfect white emission I want to have a perfectly white background with a reflection of an object. For the perfect white, I decided to use a emissive color, the result is as I expected.

Now if I mix a Glossy BSDF, I have my reflection, but the white is not as perfect as it was before mixing the shaders. Playing with the Fac-value is not bringing be further, because I need the white to be perfect, not with a tradeoff.

Is there a way to achieve this?

Please don't go too harsh on me, since I'm a beginner :D

Thank you for your help!

Final:

Nodes and overview:

You will need to create "fake PBR" shader by mixing Diffuse with Glossy by Fresnel.
Glossy should have set 0 Roughness and Color to pure white.
Mix them with Emission shader - again by Fresnel.

  Note:

  I've used black Environment color to show that Emission and Reflection
  is working, if you set it to white, like in every else node it will
  give you wanted result.


How to render an orthographic image with an alpha mask in cycles? I have created a simple grass scene with materials created in cycles.

I would like to render this image with an alpha mask and without any lighting. How would I do it?

Set the camera to Orthographic view.

Then render it as a PNG with RGBA.
Under the Film tab check the check mark for transparent.

Now if you need separate black and white image for the alpha mask.
Go to the compositer. Plug the Alpha from the render layer in to the Image socket of the Composite node.


Assign action to multiple objects Is it possible to assign a specific action to multiple objects?

I have 13 000 objects and they all need to have their render visibility animated off. I was hoping to create an action for one of them and then somehow assign that action to each object.

I don't believe I can simply use the "make links" functionality, since each object has also another action, that must stay individual for each object (and making links would override that action).

There are still possible solutions by using some node-based animation addons like Animation nodes and MotionTool. It is hard to cover enough information here on how to use them, but you can learn them from many places, and they are not so hard to learn at all (I'll try cover the basic usage if really requested).

Now let's take a simple case. Assuming you want to render the object(s) during frame 1 to 10, not render during frame 11 to 15, then render again from frame 16, we can use them to do so:

Setup for Animation Nodes:

Setup for MotionTool:

P.S.: You can still insert keyframes for buttons and values on those nodes, which may further simplify the setups, but the animation data haven't been exposed to any editors, which makes it less convenient to control, and not currently recommended.


Blender cycles with alpha texture and glass shader I'm trying to set a nice material for the leaves.

This is my node setup:

And this is the problem (just 10 samples):

Leaves are simply planes generated by sapling plugin, and the texture is a leaf with alpha channel.
On top you can see green dots around the invisible plane.

Any suggestions?

Blender 2.69

It appears that this is caused by the alpha mask not being completely transparent, which results in the Alpha channel being a mix of white and dark grey instead of black. This will result in a mix of a lot of transparent shader and a tiny amount of glass/diffuse, giving the green haze.

As a quick workaround you can add a Math node set to .5 with Greater than as the operation.
This sets all pixels above .5 (gray) to 1 (white) and all those below .5 to 0 (black).
Add this to the alpha channel before the mix node (click for full size):

Without the math node:

With the math node:


Subdividing face doesn't automatically subdivide adjacent face very new to Blender (as of about 3 hours ago), so hopefully this will be an easy one. I'm going through video tutorials and I've noticed a discrepancy between the outcome of subdividing on the videos, and on my laptop.

Firstly, I create a new plane. Next, I select the top and the bottom vertices and subdivide them. This causes a new edge to be created between them, with a face on either side of it. Perfect.

Finally, I select the right face and subdivide it. This causes it to break up into 4 smaller faces (brilliant), but the left face doesn't automatically break into 3 triangular faces. I'm pretty sure it should break up automatically to deal with the extra vertex that has now been added in the middle of the central edge. All that seems to happen is that the 'centre point' of the left face moves slightly to the right.

I know that I can hit Ctrl+T to break it up into triangles manually, but I really don't want to have to do this every single time I subdivide an adjacent face.

If it's at all relevant, I'm running Blender v2.76 with Ubuntu 16.04.

So...It is, but it isn't.

I'm betting you are watching some older tutorial videos (circa 2013) because that was old Blender subdivide behavior (circa v2.53).  Subdividing or otherwise changing the edge-count of a polygon ran the risk of an edge explosion to keep all polygons on a mesh either quads(4 edges) or triangles (3 edges).

Blender, as of around version 2.56, recieved N-Gon support.  N-Gons is the colloquialism that refers to polygons with 5+ edges, and Blender then began to hold them more or less as-is.  This allows for more or less non-destructive polygon slicing, which is what you are experiencing.

Under the hood, it is tracking just a bunch of triangles though.  If you want to see and manipulate those triangles, triangulate is ctrlt while the faces in question are selected.

You might want to find more recent tutorials, as well.


