How to effectively UV unwrap a subdivided mesh? Are problems usual to arise in unwrapping a subsurfed mesh? Specifically in my case, I have a mattress that I have modelled for a bed, when I try to unwrap this the first problem that arises is the message that pops up in the info header,,
first problem:  what does the message mean?

The UV layout that I have created after hours of untangling, is(the green box here marks the area with the only pattern in the entire texture) :
,
second problem: was this a proper way to uv unwrap the mesh.

Furthermore, I had created an experimental texture in GIMP which I applied to the mesh:

but the render turns out a bit stretched:

What are all these problems? How can I fix them? What is the correct way to uv unwrap and texture a subdivided mesh?

I have also included the file; with the texture packed:

The message is because the scales of your object are non uniform. That means that some axis has a different scale than the other (eg : (1, 2, 1)).

But, unwrap functions works on uniform scale. So, in order to keep the dimensions and unwrap with the good proportions, you need to apply the scale (with Ctrl+A then 'scale').

Here you can see the impact on the unwrapping :

By the way, it seems that your initial work on the UV map give few space for the main face of the mesh (it is in a small center part of the UVs).
You should unwrap the main faces as 'big surfaces' in order to have the best benefit of the texture.

Something like that, which is obtained automatically adding seams to each corner :


How to select components through the Transform Gizmo? I have Blender installed on 2 PC's. On PC (a) if I go into component mode and have the transform gizmo visible, I can select a vert and then individually select the neighbouring verts through the transform gizmo. The gizmo does not block selections...    on PC (b) however, I cannot do this. It will instead try to trackball rotate the first selected component, even though I am not dragging the mouse, but stationary clicking. The transform gizmo is blocking the selection.

I have compared, by eye, all the preferences etc and they are identical.  Is there an option or a toggle somewhere that would cause this behaviour? being able to select through the gizmo is pretty necessary for me.

In the Keymap Preferences there is the option Activate Gizmo...   this needs to be set to Drag and not Press.

However, it seems there is a bug that can make this entire preferences section disappear from the Ketmap preferences.


What is wrong with this OSL shader? I don't understand what is wrong with this shader

shader simple_material(
    color Diffuse_Color = color(0.6, 0.8, 0.6),
    float Noise_Factor = 0.1,
    normal Normal = N,
    output closure color BSDF = diffuse_toon(normalize(Normal),1.1,0.0)
    )
{
   color material_color = Diffuse_Color * mix(1.0, noise(P * 10.0), Noise_Factor);
   BSDF = material_color * diffuse_toon(normalize(Normal),1.1,0.0);
}

What I'm doing wrong and why the output is black ?

I checked and re-checked everything but still I don't think there is something obviously wrong with this .

It seems that you missed one of the following settings:

Diffuse color of you OSL input node
Tick Open Shading Language in the render settings
Set Render device to CPU (GPU can't handle script nodes)


Python check if the texture is enabled I'm not sure if this question is already answered. In the python, how can i know if that texture in a material is enabled or disabled?

I was planning to get all enabled textures not the disable ones.
Thank you.

If you don't know any name in python properties, you can find it in data-blocks outliner:

In your case the value named use

For example, this points to first texture slot of first material of selected object:

bpy.context.object.data.materials[0].texture_slots[0].use


How can I change the color of fly/walk mode crosshair? Is there any way we can change the color of the fly mode crosshair, this is the crosshair which is shown when in the new fps style fly mode (shift+f).

Currently the crosshair is black, I want a brighter color.

I have tried adjusting many theme parts but to no effect.
Is there a particular area to change the color or is this part not theme-able?

This option is now supported, but not in time for version 2.70. Later versions will have this option and meanwhile you can download a daily build.

To change this setting go to: User Preferences > Themes > 3D View (on the left) and select View Overlay.

The option affects:
- the cursor (fly/walk and the default black part of the 3D cursor),
- the camera guides (enabled in Camera Panel > Display), and
- the stippled line guide that appears when scaling objects.


objects not falling realistically I have modeled a screw(like a wood screw) and I want it to fall onto a rigid body plane.  When it falls it hits the plane and has a little bit of movement after that, but mostly stays in the same exact position, which is against all physics...I've pushed a bunch of buttons in the rigid body settings, nothing really helps.  Any suggestions?  Also, where is the option to 'multiply volume by mass'(I don't know if that will help, but I want to try.)  Thanks!

You probably have wrong Rigid body Collision shape, try changing it to mesh:


how to render PNG with transparent background (Netrender) Blender i can't find any option like transparent output in Net/Network renderer

Network renderer uses the parameters you set in the chosen engine.
If you select Cycles in Network renderer, then switch to Cycles, go to Film, check "Transparent" and select an output format that includes the alpha channel. Then go back to Network Renderer.


Extruding the camera block for my phone model I want to do in my 3D model a bulging camera block. Of course, I know this can be done using the "extrude" tool. But I can't use subdivide modifier, consequently I can't do that. And I want to do a "notches" (It's Google Translate, not me) for power button (like power button in Moto Inc. Smartphones)

  So, I hope you understand me, because I'm not good in english. Please, don't throw tomatoes at me :) And remember, I don't want to steal someone's design of smartphone, I'm just learning to do something like this.

This is my .blend file:

Here is an edit of your object with a more detailed topology (ngons at minimum, and you can easily replace them with quads, preferably, if you need to subdivide those faces).

It is not finished and it has a n X mirror modifier, but you can see that the "camera block" is quite easy to do now, and (after applying the X mirror, maybe) also side buttons, with a regular manual subdivision with CTRLR.

Here is the .blend file. Hth.


UV unwrapping of complex possibly concave polygons Suppose I have a flat surface that looks like a T-junction. There are at least three ways to do it:

Single concave polygon
Several convex polygons
Several convex quads

(note that the right polygon on the second image is not quad, as its left side contains 4 vertices)

The first way seems the most natural, as my surface remains a single entity. If I want to move it, I just select it all in one click and do it. The other ways require me to manually select all polygons that my surface is composed of. Not very convenient. Vertex groups alleviate it somewhat, but still.

(2) and (3) unwrap correctly. Unwrapping of (1), however, results in a very weird map:

Am I doing unwrapping wrong? Or Blender just not supposed to unwrap concave polygons correctly? Will I be fine if I stick to convex n-gons? Or I should avoid them, too, and use simple quads only?

http://chireiden.torlan.ru/blender-unwrapping.zip - here is zipped .blend file, just in case.

The normal for the plane seems to be the problem. If you recalculate the normal using Ctrl+Shift+N on your mesh, it seems to unwrap correctly.

You can also use Project from View in the UV unwrap options, that seems to work without doing any modification on the mesh.


How to apply gradient colour along a curve? In image 1, I have made an electric spark by applying a displace modifier and cloud texture to a long mesh strip, controlled by a driver following the https://youtu.be/p4UWvg6ixho tutorial. I want to apply a color gradient along the mesh's length so that either tips of the spark are blue and the remaining is white. Below are two attempts I did following tutorials. But couldn't figure out the mapping part myself. Any help please.

Depending on the way your mesh was made, it may or may not have an automatically generated UV map. As @ Master Heavy has commented, if it does, you can use a shader tree like this:

using either X or Y, depending on which dimension of your subdivided plane is the long one.

If the plane does not yet have suitable UVs, then you will have to unwrap it. That may be a supplement to your question .. perhaps the best way to get a clean answer to that would be to share your file on Blend Exchange.


Adding custom property to VertexGroup class I am experiencing a problem with adding Custom properties to bpy.types.VertexGroup

I have added custom properties to various types before, Object, Material, etc.

>>> C.active_object.niftools_constraint
bpy.data.objects['Cube'].niftools_constraint

However looking at the one for the VertexGroup I get the following and am unable to see the defined properties of the Property group

>>> C.active_object.vertex_groups.active.niftools_skin_data
(<built-in function PointerProperty>,
{'description': 'Additional vertex group properties used by the Nif File Format',
'name': 'Niftools Vertex Group Property',
'type': <class '__main__.VertexGroupProperty'>})

The sample code show a working custom Object property and the non-working VertexGroup property.

import bpy
from bpy.types import PropertyGroup
from bpy.props import (PointerProperty,

class ObjectCollision(PropertyGroup):
    @classmethod
    def register(cls):
        bpy.types.Object.niftools_constraint = PointerProperty(
                        name='Constraint Property',
                        description='Additional constraint properties used by the Nif File Format',
                        type = cls
                        )

        cls.LHMaxFriction = FloatProperty(
                        name='LHMaxFriction',
                        description='Havok limited hinge max friction.',
                        )
        cls.tau = FloatProperty(
                        name='tau',
                        description='Havok limited hinge max friction.',
                        )
        cls.damping = FloatProperty(
                        name='damping',
                        description='Havok limited hinge max friction.',
                        )

    @classmethod
    def unregister(cls):
        del bpy.types.Object.niftools_constraint

class VertexGroupProperty(PropertyGroup):
    @classmethod
    def register(cls):
        bpy.types.VertexGroup.niftools_skin_data = PointerProperty(
                        name='Niftools Vertex Group Property',
                        description='Additional vertex group properties used by the Nif File Format',
                        type = cls
                        )

        cls.blah = BoolProperty(
                        name=('bonedata'),
                        description='None',
                        default = False
                        )

    @classmethod
    def unregister(cls):
        del bpy.types.VertexGroup.niftools_skin_data

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

    bpy.utils.register_class(VertexGroupProperty)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ObjectCollision)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(VertexGroupProperty)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Quote from the api documentation:

  Custom properties can be added to any subclass of an ID, Bone and PoseBone.

VertexGroup does not inherit from ID.


Where is the volume step size option in Blender 2.83? Here is a picture of what I see in the volumes dropdown:

I tried going through all of the dropdowns in the render settings but still, no such luck.

