How do I decimate part of a mesh? I wish to decimate only a selected portion of my mesh.

The decimate modifier http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modifiers/Generate/Decimate  doesn't work in edit mode.

And if I switch to object mode, it works but it decimates the entire mesh!

How can I get it to only decimate the selection?

Using delete -> dissolve is no good, as this creates n-gons; I require triangles / quads.

Note that the decimate modifier is a Modifier, which non-destructively affects the entire mesh (unless a vertex group is defined). From the wiki:

Modifiers are automatic operations that affect an object in a non-destructive way. With modifiers, you can perform many effects automatically that would otherwise be tedious to do manually (such as subdivision surfaces) and without affecting the base topology of your object.

Because of this, a modifier which works in edit mode wouldn't really make sense because edit mode is for editing the base topology.
Note that some modifiers (such as Subsurf) support being viewed in edit mode, however this will not do what you want.
Vertex Groups:
You can however specify a part of the mesh for the modifier to affect by creating a vertex group and assigning that to the modifier.

Create a vertex group by by pressing the + button in Object Data > Vertex Groups

Assign geometry to it by selecting the geometry you want to decimate in edit mode and clicking Assign in Object Data > Vertex Groups:

Pick the vertex group in the modifier:

Sculpting:
Another option is to use Dynamic topology sculpting. This allows you to paint the areas for decimation. See my answer here for more detail.


How can I make link group that look like this image, and how to make that group to my local asset so i cant edit mesh, material, texture of it I'm blender beginner. I have a blend file called "final". And I have the other blend file call "origin".

How can I link the group name beigeBook of the "origin" blend file and add it to the beigeBook of "final" like this Image.
How can I make the group link "beigeBook" to my local group completely, so I can edit everything of this group: its object, its mesh, its material, its texture,...from final file and not effect the "origin" file.

Forgive me for my poor english, hope you understand

What you are looking for is the append option, it's similar to link, but this options is like import the group from the original file, so you copy or import the group from the original file and you can edit it in the final file without editing the group from the original file.

However, you can't edit the textures without edit the original textures because textures aren't part of the .blend file, they are independent files from the .blend file.


Constrain to any 2 axes during transform? I want to be able to lock my translation/scale operations to two axes at a time, say xy, xz or yz. It currently takes two operations (one for each axis).

Example, say for a cylinder, I would like to reduce the radius. I currently have to scale on the x axis first, then on the y axis, or I have to manually input the scale values in the object properties panel.

This option is easily accessible in 3dsmax via the axis constraints command bar. Or I can click the intersecting area between the 3d manipulator of the axes in question and move in that plane.

While Blender doesn't have widgets to do this, its fairly straightforward.

Using the Manipulator: Hold Shift and click on the Grab/Scale handles,
X locks YZ,
Y locks XZ,
Z locks XY
Using Transform keys: Grab with G or Scale with S,
ShiftX locks YZ,
ShiftY locks XZ,
ShiftZ locks XY

As @sambler notes, you can do G Shift X,X move along the objects Local YX axis, works for any axis of course.


Add Array to multiple objects I am trying to make a chain link fence. I created one of the links using four cylinders, but when I try to add the array to all four, it adds it to the last one I selected. Is there and way to use an array on the whole link?

You can copy the modifiers from the active object to the selected objects with ⎈ CtrlL> Modifiers, or you can join all the cylinders into one object with ⎈ CtrlJ.

In this case I would probably join them.


Stretch normal/displacement to give entire mesh one color Basically, I'm trying to create a material that, when any part of the object is in light, the entire object will light up. I assume this is the easiest approach:
I made a simple material that creates a dot on top of a sphere when light is cast upon it. Now, I'm trying to stretching the dot to the rest of the sphere.
I tried messing around with the displacement, but I haven't been able to stretch it completely. It only goes about a third of the way down (I didn't include this in the photo).
Anyone knoe how to do this? Maybe another method? I have very limited knowledge about normals. I'd appreciate any help. Thanks!

After hours of messing around, I finally found a way of doing this. If you stumble across this post seeking the same results, here's how I did it:

Firstly, I re-orientated the normals of each face of the sphere to point upwards.
Next, I disabled shadows for the material seen in the image above. This can be done in the material settings.
Lastly, I created another translucent material that, with the help of a shader to RGB and color ramp node, will only ever be black or white. I assigned this material to the bottom half of the sphere.

I'm satisfied with the result. The cons is that this method will work best with eevee, only work with spheres/simple objects and the top half of the sphere won't cast any shadows.
You can also get something similar by combining a translucent and diffuse shader with the add shader node. This might be better in some circumstances.
I hope this post helps someone ^^


How to get "bpy.ops.mesh.select_more()" working for a bmesh? When I select some meshes of my object by hand or with a script, the selection of some meshes "fades out". With "Select - Select More/Less - More) I can select these mesehs, too. But with a script I created a bmes to select my meshes and bpy.ops.mesh.select_more() leads to an error:

RuntimeError: Operator bpy.ops.object.select_more.poll() failed, context is incorrect

Is there an equivalent for this function with a bmesh?

I just needed to update the bmesh with some more parameters:

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me, False, False)

See the reference:
https://docs.blender.org/api/2.79/bmesh.html?highlight=update_edit_mesh#bmesh.update_edit_mesh


Place random object from group I'm working on a scene with a lot of container ships, where the ship is always the same, but i'd like to have a different arrangement of containers on the ships.

I've modelled the ship and a container. Is there a way to create a group or something similar of different container arrangements and then add instances of the ship that automatically have one of the predefined container arrangements on top of them randomly?

You could use particle systems, there's an option to use a group as particle pool, with pick random option.

Just set up a group with all your predefined container arrangements.

The downside is you wont be able to have each container as a singe object directly, and you have to manually change the seed for each instance.


Why does the y-axis of one of my objects appear to be backwards? My Transform Orientation is set to local. I have this object that when highlight is using a right hand co-ordinate system (z up, x forward, y orthogonal to the x-z plane):

I click on another object and the transform looks like this:

Which is not right handed. How do I reset this object to use right handed coordinates? I'm not sure what I did to make it like this. It's like the Y axis is backwards. Any ideas?

You have a negative scale - see the Scale panel on the right-hand side. Press Ctrl-A and Apply Scale and the transform should behave as you expect. You may also need to Recalculate Normals once you've applied the scale in case any are left pointing in the wrong direction.


How do I mirror my pose for symmetry I'm working with a face rig. When I rotate one bone in pose mode, I would like the same bone on the other side of the face to automatically rotate in symmetrical manner. Is this possible to do in Blender?

X-axis mirror will accomplish this for you. Go into edit mode, and under the options tab of the tool shelf you'll find the checkbox. See the GIF for a  visual.


Image Texture completely washed out in Render, but not in Viewport Shading Newbie to Blender here.
I'm trying to render an interior scene - it's a very simple gallery with two windows. I have added an Image Texture to the 'floor' - this is supposed to be a mid-dark brown wood texture. There are a number of lights in the room, as well as a light outside the windows. (I will attach pictures and the .blend file). In Viewport Shading, the room looks exactly how I need it to look - the colours are saturated and the lights look ok. However, when I go to render it, the floor texture becomes entirely washed out and grey. I have changed the world background colour, I have tried to see if the colours are desaturated, I have changed the image texture to be in the sRGB space - nothing seems to work. I also made a backup and removed all the lighting, and put one spot in the middle of the room to test if my lighting was the issue, and the problem persisted.
I imagine that there's something in the render settings that isn't quite right, but I can't figure out what it is.
Here is a google drive with the relevant pictures and .blend file.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SfXgCVzyjKCa4T7CZW_Y_u9V0HuZLg4p?usp=sharing
Hope you can help!

There is object "Plane" in a Collection "FloorPlan" which is hidden in viewport ("closed eye" symbol) but it's still rendered. So it overlaps the floor and causes the glitch in the final render.
In Blender 2.8x, the nasty thing is that objects in a collapsed collection, are still rendered. You need explicitly disabled them (or the collection) for render ("camera" icon). The toggle is not shown by default. You need to activate it in the filter settings of the outliner.

In Blender 2.9x, the checkbox of the collection collapses and inactivates the collection. Then everything inside of the collection is automatically hidden, in viewport and render.


Extrude not working in Blender 2.8 I can't extrude in blender 2.8.
So I merged a cube at its center.
I went to vertice mode and edit mode too. I tried to extrude the vertex but when I do it just duplicates it. I thought the problem was because it was a merged shape. So, I make another cube without merging it and extruded it. Guess what happened. It duplicated again! What do I do to extrude in blender 2.8? I press E and it doesn't work. Did they change the shortcut or what?

i do exactly what you say, and it works. Just download the latest 2.8 build


Weird rendering issue: "Rendered 387/390 tiles" I am experiencing rendering issues in my current Blender project (V 2.83). When I star rednering, after updating the object flags, Blender displays it has rendered 387/390 tiles (as shown below) although in the image, it is currently rendering the first 3 tiles. I have experienced this issue before and could usually solve it by simply restarting Blender, but this does not help anymore as the issue persists. Is this a bug in 2.83 or what can I change about it?

I have rendered previous frames of the animation which are almost identical without problems.
My system specs are as following:
CPU: Intel i7-6500U 2.5GHz
GPU: Nidia GeForce GTX 950M, 2GB VRAM
RAM: 16GB
If I let the rendering run for a while (about 10 minutes), it stops with an error message ("Launch exceeded timeout in cuCtxSynchronize")
Interestingly, when encountering this issue, my CPU is only at about 40% while when rendering normally, both my CPU and GPU are at aroun 100%! (I think this eliminates system problems as the cause of this issue).
Thanks in advance!

