Advice on dividing and unwrapping this mesh I'm working on a project with several objects like this and they are causing me a lot of frustration.  I'd like some advice on the best way to divide faces and unwrap an object like this.  I've tried dozens of versions and I can't get away from mesh artifacts.  I believe the primary challenge is getting the mesh divided into relatively consistent quads. Shading smooth cleans up the faceting but introduces the stretch marks. Shading flat eliminates the stretch marks but the arches are faceted again.  I've run into this in the past and it is an area that I'm obviously lacking some basic information and experience.

This object is architectural and will have a smooth concrete texture applied in Unity.  It has a bevel modifier:

Smooth shading:

Flat shading:

Undivided mesh:

An attempt at manually creating quads:

Basic triangulation that results in long tri's"

Again, I've done many versions.  These are just representative of the basic attempts. I'd love some "best practices" workflow advice on this.
It may be worth noting that the basic shape was created in Sketchup since I can draw consistent arches in 3 clicks.  It was then imported as an .obj and the face was extruded to the current shape.

To improve the shading:

either check ✓ Harden Normals in the Bevel modifier.
or slightly inset the area

FunFact: I'm not quite sure why this helps, it'd be great if someone explained it in the comments :)


Rigify - Envelopes look huge i am having issues rigging my mesh to the armature and i was wondering if is it normal for the envelopes to look like this
Thanks in advance

Envelope distance can be set in the properties panel, selecting bone options in pose mode. If you select more than one bone, you can enter a new distance value and  keep pressed Alt key before using Enter to validate the new value, so to assign the new value to all selected bones.
Anyway using bone envelope is just one of the binding methods, the most common is using vertex weights, with automatic weights and/or weight painting and/or direct weight assignements.


I want to do -Back to the future- like flame stripes Im currently trying to recreate the flame stripes from Back to the future.

I only need a still frame.

This is what i want:

And i only get this working with a basic fire sim:

Is there a good way to recreate these specific flames ?
Maybe even without a fire-sim ?

Final:

Emitter:

For Emitter/Flow I've used two Planes with some Loop Cuts sized differently to have random fire width. Important thing is here real world scale. Both of them are 10m long and ~15cm width. Scale applied (!).

I've assigned Transparent material to them so they are not visible in render.

Domain:

Domain has pretty high Resolution along with Smoke High Resolution. Settings like below.

Material is simple, without smoke.

Wind:

Last part is Force Field > Wind with some Noise.

  If you need any specific explanation, please ask in comments.


Why is my model lit up when the sun is pointing away? Why does my model show patches of light when the light source, a sun, is pointing away from it?

I'm working on a 24 hr hillshading animation. I use the rotation of the sun to represent the angle of light on the earth (in object rotation properties this is simply Y: 90 - altitude, Z: 90 - azimuth). So at sunrise / sunset the light source is pointing straight on the model from the side, 90 degrees. Beyond this (nighttime) the light source is pointing away from the model, up into nothingness. I figured this would leave my model in the dark, but it doesn't.
At the sun's nadir, which for my location on the summer solstice, the sun is pointing at 124 degrees up into nothingness but my model still has patches of light hitting it.

You can see patches of light on the mountains near the top of the image.
I'm using cycles. I have a glossy material combined with a water mask but I tried turning that off and it didn't change anything.
Edit: it is not world illumination. That made it darker but the patches of light still exist.
From viewing up close I can see that my mountains are simply too steep. They are steeper than the angle of light coming at them, so the edge is not blocking the light.

I thought having my sun above my model would prevent the underside from being lit up but it does not.
Edit: this was not a world lighting issue. Ambient light is key for this render. When the sun is just below the horizon it's not instantly black. The difference between that and my problem are there were signs of direct light.
Solved the issue, see below. Simply needed to block the light.

I made a plane big enough to block out light coming from below. That fixed it.

It does not matter where you place your sun in the model. If it points up, it will light the bottom of the model even if it's above the model.


How do you store the edge locations of a cube with python? Basically I want to find the edges for the default cube, so I can store their location, then use the locations to draw grease pencil strokes. I have been successful at figuring out how to print out the 12 edges with bmesh, but I don't know how to read the data format that bmesh has created to store the location data.

<BMEdge(0x00000263C41B0BB0), index=3, verts=(0x00000263C155E0B8/3, 0x00000263C155E080/2)>

Here is my simple script below.

import bpy, bmesh

# Store object data
me = bpy.context.object.data

# Create a new empty bmesh object
bm = bmesh.new()
# Use the method from_mesh to fill in the mesh
# with the active mesh.
bm.from_mesh(me)

# Create new grease pencil frame
# gp_layer = init_grease_pencil()
# gp_frame = gp_layer.frames.new(0)

edgeList = []
# Loop edges
for edge in bm.edges:
    print(edge)
    # prints 12 edges in the following format
    # <BMEdge(0x00000263C41B0BB0), index=3, verts=(0x00000263C155E0B8/3, 0x00000263C155E080/2)>

    # Store the edge coordinates here.
    # E.g edgeList.append([p1, p2]) where p1 and p2 are the corner vertices.

bm.to_mesh(me)
bm.free()

# TODO
# Create new grease pencil stroke.
# Loop edgeList.
# Draw stroke base on the save coordinates.


Adding plane in between edges/vertices I am new to blender so I have very basic question.
I have made a contour of my desired shape, but there was some extra vertices i did not need so I deleted them, but after deleting them the plane i had there disappeared too. So how do I place the plane back in between my selected edges?
My second question is concerned about very similar problem of mine. How do I connect these selected edges to finish the shape of my shoe?

The solution of your problem is to Fill the empty space , in edit mode select all vertices and do F to fill your space , please try to ignore filling Obtuse angles shapes coz they can cause many topology problem


Don't understand why holes needs to be connected to edge These are two holes I cut by using bool tool, my question is why the edges 1,2,3 are necessary, I have a rough idea that all the shape needs to be at least N-gons, so if there is a standalong hole without any connection to the mesh, it is not allowed, but why should we follow this rule, in other words,
1.why the feature is designed in such way, is this reasonable or not, I think this question will help me better understand the mesh, so thanks in advance!
2.Is edge 1,2,3 has to be at the same location as shown on the screen shot? Can the edge 1 replaced by edge a?

There's evidently some critical conditions that an ngon can't exist under.
If you take an example with only one hole, you'll see you are completely unable to dissolve these edges.

When I cut two holes I got a different result from you, and I was unable to dissolve any edges.

Until I added a new edge in the center like you have, and then you are able to dissolve a couple.  I get one less edge than yours.

But each of these remains a shape with a definite inside and outside, and that allows a face to be constructed from it.
I'm unaware of the exact limits placed on ngons, but my best guess is that these are very close to the simplest shapes possible that still allow you to draw triangles without drawing through an area where the mesh shouldn't have a face.

(I kind of misplaced the X here, maybe)
You can use a Triangulate modifier in Wireframe view to visualize.


How to make a transition between 2 strips in NLA Editor? In the NLA Editor, I set two strip actions, each one of these actions defined with the dope sheet.

However, I have a gap (20 frames about) between these 2 strips in NLA.

Do you know how to interpolate easily between these 2 strips, without defining other action which could be called for example "Transition action"?

Thank you

Actually you can't add a transition to fill a gap.

If you want to interpolate 2 strips they have to overlap, therefore you have to change the speed of your action or add more "action" to your strips.

Speed

Select the strip
In the Properties Panel (P) > Action Clip, increase the Scale value of Playback Settings

Extrapolation

To extend a strip, you could set the channel extrapolation mode to Linear Extrapolation (or some loop) first, then increase the End Frame in the Action Clip Panel.

EDIT
Using this method, however, the last frame will be determinate by the generated curve and it could produce odd results (note the rotation of the cube at the end of the animation).

If you cannot scale the strip or re-arrange the strips, I suggest you to "fill the gap" editing (or adding) the actions keyframes


Anistropic shader: mine doesn't converge at centre When I used Anistropic shader, my highlights do not converge at the centre as opposed to Blender Guru's example. Why is that so? Thank you.
link to tutorial

It looks like your cylinder has been rotated in Edit Mode and its vertical axis isn't the Z axis anymore.

Fixing it is not straightforward. You should either rotate it back (still in Edit Mode) if you can tell which one would be the right rotation, or you should use custom transform orientations -- which are a bit of an overkill.

If the geometry isn't too complicated, I'd suggest starting this object over.


How do I create a reflective white material? I'm pretty new to this and this is my first question here, any help would be greatly appreciated.

So basically what I want to achieve is a floor material as seen in this photo...

...the reflections are very crisp but dim.

With a glossy shader I get the following results:

First picture: reflections are blurry

Second picture: roughness of the material looks right but reflection is bright red

Third picture: If tinted in any other color than white, it seems to produce the result I want. Reflection is sharp and gets tinted blue. What I need is the reflection to be tinted white.

Thanks for any help.

The floor is actually more reflective near the horizon. This effect is called Fresnel and it adds a lot of realism into the scene.

Your shader should look like this:

Instead of controlling the amount of reflection with the Mix Shader Fac input, you control the amount with the value of color of the Glossy node. Black will be no reflection.

As the roughness is 0, this is a PBR dielectric shader. If the roughness would be more than 0, the Fresnel node would have to be upgraded to account for the roughness.

To keep it physically correct, keep the color of the Glossy node white. You adjust the color of the floor with the Diffuse shader.

Here is a comparison between this setup with Fresnel (left) and not physically correct setup with just mixed diffuse and glossy (right):

The right ball should feel un-natural.


Duplicating element with python, rigid body lost So at first I was using this while having selected what I wanted to duplicate before :

bpy.ops.object.duplicate_move(OBJECT_OT_duplicate={"linked":False, "mode":'TRANSLATION'}, TRANSFORM_OT_translate={"value":(0, 0, PH+PH), "constraint_axis":(False, False, True), "constraint_orientation":'GLOBAL', "mirror":False, "proportional":'DISABLED', "proportional_edit_falloff":'SMOOTH', "proportional_size":1, "snap":False, "snap_target":'CLOSEST', "snap_point":(0, 0, 0), "snap_align":False, "snap_normal":(0, 0, 0), "gpencil_strokes":False, "texture_space":False, "remove_on_cancel":False, "release_confirm":False, "use_accurate":False})

But for no reason that I could find the translation would not be made anymore, it would still duplicate but it would then left it at the same position.

