How to intersect objects and delete leftover internal planes? I'm trying to find a simple way to create vertices where two objects intersect and delete the leftover internal planes + then join the meshes so that I have one hollow mesh to sculpt.
The reason I need to know this is that on my first sculpt I just joined the meshes, but it didn't create vertices at the intersecting points so when I went to sculpt it just overlapped the meshes as you can see here in the neck.

Here is what I am working on now, it needs to be 1 hollow mesh

Select the objects and hit Ctrl+J to join them into one object, change to edit mode and select the meshes you want to intersect, hit Ctrl+F and select Intersect (Knife) from the menu and change to Self Intersect in operator panel.

After the operation is done, intersecting edges will be selected and you can mark them as seams Ctrl+E>Mark Seam, then select internal faces using L button when hovering with the mouse cursor over internal faces while in face selection mode.


How to multiply UV coordinates? I have a plane simply UV mapped and using a texture for the albedo.
I want to have the same UV mapping used for the normal maps, but multiplied by 5 or 10, I don't know how much exactly yet.
Is it possible to not make another mapping on another channel, and just feed to the normal maps a UV coordinates multiplier?

Use a MAPPING vector node to manipulate the values that are fed to it with an INPUT UV MAP node, and in the SCALE fields change the scale of the texture: the values act as multipliers.
Below is the actual node setup.


Using gate/sensor dimensions and the field of view to adjust the way camera shots warp? How can I use gate/sensor dimensions and field of view (is "field of view" the same thing as "focal length"?) to adjust the way my camera shots warp?  I desire a wide angle without some of the weird perspective warping.

Thanks!

There's nothing weird about the perspective warping. The blender camera behaves just like a real life camera. From the camera presets you can even choose some common cameras, but you can set the blender camera to mimic any camera. Just look up the sensor size of any real world camera and enter those values for the blender camera. In addition, if you'd want to match a particular shot, you could look up the meta data of the picture to see what focal length and which f-stop was used for the shot and enter those values too.

You're going for a wide angle, which means a focal length of about 20mm which translates to a filed of view of about 60º. Any distortion resulting from this setting is perfectly normal for such a camera. However, if you want to adjust the distortion, then - depending on what you're going for - you can use the shift property in the camera settings, or you can use the Lens Distortion node in compositing to manipulate lens distortion.


Exporting multiple meshes individually at once I need to export around 200 meshes into FBX, individually, organized with object names. The old method I used before was creating an export preset and export them one-by-one, with the right names. That was bearable with 70 meshes, but rather frustrating with anything beyond.

So my question is the given:
Can I export 200 meshes into 200 files with their object names as names?

I have a few complex, animated meshes that I would rather export the old-fashioned way, but if I could skip the other 190 meshes, that would be sweet.

Save your blend file in the directory you want the objects to be in.
Head over to the Scripting workspace
In the editor window: Templates -> Python -> Batch Export
Select all objects that you want to export
Run the script with the Play button


How to change default viewport shading in 2.8? Is it possible to change the default mesh color/shading in 2.8 to be more like 2.79?
I'm finding it hard to see finer detail in 2.8.
On the left is 2.8 and the right is 2.79

To change Default Studio lightning without using Matcaps/Shading modes:

Go to Edit > User Preferences > Lights and choose Edit Studio Lights.

Now you can change all 4 lights. Options are self-explanatory.

After making dreamed setup - Save as Studio Light and Save Preferences.

You can even download saved setup and share it.

Here is something similar to 2.79. Probably a bit to shiny:


How to write all characters in a font to a 3D text object? Can you help with inserting of all characters of a font (for example I loaded an Arial font) into 3D Text?

For example I created a 3D Text object and I need to insert all characters with Python:

All I found is how to insert a specific text:

bpy.ops.font.text_insert(text="texttt")

But I need all characters available in the font.

Also, can I separate characters by languages (english, french, spanish etc.) and other characters (,.<>[]{};:'" etc.)?

Thanks a lot!

Well, it depends on what "all characters" are, but generally you should be able to just loop over a range of code points or character values, casting with chr.

For example, if you want all printable ASCII characters:

text_string = ''.join([chr(i) for i in range(32, 127)])
bpy.ops.font.text_insert(text=text_string)
# [SPACE]!"#$%&\'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABC...XYZ[\]^_`abc...xyz{|}~

Here, I just used a list comprehension to go from ASCII 32 to ASCII 126, inclusive. You could use a different range to suit your needs.

You can't really "separate characters by languages" because it's not bijective. Which language does A belong to? Practically every language that uses a Latin-variant alphabet. How about ü? Spanish, German, to name two.

You could separate characters by their Unicode blocks, like Basic Latin (U+0000 to U+007F), Latin-1 Supplement (U+0080 to U+00FF, contains stuff like ¢, ©, §, õ, þ, etc.), etc.

For example, if you wanted two separate text objects:

blocks = { 'basic_latin' : (0x20, 0x7E), 'latin-1-supp': (0xA0, 0xFF) }
for k, v in blocks.items():
    t = ''.join([chr(i) for i in range(v[0], v[1] + 1)])
    bpy.ops.font.text_insert(text=t)


Single key input property in UI Panel How to capture a single key user input in the UI panel of the add-on?

The UILayout documentation mentions an event parameter in the prop method. If this is set to True, there appears a single key input control in the UI Panel. But I am unable to capture the key pressed on this control.

Would appreciate any help.

To capture a single key, the event param of prop in UILayout needs to be set to True and the corresponding property needs to be an EnumProperty with ALL the key codes mapped.

When the user presses a key on the control, the EnumProperty item that is related to the code of the key pressed, gets selected.

Please post your answer if you have any better alternative.


Complex mesh deform with array for baking (necklace around the neck) My problem may be (unnecesarily) complex as i tried alot of things mostly unsuccesfully. If you have any better solution than mine, please tell me !
I'm trying to make a collar for a character, my idea was to make only a part of it, then array/curve or shrinkwrap it around the character's neck, then finally bake it
(unfortunately i have to bake it, my game doesnt accept too much polys and the collar is too complex)

So i did a basic model, ready to receive the array modifier
Then made an basic armature of the body trying to make the collar fit

And tried various things from shrinkwrap with the armature, array or curve and it never came right.
Factually, maybe the bake doesn't need it, or maybe i could make it right on a plane? I don't know. Maybe you'll have the right answer too.

I'm not sure there's any easy way, except using the fantastic Wrapping Tools addon by Rich Colburn (which by the way allows you to create an unwrap version of any object).
You could do it with a cylinder used by the necklace as a Surface Deform object that would shrinkwrap around the neck, but when the shape begins to be complicated, this addon seems much more convenient.

Once you've installed the addon, duplicate the neck. Select an edge as if you were going to mark seam, and rip it (V).

In the N panel > External Tools tab, press Create UV Shape. It creates a new shapekey for the object.

The panel is automatically refreshed, a Shape Control appears which acts like the Shapekey value. Tweak it to 1, the object flattens like a UV unwrap.

Select your necklace, put it just over the neck object, in Edit mode make it follow the shape of the neck.

Back to Object mode, select the necklace, shift select the neck, press Bind to Surface, then Scene Update.

Move the Shape Control value back to 0, the necklace is now around the neck. For the necklace as well it has created a second shapekey, you can delete the basis shapekey if you want.


Link obj files into blender? I normally use Octane render, both standalone and plugin version for Sketchup. I'm not at all an hardcore user. I'm trying out Blender in my freetime, just for fun.

When I use the standalone version of Octane, I normally export my sketchup model as obj, and link this file into Octane Render, with it's own node. When I make changes in Sketchup (or Gravity Sketch) I export again as obj and simply press a reload icon in Octane, and the model is updated.

I can't figure out how to do this in Blender. I have only found out how to import, but not link / refresh geometry.

Is it not possible or am I'm looking in the wrong part of Blender?

You can't do this with Blender and OBJ files. Using Alembic files referencing geometry is possible.


Delete "doubles" on different object I have two objects, call them Object 1 and Object 2. The snap vertices threshold (min distance between vertices) is 0.001.

I want to delete all the vertices of Object 2 that:

have the same location with any vertices of Object 1,
or have the distance from any vertices of object 1 < threshold (=0.001)

This would be like removing doubles, but it would only compare vertices of Object 2 with vertices of Object 1 then only delete vertices from Object 2

What is a method for easily doing this?

Here is a bit of a brute force approach, base object is context object, checks global vert positions against those of other mesh objects in the context.selected_objects collection.

import bpy
import bmesh
# tolerance to use
TOL = 0.001

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

base_obj = context.object
base_mesh = base_obj.data

bbm = bmesh.new()
bbm.from_mesh(base_mesh)

# a list of global locations of base_mesh_object verts
locs = [base_obj.matrix_world * v.co for v in bbm.verts]

#meshes of selected objecst that aren't base_mesh
mesh_objs = [o for o in context.selected_objects
               if o.type == 'MESH'
               and o != base_obj and o.data != base_mesh]
# their meshes
meshes = [o.data for o in mesh_objs]

for o in mesh_objs:
    def tol(v1, v2):
        return (v1 - v2).length < TOL

    # are there other objects sharing this mesh?
    if meshes.count(o.data) > 1:
        # what to do?
        print("passing on ", o.name)
        continue

    bm = bmesh.new()
    #bm.from_object(o, scene)
    bm.from_mesh(o.data)
    update = False
    for v in bm.verts:
        # find if any global v pos match our list
        rem = [l for l in locs if tol(o.matrix_world * v.co, l)]
        # if so remove
        if len(rem):
            update = True
            bm.verts.remove(v)

    if update:
        bm.to_mesh(o.data)

    bm.free()

A bounding_box search to eliminate objects that can't have  corresponding verts.  Would make an interesting live edit operator.

Somewhat related https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/40979/15543


Particle System is floating in the air and not on the surface I need help, how can I make the grass stick to the surface? There's a lot of options here that if I change it, it moves the grass closer to the floor but smaller the more I reduce it.

The reason why your grass is not where it should be is that the object's origin is way off from the mesh, -30.5 m in X direction, 3.1 m in Y direction and 0.4 m in Z direction. That's the reason why they are not close to the surface or sometimes sinking in, because they are "growing" more than 30 m away from where they are "born".

To get them distributed correctly you should set the origin close to the bottom of the grass mesh (image below). One way to do it: go to Edit Mode, select the bottom vertices of the grass, Shift+S > Cursor to Selected. Then back into Object Mode, right-click on the grass object, Set Origin > Origin to 3D Cursor.