It turned out that after restarting my computer and blender a few times, the issue disappears; it was probably just an error of blender. I would however still be interested in what causes this and how it can be avoided.


How to ensure that two objects do not intersect before collision? I am dropping an object on top of another and I'm noticing some odd behavior. The object that falls intersects the object that it falls on top of:

It then proceeds to "wobble":

I have the following properties set for the objects:

What causes this to occur and how can I prevent the two objects from intersecting at all?

Here's a link to the .blend that demonstrates the problem:

Short Answer: Switch the collision shape on each object to Box, and you're good to go.

Long Answer:

Poor collisions are generally due to a combination of a few things:

First is the precision of the simulation. Increasing the quality of the simulation should help, but this will slow down the simulation considerably. Usually you can get away without increasing the simulation precision.

Second is the density of the colliding meshes. A subdivided plane has more geometry to work with, and will collide better than a plane. In your file, adding 3 edge loops on the X and Y axes of the floor object gave the simulation enough geometry to run perfectly. This isn't always the best solution of course, as often times dense meshes are undesirable.

Final thing is how the collisions are being calculated. Blender has a number of different collision shapes that can be used. The geometric shapes (box, sphere, etc.) will always be the most stable as they are the most simple. In your case, both your objects are boxes of some form, so using box collisions will be best. Testing this confirms this, as switching both to Box fixes the collisions and the simulation is very stable as well.

The other types of collisions can work as well, and using the Mesh option (which uses the actual shape of the mesh as the collision object) on each object did give decent collisions, but they were far from perfect. Adding some more geometry to the floor object did help significantly though when using Mesh. Convex Hull (which uses a collision object that is always convex while still fitting the object as best it can) doesn't appear to work at all in your case, as it seems to do a poor job of determining a good collision shape for a box like object. Adding a bit of geometry and changing the shape to be slightly rounded made it work great though.

More information on the collision types can be found here (about halfway down).

It is almost always the best case to keep the simulation as simple as possible, and to use the simplest collision shapes possible so that Blender has to do the fewest calculations, which will also keep your simulation nice and fast.


What is the difference between the two properties panels? In the Blender UI, what is the difference between the Properties region (the thing that can be opened with N) and the Properties editor (the thing at the very right)?

What do they apply to (e.g. current selection/viewport/globally) and what kind of settings can I expect in each of them? In other words, if I were a developer adding a feature, how would I decide whether to put the UI in the Properties panel or the Properties window?

The Properties region, or as it is commonly called the Properties panel, holds settings for the 3D view and the active object.
In the picture below of the properties region, all the selection specific items are at the top. The bottom seven in the red box are all settings for the 3D view. The grease Pencil can be either object specific or scene specific.

The Properties window, or Proprieties editor holds the settings for the entire scene and the active object. The first four contexts (aka "tabs"), in the red box, are for the scene and do not change with the active object. All the other tabs, with the exception of the Texture tab are dependent on the active object. The Texture tab, similar to the grease Pencil, can hold settings for more than just the active object.


How to bake textures with compositing applied? How to bake textures with compositing applied? I do some compositing with Compositing Nodes and I want to apply it to all of my baked textures. In other words I wanna bake with post-processing to bake all that beautiful stuff that I've made with my Compositing Nodes :)

You could try saving the image as close to the size of your texture as you can get and projection-mapping it (this does mean you'll need to render a few times, though). EDIT: You'd need to render at least one more time to get the back, and possibly a few more for more obscure angles and stitch the images together either via UV layers or externally, or, my favorite, with masking maps.


Mapping texture to repeat itself from a bigger map I'm working on a model for Cities: Skyline. It is my very first model for a game, as a mod or as an asset for my own game.

My question is about the texture usage on meshes. As this wiki says, the limit of map sizes is 2048x2048 though it is set for very special structures such as stadiums.

I'm modeling Brazilian National Congress. So far I have this model, not finished and, as you can see, partially textured.

Then I faced a problem with texture size used at the access ramp. I've set a texture and used the UV map to set the correct position of it and size. By this way, I could set a way bigger size making the tiles to repeat themselves as shown in this image:

But I need to use another texture for windows at the taller buildings for example and if I map the the texture as I've done with the ramp, it wont repeat that small portion of texture but the blank space as well, as shown here:

My question is, how can I get a texture to repeat itself selecting just a portion of it from a bigger map? Is what I'm doing right?

As everything will be packed onto just 1 texture, tiling would repeat the whole texture and this is unwanted. Nowadays engines don't have problems with polygons so if you want a part of that packed texture to repeat simply create the surface of many polygons each mapped to the same area on the packed image.

To utilize multiple tiling textures you would need support for multiple materials with multiple UV maps. Each section of model would then have different material with different UV map. Blender can do this but I have no clue about the format which you might use.


How to make Shadows-Only Render How can I achieve the following effect? Here, we see all shadows, and nothing else.

While Shady Puck's answer covers making a true shadow-only render, here is my approach to creating this type of render using the Cycles Toon shader in combination with a shadow pass and some manual contrast adjustment.

My final result:

Thanks to MrChimp2313 for the awesome CC-0 house model!

First just give everything a white Toon shader material, this will help with that contrasty, cartoony look.  The Toon shader also has two other properties (besides color), you should set the Size to something fairly high (close to 1.0) and leave the Smooth at 0.0.

Light the scene with a single sun lamp, with a fairly small shadow size.  Tweak the direction and strength to suit your tastes for your scene.

Set the environment color to Black, this way the shadows and highlights will all come from the sun lamp.

Make sure to turn on the Shadow render pass and render your image.  Keep in mind that for this effect to work you need to eliminate as much noise as possible, so use a lot of samples.

In the compositor, run the shadow pass image itself through a Color Ramp node.  You can tweak the swatches' positions to get the effect you are looking for, but the basic idea is to have them fairly close together to get that super high-contrast shadowy look.  I also found it looks a little more pleasing if you adjust the minimum color to be not pure black.


How to create a thinner fluid In Blender 2.92, I'm trying to simulate a thin liquid, like a syrup, running down a soft ice cream cone, like the picture attached (ice cream in glass jar)
The closest I got is on the second picture. The liquid is too thick, not in the sense of too viscous, but the thickness of the run out is too thick, it should be thinner, like a syrup, less like melted choc or honey. I tried to reduce viscosity, but the thickness remains the same. I tried reducing the size of my inflow object (cylinder), but now i'm at the minimum, below that, it won't flow out of the cylinder. I'm not sure which other parameters I can play with. The liquid should stick and spread more, but here it kind of lumps together.
My settings(particle radius was 1 in my picture, not 1.9):

Edit 22.4:
following proposal below, I have changed the resolution from 32 to 64. It's going in the right direction, see picture below. But processing time jumps from a few seconds to more than 20 min, for a simple scene like this. So I hesitate to crank up to 128. The liquid is still voxelized. I need to find a way to continue to improve without exploding processing time. Any idea ? Can I reduce the scale of my objects ?

The answer looks simple: the resolution of the domain is set to 32, which is very minimal. Turn this resolution up to get more voxels, and thus more precise fluids.


How to have a even thickness around the mesh Why the mesh not have even thickness all over the mesh with solidify modifier. At the bottom the rectangular shape its not having even thickness. I tried all the options in the solidify modifier (simple, complex) etc. All the face are all oriented in same direction. May i know whats going wrong with the mesh. Any suggestion or help. Thanks

The only way is to split corner edge. You can use Edge Split modifier if you don't care about overlapping geometry.

Or try to set Even and Offset minus 1 instead, so it looks a bit nicer from some angle. But the corner will always fail.

Solidify generates a copy of each vertex with offset in face normal direction. In your case the problem is RIM. Generated faces on sides are pointed in oposite direction. Blender tries calculate average connection that results in a twist.
By other words - the result you expect require additional geometry, it is more than  - copy vertex and offset. It meams you'r asking modifier to do more than was designed.


Curve Object Deformed by Curve - Distortions (Artefacts) Shaping curve object by curve (modifier) results in a terrible shape with cracked surface. Here is an extreme situation, but good visible issue.

Perspective

Top

How can I curve it smootly without adding more control points or remeshing?

switch to Edit mode, rotate text 90° in Z axis, so the text alongs Local Y axis (don't ask me why)

all control points set to Handle type (V) > Free

switch to Object mode and rotate along X axis 90°
add Curve Modifier > Deformed by Circle, Deformation Axis > -Z

Essential parts of successful deformation and avoiding other issues are

keep origins of both objects at the same place
align text direction to local Y axis
set handles type to Free

If a surface or shape isn't smooth enough increase Resolution U (Properties Editor > Object Data Properties > Resolution U). But first try increase deformation Curve, than Curve Object.


Exporting video to .mov in Blender 2.79 In the past, Blender (at least the Mac version) has had the ability to encode video files as .mov, the format used by Quicktime Player. However, with Blender 2.79 this feature seems to have vanished, for both the Internal and Cycles render engines. The release log happens to have the entry "Video encoding settings have been simplified, along with the addition of a Constant Rate Factor (CRF) mode" which I suppose could be the cause.

Does anyone know what happened—whether it is the aformentioned reason or something else—and how to export videos as Quicktime .mov in Blender 2.79?

In version 2.79 Video encoding settings have been simplified.
Read:https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.79/More_Features

Quicktime (.mov) is a Container.

Choose FFmpeg video in the output panel.

Select Quicktime as Container in the Encoding panel.