Then I read : Duplicating a mesh object

and when using :

new_obj = obj.copy()
new_obj.data = obj.data.copy()
new_obj.animation_data_clear()
scn.objects.link(new_obj)
new_obj.location = new_obj.location + mathutils.Vector((0, 0, PH+PH))

the objects are duplicated and translated as I want but the rigidbody from the original object is lost.

I tried adding a new rigidbody on the new object but this is slow as hell (by adding this)

obj.select = True
bpy.ops.rigidbody.objects_add()
bpy.context.object.rigid_body.collision_shape = 'BOX'
bpy.context.object.rigid_body.use_margin = True
bpy.context.object.rigid_body.collision_margin = 0.01

would anyone know why the duplicate_move stopped working? is there a fastest way to duplicate the rigidbody?

Thanks.

The code you got from this answer does actually copy the rigid body settings, what it doesn't do is add the new object to the rigid body group. Without being part of the rigid body group the objects don't act as rigid body objects, even with the settings.

import bpy

scn = bpy.context.scene
src_obj = bpy.context.active_object
rbgroup = scn.rigidbody_world.group

for i in range (1,6):
    new_obj = src_obj.copy()
    new_obj.data = src_obj.data.copy()
    new_obj.animation_data_clear()
    scn.objects.link(new_obj)
    rbgroup.objects.link(new_obj)
    new_obj.location.z = i * 3


Load animations into custom engine for learning purpose of 3d animation, I picked blender to study.
So far I've exported .blend to .lua file that contains mesh data, bones, and animation data. My animation data is fcurve arrays based on keyframe.
I am trying to load this into an engine and run it.
I want to apply fcurve values on bones, however what I get is smashed animation. I am extra newbie to this, and I want to know what fcurve represent, how it should be used, and how I need to process the values to apply to bones.
Without setting fcurve to bones, it draws the model as I expected.
Thank you for the help in advance.

Blender's fcurve contains a collection of keyframed values, to calculate the value used on a frame in between two given keyframed values a bezier curve is used, each keyed point contains a left and right handle position that defines how the curve is calculated between keys. If you are only exporting the points listed in the fcurves data then you are missing the data for the frames in between.

You can have blender calculate the value for each keyframe instead of caclulating the curve yourself.

for f in range(100):
    val = fcurve.evaluate(f)


I get a weird visual glitch when using the shading tab on Blender. How can I solve this? The Shading preview stoped showing what it should. Instead it shows a weird reflexion of the background as you can see in the following pictures:
The first one shows the model using the solid preview

The second one shows what it looks like when I try to see the material preview

The third one shows what i see when I move the camera a little (pressing the middle mouse button and dragging)

This issue is not exclusive to this project, but happens on every other project too. This also happens if I open a new project that only contains a cube. I have let a friend of mine run the foosball model and it worked on his computer, so it has to be a problem with my PC or any blender files on my PC. It used to work on it perfectly, but after some time, it didn't anymore.
I've tried the following:
Uninstalled Blender.
Cleaned temporary and registry files with CCleaner
Updated my graphics card's software to the newest version (AMD Radeon R9 380X, version 20.12.1)
Restarted my PC
Reinstalled Blender.
It didn't solve the problem. Can anyone help me out?
Thank you in advance.

You could try to go into to edit mode and recalculate the normals by pressing Shift + N.


Can I change entire scene scale? Let's say I created some objects without regard to their actual size. Is there a way to set the scale of the scene such that nothing actually changes other than what blender considers the size to be?

For example I drew a plane that was 3.1 x 3.1 before I knew how to change units in blender. I set the units to Feet and it shows up as 3.1' x 3.1'. In the real world the the object I'm modelling is 10' x 10'. Is there a way to tell blender to make 3.1' to 10' and all other objects, cameras, lights, etc. all adjust the same way.

In Sketchup I can use the ruler tool to take a measurement then type in what that measurement should actually be and everything gets rescaled. Nothing changes visually in the model other than when I take measurements they correspond to the real world values.

1: Set Units

First you need to tell blender what type of units you're going to use. In the "Outliner" which is normally in the top-right corner of the application, Select the "Scene" Node by clicking on it.

In the Properties toolbar (usually right under the Outliner) click on the "Scene" button which should be the third one from the left. It has a light, a sphere and a cylinder on the button. In the "Units" section below you can choose from one of the predefined Units presets such as Centimeters, Feet, Inches, etc. Choose the appropriate one.

Make note of the "Unit Scale" input field. We'll come back to this later.

2: Measure your reference

To scale the image you'll need to know what the current length of a known point is. You can use the Ruler/Protractor tool by opening the Tools toolbar if not already open by hitting the 'T' key, going to the "Grease Pencil" tab and clicking on the "Ruler/Protractor" button. Click and drag between two points to get a measurement. Hold the CTRL key down as you drag to snap to vertices.

Another way is to turn on edge length. Hit the 'N' key to open up the "Properties" region toolbar if not already open. Hit TAB to go into edit mode then look through the Properties region towards the bottom for a section labeled "Mesh Display" There will be a check box under the "Edge Info:" section labeled Length. If you enable this, you will see the length of each edge when you're in Edit Mode.

Let's assume the reference edge is 3.1" after we set the units and we want it to be 10'.

3: Adjust the scene unit scale

Now we can set the "Unit Scale" I said we'd come back to. Select the Scene in the Outliner, Click on the "Scene" button in the Properties toolbar and look under the "Units" section for "Units Scale".

In example image cube is scaled to dimension 3.1'  To make blender report the size as 10' can adjust the scene unit scale by multiplying it by 10 / 3.1. (Since the scale was unit in image above,  didn't need to multiply)

If scene had non unit unit scale, say 3.3, and the dimension was 3.1' to adjust to 10' could have typed 3.3 * 10 / 3.1

Related answer


Following Blender Tutorial gone wrong I'm very new to Blender and modelling in general, so i was following this tutorial on how to make a Low Poly Character (https://youtu.be/Ljl_QFs9xhE?t=607), at 10:04 he extrudes the vertices down and then scales it inwards to make the shape of a waist, but when i do it, the mirrored parts separate like this:

What am i doing wrong here? I'd appreciate very much if someone could help me.

In your mirror modifier, turn on "Clipping";

When you do, any virt that touches the center won't go beyond it (through the bound of the middle of the model, determined by the origin of the object), and those verts will also "stick" to the center (so you don't rip your model apart when moving or scaling)


How should I retouch videos (repaint areas)? Let's say I have video on some frames of which I have some objects that I would like to cover up.
I would put video on plane as texture and put some objects in 3D scene before this plane and move them accordingly to video.
How exactly to do it ?
I'm able to put video on plane, but don't know how to make it play and save sequence into file, also I would like to use motion tracking.

First of all:.

I do strongly suggest to not put the video as texture on a plane in 3D-space. If you wanna use video input, it's objectivly better to use the sequence editor of blender, where you can add your videos and overlay them with renderings.

Second:

I think you kinda overestimate the ambition of this stack exchange community, because explaining how to do this task is probably more complicated than doing it. I don't think you will get a fully-featured tutorial on how to do this as answer, cause it's just too much work.

There are, however already tutorials how to do this already online. I suggest the following guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVPcT0dJmoY


Importing point cloud to Blender? I have developed a 3D scanner, this is a relatively fast scan of a big space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHAK1L_AQig

The scanner works great. it Provides text files in X; Y; Z format

The only program I have succeeded to import this is Meshlab. Now trying to import to Blender via Meshlab in .ply format. Something gets imported but it appears as a sphere, I just can not find a way to get this right, any help would be appreciated.

Here are the files https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B7y_Hbr29sx8WFppMjhZUm5ZR1k
.TXT directly from scanner and .PLY converted with Meshlab. both open ok on Meshlab, but not on Blender, see the Image.

ply file imported.  Scaled as indicated in image below.


Is it possible to change sRGB/Non-Color color space procedurally? All "Diffuse-Albedo-Color" need to be, or at least they would be in an sRgb color space (in my experience), inside the diffuse node.
On the contrary the other maps such as: Normal, Specular, Roughness, etc ...
They should be set to "Non-Color" in the nodes.
Now the question I ask is the following:
I would like to keep the sRgb color space, and create a group that transforms (Or at least simulates) this "Non-Color" color space.
Is it possible to reproduce a procedural transformation after the 'TEX_IMAGE' node? The group would be immediately after the image and would serve to transform it into Non-Color
I'm not sure about this, and I'm not even sure if it requires additional hardware consumption.

You can switch between Linear/sRGB color space with a Gamma node.
I learned it from this Andy Burrows' article. No idea how it works though :)

Use Gamma: 0,454 to transform sRGB to Non-Color
Use Gamma: 2,200 to transform Non-Color to sRGB


How do I duplicate a particle system and keep its settings separate from the original? When I select "Duplicate particle systems" a copy of the first particle system is created. This copy can be edited in Particle edit and I can even add new particles there. But if I change any settings (for example, change Children, Root, Material & etc.), then these settings also change in first particle system. How can I duplicate a particle system so that I can edit the copy, but that this doesn't affect the first particle system?

Do exactly what Sanbaldo said, BUT using Cmd+C and Cmd+V when duplicating the object instead of Shift+D. Then those steps will work!
Hope it helps!


Blender does not update the file's information when rendering I render to file sequences then i re-render the same scene to same folder using exactly same name. So i'm replacing the old render. When i check the render files in explorer (windows 10) the data information is not updating. It's still showing the date of couple days ago (when i did the previous render). This is really confusing when i need to check in explorer which frames has been updated /replaced with new render.

Is this Blender problem ? or windows 10?

I can replicate that in Windows 10 and the default Explorer window. By creating a basic animation with the default Cube in Green and then re-rendering with Red.

If I check the resulting file Properties then, the Date Modified and Date Accessed values are updated correctly.

This is expected behaviour. Windows is only showing the Created Date

In Explorer you can go to the View menu and click Add Columns to add Date Modified and "Choose Columns" to add Date Accessed.

From what I can tell, this is when Windows decides the folder you are in is designated"Photos", as all my other folders default to show Date Modified.