Alright so i think the Viewport option is like Step Size but in view port and step rate is probably the same but in render mode.


my fingers are bending weirdly, what did I do wrong? I rigged my character with rigify.
I use the scale of the drawbars to make them fold, but they fold in strange directions. The pinky folds backwards, and it's like the first hinge of the fingers doesn't fold (only the 2 last phalanx)
Can I fix this? Or do I have to delete my bones and redo from scratch?
I guess it's about the orientation of the bones before I made the parenting but I'm not sure what rule I should follow...
Thanks for the help

Problem
The bones on the pinky and the ring finger appear to be rolled slightly. This can be caused by excessively rotating or grabbing the bones in those fingers. Because some widgets rely on the local transformations of the bones (especially high-level widgets to control bone-synchronized movements like grabbing, walking, and bending), they can be easily affected by their roll.
To illustrate, I added a generic wolf metarig to an empty scene and generated its rig. The third bone in the tail will be used as an example of how bone rolling affects widgets.
Below is the tail of the metrig, with the third bone in the tail highlighted. No part of the rig was modified.

The generated rig still contains a natural bone structure in a wolf's tail after curling the tail by rotating the end widget.

Now, that third tail bone has been rolled by 190 degrees and highlighted in the next image. Nothing else was modified in the process.

After posing the generated rig, some of the tail widgets are out of tune with the rest of the body, causing the tail to become unnaturally distorted.

Solution
To fix this distortion in your model, I'd compare the roll values of the problematic bones in your metarig to those of the default human metarig. (While it is possible to directly edit the generated rig, I wouldn't suggest doing so because that rig is very complex and contains many hidden bones.) Copying the roll values from the default metarig to your modified metarig should correct the bending motion caused by the rig widget.
Once you are done editing the metarig, tab into object mode and press the "Generate Rig" button in the metarig's Armature settings. This will bring the changes from the metarig into the rig.

For reference, here's a list of each of the metarig's bones in the right ring finger and pinky with their corresponding default roll values:

hand.R: -127 degrees
palm.03.R: 148 degrees
f_ring.01.R: 115 degrees
f_ring.02.R: 109 degrees
f_ring.03.R: 95 degrees
palm.03.R: 144 degrees
f_pinky.01.R: 113 degrees
f_pinky.02.R: 109 degrees
f_pinky.03.R: 101 degrees


Cycles: How can the camera position be removed from the Light Path node's Ray Length Related: How to get length of specific ray type and use that as color?

So the idea is to use the Light Path node's Ray Length to form the basis for ambient occlusion but the Camera position relative to the object is a part of the Ray Length info and this makes such a calculation difficult since this alter the results based on how far a specific position is to the camera.

Here is a demonstration of what I mean.

Here's a node setup that shows this effect.

For AO to work, this effect has to be cancelled out since the dirt and grime which tends to accumulate in crevices will not be affected by how far the viewer is from the object.

So my question is this.  Does anyone have some ideas on how to remove the camera influence from the Ray Length result?

If you think about it, it's pretty easy; The way Booleans (true or false, not the modifier) are represented inside Blender by either 1 or 0; So if you do "1 - is Camera Ray", you will get ,basically, is NOT Camera Ray; if you multiply the Ray Length with is Not Camera Ray you will get the length for all rays except for the Camera ones. You could choose another Ray, and multiply it with Ray Length, to basicly get the length of that Ray.

Also note there's a Ambient Occlusion node.

After the part inside the box, you can use the rest of your material.


Edit mode refuses to activate All I did was select bunch of vertices and move them. Then I was supposed to deselect a few of them, but Blender has switched to object mode and I can't activate edit mode anymore. It's not on the list that has the modes and pressing Tab does nothing. Anyone know how to avoid this from happening?

Like stated in the above comments you probably have more than one object selected, or you might have selected an object that is not editable (eg a light, camera, )Try pressing A a few times and then reselecting your mesh, If you believe it to be a  bug, Try closing blender, starting a new file and importing everything into your new file.


cycles render not showing changes in render viewport, only materials viewport hello i'm working in cycles blender and the changes i made to my eyebrows in node show in the material viewport but not the render viewport, screens below. any suggestions? i don't think i unwrapped anything, is this causing the issue? i'm new to cycles, thank you in advance.

EDIT:::

i fixed it somewhat, but do you notice the lightening of the skin color around the eyebrow? anyone know how to fix this part?

solved, had to add in the mix shader like moonboots said


Objects created with a specific size aren't coming out at that size when exported new to Blender here and I'm trying to make an object of a specific size that I can 3D print. Here's what I'm doing:

File> New> General, select the cube and delete it.
Go to the Scene Properties tab and under Units, make sure the system is Metric and length is in mm.
Add mesh> Cylinder
In the Add Cylinder box that pops up, change the vertices to 64, radius 20mm, depth 4mm.

This creates an appropriate cylinder, but it's really tiny in the window and I have to scroll in a lot to see it. Once scrolled in, I have about 3 clicks of my scroll wheel before it goes from barely visible, to visible, to now we're inside it. Working with such a small object has been really difficult.

When I export the object as a .stl and open it in Chitubox, the cylinder is so small that it isn't visible. If I click to resize it, Chitubox tells me that the object is 0.04mm(x) by 0.04mm(y) by 0.00mm(z).

What am I doing wrong here?

I had the exact same problem.

First, make sure your scale on the object is 1:1.

I Highly (x10!) recommend you abandon all thoughts of using English/Imperial units and go to millimeters.

In Properties Panel, Scene, Units, set Metric Unit to 1.000.  Length=Milimeters

The second image is the key that will open the city.   That little "Scene Unit" checkbox (Always check to make sure this is ON!).

Me?   I save these settings as a default startup file so I have these settings are correct to begin with.

Oh!   On the second figure... don't forget to also inspect the "Include, Selection Only checkbox"!

I use the Measure-It tool (to aid in displaying key dimensions 'say' overall height and width for example.

I personally export to Stl files.    On the 3D printer side of things, I recommend Simplify 3D .   It's good investment.  I forget the $ but it isn't much.    Stay clear of nylon filament (strong but doesn't stick to the build plate) but choose Raptor and other "Print in place" type filaments.   Raptor is stronger than ABS.  PLA is weak but good for practice runs.


How to list all selected elements in python? If I select a face of a cube and switch over to the internal Python console and pass:

bpy.context.selected_objects

I get:

[bpy.data.objects['Cube']]

instead of something like [bpy.data.objects['Cube'].f[1]].

Coming from Maya I was looking for something like:

import pymel.core as pc

print pc.ls(sl=True)

which in the above case would return the face id.

Same thing applies for vertices and edges.

How can I go about getting a detailed selection list programmatically?

You may be interested into bmesh module's select_history

import bpy
import bmesh

me = bpy.context.object.data

bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

for elem in bm.select_history:
    print(repr(elem))

# Variant 1 - get the active edge
try:
    active_edge = filter(lambda elem: isinstance(elem, bmesh.types.BMEdge),
        reversed(bm.select_history)).__next__()
except StopIteration:
    active_edge = None

# Variant 2 - same, but less geeky ;)

for elem in reversed(bm.select_history):
    if isinstance(elem, bmesh.types.BMEdge):
        active_edge = elem
        break
else:
    active_edge = None

# Get selected faces in order

for elem in bm.select_history:
    if isinstance(elem, bmesh.types.BMFace):
        print(repr(elem))

# Get all selected faces
# Note: bm.select_history lacks geometry selected via border select, lasso, etc.
#       (mass-selection operators)!

for face in bm.faces:
    if face.select:
        print(repr(face))


why does the shortcut for "image.open" not work ? (ALT + O) i use this "open image" button a lot , so i decided to use a shortcut for it on my MacBook Pro.
 i put my mouse on the link to see the python code. "image.open"
 i searched it up in the prefs.
there it says the shortcut is:  ALT + O  .
i tried it , but it is not working.
i changed the shortcut into: shift + O  .
 that didn't work either.
 what am i missing here ?

that shortcut doesn't work because it is under UV/Image editor shortcuts you have to add the same shortcut under the Property editor :

go to User preferences->Input->Properties editor
add the shortcut


A working guidance for building blender as bpy python module? There are informations on how to build a bpy python module from blender source but, it does not work (for me)
using Ubuntu x64 16.04LTS.

We need a working guidance !?

Building it up with:
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Building_Blender/Linux/Ubuntu/CMake

but use

sudo ./blender/build_files/build_environment/install_deps.sh

...and at the end:

cd ~/blender-git/blender
make bpy

or: different cmake config:
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Ideasman42/BlenderAsPyModule

Problem:

building blender bin is fine out of the box.
but  make configs and also "make bpy" throws errors:

requires dynamic R_X86_64_32 reloc which may overflow at runtime; recompile with -fPIC

some solution for this is to:

1.

build up python on your own with "enable-shared" and copy over libpython3.6m.a

sudo apt install build-essential checkinstall
sudo apt install libreadline-gplv2-dev libncursesw5-dev libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev tk-dev libgdbm-dev libc6-dev libbz2-dev
wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.6.0/Python-3.6.0.tar.xz
tar xvf Python-3.6.0.tar.xz
cd Python-3.6.0/
./configure --enable-shared
sudo make altinstall

and copy over libpython3.6m.a from /usr/local/lib/python3.6/config-3.6m-x86_64-linux-gnu/libpython3.6m.a to /opt/lib/python-3.6/lib

BUT the main problem is

sudo ./blender/build_files/build_environment/install_deps.sh

which should behave the way to build python with fPIC right away !

2.

Answered from blendercoders chat:
There is a pending fix for it:
https://developer.blender.org/D3078
But not in master today.

still:

Question:
Is it the purpose not to include folder "2.79" on "make bpy" so there are files missing -- compared to the ^^Ideasman42 config, is there a pending fix or is that "working as designed" - could it be made better!?

This issue should be fixed by commit 0a02c288aa258e18d19eff0be984f214d556b159

(27.03.2020)

  "install_deps: Enable PIC in Python static library."

I was discussed here: https://developer.blender.org/D7177

Also similar question here:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36779834/compiling-blender-bpy-recompile-with-fpic/60903565#60903565


Subdivision surface creates thorn-like artifact/curve (Blender 2.8) I'm using blender 2.8 and this issue occurred while I was retopologizing something using the poly build tool.

Subdivision surface is create a weird thorn-like curve and I can't figure out why. My unmodified mesh looks fine.

Let me just show you the images because its probably hard to figure out what I'm saying through text alone. I lack the knowledge to accurately describe what I'm seeing here.