Issues installing Blender Animation Nodes on v2.79 on my mac I downloaded the zip file for the latest version of Blender Animation Nodes. I then went to Blender's "file -> "user preferences" menu, pressed "install add-on from file" and selected the unopened zip file. I can't seem to find the addon on the list now, and the addon is not showing up in the node editor. Did I do something wrong here?

Thanks in advance.

I just downloaded Animation Nodes for Blender 2.79 on my Mac as well. What is the .zip name? This is the one I used.

After I clicked "Install Add-on from File." it immediately showed up in my list of add-ons. Then I just enabled it.
This is where I downloaded it from.


Maintaining local pivot point when importing FBX to Unreal Engine 4 Hi this is my first time making my own digital asset for a game and I'm running into some oddities.

So far:

I have a single .blend file which has meshes for my missile turret. My turret has three parts, a base, a rack that spins on top of the base, and a missile launcher itself which pitches up and own in the rack.
Since I needed these three parts separate when exporting while maintaining their relatives positions, I grouped them into three groups and used Batch(Groups) setting on FBX export. This produced three FBX files.
Then I imported them into UE4 and everything seemed to work fine. When I make a blueprint object and add three static meshes, They maintain their local positions without additional tweaking. I made a yaw script so that only the base stays still but the rack and missile launcher which is child of rack rotates to face the desired target.
The missile launcher needs to pitch by rotating on its own pivot(centre of its mass) to face targets with differing altitudes. When I use pitch, my missile launcher needs to rotate on it's own local pivot, ie) center of it's mass/vertices. However it started to rotate using pivot (0,0,0) for some reason.
I read this post: https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/23349/how-to-permanently-change-the-pivot-of-a-static-me.html, so I went back to the .blend file and changed the local pivot of missile launcher by moving the cursor to the center of the missile launcher and setting pivot option to cursor.

It didn't work and I decided to edit the individual .FBX file. However, UE4 seems deadsat on keeping the pivot on (0,0,0) and only way to change the pivot point is to align each meshes's desired pivot to (0,0,0) which I do not want to do as it does not preserve the location of each meshes relative to each other.

Am I supposed to rig the turret with bones and then import it as a single item? I didn't want to do that as it seemed unnecessary with no complex animations, just yaw and pitch is all I need.

You can have some infos about importing from Blender to Unreal Engine 4 from this page: https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Static_Mesh_from_Blender#Pivot_Points

As you can read, you should place the origin where you want your pivot point to be. For example, for a basic hinged door, you should do .

I'm not sure if you said you did not want to do something like this, but it seems like there's no way to do it.


mesh won't deform (in pose mode) once parented to bones So I followed this tutorial: riggify to the letter and once I go into pose mode, my mesh will not move/deform with the bones. Only the bones move, without any of the mesh. I have tried parenting to just the bones without the riggify and it still doesn't work. Tried looking up solutions but nothing solves it.

here's a link to my .blend file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6xONZ2msgKHRDFDaGNJc2RqaWM/edit?usp=sharing

This link is for AFTER I have applied the parenting (with automatic weights)

Automatic weighting can fail if there's a badly-formed polygons in the mesh. In your case, there are several overlapping vertices in the character's mesh. After executing Remove Doubles on the mesh, automatic weighting works as intended.

As an aside, you're not supposed to use the metarig object as the character's rig. In the Property space > Object Data tab (armature icon) for that object, there's a Generate button that will create a separate full-featured armature object, named rig.

The metarig is provided as an intuitive way for you to indicate where joints, bones, etc. are supposed to be. The script uses the metarig to decide where all the "real" bones and control bones go. That rig object generated from the metarig is meant to be used as the character's armature, not the metarig itself.


shader nodes to make a realistic looking Amethyst Here's where I'm at with the material so far:

I've been trying for the past couple weeks to model some Amethyst and have been banging my head against the desk so to speak. The problem I'm having is in modeling the volumetrics accurately. In most pictures I can find of amethyst it starts at the bottom of the crystal growth as a dense white material moving into a light purple, becoming more densely purple near it's tip. See below:

Here's my problem. I've found that no amount of volume absorption, or volume scatter set to white at ANY density looks right. I've tried them separately and I've tried combining them with an add shader. The volume scatter always looks too much like smoke even at very high densities and I can't really seem to get the effect of very dense white crystal that is apparent at the bottom of most amethyst.

Right now, the way I'm achieving the white bottom on the crystal is to blend between a diffuse shader and a glass shader using a gradient texture that I control by a vector mapping node to get it lined up just right.  The problem with this is that a real amethyst crystal would still be a crystalline material at the bottom, albeit far too dense and white to see through.  Volume scatter and absorption techniques didn't seem to allow me to achieve this so I'm sort of faking the white bottom, but I would definitely like the white bottom of the amethyst to look as realistic as possible in my amethyst material.