/me shakes fist at Microsoft


Why does not Animation Nodes provide the uv information properly? Please see the sample nodes below. You can see that the object clearly has UVs and listed in the uv list however Animation Nodes is telling me that it has no uvs.
Is this a bug? Is there a way to get uvs properly in AN so I can paste it to some instances?

thanks

Load UVs option is hidden by default. You have to enable it.


2.8 beta won't let me texture-paint on bump map slot interactively I expect to be able to "texture paint" in the bump-map slot on 2.8 and have my changes visually reflected -- i.e. if I paint a bump on the cube in the right-hand view, it should look like a bump immediately without changing modes.  That expectation comes from this online tutorial, although it seems to be using an earlier version of 2.8 with different interface widgets.

But that's not what happens: when I paint a bump in "Single Image" mode:  ... then I always get the error message shown in the top picture:  "Missing Textures, detected!"  However, if I switch the mode to 'Material':  ... then the brush color is reflected on the cube, but it's shown as a color change, not a change to the normal height.  I can switch modes to see the change as a bump, but that's tedious and makes it difficult to paint any complexity for all the mode-switching.

I've ensured that there are image files for the diffuse and bump map, and they've been saved before the experiment is attempted.

This problem means that it really isn't possible to interactively 'paint' bumps in a visual  way, because I cannot see the effects of my brush without changing modes.  It seems clear that this is not the design intent of the software.

Am I doing something wrong, or am I seeing a bug of an unfinished product?

I found the answer to my problem, with some prodding from @CraigDJones:  there's two things that enable texture bump painting to work as I expect:

Use LookDev preview mode in the 3D View texture painter
Turn off the Overlays.

It's not clear why either of these steps are required, but for this beta at least (2019-02-10 Windows version) I've got a functioning solution.

==== EDIT ====

Sadly, that solution only works for very simple .blend files, it seems.  I have a more complex model and I still cannot get texture painting to work on the bigger model.  It seems like there are so many weaknesses from a UX perspective in this feature that it just can't be called a 'feature' yet. :(

I've had to un-accept my own answer: there's a novelty!


Sculpting and keeping an image visible I can add a background image and, for example, assign it to top or bottom, cut off half the box, mirror add my other modifiers but this is when the problems start.

If I try to sculpt, the image simply goes away.  I have to hit top and then orthographic again to get the image back.

I guess I could assign the image to the camera and do the same thing and it would stay there, right but why does the image go poof as soon as I grab a brush and try to do anything to surface I am going to start working with?

If anyone knows a tutorial that covers this, please let me know.  I have chased my own tail for 4 hours in YouTube and in the Blender.org community and not found an answer.

Thanks!

Richard

Instead of using background images you can use an empty to place an image in the 3DView.

You then get a reference image that is always visible as you rotate around.


Apply scale on all keyframes I want to scale down an animated model and apply scale.
The problem is that when applying the scale to the armature, the keyframes remain unchanged, so their location/scale is incorrect.

Is there a way to apply scale on all keyframes?
Especially to correct their location.

You can use the scale function in the Graph editor the same way as in the 3D viewer. make sure that all the objects with keyframes you want to adjust are loaded in the Graph editor and visible, then use A to select all, then S,X and the amount you want to scale by (i.e. S,X,-,5 or S,X,1,.,2,5, etc. and press Enter.


Cycles baking will not produce same colors I followed multiple different tutorials and help exactly, but the bake is always completely different, it is darker, different colors, single colored, shows ONE light spot, and looks like bad like single colored walls from the worst game.

.blend

Look:

Your Normals are flipped. In Edit Mode, select everything and go to Mesh > Normals > Flip Normals.


Render without a display adapter (XEN virtual machine) I'm trying to have my server render out an animation, but it fails.
When I run blender -E help, I get "unable to open a display" (it's a headless server).

Can Blender render without a GPU?

Use the --background (-b) flag to prevent blender from attempting to open a GUI.
blender -b -E help should work as expected.


How do I mass-remove UV maps from multiple objects? I accidentally added 2 UV maps to an object, and the wrong one is selected to be used in the render. The problem is, I have over 100 non-linked duplicated of this object in my scene. How do I remove a UV map from all of them (quickly)?

You can use the following script:

import bpy

selected = bpy.context.selected_objects

bad_uvmap = 'UVMap.001' # Enter the UV map name you want to remove here

for obj in selected:
    try:
        badUV = obj.data.uv_textures[ bad_uvmap ]
        obj.data.uv_textures.remove( badUV )
    except:
        pass

Paste it in the text editor (open a text editor view, use the "new" button and paste).
Change the line "bad_uvmap = 'UVMap.001'" by replacing 'UVMap.001' by the name of the UV map you want to remove
Select all the concerned objects in the 3D view
Come back to the text editor and use 'run script' or AltP


Fluid emission doesn't follow animated inflow object I am animating some text (converted to a mesh) shake around in front of the camera. After that, I want it to turn into a fluid and fall away.  I tried going to the starting point of the mesh falling as a fluid (frame 86), and then made a giant, transparent cube for the domain and made the text mesh the inflow.  When I baked the fluid, all that happened was that that fluid started falling out from the starting point of the text in frame 1.

P.S. I am rendering with Cycles.

P.P.S. I would like the fluid to fall until frame 250.

The text mesh should not be a fluid inflow, but a fluid fluid (just change type from inflow to fluid). An inflow will keep producing liquid throughout the animation.

Now, if you bake this, you will see fluid start falling at frame 1. In order to start the fluid simulation at frame 86, go to the domain settings and set Offset to -86. You don't have to rebake to see the results.

Then all you have to do is to keyframe the visibility of the fluid object (the text) so that it is visible at frame 85, but not at frame 86. Because at that point, the fluid simulation takes over, so to speak.

However, what you will probably discover is that there is an obvious change taking place when switching from the text mesh to the fluid. One way to get around this is to set the resolution of the domain to something very large (greater than 800 at least).

The easier solution is to replace the text mesh with a mesh of the fluid as it looks in the first frame of the fluid animation. Just go the first frame where the fluid appears, then duplicate the fluid domain but leave it in the same place. Under Modifiers you will find the fluid sim. Apply the modifier. This will create a mesh of the fluid as it appears in that frame. Replace the text mesh with this one.


Using variables in Logic Editor I'm quite new to Blender's game engine, but I'm trying to give it a go now.

My first try was to create a simple WASD keys character movement using the logic editor.

For that, I needed to set the Loc (location offset) in the motion actuator for each keypress, but since they would be all the same value, and I could want to change them at a later time, I wanted to use some kind of variable to control it, like "character_speed". I know this seems like an overkill, but I'm thinking ahead for keeping things organized for bigger projects.

Is there support for something like that? Maybe using python scripting or drivers?

Thank you!

you can add custom properties to any object in your scene to store simple data types like an integer,string,boolean,float or a timer variable.

The property sensor allow you to test their values , and the property actuator to affect to them new values.
the controller can do logic operations to combine tests and trigger different actuators.

for complex data types , like arrays and structures, you have to use a python script.


how to know which pivot object is using (Local/World) i have 2 identical objects with identical location numbers, but theyre located in different places. this is so annoying to deal with. how do i see the world coordinates? here is example of what i mean.
to counter the blender random coord picking i have to move Freeze M0_LOD0 object by 100m on X scale.

Snap Cursor to Selected to see the coordinates.  Then look at the cursor coordinates.
Shift S

That cursor information is already showing in your images in your original question.


Cameras' Timecodes Within VSE? I recently started working with Blender in order to do some video editing for a research project. In it, we are using multiple GoPro cameras to capture the same scene from different angles. Unfortunately, we have no way to start all the cameras at the same time, which means I have to sync them up in post. I figured out one way to do it (by matching all the videos on an audio cue), but it's pretty time-consuming and not really feasible with the amount of participants we will be running.

My main question is: Is there a way to show a camera's innate timecode within the editor? I know the info is there, because I've seen it in the GoPro Studio video editor (which I can't use for other reasons). All of our cameras are set to the same date/time, so being able to sync them on that data would make life much easier.

I've tried Stamping the output with date/time metadata, but it uses information on when the video was rendered and not when it was originally recorded. Trying to figure it out on my own has brought me to the Proxy/Timecode options, but I'm confused as to what exactly the Timecode portion of that area does; everything I've found on the topic only focuses on Proxies.

I'd appreciate any help or recommendations to help me avoid tedious audio-matching.

Edit: Here is a short sample video from a camera we are using.

My main question is: Is there a way to show a camera's innate timecode within the editor?

If your question is regarding LTC, the answer is absolutely not.

You can muck with libLTC, but even then, it won't be what you are looking for.


Is it possible to switch objects while still remaining in edit mode? When aligning a complex scene with many objects, I currently have to exit edit mode, select the next object, and then select edit mode to then edit that object. Is there any way to stay in edit mode and switch to another object? Is there a plugin that will allow me to do this?

The way I would envision this would work is if I mouse select another object while in edit mode, that object would become the active editable object. This would reduce the extra clicks needed when editing a scene with a large number of objects.

You can use Outliner editor to press on the buttons next to the object name to enter Edit mode for those objects:

It's needed to press exactly that triangle button which shows mesh datablock inside of object datablock. If you click on the object name it will activate Object mode.

Note that this won't allow to bypass switching interaction modes; there will be Edit mode toggle anyway visible in the actions history, it's just that there will be less clicks:


What is non-manifold geometry? I am not quite sure what non-manifold geometry is. I thought non-manifold geometry was just floating vertices and hole in a mesh. From my experience this is not always the case however. What is non-manifold geometry and what are the types of it and how do I avoid it? Is there a case where it is acceptable?

Non-manifold geometry is essentially geometry which cannot exist in the real world (which is why it's important to have manifold meshes for 3D printing).
As JulianHzg points out in the comments, intersecting geometry (faces sticking through other faces) is not technically non-manifold geometry on it's own. However it will often cause the same issues as non-manifold geometry, i.e. confused volume calculations.

Non-manifold geometry can be problematic, because it complicates some tools & operations:

Rendering of refractive effects

Fluid simulations

Boolean operations

3D printing

Among many other cases.

