Multiple scenes and material with pass index I am trying to create the effect where something is bigger on the inside than on the outside, just like the Doctor Who's Tardis.

I have two scenes, one inside which is just some objects and one outside which has a box with one of the front faces that has a material index of 1.

As you can see, this renders just fine thanks to this node setup.

My problem is if I want to go inside the cube and appear in scene two, it just renders black, which makes me think its not going to the inside scene.

I only have one camera and have it linked to both scenes, I have a feeling its something to do with this, should I somehow have two cameras and link them together?

How do I transition from outside to inside without any issues?

This is because there is no thickness to the outside cube.
Your file is setup so that when the camera "sees" the face on the front it is replaced with the inside scene.
However, when the camera goes inside the cube, the camera can no longer "see" that face, so nothing is replaced with the inside scene:

Solution:
One way to fix this is to make the outside cube have an inside, by giving it some thickness. The easiest way to do that is with a Solidify modifier:

Delete the inset face on the front of the cube.

Add a solidify modifier in Properties > Modifiers > Add Modifier:

Now assign the door material to the inside faces:

Apply the Solidify modifier.

Select the inside faces and assign the "door" material to them:

Now your setup should work.
Frame 60 looks like this:


Cloth simulation doesn't work for particular object I'm trying to follow this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bGB-EePxWI
But when I apply the cloth modifier and playback, the object doesn't drop as it generally would
I'm pressing playback in object mode; The simulation works correctly for a new object, but not the one I edited
No pinning. I'm trying to simulate a free-fall
Blender v2.82a

I had the same problem. Took me over half an hour to figure out.
The problem is caused by duplicated vertices.
To fix it switch to edit mode.
Press Alt + H to make sure there is nothing hidden. Then select all vertices A and then press M to merge them by distance.
Have a look at the status bar: 148 vertices removed. Switch back to object mode. Play the simulation. It works again.


Neutral pose for animation In Softimage we have Netrual Pose, it simple set position/rotation/scale to 0 without moving pivot or object self. It just offset your object. I see that in Blender is Delta Transform, so I copy Transform values to Delta transform and set Transform to 0 0 0.

It works as I need, but:

1) Is there better workflow for copy values? Shortcuts, script ...

2) If I Clear Value, it also Clear my Delta, but I need only Transform.

It looks that I will need some scripts for this workflow, but maybe there is better ....

You can first store the expected neutral pose to pose library for further use.

Go to Object Data tab,  Click  button in Pose Library;
Click  on the right-hand side to add/store pose based on current pose;
Adjust the armature to the expected neutual pose;
Click  again to store it.

Then you can apply either one of them back to the armature object by clicking  on the right-hand side.

You can press Ctrl A > Apply Pose as Rest Pose, if you want to apply the neutral pose to rest pose (the real zero transformation, not offset) by then.


Newbie Question: in Blender 2.8 Adding Armature options missing? I did try searching for this but didn't find anything.

I've been following some tutorials for Rigging and have seen a lot of videos showing  Armature Templates available from the Armature sub option see attached.
On the version of blender I'm using 2.8 Beta Win 10 64 bit (23 April 19) I have no options to select anything.
Only the Armature menu heading is from the ADD option  which when selected provides a single bone.

Have these other options gone now or do I need to configure something within blender?

Thanks

You need to enable Rigify to see them.

Click on "Edit" -> "Preferences..."
In the new window, click on "Add-ons"
In the search bar at the top right, type in 'rig'
You should now see "Rigging: Rigify"
Click the checkbox next to it and close the window; now you should see those extra options

Note: I ran into the same problem; this solution was based on help from the Gabbitt 3D Discord channel.


Getting a closest point to 3d cursor gives a wrong result I'm trying to find a point on an edge closest to 3d cursor with .intersect_point_line() but I'm getting a wrong point as a result, here I create an Empty in the result coordinate.

What am I doing wrong? When I'm printing out the results the distances are correct but it looks like verts indices are wrong..? My code:
import bpy
import bmesh
import math
import mathutils

def main():
    ob = bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active
    if not bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active:
        return
    me = ob.data
    bm = bmesh.new()
    bm.from_mesh(me)

    cursor_pos= bpy.context.scene.cursor.location.copy()
    bm.faces.ensure_lookup_table()

    print("start")
    print("cursor_location: ", cursor_pos)

    dist = 1000000
    good_res = None

    for index, edge in enumerate(bm.faces[0].edges):
        res = mathutils.geometry.intersect_point_line(cursor_pos, edge.verts[0].co, edge.verts[1].co)
        if res[1] < dist:
            dist = res[1]
            good_res = res[0]

    bpy.ops.object.empty_add(type='PLAIN_AXES', align='WORLD', location=good_res, scale=(1, 1, 1))

main()

Global coords, and calculate the distance.
Firstly mesh coordinates are local and the scene cursor location is global. Either convert scene cursor to local
scene_cursor_local = ob.matrix_world.inverted() @ scene.cursor.location

and then the result back to global when adding the empty.
ob.matrix_world @ good_pos

This would require only 2 matrix multiplications.
or convert the mesh coordinates to global (have done this below)
bm.transform(ob.matrix_world)

since we are not writing back to the bmesh so it will not be reflected permanently.
What closest point on line does.
>>> geometry.intersect_point_line(
intersect_point_line(pt, line_p1, line_p2)
.. function:: intersect_point_line(pt, line_p1, line_p2)
Takes a point and a line and returns a tuple with the closest point on the line and its distance from the first point of the line as a percentage of the length of the line.
:arg pt: Point
:type pt: :class:`mathutils.Vector`
:arg line_p1: First point of the line
:type line_p1: :class:`mathutils.Vector`
:arg line_p1: Second point of the line
:type line_p1: :class:`mathutils.Vector`
:rtype: (:class:`mathutils.Vector`, float)

Test runs.
>>> geometry.intersect_point_line((0, 0, 1), (0, 0, 0), (0, 0, 2))
(Vector((0.0, 0.0, 1.0)), 0.5)

>>> geometry.intersect_point_line((0, 1, 1), (0, 0, 0), (0, 0, 2))
(Vector((0.0, 0.0, 1.0)), 0.5)

>>>

It finds returns the point on the line closest to the point, and what percentage this is from the start point, ie 0 is the start point, 1 the other end.  It does not go outside the line.
In example above notice both have the same result, whereas one is right in the middle of the line, the other is not.  Also evident in question image, result is least ratio from corner aka edge vert 0. Flipping the normals will change the vertex order will again shift that result, if it is 10% from corner (as is) will be 90% way with verts wound the other way.
Instead calculate the distance by subtracting the hit from the cursor location.
Test code:
Have changed up code to add empty at closes point of all edges, rather than only that of zeroth face.
import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils.geometry import intersect_point_line as ipl

def main(scene, ob):
    me = ob.data
    bm = bmesh.new()
    bm.from_mesh(me)
    bm.transform(ob.matrix_world) # put in global coords
    cursor_pos = scene.cursor.location.copy()

    print("start")
    print("cursor_location: ", cursor_pos)

    dist = 1000000
    good_res = None

    for edge in bm.edges:
        hit, pc = ipl(cursor_pos, edge.verts[0].co, edge.verts[1].co)
        d = (cursor_pos - hit).length
        if d < dist:
            dist = d
            good_res = hit

    bpy.ops.object.empty_add(
        type='PLAIN_AXES',
        align='WORLD',
        location=good_res,
        )

main(bpy.context.scene, bpy.context.object)

Other constructs for min / max
Instead of the set a super high value as max and test during each iteration, there are other ways to find a minimum and maximum (numpy is extremely good at this)
Another is to make a list comprehension of all the hits and sort them.  The zeroth will be the closest, the last the furthest away.
    hits = sorted(
        [ipl(cursor_pos, edge.verts[0].co, edge.verts[1].co)[0]
        for edge in bm.edges],
        key = lambda p : (p - cursor_pos).length
        )

    bpy.ops.object.empty_add(
        type='PLAIN_AXES',
        align='WORLD',
        location=hits[0],
        )


How to do beveled curves with changing cross sectional shape along the curve? CG artist Mike Campau creates what looks like beveled curves (below), but the cross sectional shape changes along the curve. Is there a trick to this or does he take the time and effort to manually manipulate a mesh to get these inspiring effects?

You can simplify this by manipulating a straight object by hand and use a curve modifier. It is much easier to change this not bended object using your favourite technique like sculpting, lattice, skin or completely by hand in edit mode.

Let's start with a curve.

I will then create a linear extrude and give some variation in the cross section. In this case I will do it by hand  and provide a good enough resolution along the axis using loop cut.

Applying the curve modifier will deform the object along the curve. If the longitudinal resolution is not good enough, the deformed shape will not look continuous. Some tweaking or smoothing may be required.


How do I make an object cast shadows but be invisible in the render? I want an object to affect light (cast shadows) but I don't want it to be visible in the image. There should be a way to do this?

In Cycles or Eevee, that can be:

It uses the light path, testing if it is a ray from the object to the camera: if yes, the transparent shader is used.

For Eevee, you need to set the blend mode to alpha blend:


How to fix an object in the view (e.g. corner of the monitor) I would like to have one object that is always visible in the corner of the monitor, exactly at the same spot and at fixed size, no matter what the camera is tracking and what the scene is showing. How can I do this? Could parenting the camera to the object work?

It works the other way around: parent you fixed pos object to the camera,

Select the object and place it
Select the camera and parent Ctrl-P


Best strategy for hiding an object in a scene Please excuse my newbie questions. I have a scene that has chairs. I don't want to delete them (in case I need them later), I just want to make them not visible at render, so I can composite a chair shot in green screen with an actor into the scene. (keeping them in edit also helps me know where my chairs will be). Thanks!

The easiest way is to use layers (on the bottom horizontal bar of your 3D View): Select your objet and press M to put it on the layer of your choice. Click on the layer if you want to make it visible, and shift click to make several layers visible.