How to merge coinciding vertices? Steps to reproduce the simpliest case:

create a cube
select one face and scale it to 0

The result looks like a pyramid, but obviously it's not, since we have 4 vertices (instead of 1) in the same place (if we, say, grab-X one, we get some mess, like in picture 4, not like in picture 5). How do I merge those into one? Or is there a better way to collapse a face into an edge with the same position?

Select four top vertices, choose the edge select mode and press X-->Edge Collapse.


Armature IK Causing Heavy Distortion I've been trying to figure what's wrong with what I'm doing for a long time now.
The IK moves how I want it to, but...you can see what happens with the attached image.
.blend file: file

This looks like a mesh binding problem. You should make sure your mesh's scale is applied, and then attach the mesh to the skeleton or rig more closely. You should go into weight paint mode and make sure the vertices farther down the chain aren't being influenced by the object you're manipulating.
Good luck.


How to achieve uniform thickness with no breaks when extruding faces? Why is it that when I extrude individual faces, I am getting border with a discontinued profile at the corners (see picture)?

Is there any way to make the border continuous with uniform thickness around a given object "P".

If you extrude individual faces these faces will not be connected anymore. This is why you get discontinuities.

Extrude your faces by pressing E instead (this is equal to Extrude and Move on Normal). Then immediatly press Rmb or Esc to cancel the translation. now the extruded faces should be at the same location as the previous faces.

To get walls with an even thickness use Shrink/Fatten by pressing AltS. By moving your mouse you can change the thickness of your walls. To get even thickness independent of corner angles hold down the Alt key while moving the mouse. If you are satisfied press Lmb to apply the tranformation.


Animate a tube cylinder with "build" modifier - problem with round shape I'm trying to recreate this animation: https://laravel.com/img/hero/hero.mp4
I've got 2 tubes one inside the other (bezier curves + bevel attribute to make them thick).
Since I need to animate the internal tube (the colored one), I'm using the build modifier.
The problem is that the build modifier create the shape in a strange way similar to "wall brick building" (check the screenshot), while I need the tube to animate as it is made by water (so the internal tube grow parallel to the circumference), so smooth filling of the tube.
Any idea/suggestion on how to proceed?

Instead of using the build modifier, use the bezier's bevel end property.
After adding a bevel object or increasing the depth, you can change the Bevel End value and animate it by hovering over the property and pressing I or clicking on the circle to its right.


How do you do a walk cycle in production? I am an amateur animator and have only just started learning 3d animation.

All the tutorials that I have been studying teach the character walking in-place. I am wondering whether the character moves in place with the background props moving in the opposite direction so as to give the illusion of walking or do you just translate with offset and actually have the character moving (probably stupid question, but might as well ask it).

Thats right, first you create a walk cycle where your character walking in place. When you are done you could:
1st. keyframe the location of the character / armature
or
2nd. Add>Curve>Path and select your character Armature and then shift - select the path an ctrl - P > Follow Path

For me it's much easier to tweak a walk cycle in place and creat the forward animation separately with one of the 2 possibilities mentioned above.


How to snap to a face with axis constraints? I'm trying to work out a problem that's best described visually: the problem.
I'm trying to snap a vertex to where its y-axis contraint intersects the face of another object, which apparently doesn't work the way you think it would. Instead of snapping to that one possible point, the vertex just goes as far as the y-coordinate that the mouse points to on the face, while the vertex is still on the axis constraint.
Is there an official way to do this? If not, what is a good workaround or plugin to achieve this? I don't want to eyeball it, I want to do it precisely.
If not, is there a place where I can request this feature to the Blender developers? It seems people have been asking this question on different websites since 2013, yet it seems the developers haven't been informed about this at all. There never really was a helpful answer, and I was hoping that there'd be an update of sorts by now (with the coming of Blender 2.83), hence me asking this again.

I can't get snap-to-face to work the way I would expect in 2.83beta, either..

The shipped TinyCAD add-on is one option, for this one..

Activate TinyCAD
(Assuming source and target are part of the same object) Select 1 face, 1 edge
Use TinyCad's Extend Edge to Face
(Maybe with Automerge switched on) GG slide the source vertex down the extended edge, all the way, onto the projected vertex.

I agree, the snap system could be improved.. important to keep it quick and minimal, though, IMO.. hunting through the snap options in some apps is not fun.


Animation nodes Group instances I want to know if there is anyway I can make random instances of a group or list of object in to a mesh.
In the example I want to instance the 4 objects in to the 8 vertex of the big cube.
I tried also whit the instancer node but doesn't work

Thank you

Use the Object Instancer Node to create a number of empty objects, fill a random list of the required source objects, copy the mesh data from the random object list to the empty objects, then position them as you want.


How to toggle renderable on/off for objects in the 3D View How to select multiple objects in the 3D View window (not the outliner) and toggle their renderability on/off?

Want to select them in 3D View because it's much easier to isolate them quickly there than in the outliner.

Is there a keyboard shortcut or hotkey to restrict rendering in Blender Cycles?

You can do this by selecting the objects in the 3D Viewport and pressing Ctrl+H. This will hide the selected objects during render operations. To clear the restricted render property from objects, simply press Ctrl+Alt+H.


Track stereo footage I have 2 footages. One for the left eye, and one for the right eye.

Is there any way to track the cameras from these footages and get the stereo camera from it? Or get 2 separate cameras from it, but at the same position if it was stereo camera?

I can track cameras separately, but I get separate solutions.

I think you should track for one eye and then parent another camera to the first and adjust the distances between the two and also the rotation until it looks right.


How to Add and Render Many Columns I would like to render many buildings (say, about 50000) as simple columns on a flat plain in Blender.  I have values for location (X,Y) and a height value.  However, if I try to add more than a couple of thousand columns, I run out of memory.

I think that I want to use the particle / hair system since each building is not independent.  they are all simple 4 sided columns, so they can use the same textures, etc.  I can add 50,000 columns, using the techniques discussed in the video  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCEQYyesxLg.  However, I need to be able to set the location and scale of each one based on my data.  How can I do this?

The end result should be something like:  http://ekisto.sq.ro/  which is a beautiful visualization of stack overflow data.

Update:  I'm close!  The following updates my particle locations and scales:

scalesize = 10
scalexy = 50

object = bpy.context.object
cols = object.particle_systems[0].particles

def setColumn(index, name, xval, yval, heightval):
    cols[index].location.x = float(xval) / scalexy
    cols[index].location.y = float(yval) / scalexy
    cols[index].location.z = 0
    cols[index].size = float(heightval) / scalesize

ii = 0
f = open('input.data', 'r')
for line in f:
    values = line.split()
    setColumn(ii, values[0], values[1], values[2], values[3])
    ii = ii + 1
f.close()

However, when I hit 'F12' to do the render, the particle system updates all the locations and un-does the setting of the locations.  How do I tell the particle system to not update?

I was unable do this using the technique above, because I could not figure out how to prevent re-setting of the location.  Therefore, I used the following technique:  create a single object, copy it with ob.copy, put copies into scene object list, and then update the scene.

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(vertices=numVertices, radius=columnSize,
    depth=height,location=loc)
ob = bpy.context.object
obs = []
sce = bpy.context.scene

f = open('input.data', 'r')
for line in f:
    values = line.split()

    x = float(values[1]) / scaleXY
    y = float(values[2]) / scaleXY
    height = float(values[3]) / scaleHeight

    copy = ob.copy()
    copy.location += Vector((x,y, 0))
    # copy.data = copy.data.copy()
    copy.scale.x = copy.scale.x * height / 2
    copy.scale.y = copy.scale.y * height / 2
    copy.scale.z = copy.scale.z * height
    obs.append(copy)

for ob in obs:
    sce.objects.link(ob)

sce.update()


How do I make various objects point at/follow a path? I'm trying to create a city street on a slope. I haven't found any methods that allow for several different objects to follow the same path, so maybe a path isn't the right method (still quite new to blender).

Essentially, I just want to be able to control the height and z-rotation of several objects at once. Here's a manually-arranged example:

Thanks very much!

You can definitely use a path.

 RMB select the first house and add two constraints.

A Follow Path constraint. Choose the Curve object as the target. Then check Follow Curve and Fixed Position. The offset has to vary for each object, for the first object we will leave it at 0.0.
A Limit Rotation constraint. Check Limit X and Limit Y. This prevents objects from tilting sideways. We only need the Z rotation.

⇧ Shift RMBSelect all other houses, lastly add the constrained object to the selection. Copy the constraints to all houses by going to Objects > Constraints > Copy Constraints to Selected Objects.
Adjust the Offset value for each house. E.g. [0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1]


Cannot Apply Vertex Groups To Bones im Francisco and i have a problem with vertex Groups. Recently i modeled a star wars spaceship witch is called millenium falcon and after i model everything i started rigging , while i was rigging i was watching a couple of tutorials and non of them worked for me. My problem is the following one, in the spaceship i modeled every part separated from each other and i dont know how toenter image description here rig them all together, i tried to do ctrl+j to join everything but my mesh is a bit confusing in terms of faces... pls if you can help i desperately call for help , i always stay stuck in here.

Here is the file for download
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VphWxqtiQcmYKdl-guGSfWPxOohqTp8L/view?usp=sharing

Ok, your problem is simple.

The reason your vertex groups do not take is, that you applied them all on the main hull of the ship. If your ship pieces are still separate objects, the vertex groups for the bone influences need to be on THAT object.

For your ship, you won't need to create them by hand. Parenting to Bones will do it for you.

Clear up your parenting structure, so one object does not move the other. Just hit Alt + P to clear Parents with "Clear and keep Transformation"

You need to apply the transformations to the objects, that you made in Object Mode. Your Location Values should be zeroed out, the scales should be at one.