You might want non-manifold geometry in some kind abstract model (as non-manifold geometry cannot exist in the real world), or as an approximation of a very thin object (e.g. paper, leaves, etc.)
Common causes of non-manifold geometry:

Disconnected vertices and edges:

Internal faces:

Areas with no thickness:

Fixing non-manifold geometry:
You can select all non-manifold geometry with CtrlShiftAltM.
Internal faces can be selected by pressing 3D view > Header > Select > Internal Faces in edit mode.
Loose geometry (elements without any other connecting elements) can be selected with 3D view > Header > Select > Loose geometry. Note that it only selects vertices, edges, and faces depending on the current selection mode.
Other useful tools for repairing non-manifold geometry:

ShiftG (Select Similar). This is often useful to select vertices with only one connecting edge, etc.

CtrlL (Select Linked). This is often useful in combination with Select loose and Select similar to select all geometry connected to the selected geometry.

W> Specials > Remove doubles Doubles, (multiple vertices in the same place) are usually non-manifold (not always).

Since a common cause of non-manifold geometry is lack of thickness, the solidify modifier can also be useful.


Make animated particle object start animation from the beginning when emitted? So I made a sphere which rotates and scales and changes color.
I wanna use it as a particle, which I can do.

So now I have a stream of spheres which rotate and scale in perfect sync.
What I want is each sphere to begin rotating and scaling (from its own frame 1) at the moment it's duplicated.

A stream of spheres each growing and scaling sequentially.

How do I get an object to wait until the particle system duplicates it before animating?

I'm sorry to say that this feature, which was started on in 2011, was "nearly complete" in 2013 yet still seems like a distant dream. Some of the changes necessary for these updates were dependent on the dependency graph update, though. The depsgraph branch has had a lot of progress lately. Perhaps reading about dependencies will explain why things like this don't presently work out of the box; e.g. why you still can't "animate everything" as the 2.5 project advertised.

The latest update I can find in the same vein is that Lukas wrote a patch that allows you to use a particle's age to update a shader.

The best thing you can do to participate right now with in-progress projects like this is to get in contact with the specific developers that are working on the relevant infrastructures, and show them the problem you're trying to solve. Let them know you're interested, try their test branches, test out experimental versions, etc, and if you're feeling bold,  look at their code.


how to display an image in blender UI with python? is it possible to display an image within the blender UI interface ?

let say that i want to display a 500x500px image in the N panel in layout.box().column(), how to do that ?

blender can already do that when clicking on an enum with preview
so it must be possible within the api right ?

Easy Way

Have you looked at template_preview

tex = bpy.data.textures['.hidden']
col = layout.box().column()
col.template_preview(tex)

Hard Way

So this works, but it requires a lot of finesse to make it usable. Not figured out yet how to create a layout of a fixed size to append to the panel layout for rendering over the top of.  This code will render over the top of the properties panel, as opposed to the Panel UI element.

import bpy
import gpu
import bgl
from gpu_extras.batch import batch_for_shader

def draw():

    x1 = 0
    x2 = 200
    y1 = 0
    y2 = 200

    shader = gpu.shader.from_builtin('2D_IMAGE')
    batch = batch_for_shader(
        shader, 'TRI_FAN',
        {
            "pos": ((x1, y1), (x2, y1), (x2, y2), (x1, y2)),
            "texCoord": ((0, 0), (1, 0), (1, 1), (0, 1)),
        },
    )

    image = bpy.data.images['logo']

    if image.gl_load():
        return # an exception happened

    bgl.glActiveTexture(bgl.GL_TEXTURE0)
    bgl.glBindTexture(bgl.GL_TEXTURE_2D, image.bindcode)
    shader.bind()
    shader.uniform_int("image", 0)
    batch.draw(shader)

    image.gl_free()

handler = bpy.types.SpaceProperties.draw_handler_add(draw,(),'WINDOW','POST_PIXEL')

# then remove the handler with ...
bpy.type.SpaceProperties.draw_handler_remove(handler, 'WINDOW')


Walk cycle animation not working in blender game engine I am a bit of a noob when it comes to blender but I'm trying to make a stealth game. So far I have made a mesh character and parented him to an armature. I also made a walk animation that works perfectly in the animation tab. However, when I try to play the animation in the BGE using the logic nodes by pressing "W" my character moves forward just like how I wanted it to, but it does not play the walk animation.
I've made two walk animations named Walk and Walking.001. they're exactly the same but "Walk" prevents my character from moving and always returns the character to a specific position. I looked at many tutorials to fix this but no progress has been made.
Here is the link to my game.
If anyone can please tell me what to do so I don't come into this problem again, it would be very appreciated.

This is caused by the Mirror Modifier and modifier order, to fix it apply the mirror and
change the order so that it looks like:


Render dark Scene with high samples just quick question,
I am having a rather dark scene, trying to do a prerender but even at 10.000 Samples the picture still isn't really any good looking and it's hard to say how it will look at the final render. Is that normal that you need quadrillion samples for a dark picture? The layer samples are set to 0, just if anyone would bother to ask.

Thanks for your attention.

A few of thoughts:

The rendered view on the viewport is really not a good indicator of how things are going to look in the final render and should be viewed with caution.

(read this link for more info)

Instead, use a Render Border to test render small segments of the image and evaluate the real render settings. It is the only way you will get an idea of how things are working.

It is easier to perceive noise in Dark and low contrast images with small light sources. Our sense of a noisy image is relative, images with more contrast are perceived as to have less noise than those with low contrast. Even when the grain structure is the same.

Rendering at a larger size and reducing the image size in postproduction can also help mitigate noise.

Another trick is not to make the original image not quite as dark and then darken later, as part of postproduction.

Additionally you might want to try the new denoise feature on available on v2.97. You still need a lot of samples to get a decent image, but not quite as many as you do without denoising.


Sculpting problems to attach a head I sculpted a character, abd heard and saw it was easier to have a separate shape that makes it easier to manipulate and make two shapes as one mesh. so I had the head separated from the body and tried to attach it as best I can. I joined the meshes, used Clay Strips and and Smooth brushes, but I could not seem to make it look like one mesh. How do i fix this?

Enable the "bool tools" addon, then use its boolean Union function instead of Join. Then you can go with clay strips and smooth brush (better if dynamic topology is on).


X-Axis pose flip does not work properly in part of armature I have a problem because one arm in my human armature doesn't want to flip correctly:

as you can see left arm position is invalid, what can cause that issue?

model: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7cez1pub1z78468/hero_test.blend?dl=0

Ok, it seem a problem with roll of your UpperArm_L bone, it isn't mirror of its counterpart.

Go to edit mode of your armature.
Select the UpperArm_L Bone.
Click the Bone tab.
set the Roll from -162.7d to 39.86d.
This would offset all child bones, do the above changes to roll for Forearm_L(35.73d), then WristIK_L(49.01d), then Wrist_L(50.17d) copy the negative of Right side roll. (Do it in said order)
All set to go.


Use part of an image sequence as specular map I'm using Blenders plane track feature to replace a sign with an image sequence.

Now I want to add a little bit of realism to the scene so I 3D tracked it too and added a ground plane to catch the reflections of the screen. Of course I want the reflections to blend in better.

I'd like to use the ground of the background image sequence as a specular map. The asphalt is showing through and those parts should not be as reflective as the snow.

Is there some smart way to project the ground part of the background on to the plane?

Here's the background and the replaced sign I want to shine somewhat on to the snow.

Within Blender you can create a mask in the Image Editor, and then go into the compositor To Get This less saturated and rendered out with the Mask applied, then saved out as a Specular Map for this reason. I will play around with it, and append this answer with some screenshots/blend files/step-by-step instructions/etc...

Before I go much further, is this what you are asking for?:


Bump map connected to Glossy shader Normal input causes line artifact in render I wanted to plug a bump map into the normal inputs of a Diffuse and a Glossy shader. But if that is done, for some unknown reason it renders only on part of the mesh.

A line across the image will appear. On the left side of the image below it looks fine, but on the right side it isn't. It looks as if it has rendered image without the Bump map plugged into the Normal input of the Glossy shader.

Rendered preview:

Bump node group:

I used spec map as factor of Mix shader:

Nodes

I discovered that the problem is caused by Bump map plugged into Normal input of Glossy shader.

EDIT:

It seems that the artifact is caused by the last "Add" node in the Bump map group connection which is combining all free bumps together.

if the Blend type is changed to e.g. "multiply", the line across the image (the artifact) will disappear. However, the resulting image is much to dark. Which is obvious (wrong blend type).

So why does the blend type "Add" on the last node of Bump group cause this issue?

Bump maps are classic *.png images with greyish background  color (#b3b3b3), content in a image has dark color (#0a0a0a)
I'm using Blender v2.69.

In short, adding all those values together is making bump values that are larger than the reasonable range.

The add nodes don't do anything magical. They are doing exactly what it sounds like ;-) They're adding numbers together. In the case of bump, full normal distortion is 1 (tallest value), no normal distortion is 0 (shallowest value).

50% grey plus 50% grey is 100% white, which is full bump distortion. 75% grey plus 75% grey is.... a color that Blender doesn't know what to do with... which is a bump distortion that Blender doesn't know what to do with.

Those add nodes shouldn't have anything to do with color. You can't necessarily expect that the color you want is also exactly the bump value that you want. You should manipulate the color of your shader seperately from the bump of your shader, even if you have to input the same image twice.

I hope this helps!


can I use blender render scenes for blender game engine So I pretty much copied out a whole tutorial on making a realistic scene.
Then I realized I done it all in blender render and cycles render, is there a way I can make it capable of being game engine?
Thank you

I guess a lot of the things you already did will work with the BGE.

You might need to tweak materials and settings here and there to get the desired result.

Be aware not all modelling options are available. E.g. particles and curves are not supported by the BGE.

The animation systems are different (Blender is timeline driven while the BGE is event driven). So you will need to add the BGE behavior on that (you can use the actions of the Blender animation).

The Physics systems are different and require a complete different setup.

The Renderers are different (realtime renderer vs. non-realtime renderer) and not compatible, but can result in similar results. Due to the different requirements the BGE renderer will support less features than the Blender renderers. You can bake the output of the Blender renderer into materials and textures which can be presented by the BGE realtime renderer. Be aware not all details can be baked (e.g. reflections).


How to use mirror but affect different sides differently? I want to make a car model but I want to be able to make the model with the mirroring way but I also want to be able to select the different sides of the model individual. For example I want to make a hole in the left door without having the same hole in the right door.

It will be difficult in this way, you may make it simple in following ways;

First work for the model in all aspect in which both sides are same - using mirror

When you satisfied with your model apply the mirror.