Why do my hair particles disappear when physics is set to None As detailed in this question, I'm trying to create a scene with a grassy patch of dirt and I'm having trouble controlling scale and direction.
One of the bizarre relationships I discovered is that the "timestep" setting in the "Physics" tab will change the scale of the rendered particles.  So since I'm not currently using physics, I tried turning physics off by setting physics to "None".
And then all my particles simply disappeared.  They come back when I set physics back to "Newtonian".
Same problem as in this question, but the only answer given says that physics are needed for hair (then why is there a "None" option?!) and that one should use a "regular particle system" instead of hair.  I'm not sure what a "regular particle system" is.  Are there two types of particle systems in Blender?  I know there is instancing available, but as far as I can tell I can't randomize things well using that.
Can someone explain a)  why the timestep affects the particle's scale and b)  how I avoid that interaction if I can't set physics to "None"?

Different particle systems:
A "regular particle system" is of type Emitter and spawns particles which hava a size, different modes of display (object instancing etc) and move according to the selected form of physics simulation.
A Hair particle system is not identical to that, since Hair particles require a different set of information; they have a root connecting them to the emitter and are path objects, which can be physically simulated as well - this is what the Hair Dynamics option is for.
As long as you don't enable Hair Dynamics, your particles shouldn't move or collide, regardless of the selected Physics option.
Hair particles require a velocity. Tweaking it will result in a different size, which should correlate to your observation regarding timesteps: changing the speed by which time passes changes all velocities. A hair particle with a velocity of zero has a length of zero, so setting the Physics type to "None" is a bad idea; it means we are creating particles without speed and therefor without length.


I made some annotations (not grease pencil!). Where is the menu to remove / hide / edit them? I used the Annotate tool to make some annotations in the 3D viewport.

I would like to edit, hide or remove them, but I can't find the annotate layers editor.

Selecting again the Annotate tool will display a menu in the header. By default an annotation layer called "Note" is used.

From that menu, the layer visibility can be toggled, as well as adding / removing layers, and changing some little things like the color and the thickness.

Note: if the header is hidden, it can be displayed again using the little downwards arrow at the top margin of the 3D window.

Edit: ᴊᴀᴄʜʏᴍ ᴍɪᴄʜᴀʟ made me realize that there is another, more natural, place where the menu can be found! The 3D viewport's sidebar (aka "the N menu"), under View > Annotations


Create a translucent plastic node setup/bump map for "ice pack" material Looking to recreate this rough polyethylene material with a "gel" ish appearance underneath.  Any help is appreciated!  Thanks!!

This should be rather simple. Just use a noise texture (softened by runiing through a MixRGB with white) and a Bump Node to get the surface bumps. Then, create the "icy" (translucent) gel effect by using a small Subsurface Value (0.3) and a blue color.

If you want to go deeper on the gel effect, try increasing the blue and green values only of your Subsurface Radius:


Best way to change a value between render layers? I have a setup where I am re-rendering the same geometry on several different layers. I want to change a property in the geometry's material before each layer runs (probably via a driver). The goal is to render out several different passes and have them all in the compositor together.

(I am aware this is possible with Scenes and different materials, but it is a ton of work to set that up when working with assets that will be linked into a bunch of different files. The simpler method seems to be to put several material setups in the same group, then mix between different outputs for each layer.)

For Renderlayer 1, the value is 0. For layer 2, the value is 1. etc.

I can manually do this by clicking the Render button on the Render Layer node in the compositor, then manually changing the material value, then manually rendering the next layer. But I need to automate it so that I can leave it running for long renders.

It seems it should be possible to solve this problem in a couple of different ways, but it depends on the details of how the render command works.

I could make a script that sets the property to 0, starts the render of layer 1, then when that finishes sets it to 1, starts layer 2, etc. For that, I need to know how I can have a script tell when a layer finishes rendering?

Or, I could have it start the value at 0, then detect when a layer starts rendering, and change it then. Either way, it needs to be able to have a script get info about when a layer starts or finishes.

Can anyone shed some light on how this can be done, or if there's a better way to set this up?

I don't think there is any way to know the name of the render layer currently being rendered, which means you can't use a driver or app.handler to calculate a property that varies by render layer.

We can however, render one layer at a time, this allows us to control which layer is being rendered and to alter properties before starting to render a layer.

As an example, we can set a text object to the layer name.

import bpy

for l in bpy.context.scene.render.layers:
    bpy.data.objects['Text'].data.body = l.name
    bpy.ops.render.render(layer=l.name)

Note that rendering a single layer doesn't work when rendering an animation, which means you would need another loop to render multiple frames.


How to party add geoetry while keeping good topology (Cat nose) I'm working on a cat-like creature for game usage so it should be low poly, good topology and animateable. I blocked out the head (basically just a subsurfed cube) and kept it low poly so far, with edge-loops going around the mouth area and the ears like you see in many tutorials for human heads. But I totally fail at the nose section. I want this part more detailed (not just a bump). Adding edgeloops is a bad option since they run through the whole head (and whole body) and add geometry where its not needed. Then I tried using inset faces around the nose-area but it seems a bad idea as well.
How would you tackle this? Many thanks!
Edit: screenshot
https://gyazo.com/8118d5009e9d276b9b8d6494ed287448
I really need more deatails around the nose, it appears important to me, get a realisic big-cat nose, with nosetrails and the seperated upper lips beeing sortof connected to the nose.

Actually your topology is not really "low-poly", it's rather "medium-poly"  ;)   Here is a try, I think it works pretty well:

Previous version:


Modeling low poly bush I am planning on modeling a low poly nature collection, but I can't find a way to make a low poly bush like the one in the image below.

If anyone could mention the steps or make/find a video tutorial to the process of making a low poly bush like the one in the image, I would really appreciate it.

Thank you.

The following is my result with about 5 minutes of work. Note that I used Cycles Render, as it is much better for the scene showed in your question.

Modeling the Scene Minus the Berries

The key to this is Icospheres, which you can add using Shift + A > Mesh > Icosphere. Add an Icosphere. Key T to toggle open/close the Toolshelf and make sure there is only 1 subdivision.

I scaled all of my Icospheres down on the Z-Axis by a factor of 0.7 by keying S, then Z, then 0.7. I then rotated to Top Orthographic View through Numpad 7, then Numpad 5. From there, used Shift + D to duplicate, S to scale, and G to drag them around appropriately.

I also added an Icosphere of 1 subdivision, which I dragged behind the camera and out of view.

Lastly, I added a ground plane, scaled up just enough so that it fills the camera view.

Materials

The lone Icosphere behind the camera got a Diffuse BSDF with Hex: FF0000.

The bushes got a Diffuse BSDF with Hex: 57E746. Note that you can add the material to one bush, select all of the others, select the one with the material, key Ctrl + L, and select Materials to copy the materials from one bush to the rest.

The ground got a Diffuse BSDf with Hex: 296C27

Berries

Select one of the five Icospheres that should have berries on it. Go to the Properties panel > Particle Systems tab and add a new particle system. Use these settings, but note that Icosphere.010 should be the name of your red materialed Icosphere.

Select all of the bushes that should have berries, then select the one that you added the particle system to. Use this feature:

Lighting

Select the default Point lamp. Change to the following settings. Note that the Color: is Hex: FFFECC

Here is the .blend file:


animating shape keys I recently learned shape keys and made couple of them. However the hard part for me now is animating them. Once I set values to 1 and key them and do the same for another facial keys nothing happens when I play the animation. Any solution. I'd prefer some image tutorial but not a must.

Go to the desired frame on your timeline, hover the cursor over the shape key's value and press I.

Go to another frame on a timeline, change the shape key's value to 1.000 and press I again.


Imported fbx camera from NUKE is rotated the wrong way I tracked a scene in nuke and created geo for particles to interact with in blender. But when i import the .fbx generated from the write geo node into blender, the camera is rotated the wrong way. The translation of the camera is correct, but the direction it is facing is completley wrong. How can i fig this?

SOLUTION: Import fbx into maya and export that scene using the DAE_fbx export. And then just import into blender using the .dae import option.


Blender 2.82a Cant select through bones In edit mode, with the bones set to wireframe view, I'm simply trying to select one bone, and then shift select another bone, in order to parent one to the other.

The issue, is that the target bone is inside/behind another. and I cant seem to select through it? Each time I go to shift select in inner bone, it selects the larger outer bone.

I believe this should be possible in wireframe mode by selecting the bone outline? But it doesn't seem to be the case?

I can work around it using the outlier, but the issue of selecting bones inside/behind other bones is something I'm looking to solve.

A bone inside like that is more difficult to select but you can do it two other ways that I know of:

Double click on it. Be fast! Mouse cursor right on it, and it works.
Select larger bone, Shift+G "Direction", "child" ect and it may also help in certain situations, especially when dealing with multiple parent bones and children.


How to make a text object show dimensions of an object? I'm working on a way to make a semi-automatic system for visualisizng dimensions

One last thing I need is to make the text boxes automatically contain the wireframe cube's X, Y and Z dimensions (not scale) with units and 2 decimal point precision like this:

2.56 cm
7.2 mm
10 m

#ob is the object you want to measure
#x_ob,y_ob,z_ob are the three text objects
(x,y,z) = ob.dimensions.to_tuple()
x_ob.data.body = str(x)
y_ob.data.body = str(y)
z_ob.data.body = str(z)

If you want to use the metric system, you can add this:

bpy.context.space_data.context = 'SCENE'
bpy.context.scene.system = 'METRIC'

If you want the correct unit you can make this kind of function:

def units(x):
    if int(x) > 0:
        u = "m"
        y = x
    elif x*100 > 0:
        u = "cm"
        y = x*100
    else:
        u = "mm"
        y = x*1000
    return str(y)+" "+u


Why can't I have an inflow with an animated mesh output to local coordinates? If I check Export Animated Mesh for an Inflow in fluid dynamics, I lose the option of using local coordinates. Why? What can I do about it?

As far as I can tell this is a limitation, and I can't see a workaround.

Ideally you would be able to animate the inflow mesh shape, and at the same time use its motion to give the fluid a starting velocity like the local coordinates option does. This can work in principle but no one seems to have gotten around to implementing it.