Some help would be greatly appreciated!

After a lot of tweaking, I came up with a result that looks decent:

Or how it is more likely to be:

I used a different reference so it's more purple than yours, but that's easily fixed since you seem to have no problem doing the actual crystal material.

Here is the node setup:

I'm sure you know what the top box does since you have already done that. It simply transitions from the transparent crystal material to the opaque white material.

The white material's surface is just a simple glossy add to a transparent shader. I have added it so as to not block any of the light going into the crystal.

I have separated out the purple crystal material into Refraction and glossy so as to have more control. I needed to blur the reflections slightly without adding roughness to the refraction.

The volume scatter is set to white with a really high density (around 50).

The real trick though, was to go to the Light paths and increase the volume bounces from 0 to 5. This causes the light to bounce around and some of it to come back out, causing the volumes to be a lot brighter.

This however increases the render times exponentially. But if you're going for realism, then it's a trade you have to make.

Note: I haven't added a scratch texture to this so the reflections are perfect at the moment. But I have included a procedural scratch texture in the attached blend file, but it isn't connected to the material. It isn't very good but works if it isn't going to be viewed close up.

Hope this helps you!


Blender inserts keyframes on multiple channels but I want it on one Now this is probably a beginners thing that I have missed. I am trying to animate this object first on the z rotation and then on the y rotation. Whenevever I select the keyframe to move it and it appears to have inserted on multiple channels and overlayed it ontop of the other keyframes. How can I just insert a single keyframe on say the z rotation and be able to move them separately on one channel? I am really confused.
These images should help explain my situation.
https://i.imgur.com/AJMHbT6.png
https://i.imgur.com/U5jt0rn.png
https://i.imgur.com/NosVaex.png
Mark

In order to set a keyframe on an individual channel, simply right-click the property and right-click and select 'Insert Single Keyframe'.

Alternatively, you can click on the Animate Property 'dot' alongside the property in the right-hand properties panel :

In the Dope Sheet, you can move individual channel keyframes by simply selecting the keyframe for that specific channel only - and move it independently of any other channel(s).


Align camera to view precisely and automatically, without manual fiddling I know there is a ton of questions and answers about this topic, but none answers my question sufficiently.

Let's say I have a viewport view that I want to render in Cycles. Pressing ALT CTRL Numpad 0 aligns the camera to this view, but it does not solve the whole problem. The thing is, I want PRECISELY this view on the render, preferably in one click, without manually moving the camera back-and-forth, changing sensor sizes etc. fiddling that will remove the unwanted border that appears and blocks the viewport partially. This whole activity wastes a lot of precious time especially if you do this 10 times a day.

What this dream action should do:

match the render resolution (proportions) to the resolution of the current view (can the resolution of current view be read by a Python script?)
make the entire view the camera view, without any borders, passe-partout etc. by automatically maneuvering sensor sizes etc. whatever is necessary to make it exactly the same view, the same camera lens angle.

Is it possible to write such a script that would do it all in one click?

I created this script based on operator simple template.

import bpy

def main(context):
    if context.area.type == 'VIEW_3D':

        #set render resolution and lens data
        region=False;
        for reg in context.area.regions:
            if(reg.type=='WINDOW'): region=reg;

        if(region):
            context.scene.render.resolution_x=region.width
            context.scene.render.resolution_y=region.height
            context.scene.camera.data.lens=context.space_data.lens

        #set camera position
        context.scene.camera.matrix_world=context.space_data.region_3d.view_matrix
        context.scene.camera.matrix_world.invert()

        #I don't know why sensor width must be 64, but it works:
        context.scene.camera.data.sensor_width=64

        #set view from camera
        context.space_data.region_3d.view_perspective = 'CAMERA'

class SimpleOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.set_render_size"
    bl_label = "set render size"

    def execute(self, context):
        main(context)
        return {'FINISHED'}

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

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(SimpleOperator)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

You can launch this script, then use set render size (you can set outer name if you want) operator.

Or you can add additional information to create an addon from this.


Nothing is coming from fluid inflow in Blender 2.8 I cannot get my fluids simulation to work. I am having the same problem in both CentOS Linux and Windows 10. I have tried decreasing the size of the domain and increase the size of the inflow, as well everything else that I can think of. I uploaded the test file that I was running to drop box. Here is the link if anyone can have a look:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/svlczemfk3yfy48/fluidtest.blend?dl=0

I am kind of getting the feeling that Flip Fluids would be my best hope.