Select Bone in Pose Mode

Click on Geometry you want the Bone to be the Parent of

Shift-Select the Armature again

Ctrl + P to Parent the Geometry to the Selected Bone

Selecting one bone of the armature (in Pose Mode), like for example the one that controls the landing gear, you select the mesh you want to attach to it to, Shift Select the Armature again and then hit Ctrl + P and Parent to Bone.

I have done this for you in the blend file. I would also advise you to roll your bones over, so that all hatches close by rotating the x-axis, just to give an example. That will allow you to lock the other transform channels. Otherwise, you will go nuts animating.

I have also set your rotation to ZYX Euler. Since the hatches only rotate around a single axis, that will make everything easier, transforming, reading and changing the animation curves, locking the right channels. Try it, you will see it right away.


How can I make stubble facial hair in Cycles? How do you add stubble facial hair in blender cycles to a character? I have tried using the particle system for hair but it just makes uneven patches of hair that is the skin color of my character.

By default particles will use the same material as the object they are emitted from. To use a custom material for your particles you need to add another material to your object -

then assign that material to your particles in the particles render settings.


Grease pencil showing the wrong colour I've selected a colour that I wanted to choose.

Despite that, the line appeared to be grey rather than the green that I intended to pick when the line was drawn.

The strangest part about this is that I don't get this problem when I create a new blender file.

It turned out that I was using the Solid shading instead of the Material Preview viewport shading.


How do I prevent child objects from stretching when duplicated on the parent's faces? I have run into an issue where I'm building a shield in blender. I created a duplicate object of the faces on the shield I want rivets to be placed on and then made that object a parent of my rivet object. When I duplicated the rivet object on the faces of the parent, all of the duplicates are stretched along the Z-axis. How do I prevent this from happening, or what am I doing wrong?

Screenshot: https://drive.google.com/open?id=13_zHFm6PFo8dwgb5qH93gDyfJvApIaax
Blender file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=11scI0oYaUpaq9c0Lk2Tc5ysop4HlSxVE

Thank you

Select your Rivet_Surface and ctrl A to apply the scale. You have changed the scale of your object on its Z axis in Object mode and now you must make this scale real.


Rotation in rigid body physics Does rigid body physics support rotations? I would expect this thing to start to during a free fall rotate due to its non-symmetrical mass distribution which would give a larger torque on the left. However all I get is a translation downwards.

If you neglect air drag and other forces, basic mechanics tells you that there is no net torque due to the weight of the object.

Edit:
An example can be this: Imagine a point mass m attached via a massless bar to a point mass 2m. Assume that the bara is 1 meter long. Then the center of mass will be 1/3 meters from the heavier mass.

Now the gravitational force acting on the two masses is mg and 2mg, respectively.

The torque due to gravity around the center of mass from the left mass is mg*(2/3 meters), where 2/3 meters is the distance from the mass to the center of gravity. This torque tries to rotate the bar counter clockwise. Now the torque from the gravity force acting on the heaver mass is 2mg*(1/3 meters) = mg*(2/3 meters), but this torque tries to rotate the bar clockwise. Hence they two torques exactly cancels and there will be no rotation.

This can be proven also in the general case which is done in most beginners university courses on classical mechanics.


Seeing through high-res wireframes Sometimes when working with high density meshes (like sculpting in multires, which is my case) in wireframe mode, there are so many edges that I can barely see through the model, making it very hard to check background images and objects behind it.

Is there a way to work with a simplified wireframe or is there some other see-through mode I'm not aware of?

In the Background image panel (N in the viewport), you can choose to have the background image in Front, instead of Back, and set the opacity level


Workflow using the metric system? I was wondering on what is the best workflow for combining scenes and characters.

Like for example, if you are making a living room scene, should I use the metric system to get the correct measurements on the room and furniture or should I just use blender units?

Because my character is in blender units and my room is in metric, so should I just scale my character down or is there a workflow to make this process streamlined?

Blender units equal one meter.

You can set the scene to explicitly use metric units in the scene>unit section of the properties window:

Keeping your scene in real world measurements is a good idea when it comes to dealing with physics simulations and lights, blender is designed to calculate things using real world values.


Blender Hair Dynamic not working with both force field and collision I am new to blender Hair Dynamic, and I am trying to create a hair that would react with the world.
I have made the sample file and it does not work.
I tried all tutorials I can find, and I don't know what I have missed.
Please help me with this and tell me what's going on.
Here is the link to my file:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1H7VsX17Ny1vikSTvEBbntGN6-iNDRAwS

So, I have fiddled around with my model, and I saw one post says that before certain version the Hair won't collide with itself.
My understanding is it should be able to collide with it self now, but somehow mine didn't.
(someone save me on this part pls)

I made a new mesh, used collision(as in image), and I achieved some collision but some hair is still going through.
note that the thing will now have any collision if it is hided (the eye button). I hope this helped those have the same problem with me.
(And please post better solution if you have one.)


Problem using NetworkRender and SSL we have a "Blender Farm" with a master and a few slaves. Now we try to use SSL. I configured the path of the certificate and the key, but the Blender-Master crashes with the following error:

read blend: /home/renderuser/blender/master-int.blend
Error: wrap_socket() missing 1 required positional argument: 'sock'
Error: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/renderuser/blender-2.74-linux-glibc211-x86_64/2.74/scripts/addons/netrender/client.py", line 367, in render
raise e
File "/home/renderuser/blender-2.74-linux-glibc211-x86_64/2.74/scripts/addons/netrender/client.py", line 362, in render
self.render_master(scene)
File "/home/renderuser/blender-2.74-linux-glibc211-x86_64/2.74/scripts/addons/netrender/client.py", line 383, in render_master
key_path=netsettings.key_path)
File "/home/renderuser/blender-2.74-linux-glibc211-x86_64/2.74/scripts/addons/netrender/master.py", line 1165, in runMaster
ssl_version=ssl.PROTOCOL_SSLv23,
TypeError: wrap_socket() missing 1 required positional argument: 'sock'
location: <unknown location>:-1
Traceback (most recent call last):

On all systems is CentOS7 and Blender 2.74 installed. Unfortunately I am not a python specialist. Maybe there is an error in the python-script master.py? Has anyone experience with Network Rendering and SSL?

Thanks in advance

I think I found the solution by myself. There are missing argumets in the python-script netrender/master.py.

This thread was helpful:
https://developer.blender.org/rBA8b56ce969db281579bf35000ef7b20a8d9590dbb

I reported a bug here:
https://developer.blender.org/T50475


How to rotate around some coordinate axis in camera view? Apparently, if I press R rotation occurs in the plane of view. How do I rotate around some coordinate axis in camera view?

In the 3D view header change the Transform Orientation to View.

Then when you want to rotate something around one of the other axises of the current view just press R then Y Y or X X. The Z axis in view mode is how it will rotate with out any axis constraints.


If you install Blender while there is an existing copy, does it uninstall the existing copy? I'm installing Blender 2.74 but there is a copy of Blender 2.73a on my computer. Does the installer uninstall Blender 2.73a?

Not in the conventional sense but yes, it will simply overwrite the common files in the directory and you will get a new executable, new scripts if any were added etc. Since there is a major version difference it will create a new config folder for 2.74 while keeping the 2.73 folder. (I have a few old folders going back to 2.52!)

By uninstall you are asking if it will remove your settings, the answer is no. However, on installing the new version it will use the newly created 2.74 folder so it will appear as it did out of the box the first time you used it. To get your previous settings and scripts, you can simply press Copy Previous Settings on the splash screen. If you want to keep the old version separate, change the install directory.

So, you don't need to uninstall the old version, if the folder is getting bulky delete the older version folders as you don't need them. Same goes if you use the zipped portable version.

See my similar answer here Where is the startup file stored? for a bit more info.


Finding top surface area of a mesh by python I need to find the top surface area (in one plane) and total surface area (by summing all the faces) of a complicated mesh. For that I need to know how to fit a plane to the top of a mesh to find the top surface area. The mesh can be .obj or .stl or .ply

Here as requested is faces whose normal vector has angle from up vector of less than 80 degrees.

import bpy
import bmesh
from math import radians
from mathutils import Vector

obj = bpy.context.active_object
mw = obj.matrix_world
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(obj.data)

up = Vector((0, 0, 1))
# local space
area = sum(f.calc_area() for f in bm.faces if up.angle(f.normal) < radians(80))
print("local", area)
# global space
area = sum(f.calc_area() for f in bm.faces if up.angle(mw * f.normal) < radians(80))
print("global", area)
# or avoid a lot of matrix mult by converting "up" to local space.
up = mw.inverted() * up
area = sum(f.calc_area() for f in bm.faces if up.angle(f.normal) < radians(80))
print("global", area)

bm.free()


Why am I getting these spikes after Solidifed an SVG file? So anytime I import an SVG and then apply the solidify tool, it will give me these weird spikes.
How can I fix this?
Here’s footage of what I mean: https://youtu.be/UqrxbEj0GOs

I remember having something similar to this problem. What I had to do was in edit mode, there were vertices that were sticking out for no reason at all. I am not sure why they do this, but what I had to do was delete the vertices that were sticking out in edit mode. I hope this helps!


Move object array along curve I have a simple mesh that forms a belt around a BezierCircle with the help of an Array and a Curve modifier. I want to move the belt forward and animate it.

The common way to do this is to simply move the object, but when I do this, I get:

I also already tried Follow Path constraint and duplication frames; neither worked.

Just found it out myself: The curve was not looping.