Compiling Blender - Python Error I'm a noob when it comes to compiling. I've followed the instructions for compiling Blender on OpenSuse Linux.
https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Building_Blender/Linux/OpenSUSE
I downloaded the sources.
I downloaded the libraries.
But when I follow the Update and Build instructions
cd /home/myprofile/bin/blender-git/blender/
make update

I'm given the following error:
python3 ./build_files/utils/make_update.py
Python path configuration:
  PYTHONHOME = (not set)
  PYTHONPATH = '/usr/local/lib/python:/usr/lib64/python/'
  program name = 'python3'
  isolated = 0
  environment = 1
  user site = 1
  import site = 1
  sys._base_executable = '/usr/bin/python3'
  sys.base_prefix = '/usr'
  sys.base_exec_prefix = '/usr'
  sys.executable = '/usr/bin/python3'
  sys.prefix = '/usr'
  sys.exec_prefix = '/usr'
  sys.path = [
    '/usr/local/lib/python',
    '/usr/lib64/python/',
    '/usr/lib/python38.zip',
    '/usr/lib64/python3.8',
    '/usr/lib64/python3.8/lib-dynload',
  ]
Fatal Python error: init_fs_encoding: failed to get the Python codec of the filesystem encoding
Python runtime state: core initialized
  File "/usr/lib64/python/encodings/__init__.py", line 123
    raise CodecRegistryError,\
                            ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Current thread 0x00007f9baaa00740 (most recent call first):
<no Python frame>
make: *** [GNUmakefile:504: update] Error 1

The issue is caused by the PYTHONPATH. It seems that /usr/lib64/python/ points to the libraries of Python 2.7, which results in the aforementioned error. The PYTHONPATH environment variable can be temporarily removed for the current terminal with the command unset PYTHONPATH after which you should be able to run make update successfully.


How to animate an object to dissapear (clipped progressively) as it passes through a plane? I want to create the effect of a train traveling through a glass plane and becoming progressively invisible as it passes through.
How would you set this up to animate it?

Note: This answer is only convenient if your object is made of a single (or just a few) materials, and if the plane it intersects is parallel to two cartesian axes:

All you need to do is to Mix your material (in this case, a simple principled shader) with a fully white Transparent BDSF.

The Mix Factor must be controlled by a Math > (Greater/Less) than node, that compares your object's Geometry > Separate XYZ > [selected coordinate] with a fixed value.

In this example, Z is compared with 0:

Additional notes:

If you are using Cycles and you see some black spots, you may need to increase a bit the number of Transmission bounces under Render > Light Paths.
If you are using EEVEE, your material's setting should have Blend Mode and Shadow Mode set to Alpha Clip.


Blender instantly closes on startup This has started today, and I'm not sure what happened, since I had been using 2.83.2 for a while.
The process is as depicted: I click on either the Blender shortcut, or the direct .exe file, it boots up the command tab, and then it closes.
I have tried using other versions, these don't work either. It may be a problem I've had in the past where Blender 2.83 closed because I tried copying the preferences from 2.82.
I'm pretty sure it's not a performance problem, but I'll tell this if it helps.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
i7-8750H
32 GB of RAM
8 GB of VRAM

Apparently the solution to this all along was restarting my PC, which I didn't think would fix the problem so I didn't try in the first place.


Using Python, how can I preset points in ShaderNode RGB Curves? I have referred to
https://blenderartists.org/t/how-to-modify-rgb-curve-nodes-in-compositor/503936
hoping the technique would be same or similar for shader nodes.
I have also checked
Is there a way of keyframing RGB curves?
and
How to make preset for RGB curves in compositor

-- where, in passing, the high-voted answer needs a typo correcting, from:
(RGB_Curves_Node).mapping.curves[0].points[id].location_x
to:
(RGB_Curves_Node).mapping.curves[0].points[id].location.x
and same for y.

In this, "id is used to access which point you want the property from.
Also, the 'R', 'G', 'B' and 'C' curves are separated by id 0, 1, 2, 3 respectively."

Therefore I script:

rgbC = nodes.new(type='ShaderNodeRGBCurve')
rgbC.mapping.curves[2].points[0].location = (0,0)
rgbC.mapping.curves[2].points[1].location = (0.48,0.675)
rgbC.mapping.update()

But, although 'points[1]' is set correctly, the curve does not bend, and a straight line then goes from
an existing end point through the new one -- having lost its 'other end' anchor (that presumably would have made it bend?).
If I try and anchor both ends (0,0) and (1,1), then when adding the 3rd point so:

rgbC.mapping.curves[2].points[2].location = (1,1)

I get an 'index out of range' error.

Any help on properly adding and setting points would be much appreciated, thanks.

I spent the day looking for the same answer and had given up already because it's nowhere to be found, may it be in the documentation, StackExchange or specialized forums.

It was when I decided to replace the RGB Curves node with a ColorRamp that I figured it out, and it's ridiculously simple! If only it were documented anywhere.

You add points to a RGB Curve with the same method used to add points to a ColorRamp: new()

In your case, I'd leave point 1 alone and add this at the end, removing the redundant update() line:

rgbC.mapping.curves[2].new(0.48,0.675)

curves.new() explained

When you add a point update() is trigged, resetting the points' index based on their x location.

Example Issue: You always start with curve[n].points[0] at (0,0) and curve[n].points[1] at (1,1). If you create a point at (.5,.5) it won't be curve[n].points[2] because it'll be situated between [0] and [1]. The new point will become [1], and the previous point[1] becomes [2].

It makes easy to lose track of your points when you're also manipulating them. To avoid this, you can add all new points at (1,1), reposition them and do whatever you need; then execute update() at the end so they're reindexed in the new order.

This way your new points will always have a higher index than your existing points while you're working on them.

Here follows a sample script to add an RGB Curve node to the active material, add three new points and reposition them:

import bpy
NODES = bpy.context.active_object.active_material.node_tree.nodes
# Create node
rgbC = NODES.new("ShaderNodeRGBCurve")
# Select "C" curve
curve_c = rgbC.mapping.curves[3]

# Add three points at (1,1) so they're created with [2],[3] and [4] indexes
curve_c.points.new(1,1)
curve_c.points.new(1,1)
curve_c.points.new(1,1)

# Move the new points to desired (x,y) locations
curve_c.points[2].location = (.2, .1)
curve_c.points[3].location = (.44, .44)
curve_c.points[4].location = (.6, .9)

# Update curve. Now new points are [1],[2],[3] and last one is [4]
rgbC.mapping.update()

And the short version if you're sure you don't need to preserve indexes:

import bpy
NODES = bpy.context.active_object.active_material.node_tree.nodes
rgbC = NODES.new("ShaderNodeRGBCurve")
curve_c = rgbC.mapping.curves[3]

# Add new points at (x,y). No need to update() at the end
curve_c.points.new(.2,.1)
curve_c.points.new(.44,.44)
curve_c.points.new(.6,.9)

Result:


When toggling fullscreen on MB Pro Retina 15 - a red bar appears I experience a red bar appearing right on top of my screen everytime I toggle fullscreen on. In addition to that the mouse seems to be shifted by about 50 pixels(the height of the red bar appearing in the top). For example I can click on a button while placing the mouse 30 pixels above the button.

When I exit fullscreen it disappears.

My machine is a 2016 MB Pro retina 15. The machine is running OSX High Sierra version 10.13.3 and Blender version is 2.79 2017-09-11.

I'm helpful for any insights.

creased.

The solution was to resize the blender window to a smaller height. And toggle fullscreen after the window height has been decreased.


Mesh moving incorrectly with bones I'm not very good at Blender, but I know the basics. But when I tried making my first rig, things didn't go so well.
This is what it looked like before I moved a bone

And then when I tried to move a bone, it did this.

Please help me out here

epsilonn,
I have seen the rig and the object and it really doesn't look good. It is very common and happens to a lot of people. If you are going with joining one part which is a separate object with the rig, it is not supposed to happen. If you don't understand, imagine the front is one object and the back arm is one object and both are connected to the same thing. This provides fewer problems but is kinda tiresome. If you have done this, this shouldn't happen. But if you went with the common method of making the whole body as 1 object and using automatic weights to parent it, then this problem occurs. Luckily, it is easy to fix. I will share the link to the youtube video. It's below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9S-jhBIEiU
If you are using a version below blender 2.8, here's the link for that version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl4qTgwQwYw
If it still doesn't work, then you have to sadly delete the whole model and the rig and start over again. There's no other option if weight painting doesn't work.


Modeling problen with edgings How to make such edgings? I have tried to just adding additional loops but i got bad result

Simple answer: model them.

There are many different kinds of seams on various furniture so it is essential to have good reference photos and see clearly how they look so you can then decide what will be the most appropriate method for modelling them. The ones in the picture seem to be simple piping seams. If you Google 'piping seam', you can find pictures and even videos how they are actually made and see that it is basically exactly what is sounds like - just a pipe going around, that is sewed into the seam to hide it.

I would recommend to model furniture with correct peaces of fabric so there will be seams on your models in the places there would be seams in reality. This helps with texturing and if you have UV seams already marked it is very easy to select them in edit mode with shift+g > Seams. Once selected you can duplicate them with shift+d and separate them with p > Selection. Then you can hit alt+c and convert the edges to curves. Once you have curves it is very easy to make pipes out of them just adding some bevel and adjusting it's resolution in the curve tab in the Properties Editor:

You could also use another curve as a bevel object if you needed a more complex form. Also because you now have them as curves, you can use more complex geometry and deform it with Curve modifier to follow the shapes of these curves. This way you can model various complex patterns for classical furniture:


Snap multiple verticies simultaneously I know how to snap vertices to the face of a mesh one by one. Is there any way to snap multiple vertices to the closest mesh all at the same time?

Here are the settings I use for retopology with snapping. (Note the options on the right of Closest)

If you make an extrusion, and the vertices don't snap to the mesh underneath, just press g with the vertices selected and they should snap.