Meshes wont show up in render So I've almost finished a huge project that I have spent hours upon hours creating and now I don't know what to do, I've looked up so many things to try and fix it but none worked

as you can see here I have a toy train

and when I render it you can see the carriages and they are just black and you cant see anything else and you can see the wheels have put holes in it or something but I don't know what I've done.

and an all my other layers when I render it there is nothing. Please help

Bases on other questions, I think your problem is that you haven't enabled the meshes for render. At the top left, there should be a list of meshes. Click the camera next to the name of the mesh so that its like this:

And you should be fine. :) (Also, add some more lights to your scene so the meshes aren't black)


2D stabilization causes stretching artifacts In 2.77a, the 2D Stabilize is causing stretched pixel artifacts all along the edges that black.  This problem is particularly strong when animating the Location Influence and Scale Influence.  The artefacts are present in renders, as well as in the Movie Clip Editor with Display Stabilization turned on.

As you can see, on the top edge and left edge, the pixels are stretched to the edges, as if trying to fill the black gap that would be left there.  I had to black out the faces of the actors, as we are still in post.  Furthermore, these artefacts appear no matter what when animating the Location and Scale Influences in the Movie Clip Editor.  Previewing the animated stabilization is impossible, also, because the influences do not update with each frame.  You have to refresh something in the Movie Clip Editor for it to show its true position (like turning 2D Stabilization off and on).

Is this a bug, or am I missing something?

Thanks.

Change the filter used for stabilization from bilinear to nearest or bicubic:


how to render in user perspective and not camera perspective When I render an image, the render uses the camera perspective. What setting do I need to change to have the render show the user perspective?

There is no real way to do that. (For example many settings like defocus depend on the camera object.) You simply will have to move the camera around.

Firstly: You can move the camera around like any object (grab with G, rotate with R and scale with S), but it is easier to go to the camera perspective (numpad 0) and enter fly mode (Shift+F). This allows you to position the camera in a more practical way. (See this in more detail here: https://youtu.be/xcZmyD9jkI4)

Secondly: If you want to save the camera's position for some reason, you can simply add a new one to the scene (Shift+A) and set it to be the active camera by pressing the Ctrl + 0 hotkey. Now the scene will be rendered from it and hitting 0 will make you look through it. You can tell which camera is active by looking at the camera object from another view: the small triangle above it is filled when it's active.

Thirdly: If your user perspective is "just the right way", you can align the camera to it (I can't remember the hotkey, but hitting space and looking for something along the lines of "Align camera to view" should get it).


Voxel data in Cycles Is Cycles able to render voxel data from an external file?

I can create the volumetric effects that I'm interested in by plugging a texture node into volume absorption and volume scatter shaders, then into an add shader. What I'm lacking is being able to use my own data, rather than only the built-in textures.

You can use a particle grid to get back the ability to use a Voxel data texture.

Create a box with the proportions of the voxel data
add a particle system
set the emission to Volume and Grid
set the end emission frame to 1
set a low resolution at first (like 40)
add a texture to the particle system
set the texture to Voxel data
load your voxel data file
Enable Ramp to tweak the threshold
Set the influence to Density

If your volume doesn't appear, it's just because of a little bug that you can easily get around by switching to Blender Internal Render View mode and back to Cycles Solid mode, then refreshing the Voxel Data. The bug is reported here.

add a material
Replace the Diffuse by a Volume Scatter and plug it to Volume
Add a Point Density node and plug it to the density of the Volume scatter
Plug a multiply node inbetween to get a higher density
In the Point Density node, select the other box object and its particle system

tweak the resolution settings of both the particle grid and the point density. Note that the particle grid resolution is limited to 250. If you want a higher resolution you have to slice your voxel data in pieces of 250x250x250 (or any resolution below) and use multiple particle grids. I won't do that because my computer is a toaster but I think you get the idea.

You can then add a particle killer mesh to cut your MRI where you want :

This is ugly because the resolution is low but it can be as good as your computer allows it to be.

Here's a file you can open to test (provided you also put your MRI file in the same folder as the .blend) :


Map Nasa Heightmap to Sphere I'm pretty new to Blender and I'm trying to map a Nasa Heigtmap onto a sphere. I've tried to use the Displace Modifier but the heightmap is streched:
I think this is because Africa is at the UV spheres pole, but I have no idea how to change that.

Help would be very appreciated!

Try this. 1. Apply scale and rotation of the object. Activate the object than press Ctrl + A button, than choose scale and rotation. 2. Unwrap the object perfectly to a rectangular shape. Delete top and bottom vertices. than make one vertical markseam, than unwrap the sphere. please learn how to unwrap UV sphere, in somewhere tutorial. 3. add more polygon, increase subdivision surface to highest level. if needed add double subdivision surface modifier, more polygon more detai.


Moving Square to Sit onto Sphere's Face? I am trying to move a square onto a face of a sphere, so that the pivot of the square is at the center of the face I selected. I also need the square to be rotated so that the faces of the square are parallel/perpendicular (depending on the face) to the face of sphere.

3 techniques at a minimum are possible.

Particles and Duplication on faces and Inset Faces.

Consider particles in the selected object in the image below.

The orange cubes are particle objects rendered by the particle system.

Consider duplicated objects in the select object in the image below.
The selected sphere is the parent of the cyan cube.  Duplication panel ... select faces.

The cubes location are determined by the sphere.  They are moved off the sphere for discussion purposes.

3rd Technique for Trapezoids placement.

Create Cyan UV Sphere. Edit Mode. Mesh Select Mode Faces. Select All.

Inset Faces. Accept Inset. Keep Selection.

Scale Mode to individual Origins.
Scale To Taste.
Switch Mesh Select Mode Vertices. Invert Selection.  Delete Vertices.
Some of this is visible in the Info Window in the image below.

For discussion purposes a yellow sphere was placed in the middle.


Trying to extend an edge along a curve First, I cannot draw a straight line with a ruler.  I have NEVER been artistically inclined, however, blender seems to help me overcome SOME of my issues.  I can edit basic models and get close to what I really want.  lol

With that being said, I have a model (I am not the author of the model), that i need to extend the edges pointed at by the arrows.  That "bump" need to be smoothed out.  I want to extend it so that the "bump" is now a smooth transition from the ground plane.

My issue is that I can extend the edges, but it does NOT maintain the dimensions I need.

If I made the model, I would have created an outer and inner circle to attach those "bumps" to.  With that being said, I do NOT know how to make an inner and outer circle to attach the edges to so that the edge of the model continues to follow the dimensions of the circle.

If I select the edges and grab them, I would want the individual rectangles to shrink as they get closer to the center and expand when it gets further from the edge.

I hope my explanation and pictures are clear enough.

Once I figure that out, I SHOULD be able to cut this into 45/30/10 degree curves!

If there is a youtube video, that shows what I want, please send me the link.

Otherwise, I would need fairly complete instructions.

If I need to make a circle, I can do that, however, I have NO clue how to center it on my existing model, or make my model center on the circle. OR even size the circle so that it matches the radius on the inner and out edge of the model.

I know how to alt-click to grab edges/faces/vertices, S + axis scales, etc... but some of the more in depth stuff, I have yet to learn.

I appreciate any help on this!

Overview:

The thing you are struggling here is a Pivot center for rotating/scaling.

In your situation as you stated that model isn't yours we will need to manually place 3D Cursor at the desired spot and then switch to Pivot center: 3D Cursor and we are good to go. Normally when you are creating such shape it is (mostly) in the center of the scene so the first steps wouldn't be necessary.

Steps:

Grab two vertices on the inside of the mesh like in the gif.
Press F to make an edge and connect them.
Press W > Subdivide to create vertex in the middle of created edge.
Turn on Vertex Snapping.
Press G > Y and hover mouse over the bottom most Vertex. Repeat with X Axis.
Shift+S > Cursor to Selected to place 3D Cursor where we've moved our vertex.
Delete this vertex, it's no use now.
Select Pivot center to 3D cursor.
Select inner/outer edge loop and Extrude/Scale or both.
Optionally go to Object Mode and set Origin Point to the 3D Cursor, it should help later on. Do this by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C.


turning a map into height map How can i change a simple image into height map. I am using crazybump software for making different maps of a picture. But it does not provide the facility to make heigtmap. Is there any way to do this?

Crazybump doesn't use height map because it is poor. Instead of height map, use normal map - it has much better results on same resolution.


Where to find F Brush tool? I just downloaded blender 2.75a. I'm halfway through my first character creation and decided to try out the F Brush tool. I've seen quite a lot of folks using the tool. I do not have this tool.
I've looked for the addon...with no results.

Where can I find a download for it? I would really appreciate it as I am still learning. I don't want to settle with sculptdraw.

The Brush preset and a few others were removed in 2.73 because they were essentially the same as other presets:

  Some brushes really do the same thing and we have agreed not to offer
  extra presets for one brush type. Removed those brushes from default
  .blend. They are Polish (Flatten Contrast does the same), Brush (Does
  the same as draw) and Draw from texpaint (where texdraw/draw does the
  same)

Also note that the "F" is not part of the brush's name, but rather indicates that it has a Fake User.


Can we use just a script for a driver? For example:

  bpy.data.textures["mouth shapes"].image_user.frame_offset = bpy.data.objects["rigMeenuTeen"].pose.bones["eyes"].location

Can this kind of expression be a driver?

If the property doesn't allow for drivers, it cannot be driven with a driver.

It can be driven through app.handlers though:

import bpy

def my_handler(scene):
    # this code will be run on every frame change
    loc = bpy.data.objects["rigMeenuTeen"].pose.bones["eyes"].location
    bpy.data.textures["mouth shapes"].image_user.frame_offset = int(loc.x)

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(my_handler)


I downloaded a model that already has a texture attached, why doesnt the texture appear on the model? My previous question was closed and linked to something about cycles, as I've just started using blender I have no idea what that is. I want to know why a model that already has a full texture map still appears as grey.

That's because you're in Solid view, where textures don't appear.
Switch to Material Preview or Render Preview and your textures should be there.


Node "Recipe" For Asphalt? Is there any sort of node "recipe" or tricks for making asphalt? I'm making a road and I was wondering if there is a way of using shaders and/or other things in the editor to make it look more realistic?