Image with subsurf:

Image without subsurf:

Normals (definitely hard to see, but they're all pointing the same direction):

UPDATE: So I solved the issue, but I still don't know what caused it.
I selected the whole mesh, and deleted loose. That gave me a face with 6 vertices. Creating an edge by selecting the two middle vertices and pressing f recreated the issue; However, using the knife tool to cut the new face solved the issue. I somebody knows what this means, please let me know. Thanks.


How to make this face look more voluminous, round and friendly? i´ve created a lion humanoid with blender, but the face did not yet get the look i wanted it to have:

i have found a picture of a model in the internet with the right looks:

is there an easy way to make my model look more like the other one, by using some modifiers or doing something?

(ignore the errors at the eyes, i allready fixed them)

There is no magic modifier to make your model look like some picture from the internet. You'll have to model or sculpt it according to your reference image. That can be very easy or very hard to do, depending on your skill level.


Un-subdivide problem I'm new to Blender. I'm modelling my first head. I accidentally saved it with the sub divide on and tried to figure out how to unsubdivide. I found decimate, but that only worked in object mode. Then in edit mode, I tried unsubdivide from the Edge menu, but then the head was distorted like it had been in a fire accident! I had the geometry I wanted back in object mode but not in edit mode. :(

So from this question I'm guessing you've already applied the subdivision surface modifier by accident. If it looks distorted when you are using the decimate modifier try doing Ctrl+A > All Transform then apply it again, it should work out properly.


Bevel Modifier: apply before or after UV unwrapping and texturing (especially on Substance Painter)? Say I made something in blender using Hardops and BoxCutter we got nice bevels, no overlapping, normals are correct. Then I apply all the cutters for UV unwrapping and texturing in Substance Painter and then I come across the Bevel modifier...
Choices:
A) Should I apply the Bevel modifier? (set at 3 levels) then tediously mark seams and UV unwrap? Or is there a better approach to this?
B) Mark seams and unwrap ignoring the Bevel modifier, then texture stuff in Substance Painter and go back to Blender and reapply the Bevel modifier? Will the textures be fine by that? (especially edge scratches or grunge or anything sensitive to the edge?)

I believe, the bezel modifier will change the shape of your faces and add more (when applied), thereby changing the way the faces align with your UVMap. You may get lucky and find it works, but the more complicated the model and textures, the more change the bevel makes and the more likely you will need to adjust the UVMapping if not the source image. When you tediously mark seems, look up how to "Select more faces" and "Loop selection", you may also consider saving specific vertex groups so you can select one point and then "Object Properties" > "Vertext Groups" > [Pick your Group] > Click "Select". Ok, now the best part, once the Vertex Group is created, before you bevel, the bevel operation will include all the new vertex in the Vertex Group and you have a way to select all by Vertext Group ;) Now, UVMap and texture and if you have to edit the texture/vertex again, you only had to do the tedious part once


How can i align the vertex to a surface? first time writing here in stackexchange since most of the time i find the answer on other people's posts
I have a mesh made of a lot of vertex, i had do manualy remove and add some vertex after the surface was already made and now it looks kind of bumpy, it has smooth shading on and still
I want to align the vertex to the shape of the surface to smooth them, is there a way i can do this?

Thanks in advance!

1.) select all vertices in edit mode with your bumpy face
2.) then press this + button

3.) then tap S Z 0
4.) enjoy the flat surface
tutorial: https://youtu.be/4QJkM2Ve6qs (just be a little bit patient if it isn't uploaded, my upload speed is pretty slow)


How do I add a red dot on a specific part of a 3D model? I have a 3D model of a face and would like to add red dots (think of it as if they are pimples but flat) onto the model in specific locations.

Is the following what you're trying to do?

You have a material on your surface.  In Edit mode, cut new edges to define the area to be filled with red. In the picture below, I've moved vertices, but that'll muck up your UVs so just cut new edges without moving them.  Select the area to be assigned the Red Dot material. Create a new material slot by clicking on the + sign and create the red material. Click on Assign.  Then you can come out of Edit mode.


How can I break apart a mountain in Blender? I need the top of a mountain to be smashed into pieces when somethings falls and smashes into it. I made the mountain itself using the ANT landscape add-on in blender.

I tried to break it apart using the cell fracture add-on but I can't figure it out.

Can someone please let me know how I can use the cell fracture add-on in this situation or if there is a better way to go about this.

You could try out the Fracture Modifier Build

from here... http://df-vfx.de/fracturemodifier/

or here http://graphicall.org/1148

which is a separate blender build.

I closed the bottom of the landscape with a face, then I prefractured this with a helper object and Voronoi + Boolean. After that i set up some easily breakable constraints and triggering, and added a ground plane.

Simulation looks like this:

If you have further questions, please post either here on stackexchange or here :

https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?343637-Custom-Build-Blender-Fracture-Modifier

The Blend link: (will only work with the Fracture Modifier Build)


Is there a way to get the location of the starting position of a curve? ORIGINAL PROBLEM:
I have this scene with three objects in it: a curve, an arrayed object that follows the curve, and an empty that serves as the offset object of the array. The empty is parented to the curve, and the curve is parented to the object.

I also have this script:

import bpy
from mathutils import Matrix

obj = bpy.context.object
parent = obj.parent

mat = obj.matrix_world.copy()
obj.parent = None
obj.matrix_world = mat
obj.parent = parent
obj.matrix_parent_inverse = parent.matrix_world.inverted()

When I run the script with the curve selected, it doesn't move, which is exactly what I wanted, but when I do it with the empty, it changes its position. Is there something about empty objects that makes this method of changing parents not work? What could I do to keep the empty's position?

EDIT: So I've been trying to figure out what the problem is, and I think the problem is not with the empty, but with the curve. It turns out when I have an empty at the origin (0,0,0) and I parent the empty to the curve via script, the empty gets transported straight to the starting position of the curve, and that's what was causing the offset. Now the question is: Is there a way to get the matrix of the starting point of the curve, so I can maybe use it to bring the empty to the origin/pivot point of the curve object?

Well, I don't know how good of a solution this is, but as suggested by @batFINGER this worked for me.

if parent.type == 'CURVE':
    if parent.data.splines[0].type == 'BEZIER':
        curve = Matrix.Translation(parent.data.splines[0].bezier_points[0].co)
    else:
        curve = Matrix.Translation(parent.data.splines[0].points[0].co)

    mat = parent.matrix_world @ curve

matdupe = obj.matrix_world.copy()

obj.parent = None
obj.matrix_world = matdupe
obj.parent = parent

if parent.type == 'CURVE':
    obj.matrix_basis = mat.inverted() @ obj.matrix_basis
else:
    obj.matrix_parent_inverse = parent.matrix_world.inverted()


Fluid simulation is choppy with animated obstacle descending on Z axis [video included] see video for example HERE.

I have a cylinder that's an obstacle for my fluid simulation. It descends, and the fluid is supposed to descend with it. Well... it does, but on the bottom where the fluid meets the obstacle, it jumps instead of gradually going with the obstacle. Here's the blend file for review: blend file.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

That's not an error; that's simply Blender telling you that your fluid it too low res. Generally, I would say, "up the Final Resolution: for a smoother result," but that won't help that much in your case (150 should be plenty for most anything).

However, in this case, the issue is that your Domain is HUGE!!! The Domain should be exactly that; a cube that encompasses anywhere your fluid might travel and NOTHING ELSE! So if you scale your domain cube from Img 1 (where it currently is) to Img 2 (what I am suggesting), your resolution (being relative to the size of the Domain) will "increase."

Img 1; how you have it:

Img 2; what I'm recommending:

Notice how it only encompasses where the water will be. Lastly, consider the following image, which shows how your fluid will bake after the modification (so much more concentration!).

I only let it bake the first frame, because baking will now take longer:

Here is a .blend file with the modifications:


Why does my object not show up in View Port Shading? I'm very new to Blender. What is every reason an object isn't showing up in a render or viewport in when using the cycles render engine? I've been trying to figure it out but the object is still disappeared. Please advise.

After I inserted light in my scene.The object still doesn't show.

You need to insert a light into your scene. Press SHIFT + A then Light to add a light.

In order to view an object, you'll need some light for the object to bounce back to you!


Screw modifier counterclockwise? I am trying to create the green part of the pommel shown here:

I used the screw modifier like this:

I would like to duplicate the pommel wrapping and make it rotate counterclockwise to achieve a similar look as in the 1st picture .. but I can't figure out how. I don't know if this is actually the right way to do this.

Taking some information from the comments:

You have at least two ways to do this.

Option 1: Duplicate the object, and set the Angle on the new object to a negative value.
Option 2: Add a Mirror modifier after the Screw modifier (just one object here).

Note that with either of these, you may end up with Z-fighting at the points where the two wraps intersect.


Intro template not rendering background so the intro I'm trying to render looks like this: https://youtu.be/PHIZfv_XcFI?t=373

My issue is that whenever I render animation, it turns out like this: https://imgur.com/a/QdUI6bx
I turned off "transparent" in the "film" area and it made it look like this: https://imgur.com/a/93iPVs0
What am I doing wrong? Why is it only rendering the text with a transparent background?
I've done multiple templates and they all do this, and there doesn't seem to be a single other person with this problem lol.
Is it something in my output settings? I've tried multiple different ones including quicktime and h.264
I just got blender today.
Please help.

Blender is only the first step. After you render the Transparent 3D font Layer with Blender you will need to place the output in the Aftereffects composition.


how to model sphere with 3 color layer I am very new to 3D modelling and a bit lost. Can anybody tell me how to build something like this in attachement? I did 3 spheres with transparency but the result of colours doesn't correspond to my pattern. The first picture is the patter how the result color should be and the second one is my result and if I set up transparency in Blender then the green color is quite dark but I need the more like in the first picture. Thanks in advanced

This is occurring since Blender has a system of "Normals" for calculating the outside part and the inside part of the faces. If you Tab into Edit Mode, go to "Shading and UVs", then click on a button that says "Flip Normals". Those dark bits you are seeing will be reversed to the other side.