Move the object so that the error is clearly visible.
Select curve, go into edit mode.
Find the segment where the array modifier quits the curve.
There, look for the ending of the curve (The segment is not attached to its beginning) and select it.
Tool shelf, "Toggle Cyclic".


Uneven distances between the edges when extruding I have the following mesh:

When I try to inset it, the distances between the edges are in equal distance:

But when I try to extrude them (by pressing e then s), I get uneven distances between the edges:

How can I extrude the edges evenly/do an inverted inset?

What you're trying to do is a Shrink/Fatten but with a simple series of vertices. I don't think you can do it with simple vertices but you could do it with a trick: Use the faces normals.

Extrude up your mesh.
altE to Extrude Region (Vertex Normals).
Drag to get what you want.
Only keep the shape you want.


Blender Will Not Select Faces, Vertices, or Edges in edit mode individually Recently in Blender 2.75 I've come face to face with an inability to select the proper faces, edges or vertices in edit mode individually.

Selecting everything with the A button is no problem, but when I right click on a vertex, face, or edge in their respective selection modes, there's no orange highlight and no manipulator around the selected face/edge/vertex, which means I have no way of selecting an individual mesh piece in edit mode.

I've even tried the lasso tool and selecting stuff by pressing the C button and clicking.

I didn't have this problem until I changed my Intel graphics driver to display color in 16 bit. Except I only changed it to fix another problem in blender which made the viewport lag one step behind every action, like clicking on an object or dragging or moving something around.

I'd love to know if there's any way to fix this problem and if there's still a way to keep blender from lagging like it did before. I look forward to seeing your answers.

I was having this problem on a Mac, trying to use a keyboard shortcut for right clicking individual faces, and the problem was solved for me by simply enabling a secondary mouse click in my general settings.


Blender 2.82a bug? Some faces always shading flat even though all faces were set to shade smooth? This started happening randomly. I was in edit mode tinkering with the mesh and merging a few vertices. When I came out of edit mode I noticed the shading was messed up. No matter what I do, I can't seem to get the faces to shade smooth again.

Has anyone run into this problem? Here is the file:

I had something like this happen and it was double verts.

Removed them by selecting all verts and pressing Alt + M Merge > By Distance


How to place an overlay video with a transparent background upon another video/image? First off, I'm a novice to node compositing, so I might not understand some jargons.

Below is the original video.

Next photo: the white background is removed (my first time with invert node). The background is turned transparent. Now how do I lay this overlay upon another video or image with any different colour?
I'd like to try medium brown ground or yellow for the lower ground.

The next day...
I have tried Alpha Over as was suggested. Initially, it was tricky and difficult to work with nodes, while making mistakes. Now, I have finally achieved the desired result and here I enclose the screenshot.


How does the "Depth" property work in image objects? What does the Depth property mean and how does it actually work for image objects?

Default : Displays like any regular 3d object, if another object obstructs it, it will not display. If it obstructs another object, the other object does not display.
Front : Always displays in front of other objects, even if the view is obstructed.
Back : It will always display behind other objects, even if they are placed in front of them.

Note that this kind of image objects are meant for reference only while modeling and setting the scene, they will not be visible in the rendered image. If you need the image to render then import it using "import images as planes" or use the compositor to set a background for the scene.


Cannot render video in video editor I am completely new to Blender so I'm sorry if I'm not able to ask this question articulately or with enough detail. I am using Blender to create a short video of me playing drums. There is audio of me playing, audio of someone else playing piano part of the song, and video synced with that of me playing the part. I just want to export the final product so that I can share with band-mates.

I followed all the steps in this YouTube tutorial about exporting / rendering https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxeP3We4k-A. But when I click 'Render Animation', it takes me to a blank render screen and nothing happens (there is no % in the bottom of the video editor screen). I have clicked 'Render Animation' many times now, and have not seen the file appear in the destination (my Desktop).

My only guess is that it is something to do with me created a Proxy for the video clip that I exported into Blender, as I couldn't watch it back properly without major lag issues while editing.

I have attached two screenshots of what I see when I click of the video editor window, and of the blank 'Render Animation' screen.

Again, sorry if I have failed to describe this with enough detail.

enter image description here

I, too, am somewhat new to Blender, and this one has gotten me several times.  If I'm guessing correctly, the problem lies in the order in which sources for rendering are processed.  In the picture below, I show that the render output panel is selected in the properties window (upper left highlight).

Way down at the bottom of that panel is a flippy triangle marked Post Processing.  I think rendering first looks for something in the Compositing timeline if the Compositing box is checked.  Then it looks for something in the Sequencer (video editing) window if the Sequencer box is checked.  If not checked or nothing there, it renders the viewport camera that's active directly.
So, uncheck the Compositor box, check the Sequencer box and let me know whether this now works.
HTH


Camera tracking: Moving the camera too much I am working on a scene which is a corridor, and I want it to seem like someone is "holding" the blender camera while running down the corridor. I asked how I would accomplish this and someone said to hold a camera in real life and run down a hallway with contrasting objects that can be tracked. So I went ahead and did this, however, the way I want it to show up and the way I filmed it I moved the camera around and looked at the walls and moved in different directions to make it look like the person running down the corridor was looking around, which means that the markers come in and out of view and no marker stays in the view the whole time. How can I make it so that when Im looking straight at a marker it is tracked and then when I move the camera away to look at the wall then back straight ahead the marker is then tracked again?

Sorry about the long question thanks in advance for the help.

You should use weighted tracking; To do this, go to the Motion Tracking perspective, select a marker, and open the Properties Panel(N) and go to the subsection "Track"; There is a field labeled Weight, which controls the importance of that marker;

Like most fields in Blender, this can be animated. What you need to do is make this field change, such that when it's almost out of view, the weight is 0, then, when it gets back in inside the Camera's frustum (Camera's View) make it go up again, 1 being the maximum; Keep in mind you shouldn't just make it 0 all of the sudden.


Why does my environment texture show up in Eevee but not Cycles? In the first image, I'm using Eevee with an environment texture -- the star field background is clearly visible.  But, if I change nothing but the rendering engine (to Cycles), the environment disappears.

This is 2.80 beta (2019-01-07).  I get the same result on Windows and Mac, with multiple recent 2.8 beta builds.

I found my own answer with endless setting-tweaking:  in the Render settings, the Film > Transparency checkbox was selected.  The tooltip says "World background is transparent, for compositing render over another background."

Serves me right for being a beginner.


Drawing a nurbs curve along a surface I think I've asked this question once before, but I am not sure if anyone out there has an answer.

My question is, is there away that I could draw a Nurbs Curve right along a surface?
As in the Nurbs Curb would fallow a certain shape.

For example, I am trying to re-create a a wire harness / Brake lines for a car, I have a reference scan of it, but I only have the A surface, the other side wasn't captured by the scanned.

I have tried using the poly tool, but it's too complicated and takes a lot of time.

I appreciate any answers you could share with me
Thank you :)

I would just use Snapping.

set Snapping to Face
grab a curve point while holding Ctrl to temporarily enable the Snap to follow the shape of a target object

You can also take a look at Shrinkwrap modifier, but it can be little tricky for this kind of usage.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/modifiers/deform/shrinkwrap.html


How do you mirror and invert at the same time? How would you mirror an object across both the x and y planes?
If you try and mirror them, you get a heart like shape:

General idea of the shape I am trying to make.

How could you mirror this object, but do so in a way that makes the curve bend the opposite direction?
Blender file located here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/460997/Blender/curve%20_test.blend

Unfortunately, the mirror modifier can't so this as it creates copies of the object for each axis you tick instead of just transforming it but this is easily done with the Interactive Mirror tool (Ctrl + M) or from the 3d view header, Object > Mirror > Interactive Mirror.

Simply duplicate the half of the mesh you want to mirror and use CtrlM + Xto mirror it on the X axis, then without deselecting, mirror it again but this time on the Y axis.

Only disadvantage as compared to the modifier is that if you update one side, you will have to perform the mirror operations again (this can be avoided if you link both object's Mesh Data with CtrlD > Object Data but adds unnecessary complexity IMO). Also, as per Understanding mirroring and inverting an object, you will have to recalculate the normals if you perform this operation in Edit mode.


Help with UV Mapping Islands I'm trying to export a Mercy UV Texture (for use in Tabletop Simulator :P) but I've been struggling a bit. As you can see here, the textures are positioned / look like they are working correctly before I begin the UV unwrap, however after unwrapping the texture begins to act a bit weird.

It seems that the UV Map is just overlaying one of the textures on top of the whole map, rather than assigning each texture to each island (I'm sorry if my terminology isn't quite right), as shown here.

So my question is how do I properly assign textures to each part of the UV map? I read online somewhere that placing each texture into the correct island manually is an option, however given the hundreds of islands this isn't practicable at all for me. Considering that the model and textures look fine before UV Mapping, I'm assuming that there is a much easier way to do this, and that I am missing a setting somewhere?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

As you can see here, I have several texture materials. I'll convert everything just to a single texture.

First you will have to create a new 'UV Map'.
Now enter edit mode. See how my mesh is blurred and overlapping, just like yours.

With the new 'UV Map' selected, unfold the mesh using 'Smart UV Project'

Now in UV image editing mode, create a new texture where you will receive all textures. Opt for a resolution of 2048 or higher for better texture quality.
Now go to Scene> Bake> Bake mode and select 'Textures'

Click on bake and you will get all the textures of your character in that single image.
Now go to the Materials tab and delete all existing materials there, and create a new material.

Go to the texture tab and create a new texture and select the image you just created.
Everything is ready. All textures are rendered correctly.