This is intended for use in Cycles.

I would start with a Voronoi texture as displacement map to get the "pebbles", then disrupt that texture with other kinds of noise.


Duplicate edit bones I want to loop through my skeleton and duplicate each bone but also making the new duplicated bone parent to the original bone. Kinda like this:

for bone in bpy.context.active_object.data.edit_bones[:]:
    new_bone = bone.duplicate_move()
    bone.parent = new_bone

But this results in this error: AttributeError: 'EditBone' object has no attribute 'duplicate_move'

There is no bone.duplicate_move  There is a bpy.ops.armature.duplicate(...) but being an operator it wont return the newly created bone(s) only a status set.  {'FINISHED'} if run succesfully for instance.

Need something like (run in edit mode ofcourse)

import bpy
arm = bpy.context.object.data
for b in arm.edit_bones[:]:
    cb = arm.edit_bones.new(b.name)

    cb.head = b.head
    cb.tail = b.tail
    cb.matrix = b.matrix
    cb.parent = b


Image Editor 2D gizmo name? Hi I am trying to create a tool that has a gizmo in the 2d/Image-editor view.
When adding a gizmo I use the self.gizmos.new("GIZMO_GT_dial_3d") to display a radial gizmo.
However I saw in the release notes for 2.82 there is a 2d gizmo that you now can display in UV view.
I would like to know what its name is so I can use it for my tool, self.gizmos.new("UV_WIDGET_NAME?")
If you know anything about this or somewhere I can see all listed types of gizmos that would be great.

TL;DR The UV translate tool uses GIZMO_GT_arrow_3d.

The gizmo groups that are used for the tools in the UV editor can be seen in _defs_image_uv_transform (space_toolsystem_toolbar.py).
The ID name of the gizmo group is IMAGE_GGT_gizmo2d_translate which is implemented in space_image.c. It uses ED_widgetgroup_gizmo2d_xform_no_cage_callbacks_set, which in turn calls ED_widgetgroup_gizmo2d_xform_callbacks_set  that stores gizmo2d_xform_setup as function for the setup. Should the setup function be called this also results in gizmogroup2d_init being executed. Its return value is a GizmoGroup2D that is used to set gizmos for the operators through WM_gizmo_operator_set. The gizmo types that are returned by gizmogroup2d_init in a GizmoGroup2D are GIZMO_GT_arrow_3d, GIZMO_GT_cage_2d and GIZMO_GT_button_2d.
These functions are implemented in transform_gizmo_2d.c.


How to remove lighting and keep objects visible I am trying to film / animate a short film utilizing Invidia's GAN AI to generate the various backgrounds for a surreal effect. Before I attempt filming I need some help using blender.
In order to generate these backgrounds, different textures are applied/generated in accordance to a certain colour value (see Video 1 and Video 2). Is there a way for me to completely remove lighting in Blender while still having objects remain visible and still retain their colour?
In other words, how do I make sure that the colour I texture objects are unchanged by that of the lighting and compression other any renders. Is it possible to recreate some of the techniques shown in the video below in Blender?
I am extremely inexperienced with the program.

You can try to change the rendering engine to “workbench” and set the shading as flat. Although if you have textures and material you may can’t use that.
If so, try switching to EEVEE/Cycles. Set the color (I’m not sure what it’s called, but maybe a color correction?) to “Standard” instead of “filmic “. It’s located on the color management, properties tab. Then, delete all shader and replace it with an image texture/color (just the emission). Without a shader, the final result should be flat without shading. You can also mess with the world setting for better result.
(If you’re confused about the emission, it’s using only image/color, like ColorRamp, image texture, noise texture, other textures, and yeah stuff like that. I believe it would work)
Oh, and I remember NVDIA GauGan is using a color mapping (if it’s what it called.) There shouldn’t be any texture on the material, isn’t it?


How to emulate a Number Pad and 3 Button Mouse? I have a MacBook Pro. Since it's a laptop, it does not have a number pad. It only has the numbers at the top of the keyboard. Can I emulate the number pad so that I can access the hot keys for top view, bottom view, etc...

Also, how can I emulate a 3 button mouse with just my touch pad or a two button mouse?

Blender has options that allow you to emulate both of these features. If you go into the User Preferences view and select the 'Input' tab, you should see a bunch of options on the left side of your screen. To use the numbers across the top of your keyboard instead of a number pad, select 'Emulate Numpad.' To emulate the third mouse button, select 'Emulate 3 Button Mouse.' What this does is allows you to press the Alt key while using your left mouse button, and have it behave just like the middle/third mouse button.

Ultimately however, if you're going to be using Blender heavily, you're going to want to get a real three button mouse and/or a numpad. I would personally heavily recommend getting a USB or wireless three-button mouse from a office supply store--they're really cheap, and it saves a ton of time over the Alt-click setting.


Constant errors with Rigify (Blender), and ultimately can't import to Unity3D I sat down today to try and learn animations in Blender. After a few hours I was rigging bones to simple structures, making key frames, and saving FBX files for import to Unity3D. I felt like a pro.

Then I tried Rigify. Theoretically this makes it easy to create humanoid armatures and animations.

I started with a free humanoid model I found online. After about 20 minutes of carefully positioning every finger and knuckle I was happy with the result. Previously at this point I would have let out an aggravated scream, knowing I now had to assign a vertex group to every bone - however not with Rigify! I was all ready to test out this beautiful feature. So I select my armature and I hit Generate. The result was... disastrous.

This looks nothing like the beautiful armatures in all the Rigify tutorials and examples. Rings were out of place, the hips are 8 feet in front of him, there's some weird convergence of bones behind him on the floor... I don't quite know how this happened, but I figured - hey, I'm not the Rigify expert, right? Maybe it's supposed to do that. So I tried to select my rig so I could attach it to my mesh.

It only selects part of the rigging instead of the whole thing. That's... scary. I used the B shortcut to select the entire rig and tried now. Select the rig and the mesh, make sure the rig is the active selection, hit ctrl+P, and... there's a new menu item?

What on earth is "Bone Relative"? No matter. I'm not selecting that, anyway. So I click "With Automatic Weights" like a good little lemming. This should connect the rigging to my mesh, right? OH GOD WHAT ON EARTH-

So my mesh has committed suicide. It's not quite seppuku, as that requires you have a stomach through which to ram a sword. It completely removed the stomach. And the legs. And the arms. It was like a self-dismemberment.

To my surprise, the rigging still worked... kinda

The few remaining faces move as one would expect. I wasn't really sure what was going on, if this was successful or not, so I figured I may as well import into Unity3D and see what happens.

Now with my previous experiments in Unity I was able to select the armatures in Unity and manipulate the model manually. This was the expected ability with my new mesh:

So we import our test asset to see what will- well, this doesn't look promising

Attempting to import the character to my scene caused Unity to all but freeze. It now takes 3 seconds for any mouse click or button press to register. What on earth is going on here? I fight through the pain. It'll all be worth it if I can make it work. I had to destroy everything in the scene and only add this one character to be able to move the camera, and even still it's extremely laggy. Two things seem amiss, though...

The root bone is.... the pinky? Also, WHAT ON EARTH ARE ALL OF THESE?

Clearly I'm a little bit lost on how to use Rigify, or what I did wrong, or why it's making rigs that don't make sense, or how to use the rig it creates, or why it isn't bonding to the mesh,... or anything... Can someone point me in the right direction? I've tried Googling all night and every tutorial and video just makes it look easy. You line up the bones, hit Generate, and voila - you have a perfect rig that works like a charm. No dice.

Go into Blender's User Preferences and on the File menu, tick 'Auto Run Python Scripts' on and regenerate the rig. This will fix half of it missing. However, when you move into Unity, you'll notice that Rigify creates a lot of controllers and widgets, that while very helpful in Blender, are rubbish for Unity. I suggest taking a look at the Rigify to Unity package in the Asset Store as well.


Subdivision Surface not making things smooth as they are in the tutorial I am following I am currently trying to develop my modeling skills, and following a tutorial found on YouTube. The tutorial teaches how to create an anvil. At 19:10 or so into the video, a subdivision surface modifier is used to create a smooth, soft look.

However, when I do the same, mine looks very sharp and generally bad.

Any ideas why? I will include the blend file below, I appreciate your time and suggestions.

The Tutorial I'm following (skip to about 19:00)

This is his when he subdivides, which is very different from mine when I do the same at the same settings. (I cannot post more pictures because I am new, but if you check the blend file I attached, you should be able to see the difference.

This is what it looks like when I subsurf without the base face.

You need to delete the bottom face. Select it and press "X" and select "Faces" from the dropdown menu.

After you delete the bottom face an additional problem for your Modifiers/mesh occurs.

Set the "view" and "render" to 2 in the Sub Surf Modifier.

In Edit Mode select all of the vertices and press "G" "Y" to move them slightly away from the center on the Y axis.

Then check the box next to "Clipping" in the Mirror Modifier. Then "G" "Y" again and move all of your vertices back toward the center.


How can I create a box/cuboid by entering values? Warning: newbie question. I am just starting with Blender and learned about creating meshes and editing them. However, I miss something I did in 3DS Max about 15 years ago: I would like to create a box/cuboid just by entering the values and can't find a way to do this in a simple way.

So far I did it this way: added a box. Selected the vertices for one dimension (e.g. the ones of the face facing x into positive direction). Pressed g to translate, had to move it a bit and confirm by RMB. Entered the desired multiple of 1 for one dimension (e.g. x).  Then I had to repeat this for y and z, if necessary.

This hardly seems efficient. Did I miss something and can somewhere simply create a box e.g. with dimensions (4,1,9) in one step, as I know it from other software?

I hope I did not miss any existing question, but I did not find anything with my keywords. If I missed something please just close and hint me at the existing one. I might still be missing terminology for Blender.

It would be better to set the dimensions of your object, like in the screenshot. This way, you can even make use of blenders ability to use different units. After that, apply the scale of your object. This will normalise the scale while keeping vertices at the right position, and prevents many problems later on, especially if you plan to animate.