Blending normals at edge of mesh and accessing result with python I have this problem: Copying Vertex Normals
I have a head and a body that need to be separate objects, but they need to join seamlessly. Viewing them in object mode, I see the seam.
I can use the Data Transfer modifier or operation to copy "Custom Normals" from the body to the head with a max distance set so only normals near the seam are affected. Visually, that works fine. The seam is gone in the view.
But I need to export and when I go into the data model, the normal vectors haven't changed at all, even when I use the data transfer operator or apply the modifier. That is, bpy.object.data.vertices[1793].normal doesn't change before and after the operation (where 1793 is on the seam). So what is the view using to show the transferred normal? And how can I get at that normal through the data model so I can export it properly?

So it seems that data transfer for custom normals works opposite to other data transfers. The object you select first receives the normals from the active object.
The operator works by adding custom normals to the target, not by changing the regular normals.
The custom normals appear to be oriented backwards to the regular normals, and backwards to what you see on the display. If I make the standard cube and select face 0, its normal is (-1,0,0) but the custom normal on one of the verts in its loops is (1,0,0). That seems wrong to me, but I don't know how else to interpret the data.
I'm still not sure how to access these normals. Making a bmesh and using calc_normal on a loop isn't given the results I expect. On the cube the custom normals are still pointing along the axes even when the visuals say the cube is smoothed.
Edit: When I look at my object's mesh's loops and access the normal property of each loop, I see what I expect: The normal points in the direction I expect and it matches what's shown visually. But the bmesh is not picking them up in a way that's obvious to me.


Import PLY doesn't display vertex colors I'm trying to import a .PLY mesh in Blender.
I've troubles with colors: the mesh appear in a grayscale palette.
Other softwares open it correctly (eg. MeshLab).

This is the header of the PLY file:

ply
format binary_big_endian 1.0
comment created by Geomagic Sculpt Exporter.
element vertex 182488
property float x
property float y
property float z
property uchar red
property uchar green
property uchar blue
element face 364980
property list uchar int vertex_indices
end_header

Any tips? Thanks!

The .PLY importer makes a Vertex Color Layer, if you switch to it you will see the colours.

And as a cycles material:


How to add a custom object entry to the add menu? Hello I am creating an addon for blender. I have rigged a character, with controller handlers, sliders to control the rig, etc.

I need now to understand how to create a custom 3D menu to append the whole scene in my viewport, just a way to make it less boring than appending it everytime.

I learned how to add a custom object, but I am encountering difficulty in making a custom menu to append an entire scene.

To be clear I want to add a custom button under the bone and armature section when you hit ⇧ ShiftA to append in the 3D scene.

Blender 2.8x

def menu_func(self, context):
    self.layout.operator("YOUR OPERATOR BL_IDNAME")
    # bl_idname should be in form of "something.something"
    # or YourClass.bl_idname

def register():
   # register classes so blender knows about them
   bpy.utils.register_class(MyOperatorClass)
   # this adds your menu to shift-a add object menu
   bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_add.prepend(menu_func)
   # if you want to add to mesh menu use INFO_MT_mesh_add
   # other menu classes you can find in \scripts\startup\bl_ui\
   # by looking into the files there (i.e.: space_view3d.py)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(MyOperatorClass)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_add.remove(menu_func)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Blender 2.7x

def menu_func(self, context):
    self.layout.operator("YOUR OPERATOR BL_IDNAME")
    # bl_idname should be in form of "something.something"
    # or YourClass.bl_idname

def register():
   # register classes so blender knows about them
   bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)
   # this adds your menu to shift-a add object menu
   bpy.types.INFO_MT_add.prepend(menu_func)
   # if you want to add to mesh menu use INFO_MT_mesh_add
   # other menu classes you can find in \scripts\startup\bl_ui\
   # by looking into the files there (i.e.: space_view3d.py)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)
    bpy.types.INFO_MT_add.remove(menu_func)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Keeping IK controller in place How do I keep IK controll bone from "jumping off". Like keep it so it cant go further than the bone moves. Hard to describe, just look at the picture.

I know its not a big deal if its a character since then

The simplest solution would be the following:

Step 1:
First your foot bone has to be set parent to the leg, not the ik bone.
Then deselect "inherit rotation" in the bone settings of the foot bone. This way the foot will allways stick to the leg, but will not rotate with the leg.

Step 2: After that, go to the bone constraints panel and add a "child of" constraint. select the ik controler as target, only select rotation and hit "set inverse". this way the bone will copy the rotation of the ik controler.


BGE glsl setUniform problem In Blender 2.69 and 2.70 I tried to make a simple GLSL shader that has one uniform value. However, it seems like the uniform value isn't applied correctly. The scene is showing a black cube. How can I fix it?

import bge

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()

vs = '''
    void main() {
        gl_Position = gl_ModelViewProjectionMatrix * gl_Vertex;
    }
'''

fs = '''
    uniform float c;
    void main() {
        gl_FragColor = vec4(c, c, c, 1.0);
    }
'''

mesh = cont.owner.meshes[0]
for mat in mesh.materials:
    shader = mat.getShader()
    shader.setSource(vs, fs, 0)
    shader.setUniform1f('c', 0.5)

i partly figured it out myself.

if i play the scene in the stand alone player.
the uniform value is applied correctly.

i don't know why the viewport mode bge player doesn't work correctly.

The problem is the last argument of setSource, which isn´t documented. Looking at the blender source code this argument is named "apply" and expects a boolean.

So:

shader.setSource(vs, fs, True)

should fix the problem. Note, that you should also switch to textured view mode.


Can I merge objects without messing up their modifiers? I have made a character, through several different objects, using different modifiers for each of them. Is there a way that I can combine them into one object, without having the modifiers screwed with?

Although some modifiers can be applied to specific parts of a mesh via vertex groups, when you join them you will find that the active object's modifiers always overwrites the others.

You will need to apply the modifiers before joining the meshes, or add them afterwards using vertex grouping. Sadly you will not be able to edit the modifiers after applying, but they will not be messed up by joining.


What version of Bullet Physics engine does the blender game engine use in 2.74? What version of Bullet Physics engine does the blender game engine use in 2.74?

I would like to know and I dont see listed anywhere and don't have Git on this computer yet.

According to the commit notes which you can read online the current bullet version is from svn revision 2719 from 26 Dec 2013 which appears to be 14 revisions after the bullet 2.82 update.

There are a few newer changes but they appear to be blender only updates.


- Child Parent bones are attached to objects on both sides of mirror? How to fix to only apply to one side? - Bones attached to one side of the mirror control and warp objects on the other side of the mirror? How to fix please if anyone knows?

Simply, your vertex groups (which attatch the armature) are copying to the other side of the mesh, so both the left and right arm are in the same group: The mirror mesh modifier, as far as I remember at the moment, does not automatically split and mirror vertex groups. Check that the "vertex groups" option is checked, and if it is, this is a bug.


How to make a perfect orbit? I am making a space game in BGE and I need a planet to orbit around the sun without having the origin point inside the sun (this is because I want it to have a Collision bounds). How can I do this? Thanks

Add a circle or any other object (could be an empty) to the position of the sun and parent the planet to it. If you rotate the center object, the planet will rotate too, you can then animate its rotation via the center object's rotation (or just let it rotate on its local axis via Motion Actuator). Its important to create a new center object for every other planet so that their rotations can be different.

Object Relations:

Sun
Orbit Object

Planet (Origin at sun)

Example (Circles used as orbit objects for demonstration):


Right Clicking Deforms instead of moving points? New to blender,
I just made a simple model, but now when I try to change the mesh, the entire mesh stays together and is moved as well as deforming. For example, attempting to shape a cube by grabbing one vertex no longer pulls that vertex, but moves the entire cube in that direction, and subtly deforms it. I don't have this problem when I 'load factory settings' but every time I load this particular project the problem persists.

After some googling, it seems like it is acting like I'm deforming a shape key, but I haven't learned much about those yet, and it doesn't look like the mesh even has a basis shape key yet. Does anyone know how to get back to normal editing? And maybe what I accidentally pushed to cause this in the first place?

It sounds like you have proportional editing on.

Try hitting O (NOT zero) on your keyboard and try again.


License of project files created with Blender So I'm designing a game. I want to include not just the exported models but the original blender file as well. Am I able to do this without having permission or a licence?

Yes, you can do whatever you want with your files when you create them. Blender's license does not have any restrictions on the work you produce with it. In fact it has very few restrictions on what you can do with Blender itself.

You can read the license here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html

The license also comes with Blender itself - in its installation folder you will find GPL3-license.txt file with all the text of it.


How do I get Blender to export a single mesh instead of multiple meshes? Thank you for taking the time to help.  I have a model in my Blender workspace that came from the source subdivided into four individual meshes/armatures/materials.  I merged the meshes into a single mesh, and set up the new, single armature the way I wanted it.  I exported the collection as an FBX, but when I import that FBX into other programs, it's still showing up as four separate meshes.  How do I get Blender to export the collection as a single mesh/armature?

Like FFeller mentioned, select all the objects, right-click, and press Join. Make sure you shift click one of the objects so that at least one of them is selected, otherwise it is impossible to join them.
In the FBX export screen, there will also be an option to export only "Selected Objects", or just the "Active Collection".
Select the objects and collections you have to export, and tick both of those. If are still having problems, maybe export the objects as OBJ and everything else as FBX.


Set default append location? I made a customized startup.blend with nodegroups and other assets I use a lot by appending the appropriate data blocks from other files, then pressing CtrlU.

However, now when I press ShiftF1 to append in a new file, the file browser opens in the last blendfile I appended from when I set up my default .blend.

I would like it to not open in any blendfile, just in the default directory (By default I mean the one which appears when you press CtrlO in a new file).

Is there a way to explicitly define what directory should be opened when I press ShiftF1?

I tried pressing ShiftF1, navigating to the directory I would like to default, and pressing Append, but I get the error Not a Library, obviously because I have not selected a blendfile.  Even if I save the default .blend after doing this, it will not overwrite the previously saved default location for appending.

How can I fix this?