Note that if any texture has alpha, it will lose transparency and will not have the expected result, as you can see in the hair and mustache.
I hope I have helped you and other people who are looking into this.


How do I add a new panel to the Properties Editor? First, I want to make sure I'm using the right terms and talking about the proper part of the Blender workspace. From reading a few different answers on SE:Blender, and a few other sources, my understanding is that the area in the blue box below is often called the "Properties area," and that the area in the red box is the "Properties Editor." But I've also read things that make me think the area in the blue box is not called a "Properties area," or anything like that.

So, first, can someone provide me the correct names for these areas? And, since I'm not sure of names, I'll just call them the highly technical terms of "Red Area," and "Blue Area."
A user on SE:Blender sent me an example script that created a tab and panel in the red area, so there was another panel for a specific use. I tried it a couple months ago and it worked. I've been heavily involved elsewhere for awhile and came back to this issue about 2-3 weeks ago. I copied his script in and it didn't work - no panel in the Red Area.
So I went into the Script Editor and picked the "Ui Panel" from the templates and ran that. It looked to me like it was supposed to add a panel to the Red Area, but it didn't. I checked the tabs in the 3D View and nothing was added there at all.
Then I copied the script in the image above from this answer to test it:
import bpy
from bpy.props import FloatVectorProperty, BoolProperty

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

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.object.get("Capot", False)

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

        car = context.object
        layout.prop(car, '["Capot"]')
        #bools don't show well (1 or 0 integer)
        layout.prop(car, "switch")
        layout.prop(car, '["bool"]')
        col = layout.column()
        col.prop(car, '["prop"]')
        # car color property
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(car, "car_color")
        # object color rgba
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(car, "color")

def register():
    # define a registered property (available for all Object types size=4 gives rgba)
    bpy.types.Object.car_color = FloatVectorProperty(subtype='COLOR', size=3)
    bpy.types.Object.switch = BoolProperty()
    bpy.utils.register_class(CarPanel)

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

I did not see a panel added in the Red Area or anywhere else at all.
Last example - I went to Blender documentation and this page has this script:
import bpy

class ObjectSelectPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_select"
    bl_label = "Select"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "object"
    bl_options = {'DEFAULT_CLOSED'}

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return (context.object is not None)

    def draw_header(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.label(text="My Select Panel")

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

        box = layout.box()
        box.label(text="Selection Tools")
        box.operator("object.select_all").action = 'TOGGLE'
        row = box.row()
        row.operator("object.select_all").action = 'INVERT'
        row.operator("object.select_random")

bpy.utils.register_class(ObjectSelectPanel)

I ran it and it seems to have no effect at all.
So what am I doing wrong? Why don't these scripts seem to do anything and what do I need to do to add a panel to the Red Area? (And what are the proper names for the Red Area and Blue Area?)

Texture context
when adding a panel to the properties area we set the context as signified by the icon on LHS. This is set with bl_context.  To get a panel in the questions "Red Area"
bl_context = "texture"

all the examples given in question are in object context. Press the Object tab. (cube)
How to enable or disable panels with the click of a button
Eg for Hello World example.
import bpy

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

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

        obj = context.active_object

        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text="Hello world!", icon='WORLD_DATA')

        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text="Active object is: " + obj.name)
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(obj, "name")

        row = layout.row()
        row.operator("mesh.primitive_cube_add")

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


How to make a growing unique index (IntProperty) of the objects? I would like to assign a unique Immutable index of the objects that are added in the scene.
I want this unique index to be stored in an object type property (Relative to the object)
Obviously the object can be deleted and I would like the index to always grow regardless of whether the object is deleted (keeping it stored somewhere)
So assuming you have 10 objects in the scene, they will have an index, from 1 to 10
Assuming deleting all 10 objects, I would like that by adding a new object, the index continues to grow, i.e. in this case the index should be 11, Obviously the index could be very high even if there are few objects in the scene, but it is very important that it remains so, and that it is always growing.
I suppose I should create a list that contains all the previous indexes or something similar.
This situation is making me difficult.
This is how we declare an object-type property:
I don't really know how to build a function that assigns correctly only when the len(bpy.data.objects[:]) changes, I can also think of a function called by bpy.app.handlers.depsgraph_update_post(), but I'm not sure
class ObjectProperties(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    obj_index = bpy.props.IntProperty()

def register():
    bpy.types.Object.obj_prop = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=ObjectProperties)

My question is inherent in this answer , I was thinking of indexing all the objects present in the bpy.data.objects with a unique index.
I want to try replacing the "Object Info" node with a driver, which is driven by the object's IntProperty Like this:

An additional problem is when copying the object (Without instance)
I have done various tests, but there seems to be some problem with updating the integer value in the Driver.
Based on @batFINGER 's answer, the indexing method seems to be right for me. But I can't understand where I am wrong with the driver, when I assign sefl.scene_object_index to the driver, the driver never changes and always remains on 0 Although in this case C.object.scene_object_index is 6 (As seen in the console)

I had already noticed this problem, when I tried to make an index in my own way, I noticed that the driver was assuming wrong values

A collection of pointers
Can set up a collection on the scene with pointers to objects.
On an object set up a property to populate the collection and return the objects index in that collection.
Feel it's a little hacky to use context to get the scene within the getter method.
Example of setting up the props.
import bpy
from bpy.props import PointerProperty, CollectionProperty, IntProperty
from bpy.types import PropertyGroup, Object

class SceneObject(PropertyGroup):
    object : PointerProperty(type=Object)

def get_scene_object_index(self):
    from bpy import context
    scene = context.scene
    obs = [o.object for o in scene.scene_objects]
    for ob in set(scene.objects) - set(obs):
        o = scene.scene_objects.add()
        o.name = ob.name
        o.object = ob
        obs.append(ob)
        ob["scene_object_index"] = len(obs)

    return self["scene_object_index"]

bpy.utils.register_class(SceneObject)

bpy.types.Scene.scene_objects = CollectionProperty(type=SceneObject)
Object.scene_object_index = IntProperty(get=get_scene_object_index)

def draw(self, context):
    layout = self.layout
    scene = context.scene
    ob = context.object
    self.layout.prop(ob, "scene_object_index")
    for o in context.scene.scene_objects:
        layout.label(text=f"{o.object.name}")

bpy.types.OBJECT_PT_context_object.prepend(draw)

Added a little draw method to object props panel
Drive the pass_index
A driver using this prop can be added to the pass index of an object.  Adding a value input driver to a material node will require targeting a different object per material.
EDIT
Have edited to give each object a custom property. Needs a rethink re property name to have a unique value per scene.  It appears the driver "auto updates" better from the custom property rather than the read (getter) only property.
Will revisit and clean up if I have time, thinking a prop on scene with an update method.

Note at issue here is the collection property of the scene is giving the object a user. Deleting objects using operator will only unlink them from the scene, not remove them from the data.   Requires an edit to remove objects if they are only used by the collection.
If an object that is assigned to a pointer is removed from data the pointer will return None


How to edit xyz F-Curves at once? Is there a way to edit/move multiple f-curves (xyz) at once?

I am editing a Cube and got it to scale up.
To get a feel for the right timing, I'd like to edit all xyz f-curves at once during playback.
Possible?

Cheers!

The key to the default behavior is in how you setup the first two keyframes.

Let's say that in the first keyframe you have x/y/z scale at 1.000

Then in the second keyframe you have x/y/z scale at 2.000

Then naturally your curves geometrically follow the same rate of change.
Blender somehow decides to lock this on you though, and when you try to edit one axis in the Graph editor the other two follow.

If this is not desired you can always make a slight change in the 3D view's  >> Properties Region >> Transform >> Then x/y/z scale. If you don't see this, with your mouse cursor over the 3D view hit N to toggle.

If you have a differing starting scenario (your axis values aren't all the same), you can still achieve similar behavior by using the Normalize toggle within the Graph Editor.

This will visually group the graph curves together for you to edit them as one curve.

This however will fix your offsets from one axis channel to the other, and may not be the desired effect depending on what you are trying to accomplish.

To solve that you can always use your 2D cursor options to control where to base action from.


How to connect two vertices of two objects in python I have two objects where I want to randomly link different vertices.  Is there a way to select two vertices and connect them if I know their coordinates?

Not sure if this answers your question, but you can Shift-Click vertices in Edit Mode to select multiple of them. If you select 2, and then press "F", an Edge will be formed between them. If you select 3 or more and press "F", a Face will be formed between them.


Hair appearing at origin point of mesh So I have this towel render; everything seems to look fine about it, except that little distracting point of floating fur at the top which just ruins it.

Looking a tiny bit into the scene, I found the hair is built at exactly the origin point, and changing it will render the hair in the set place.

I could surely move the origin point out of the camera, but if I wanted to rotate it, scale it or animate it in a way that involves it, it'd be really important to have it in the appropriate location, meaning the hair will have to be rendered there as well.

So what exactly causes the hair to just... appear there?

Here are the particle settings if that matters BTW.

Edit: Here's the .blend file for more clarity, though this is a pretty small issue: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bejfakblkf8ntuj/extowel.zip?dl=0

I had the same problem, and somehow fixed it by checking "Use Modifier Stack" under the "Emissions" tab in the particles menu.

Alternatively, this was also solved when I went to the object modifiers menu and moved my particle system above my subsurf modifier.

(I know this is an old question but I came across it when I googled the same problem, so hopefully this helps someone else!)


Connected Bone Parenting Issue with IK Constraint I have created a model with movable eyes. This uses two separate UV Spheres which are parented to their bones. These bones are then set to an IK bone in front of them. My issue is when I connect the eye bones to the model's armature, the model tips forward when in object mode. In edit mode there is no issue.