Secondly, Now you are able to select any side as per your need and change any side individually


When are tris used effectively? When are tris appropriate to use on a model and where are they usually seen?

For example, this image of a popcorn container (from turbosquid), uses tris for the top half circles and the edge corners on the bottom. Is this use of tris appropriate for this kind of model?

Why are triangles added at the bottom corners?

In terms of quality I suggest you to model in quads. The simplest reason is:

  The flexibility to soften and sharpen edges is key to build high quality
  models.

Example geometry with a soft edge on the left side and more sharp edge on the right

The best way to achieve this, is to build consistent topology to be fast in selecting  Alt+Shift+RMB and creating edge loops Ctrl+R, which depends on quads.

Create edge loop issue

For the picture of your question, I assume that automatic algorithms (e.g. bevel modifiers) have been applied to improve the edges. A side effect of such algorithms is that unwanted edges appear (triangles at the corners), but I can't really see if there is a reason for this.

  For sure there are exceptions to use triangles.

In terms of speed artists often use modifiers on simple geometry to build complex shapes - side effect can be a geometry of triangles. For the crumpled paper I could also imagine that here some kind of modifier on a icosphere was used.

But it really depends on what do you want to achieve.


Objects disappearing in render "restrict render" is on. Layers are checked.Materials checked
No idea why they do not show

Blend file:

I'm not sure why, but something in your rigging is to blame here.
When I removed the head object's parenting to the armature, it popped back into existence.


Viewport options in Blender 2.90: where to configure Active outline and world grid? How to configure viewport options for different Viewport shading options in Blender 2.90?
I accidentally changed my "Viewport shading: Solid" mode into setting that does not show the world grid (small 1m x 1x squares going through the origin) and active object marker (thick orange outline by default) has also vanished. If I change "Active workspace" from "Layout" to default "Modeling", the viewport works as previously so this is some kind of incorrect setting instead of bug.
Places that I've tried to look but found nothing:

Shading drop down menu next to Viewport shading buttons in top right corner of the viewport.

Options drop down above the Viewport shading buttons.

World options in Properties Editor

Toggling the Camera View

Any additional places to look? Is there a way to dump all settings for a single Workspace into text format so that I can compare my .blend file settings to default settings to figure out the problematic setting?

It turns out that the correct place to change this is "Viewport Overlays" dialog. It's accessible via third dropdown in viewport top right with icon that looks like outline circle and filled circle partially overlapped. The tooltip for the quick toggle says "Show overlays".
Other possible reasons for this behavior can be found at question Grid floor disappears and cannot see outline of selected objects


How to make a lamp only half-cast shadows? There's of course a binary option to use shadows or not to use shadows with a lamp. How can I do this somewhere in the middle, giving more control to use, say, 50% shadows?

You can accomplish this by changing the material of the object casting the shadow and using the Light Path node:

Here, the principled shader would be the material of the object (replace with your material), and the factor of the mix shader determines how much of the shadow this object casts. (1.0 is no shadow, 0.0 is entire shadow).

If you're unable to change the material of the object, another approach would be to render the scene twice, once with shadows enabled for the light source and one disabled, then mix the results together. Obviously, this has the downside of needing to render the scene twice.


Why aren't lights affecting my scene? Each time I add a new light into my blender scene it doesn't show up or have any effect on the environment.  I tried increasing the strength and messing with the translate, rotate, and scale of the light as well as trying different kinds of lights.  But no matter what I do it doesn't show up or have any effect on the render.

I had the same issue and it was because i was in the local view (Numpad /), didn't realize it before i figured out there were no layer selection.

hope this helps someone to not be stupid like me.


How to check for material and execute commands if no material present? The following command draws the Material interface:

layout.template_ID(obj, "active_material", new="material.new")

When a material is added additional functions can be shown such as:

row.prop(mat, "diffuse_color")
row.prop(mat, "alpha")

Oddly row.prop(mat, "diffuse_color") generates a python error code when no material is added:

  File "C:\Users\info\Desktop\Claas UI.blend\Claas_UI_2.py", line 175, in draw

  TypeError: UILayout.prop(): error with argument 1, "data" -  Function.data
      does not support a 'None' assignment AnyType type

And because of the error everything after row.prop(mat, "diffuse_color") will be ignored.

So I am curious how one could create an argument switch that checks if there is a material and then ignores

Check For Material

layout.template_ID(obj, "active_material", new="material.new")
layout.template_ID(space, "pin_id")

If Material Present show the following as well

row = layout.row()
row.prop(mat, "diffuse_color")
row.prop(mat, "alpha")

But still render the following buttons:

row.prop(obj, "draw_type", text="Draw Type")
row = layout.row()
row.label(text="Draw Option:")
row.prop(obj, "show_transparent", text="Transparency")
row.prop(obj, "show_x_ray", text="X-Ray")
row = layout.row()

It's easy to overthink this. A solution is to prevent those two lines from being executed (therefor not showing) if you don't have a material reference.

if mat:
    row.prop(mat, "diffuse_color")
    row.prop(mat, "alpha")
else:
    row.label('add a material')

if mat is a material reference, it will evaluate to True and show those two props, else it is None and this evaluates to False.

import bpy

class HelloWorldPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
    bl_label = "Hello World Panel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_hello"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "object"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        row = layout.row()

        obj = context.active_object
        if obj:
            mat = obj.active_material

            if mat:
                row.prop(mat, "diffuse_color")
                row.prop(mat, "alpha")
            else:
                row.label('no materials')
        else:
            row.label('no object')

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

If your object has more than 1 material, you can use the return value obj.material_slots and loop over them and display their name, diffuse, alpha..etc.

def draw(self, context):
    layout = self.layout

    obj = context.active_object
    if obj:
        mats = obj.material_slots

        for slot in mats:
            mat = slot.material

            row = layout.row()
            row.prop(mat, "name")
            row.prop(mat, "diffuse_color")
            row.prop(mat, "alpha")

        if (not mats):
            row = layout.row()
            row.label("no materials for {}".format(obj.name))

    else:
        row = layout.row()
        row.label('no object')

You'll want to finetune how that displays yourself:


How to enable and disable Add-ons via Python? Problem
I'm creating an addon loader that allows developers to test their addon in realtime from their external development environment (like eclipse and pydev). Since Blender does not reload all addons automaticly I have to deactivate and reactivate the addon (the refresh button does just update the addon list)
My Idea
I thought I could dig a bit in the Blender sourcecode and use the original code that activates and deactivates an addon. I found several things (in space_userpref.py line 1227 & line 1263) that could do what I want, but it never worked.
I need
the simplest way of de- and reactivating an addon with a known name.

There is an API to manage addons to bypass operators, see addon_utils, this isn't exposed in the API docs because its mainly to manage internal functions. But the API is quite stable now.

addon_utils.enable(
        module_name, default_set=False, persistent=False, handle_error=None)

addon_utils.disable(
        module_name, default_set=False, handle_error=None)

Typically its enough to call:

import addon_utils
addon_utils.enable("my_addon")
addon_utils.disable("my_addon")

Use default_set if you want the value to be stored in the preferences, (although these will have to be saved for the new configuration to be used on restarting Blender).

See the docstrings in the source:
https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/B/browse/master/release/scripts/modules/addon_utils.py

Since you ask about reloading, see this question on recursive reloading.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28101895/reloading-packages-and-their-submodules-recursively-in-python


How do i add weights to bones that i added after i parented the armature to the mesh? So i added two bones to the armature after I parented the armature without those two bones to the mesh. I named them mouth lower and mouth upper, but when I select the mesh they are not in the vertex groups. How do I fix this?

Find out the names of the newly-added bones

It's listed in your Properties Panel, under Item.

Create Vertex Groups on your Mesh with those names

Bones look for vertex groups with corresponding names to deform.

Paint on some weight

You can do this from Weight Paint Mode, or alternatively use the Weight slider to specify a weight before clicking Assign. Always pay attention to which vertex group you have selected when weight painting.


How to debug AN's red boundary box? What can I do to debug an AN network when I get the red boundary box around my Node Tree?

Red border means a fatal error occured. This is probably caused by a bug in Animation Nodes, however, it may also be an error in your node tree when you disable certain error checking options. In case of a fatal error:

A new panel called the Problems Panel appear. It include some suggestions and an operator to open a new issue on github to report the error as a bug. Choosing Monitor Execution as the Execution Code method in the Developer Panel should present more information in the problems panel like the node that causes the problem.
The error will be printed to the terminal, so looking at the terminal should give you all the information you need, like the node that caused the problem and what exactly is the problem.

It should be noted, however, that some nodes don't have an execution function, and they contribute code to the execution unit directly, thus the terminal output will not be as useful. In this case, the terminal output should be something like:

  File "/home/omar/projects/blender2.80/2.80/scripts/addons/animation_nodes/execution/main_execution_unit.py", line 38, in executeUnit
    exec(self.executeCodeObject, self.executionData, self.executionData)
  File "execution: 'NodeTree'", line 3, in <module>
  File "<string>", line 11, in main

Which tells us that the error occurred in line 3 of the execution code of NodeTree. The Developer Panel have an operator that prints/write the execution code of the selected tree to the terminal/text block, the output should be something like this:

 ...
  9.  nodes = bpy.data.node_groups['NodeTree'].nodes
 10.  _bqracm2qds5y5ta = nodes['Expression']
 11.  __socket_False_0_bqr = None

  1.
  2.  # Node: 'NodeTree' - 'Expression'
  3.  _result_bqr1 = _bqracm2qds5y5ta.expressionFunction()

Line 3 of the execution code lies in the scope of the node called Expression, so we know that this node is the source of the problem.


Camera Solving, the trackers in 3D space are inverted I have a shot I'm tracking and the problem is that after I hit Setup Tracking Scene, I check the points in the 3D viewport and the trackers that are supposed to be in the distant background are closest to the camera and the trackers that were tracked in the foreground of my footage is farthest from the camera in 3D space; it's somehow inverted.

I set the origin and floor markers.

I'd appreciate any help. Thanks!