It's possible to let it start in a certain directory from script:
bpy.ops.wm.link_append('INVOKE_AREA', directory="C:\\tmp")

Hence, it's possible to bind a key combination for that as well. You can simply edit the existing Shift+F1 binding:

Set search type to Key-Binding, search for "Shift F1", expand the entry and pick a directory.


Setting default file format when saving baked textures? Once I've baked a texture and want to save it - by default Blender offers me to save it as PNG RGBA, I change it to PNG RGB (no alpha) and save it.

The problem is that every time I re-bake the same texture and simply hit Save, it somehow saves as PNG RGBA again, not RGB as I saved it initially.

So I have two questions:

Why is it not remembering my file format when saving with "Save", not with "Save as" (from uv window)?
Where can I set its defaults to PNG RGB, so that every time I save a baked texture I won't have to go and click PNG RGB?

To change the default image file type produced by Blender, you actually want to change the image settings in the Render panel.

To change the default for a single file, go to the Properties>Render panel and scroll down to the 'Output' submenu. Then select the file format and BW/RGB/RGBA to your desired format.

If you want to set this as your default image type for all of your projects, first open a new file or open a new instance of Blender. Change the settings to what you would like to be default, then press Ctrl+U.

This changes your startup .blend file so that when you open future projects, they will come preloaded with these settings. It will not affect any of your old .blend files.


How can polished and frosted facets be created on a gemstone? There are a number of gemstone designs that have some of the facets left unpolished or frosty.

From software I created, the coordinates of each vertex and the equation of every face is known.

This is why I use Boolean Difference to create my gemstones - one facet at a time.

Since I do one facet at a time, is there something that I can do to make the facet frosty like a roughness of 0.2?

If I understand correctly, you want certain faces of the same object frosty while others are glossy.  Is this what you're thinking?  If not, please add additional info to the question:

1.) Select which faces you want frosty:

2.) Assign the selected faces a separate shader with roughness of 0.2:


How to get sun lamps to get rendered indirectly Why is it, that when rendering, if the camera is facing in the direction of the sun, the sun doesn't show up in the sky? When a camera ray is cast straight in the direction of the sky, It shuld end up hitting it, and creating a bright spot on the render. Instead, there is no way to point a camera so that it picks up sun lamp light indirectly. How do I change that? (I want a visible sun without the use of a HDRI)

The sun is not really a lamp. It is an abstraction that sets a light direction from an infinitely far away place, and it doesn't have a real place in the 3d workspace. In other words: Only the rotation will determine the direction of the lights and shadows, regardless of placement.

If you want a lamp that when placed in the 3d environment shines from a specific specific point, then use a point light (or a spot or area light).

By default. lamps do not appear in the rendered image.
There are two options to make a light source visible:

Add some volume scattering to the world, and that will create a hazy atmosphere (think of what happens in the real world with smog or suspended particles), the light source will be thus revealed.

Or

Make a mesh with an emission shader insted of (or on top of) using lamps.


How do I insert two edge loops equally spaced from the edges? I find myself doing this quite a lot in Blender 2.8: Add temporary centered edge loop (Ctrl+R click, Esc), then use Offset Edge Slide (Ctrl+Shift+R - I think this is the default?) to generate 2 mirrored edge loops that are equal distance from the corners of the shape, then delete the temporary center edge (Ctrl+X).

Hopefully this isn't too confusing - the point is to quickly create two edge loops that are identically spaced from the edges. This seems like an extremely useful task. My question is - Does Blender have some mechanism to do this in one step? The ability to create 2 edge loops and edge-slide them away from each other simultaneously?

I'm okay with using add-ons if anyone is aware of a tool that does this.

EDIT

After posting, I starting playing around with the loopcut_slide shortcut and may have came up with exactly what I wanted. I haven't fully tested this, so it may completely fail at something later. But so far, it seems pretty good.
It creates two edges (in one click/drag), and moves them toward/away from each other simultaneously.

If you guys have trouble seeing the shortcut, here are the most important settings:

Shortcut Command: mesh.loopcut_slide
Number of cuts: 2
Factor: -0.5 (this starts them in the center - use 0.0 to start at default spacing)
Single Side: Enabled (this was the magic checkbox that made it work)
Clamp: Disabled (otherwise, they cannot move to the center)

The only issue so far is that it is easy to accidentally slide the wrong way with clamp turned off. So it may be better to leave that on.

For anyone not familiar with creating custom shortcuts, you just go into User Preferences -> Keymap -> 3D view -> Mesh (Global) -> scroll to bottom and press add new, expand the new entry and type in mesh.loopcut_slide into the text box. Then set up the options as above.

EDIT 2

After playing around with this some more, it appears this setup does not work as well as I hoped. When the enclosing edges have strange angles, the cut-slide does not perform the way you would expect. So my vote goes to Lemon's suggestion of using Bevel after adding a single loop cut. It works perfectly in all cases
except when your model has UVs (edit/correction: bevel does work well with UVs). I will update this if I manage to stabilize this crazy shortcut.

CtrlR for the first loop.

CtrlB to bevel it using the percent option.


Orbiting around axis at an angle As you know, Earth rotates around it's axis in an angle of 23.5 degrees. How do I make a sphere in Blender rotate like this?

Set the sphere's y-axis to 23.5 and Rotation Mode to ZYX Euler. After that you can rotate the sphere around its local z-axis.

Set a keyframe with I at frame 1 add another one at e.g. frame 240 with z-rotation set to 359.

See also:

Manual Rotation


How to cut door hole in solid wall? I want to cut doors holes in walls.

What is method to do it?

I prefer to just cut hole and join vertexes to keep shape simple. Consider that wall has some width and is asymmetric on both sides.

Should I extrude edge loop and do some cut or is there other simpler method?

How can I create edges and vertices on faces intersection?

You can use the Boolean modifier.
First create a cube, then scale it so that it intersects with where you want the door to be.

The hole will be cut where the red line is. Next, click your building and add a boolean modifier. Set it to difference instead of intersect, then set the object to the cube you just created.

Now click apply, and delete the cube used to cut the door. You should end up with something like this:

If you enter into edit mode, the extra faces created should automatically be selected. If you want, you can delete the extra faces and get something like this:

To do what you would want, you could select the vertices around the first doorway, press F to make it a face, then press P and select by selection.

This has created a plane that has the exact dimensions of your door. It is a separate object. Press Tab to go into object mode, click the door plane, and press Tab again, to enter edit mode. Then select everything if it is not already selected, then press E for extrude.

You can then click once it is thick enough, then go back to Object Mode. Move the cube so that it is intersecting with where the door should be projected onto. Then do the same thing I mentioned above with Boolean, only use the cube you created with the door instead of a new cube.

Tada, two identical doorways!


How to remove yellow circle in edit mode interface? Super newbie question. I accidentally pressed something on my keyboard and now every time I go to edit mode, there's this yellow circle thing that won't disappear. How do I remove it?

if you select a tool on the toolbar,this handle(yellow circle) appears.You can use the tool by pulling this handle.To swich back to selection click the icon on the top of the toolbar.


Can't Add Platonic Solids in Blender via Script After watching the following tutorial, I thought I was going to customize it a bit and add a dodecahedron in the place of the ico sphere.

Tutorial that I followed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-cgCXg7Z3o

As mentioned in the tutorial, I found out via the console, that to add a dodecahedron, Blender runs the following command:

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_solid_add(source='12')

So below was my best guess at implementing it and it doesn't work. Any idea how I'd go about doing this?

import bpy
from bpy import context
from math import sin, cos, radians

primitive_add = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_solid_add

# get cursor loc - Script Modified by SardiPax
cursor = context.scene.cursor_location

radialdist = 2.0

xsize = 0.15
ysize = 0.15
zsize = 0.15

theta = 0.0
pi_over_8 = 6.28 / 16.0

levels = -10
maxlevels = 10
divi = 2.0
inci = 0.25

while levels < maxlevels:

    while theta < 6.28:
           x = cursor.x + (radialdist-(levels+ 2*cos (theta+levels/divi))) * cos (theta-levels/divi)
           y = cursor.x + (radialdist-(levels+ 2*sin (theta-levels/divi))) * sin (theta-levels/divi)
           z = cursor.z+levels
           bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_solid_add(source='12',location=(x, y, z))

           bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(xsize* cos (theta-levels/divi), ysize* cos (theta-levels/divi),  zsize* cos (theta-levels/divi)), constraint_axis=(False, False, False), 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), texture_space=False, release_confirm=False)
           theta += pi_over_8

    theta = 0.0
    levels += inci

radialdist = 1.0

Also at: https://gist.github.com/robksawyer/93597658ccc75fba324e

I'm using the following addon:
https://github.com/jaredly/blender-addons/blob/master/add_mesh_solid.py

first you have to add the add mesh: Extra Objects...

also, first try with

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_solid_add(source='12')

best


Mirrored object scale in weird positions I mirrored object on the photo and I want to scale it but something's going wrong. How can i scale it to keep this round?

It's not covers all cases, but you can use Shrink/Flatten (Alt+S) instead of regular Scale. It uses normals for transformation, so for circles it should work fine.
The Problem, that you have is about center of objects. When you use mirror, transform tool use center of vertexes, instead center of symmetry. So for make it work as you expect, you should use 3D-cursor to define center of transformation. See here:
how to scale an object that uses a mirror modifier?
Scale about true center with Mirror modifier


when i draw on my object, it only shows up on the net When I draw on my object, it only shows up on the net (not the object itself). When I draw on the net, it shows up on the drawing, but it isn't as user-friendly as it is drawing on the object itself. Yes, I have unwrapped the whole shape.

Actually it shows up on the other side of your object, it's because your normals are flipped, go in Edit mode, select all and AltN > Recalculate Outside


Low poly character eye modeling I have a problem with modeling :

This is my rough sketch of my character.
Now I applied the face png to the 3d model with "Shrinkwrap modifier".
Result was devastating :

from this..
to this.
The eyes are distorted and bent so much from the original intended image as you can see :(
I've been searching for an answer to this on youtube but found none so far.
What other ways can I apply the face just like the first image at the top?
++++++ Below is a reference I used :
seems like extrude function was used for this reference character's eyes but how can I select the sections that will look exactly like those eyes??
Thank you for reading this question! :)

Use Shrinkwrap > method Project / Negative / Offset 0.01

Another try to flatten is to change camera Focal Length.
Example - from original 50 to 180 mm.