Here is a screen shot of the eye bones not connected to the armature in object mode:

Here is a screen shot of the eye bones connected to the armature in object mode:

I can upload the actual .blend file if needed.

Have you setup the IK constraint's Chain Length setting? Its default value of 0 means the whole chain of bones, right up to its root which is the head, will be affected by the constraint. You'd need to limit it to whatever length of bones really need the IK behavior, in this case 1.

If you want to make eye target controller, IMHO a Damped Track constraint would be more appropriate than IK, because it works on a single bone and very easy to setup correctly.

Each eye's bone need not be connected to the head, BTW.


How to change the camera from Landscape to Portrait I need a way to render a picture that is longer heighth-wise than width-wise.
Changing the scale of the camera does nothing. I've been told to look in the scene focus settings, and I didn't see anything.
Is there a way to change the shape of the rendered image?

Probably the easiest way to do this is to swap the values for the x and y resolution fields of the camera Dimensions-Resolution section. So, for instance, change it from 1920x1080 to 1080x1920.

For 2.8 the resolution settings are in Properties > Output > Resolution

The other way I know of is to select the camera and, while viewing from it, rotating the camera 90 degrees. This, however, rotates the view too.


ID mask noisy when using Volume Scatter for World volume I've made a sword in this medieval blacksmith scene an ID mask so that I can give it a glare effect without affecting the rest of the scene, but because I used Volume Scattering for the world volume, the mask shows up like this:

Without volume scatter the mask looks fine, and I've tried rendering the mask without volume scatter enabled but it looks too far removed from how it looks WITH volume scatter not to stand out when I add it back into the scene.

This only happens when I include an ID mask node in compisiting. Is there a way to fix this or a workaround?

This is how I have the compositor nodes set up so far in case it helps:

ID masks are generated from sampling as far as I understand. The quality of them depends on the amount of samples set for the render. If it's noisy, you should increase the amount of samples for the render. It is worth noting that ID masks are also 2 bit black and white images so there is no anti-aliasing at all and that makes the usefulness of them very limited (some might even say 'completely useless'). For glare effects they are completely adequate, however, if you want good masks with anti-aliasing  for other purposes you should render them separately with shade-less materials made with emission shaders assigned to objects in the scene or another a lot better option would be to use Blender 2.80 that supports Cryptomatte that is way more convenient and powerful solution for generating masks.


FBX Importer AssertionError (unknown location -1) when importing .fbx from wow model viewer Using version 2.75 I am unable to import .fbx files from WoW model viewer into blender.

Attempting to do so throws an AssertionError.

Assertion Error

location: <unknown location>:-1

Does anyone know what is going on here and what I can do to fix it?

That kind of issue must be reported to our tracker, with an .fbx example file to reproduce it…


Modeling a fish with curves - complication at tail I'm modeling a fish with Bézier curves, but now I have a body of rotation and don't know how to carve out the tail.

I have searched Google and YouTube for the problem, but the nearest thing I have found is a tutorial for creating trees, but with this method I don't get a sharp edge between the tails.

Basically, I'd be happy if I could cut away the surplus material at the tail from the body of rotation with the bisect tool. The tail would be angular, so I'd need some bisect too that could cut spherically.

If you have a whole different solution I'd be happy to hear it! Maybe with nurbs-surface-circles or something like that??

I have looked at this tutorial (in German), and in that case I would need to align the nurbs-circle-surfaces to a curve. This method (if possible) would be the very best one!

Thanks in advance for helping me! :)

Why not give sculpting a try? You could make something close to what you want and touch up the details in sculpt...

heres a link to a video instructing how to use dynamic topology (and by extension sculpt mode)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opsKPCCFbr4

docs on sculpting

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modeling/Meshes/Editing/Sculpt_Mode

docs on dynamic topology

(note that this feature has been changed in 2.7, it can now be found under the header labelled "dynotopo")

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.66/Dynamic_Topology_Sculpting


Node Editor, Unwrapping, and FBX export not working I am new to Blender and Unity, so if you need me to add more information I can, any help is greatly appreciated. This all started when I tried to export my Blender object into Unity. So I had my object all created with materials and everything, it was unwrapped and UV projected, but when I exported it to unity as a FBX file the Materials didn't show up. I thought that was weird so I went back into blender and all my materials where gone I tried reapplying the materials and I couldn't. Now I can't seem to add materials, unwrap, add nodes, or UV project anything.

Blender File Link

Sorry if this reply comes a little late, but I rarely ever import into Unity, so I had to do a bit of trial and error.

First of all, there is nothing wrong with your file. The only thing that is missing is the link to your texture. If you load it back in via the Texture-Tab in the Properties Window, everything works as it should.

Consider packing your textures into the .blend files if you hand them off to somebody else, this will incorporate the images into the file and you will no longer have to send the texture files along with the .blend file.

Now, to import those files into Unity, there are a couple of workflows. I will give you the one that I find the most useful, if you want to learn about all the ins and outs, i would recommend Darrin Lile's course on Blender and Unity Pipelines. It is only about 12 Dollars, but it goes through all possible permutations of asset importing and gives you best practises to follow along the way. Like for instance naming the materials. It will not matter with a single cube, like in your file, but the materials do pile up.

Darrin Lile's Creating a Game Environment in Unity Course

To get assets from Blender into Unity follow these steps:

Set up the materials (like you have)
Export an FBX. Either for the whole Scene, or, with the "Selected" Checkbox checked, only the selected Objects
Drag these objects into Unity's Asset Window (or right click it and select Import New Asset)

I would recommend you set up 3 Folders: Models for the Mesh Data, Materials for the Unity Materials and Textures for the Texture files

If you use the same Texture Folder for your Unity Project that you use for your .blend files, you will not have to import anything here. It populates with the files that are in this folder.
Now select your object. It has the material on it, that you assigned in Blender. You need to hook up the brick Texture manually to the Albedo slot (see image above). Drag it from the texture folder onto the square next to the Albedo Label.

This should be all you need. I remember there was an option to embed textures into an FBX, but as far as I could find out, that ONLY works if you use Blender Internal Renderer and do NOT use nodes to build the material. Just wanted to mention it for completion's sake. FBX Export Article

Also, on import, the default color in Unity is an off-white, which will make your textures look less contrasty. To counteract this, set the base color to full white.


Blender Game: Transparent Shadows I have a semi-transparent vase that casts a nice shadwo when I hit "p".

However, when I start the standalone player, the transparent material doesn't cast a shadow.

Any ideas why that could be?
Thanks in advance!

Got it, had to change the transparency from "Z Transparency" to "Raytrace".

Edit: In the material settings you have "mask" "z transparency" and "raytrace" - just select the "raytrace" box.


Rendered image has white "tiles" Still very new to Blender. Trying a first mini-project after following multiple tutorials.

This is a plane with a seamless sand image placed on it (through shown nodes), with an as-yet untouched cube. A plane provides lighting distant far up and behind (per given view) the block.

In render mode, as seen in small bottom area, things look okay. But the top is the result of rendering the image, lots of white squares and triangles, which are patterned to the subdivisions on the plane.

The surface has not been height-distorted (all 0 on Z-axis), it's just a simple large plane that's had several subdivides as shown here:

I've not seen such things during learning with tutorials, and while I could find lots of responses to white "fireflies", I couldn't find anything on what could cause this rendering issue.

Where should I be looking?

I think you might have a duplicate ground plane in your scene that is hidden in your viewport (which is why it does not show up in the viewport rendering). If that is the case, it will still be rendered because the F12-rendering does not ignore hidden objects.

If the plane has a white material and is in exactly the same z position, it will be in conflict with the textured one. As a result, faces will show pretty much randomly from either of the two objects, creating the pattern that you can see in your rendering.

You can unhide all hidden objects with Alt+H in the 3D View.


is there a way to speed up the render process? i have to render a project for university. The computer i'm using has Titan z and a i7 5th gen. The project is a large city (100+ Gb of project) and i have 2400 frames in 720p resolution. Using default 32x32 tiles and cuda for rendering i have 20+ minutes for a single frame. There is a way to speed up the entire process? Thank You all!

If you're able to, start thinking about how you can break your project down into manageable parts.
You say you have a large city. Does every building need to be an actual object? Maybe think about making billboards (a plane with a texture on it), with buildings on them.
Is every building super detailed? Think about making LoD (level of detail) variants that are less detail and less poly count. So the further away something is from the camera, the less detail it has. Which means overall your scene is less heavy. Kind of like how video games work.
Also, try and make sure your buildings aren't super messy in terms of geometry (extraneous loop-cuts, floating verts, etc.). It's a small thing, but multiplied by the amount of an entire city's worth of messy geometry, it can have an effect.
Do you have multiples of the same building? Are they duplicated? If you've got a bunch of objects that are duplicated with shift+d, each of those objects are treated as individuals. If they're all exactly the same, it's a waste of memory and can also cause problems with scenes. Instead, instance those objects with alt+d. Which means each instanced object shares the same data between those objects. Which lowers memory cost.
Do you have heavy effects like volumetrics? Are they necessary? Sure, everyone loves having atmospherics and stuff in their scenes. But if you just need some slight fade in the distance to make your scene have an atmosphere, do you really need to use something like volumetric absorption/scatter? You can get pretty much the same effect with a low-strength emission node in the volume output instead. It's essentially free in terms of render times.
Also, making sure that your tile-size in render settings is correct, is important if you're using GPU. 256x256 is generally the most optimized when it comes to GPU rendering.
Lastly, if it's still not having an effect, look into distributed rendering solutions like SheepIt. It'll render multiple frames on other people's computers, which should give an output in a more reasonable time-frame.