There is another way to achieve what you want: At the moment, you added the new object to your scene, there're some parameters to change - see screenshot. Sadly, this is only possible directly after creating the object. Blender creates objects and treats them as meshes directly after, while 3ds Max creates primitives, which can be edited with edit poly later. Both ways have their drawbacks.


Extrude Curve Between Two Paths I'm trying to create a beveled edge with a smooth transition from one radius to another as you can seen in the image below.

The primary selection is the path I want the secondary selection to follow while it tapers down to smaller radius bevel of the existing geometry.

Both the inner and outer "tracks" that the bevel should follow have the same number of segments (6) so the final shape should have 24 faces (6 segments x 3 beveled faces per segment). I hope that makes it clear what I'm trying to accomplish.

I think I can create the geometry fairly easily by hand using curves between each segment, but I thought there might be a more elegant way to dot it.

I've read a few topics (32571, 34763, 31211) that I thought might help but haven't been able to get anything to work yet.

I'm quite new to Blender so I hope I'm not overlooking something simple.

Thanks for the help!

For this sort of thing you may use the Grid Fill operator, as long as all opposing loops have the exact same number of edges, and belong to the same mesh object.

If you want to use actual Bezier Curve objects as guids for lofting, you may look into using the BSurfaces Addon. See the Blender artists thread, or it's Wiki page.

This sort of thing is usually best modeled with either NURBS or Solid Modelling CAD based software, though.


Text-to-Object Animation I would like to create an animated logo.

The idea is to change two letters into a circular object using animations. Essentially, the two converge into one line where the half circles, made by the letters, align to make a circle cut in half by the line. The entire sequence then spins as the line disappears into the middle, leaving just a circle.

I have attempted to search the communities for video tutorials or someone that may have done something similar or any text-to-object animations. Maybe even combining several ideas if need be, but have come short and am stuck on how to even approach the project.

If anyone has any links or experience in doing such an animation, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Any way to remove the extra space? These are supposed to be half circles so I would expect them to fit together without this happening. Not sure of how to prevent this.

We will use shape keys, vertex groups, keyframes, and modifiers to achieve this.

First, go to edit > Preferences > Animation and make sure the default interpolation of F-Curves is set to Linear

Add a Circle. Add>Mesh>Circle
Immediately press F9 to open the popup menu and set the vertices to 64
Go into edit mode, select the top most vertex and press V and right-click to rip it and keep it in place. Do the same to the bottom most vertex. You now have two separate half circles.

While still in edit mode with the same object, add a plane. Add/Mesh/Plane
Press S, X, 0 to scale it to a line along the y axis.
Press S, Y, 2 to set its length to 2.
Press Right Click > Merge Vertices > By distance so that it is a simple line

Add a new vertex group named "Bar Left", click assign.
Press G, X, -0.1 to move it a little bit to the left.
Press SHIFT + D,  to duplicate, then type X, 0.20 to position it on the right.
Add a new vertex group named "Bar Right", click assign, select the "Bar Left" vertex group and click "Remove" so that each bar is assigned to a different vertex group.
Press L while overing over the right half-circle to select all the linked vertices.
Add a new vertex group named "Circle Right"
Unselect, and do the same for the left half circle. Name the vertex group "Circle Left"
Move both half circles 0.1 unit on either side along x axis.

Tab out of edit mode, add a shape key and then another one. Select the new one and go into edit mode.
Select the vertices of both bars and press Press S, X, 0 so that they are on the same spot. Move each half circle 0.1 unit closer to the center so that they form a circle again. Tab out of edit mode.
Go to frame 1 of your animation, and click on the little dot on the right of the value of your keyframe. Make sure the value is "0". The field becomes yellow.

Go to frame 10, set the value to 1 and click on the rotated cube on the right of the field. Now when you play your animation, the two bars begin separated and merge at frame 10.
Add a mask modifier to your object. Select either one of the bar vertex groups, click on the invert icon and press i while hovering over both the screen icon and the camera icon.
Go back to frame 9, unchek both these icons and again press i while hovering over them. The modifier should look like this on frame 10

Add a new shape key,and move the right circle 1 unit up and the left circle one unit down on the Y axis
Tab out of edit mode, set the value to 1 and while still one frame 10, add a keyframe (white little dot on the right)
Go to frame 40, set the value to 0 and add a keyframe
While on frame 40, go to the object's transform properties and add a keyframe to the Z rotation set to 0.
Add a new shape key, select the bar vertices which are not masked by the mask modifier (in my case Bar Left) and scale it to 0 along the y axis
While on frame 40, add a keyframe on the value of this shape key set to 0
Go to frame 70, set the rotation to 270° and add a keyframe, set the value of the last shape key to 1 and a a keyframe
Add a mask modifier and mask the bar from the frame 70 and on. (Same steps as for the first bar) Your modifier should look like this on frame 69 :

Add a skin modifier, go into edit mode after selecting the base shape key, select all the vertices, type CTRL + A and move your mouse to the left to reduce the width of the skin modifier.
If the skin doesn't appear on parts of the mesh, select one vertex from it and click on "mark root" in the skin modifier.
Go back to frame 1. Add a new shapekey and mute all the other ones (checkbox on the right of the shape key name)
Select the vertices of your first half-center and scale it by a value of 2.

Repeat those steps for the other half-circle. Un-mute all the other shapekeys.
On frame 70, add a keyframe with a value of 0. Go to frame 100 and a keyframe with a value of 1.
I did not really understand the final parts of your animation but I am sure you can achieve it with the knowledge from this answer. Play with vertex groups, shape keys and masks.
The final result


How to properly rig a watch to an arm So in order to fix the wrist-twisting, I use bendy bone the twist the wrist erea (pic1). But this make the watch also twist too(pic2)

.

So is there a way to properly rig the watch or better way to rig the arm?

Edit: Are you sure it's a rigid-body-simulation problem?

I guess what you want is to deform the bracelet but not the watch. To do so you could use Make Vertex Parent. In my screenshot I just kept the watch and its bracelet but of course the bracelet is supposed to be part of the same mesh as the character and his arm.

Make the watch a different object from the bracelet. Now select the watch, then the bracelet and go in Edit mode.

Select 3 bracelet vertices, press ctrlP > Make Vertex Parent

Now when you deform the arm (and therefore the bracelet) the watch follow but doesn't deform.


What is the meaning of the strength of the sun lamp? all other lamp types in blender uses a physical unit to define strength but the sun lamp has a unit less strength value.So what is the unit of the sun lamp strength if it has or if it is relative what does 1 strength mean?

This is in the documentation:

  Strength of the lights in Watts per square meter.

Though, I'm wondering if that should be kilowatts instead of watts.


How to render gease pencil in cycles in blender 2.8 How can I render grease pencil lines in cycles? Other stack exchange questions explain that you need to bevel the lines, but that option seems to have disappeared. I have markings on some objects that I made with the grease pencil, and they don't show up in the final render, though they do show up in the preview render (when you press z, and select uv, rendered, lookdev, solid). Thanks.

Ok, figured it out. After the render finishes, the lines are added, so you have to wait throught the whole render.


How to "Separate by loose parts" in 2.90? I use the search function for everything in blender when I can. That could be a bad habit though, because now "Separate by loose parts" doesn't come up in search (2.90) and I do not know how to do it optimally.

You just need to Hit P on the keyboard and select one of the options


cloth simulation problem I'm trying to make a simple cloth simulation in the skirt of my mesh

I want something like this but with cloth colission of course

but this happens when I turn on cloth colission.

it looks like the problem is in cloth colission config. but I dont know exactly where.

Somebody knows what to do?

Thanks in advance

While I haven't looked in detail at your cloth configuration, I notice that your model is less than 1 cubic unit in size.  I have found (much to my chagrin) that trying to run cloth physics on anything that small has the unfortunate result that the cloth jiggles around and eventually gets sucked up into whatever model it is supposed to be colliding with.

Try scaling the model(s) up by 100x and apply. Then set the scene units to centimeters (If you want units to display realistically).


Is it possible to simulate a long exposure shot in Blender? I am well aware of the Exposure setting, however that appears to just change the luminosity of the image (doesn't make sense to have the option even there if that is all it does, any other insights?).

The effect I am trying to achieve is like the classic night time city shot with the traffic blurred along the route. Is the only way to achieve this to animate light sources going very fast and use motion blur? This seems like it could be a very inefficient method, and might yield bad results.

Also note that the render times could be quite immense (8+ hours each) so rendering as few frames as possible is necessary and will help decide which method I use.

You can use motion blur, and you don't even have to animate the objects going absurdly fast or anything. Just set the shutter speed really slow (just like on a real camera):

However, there is one rather major problem; by default cycles only uses one step of interpolation between the positions of the object at the beginning and end of the exposure. This is fine in most cases, but for long exposures this is likely won't do at all:
Animation:

20 frame exposure:

To convince cycles to interpolate between start and end locations with more steps, we have to use Deformation motion blur. This allows us to set the number of interpolation steps per object in Properties > Object > Motion Blur.
20 frame exposure with 5 interpolation steps:

Setting up deformation motion blur
To do this everything must be in a single object (motion must come from the mesh itself deforming). A simple way to accomplish this when you already have animated objects:

Duplicate the objects you want to be blurred
Join them into one object
Hook each individual part of the joined object to it's corresponding original object (Select the original object, then the joined object, enter edit mode (↹ Tab), select the part with L, and create a hook with ⎈ CtrlH> Hook to selected object)
Hide the original objects in the render so they don't interfere

Once everything is joined into a single object, cycles will use the steps setting in Object > Motion Blur for determining the number of interpolation steps. Select the joined object and bump this up, e.g. to something like 5:

Result:

Note that deformation motion blur is quite a bit slower than normal motion blur. Ideally there would be a interpolation steps option for object level motion blur too, but unfortunately this is still on the todo list.


Export model with Vertex Paint to .fbx I have a complex model saved from mayavi library in python and its colors are saved at Vertex paint.

My final goal is to import this model into Unity with textures.