Is there a way to prevent mesh editing when importing via the API? When appending models to a scene via the API, is there a way to prevent the end users from editing the mesh? The use would only have access to the translation and material setting properties ideally. What I am looking for is similar to Arnold Archive meshes in Maya, if anyone is familiar with how that works.

In general this is possible, but a few conditions must be met to achieve this.

First off, to prevent the end user to accidentally edit the mesh, it has to be linked instead of appended to the file. In order to answer that from a scripting point of view you need to provide more detail on how you handle the appending currently. There are low-level and high level approaches to this, so please add your code to the question. The tricky part is that if you want to edit material assignment, only the mesh data must be linked, but the object must be local. If all tansforms on the incoming object are applied, that would be trivial. You could then create a new mesh object in Python, and use the linked mesh datablock in it. Otherwise, things become more tricky or require end user interaction.

Note that linking the mesh in will also mean that whenever the source mesh in the source file is updated, it will be updated in all files that link it as well on reload.

Second, by default Blender associates the object data datablock with the material. That means, the mesh datablock you have just linked in also defines what materials are assigned to the mesh. Since now the data is linked and unchangeable, you can not change the material any longer. The solution to that is to set the material link to 'Object' instead, like in the answer given here.


Help with separating fingers on model, absolute beginner I am an complete beginner and I just need help with a simple task. I have a textured 3D model that I would like to use for VRChat (I know how to rig but not how to model) but the fingers are merged; I would like to seperate them if possible. I'm sure there's a way to add a vertex on an edge and either negate or pinch the vertices in a way to add a separation, but I just don't know how to do it.

I know I seem like an utter novice, but I can just not wrap my head around all the shortcuts and tools; this would be a walk in the park for someone with experience. Thanks for any help.

This looks like a job for the Knife tool! (Default shortcut K).
Before you start though you may wish to convert to quads, which are typically easier to work with - select the whole mesh in edit mode (shortcut is A for select-all, usually) and still in edit mode use ctrl-j by default - although just typing quad in the command search function will return Tris to Quads as the second option.  Command search is very useful for when you don't know where to find a command.  F3 should bring it up, though I usually pick the interface mode where it's bound to Space, as I use it often.)
When in edit mode, press K, click where you want the cut to start (it will snap to edges and vertices, and you should probably start from an edge but don't necessarily need to be at any particular spot on that edge) then click at each new point you want.
It will cut new vertices into the mesh to form that geometry.  If you've pressed Z along the way it will cut all the way through, otherwise it just works on the visible side you're looking at.
Anyway, make some cuts up the length of the fingers, and you can start cleaning up all the other edges while keeping your new edges.  You will need to make new faces (possibly assigning textures) and probably even move some fingers around a bit to get it ready to rig.
Another useful tool is the Rip command (shortcut V in edit mode), which essentially takes one vertex (or set of vertices/edges/whatever) and rips it into multiple, with the ripped side depending on where your cursor is when you invoke it.  Have a play around with it, see if you need it.
Together those would be the main two things I would use to split up that mesh.  After that, using F (make face) or alt-F (fill a bunch of faces - sometimes not always reliable but much faster when it works) to fill in the holes you've just made so that the fingers have actual side-faces where they used to be joined, and you should be most of the way there.


How can I get Sculptris textures to work in Blender? So, a long time ago I asked if it was possible to convert Sculptris files into proper Blender files... with proper texture maps, are able to be baked and re-used. At best, importing the Sculptris object leaves a corrupted texturemap that only half-exists, and cannot be edited much without causing problems.

However, I have managed to find a solution that helps resolve a LOT of this.

The problem is that imported Sculptris objects retain the Sculptris texture/mapping data, which is incompatible with Blender.

All you need to do is copy the geometry and make a new object. The result is a proper BLENDER object that coincidentally has the same vertices as the import.

Keep in mind my tests have been limited; but I've managed to successfully create proper displacement maps in the UV editor using this technique when previously I could only create a UV mess, so I'm confident this resolves a lot of the issue. I haven't had a chance to experiment so thoroughly.

However, there is still an issue with textures. Please see my reply below for some possible solutions.

For textures, there are more problems; the actual UV texture maps Scultptris makes are a cacophony of random shards that are stitched together only by the object mapping code Sculptris provides.

This is a problem for Blender, which expects textures to be a more unified 'wrapper' (as you know).
The means, by using the above technique, your texture ceases to be a single smooth surface and instead shows its true form- disjointed shards.

I have two possible solutions;

1- tested and very successful- but a little work intensive.
In short, you flatten the (original) Sculptris model, take a screenshot and use photoshop to put the pieces together.
You don't need to do much re-fitting to the UV map IF you specifically use 'squash' type modifiers that simultaneously flattens the object while spreading it out- often these coincidentally mostly fit the flattened UV map already, at least on simplified objects. It will require a bit of 'hiding' or temporarily deleting vertices so you can squash the surfaces to get some flat angles, so keep in mind as the complexity of the object increases, so does this conversion process.

2- Untested.
It could be possible to bake the original's texture onto a lower poly 'fake' copy positioned over it, but I haven't tried it. If my theory is correct, this should essentially convert the half-pregnant Sculptris texture into a nice, flat Blender one, provided you made the necessary seams on the object to bake onto.

I should point out that at the end of production, you will want to have NO SCULPTRIS files, and everything converted into a Blender UV map, to be applied strictly to BLENDER objects.

I hope this helps, and good luck!


Extruding mesh with holes creates weird artifacts I created slits in my chair mesh by subdividing then deleting faces. I wanted to a little thickness to the chair by extruding by normals. However, it created these weird artifacts.

Cleaning up the mesh by merge by distance or flipping normals doesn't do the trick. Are there any solutions to this dilemma?

Your problem is that you have ngons that create this kind of artefacts. Also you have a lot of useless edges, if you use a Subdivision Surfaces modifier you won't need so many.

If I were you I would redo the object, it would take less time than correct your version:

Keep the profile only, mirror it, use the Checker Deselect and the Dissolve Vertices tool to keep only the necessary amount of vertices.

Now extrude the profile, give it some edge loops and bevel where the cut are supposed to happen, then delete the faces.

Give it some additional edge loops to make the holes square, give your object a Solidify modifier to give it thickness, keep a copy of the object somewhere, apply the Solidify modifier, bring some additional edge loops to sharp the edges again.


Keep a set of objects from casting shadows while having a shadow I am making an animation in Blender 2.82 that shows the Earth and the Moon orbiting around the Sun. For clarity, I want to avoid the Earth and the Moon to cast shadows on each other because I made them move in the same plane. I use the Cycles rendering engine.

In a previous version, the Earth and the Moon were single spheres. In the “Visibility” section of the “Object” panel, unchecking the “Shadow” box did the job.

However, I wanted something more realistic and followed the Blender Guru tutorial on how to make a realistic Earth so now the Earth is 3 concentric sphere and everything I tried did not give the right result. (Note that I did not follow the tutorial for the atmosphere: mine has a volume scatter shader only.) The Moon is still a single sphere so the problem is with the Earth only.

What I would like is a way to tell Blender that the 3 Earth spheres can have shadows casted on them, cast shadows on themselves, but not on other objects.

This is what I have now, physically correct but the moon is not visible due to she shadow (it’s located on the missing arc of the blue circle):

My first try was unchecking the “Shadow” box just for the surface. The moon is then visible but the night side of the Earth becomes reddish and it’s not realistic at all. With the box unchecked for the surface, the clouds and the atmosphere, the Earth is invisible except a few reflections, but the moon looks as wanted:

Then, with every boxes for the Earth checked, I tried to prevent the light source to cast shadows. The Moon looks great and the Earth is quite good but its shadow is way too light:

This last try would be perfect if the shadow on the night side was darker.

I’m answering my own question. The solution was found while working on the compositing phase.

It is possible to do this using view layers and compositing. It is necessary to create an masking object, in this case a sphere centered on the Earth and with the same size as the atmosphere, with all needed relations to follow it during animation. Then, in the “Object” panel, the “Visibility” section is set like this:

The “Holdout” makes the masking sphere appear like the background (in this case transparent, as usual with view layers). In unchecked every other boxes except “Camera” to avoid interference with lighting.


Rigging my human armature makes eyes be sucked into the skull I've been following a course on Udemy and I got to the part where I have to parent my mesh to a rig with automatic weights right after rigging the default human armature in blender 2.79. The problem is that my rig ended up looking like in pic related, where the eyelids have been sucked into the skull through the eye-sockets and the eye themselves have the bone pointing inwards instead of outwards. What am I doing wrong?

EDIT:
1) The problem seems to start as soon as I press the 'Generate rig' button. The bones deform at that moment, without even allowing me to parent the mesh first, in fact, when I parent the mesh to the unrigged armature, the thing works completely fine...

Just looking at the pictures, I am not positive but it could be that you need to fix the weight paint issues. Select the rig in Pose Mode and then Shift select the model (both should be selected) then go into Weight Paint (its in the Object/Edit mode menu. From there you can right click on whatever bone and see the weight influence. Red= full control and Blue is unaffected. If the eye are red then you can pull up the paint menu with T and select the Subtract brush. (Default is Draw). Weight is 1.0 meaning you will paint red and 0 is blue meaning you will kill the influence of the bone on the mesh. So if you lighten the color of the mesh affected by the eyebone then it should fix the problem.

If all that wasn't the issue, then try to delete doubles. Make sure your mesh has no double verts. Un-parent the mesh (Alt+P), delete all the vertex groups (go to the vertex tab it is next to the materials tab) and then select the mesh and press W and remove doubles. Then parent the mesh to the armature again. The order in case you messed it up is, select the mesh (child) then shift select the armature (parent) hit Ctrl+P parent with auto weights. Hopefully that fixes your issue. Please respond if it helped you fix your problem.


How do I constrain location to a path I'm not sure if this is a "follow path" question, but I don't want this animated.

I have a parent handle empty that I want to be able to grab, and for that empty to only move along a nurbs path.

I can animate it but if I try to just grab the handle, it has no location limits.