It looks like the problem is that the inflow object is a circle curve with no face geometry. The fluid simulator will need some face geometry in order to generate fluid. The circle can be filled in Edit Mode by selecting the entire object and using the 'F' hotkey to fill in the circle with a face.

Note: your Domain Viewport setting is set to display Geometry. This mode will not display the fluid in the viewport and will just show the domain box geometry. Setting this mode to Final will show the final quality fluid result in the viewport.


My faces won't fill ( Blender 2.9) Working on a human character and when i try to add faces to attach the body it wouldn't work .. Tried F , Alt + F. Relatively new to blender.
Also tried on a basic cube still won't fill in faces.

I can see you have 2 objects, because there are 2 origins.
First Join objects (cmd/ctrl + J).
And yes, Joonas is right you have doubles (> Merge by distance).


Object tilts along animation constraint path I have attached an object along a constraint path, When the path is flat the object follows along accordingly. I then make one point elevated so the object can heave then dive along the path. All up to the blue line its perfect, then once it comes down the slope, the object is tilted all along till the end of the path.

Select the curve and choose Twist Method > Z-Up:


Blender game: How you can make an object to emit light? In Blender Game how you can make an object to emit light? l known how you can make an object to emit light in Blender render but l don't known how you can make an object to emit light in Blender game.

I don't believe you can, you could however parent a light to the object and give the object a shadeless texture. It for all intents and purposes would appear to be emitting light in that case.


Is it possible to make material independent of the geometry or the details of the mesh? I'm trying to make mountains and apply texture. Both the ground and the top of the mountains look good. In the mesh, some faces start from the ground and end at the top so the material is scaled differently which makes it look weird. Is it possible to distribute the material uniformly regardless of the geometry or those long faces? I'm using EEVEE.

The issue is caused by UV stretching, which is a result of deforming the mesh with a displacement AFTER the model was already UV unwrapped.

Open the UV Editing tab
Hit the N key to open the side bar
Expand the overlay section of views
Tick the box that says Stretching

Now you will see something like this:

The dark blue areas are good and have little or no stretching.  The bright areas with more yellow are bad and have a lot of stretching.   To fix it try selecting all of the UVs and hitting UV -> minimize stretch.  If this doesn't fix this issue enough, then you should try to unwrap the model again.

NOTE - If you don't see any stretching, try applying your displacement modifier.


Bad looking motion blur with cycles motion blur and vector blur I currently have a simple scene in blender consisting of a particle emitter with thin rectangular prisms as particles.  They have a pretty fast speed, and it's causing some terrible looking artifacts in the final renders.

I've tried this with standard vector blur with compositing nodes in blender:

And I've tried this with the basic motion blur option available in Cycles:

This looks really great as a still image, but as soon as I actually go in and press the "animate" button instead of still render, it starts to fall apart.

And in my current revision, the Motion blur setting makes frames horribly messy and doesn't seem to know where the object is going.  Blurs are curved instead of linear like in the still image.

I've never had a problem like this before where the animation view looked different than the still image view.  What's going on, and how can I fix it?

Here's a link to my blend file.

EDIT: Fixed by nik10110
Here's a gif:

Your particles seem to be rotating a tad in-between the frames (bug in particles?)

The solution is to turn on rotation for the particle system, and leave the values at 0.

As for having different results between render and animate, try baking the particle system.


Add weight to all vertex groups on an object? I have a mesh attached to an armature with many bones. I have generated weights off the bones automatically. In some areas, the amount of weight each bone got is uneven, causing distortion between bones. In these areas, the weight of the groups does not reach 1 for those bones. I could solve these problems if I could add to all groups to bring them up to weight 1.

How can I add a set amount to the weight of every vertex in a vertex group (such as +.03), and do this automatically for every vertex group on an object? I have far too many bones to do it by hand.

select the object  set the addition value and Run this script :

import bpy

addition = 0.1

obj = bpy.context.active_object
obj_data = obj.data
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'OBJECT')
for vert in obj_data.vertices:
    for g in obj_data.vertices[vert.index].groups:
            g.weight  = g.weight +addition


Color of spline in 3d view Is there a way to change the color of a curve object in 3D view?
(change the black lines only for this object to green).

I've got over 1000 curves generated by a python script and would like to change their color depending on length.

My suggestion would be to:

Increase the bevel Depth value of the curve on the curve properties to give thickness to the curve
Make sure the Fill type for the curve is set to Full instead of half. So that the curve is a cylinder instead of a half cylinder. (Increase bevel Resolution for a smoother curve profile)
Assign separate materials with different colours to each curve. The curve now has a thickness so that materials can be displayed.

You should be able to incorporate the steps above into your script:

Something like the image below can be achieved:

Of course, a disadvantage may be that this only works for Object Mode and not Edit Mode.