And Only way I found is, import this model first into Blender, create a new image in UV/Image mode; select all vertices of model, Bake it; and I get that new image as the texture file.

Is there any simpler way? where I can export the model from blender with its Vertex paint (if possible as texture) as .fbx or .3ds or .obj

Thanks in advance.

If anyone stuck in the same dilemma; Here's a solution.

And @Firewall's comment showing the shader script can also be implemented.


How do I space quads evenly? Is there a way in blender or an addon that allows me to select a bunch of faces (or verts) and evenly distributes (or relaxes) them into quads clean quads.
Without screwing up the vert ID/order.

Edit:
I would like to have the shapes of my quads to turn into perfect squares while maintaining the volume of the object and the vertex order.

Select the inner Vertices, press W > Smooth and adjust Smooth Vertex settings:

You can also access Smooth Vertex operator settings via F6:

Another way is selecting a whole row or column of vertex and then Scale in X or Y axis to a factor or Zero with S > X + 0

Alternatively place the 3D cursor over the vertex you wish to align to, press . to transform relative to the 3D Cursor position, and then repeate the scale process described above. S > X + 0


Extruded SVG showing spikes I have imported what appears to be a clean SVG into Blender (works fine for 2D) but when I try to extrude it, I am seeing spikes appear. Can anyone tell me what is the issue and how I can fix it?

Many Thanks]1

Hard to tell for sure without post a blend file we can inspect.
Most likely overlapping vertex or segments in your curve. Try checking your curve for duplicate geometry or overlapping segments as described in the link posted by Georges.

Otherwise try entering edit mode in your curve, and check if the radius of all your vertex are set to 1.
Go into edito mode, select all vertex and head to the Tool Shelf > Tools > Curve Tools > Set Curve Radius Button and set all to 1 or any other value has long as they are all the same.


Inconsistent color on rendered image Clearly because of lightning but not sure what is the best way to fix this. Suggestions?

Edit:
The problem is with area in the red. The color is really inconsistent (Looks like clouds?). Lightning source would fix this but how would i achieve this naturally. Or its not achievable?

Material on walls, roof and cabinets are just normal diffuse. Tried to add more light bounces but that didn't help.

Do you have the De-noising filter on?  If so you might consider increasing the radius.  See this answer also: How to reduce noise in really dark scene


Procedural Text in Video Sequence Editor I was wondering if there is a way to create procedural text in the text Effect Strip. Something so I can clearly see the name of images shown, the frame of the video, and the time in an video sequence. Something similar to some tricks in AE or Shotcut filters that have copy and paste features for their filters.

Shotcut:

I tried doing this manually, and I'm trying to add it to hundres of images which is too much.

You can add stamp like this in Render -> Metadata section:

There is now so much settings, but you can bake over image a strip name, labels of markers, frame number and time here.


Adding a texture to one face in Blender 2.8 How do you add a texture to one face of a cube in 2.8?

I get stuck on the instructions below when it tells you to "Go to the texture header" in the materials context. In my version there is no texture header in the materials context.

How do i add material/textures to only one face of an object?

OK I figured this out.

After adding a material slot and clicking new:

Click the small dot next to 'base material' and select 'Image Texture' that then allows you to load a texture for the material and can be assigned to the face.


Set hotkey to move perpendicular to normal/slide on surface I'm basically just trying to avoid hitting G, Shift+Z, Shift+Z every time I want to move a vertex freely on a surface. Is there a way to set this to a single hotkey?

Not sure exactly what that key combination is supposed to do nor if it is supposed to be used in Edit Mode or Object Mode specifically, but go to the User Preferences > Input look for the relevant context under the 3D View category, like Global, Object Mode, or Mesh etc.

Either add a new entr there using the Add New button at the bottom, or modify an existing.

Pick the relevant operator, I am guessing transform.translate, expand the settings bellow and adjust the available controls to your liking.

I supposed the Constraint and Align with point Normal are of particular interest to you.


Animation Node (Vertex color) and Cycles Node (Gradient) I have a problem creating a color gradient in the AN grid (I used vertex color, but only one color remains). This image below shows the effect you would like to have on AN. But I used the array and the Node Cycles. How do I have the same effect on AN without instancer.

That's how I did it at Cycles

I'm using this Config in AN

But I only get this

You are using the local texture coordinates to color the objects, thus the colors are local and identical for all arrows. What you want to do is color the objects solely based on their locations. In Cycles, the Object Info node can be employed as follows:

Where the value controls the radius of the gradient.


Separate selected UV map vertices from surrounding vertices How do I break the selected UV map from its surrounding vertices?

You can do this by selecting the face and using Select > Select Split from the Image Editor header or the Y key, then drag to separate. This method doesn't require you changing the Sticky Selection Mode, but it does require that you separate at least one tri. This method does not work for separating a single point or edge.


How to show an object in viewport as it is in another keyframe, without going to that other keyframe? This is keyframe 1

This is keyframe 2

I would like to see the object as it is in another keyframe, without going to that other keyframe. For example, I would like to see the object as it is in keyframe 1, while working in keyframe 2. I want something like this:

Blender Does not support anything as direct as Onion-skinning like in 2D Animation (without addons at least)
Blender DOES on the other hand, support Motion paths, Which will show you essentially the same information in a more basic way. To Use it, select the object, and find motion paths in the object info tab

Click Calculate, And it should give you a result like this:

Hopefully this helps!


Artifacts after render I have taken over this project. I need to render this with a new UVMap/Shape however Im getting these lines appear.

Here is a partial of the UVMap/Shape. I believe the error is coming from location the bunched up faces on the UVMap/Shape.

Any ideas?

Fixed it by dissolving some of the edges.


Blenderkit addon - Error while trying to enable the addon in Blender 2.9 I am getting this error when I try to enable Blenderkit addon in blender 2.9, I am not sure why, it was working fine before updating to blender 2.9, please help me solve this issue.

For all who might have the same problem, I found a solution thanks to the addon developers, I guess there was a conflict between several downloaded versions of blender, so to fix the issue, I went to the following path
C:\Users[Your Username]\AppData\Roaming\Blender foundation
I deleted the blender foundation folder and restarted blender and now I was able to enable the addon again
make sure to show hidden files in order to see App Data folder.


Installing Blender on windows 10 pro reduces UI size I have been using Blender for few years on Linux Ubuntu on my Thinkpad and I never faced problem in Blender installation and running smoothly even in my 2 GB ram Linux laptop.
Recently, I tried to install blender latest version 2.79 from blender.org in my new Dell xps 15 16 GB ram with Windows 10 pro. I am facing terrible lagging problems,

If I install old version like 2.77 or 2.78 or 2.76 there is problem like I cannot see the tabs anymore. They are so small that I cannot see them.

I cannot understand where is exactly the problem. I have all the pythons installed properly.
Can anybody tell me the solution. Is it problem with blender and windows 10 compatibility?
I have attached the screen shot,  please have a look and tell me the solution.

It's looks like you have retina display, that means it has four real pixels in one digital pixel.

Open File > User Preferences

or CTRL+ALT+U

And the very first entry at the top:
Display: Scale

Set it to 2.


Is it possible to have seamless material blending on two separate objects? I'm looking for a way to make more seamless joints between separate objects when rendered with cycles.

I've noticed that joining multiple meshes will create a seamless edge, even between different material types. I'm hoping to accomplish this effect without having to destroy non-mesh objects, such as paths.

Here's a demonstration of the issue:

The top left is three separate objects, two paths and a sphere.

In the bottom right, the paths have been converted to meshes and joined with the sphere as a single object.

Here's what it looks like when rendered:

Is it possible to get these more seamless edges without having to join everything into a single mesh?

I was working on expressions with shape keys and kept running into issues where manipulating the mesh of a body would break the face and vice versa. I disconnected the two for more control (i.e. two objects), but ran into this issue again. I figured I'd just fix the edge in post, but happened to notice a difference when adjusting the subsurf value.

Looks like the way light bounces around inside of any given object will generate darker spots where objects overlap. Handy to know for certain effects. It also happens to be the reason for my hard edge issues. (educated guesses here)

Here's a quick and dirty demonstration with four separate objects:

The 'hardness' of that clipping edge is dictated by the level of Subsurface applied. Top two renders have the value at .5, and the bottom two are 0:

Fairly simple once I realized what was going wrong. It's worth noting that a combined group of meshes (single object) won't have this problem since the surface is treated as a whole instead of separated bits.


Rendering does not process transparency changes over time - Playing my timeline do. v2.79b Hello dear community :)

Note that I started with Blender less than 4 days ago.
I have a simple scene with 2 texts, 1 Sun light and another lamp light.
I managed to make the lamp light move so that shadows move as well - keyframes with location -
I have another text, rather flat, and I want its transparency to change during the animation. I converted this text into a mesh and then I was able to apply different transparency values which I was able to record with keyframes - property: available -

When I "play" my timeline I can see both the lamp moving and the transparency changing.
But....

When exporting the whole thing to a video or even a single image of my timeline, my transparency is not processed at all.

Do you have an idea of what is going wrong ? Are there special options to enable ?
Here is a short video of the blender interface with the timeline playing.
You can see the light moving behind and the transparency changing next to the point of view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z14QSAyHzVA

Thanks for the file, i didnt realise that you were using Blender Render, i cant help you with that because i only use cycles and eevee.

If you want the retro-aesthetics of blender you could even use eevee and configure it that way, plus benfit from the rendering speed.

In Cycles as in EEVEE you would do your animation via the Node-Editor and animate the facture of a mix shader that hast one diffuse and one transparent shader (with absolute white!) in it.


Blender render crash when using subsurf modifiers. Essentially, my problem is that i am trying to render a scene, however, blender crashes on me early during the render.
I only have about 14 total objects in the scene. (It's not that complex)
I tried to render a different blender file which was bigger than the one that i am having problems with, and the scene renders just fine. There is no difference in the render presets for both of these files. However, i still cannot render the other scene. It gets to preparing scene data, but then it crashes.

Thank you.