Is this a simple setting I've missed?  Does the empty have to be parented to the path?

Not sure if this answers your question but if you add a follow path constraint to the empty, check fixed position and then move the offset from zero to one the empty is locked on to the curve which now functions as it's path. I really hope this helps and I didn't misunderstand the question.

(I then, just for effect, parrented the cylinder to the empty, to visualize a handle.)

Here's a picture of the setup.


Explosions and fireflies / dots in Blender 2.8 (already followed all tutorial without results) Good morning everyone,

I'm literally ready to pay who will be able to solve my problem.

here is the original file of the explosion.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UBb2ctIG_OQ5qh7bpMSTUFcNI_E1LTCq/view?usp=sharing

Blender 2.8
Cycles

PROBLEM: FIREFLIES, STILL A LOT OF THEM IN RENDERING.

Everytime I use fire / explosion I cant get those fireflies away in the rendering.
Already followed all tutorials/discussions/youtubevideos about deleting fireflies in rendering.
Already tried everything without finding a solution (clamp, light size, hundreds of samples, caustics, filter glossy, glossy bounces, multiple importance).

The denoiser helps but it really makes a lot of damage to my scene, so I would want to try avoid it for now, and for sure this scene can get a lot better before I will put the denoiser as a last touch. But for sure for now there is still too much fireflies/dots!

Please open the original file and help me find a solution !!
It does that everytime I work with fire/explosions.
With smokes I can fix the problem, but when it comes to fire here they appear without solutions!

Thank you very much for helping

The only way to do this without denoising is increasing the number of samples up to about 2500. It takes a long time to render, but your image stays crisp.


How to Parent jeep Rig to Character rig I want to parent the rigs, so that when I move the jeep with rig the character will also move.

Check this picture:

You can add a "Child of" bone constraint to the root of the character, pointing to an appropriate bone of the vehicle. You can animate the influence of the constraint, to separate the two actions. After the set up of the constraint, click its "set inverse" button to build the correct location relationship.


Objects created by Blender see through on Unity I created simple rooms with planes and cubes by Blender 2.83 and exported it as fbx file.

Then I imported it into Unity, and its inner walls are transparent.

Why? Will anybody help me resolve this? Thanks.

The reason you're seeing this effect is that in game engines like Unity, typically only one side of every face is rendered. Faces have a front and a back, and only the front of a face is rendered. This is typically done because in many circumstances, the back sides of faces are never seen, and it is much more efficient to never render them.
To better preview what your mesh is going to look like in Unity, you can turn on Backface Culling in Blender.

If you do need a face to be visible from both sides in Unity, you can duplicate that face in Blender, and flip the normals (the direction the face is pointing) by pressing ALT+N, then F.
Typically though, real life objects (like walls) aren't infinitely thin, so you will usually have a face defining either side of a wall, with some distance in between.


Seeing Construction History for use in python I know that operators can be copied for scripting by ctrl-c if you mouse through whatever menu item you are at.

What I was wondering is if there is a way to see the construction history. In Maya's scripting panel you can turn on construction history, and then as you select an item or press any operator (like create polygon cube) it prints out the internal construction code to a window.
(That actual prints Mel scripting for Maya).

I am sure the construction history is stored in some data object, so another spin on the question could be phrased . What is the name of this object and can I run a print loop through it?

You can pull down the 'Info' panel at the top of the blender window to reveal the code for operators that have been run:

Here I have deleted an object, added a cube and then rotated the cube.


I can't move the finger from makehuman model with rigs I have selected the finger that I want to move. I clicking in Transformation manipulators:Rotate and Gimbal.

When I press "R" to move it. Nothing happens.
The green colour from the finger selected is moving but the finger doesn't

When I try to move the arm. The rigs are moving but not the arm.

Thank you so much

The file is this

For a rigify rig the fingers curl is controled by scaling S. This automaticaly rotates all finger bones at once.

Related: What are the not so obvious features of Rigify?


Modelling - A smooth, gradual descent/rise? Let me go straight to the issue at hand.

In my image below, you can notice several selected vertices.

Is there a way for me to make selected vertices rise, or descent, in a smooth, gradual manner automatically, or do I have to select each one of them separately and move them up or down by hand?

Any help in achieving my objective is highly regarded.

EDIT: Hi @Lee and @Robin Betts -

Thanks for the quick answers to my issue.
I tried both of the suggested methods but I failed to achieve what I was looking for. I may have missed something when trying them as I'm still new to Blender.

What I instead did is, go into Ortho - Right view, add and rotate a place as reference and move the vertecies until I get a smooth rise/descent.
(I deleted the plane afterwards so it's not in my screenshot but you can see the end result. Not the fastest way to work but ended up doing what I wanted anyway.)

EDIT Number 3: Man, what a pain this website format is.

Yes, actually! What you want for this task is proportional editing! If you'll look in the image below, you can access it via that icon, or by pressing 'O'. You have several falloffs to choose from, and you can choose if it should be affected by connected vertices, or anything under the circle (it makes a wide circle like when you use the brush select, and scrolling with the mousewheel adjusts the area of influence).


how to have one force field influence on 2 collection? I am trying to make a tornado. I want to make a force field influences two different collections of particles.I have separated different force fields by collections but now I want a specific force,to influence both my collections. how can I do it?

The basic way to affect a force field to an emitter: Put your force field into a collection (let's call the collection Force), select your emitter and in the Properties panel > Particle > Field Weights > Effector Collection, choose the collection called Force. Do the same for the other emitters. It seems a bit buggy so if it doesn't work, remove the Effector Collection and select it again (or tweak some values in the particle settings).
If the emitter has no Effector Collection, all the force fields of the 3D scene will affect it.
If your 2 emitters have 2 different effector collections and you want to affect one force field to both these 2 objects, then put your force field into both these 2 collections (ShiftM > Link to Collection).


Options Missing from File browser This has happened before, but I can't figure out how to fix it. Where are the options for the UV layout export that are usually on the left side of the screen?

To show or hide Options tab in export window use T button while mouse cursor located inside the window. Alternatively you can click + icon that was added in blender version 2.74 next to the File Path input.


Problems with textures in Standalone Player I am trying to render an object in Standalone player, but textures don't work. However, similar blend file does not have this problem. The only difference I have found is in texture mapping : mapping in problem file is set to "Generated" and in working file to "UV". I tried to switch to UV, but it requires "Map" field. I am confused, why in working file UV map is assigned and it is texture, whereas when I try to assign texture as UV map in problem file pop-up window does not contain any names, except some weird UVTex and UVtex.00. I also tried to unwrap texture in edit mode, but it didn't show any effect.

There was a similar question:
Texture appears in render but not in game engine
But it doesn't say, how to make "UVMap" map.

Could you make some suggestions, what is the root of problem with rendering in Standalone Player? And if my clue is right, how to set UV map?
Problem file : http://www.filedropper.com/problemfile
Working file : http://www.filedropper.com/workingfile

Procedural textures and generated texture coordinates or not supported in Blender OpenGL renderer, that means you won't see any procedural textures in Blender's Viewport nor in Blender Game Engine or Standalone Player.

For you textures to work the have to be image based textures (Voronoi, Noise, Clouds etc. procedural texture wont work) and the have to be UV Mapped, that means you have to create an UVMap Chanel, unwrap your mesh mesh and use that UV Chanel on your texture afterwards, generated texture coordinates won't do.

Unwrapping is an involved and time consuming process, try searching for video tutorials about unwrapping


How do I assign drivers with the eyedropper? I cannot figure out how to assign drivers with the eyedropper. I try clicking on the mesh I want to be the Driver but instead of working the eyedropper just disappears. I have gone to Graph Editor> Drivers and no drivers have shown up.

You click with the left mouse button on  the eyedropper and then with left mouse button (yes both times with Left mouse button) on the mesh, which you want to be driving one. If that doesn't work, reinstall your Blender, cause there is no way it shouldn't.


Why some of my objects suddenly start to move together? In my scene all of a sudden I must have hit a random hot key, because random objects are now parented and when I move an object others move as well.

I had proportional editing accidentally checked.

As Chebhou mentioned in the comments, this can be disabled by pressing O.


How do I apply gravity to a chain? I've never used physics in Blender before so I just have a quick question about the workflow. I've created a chain using the Array Modifier and made sure none of the meshes are intersecting, but what I would like to do is attach the first and last link to a fixed point and let gravity work its magic. However... I have no idea where to even start. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

UPDATE: I've applied Rigid Body physics to each link and also a Constraint between each, but when I run the simulation the links just go crazy. Does anyone happen to know where I'm going wrong?:

UPDATE 2 (final): I removed the constraints and set the shape to "Mesh" rather than "Convex Hull" and everything is working perfectly. Thanks.

Step 1:
To apply physics on objects you first need to go to the properties physics tab and enable rigid body on this object.

Step 2:
If an object has to function as a hook/pin object that has to stay at its initial place, set it to Passive.
If an object has to to function as a dynamic physics object, set it to Active.

Step 3:
Select two of the physics objects and go to the 3D viewport physics tab. Hit connect and a new rigid body constraint empty gets generate.

Step 4:
continue until the entire chain is connected. It should look sth like this:

Step 5:
Setup the rigid body constraints of your chain.
this part needs to be tweaked to your specific needs so there is no concrete setup. But for a generic metal chain this values should be good:

Step 6:
 Run your animation! But make sure you have enough frames in your timeline. The physics will only get calculated to this point. if it is not enough, raise the number.


Archimesh is not displayed in the Tool shelf I've enabled Archimesh and just started using it. The problem is I can't find it among the tools in the Tool shelf. How can it be fixed?

In toolshelf -> create -> Archimesh -> Room tools


Boolean modifier union doesn't work union doesn't work for me, it just makes the cube dissapear. Why?
blend file here: https://app.box.com/s/bf51u29w8sb7juc8lauhs61rdwz1ncsv
Thanks/ Dan

You have to check the normals on your mesh (they should collectively point in one direction with respect to the surface) and it has to be a closed mesh (check for holes). Otherwise the modifier gets confused on what is on the outside and what is on the inside.

In this specific case the mirror modifier on the centerpiece of the steering wheel doesn't merge the vertices at the mirror axis. This results in the mesh being open in the center, thus confusing the boolean modifier.