Where are the faces? Python Mesh script I am having a really hard time trying to create a diffuse colored plane by script. The contours of the plane I do get right, but I can't seem to get the surface filled.

g_d = bpy.data.meshes.new(name="GroundM")
g_o = bpy.data.objects.new(name="GroundO", object_data = g_d)
scene.objects.link(g_o)
g_o.location = (0,0,0)
g_o.select = True
scene.objects.active = g_o

# Fill in the data for the mesh
b = 10
v1 = (-b,b,0)
v2 = (b,b,0)
v3 = (b,-b,0)
v4 = (-b,-b,0)
verts = [v1, v2, v3, v4]

g_d.vertices.add(4)
g_d.edges.add(4)
g_d.faces.add(1)

g_d.vertices[0].co = (-b,b,0)
g_d.vertices[1].co = (b,b,0)
g_d.vertices[2].co = (b,-b,0)
g_d.vertices[3].co = (-b,-b,0)

g_d.edges[0].vertices = (0,1)
g_d.edges[1].vertices = (1,2)
g_d.edges[2].vertices = (2,3)
g_d.edges[3].vertices = (3,0)

g_d.faces[0].vertices = (0,1,2,3)

As a result I get the edges of a square, and an error message "Mesh object has no attribute "faces"." But one should be able to define faces in a mesh..

Trivial case with bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add()

import bpy
context = bpy.context

b = 10
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add(radius=b)
g_o = context.object
g_o.name = "GroundO"
g_d = g_o.data
g_d.name = "GroundM"

Use bmesh
Strongly recommend getting familiar with bmesh as soon as possible. Trying to use the mesh methods (esp. to create), other than from_pydata(..) as pointed out in answer from @atomicbezierslinger, will drive you nuts.

import bpy
import bmesh
scene = bpy.context.scene
g_d = bpy.data.meshes.new(name="GroundM")
g_o = bpy.data.objects.new(name="GroundO", object_data = g_d)
scene.objects.link(g_o)
g_o.location = (0,0,0)
g_o.select = True
scene.objects.active = g_o

bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(g_d)
# Fill in the data for the mesh
b = 10
v1 = (-b,b,0)
v2 = (b,b,0)
v3 = (b,-b,0)
v4 = (-b,-b,0)
verts = [v1, v2, v3, v4]
bmverts = [bm.verts.new(co) for co in verts]

bm.faces.new(bmverts)
bm.to_mesh(g_d)
scene.update()

or easier still with bmesh.ops.create_grid(...)

import bpy
import bmesh
scene = bpy.context.scene
g_d = bpy.data.meshes.new(name="GroundM")
g_o = bpy.data.objects.new(name="GroundO", object_data = g_d)
scene.objects.link(g_o)
g_o.location = (0,0,0)
g_o.select = True
scene.objects.active = g_o

bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(g_d)
# Fill in the data for the mesh
b = 10
bmesh.ops.create_grid(bm, x_segments=1, y_segments=1, size=b)
bm.to_mesh(g_d)
scene.update()


How can I change the movement to Linear? I want that the animation always move linear how can I change that?
Thx for our help.

Select the keyframes
menu bar(header) > Key > Interpolation Mode > Linear  (or shortcut T2)


How to stop cloth-physics from catching on pointy surfaces? I'm using cloth because soft-body is too slow. As a test I have a character's hand pushing against a zero-gravity cloth surface with high structural integrity, but the when the character pulls back, the drag of the cloth causes it to catch on their fingers and twists and wraps around before falling off. What setting can I modify to stop this from happening? Part of the problem is the hand pokes through the cloth and I don't know how to prevent that either. Subdividing the cloth somehow makes the problem worse.

Most of these come with larger simulation times, try to keep the subdivision to a minimum.

Increase the substeps of the simulation to prevent the geometries from ever intersecting.
Increase the quality of the collision with the Quality slider.
Increase the (minimum) Distance of the collision. Note that this will also create a gap between the object. I would advise to simulate with an offset animated collider, which can be repositioned after baking.
Replace the animated object with simpler geometry. Recreate the basic shape with concave meshes, with evenly distributed triangles while trying to keep the edge angle at a minimum. Hide these helper collision for rendering.


What is the difference between "Shader" and "Material"? I know that Shader is a type of computer program that used for shading. And it looks like Material also define how model looks like. That means for me, that in Blender "Material" equal "Shader" (or not?) But if it so, why same thing named differently in different parts of interface:

Is there a some inconsistency here, or this is a different things? Can I call it "Material nodes" and "Shader tab" or it will be wrong?

Answer from Brecht Van Lommel:

  In Blender terminology material, light and world are datablocks that
  contain two things:

  Shaders to describe the look.
  Settings to control the quality.

  Shaders can be mixed, grouped, and shared between datablocks.

  The reason it’s not called the material editor is because you can also
  edit world, light and freestyle shaders there.

So materials define how object looks like, and have some additional material-specific settings. Shaders define object materials and also lights, world and freestyle as a part of each data-block.


Boolean Modifier acts like the object has no volume I added a cube and a cylinder.
When i now substract the cube from the cylinder using a Boolean Modifier it looks like this:

Like the cylinder has just a shell and no volume.

I checked the normals
i checked if there are any missing faces (what shouldnt be possible cause i just added the cube...but in case)
There are no other modifiers on them.
I added another cube in the exact same location and subtracted it with the same boolean...and this one works.
i just wann know...

please halp

I noticed the scale of the two objects are different so I'm assuming you scaled one of them.

If you resized the cube or cylinder try using 'apply object transform' and mark the scale and rotation. Probably even if you see the object as smaller or bigger, Blender doesn't take into account that the object has a new volume.

Most of the times it will fix things so that afterwards you can successfully apply the Boolean modifier.


Why does my my door have odd circular lighting effect on it? All of my other meshes have normal lighting on then but when it comes to my shower door it creates this odd circular effect that I just can't seem to remove.

The door is just a cube, however when I duplicate the single front face of the cube as shown here the lighting looks normal. When I extend the face to make a cube it adds that circular effect.

I haven't applied any materials to any of these objects yet so I'm not quite sure what is going on here.

I'm sorry I'm a little new to this. I tried creating a cube with the exact dimensions and it turned out fine. I've discovered that the lighting behaves in this way if you changed the shading here to 'Smooth' as opposed to 'flat'.


Rescaling a baked F-curve to values between 0 and 1 I'm trying to drive a shape key by baking an audio file to an F-curve. However, although the audio is normalized to -.1 dB, the peaks of the baked curve are far too low, and never even get close to 1. I need to highest peak to give the shape key a value of exactly 1, and the lowest to give the shape key a value of exactly 0, so I need to scale the F-curve and possibly also move it up or down a bit. To do this, I need to find the maximum and minimum values of the baked F-curve. How can I achieve this?

I've partially solved this by using some external programs.

First I edited the audio in Audacity, to get a curve shape I was happy with. I won't go in to the detailed workflow, as this would be beyond the scope of this site. What I did was basically applying a series of compression, normalization and amplification filters.

Secondly I resampled the audio to 32-bit floating point, as it seems Blender doesn't correctly map 16-bit integers to values between 0 and 1. For this I used SoX.

sox <infile> -b 32 -e floating-point <outfile>

(I could do both with either program, but I find SoX to be better at resampling and Audacity more intuitive, as I can see the changes directly affecting the shape of the curve).

Then, in Blender, I created an object (in this case an icosphere) and added a keyframe (in this case to the Z location) at frame 1.
Then, in the graph editor, Key > Bake Sound to F-curves

Experiment with the different settings. I used an attack time of 0 and left the others to their defaults. Increasing the attack time may make the curve smoother, but it may also introduce clipping below 1.0, if the curve starts decaying before the attack time has passed. Likewise the release time may introduce clipping above 0.0, if the curve turns upwards before the release time has passed.

Here's what I got

The animation gets a bit jumpy. This is mainly caused by resampling the audio to the framerate (e.g. resampling from 44100 samples/second from a CD source to 25 samples/second for a PAL DVD).


Creating a empty hemisphere I'd like to create an empty hemisphere in blender eevee, so i.e. a bowl, but I have no idea how to do it. If anyone could help me I would be very thankful.

Add a sphere
Enter edit mode Tab
Select top vertex and select more CtrlNumpad + until you reach the part you want
Delete X vertices


When i Import an obj it imports far away from the origin Title says all
how do i make it so the obj is imported to the origin, it was working fine yesterday...

Any model imported will have it's coordinates where they are in the file. There is nothing to fix here since the problem is not in Blender or importing, but in the file.

Imported objects are selected after importing, so just after importing you can set the origin to its center of geometry:

And then you can snap it to cursor that you can place anywhere you wish:


How can Blender be augmented to display color critical and accurate results? If I need to use Blender within a colour-accurate workflow, what do I have to do to set that up (including hardware calibration, etc)?

Further along the research path, when comparing the output against the expected using GIMP, the LUTs generated from displaycalGUI seem to be absolutely correct and as expected. A few quick tests later however, revealed that GIMP is stuck with Relative Colorimetric rendering no matter what setting is selected. Needless to say, this answer has been validated and I'm much more comfortable standing by the process that follows. I would encourage anyone interested in Absolute versus Relative colorimetric rendering intents to read the fantastic article at Cambridge in Color.

Who is this for?

Any artist that is delivering material should be aware of the pitfalls and complexities of colour rendition. If they aren't, clients and audience members will be delivered material that isn't the artist's intention.

How long does it take?

This depends on both the hardware involved and the experience of the artist. The bulk of the time will be spent sampling on-screen values. An artist familiar with the process can expect reasonable quality results in fifteen minutes, with high quality results taking longer.

What should I know?

While it is possible to follow this guide without prior knowledge, an awareness of colour and its management is advised.

What do I need to do this?

The measurement of colours and intensity from a display or other output device requires a great degree of accuracy. This requires either a colorimeter or a spectrophotometer.

What type of device should I get?

The X-Rite ColorMunki Display and the i1Display Pro are extremely reasonably priced and high quality colorimeter instruments, differing only in their processing times in the darker regions. Both require no additional binary blobs to drive them. For greater accuracy, a spectrophotometer is advised. At this time, the ColorHug or other measuring instruments cannot be recommended.

What software do I require?

The software that comes pre-packaged with the various devices is often lacking in artist-driven control so much so as to make the software effectively useless. With specific regard to Blender and other motion picture forms of colour management, the software must support the generation of 1D and 3D LUTs. One of the most sophisticated pieces of software available to achieve this is dispcalGUI, which is built atop of the robust ArgyllCMS toolset. In some instances, you will also require the ArgyllCMS application files.

What should I know about my hardware?

If we zoom into a single pixel on your screen, we will typically see a set of three unique micro emitting regions. These regions are normally red, green, and blue. What many artists don't realize however, is that the colours of the red, green, and blue filters are unique and different across a range of hardware, despite often being labelled "sRGB", and vary immensely. The quality of the filters, spectral output, intensity output at various levels, age of hardware, white point, and a plethora of other factors all contribute to a near random range of output values for any given RGB triplet output to them. The limit of the range of colours, or gamut, a display can produce is permanently bounded by the colour of these emitting regions.