Dropbox link to Footage Sequence and .Blend file:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vbzan9by8p8dp1f/AABu2wP8uSUodfdhIFt8a7q7a?dl=0

I had this same problem. The points closer to the horizon were solved to be the closest point to the camera. That was when I was using auto detected points. I started over and manually selected a lot of high contrast point, only kept the good ones after looking at the graph clip editor, and then the scene solved perfectly


Blender Text field multiple line I can add a text field to blender go to edit mode and add more text and hit return at the end of each line to get more lines and go back to object mode and  object is a single object.
How can I use a python script to do the same. in other words I like the following on the screen
Line1 some text
Line2 more text
Line3 more text
.etc
all as one text object.

import bpy
bpy.ops.object.text_add()
ob = bpy.context.object
ob.data.body = """Line1 some text
Line2 more text
Line3 more text"""

""" in Python denotes a multiline string. You can also Just use the newline character \n:
ob.data.body = "Line1 some text\nLine2 more text\nLine3 more text"

as well as many other techniques: Pythonic way to create a long multi-line string


How do I remap the 'Edit Mode' / 'Object Mode' key (tab) to a new key in Blender 2.8? I would like to make it so that '5' toggles between edit mode and object mode instead of pressing 'Tab'. I thought I could do this via Preferences->Keymap, but when I change the shortcut to '5' in the keymap it only goes one way (for instance edit to object) but it does not toggle back and forth. What am I missing? Do I need to create a custom operator just for this?

Go into Preferences > Keymap and in search type "mode"

Go down to Object Non-modal

Turn off Mode by clicking the tick

Then go to Set Object Mode

Click on tab and then press your chosen override key - 5

Make sure edit mode is selected in mode and toggle is ticked)


2.7 -- Rigging model and not seeing "Deform" section in Armature >> Object Data >> Skeleton You can find my blend file here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_dm_cPSM1oFbi1xYzNZMEs2UHc/view?usp=sharing

I've been following this tutorial to make a simple character model: wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Tutorials/Your_First_Animation/2.Animation

I'm getting stuck at the skinning step. I've created the skeleton how I want it, and set the mesh as a child of the armature as the tutorial indicates. The issue I run into is that there is no "Deform" section in the Skeleton settings:

I've tried multiple times to add a new armature object and regardless of what I do the "Deform" section doesn't appear. Any help with this is greatly appreciated!

EDIT 1

Updated image with Armature Modifier >> Vertex Groups disabled.

The deform section is one icon over from where you are in that picture, on the properties panel.  Click on the 'bone' icon, the deform will be there.  By the way, that tutorial is out of date, and you might just want to uncheck the VG group in your armature modifier settings to get full deformations going.


Giving planes thickness in real-time display I've got a bunch of planes that are perfectly lined up with the coordinate space, so I can't see them when I go to either front, side, or top view. Is it possible to give planes some thickness for the real-time display, just so I don't lose track of them when I'm editing other meshes?

I can imagine giving them all a thickness modifier that is disabled for rendering, but that seems like a big pain in the neck.

I only see your problem when you are in orthographic view and your plane overlaps with one axis line. You could go into Properties -> Object -> Display panel and enable Axis or Wire.


How to scale snapped measure along with objects? I would like to rescale model according to real world measures.
I drew a measure and snapped it to some vertices. Then I am doing rescale of all objects hoping that measure will rescale too, but it doesn't.
How to snap it to verticed harder, so that it doesn't detach on scale?

You cannot scale measure bars, but you can get what you want with some arithmetic. In the bottom right, the 3D View editor has a dark grey box that appears when you do something like scale. This is the Adjust Last Operation Panel (blender docs link). Click the little arrow on it's left to open it up, and you'll see adjustment wigets for whatever you just did. In the case of scale, you'll mainly see 3 numbers that correspond to the 3 axes. IE: 2, 2, 2 means the object is twice as long on each axes (or 2^3= 8 times bigger volume-wise). It's basic multiplication from there: Current measurement*[SOLVE FOR FACTOR]=desired measurement. Enter that factor in all three areas, and you're good to go.


How do I get rid of green numbers? these green numbers are there and they are bothering me and making it hard to work. I can't seem to find a reference to them anywhere. any help would be much appreciated

Whilst in edit mode, press N to open up the properties bar. Scroll down to the mesh display section and make sure that all edge info and face info checkboxes are unticked.

Hope this fixes your problem.


A Material that has Colourful, Swirly Turbulence How could I make a colour turbulence material like, so from a pic? I would need help with this thing.

Its not exact but maybe can get you in the right direction.

I just used a mixRGB node for all the different colors I needed. Then I just seperated the colors with a noise texture. The trick is to change to distortion on the node to get those swirls.

Use the ColorRamps to control how sharp you want the edges of the swirls to be.

It will just take some playing around with all the settings I circled to get that specific look.


I would like to make a water cube however I would only one plane/surface to have the water simulation active so the title pretty much sums up what I want, the simulation I would like to have should have water physics/movement on the top plane of the cube while the side plans would follow the movement/physics of the edges of the top plane but have no other physics them self, bottom plan would be a still plane. Thank you for your help.

Ok! Sounds like fun.

Create your cube to set it to be a fluid simulation bound. Fill it with fluid using another cube and gravity should hold the side and bottom faces flat. It may need a few frames at the beginning to settle.

In theory, the simulation should bake and only the top surface has room to move. If there are any inconsistencies, use the boolean modifier to clean up the sides.

If you want the fluid to flow over the edge that is a whole nother step of complexity that I feel you haven't asked for. If this is what you want please update your question using the edit button.

If you are confused about any of the topics I have brought up and are not in italic, I will help you. Any in italics are easily found on the internet so please don't ask.

Not meaning to be rude but no need to repeat what is already freely available :D

Good luck with your project and I hope I helped,

BFB


Armature does not want to be animated I have now for a few hours been trying to animate one set of bones but with no success. I animated one set before and that worked but with this one it does not want to be animated.

I have placed the bones in one position and then moved the time line indicator to frame 0 and then pressed "i" and captured the location. Then I placed the time line indicator to frame 25 and pressed moved the bones and pressed "i" they show up on the time line but when I render it or move the time line indicator it does not show the recorded animation.

I have no idea why it does not work I tried different methods, with using the auto record button but that did also not work.

With kind regards,
Remmert

If, for example, you've rotated your bone, i > Location won't save the rotation but only the location, so you need to make sure that you've keyframed the right data.

What you can do to avoid that is to always save LocRotScale.


Will there be a browser version of Blender? I heard about WebAssembly, which lets C/C++ programmers target the web, I was just wondering whether Blender has any plans to make a "web" version, that runs in the browser? At the recent Google I/O, they showed AutoCAD running inside a browser using WebAssembly, so...logically, Blender should follow suit...?

After searching, I see that B is written in C and Python, and from some searching, I don't see that WebAssembly can do Python yet - maybe someone should get in touch with them?

And just to say - I have no idea WHY I want a web Blender, it just.....seems cool! :) Other projects in this area have already started - check www.tinkercad.com !

No. For questions about the future of blender, check the roadmap here: https://code.blender.org/2013/06/blender-roadmap-2-7-2-8-and-beyond/

There are no current plans for browser integration.


How to adjust Cycles color balance The color an object appears can be set using a Black Body node, which accurately simulates the color an object should have. This is however relative to the color balance/white balance used. An object will appear blue if it's "temperature" is 6000K if the image is balanced at 4500K (and 4500K appears white); If, however, it's balanced at 8000K, the same object will appear yellow/red.

Is there a way to adjust the color balance temperature?

I'm not sure this means the same as color temperature: in the Scenes's properties is a checkbox Use Curves

The release notes only mention

  RGB Curves Curves to control image colors before color space
  conversion.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Sobotka/Color_Management


Mute renderer output when calling through script When calling bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True) from in a script
I pass to blender with blender --background --python myscript.py, I get a very verbose output:

Fra:1 Mem:13.02M (0.00M, Peak 13.03M) | Time:00:00.00 | Preparing Scene data
Fra:1 Mem:13.02M (0.00M, Peak 13.03M) | Time:00:00.00 | Creating Shadowbuffers
Fra:1 Mem:13.02M (0.00M, Peak 13.03M) | Time:00:00.00 | Raytree.. preparing
Fra:1 Mem:13.05M (0.00M, Peak 13.05M) | Time:00:00.00 | Raytree.. building
Fra:1 Mem:13.05M (0.00M, Peak 13.11M) | Time:00:00.00 | Raytree finished
Fra:1 Mem:13.05M (0.00M, Peak 13.11M) | Time:00:00.00 | Creating Environment maps
Fra:1 Mem:13.05M (0.00M, Peak 13.11M) | Time:00:00.00 | Caching Point Densities
Fra:1 Mem:13.05M (0.00M, Peak 13.11M) | Time:00:00.00 | Sce: Scene Ve:112 Fa:220 La:1
Fra:1 Mem:13.05M (0.00M, Peak 13.11M) | Time:00:00.00 | Loading voxel datasets
Fra:1 Mem:13.05M (0.00M, Peak 13.11M) | Time:00:00.00 | Sce: Scene Ve:112 Fa:220 La:1
Fra:1 Mem:13.05M (0.00M, Peak 13.11M) | Time:00:00.00 | Sce: Scene Ve:112 Fa:220 La:1
Fra:1 Mem:13.05M (0.00M, Peak 13.11M) | Time:00:00.00 | Volume preprocessing
Fra:1 Mem:13.05M (0.00M, Peak 13.11M) | Time:00:00.00 | Sce: Scene Ve:112 Fa:220 La:1
Fra:1 Mem:13.05M (0.00M, Peak 13.11M) | Time:00:00.00 | Sce: Scene Ve:112 Fa:220 La:1
Fra:1 Mem:27.33M (0.00M, Peak 27.33M) | Time:00:00.00 | Scene, Part 3-100
Fra:1 Mem:34.03M (0.00M, Peak 34.03M) | Time:00:00.00 | Scene, Part 11-100
Fra:1 Mem:38.91M (0.00M, Peak 40.43M) | Time:00:00.00 | Scene, Part 17-100
Fra:1 Mem:39.62M (0.00M, Peak 40.43M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 19-100
Fra:1 Mem:40.12M (0.00M, Peak 40.43M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 16-100
Fra:1 Mem:37.20M (0.00M, Peak 40.44M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 8-100
Fra:1 Mem:37.01M (0.00M, Peak 40.44M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 18-100
Fra:1 Mem:37.13M (0.00M, Peak 40.44M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 1-100
Fra:1 Mem:40.11M (0.00M, Peak 41.03M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 24-100
Fra:1 Mem:38.76M (0.00M, Peak 41.03M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 21-100
Fra:1 Mem:37.59M (0.00M, Peak 41.03M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 4-100
Fra:1 Mem:38.62M (0.00M, Peak 41.03M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 26-100
Fra:1 Mem:36.70M (0.00M, Peak 41.03M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 5-100
Fra:1 Mem:35.06M (0.00M, Peak 41.03M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 23-100
Fra:1 Mem:35.52M (0.00M, Peak 41.03M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 6-100
Fra:1 Mem:35.56M (0.00M, Peak 41.03M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 2-100
Fra:1 Mem:33.42M (0.00M, Peak 41.03M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 30-100
Fra:1 Mem:32.94M (0.00M, Peak 41.03M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 10-100
Fra:1 Mem:33.87M (0.00M, Peak 41.03M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 13-100
Fra:1 Mem:34.24M (0.00M, Peak 41.03M) | Time:00:00.01 | Scene, Part 32-100

Is there any way to suppress this output?