Solution:

Increase merge limit on the mirror modifier to 0.1 or move the vertices in the center closer to the mirror axis


Project from view using photoshop Im trying to follow this tutorial but using 2.8 and I can't seem to figure out how to get it to work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0qaB-y8qow

I linked my photoshop via both the folder and the exe in the preferences>image editor

I found the external button but I just ge this error

"operator bpy.ops.paint.image from view poll expected"

Any help?

Just incase anyone else needs this I figured it out, it only works in the stable release in Blender 2.8 and I was using the old version back in July

Link your image editor by going to Preferences > file paths > image editor > click on the EXE of your program

Then to project from the editor go into texture paint > Options > External > Quick edit

Save to apply save the file, make sure you only have one layer it will mess up. Then hit "apply" under external.


How do UV texture seams work? My maps does not look like what I expect them to. I don't understand how Blender knows what part of the mesh should have it's own separate map in the UV editor and which should be a part of another map? Does the order in which the edges are selected and the seams made matter? Why does Blender want to rotate the map of one side of the wall?

I've been playing around with the exercise from the tutorial given above and while I understand the way the box has to be cut up with seams to get this box template UV map, I don't really get how Blender translates the 3D rotation of the seams around the object to the 2D plan in UV editor. I've made this example where I made the seams exactly the same way on each side of the box around the Z axis. The UV map also rotates but I can't see the logic to it so I could predict how it will be rotated when except when the X axis is pointing right, Y away from me and Z up. For example why is the UV map rotated up when the Y points to the right and Z towards me? And even more surprising when the Y is pointing down the UV map has the same orientation as when it's pointing towards me. Simple stuff but so hard..

UV unwrapping is an art… Some things that have helped me:

In “Object Mode” apply the scale Ctrl + A then select “SCALE” from the drop down menu Before you attempt to unwrap the mesh.
In general seams are placed on object edges. The order of their selection shouldn't matter.
After unwrapping you can move/rotate individual maps. Easily selectable by selecting one vertice of the UV map then Ctrl + L to select the rest of the linked vertices.
Try unwrapping using “Smart UV Project” with the “Angle Limit” set to “89” (Doesn’t always help).
Unwrap the mesh and then export the UV layout. Found under UVs then at the top of the drop down menu “Export UV Layout”. Bring the exported UV layout into Photoshop or Gimp and place your textures there.
In a pinch assign a different Material to the mesh faces for each Texture.
This simple tutorial helped me to begin to understand UV unwrapping.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDABx8wWGR4


One curve into two or three I have a straight curve that's hooked with hooks at both ends to two objects. I'm creating the curve in python and applying the following to make it look like a cylinder in a python Bond-class (for a chemical bond between two atoms):

obj.data.dimensions = '3D'
obj.data.fill_mode = 'FULL'
obj.data.bevel_depth = self.bevel_depth
obj.data.bevel_resolution = self.bevel_resolution

This works fine. Now I would need to be able make these into two or three "cylinders" to represent double and triple bonds as needed. These should stretch lengthwise as the atoms move closer or further apart, but they should stay otherwise unmodified. Any ideas how to do this as simply as possible in python?

Could I use a bevel object on the curve, say a curve-object consisting of two circles? If yes, how do you control which point on the bevel object follows the curve?

You can totally duplicate your circle in Edit Mode on the Bevel Object. The origin of the Bevel Object is the point which follows the curve. you can Tilt the curve with CTRL + T to control its rotation.


Steel Cables Modeling Help I'm after some advice on how to model a Steel cable is anyone able to point me in the right direction of an up to date or relevant tutorial, or even able to advise me on how to create a Steel cable like what could be seen on a Tank or a Ship ?

Like ones that a tank would use to tow another.

Any help and Advice would be greatly appreciated.

A way to do that is using curves (that will allow to bend the cable if necessary).

The principle is to make a base shape which will be a slice of the cable. Then use this slice as bevel object on a curve. Once done, you can twist/tilt the curve extremity in order to twist the cable itself.

The base/slice shape :

It can be what you want (more or less detailed, for instance). The only constraint is we need to make it a curve object at the end, so that it can be used as bevel object for the final curve (the cable).

To do it quick :

Add a circle
Add a array modifier to the circle and choose for instance a count of 6
Add a simple deform modifier, set it to 'bend' and set the angle to 360°

Here the inner parts are a bit stretched (due to the deform modifier). You can refine that or use another approach (again it is to do it quick here).

The result of the modifiers is a mesh, and we need a curve.

So use AltC to transform it to a curve (that will apply all the modifiers and convert to curve).

Now, add a curve ShiftA then curve and bezier and set the previous object as its bevel object.

What you obtain at this step is probably to large. So scale down the bevel object and/or stretch the cable curve (in edit mode for this last, it will be better).

Now, enter edit mode for the cable curve, select one of the extremities and hit CtrlT to twist and move the mouse around :

The cable is deformed. It is because the origin point of the slice/circle is not at its center. So select it and transform its origin to its geometry :

Refine the result by changing the cable/curve resolution :

And so you obtain a bendable cable.

Note :

If you want to insert some additional control points to the cable, you will notice that the twist/tilt is not divided equally... unexpected behavior (for me)... so if this is needed, remove the twist/tilt and do the twist again ;) using proportional editing.


Why does it displays a kernel error message whenever I try GPU rendering in Cycles? Whenever I select GPU rendering it displays an error message. I have a Radeon RX Vega 8 GPU but still it doesn't get to work. I tried selecting only GPU rendering in Preferences tab but still it doesn't work in Blender.
The Error shows like this:  Split kernel error: failed to load kernel_path_init.
This happens every time I select GPU rendering.

It seems to be a problem with the Radeon RX cards if I understand this bug report correctly, updating the card drivers can help in some but not all cases as far as I've read:
https://developer.blender.org/T83130


Rendering: Excluding a layer while keeping it's influence (Masking?) I am making this Christmas Tree but the problem is that I can't render the whole scene in one go because of too many particles. So I have rendered my tree and now I want to render only tinsels wrapped around the tree but I want it as png with alpha so that I can add them together as layers.
So how can I do this?
Thanks.

Tree

Tinsel

It should work if you replace the transparent with a holdout shader. However that doesn't solve the Memory issue.
There's a fairly easy solution, which of course doesn't work in all cases.
In post you can use the Z-pass in order to combine renderlayers.
Compositor -> SHIFT A -> Color -> Z-Combine.
It is intended to do what you want, but it will produce strange results when MB or DoF is involved.


Subdivision Loop cut doesn't hold I don't get it why the loop cut doesn't hold on a subdivion surface applied to an object. Is it something wrong with my Loop Cut settings or is there something else I'm not aware of? Only two weeks old in Blender.

Video with a simple object to understand the issue

Ok, well first, you might be doing it wrong...

When you make a loop cut, click to establish the loop cut. Once the loop cut has been made, drag it (not holding down the mouse) to the desired location and click again to set it.

Does that work?

Also, just so you know, you don’t ever want to have vertices overlapping—which leads me to:

Pro-tip: if you’re using subsurf and want sharp edges, hit N, which opens up a side bar on the right. In it, in the default Item tab, you’ll see Mean Crease. Select the edges you want to keep sharp, and set their Mean Crease value to 1.00 (or any value in between) to accomplish your creases with no extra vertex data and no overlapping vertices (which will come back to bite you).

Good luck, and happy Blendering,

John


x3d import in python I have a huge amount of .wrl files. They mostly contain a single mesh.
I want to write a small python script that loads each of these files, then reduces the contained meshes and saves it to a new file (ideally again a .wrl, but not necessary)

My script so far

import bpy
import os

for i in os.listdir("C:/PathToFiles"):
    if i.endswith("n.wrl"):
        fullPath = "C:/PathToFiles/" + i

        bpy.ops.import_scene.x3d(filepath=fullPath)

        bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')
        bpy.ops.object.delete()

        continue
    else:
        continue

The saving part is missing for now.
When first trying this I got the error message "blendata not defined" in line 2223 of import_x3d.py. I corrected this by replacing all occurences of blendata with bpydata.

Now it crashes with error in line 2044 of import_x3d.py with

  ValueError: matrix * vector: len(matrix.col) and len(vector) must be the same

Since I have no real insight into the script or the .wrl file format I am kinda lost. Any suggestions?

I'm not entirely sure that it does the exact right thing but...

I edited the lines 2044 and 2045 to following lines in the import_x3d.py script in order to fix the error message I got. Basic idea is to just prolong the uv vector to 4 components and then copy the first to back to the target.

tmp = texmtx * luv.uv.to_4d()
luv.uv = tmp.xy

The scenes seem to be loaded, but I have not checked the UV coordinates in detail since for now I don't care that much about them. I may later.


Can't set major radius of a torus to anything larger than 1 meter I am modelling in Metric mode. I added a torus in Edit mode and it will not allow me set set the Major radius to anything larger than 1 meter. If I type in a value greater than 1m, it just changes back to 1m and clicking the arrows on the size control will not increase it past 1m.

This is probably stupid, but is there some setting that I might have activated to prevent larger sizes? I've double checked that snapping is off, so I'm stumped.

What could I be doing wrong?

Additional info: I have the scale of the metric units set to 0.01 and this seems to be the cause, but why?

Steps to Reproduce:

Create new project
Delete default cube
Set scene to Metric units with scale of 0.01
Add a torus

At this point the Major radius of the torus cannot be made larger than 1 meter.

More information:

If I change to metric units but do not set the scale, then the major radius of the torus is capped at 100m.

If I do not change to metric unit but instead stay with Blender units, then the major radius is capped a 100bu.

This seems to be an arbitrary limit.  Is there any reason for this limit?

Creating the torus in python doesn't seem to have this limit.
not sure if it's easy to do but you can add this as a custom operator in the toolshelf.

 bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_torus_add(..., major_radius=999999,...)


Limit rotation limits the wrong axis Ima having a problem where i limit my bone's rotation in the Y axis but in the scene it is limiting the X axis.

Here's a gif

Thanks guys in advance :)

The constraint is in "world space" switch it to "local space"