How to keep triangles connected and the same shape, while modifying/transforming? EDIT:
All green triangles should keep the same shape as the purple triangle. They may not deform in any other way than location and rotation. If I work with modifiers the triangles keep deforming.
I also don't want to move all triangles manually. The triangles/blender need(s) to know that the triangles form one structure, connected on the corners.

All help is appreciated.
If necessary I'm willing to learn Sverchok or Houdini or any other way to solve this...

old:
I want to do the following:

I model the shape like a i would normally do, the triangles will 'replace' it.
All of the structure is made of one base triangle, without the triangle being deformed.
(Only) the corners of the triangles are connected (snap to vertex)
I can change the scale of the base triangle for more or less detail
In the end I will replace the triangle for a more complicated object

All help is welcome

There are matrices inside sverchok.
Category Analiser - origins node to find matrices.
use category Viz - viewer bmesh to show triangle and matrices to make multiple items.
Or use category Scene-mesh instancer node
Also surface way of this task exists
Please, import this node tree https://gist.github.com/78da59d7bcba7ee9b90e9276a09022d5
in "sverchok import panel"
copy link and press "import from gist"


How to properly add a chrome-like material in cycles to a thin object? i was trying to put a chrome-like material in a curve that i'm doing, because it needs to somehow 'shine' on the borders, like a detailed curve/tube, something like this:

Is this possible to do with a thin object like this? i need to zoom it in the animation, so that's why i need it to be detailed on the material...oh and also, it should stay with black background so it will not reflect anything at all.

Thank you in regard.

Random shading tips

Different world colors for background and reflections

Below is an example of using a different color for the background than for the reflections. In addition to colors, you can of course also use, for example, an HDR image for reflections and radial gradient for camera, or other kind of combinations.

Procedural reflections

For reflective materials something is needed to be reflected. Common and nice looking method is to use an HDR image. However, sometimes a simple gradient node can look nice in reflections. You can sort of 'paint' your reflections with it in real-time, which is cool :)

Keep the scale

When using procedural shaders, it's important to reset the scale of the object if it has been scaled:

Don't skimp on detail

When modeling an object, it's good to test how the light will bounce off the surface. For example, adding some double-beveling easily leads to nicely highlighted rims for some metallic objects:

My test

dented_chrome.blend


Mirror object with animation I am making an aircraft for Flight Simulator and I need basically get the flaps from one wing copied to the other wing with the animations, if it is possible, how can I do it ?

You can simply use the Mirror modifier.

Object Mode: Select the flaps.
In the Properties panel, click the wrench icon.  Add Modifier, Mirror.

At the bottom, Mirror Object: select your plane object.

Axis will depend upon orientation of scene.
I believe X is the correct orientation in your image.

click Apply, and you're set.


How to control tube thickness I have several tube as seen in the below image. A orange color circle seen that is the bevel circle made to the tube. Tube thickness is bigger than the orange circle. I do not want to affect the tube thickness as its present in the gray color. With the same tube thickness i want to have similar all tube size in the bevel i have given. How can i decrease the orange circle and match with the original tube thickness. Any suggestion or help Thanks

Difference in tube thickness to 2 different circles I have just duplicate the circle and scale. I get 2 result as seen in the gif file.

Here are two beziers pairs beveled to two differently sized circles: in my test, it's pretty much the same size... it could be something else, or I don't understand what you did.

my test .blend


How do I re-link the video of a project when editing on a different computer? I know this is asked a lot but the answers i found haven't worked. I recently made a speech on a different laptop using blender 2.78 and then i sent the file to myself in an email and downloaded it onto my macbook pro. But for some reason when i try and watch the video in blender nothing is appearing. I've been trying to rebuild the proxies and everything else but nothing is working. I have audio in it as well that's not playing. Any suggestions?

Yu could try packing it into the blend file. I dont have 2.7x anymore but I think it is File->External Data->Pack All Into .blend


Keyframes do not render I'm new in Blender and I have a issue  with keyframes. In 3D view I have Text objects and I set keyframes. In Image Previw in Video Sequence Editor it looks all OK(objects hide and show properly how I want), but when i render it
objects show from beginning (they are keyframed to be hidden). I don't know how to fix it.

In the outliner, if you animate the eye icon, it will controll the viewport only. You'll have to animate also the photo camera to influence the rendering. The arrow toggles the selectability of the object.


Change merge shortcut? I have a High poly mesh and I have decided to make the low poly by merging as it is easiest for me. Would it be possible to change the W Hotkey , so that it merges to the center automatically? It is time consuming pressing W > Merge > Center.

Blender 2.8x
As of Blender 2.8x the 'Merge at Center' shortcut has been removed so you would have to create a new one. Right-click  RMB the menu item, click 'Assign Shortcut' and choose whatever you like:

Alternatively you can add it to the new 'Quick Favorites' list. That way you can access the operator by using (Q) in the viewport.  RMB the menu item and select 'Add to Quick Favorites':

Another option is to create the shortcut manually. Go to the User Preferences > Keymap, then unfold 3D View > Mesh > Mesh (Global) and add a custom shortcut item by clicking 'Add New'. Set the identifier to mesh.merge, it's type to 'At Center' and the actual key event to W:

Blender 2.7x
As always in Blender Right-click  RMB the button (menu item in this case) and select Change Shortcut will do the trick. If you want to reset it, original shortcut (default value) is Alt+M for all merge methods (menu items). For this reason you could also disable/remove unnecessary shortcuts in this dialog to prevent that the dialog appears:

Merge At Center (without Dialog)
Another option is to set the shortcut via User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U). Select the Input Tab and type: merge in the search area or simply unfold 3D View > Mesh > Merge:


How to set collision bounds for Armature object I made a simple character in blender game engine. He's parented to an armature, so he can walk, ext. Now I want to make him a character, so he can jump, can't go through obstacles, have a step height. I think you do that by setting the armature to Physics type: character. And it kind of works. But the collision bounds are a box, so the character sinks into the ground.

here's a picture

The white box in the middle of a character is his bouning box. How can I fix that? I tried the collision bounds, but it doesn't work. No matter which one I chose, it had no effect whatsoever.

Please help. Thanks!

Don't apply the physic to your character's Armature directly as Armatures aren't recognized as an Actual model object but only an unrendered object that makes your character's body part move (rig), If you want to make your character collide with other thing, try this:

Make sure that your char's armature and it's model have No Collision physic assigned.
Then, make a Cube and resize it to match with your Armature/Character's size and Place it around your character, You can rename the Cube as "charbound" if you want.
Set the Cube's physic to Dynamic and then Set the Cube as parent of your Armature (not the entire character).
Move the basic movement control in Logic Bricks from your char's Armature to the Cube, but don't move the Action or other Actuator more than Motion Actuator.
And at last, make the Cube Invisible (physic tab > enable Invisible button) and Box Collision Bound.

If you want to make him "jump", try using Servo Control Motion Actuator in Game Logic. by adding Z-axis Linear Velocity, Enabled Z-axis Movement and Adjust Z-axis Max/Min speed value then it would jump, make sure you activate the Collision Bounds on Physic Tab. Alternatively, you can use Character Motion Actuator and Enable "Jump" toggle there (Actually, I've never tried it. But I'm sure it can).


Scale following the location of another object I am making an animation and I need the z scale of an object to follow the z location of another object. Can anyone help me with that, please?

Thanks in advance!

You have to drive one object's scale factor in the Z axis, by the other object's location in the Z axis. This is how you would implement it.

If object A is to be scaled based on object B's z coordinate:

Animate object B's z location by inserting keyframe points appropriately.
With object A selected, in the object properties (or the transform toolbox, press 'N' in the 3D View window), hover over the scale Z box and right-click: select add driver.
Configure the driver menu as follows:

Driver Settings -> Type = Scripted Expression
Expression is the scale value. In the example shown in the screenshot, we add to var (location Z coordinate) 1.0.
Under Add Input Variable, on the drop-down menu, select Transform Channel; Object should be your object B; under Type, select Z Location; finally, set the coordinate system (in the example below is the world space).

Now, object A's scale factor on the Z axis will be equal to object B's location in the global Z axis plus one (expression = var + 1.0) .


Load data to cloth simulation setting I want to write a program that can write a json file that record values for cloth simulation setting and read the json file.

For example, when I finish a good cloth simulation, I can export a json file that contains all the values assigned in quality, mass, air and sprint etc.

Or when I load the json file, blender assign 3 to air_damping in ClothSettings if "air_damping":3 is read. If there is no "mass" key in the json, blender use the default mass value or the assigned value in blender.

OK, I am silly.... setattr(settings, "mass", 0.5) makes it......


Bake action with euler rotation instead of quaternion there is a problem that baking actions with Euler rotation creates a flickering rotation in the keyframes. The problem can be solved by choosing quaternion as rotation but I need to export the keyframes which require an Euler rotation. How can I fix this flickering issue? Is there a way to bake actions properly with euler rotation? I tried to convert the quaternion rotation to euler rotation but it didn't work, the flickering returned.
Any solutions?

I found a workaround or temporal fix. In Blender version 2.92 (at this moment alpha version) the euler discontinuity filter has been improved. If you select the problematic bone, which has a flickering rotation after baking the action with euler rotation, you go into the Graph Editor -> Key -> Discontinuity Filter (Euler) at the top. At the moment, it fixes many of the rotation flickering but not all of them. Maybe in the future, it will fix all of the problematic keyframes, as it is still alpha.
Maybe this also helps other people with the same issue.