Even if a display is capable of fully covering the volume of a small gamut such as sRGB, it does not mean that an artist can use unadjusted RGB values to display sRGB content. The values must be evaluated for their intended colour against the actual output the display produces. This is known as characterizing or profiling.

I have a wide gamut display.

Expensive wide gamut displays, from Sony Trimaster ELs and Flanders Scientifics to less expensive Eizos and Lacies, increase the chance of incorrect colour output because the colour of the individual RGB emitters are radically different from the canonized default of sRGB. An artist using such a panel must exert extra care and attention to settings or risk never accurately outputting sRGB primary based colours. This answer relies on a wide gamut display being set to sRGB emulation mode for the sake of clarity.

What should I do as first steps?

If you are using a wide gamut display, ideally enable sRGB mode. This will trigger a low level hardware adjusted setting that will emulate sRGB output from your wide gamut display.
Backlight technology takes time to warm up to a constant level, so assert that your display has been illuminated for at least twenty to thirty minutes. This includes not being in a standby or power save mode.

Do I need to do anything prior to proceeding?

Colour management and display can be complicated by various operating systems and applications, and no operating system nor piece of software can insulate you from these complexities.

If you have previously calibrated and profiled your display, you must disable any previous settings at your operating system level. This is because each calibration and profiling attempt is specifically geared to a particular set of settings and device states. If you fail to do this, your effort from here forward will be worthless.

I have downloaded the software and have my measuring device plugged in. What next?

Launch displaycalGUI. You should see something close to the screenshot below.

Under the Options, make sure that Advanced Options are enabled, and that Black and White drifting compensation is turned on. These settings reduce temperature from adversely influencing your measurements.

Profiling

Select the Profiling page, and you are ready to begin characterizing your display's response to known values.

Some may be wondering why we are purposefully skipping the calibration phase. The reason for this is brevity, but also practical. When we calibrate a display, anything beyond hardware controls requires the computer's video card to store intensity curves on it. Sometimes, due to broken drivers or otherwise, the intensity curves may be dropped without an artist becoming immediately aware. The net effect of this is that the profile generated becomes useless, and worse, many hours of colour critical work can be lost.

For more experienced artists, feel free to use the interactive adjustments to steer your display into the sRGB target as best as you can. If there is interest, this can be covered in a later answer.

From the Profiling page, select the sRGB swatch set. This will use a set of test patches that will model the display's response with particular focus on important sRGB gamut values.

From the Options menu, select Measure testchart, disable the calibration within the profile, and position your instrument as directed.

Select Start measurement and wait for the process to complete.

Generate the profile

When the software completes, you will have generated the response data from the known swatches. This now needs to be converted into an ICC / ICM file. Select Create profile from measurement data and select the data directory created from the previous step to find the correct file.

Create the 3D LUT

Many high end imaging applications do not use ICC based colour management systems as it is inappropriate for photographic and scene referred imaging. As a result, we will need a particular type of file that OpenColorIO, the colour management system in place within Blender, can understand.

The relevant selections we need are as follows:

Our output space coming from a default Blender configuration assumes sRGB / REC.709 coloured primaries, sRGB D65 white point, and sRGB transfer curve. As such, we select the Source profile to be the sRGB profile included with Argyll.
We want an unmodified tone curve.
Our Target profile is what we want to filter the values from Blender coming out of into. We select the profile we generated from the output above.
To avoid inconsistent bending of our values, we select Absolute colorimetric. This will attempt to display as close to a true D65 sRGB image regardless of our current display's white point. If we wish to have the software compensate for our measured white point, we should select Relative colorimetric. These are the only two most mathematically correct rendering intents as a general rule, with many others being nonstandard and custom approaches.
We select the Sony Imageworks 3D floating point LUT format, with full range input and output.
The maximum LUT size assures best quality conversions where available.

Hooking the 3D LUT into Blender

The final step is to hook the 3D LUT we generated into the Blender display chain output transformation. This will require editing the OpenColorIO configuration file and placing the generated 3D LUT above into the correct directory.

Our first step is to copy the generated 3D LUT into the correct directory so that Blender can utilize it. The 3D spi3d file should be placed in the colormanagement/luts directory below your installation. That is, if we are using version 2.74, the full path from within our base Blender directory would be:
    /bin/2.74/datafiles/colormanagement/luts

Finally, we need to adjust the config.ocio file. Open the config.ocio file using a text editor.

<BLENDER_DIRECTORY>/bin/2.74/datafiles/colormanagement/config.ocio

We need to first create the actual colorspace reference within the file. We will use the generic sRGB float based transform as a base, and simply append our corrective 3D LUT to it. After the sRGB transform definition, add the following transformation stanza:

- !<ColorSpace>
    name: sRGB Corrected
    family: display
    equalitygroup:
    bitdepth: 32f
    description: |
      Corrected sRGB display
    isdata: false
    allocation: uniform
    allocationvars: [-0.125, 4.875]
    from_reference: !<GroupTransform>
      children:
        - !<FileTransform> {src: srgb.spi1d, interpolation: linear, direction: inverse}
        - !<FileTransform> {src: <NAME_OF_YOUR_LUT>.spi3d, interpolation: best}

At the top of the file, we will need to add our sRGB Corrected transform to our list of options for the view outputs.

  sRGB:
    - !<View> {name: Default, colorspace: sRGB}
    - !<View> {name: RRT, colorspace: rrt_srgb}
    - !<View> {name: Film, colorspace: srgb8}
    - !<View> {name: Raw, colorspace: Raw}
    - !<View> {name: Log, colorspace: lg10}
    - !<View> {name: Corrected, colorspace: sRGB Corrected}

This will enable you to view your transform in the Scene's colormanagement settings via selecting the option Corrected.


Playback Rate Suddenly Changes I am a total newcomer to using Blender, so I probably have something not adjusted correctly.  Here is my problem.  I will be editing videos using the video editor, and all of a sudden, the video will jump to playing 3-4X the normal rate.  I am not making changes to the frame rate or anything else.  In one instance, I watched a section of video and it was working fine, but then I got up and got someone to come look at it, and when I got back to the computer it was playing faster.

I have yet to discover a way to fix this issue.  I will try adjusting frame rates and other items, but it still flies over the video in the preview window at probably somewhere around 100-120 fps.

There is a pretty good explanation from Mikeycal Meyers.

It's about the "Refresh Sequencer" function and the MPEG Preseek option (set to its maximum of 50) in each video Strip Property. If this won't help you, try to use Proxies which take some time to be built, but they should not only improve your cutting workflow but eliminate your issue as well.


Why is part of my model black when rendering? I have used a simple mesh and to corner I sculpt to give some rough shape. I added the boolean modifier to the name and applied all the modifiers. Added the texture as material. Remove doubles & Normals. Looks good in object mode. When I press Shift+Z the name looks black.

Object Mode

Rendered Mode

Ok, here is a simple way:

select the area that has black letters by pressing B and press U to unwrap and select Projection from view

Sorry for the previous answer. Did not test it through enough.


Strange lightning - what is wrong with my model? I am a total beginner in modelling but would claim to know the basics.
Here is how my model looks rendered in blender:

As you can see there are many strange ligthning artifacts, and the edge is not lit how one would expect. The beveled faces at the edges of this thing look weird, too.
The normals seem to be correct (I also recalculated them):

So what am I doing wrong here? It is worth mentioning, that this only occurs when i triangulate the model. Before that, everything except of the beveled areas looked okay. The artifacts vary in size and intensity when i subdivide the faces even further.

What am I doing wrong?

Try turning on this, and play with the angle setting.

This model is a bit of a mess though, so many triangles, some don't look planar, those things are going to ruin your shading. Try to keep everything as quad as much as you can.


How do I join two models together without messing up the texture? I have a model of a human body and a human head, and both models use the same texture file. When I go to join them together into one form, however, the head's texture jumps to all bundled in the lower left corner,messing it up. how can I stop this from happening?

Your are using two UV Maps with different names.

When you join the meshes, the UV Maps will be mantained:

If you want to merge the UV Maps, just assign them the same name before merging.


Why does changing animation layer make my model very small? I am selecting a certain animation layer, and my model becomes really small.
As it is hard to describe, I have uploaded a video here.
Does anybody see what might be going wrong here?
What could I check?

Thank you.

If you open the action called Genesis2Female|Animation|Base Layer you can see that you've keyframed the XYZ scale of the armature itself:

You can see the keyframed scale in the N panel > Item > Transform, it has been set at 0.01:

When you open your file, we can see that the armature is set to a default scale of 1/1/1, so as soon as you select this action, the armature is scaled down to 0.01 of its size.
To fix that, select the action, select the 3 Scale tracks and press X.
The little bit confusing thing is that the armature transforms (location, rotation and scale) are part of an action, not only the bone keyframes.


Ping Pong Math node - what does it do? Reading through the math node docs, I came across a math function named "ping-pong".
The docs state that ping-pong does the following

The output value is moved between 0.0 and the Scale based on the input value.

What in the world does that mean?  Can anyone tell me what the actual ping-pong function is?  What input values lead to an output of 0, and what input values lead to an output of "scale"?

It's a positive symmetrical triangle-wave, amplitude Scale, period  2 * Scale, 0 at 0.

Here's the function illustrated with 'Scale' (from the bottom up) set to 1, 0.5, and 0.333.
These planes are 8 units across, and 2 up, 0 at center.
You could roll your own like this:
PingPong(Value) = Scale - abs( (abs(Value) % (2*Scale)) - Scale)

..but someone else might come up with a neater way.. :)
You could wrap up the node like this to give more intuitive inputs?


Blend-Files Preview Thumbnails with Background Images in March 2019 when Blender 2.8 non-stable was released, there was a feature added which is apparently missing now from the 2.8 stable release.

In the previous release you could see the camera background images in your .blend thumbnail preview.

With 2.8 stable they're all gone. Is there any way to get this feature back?

Thanks!

In the Blender File Browser was able to show previews by clicking on box shown and the clicking on show previews.

My bad, did not notice I was in 2.81. Switched to 2.80 and does not work.
Sorry for incorrect information.
In my present version of 2.81 the settings in preferences don't stick.