Short Answer
You are exaggerating with the subdivision.
Using large values on for subsurf or adding mutliple instances of the modifier will stress your system in no time.
It is better to use proper modeling and efficient topology, and keep the subdivision to low values. Less than 3 levels of subdivision should be enough for most projects.
Long answer
In this case you are using multiple subsurf modifiers on some of the objects.
Doing that is not only going to cripple the performance of your computer but can even make it crash.

What exaclty is the is the issue with subsurf then?
From the blender manual:

Subdivision Surface is a method of subdividing the faces of a mesh to give a smooth appearance, to enable modeling of complex smooth surfaces with simple, low-vertex meshes. This allows high resolution mesh modeling without the need to save and maintain huge amounts of data and gives a smooth organic look to the object.
This process creates virtual geometry that is generated non-destructively without modifying the original mesh

Creating virtual subdivisions on your geometry saves you the trouble of  creating smooth curved surfaces, but when you do the final render blender has to compute all of that "virtual" geometry as if it was real anyway.
With each one of the modifiers on the stack your geometry is getting subdivided: out of every quad at least 4 virtual quads will be created. A second (or third) subsurf modifier will subdivide it even further, creating a very large number of vertices in no time!
So what can you do to prevent this?
For most models it is likely you can get decent results with proper modeling and adequate topology, and using only one subsurf modifier with low values.
If the edges on your model are not round enough, consider reworking your mesh to have a greater level of detail, or cautiously increase the number of subdivisions in a single modifier. You should hardly ever need more than level 2 or 3:

What is important to keep in mind is that for every subdivision level the number of polygons increases exponentially: It's very easy to end up with a number of vertices that exceeds what your computer can handle.
(Again from the manual)

Great levels of Subsurf demand more video memory, and a faster graphics card. Blender could potentially crash if your level of Subsurf surpasses your system memory.
Note about potential crashes: Be aware that the Subsurf Modifier will need more and more memory at higher levels of subsurf, and the more dense your base mesh, the more memory you will need. In 32 bit systems, Blender could potentially crash with malloc errors, when you surpass 2~3 GiB of memory used. This is not a Blender bug. Blender, when paired with a 64 bit system, could use 64 GiB of memory, thus reducing the chances of malloc() errors.

To get an idea of how many vertices are created with every subdivision level take a look at this charts:

(click on the images to enlarge)
But what if I still need high levels or more than one Subsurf modifer in the stack?
Sometimes you do need to use a subsurf modifier to create denser geometry for other modifiers to work, and then you need to have a second subsurf modifier to smooth out the result. For example when using a displace modifier:

In those cases you might want to consider applying the modifiers and/or decimating or retopologizing your mesh, all in the interest of having a number of vertices that is reasonable enough, so that your system can handle it.


Displacement with nodes doesn't work, do I need a Displacement modifier? Here is my node setup:

Displacement is on True, and I have a Subsurf modifier. I am rendering with the Cycles Render.

It doesn't displace at all. I am not sure what i am doing wrong.
I do get displacement with the displacement modifier, but I was following a tutorial where this method worked (it was 2.78).

What am I missing/ Does it not work this way?
Thanks

1) Material output Displacement input doesn't expect a color, it expects a value.  I don't have any idea what multiplying with what looks like .8 gray with a factor of 5 is going to do; that is highly unusual, to say the least.  Instead, use a simple math/multiply node to do this-- Blender will do an implicit RGB->BW conversion.

2) Rendered preview true displacement does not update with changes.  If you make changes to your displacement, you will need to leave and re-enter rendered preview.

3) I would recommend troubleshooting without any image texture plugged into your surface shader, with displacement set to "Both".  This will let you (and us) see if the issue is with the texture/ UV map, or due to some other issue.


Extrude faces seems to move faces and extrude outer edges If I have the situation shown in the first image and extrude the faces I get the second image.

It is extruding the outer edges and moving the faces. I want to extrude everything that is selected.

I guess I am missing something in the way I have selected the faces maybe?

The hidden rules of Blender's operators can become so familiar that you don't notice them any more, and work round them / with them without noticing them. This is an example, for me, so it's interesting to have a look.

Trying to reduce it to the minimum case, Blender seems to use quite a simplistic rule to avoid the creation of internal faces when extruding regions, while still providing expected behavior when extruding simple, isolated shapes.

In this example, we start with two squares. One has a connected face extending one side.

The pink and blue faces were extruded downwards in separate operations. The pink extrusion left a face behind, the blue one didn't. This suggests Blender's rule is to duplicate a region of faces only if none of the edges surrounding it are shared  by another face.
Sure enough, the green faces were extruded in one operation. Still, the extrusion didn't leave a face behind, even in the isolated region. So the rule seems to be not to duplicate faces if any bounding edge of the selection is shared. (This applies even if you try setting the extrude to 'Individual Faces')

So it's not something funny you've done. Your best route to where you want to go is probably to select the edges on the outside perimeter of your base, EZ them downward, and F fill the bottom end. Or, work in one direction, from the bottom up,I insetting on the way.


add driver to Scene.current_frame? Is it possible to add driver to Scene.current_frame so that one scene's current frame can drive other scene's?

If not is there a way to link them continuously?

Thanks.

You cannot add a driver to the frame_current property of the scene object, error message from console.

>>> C.scene.driver_add('frame_current')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: bpy_struct.driver_add(): property "frame_current" not animatable

You could do something with frame change handlers.

import bpy

def lockscenes(scene):
    if scene.name == "Scene": # master scene
        f = scene.frame_current
        for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
            if scene.name == "Scene":
                continue
            scene.frame_set(f)
    return None

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.append(lockscenes)


How can i take a video without render I want to make animation on blender but first i need to see how speed my models in animation. Render is taking very long time and i can't use timeline because fps is very low. this mean i can't understand my models fast moving or slow moving. I want to take o video without render. How can do this?

You can do a preview render using the OpenGL renderer. This will pretty much be as quick as in the viewport.

More info in the Blender documentation:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/opengl.html


Basic Rigid-Body Setup: Displays perfect in Render preview but is completely broken in the actual render This is my second consecutive project where I follow a tutorial to The Letter and it does not work. This time, it's this basic Object Breaking Animation by Blender Made Easy.
While I have spruced up my scene a little bit (versus the tut), the essence is exactly the same. I have two rigid body animation systems set up with a simple keyframe to hide the 'whole' sphere right before impact, revealing the 'shards' sphere instead.
Here is the link to the blend file.
As with my previous project, I have confirmed that this looks 100% correct in my 3D viewport in render view. But when I actually Render the Animation, the results are a spectacular failure. Which is to say that nothing actually falls or appears in frame on top of my surface. There simply is no physics scene.
Is it a requirement that all physics be baked? Because if so, I will need to manually bake the physics of like 200 shards. And that feels wrong considering that i have rendered out rigid body scenes a while back without any baking.
I really hope I am missing something obvious because I'm about at my wits end with literally anything interactive with Blender.
Thanks for your attention.

The only surefire solution I have found is to select all my Rigid Body actors and then select: Object - Rigid Body - Bake to Keyframes. This ends my sim but turns everything into proper manually-moving objects that renders with no problem.


Is there a way to bake animated/ deformed geometry? Is there a way to bake/cache geometry deformations (in this case, an animated character)? This would be handy if I wanted to import an animation to another scene, or just to save computation power if I wanted to add, for instance, a cloth-simulation on top of it.

You can export most animations as point cache files (*.pc2) and read them back in using the Mesh Cache modifier. The export addon is not active as default so you have to enable it beforehand.

To read it back in, use the Mesh Cache modifier. The option to read PC2 files is under the format option.

The PC2 format works well with 3dsMax's Point Cache modifier as well, so you can use it to transfer animations between the two programs. Not sure about Maya.

One thing you should keep in mind is that PC2 cannot save fluid simulations. Point caches require that the number of vertices remain the same between objects, and this is not the case with fluids. However it seems that a modifier for reading OBJ sequences is in the works, but that's still coming.


Volumetric Scatter ignoring World lighting I'm having trouble getting Volumetrics to respond to the World environment lighting. I'm using a standard node setup combining Volumetric Absorbtion and Volumetric Scatter and it appears to work as expected for standard Lamps and also for Mesh lights but not for the World lighting?

There is a checkbox on the World Ray Visibility to control visibility for Volume Scatter rays and that appears to have no effect (see the checkbox being flipped in the right-hand panel but no effect on Suzanne) :

To show that this is working for standard (point) lamps and for mesh lights but not for environment lighting :

The sequence in the above image is all on, lamp off, lamp on, mesh off, mesh on, environment off, environment on. You can see that the lamp affects the suzanne volume, the mesh affects the suzanne volume, but the environment does not affect the suzanne volume.

What am I missing here?.... Or is this a bug?

I've tried this on Blender 2.76b and 2.78a with the same results.

I've managed to get this working - the problem only occurs when Surface Multiple Importance Sampling is not enabled for the World.

Here I have two Suzannes - one with Diffuse (the one on the Right) and one with Volumetrics to mimic the diffuse (with the Diffuse at 20% grey to produce a similar shading).

With Multiple Importance of the World disabled (the default) the volumetric material ignores the (red) World illumination :

With Multiple Importance Sampling of the World enabled, the volumetric material is correctly illuminated by the world :

Also, with Multiple Importance enabled, the Ray Visibility works as it should - enabling and disabling the effect on the volumetric scatter.

I don't know enough about the Multiple Importance Sampling to know if this is expected behaviour or what the downsides of enabling Multi-Importance (if any) are, but it fixed the problem for my situation.


How to get same hair particles from collection in second particle system/ or how to delete instanced particles without converting them to real meshes? I made a relatively huge landscape which has rocks scattered on it with a particle (hair) system. Then as I wanted to simulate some objects falling down a mountain I wanted to give the scattered stones (particles) also an rigidbody(passive) so the falling objects would collide more reallisticly with them and not only pass through them.