That is normal output for rendering from the cli and blender doesn't offer an option to reduce it. The way to mute it is to redirect the output for the shell, the method varies depending on the shell used. While redirection is normally used to save output to a file you can use /dev/null as a file to effectively scrap it as it is output.

For sh or bash (I believe also works in windows terminal) -

blender --background --python myscript.py > /dev/null 2>&1

for csh

blender --background --python myscript.py >& /dev/null

The above examples redirect both STDOUT and STDERR to /dev/null, to get more control you can direct only STDOUT to /dev/null (by only adding > /dev/null) which will consume blenders render progress and then print your output to STDERR, which your script can do with print(myoutput, file=sys.stderr)

Another approach is to use a script instead of calling blender directly, this will allow you to catch all of blenders output and only send your info to the terminal. By adding a unique tag you can separate your output from blenders progress report.

from subprocess import check_output

render_progress = check_output(['blender','--background','--python','myscript.py'])

msg = render_progress.split('*#*#*#')[1]

print(msg)

A similar result could also be achieved with a shell script.


The separate shortcut doesn't work I tried to change the separate shortcut to another button in preferences, But it still didn't work, I can use the scale and move shortcut and other shortcuts, I tried reinstalling blender deleting the left over files too, The blender version that I am using is 2.83.2
This problem didn't happen before it used to work fine
here is a screenshot of the separate keymap
http://prntscr.com/tidli7
I tried download a previous version of blender 2.82a
but the problem still stands.

I had to be in edit mode in order for the separate shortcut to work.


i want to turn an open edge loop into a single vertex, how do i do this . i know this may have been asked before but isimply can't find it.

Hit ⎇ AltM to merge the selected vertices into one. Or use the menu item Mesh > Vertices > Merge.


Keeping track of splines in curve -> splines.get(), but what is the key? I have a curve and want to check whether a spline already exists.

As other data types, there is a get() method. But what is the key? Since splines.new() takes only one argument (the type), there seems to be no identifier?

My current workaround is to use exception handling and accessing the splines directly using splines[x], but that is kinda ugly.

curve.splines is a list so you can test how long it is -

if len(obj.data.splines) > 0:
    print('There is a spline in this curve')

You can treat the points the same -

if len(obj.data.splines[i].bezier_points) > 0:
    print('We have a point in this spline')

Depending on what you are doing you could also use a for loop -

for s in obj.data.splines:
    print('This only prints if there is at least one spline')


"Clip Cube" Image Texture extrapolation with default colour? Image textures have a "Clip Cube" extension mode that sets all areas outside a cube around the image as transparent.
Is there a way to set to a default value instead of transparency, somewhat similarly to how the "Extend" mode extrapolates the nearest pixel value? It should work with modifiers.
This is both a subset of and a workaround for the behaviour that used to be possible with voxel image sequences, so if there is a way to get those back then that would also count as a solution to this problem.

Assuming I'm getting you correctly, it's not "clip cube"-- it's just, "clip".  What this does is return 0,0,0,0 RGBA for any vectors that are out of bounds: any vectors with any components that are outside the 0,1 range.
If you want to use a specific color for anything outside of this range, almost like clip border mode does with 0 RGBA, one way to do it is to just check whether the vector is out of bounds:

That's just how I figured to do it with the fewest nodes (no separation nodes): we compare the length of our original vector to the length of our vector clamped to the 0,1 range, and if the original vector is longer, we're out of bounds.  In this case, that means mixing with hot pink.
I said "almost like clip border mode," because there's one thing clip border mode is doing (or at least should be doing, there used to be an Eevee bug related to this) is texture filtering properly between lookup color and clip color, and doing it this way will not do any kind of texture filtering at the border: you will have a hard-edged border, no matter how little screen space the texels occupy.
Also, because "clip" border mode doesn't actually care about the Z component, only the XY component.  Sending a Z = 1.2 won't clip an image texture lookup, but it will clip the nodes I show above.  If this is important, it's easily fixable-- just scale vector.Z by 0 with a mapping node.


Texture paint - PBR with stencil Now trying to texture paint a model - the texture painting with stencil comes in here and is really cool. So I can paint my diffuse/albedo with a selected texture on my mesh, which is really cool, but my texture also has a roughness and a normal map.

E.g. with a wooden knife grip, as Zacharias Reinhardt did present in a tutorial: full control of where to paint in which direction using the stencil.

Unfortunately, having my roughness map - I cannot paint both textures at the same time, and for the normal it is for sure more complicated, if the stencil texture gets rotated for adjustment.

So how could this be solved?

Using Quixel Mixer allows to assign multiple texture maps, but there's no control on painting (at least for now), so just things like box projection.
Any hints how to do this are highly appreciated.

I have been pondering this as well while trying to figure out the most efficient pbr texturing workflow without shelling out for substance painter (just yet), and mixer is not quite there and neither is armor paint.
What I have so far is not ideal and involves some annoying texture switching and a paid blender addon (Layer Painter) but its the best I have figured out so far.
This layer painter addon has a pretty good workflow and is fairly similar to the basic layer workflow in substance painter and mixer.
So to paint pbr layers as a stencil I enable the channels I want active on a layer like albedo, normals & AO.
I create a new paint texture for each channel
I load my stencils albedo source image and move the stencil into the right location on the mesh and enable painting on the albedo channel and paint in what ever area i need on the mesh.
I dont move the mesh or the stencil and just change the stencil texture to the normal stencil source, disable the albedo channel in layer painter, enable the normal channel and paint over the same area.
I do the same for AO and although it is not ideal and requires alot of texture switching and an extra addon Its the best I have got so far.
I will ask the dev if they could add the ability to add a material to the Texture/stencil feature so that when we paint with the stencil material it will align to the corresponding channels in the material layer we paint on.
I understand this probably makes little to no sense if you are unfamiliar with the addon so here are some follow up screenshots.


Why doesn't the "Disable for viewport selection" button doesn't show up in the Outliner? I can't lock my reference image because there is no visible button for disabling the image to be editable:

Look in the top right of the Outliner tab (in the Default workspace, this appears in the top-right) for a sub-menu called "Restriction Toggles"; it has a symbol that looks a little bit like a triangular key on it. In that sub-menu, you can choose which Restriction Toggles to make visible. By default in 2.80, only Visibility is present, but in this sub-menu you can turn on/off the Selectability, Renderability, etc restrictions toggles as needed.

The Outliner tab appears here in the Default workspace:

Within the Outliner, can find the relevant sub-menu here:

Inside this menu, you can choose from several available Restriction Toggles that you either do or don't want to have appear in your Outliner:


How to set the physics property of imported mesh in Blender everyone,
I am trying to add rigid body properties to a mesh model in Blender. There are a lot of tutorials available on how to set rigid body property of the Blender built-in mesh models such as cube. I followed this tutorial to do the same thing in a imported mesh model.

However the weird thing is that the built-in cube falls normally on the passive plane but the imported mesh model just falls through the passive plane. Is there anything special to be set in order to make the imported mesh also work normally?

Thanks very much. I put on blender file here and I use Blender 2.79 on windows 10. I am sorry that the file size is large since the imported mesh model is very large.

Eventually I figured it out. It turns out that the mesh model is too complicated. I need to first use the Decimate Modifier to simplify it. Then it works normally, although with some vibrating effect.


How do I fix a tear in model I don't know how to explain it but I'm pretty sure a picture is more than a thousand words. Problem is I have this tear in my model. How can I fix this?

Selecting those 2 split vertices hit AltM then merge either at first/last selected or center


Flickering and funky cameracontrolls in perspective-view I am having craphical glitches in one Blenderproject.  But only when switching to "User persp" View.
I was working in orthographic view for some time, so i can not tell when this happened.

Additionaly to the flickering Holes in the Mesh, manuvering the camera gets all funky and i can no longer place the 3D-cursor against the background.

Thank you for your attention.

2 Pictures to show the difference between orthographic and perspective:

Hello and thank you very much for your comments!

The problem was indeed "Clip: Start". As soon as i changed the value all problems were gone. Visuals and controlls restored to normal.
But this must have been a bug, since i could not reproduce the problem by setting the value back to 0.001.

I hope some people can use this workaround in case they run into the same glitch.

Thank you for your Help!


Is RAM the solution? I would like to ask a question, I hope I find a solution here.
I’m working with Blender for like a month already and I just started to notice that the baking and rendering process takes pretty long. Rendering would not be much of a problem (for now), but with baking I’d love to make things better.
As I understood, baking is about RAM. I have 16GB Corsair XMSE DDR3 (2x4gb + 2 – not sure, if they are 2x4 or 1+1) and a Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 Motherboard with 4 Channel Memory Architecture (up to 96GB).
I was planing to buy 32GB DDR4, but before that I wanted to ask if it’s worth the buy and if so, what RAM should I purchase. 2x16 or 4x8 – what would make the best performace? Does this make a big difference for blender? Also, my GPU is a Zotac GTX 760 (4GB), but I thought I replace that only later.
Thanks in advance for your answer!
Best
M

Firstly you need to determine whether the bottleneck actually is the RAM.... This is dependent on operating system - if Windows you can use Resource Monitor to view how much is in use. On Linux you could use 'top' or System Monitor - either should give you what you need. The key is to see whether Blender is using up all of the 'free' memory - and causing swapping out to disk - you'll see the 'free' drop away to zero and disk activity drastically increase if that is the case. If you have free memory available while baking then the problem isn't the amount of RAM but elsewhere - so increasing the RAM won't give you any benefit in that area (but could still be useful elsewhere!)