How do I seperate shared vertices when creating seams for UV unwrapping? I have a square mesh, I create a seam along the top edges (like a lid) and I UV unwrap the whole thing.

The UV mesh looks correct, but when I select an edge, the corner vertice is shared by an edge that is not part of the seam as well. So the UV mesh becomes selected in multiple places.

How can I get a vertice on a seam to separate from a shared edge?

Does that makes sense?

Maybe switch the selection mode to Shared Location, it will take the seam into account:


How do I get rid of right click context menu I was in blender and I was just trying to make a render but I cant right click select. Instead of selecting with right click, a stupid context menu pops up. I need help

In Edit > Preferences > Keymap, you can change the 'select with' parameter to right. Left click will automatically change to Cursor. This used to be the default behaviour till version 2.79


trying to add an image to the face of an object I'm  modeling an indoor football field which is like a hockey arena.

I can not figure out how to get the image applied to the surface of the cube which I've positioned as the field.

I've created the field in Fireworks to the dimensions of the cube and I am unable to get it to render on the object face.

I've looked at over a half dozen tutorials and I'm still unable to get it work...

Can someone please simply explain the steps for me...

Thanks
Trey

Assuming the dimensions of the face match the dimensions of the image (to prevent stretching) and also assuming you're using cycles render, simply

With the cube selected, press tab to enter edit mode
Press "u" and select smart UV project. Make sure you have the faces selected.
(keep settings the same, just click "ok")
Head on over to the UV image editor
Make sure you're still in edit mode, and you will see the faces unwrapped
on the image editor like this:
Now add your image by clicking "open" at the bottom left and find your image
Rescale the face to fit the image by selecting it (yours will have an image):

In the materials tab, click "use nodes" and on the color, click the dot next to the color and select "image texture"
Open image
and you're done.
Here's an example :

Here is the material tab:

When you click the dot, select image texture:

If the UV unwrapping worked out, it should appear in rendered view
(note: it will not appear in solid viewport; switch to rendered or texture)


How to create this kind of spiral tube? I've modeled this example manually by extruding to show you what I mean, but its obviously neither a fast nor a perfectly accurate way. So how would you do it?

One way to do this is with a curves addon.

Go to the user preferences by pressing CtrlAltU. Under Addons type "extra" into the search field. Enable the checkbox of "Add Curve: Extra Objects".
This will give you some additional options to create curves.

Now go back to the 3D view and press ShiftA to add a new object and select Curve->Spirals.

In the Tools shelf (the menu on the left of the 3D view that is toggled by pressing T) settings for the spiral will appear. Play around with them until you are satisfied with the shape of the spiral. You probably want a spiral of type 1 or 2 and a "Curve Type" of 1 (for smoothness).

To give the spiral some thickness you will have to add a taper object to the curve. Go to a new layer and add a Bezier Curve. The distance of the curve from its object origin will represent the thickness of you spiral along its length. For a linarly increasing thickness edit the curve to look something like this:

The shape around the spiral is determied by a bevel object. Just add a "Circle" curve. It does not matter if it is a Bezier Circle (just called Circle in the menu) or a Nurbs Circle.

Go back to the layer with the spiral and select the spiral. Go to the curve settings and select the bezier curve from the other layer as "Taper Object" and the circle as "Bevel Object".

The result should look like this:

You can play around with the shape of the taper and bevel object to achieve diffent effects. To close the end of the spiral you can also enable "Fill Caps".


Building Blender from source with static linking I'm following these instructions to build Blender from source as a Python module. As I need to share my build with others in a different runtime environment, I need to build it with static linking.

I did

cmake ../blender -DPYTHON_LIBRARY="/home/anaconda3/envs/project/lib/libpython3.6m.a" -DPYTHON_INCLUDE_DIR="/home/anaconda3/envs/project/include/python3.6m" -DOPENIMAGEIO_LIBRARY="$HOME/blender-deps/built/oiio/lib/libOpenImageIO.so" -DOPENIMAGEIO_INCLUDE_DIR="$HOME/blender-deps/built/oiio/include" -DWITH_PYTHON_MODULE=ON -DWITH_PYTHON_INSTALL=OFF -DWITH_STATIC_LIBS=ON
make -j; make install

and failed at the very end

[100%] Building C object source/creator/CMakeFiles/blender.dir/creator_args.c.o
[100%] Building C object source/creator/CMakeFiles/blender.dir/buildinfo.c.o
[100%] Linking CXX shared module ../../bin/bpy.so
lto1: internal compiler error: in lto_tag_to_tree_code, at lto-streamer.h:1005
Please submit a full bug report,
with preprocessed source if appropriate.
See <file:///usr/share/doc/gcc-7/README.Bugs> for instructions.
lto-wrapper: fatal error: /usr/bin/c++ returned 1 exit status
compilation terminated.
/usr/bin/ld.gold: fatal error: lto-wrapper failed
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
source/creator/CMakeFiles/blender.dir/build.make:319: recipe for target 'bin/bpy.so' failed
make[2]: *** [bin/bpy.so] Error 1
CMakeFiles/Makefile2:7690: recipe for target 'source/creator/CMakeFiles/blender.dir/all' failed
make[1]: *** [source/creator/CMakeFiles/blender.dir/all] Error 2
Makefile:162: recipe for target 'all' failed
make: *** [all] Error 2

This error is too obscure for me to figure out what is wrong.

The most relevant line here is:

lto1: internal compiler error: in lto_tag_to_tree_code, at lto-streamer.h:1005 Please submit a full bug report

The compiler has hit code that caused it to fail.  It's not possible to continue this build without fixing the compiler, or changing compilers.

I encourage you to submit a bug report.  gcc-7 is still widely deployed and this will definitely get looked at.


Colors in object mode are different to render mode Alright so I have been trying to figure this out when I am in object mode making materials for my low poly island when I texture a face the color is dark that when I would be in render mode.
When I pick the color it shows differently to what is shown, I have factory reset and still not fixed.

The problem am seeing there is SPECULAR problem.

The solution will be to change the SPECULAR COLOR to something dark,

or

Change the SPECULAR INTENSITY from 0.5 to 0 in the material panel


Accessing plane track using Python API I'm new to Blender and the Python language and I'm trying to extract the coordinates of the corners of a plane track from all the frames of a clip. I'm having trouble even accessing(?) the plane track object/variable. I hover over the text field containing the name of the plane track and it says

...
bpy.data.movieclips["1340wbdc0000.jpeg"].tracking.plane_tracks["pt"].name

I type that line into the console, but then I get the error

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
KeyError: 'bpy_prop_collection[key]: key "pt" not found'

However, if I enter

D.movieclips["1340wbdc0000.jpeg"].tracking.plane_tracks.active

The console "responds" with

bpy.data.movieclips['1340wbdc0000.jpeg'].tracking.plane_tracks["pt"]

This is really making me very confused and frustrated. What am I doing wrong? Could this be a bug since plane tracking is a new feature?

Works for me in 2.69:

>>> bpy.data.movieclips[0].tracking.plane_tracks.active.markers[0].corners[0][:]
#(0.12633077800273895, 0.4383348524570465)

plane_tracks.active gives me the correct name, even if I rename it in the right sidebar of the movieclip editor. You could try plane_tracks["Plane Track"] or plane_tracks[0] instead.

Do should deselect all in the movieclip editor and re-select the tracking plane and see if plane_track.active changes to the correct name.

clip = bpy.data.movieclips["1100wbdc0000.jpeg"]
print("\nMovie Clip %s" % clip.name)

for i, ob in enumerate(clip.tracking.objects):
    print("\n\tTracking Object %s" % ob.name)

    for j, pt in enumerate(ob.plane_tracks):
        print("\t\tPlane Track %i" % j)

        for k, marker in enumerate(pt.markers):
            print("\t\t\tMarker %i" % k)

            for l, corner in enumerate(marker.corners):
                print("\t\t\t\tCorner %i = %f / %f" % (l, corner[0], corner[1]))


How do I achieve this simple shape? I want to round off one level of the mesh into the next. As you can see, I’ve tried loop cuts both ways but it always ends up looking off because of how distorted the last few faces are. Is it necessary that I add an absolutely ridiculous amount of loops here? There must be a better way.

This is the effect I’m trying to achieve.

John

you should try to mark those edges and use the bevel modifier with the option set to bevel weight, instead of using way too many cuts like you did.
Dissolve all edges loops between the two cuts.
OR use a bevel on a sharp corner edge with a suitable amount of division, like in my drawing. Usually, 3 or 4 cuts are enough to achieve the effect you want, provided that you also have a sufficient amount of geometry (for example a subdivision modifier in the stack).

Hope it helps. Check my drawing on your example.


toon material from blender internal rendered in cycles render engine? Is it possible the toon material and specular from the blender internal render engine to be rendered in the cycles render engine by using render layers?

Blender internal and cycles are completely separate rendering engines, only the object surface data can be shared between them. Each render engine uses incompatible material data.

To combine the two render engines you can render an image from each engine and composite the two results together. You can either do this manually by saving one or both of the results to file and inputting the files in the compositor or 2d graphics application. Or you can have two scenes, one using blender internal and one using cycles that can both be input into the compositor.

BlenderCookie has a tutorial explaining this in more detail.


Using higher subsurface modifier values I found this nice playlist of general tips. Particularly I am interested in the first video.

You can clearly see, at about 1:50 that the author is using a value of five in his subsurface modifier. I can only go as up as 6 though, and as a result my shape is not that much smooth.

Is it something on my end, and if yes, how can I make this shape completely smooth?

Yes, you can use higher subsurf levels by typing the values directly, rather than using the slider.
See How can I set sliders to values outside the limits allowed by their slider?

However in this case it looks like the bumpiness is more likely to have been caused by something like this:
Weird deformation between large ngon and edge ring
To fix it, try adding some supporting geometry.


Drawing 2D in Blender I was wondering

There was this image on Blender.org, but how to make it?

Greace pencil is sure but rendering and other I don't know

Kind regards :)

I don't think this is made entirely with the grease pencil. For results like that you should take a look at freestyle line rendering.


Enable/disable Force Field function of keyframe So I have a simulation where I want some force fields to be working from frame X to frame Y, with the rest of the frames performing other types of simulations... is there a way to achieve this, including via python scripting?

Thanks!

if you are in blender 2.8, you can click the small circle next to the settings you are trying to animate (frame X), which will make it go brown, then go to frame Y and change the value and then click the diamond shape to lock the setting


Issue with grid and Blender Unit (Screenshot attached) I hope all is well. I've been having an issue with Grids and the Blender Unit during my 3D designs.