The problem is that the landscape is to big and the scattered rocks are to countless for efficiently running a rigidbody simulation. Therefore I simplified the landscape (unsubdivided) as a second mesh and used only the necessary part (boolean after particles in modifier stack) as a passive rigidbody.
I couldn’t delete the original faces because that would change the distribution of particles in relation of the collider-mesh to the rendering-mesh.
I discovered the particle-edit-mode which first appeared as the solution. The new problem here is with particle systems in general, that if you instance from collection, and give the second mesh (collider-mesh) a single user particle system, the seeds are different even if “pick random” is unchecked. That means I cant get the same rocks at the same position.

Deleted Particles in Partice-Edit-Mode to reduce the particles to the area needed for rigidbody-simulation:

Seeds are diffrent in single-user particle systems:

Has anyone an idea to fix that problem with the particle system or knows an alternative workflow that would accomplish my goal? Even on a reduced scale, the small rocks are to countless to do anything by hand or convert them to real meshes (facecount would rise in the 10-100 millions).

A question that came up with one possible solution is found here:   How to get instanced object from particle system at location?

Found a makeshift solution via Python: Get transform of Instances and the corresponding instanced mesh and create a new mesh in a separate collection with the transform and mesh data of the instance.

Converting all Particles to a real mesh wouldn’t be possible because of face-count but creating new meshes for only those particles in the area of the rb simulation is doable.

import bpy

context = bpy.context

dg = context.evaluated_depsgraph_get()

    # objects that are spawned from particle system via collection as source
obj_cube = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
obj_colum = bpy.data.objects['Colum']
obj_ico = bpy.data.objects['Icosphere']
    # empty collection to spawn the new meshes to
new_collection = bpy.data.collections['SecondInstances']

counter = 0
for i in dg.object_instances:
    obj = i.object
    print(obj.name)
        #filter all objects that are not instances by is_instence
    if not i.is_instance:
        print("not an instance")
    else:
        print(f"Instance of {obj.name} at {i.matrix_world}")
        counter += 1

        if obj.name == 'Cube':
                #create new object and keep data (also modifiers) from right source object
            new_obj = obj_cube.copy()
            new_obj.data = obj_cube.data.copy()
            new_obj.animation_data_clear()
                #set new_object transform from instance transform
            new_obj.matrix_world = i.matrix_world
                #move to seperate collection
            new_collection.objects.link(new_obj)

        elif obj.name == 'Colum':
            new_obj = obj_colum.copy()
            new_obj.data = obj_colum.data.copy()
            new_obj.animation_data_clear()
            new_obj.matrix_world = i.matrix_world
            new_collection.objects.link(new_obj)

        elif obj.name == 'Icosphere':
            new_obj = obj_ico.copy()
            new_obj.data = obj_ico.data.copy()
            new_obj.animation_data_clear()
            new_obj.matrix_world = i.matrix_world
            new_collection.objects.link(new_obj)

I will keep the question open for now, because maybe there is a better way and having real meshes is not ideal either and could be optimized?


Is there a way to "merge" two extruded regions to one? I have a model as shown below, which is the product of two extrudes, bottom step followed by upper step. These are disjoint which I can see if I select the front face of the upper stair and drag it up, there's even a hidden face between.

Is there a way to merge them by deleting said hidden faces (orange arrow in the bottom image) and perhaps triangulate like I outlined with two lines on the bottom image?

If I had extruded upwards from the bottom step my hidden face would be along the wall instead, so no improvement. (I think it's a non-manifold mesh but https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/7914 does not help here as it selects no vertices or anything).

I could fix this by deleting the two faces touching in the above image and manually recreating the 3 triangles seen below. I was just hoping there was an automatic way to collapse "touching" geometry.

Delete both overlapping faces. Then select the edges on both steps and do bridge edge loops.


Vector Math to Determine Gravity Path I need to code a function that basically traces the path a sphere would roll when placed on a triangulated terrain. The image below shows the problem, but I haven't got a clue how to work with vectors in order to find a solution.

Pseudocode-wise, I'm looking for:

def gravity_trace(face_ABC, point_D):
    ...
    return X

I honestly don't know how difficult it will be to fill in the ... above. I'd appreciate any and all help I can get. My math skills are terribly rusty and I have never worked with vector math before.

Thanks!

Project plane normal in z direction onto plane.

Here is a test script. Adds a randomly (random 0 to 1 radian rotation on x, y, z) rotated unit circle ngon at cursor, and places an empty on global edge low point.

The normal of the plane is its local z axis.
Global -z axis is considered down.
Find The vector intersection of the line from tip of normal in -z
direction to the plane. Used mathutils.geometry.intersect_line_plane(...)
Result is the "downhill" vector.

lowest point on circle edge will be
centre plus the normalized (unit length) downhill vector.

Test script:

import bpy
from random import random
from mathutils import Vector
from mathutils.geometry import intersect_line_plane as ipp

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_circle_add(fill_type='NGON')
ob = bpy.context.object
ob.rotation_euler = Vector(random() for axis in 'xyz')
z = Vector((0, 0, 1))
bpy.context.scene.update()
mw = ob.matrix_world

n = (mw.to_3x3() @ z).normalized()
p = mw.translation
v = ipp(p + n, p + n - z, p, n)
bpy.ops.object.empty_add(location=p + (v - p).normalized())


Light areas appearing larger and dark areas appearing smaller in Cycles As part of a scene I have a white diffuse surface with some black icons on it. Right below it I have the same icons in white on a black surface.

I use the same texture for both surfaces, with a node set up like this:

As a minimal example I have a texture containing the letter A. I have it applied to two surfaces like this:

However, when the camera is further away (or it is rendered at a super low resolution) The white A looks significantly thicker than the black one:

When rendered at a higher resolution and scaled down the results are as expected:

The difference between the white and the black A's becomes even greater the smaller it is on the rendered image. Top is rensered at a higher resolution and scaled down, bottom is rendered at low resolution:

Currently the only way I can think of working around this issue is rendering at a higher resolution and scaling down the final image. This is fine for this example, but for the scene I'm working on render times are already high and I really don't want to increase the resolution.

Is there any way I can fix this and have both render at an equal thickness? Is it just a product of how the Cycles works? Is there a setting that can compensate for it? Or am I doing something completely wrong? The only possibly related question I found was this unanswered one here.

Here is the .blend file for this example:

I'm probably going to get laughed into next week for this one.......but I think it's an optical illusion. Not only that but I think it also has to do with 3d world as opposed to 2d screen. A white A on a black background is always going to look bigger than a black A on a white background. Take the Olympic rings for example ......there is an actual formula for how thick each ring should be so that they all look the same thickness. The greatest example of this that I have ever seen is as you look up towards the alter in St. Peter's in the Vatican where Bernini makes the letters at the top of the columns larger than the ones at the bottom of each pillar as you look up the nave so that they all look the same hight from ground level. Anyway put a cube or a plane in the scene and measure it.


two gpu's, how to differentiate them in system settings pull down menu? I have two identical gpu's.  When opening the compute device menu in system settings, there are two identical entries.  I'd like to select the one that isn't being used - is there a way to do this?

I think this is a trial and error kind of question.
Choose one of the GPUs on the list:

And do a render test.
Using an external application to monitor the GPU usage you can determine which card is being used to render.

In my case the one on the bottom of the list in blender is GPU1, but it might be different on your system.

Now, I would recommend enabling both cards to render... Even with the load of the display, it might cut your render time almost in half...


Object that rotates around another but not on itself Noob question here. When rotating a parent, I'd like to fix the child's orientation in space. I put a video on youtube linked below where the child cube's red face remains facing the parent(what I don't want,) and the second 2.5 seconds shows the red face remaining fixed(what I do want.)

The problem is- I had to rotate the child -360 degrees when I rotated the parent +360 degrees to accomplish this. It seems clunky. Is there a simpler way to accomplish this? I tried rotation lock and didn't have success. Sorry, it's an embarrassingly amateurish question. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CH389tW0yU&feature=youtu.be

One solution is to parent object B to object A, give a Limit Rotation constraint to object B, and limit the constraint on the Z axis: Object B will rotate around A but won't rotate on itself.

Another solution, suggested by Frederik Steinmetz, is to not parent B to A, to parent an empty to A, and give B a Copy Location constraint with the empty as Target.


Pixelated error on select faces during Render I have a low poly model and I can't figure out what is doing this. It's not a reversed normal and I removed duplicate vertexes so....?  These faces were the most recent adds to the model buy adding vertexes and creating new faces. there are a little bit darker than the others when viewed as solid.

thanks

So it was definitely a duplicate face, but the bad face had some strange properties. I had to delete all the bad faces and start over. I created the issue again by subdividing the edge and creating a new face with the new vertex. Still don't know why.


Can't bake normal map I have two meshes: one is low poly which also has uv map and another one is high poly mesh.

And also I created new image for baking normalmap from uv/image editor.

In the render tab, I choosed "Normals" and checked "Selected to Active".

Those both meshes are in the same location with same scale/rotation.

Finally select high poly first and select low poly later and click bake, but result is just same as low poly mesh.

Sometimes it just didn't baked with weird error message that something like "Circular blabla", so I created new texture image in the texture tab and then it works but still result is not coming from high poly mesh.

I don't know somehow, only once I've succeed, but after I tried to reprocess, it never succeed. I'm already tried this over 10 times more but still stuck here.

I sawed and read hundreds of videos and articles about baking normalmap in blender, but none of one is working to me.

Using Blender 2.78c also tried with 2.79 but didn't worked either. Why this is happening?

p.s. Additionally, I just baked Ambient Occlusion map and it looks fine. Seems only normal map doesn't baked properly.

What you need is baking the displacement map. Baking normal map for that mesh doesn't work because the tangent value is undefined, meaning your mesh has shaped 90 degree difference of angel (as we always know tan 90 is undefined). However, if you make slight difference, say it shaped 89.99, it might work. The point is never make an angle difference that makes its tanget value is undefined


Problem with bending model using simple deform I'm trying to create a wallet case in blender, I want to add a system that allows me to comfortably "adjust" one slider to open, close and flip it. Currently I divided the case into two movable parts, the 1st one, that bends, uses simple deform. However I can't figure out a way, to have the 2nd one "connect" to it so that it moves with the middle section, but doesn't bend. At the moment when I slide the angle slider in simple deform I only move the middle section. For now, the 2nd part compensates by using simple keyframes but that's a very inaccurate and slow method. So I'd like to know, is there any way to connect the two, and have simple deform or any other system perform all the work?