How can I rotate and scale a texture in cycles? When I try to rotate and scale the texture in the mapping node it only changes the color of the texture.How can I fix this?

You need to switch the order of the nodes. "Texture mapping" needs to go before "image texture"


The shader is not animating The shader I just ported doesn't work as intented. It should be animating on changing time property. Now it is like still image.

#include "stdosl.h"

float fract(float x) {
   return x-floor(x);
}
vector fract(vector x) {
   return x-floor(x);
}

float snoise(vector uv, float res){
   vector s = vector(1, 100, 1000);
   uv *= res;
   vector uv0 = floor(mod(uv, res))*s;
   vector uv1 = floor(mod(uv+vector(1.0,1.0,1.0), res))*s;
   vector f = fract(uv);
   f = f*f*(3.0-2.0*f);
   float v[4] = {uv0[0]+uv0[1]+uv0[2], uv1[0]+uv0[1]+uv0[2], uv0[0]+uv1[1]+uv0[2], uv1[0]+uv1[1]+uv0[2]};
   float r[4] = {fract(sin(v[0]*1e-1)*1000),fract(sin(v[1]*1e-1)*1000),fract(sin(v[2]*1e-1)*1000),fract(sin(v[3]*1e-1)*1000)};
   float r0 = mix(mix(r[0], r[1], f[0]), mix(r[2], r[3], f[0]), f[1]);
   r[0] = fract(sin((v[0] + uv1[2] - uv0[2])*0.1)*1000);
   r[1] = fract(sin((v[1] + uv1[2] - uv0[2])*0.1)*1000);
   r[2] = fract(sin((v[2] + uv1[2] - uv0[2])*0.1)*1000);
   r[3] = fract(sin((v[3] + uv1[2] - uv0[2])*0.1)*1000);
   float r1 = mix(mix(r[0], r[1], f[0]), mix(r[2], r[3], f[0]), f[1]);
   return mix(r0, r1, f[2]) * 2.0 - 1.0;
}

surface energy_crystal_wyvern(
   float Time = 0.0,
   float mipmap =0.0,
   point Po = (0.0),
   output color Color = (0.0))
{

   float intensity = 1;
   vector coord = Po;
   float timeOffset = time / 15.0;

   coord[0] +=  (coord[0] / 10)+timeOffset;// - (angle.x * 2);
   coord[1] += (coord[1] / 10);

   float density = 15;//float(int(15.0 * mipmap));
   float brightness = 1;
   for(int i = 1; i <= 7; i++)
   {
      float power = pow(2, float(i));
      brightness += (1.5 / power) * max(snoise(coord + vector(0, 0, time * 0.01), power * density), -1);
   }

   brightness = ((1 - mipmap) * brightness) + (mipmap * 1.2) ;//max(brightness, mipmap);

   Color[0]= brightness * 1;
   Color[1] = pow(brightness, 2.0 ) * 0.4;
   Color[2]=pow(brightness ,3.0) * 0.1;
}

You need to change this line. You declared your time variable with a capital T.

float timeOffset = time / 15.0;

You should change it to this

float timeOffset = Time / 15.0;

To animate the the time value in your script node and press I to insert a keyframe.  The field should turn yellow.


How to Return Camera View Back to the Origin? I know this may seem like a stupid idea, but the view, camera, whatever you call it (the view you see while flying around in the viewport) is very far from the grid. When I try to zoom to get closer, it eventually stops scrolling in. Is there some way for me to instantly bring the camera view back to the origin?

View > Align view > Center Cursor and View All Shift+C

OR

Select an object from Outliner and:
View > Align view > View Selected Numpad .


How do I view Annotations (i.e. pencil strokes) in the Sculpting Workspace? I am using the Annotate tool via D+LMB in the default Layout Workspace, and it works fine.

When I switch to the Sculpting Workspace, all the pencil strokes turn invisible! I can still draw, but they're just not there. How do I make them visible while in the sculpting workspace? Thanks.

Open the Viewport Overlays options and enable Annotations. This will allow you to view the pencil strokes in the Sculpting workspace, where this option is disabled by default.


Adaptive Subdivision Hides Parts of Mesh I'm using Adaptive Subdivison Surface on a model and some sections of the mesh just dissapear when I go in render mode. I'm using the material Displacement mode to "Both". Also, I'm using Simple Subdivision Surface Modifier.

Not sure what is happening. Googling didn't return any useful results, either.
Is the topology somehow affecting the hiding?

Solid Mode:

Rendered mode:

It seems that the problem is related to the ngons the mesh has. Convert them to quads and try rendering again. Also, it seems that this only happens when the shading is flat.


how to make new object from the duplicated part of other object in edit mode? i need to make new object from part i duplicated from other object.

Select mesh and press P> Selection. In object mode, to join the mesh press Ctrl+J.


Blue Color On Everything After Render Please forgive me for asking, I am new to Blender.

While I am rendering I really love my work, then right at the very last second for some reason everything is tinted blue.  I have tried changing the Preferences > Solid OpenGL Lights, amongst a number of other things.

I get all pumped up everytime, then WHAM! blueness smothers everything everywhere on the last 1/10 of a second of rendering.

What am I doing wrong?

I added more screen shots in the link because I don't have enough street cred to post more than 2 links :)

Screenshots of Materials & Settings

Composite shadowing was the culprit. Shadows were set to be adjusted with a blueish tinge.


Transparency on Linked Groups in OpenGL I am attempting to render a scene in OpenGl with several linked groups which include objects with transparent textures. While the transparency appears in the original Blend file of each model by checking Display > Transparency in the Properties panel, this option is not available when linking groups.

Posts as recently as 2013 mentioned this might be addressed, but is a low priority. Is this now possible? Is there a workaround?

Unless I missed it, this has not yet been fixed. I actually reported this as bug once and that's how I learned it's considered a "known limitation", not a bug. Viewport transparency on dupligroups just straight up isn't supported.

If you really need to see past an object in a dupligroup, the max draw type on the source object is still respected, so you can set this to wireframe or bounding box. (max draw type is located in the object > display panel too, right next to the transparency checkbox)


Can I import an image file so it can be used in grease pencil? Can I import an image file so it can be used in grease pencil instead of drawing? I would have problems with hand drawn image in Blender due to a stroke.

Specifically I'll have difficulty drawing vertical and horizontal lines with grease pencil. I need to import some line drawings of buildings, and the way that Grease pencil enables you to draw in 3D space appeals to me.

If so How would I import exactly, into Blender generally?

HOW TO ADD BACKGROUND OR REFERENCE IMAGES IN BLENDER 2D GREASE PENCIL THIS EVEN APPLIES TO GENERAL MODE

When you start in 2D animation Mode. Your option will be set to "DRAW" mode instead of
"object mode" you need to Switch from Draw mode to object Mode.

When you switch to object mode you will notice new button options and one of them is "Add"
you can use that or just Shift A.

1 -shift+A to add background image or reference Image.

2 - Shift + A to add Grease Pencil then select blank or stroke or the monkey if you don't know what they each mean, google it. if you just want to draw select blank.

3 - now change mode from object mode to "DRAW MODE"
    enjoy.


"Project From Cylinder" suddenly working improperly in 2.79b I am not very knowledgeable about the program, I should start with.

Today I was messing around with some simple models and for some reason, either a keypress or a setting change, the "Project From Cylinder" UVmapping option stopped working right.

Normally it will project a nice even map when mapping something from a head-on view in orthographic perspective, and will even readily tile/wrap when moved to the proper area of my textures.

It has started projecting tubes that look more like results of "Project from View." They are incredibly stretched and have no boundaries on screen. It is essentially just the shape of the object I'm attempting to UV. It is also ignoring the seams I put on the model to attempt to compensate for this.

Is there some setting or toggle I activated? I was mapping somewhat spherical shapes just fine right up until I started getting these results.

I am only using two third-party addons. The Source SMD tools and NifTools for Blender.

Proper unwrapping, or at least what I want.

What I'm getting. Clearly not right.

It seems to work on spheres but not vague cylinders?? What gives?
It won't even project a single row of faces properly. Yet if I select other objects they unwrap just fine. What did I set on some of these, or do?

You need to Set Origin to Geometry and it will unwrap (Cylinder Projection) correctly. I've never noticed that before though...


How to use one weight layer as a mask for the other Below is an image of a subdivided plane with 2 different weight layers and 2 different particle systems.

I am curious if there is a fast way to take the weight painting information for my red objects and use it as a mask for my green objects weight information?

The result would make it so the red objects seemingly cut through the green objects.

Thank you so much everyone!!

You can either use the Vertex Weight Edit modifier or, more simply in this case, the Vertex Weight Mix modifier:

Which will let you subtract the band group from the circle group:

Ensure 'Use Modifier Stack' is checked in the particle system..


Can I just copy "Z location" to all the selected objects? "Copy to selected" copies the complete location X, Y and Z to all the selected objects. I wish to copy only Z location. Please see the images bellow to get idea of what I intend to achieve.

Before

After

You can also try another way:

Switch pivot point type to Active Element, toggle Manipulate Center Points;
Select objects, keep one active, then SZ0.

UPDATE:

Thanks to Bastien Montagne (aka mont29)'s commit, you can find this feature in latest version, now only for Location, but also Rotation, Scale, Dimensions, etc:


How to avoid crashing when applying particle system with 10 000 000+ polys? I have a pine tree. I made needles with particles. Particle are meshes of small needles, around ~10 polys each.

The number of particles i have is big, needles make around 10kk polys on that tree.

Here is the problem: when i try to apply(convert) particles from modifiers menu, the blender crashes. It just processes task infinitely. I left my PC working for 50+ hours, and it did not worked out.

I think the problem may be this: when applying particles, blender does not kill original particle system, and after applying you end up with applied meshes + particle system itself. So it basically meshes on top of each other. In my case this gives us 20kk + polys, quite big.

Is there a way i can "kill" that particle system while applying particles? Because i think it may be the reason blender is crashing.

First of all I would think about the necessity of 10 polys per 1 needle. Since 1 would be enough, it would reduce the polycount to a tenth. In case you need a close up, I would suggest setting up another tree with higher density settings. This workflow maybe does not bring you into your " particle kill situation".