For context, I want to set the Blender Unit (length) to be 1:1 with millimeters. I'm expecting that to mean that every subdivision of the grids should equal 1 mm. But, as you can see from the screenshot, it still equals 1000 mm or 1 meter.

Does anyone happen to know what I'm doing wrong here?

Try setting the unit scale to .001. The drop down settings only affect what prefix is used to display the units, not the actual scaling.


Unwanted sharp shadows when using a point lamp I'm learning the basics and while modeling a simple volcano using a point lamp for the magma I keep getting unnatural sharp shadows, even when disabling ray shadow. I don't think the problem is in the mesh (you can find the .blend file in the comments). Here are some examples:

In this case I put the lamp outside the crater. If I disable Ray Shadow here it gets better.

Now placing the lamp inside the crater. Even when I disable Ray Shadow I keep getting those sharp transitions.

You can also try changing the shadow's Soft Size to affect how sharp or blurred the shadows will be.  If you are using Blender Render(Internal), the samples for the shadows are right next to the soft size.

For Cycles, the lamp size can be used to alter the softness of the shadows.


How do I fade in/out an object in Blender 2.8 Eevee? I'm kinda new to using Blender Eevee. I used to use Cycles, but that took too long to render. I'm doing a text animation with a video in the background, and I want the text to fade in and fade out. However, I cannot do this because Eevee is different from Cycles. Is there any way I can animate the transparency of an object so I can fade it in and out?

Of course it is. The only "catch" is to change Blend Mode under Material > Settings tab to Alpha Blend and turn off Show Backface.

Then regularly you can animate Factor between your shader and Transparent shader (full white colour).


Unfold 2 polygons into a plane, without distorting the dimensions of the polygons I have a bunch of 2 polygon objects, each with a fold between 2 vertices. I need to figure out the angle of the bend and then "Unfold" into a flat plane without distorting the dims of the two polygons. These will be exported as 2D for waterjet cutting.

Picture is an example of the objects.

This is a fun question, so let me show my limited knowledge :).

1) Edge angle
You can display the angle of the bend by enabling Edge Angle in the Overlay menu.
It's only visible in Edit Mode, and you have to have the edge selected.

2) Unfolding into 2D
Very fast and very dirty way for the unfolding bit:
If you unwrap your mesh with Smart UV project, you will get it unfolded as a UV map.
If you do it right, it will perfectly correspond to the shape of the faces.
You can then  export it as a .png,.svg or eps.

Unwrap your mesh with Smart UV project

Export your UV map as svg.

Note:
This is definitely a "solution".
But maybe the Blender Elders will banish me to hell for this.


i want to create a light that cycles through all colours in the rgb range, how would i do so? I want to make it cycle through colours to emulate an RGB led light, like a Philips hue, it's for a lamp I'm making which will be in a mockup room.

Select HSL color mode for interpolation.
Choose Clockwise method.
Select pure red color - R: 1, G: 0, B: 0.
Select pure red color and add a bit of blue - R: 1, G: 0, B: 0.01.
Animate Factor - press I over it to put keyframe on selected time frame.


How can i make a proper light inside a circle with objects so their surface is illuminated? I'm trying to do a Solar System representation with Cycles, i already have the planets in order, the orbits, and i'm basing my file on a picture, and i'm trying to achieve the same illumination, but it seems pretty hard, so maybe or i'm using the wrong options, or even position of lighting.
The thing is, i do not want to put the Sun on the image because later i'll add it in another software, but what i want to achieve is the same kind of lighting effect.
Here's my reference (plus, my image will not have any kind of background image)

And this is what happens if i add a Point light inside the circles, i think the lighting is too weak for the objects and also if i add more Strenght to it, probably the planets would end up being totally white (or the color of the light)

Also, i tried putting an Emission object (a simple sphere, on this case) and again, the lighting seems too weak compared to the reference, and if i add more Strenght..this happens:

Please if someone have a method to add this kind of lighting, or maybe even a trick, please tell me, i'm really in trouble right now with this one..

The light sources can be invisible to the camera. Set Cycles Ray Visibility to FALSE

You mentioned trick.  Consider the point light external to the sphere.  Set Cycles Ray Visibility to FALSE.  Each planet has a sister light planet not visible to the camera.  They can both rotate relative to Sun. You may consider [Tracking] Constraint.
The Sun. Set Cycles Ray Visibility to FALSE.


How to merge or move two vertices without affecting the others? I want to merge two vertices into one, but Blender help me to select the third one automatically. I didn't turn one Proportional Editing Mode. Would anyone here can explain why? Please go to my shared videos below to see my problem in detail, if my word is not clear enough. Thank you

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7o5ywq5dlOgOFNVVHhkZzljcjQ/view?usp=sharing

As I see, you are using Ctrl + mouse click instead Shift + mouse click  for selecting multiple vertexes.  Ctrl + mouse click is a Pick Shortest Path function and select road from vertex to vertex.

To add vertex to selection use Shift + mouse click


Can I align a bone to face normals? I aligned the bone to the normal of the face as in the gif.
But bone roll is a problem.
I manually approximated to set the value of roll but it is not numerically correct.
Do you know a good way?

Select the face and create a new orientation coordinate system clicking the plus button. Then set cursor to selected, then select the head of the bone and set selection to cursor, then do the same with its tail ( so both are in the same spot) then (still with only tail selected) press G Z, move the mouse and confirm LMB.

This procedure will automatically set the roll.


How do i change just one side of a mirrored model? I'm working on a model of a cat and i wanted to give it an earring on one side and a cut in the ear on the other. The problem is i've only created one half of the model and used the mirror modifier. so how will i be able to change one side?

If you want to break symmetry you have to remove the mirror modifier by clicking "Apply". Unfortunately once i'ts done you can't go back, so be sure that your cat has enough details before you apply the modifier.

Another way to do that to keep the mirror modifier would be to add another modifier on the stack, over the mirror modifier. In your case, you could add a boolean modifier to make the cut, but think to hide this modifier if you want to edit the base mesh if it is high poly, it can slow down blender.


Duplicate and scale edges but keep in the same mesh So I am working on a low poly car, I forgot to add more detail around the wheels, so I want to add new edges at the exact position as the current but scaled up. I am not the most advanced blender user and can't seem to find a way to basically extend these edges but keep one connected to the outer face and the other connected to the inner face of the wheel.

See:

How would I achieve this? Thanks!

There may be a snappier way, but I would:

CtrlB bevel the outer curve of the wheel-arch, Segments 2, Profile 1
CtrlX dissolve the surplus loop on the inside of the arch
Select the new edges, and GG with C Loop Slide to adjust the depth of the new loop's offset..

..depending on your previous use of the Loop Slide, you may have to hit E to get the sliding loop to be parallel to one side or the other, and maybe F to flip which side.


Change or update audio start with video texture start frame I am looking for a way to link the video texture start frame with the audio start frame in the video sequencer.

My intention is as follows

Import multiple movies as Image plane in Blender
Then import the respective audio track in blender video sequencer. Align the audio track by matching the start frame in the video texture and video sequencer. This is a manual process. But I am ok with it. I am not sure how to link the start frame of video with the start frame of audio. - This is what I need.
Then animate camera pan and zoom and update the video start texture according to the animation manually.
Then I expect the audio start frame to be adjusted automatically - This is what I want to happen

I searched google and found that drivers in blender can be used for these purposes. But soon realized that there are no drivers for both the options. I also tried to create a custom property. But had no success.

Please suggest

Here is a workaround solution

A custom property, named "audio" is added to the movie texture, with a value of the soundstrip name.  Every time the script is run it updates the audio strip, pointed to by the audio key, to have the same frame_start as the tex.

import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
sequences = scene.sequence_editor.sequences_all
# all the textures with audio custom prop
textures = [t for t in bpy.data.textures if "audio" in t.keys()]

for t in textures:
    audio_strip = sequences.get(t["audio"])
    if audio_strip:
        audio_strip.frame_start = t.image_user.frame_start


How to texture a DEM data with satellite imagery on Blender ? I'm very new with Blender and I'm interested in making 3d visualizations of real Digital Elevation Model data.

Blender is a great tool for 3d visualizations, I've figured out how to create a 3d model from USGS dem data. Please check it here ; https://sketchfab.com/models/7cb8fbac61c0485b8dc0130b7bec2f23

But my problem is texturing this data with real satellite imagery. I've tried my things and searched the internet for solution but all I've found was texturing non-real data. In Terragen texturing a DEM with satellite imagery can be done and what I'm looking for is something like this ;

www.archer-designs.com/tutorials/usgs-elevaton-data-with-terragen-2/

But how can I do it with Blender?

Note : I've tried this tutorial but it seems uncompleted. Last part is not clear to me. http://johnflower.org/tutorial/make-mountains-blender-height-maps

First, you need to find the satellite image that corresponds to the exact same coordinates of the DEM and is generated using same projection.

Load the image from the satellite image in the UV/Image editor.

Go to top orthogonal view, select your model.

Enter edit mode Tab.

Press A to select all. Press U to UV unwrap and choose Project form view bounds.

Still in edit mode create a material that uses the image as part of the texture and set the coordinates to use the UVs.

Assign then the material to the mesh.


OSL distortion effect I have a simple math function that produce a saw-like pattern. The question is - How to apply a distortion effect to it?

Here's an example of the code:

shader basic_function(
point Pos = P,
output float f = 0)

{float x = Pos[0];
float y = Pos[1];
float z = Pos[2];

f = (z + 0.5 - floor(z));}

PS
Honestly, Im a new one in osl shader writing so it possible that I dont understand what im doing.

You can use the same methods as you would use to apply distortion to a node-based material - ie, distort the input coordinates.

For example, change the script to include a DistortFactor and DistortScale as follows :

shader basic_function(
point Pos = P,
float DistortFactor = 0.0,
float DistortScale = 1.0,
output float f = 0)

{

vector distortion = noise("perlin", P*DistortScale)*DistortFactor;

float x = Pos[0]+distortion[0];
float y = Pos[1]+distortion[1];
float z = Pos[2]+distortion[2];

f = (z + 0.5 - floor(z));
}

This will give you two additional inputs on the script node to allow you to adjust the amount of distortion and its scale. The 'noise' function is used to generate distortion based on the point vector (P), scaled by the input DistortScale and multiplied by the input DistortFactor - and added in to the coordinates used to generate the "stripes".