You could use vertex parenting, which is similar to parenting but the child will follow the vertices as they are deformed.

Select the cover.
Shift select the spine.
Go into edit mode.
Select three vertices a the end of the spine.
Press ⎈ CtrlP to parent the selected object/s to the selected vertices.


How can i modify an already rigged model? I downloaded a model (this one, actually http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/70898) for practicing animation purposes, but i want to add some few features, like sleeves or a nose (because the character doesn't have one) to also practice about textures, so for example i would be able to add a shirt eventhough i can already add one with a plain image alongside the body of the character...but as i said on the title of this question ,the model is already rigged, working with bones, if for example i extrude part of the face of the character, it will be deformed badly and it will appear pretty bad on render, for example, how can i modify simple features without modifing the rig?

I do not only ask this about this model, but of any other model for future reference, i can also rig characters but what if for example, same as this example, i want to modify an already made character that works perfectly with the bones?

There's nothing wrong in the idea of modifying a character which is already rigged, as long as you know what you are doing:

The character you've downloaded has 134 bones, some deforming, some used as machinary, some constrained and/or related to other bones, some used with drivers, to perform deformations using a lot of shape-keys, expecially in the face (as usual).

Maybe you should start from a simplier character, for practicing, until you reach a good comprehension of what is going on.

Anyway, all deforming bones are related to vertexes, so you can freely edit their materials and textures, without affecting the rig.

Viceversa, if you extrude a vertex from another, it will copy the properties of the previous active one: if the new vertex stays in a similar position, very often there are no problems. A lot of problems generally can come out when shapeKeys are involved (all the face, in your case), in which case the new vertexes can seem to move in weird ways: any vertex modification in this zone probably will need a lot of adjustements in every Shape-Key in which it is involved.

Selecting the rig and entering edit mode you can add new bones, and parent them to the rest of the rig; you will have to create a new vertex group in the character's mesh, with the same name as the new bone, and assign a weight to the vertexes you want to move, for having it deforming the mesh.

Consider also that you can parent more than one mesh to the same rig, even if this solution  is not the best, often.

Search for Nathan Vegdahl tutorials serie about advanced rigging, he's the best!


How can I animate the pinning button on / off (cloth)? I do not find the way to insert a keyframe on the pinning button (cloth).
It would still be better to have an animate pinning weight.

I just found this solution.
I would like to see if there are other ways to control vertex group in the simulation cloth.
My problem was to attack and detach a group of vertices. Turn off Pinning in cloth simulation.


Chroma Key Render isn't the same as viewer Please take a look at my node setup, viewer output, and then render.

I used the viewer node at two points so that I could make sure my color correction nodes were not the problem and even if I take the output straight from the keying node, the viewer shows the keyed scene over an alpha layer but then the rendered output puts the green screen and background all back in again.

I have been ripping the hair out of my head trying to figure out why this is happening. Several tutorials I've watched on Youtube show that if you take the output straight from a keying node into the compositing node and you composite using a format that has an alpha layer you are supposed to get just your keyed actor over a transparent alpha layer.

You can clearly see that on the top the viewer node has exactly what I want, but when I click render, the output on the bottom is completely wrong.

What am I doing wrong?

You'll have to re-think your keying process.
Focus first on producing a proper matte from the greenscreen. In that stage, leave the RGB pixels alone and focus on the "matte" output of the keying node.

When you're done with that, connect another instance of the unmatted plate to a spill supressor and do all the colour correction and adjustments you need.
Avoid doing a massive colour grading at this stage, the only color correction needed is to fix background spill and take the foreground color closer to the background, adjusting levels and neutralizing undesired casts. The creative part of colour correction doesn't have to be performed at this point, but after it's composited over the background.

Once you have a proper alpha channel and a corrected image, next step is setting the alpha channel to the corrected RGB. That's done with the "Set Alpha" node.

The result will be an "unassociated" (usually called "straight") alpha image.

In Blender's compositor you need it to be associated (often called "premultiplied), so you'll have to add an "Alpha Convert" node after the Set Alpha, from Key to Premultiplied.

The result will be an RGBA image ready to be composited over a background with a simple "alpha over" node (without marking the "Convert Premul" checkbox as it's already associated).

If you intend to composite it over the background using a different software and not Blender's compositor, then you just have to save the result to a format that supports alpha transparency (EXR would be ideal, but there are other formats).

There's an important thing to keep in mind: Blender's viewer is broken for associated alpha images, so don't trust how the viewer renders images with transparent background. Place a temporary solid background with an alpha over node and inspect the edges instead.


Make a 3D tube with a Bézier curve? How can I make a Bézier curve into a 3D-noodle-like structure (like a tube)?
When I try, it keeps turning out like a rectangle with corners.

To make a tube, set the Fill to full in Curve > Shape:

Then increase the bevel Depth and Resolution in Curve > Geometry:

If you want a more complex/custom shape, you can use a bevel object:


Making top and bottom sides of bandage How should i create top and bottom sides?
Add rolled up texture or do it with mesh?

It depends on the level of detail you wish to accomplish. If it is a minor prop for a game a texture map on a cilider will do just fine.
Otherwise I would sculpt the general form the bandage starting with a cilinder and multires. Then do a Uv unwrap and create pattern on the side by applying a displacement map and the top by sculpting using a texture. When finished  a normal map can be generated if disired


Video output is bad quality Hello while I understand this is a 3d animation software not a video editing software, I have heard of people getting great quality videos with the video editing feature in blender. I watched a few tutorials and researched settings for good video quality but for some reason I cannot get good video output. No matter the render settings I use my video ends up pixelated and terrible looking (source file is great quality).

I am basically trying to render gaming videos at 1080p, 60fps for Youtube I don't know what I am doing wrong but I can't seem to render a good quality video.

The below settings I found on the internet which was recommended for Youtube but quality wasn't very good after my testing
Format = xvid
container = AVI
codac = h.264
bitrate=10000
min-rate 7000
max-rate 15000
Gop-size=15

settings below I configured myself to try get the best but still didn't work
format = H.264
Codac = H.264
bitrate = 10000
min=rate=5000
max-rate=20000
buffer=2000
GOP size=1

Am I doing something wrong? Has anybody got a better render setting that I could try?

Any help would be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance.

It could be something as simple as setting the output quality from 50% (Default) to 100%

You didn't explicitly mention this.


How can I edit how many vertices are in my object? I was watching a tutorial where someone could spawn a cylinder then type in how many vertices he wanted, it's an old tutorial and the ui doesn't show up on the left anymore.

I know only one way to adjust face count of a model by sliding Ratio value of Decimate modifier in Collapse mode.


Change location of animated armature I have an armature which is animated using bone rotation as well as object location. I'm trying to duplicate it and move it to another location but it's not working as there are some keyframes changing the location of the armature. I tried baking the animation but then the armature no longer moves around the scene. Any advice please?

My .blend file can be found here:

You animated the movement of the armature in object mode, but you should always use a root or ground bone in pose mode to animate the movement: Root bone as pelvis vs ground?

What you can do if you don't want to redo the whole movement animation is parent the object armature to an empty and use it to move or rotate said armature.


Extrude curve given by mathematical equation How can I extrude curve given by mathematical equation?
I know how it works for a Bezier Curve.

I tried to use Solidify modifier but it doesn't work

Okay, the problem seems to be that you need to turn off "u-wrap" and "v-wrap," in the function menu.
I also turned off show wireframe.


Randomize wave texture rotation I have followed the setup in  and got the expected result (bottom part of image).

However, if I duplicate the sphere, all the spheres will have the same colour and same wave texture (say, 2 of the blue spheres in the above image - but not, one whose wave texture is rotated - eg. the blue and yellow spheres have a wave texture that is slightly rotated).

I am able to have a different colour for the spheres (by using object info and color ramp), but I do not know how to have each sphere's wave texture have a different rotation.

Initially, I used randomize transform (specifically used a random rotation), but did not have any effect on the wave texture (the objects are rotated, but the wave texture isn't).

I then used a mapping node as in the following:

connecting the vector output of mapping to vector input of wave texture (and changing the rotation of the mapping node).

This does change the rotation of the wave texture, but I have to manually specify the rotation and each sphere needs a new material.

So how do I have a single material that has a random rotation on the wave texture?

EDIT: I tried to "group the above node tree, apply it on x and y values (just as above) then the output of that applied on the x and z and finally the y and z", but none of the combinations work as I would like. I have linked to a blend file containing my trial and errors

You can use the Object Info Random Output as an angle for rotation of the texture in one or more axis. I understand your problem is that the mapping nodes doesn't have input, you can however use rotation transformation matrices to compute the vector manually, in one axis (z), it looks like this:

In three dimensions you can use the 3D Rotation Transformation Matrices to get:

The node tree is big, so here is the file to study it:


Emulate 3 button mouse not working properly on linux mint 18.3 I used this feature on Wnidows 7 and it worked perfect, recently I change my OS to Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia Mate and I just realized that this feature only works for the zoom in, zoom out, when I try to do a pan it drags the whole window and also the same when I try to rotate my point of view.

I'm using blender with my Huion H610 as I used to do on Windows 7.

Thanks a lot man! my Linux is in spanish but it worked, in the "centro de control" then "visualizacion y comportamiento" "ventanas" in the pop up menu search for the "comportamiento" tab and I uncheck alt and chose Super (logo de windows) as You tell me, Thanks!!

I use Mint 18.3, blender 2.79 and emulate 3 button mouse with no issues using a wacom tablet. Keep in mind that the shortcuts and gestures on the operating system take precedence over Blender. You might want to re-configure them so that they do not interfere. On the system preferences (for cinnamon) there are settings in the windows section and Windows tiling that need to be disabled. Also the keyboard shortcuts that use Alt, Ctrl and other keys work better if you disable them or map them to the super (windows) key.