This can produce the following result :

EDIT : As @LarryGritz pointed out, the above solution is generally only of use for static objects - any object using this shader which is moving through the scene (whether location, rotation, or scale) will move through the distortion and the pattern will change as it moves. To address this we need to transform the World coordinates of 'P' into Object coordinates so the OSL code becomes the following :

shader basic_function2(
point Pos = P,
float DistortFactor = 0.0,
float DistortScale = 1.0,
output float f = 0)

{

point Pobj = transform("world","object",Pos);

vector distortion = noise("perlin", Pobj*DistortScale)*DistortFactor;

float x = Pobj[0]+distortion[0];
float y = Pobj[1]+distortion[1];
float z = Pobj[2]+distortion[2];

f = (z + 0.5 - floor(z));
}

Note the use of the 'transform' function to convert from 'world' to 'object' coordinates (similar to the Vector Transform node in node-based materials).


How can I see my nvidia quadro 6000 in 2.80, 2.81 CUDA? I bought my computer two years ago.
In 2.79 or earlier I can see my quadro 6000 listed in the CUDA settings but now, starting with 2.80 I cannot see it.
Is there any way to fix this problem? I am using Windows 10 and I already updated my driver, but still, no change.

Thank you!

The requirements for GPU rendering are higher than the minimum requirements for running Blender.

  Supported Graphics Cards

  These requirements are for basic Blender operation, rendering using the GPU requires slightly different requirements.

The manual states that CUDA compute capability 3.0 or higher is required for GPU rendering. Graphics cards that do not meet that requirement will not be listed in the preferences.

  NVIDIA CUDA

  NVIDIA CUDA is supported for GPU rendering with NVIDIA graphics cards. Blender supports graphics cards with compute capability 3.0 and higher. To make sure your GPU is supported, see the list of NVIDIA graphics cards with the compute capabilities and supported graphics cards.

  NVIDIA CUDA GPU rendering is supported on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Since the Quadro 6000 has compute capability 2.0 it's not supported for GPU rendering.


Is there a way to highlight a face in the 3D viewport if you have its UV selected? So I know if you have a face selected in the 3D Viewport, its UV will pop up in the UV editor. What I want to know is, is there a way to highlight a face in the 3D viewport if you have its corresponding UV selected in the UV editor? Sometimes it's hard to tell where exactly the face of the UV is if it's small or if you have a lot of similarly shaped polygons/uv islands.

Yes, you need to enable the Sync button here:


Image Texture not showing I'm having an issue with my image texture. I want the eye texture to show up on the flat surface I have selected but no matter what I do it never shows up.

Help please.

You are in Solid display mode, switch to Rendered display mode.


Maintainable models and topology I come from CAD and I am having a hard time wrapping my head around how people maintain models in Blender and other mesh tools. If I want, say, a hole through my model, I seems that I have to commit to the general location of that hole, since it is going to be baked into the topology if the model. If I ever want to change the location of the hole it can be a huge job. It gets worse if I have, say, 30 holes in a row, and want to change it to 35 holes in a row with the same total span width.

I can always use modifiers, but eventually I have to apply them and fix all the edge flows they break. If I need to change something at a later date, I will have to redo the edge flows again. This is especially broken if I want to use subdivision surface modifiers, since I will either need detailed control geometry around my hole’s sharp corners, or I will need to do the Boolean after applying the subdivide and be stuck with a lot more geometry to retopo.

How do people deal with this? I make thousands of retrospective changes to a model as I move through a CAD design process. Is 3D modeling more like painting, where you commit to the structure of the workpiece as you go? Are there any tools that I could use to mitigate these issues? So far, I cannot see the advantage of working directly in meshes besides the output being easily UV-mapped. Because of this it is surprising to me that we don’t see more modeling done in parasolid software and then meshed into UV-friendly topologies using automated tools. Either this is just mathematically very difficult to do, or there are some strong advantages to the mesh workflow that I am not seeing.

Blender is not the best tool to use for procedural modeling workflow. Its workflow is quite destructive actually. There are better tools like Modo's MeshFusion, Houdini or Moi3D if you value procedurality.

It is possible to create the shapes parametrically and mesh them with clever math, there are some auto-retopology tools out there, but humans can do usually better than that. Maybe in couple of years there will be AI to do that well for us.

Since the workflow is destructive it's important to finalize the design before modeling. That's what concept art, sketches and 2D studies are for. There is some room for experimentation in modeling phase, but it should be well defined beforehand.


Keyframing start and end of smoke simulation Can anyone help me with quick smoke?
I am still very new to blender and I am confused on how I can key frame quick smoke to start at a certain frame with the explosion I have set up.

If you are using the mesh as the flow source,  then animate the Density of the Flow object.

Hover over the field and press I to add a keyframe. Or RMB  on the field and choose Insert Keyframe.
If you are using a emitter particle system, then use the start and end time of the particle system.


In BGE, how do I move an object up with a motion actuator for a few seconds then bring the object back to its original area I am making a game in which if you press e the character will lift up their shield to block an object. I am using a cube to detect objects so when i press e I want the cube to move up to avoid hitting with an obstacle, giving the illusion that you have blocked the obstacle with your shield. When I use the motion actuator it moves up fine but it just wont move back down automatically to receive another obstacle ahead. Thank you for any feedback.

I suggest to play an action that lifts the object.

A simple logic would be to have one sensor that measures when to block (e.g. keyboad sensor on E).

Activate an action actuator that plays the action in flipper mode. This means when the blocking request ends -> the action will be played reverse.


Viewer node in compositing doesn't show anything Viewer node in compositing doesn't show anything, I've rendered the image, unplugged and replugged the nodes, but it never displays anything for some reason.
uploaded the blender file here

Enable the Use Nodes check box in the compositor and refresh the Viewer node with Backspace.


How to scale multiple faces proportionally I am making a leather sofa texture. I need help. As you can see in the animated image below I want to extrude the edges from all sides.

I have press Alt + S to make it proportional on all sides. How do I scale all sides at same time?

Press Alt + E, then select Region (Vertex Normals).


How can I cast artificially darker shadows? I want to make certain shadows more prominent (using Cycles) without further illuminating the rest of the scene.

Example: I have a simple studio with a bowl of fruit and 3-point lighting.  The light looks great so I don't want to change it but I want the bowl to cast a darker shadow on the ground (without dimming the back-light).

Alternatively, and this would be really cool, an anti-light source.  Like a spot light that throws darkness instead of light. (Am I crazy for wanting this?)

Thanks!

You have three options.

You could add a light that is only visible to the shadow path, so it won't add any light, but it will cast shadows.  If you're happy with the scene otherwise, you should duplicate one of the existing lights and move it forward or back just a touch.
Another option is to add a "negative light", where you add a light with a color of white, and a negative value for the strength.  There aren't such things in real life (except maybe black-holes) but for some lighting effects it is a neat trick to add darkness.
Lastly you could do something with render layers, and render passes to get the shadow on it's own render layer and then control how dark it is during composting.


How do I get all those tabs to be the same in upgrades I have Blender 2.78 in the Tools shelf area it has all these tabs: Tools Create Relations Animation Physics Grease Pencil 3D Printing Navigation Layers Bool Tools Archimesh Sketchfab Measureit Sculpt

These tabs aren't in Version 2.79 How do I easily make them transfer from 2.78 to 2.79?

Thank You.

Those are addons. Whether they're enabled or not is stored in the startup file which is stored in your settings for Blender (e.g. for Windows: %APPDATA%/Roaming/Blender Foundation/Blender/[version]/).

When you install a new version on the splash screen there will be a "Copy Previous Settings" button. That should copy everything from the previous version and the folder for the previous version will remain just in case.

If the option isn't available (because you might have saved some settings and created a 2.79 folder), you can just delete the 2.79 folder, start Blender, and the option should be there now.

You could alternatively go into the User Preferences > Add-ons and re-enable the ones you want, one by one, but any options you might have changed then saved to the startup file will not be there.

I have also just copied the files manually. Probably not the best idea, but it has worked.


How to run a python script external to Blender to run bpy commands in Blender'spython console Platform = Ubuntu Linux 64 bit, Blender 2.77a

When creating models using bpy-based python scripting, there many times I need to type in the same code in Blender's python console; every time I invoke a new blender session.

For example if something is wrong with objects, I type the following:

for object in bpy.data.object:
    print(object.name + " is at location " + str(object.location))

I would like to put this in an xxx.py file I create in a documents folder so when I need to execute it in the Blender python console at each Blender session, all I would need to do is run the .py file ; this will save a lot of repetitive typing.

How do I do this?

Sam

This is the equivalent to running the script directly, referencing a scripts path from a 2 line text-block.

filename = "/full/path/to/myscript.py"
exec(compile(open(filename).read(), filename, 'exec'))

You might want to reference a script relative to the blend file.

import bpy
filepath = bpy.path.abspath("//myscript.py")
exec(compile(open(filepath).read(), filepath, 'exec'))


How to move a cube on a plane I'm using blender 2.8 and my simple scenario is: a plane and a cube mesh.

I want to move the cube on the plane without using the G command on the Z axis of the cube mesh, because doing freehand it's not perfect.

What's the best practice using blender tools?

Thanks

Helpful tricks to use when moving/scaling/rotating an object: to move on two axes while scaling/moving/rotating press S/G/R then SHFT+(axis you don't want to transform on). This will allow you to move on, say both X+Y axes, but not the Z axis if you press G-SHFT+Z, or only scale on X and Z- S-SHFT+Y.


Duplicate along path with uniform spacing I'm trying to create tank tracks and I've followed the steps outlined in the answer of this question How can I duplicate a mesh along a curve?

As long as the curve is somewhat straight the tracks align quite perfectly, but as soon as there is bend in the tracks, the connector thingy of the tracks do not want to align (red arrow in image)

I've tried moving the pivot of the individual track but I didn't improve the situation much..

How can I make sure that all my tracks align even if there's a curve in the path they follow?

There are generally three possibilities to cause such problem in this particular case:

The resolution of the curve path, which is the least possible factor here;
It seems that you are using Dupliface, it will also be curved by the Curve modifier see Figure 1;
The edge of per panel should better coincide with the joint, in order to minimize the disjoint look. See Figure 2.

I think the most accurate way is to use rigid body constraints, but that would be way too complicated comparing to this way. Hope it helps.