Missing vertices when skinning I am trying to skin my creature and I can skin one side. However, the other side doesn't have the vertices and I am not sure how to get them or what when wrong. I parented the bones to the creature and then hit box mode to select the areas where need skinned, but I cannot select one entire side. I attached an image for it to be seen.

Thanks in advance!

Go to the properties window.
Select the modifiers tab.
Apply the mirror modifier.
Then you can do the skinning.


Topology for a disk with circular holes? I'm trying to create the center body of a grinder. I always start of with a cylinder and tried variations of high-low vertices/different fill types in different attempts at the beginning to star off right.
Above the body, Ive already created the hole (2 sets/rows) and spike arrangement using array and curve modifiers. But it seems that no matter how many edge loops or subdivisions and variations of such I try on the actual body of the grinder, every time I intersect everything using Boolean, 1 at a time, the center always distorts making a subdivision modifier act crazy and not creating the holes properly with or without the submod.
Since this is gonna be printed out, I need to make sure that based off what all tutorials have told me and info I've read here, that the topology is precise for best printing results. I don't know what else to try. I really wanted to get this "on my own" and so I couldn't find any more helpful youtube videos so here I am.
I should mention that at this point, Ive erased the body and am ready to start from zero creating it if someone can guide me and explain why it has to be created such way. I really want to get good at this. I'm super impressed with some of the things people have been able to create with Blender. The type of images that you know are real until they show you the wireframe version.

Out of all the times I made and remade the body, I managed to get one variation that I used in a video to be able to show my idea. This model didn't have the holes in the middle, because as soon as I added them, the submod went crazy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6CewS_i8Yo
While those black shadow areas do look interesting, they're not a result of my modeling but of the submodifiers effect. Not sure if actual size of the objects to be printed out matters in the specs but heres the idea. So it is the topology? Whats the best strategy to begin building it correctly? Empty cylinder and extremely extrude from there?

As was already recommended in the comments, don't use booleans, they are a beginners trap. They can be extremely useful but they are also dangerous.
Until you understand how edge flow, tensions and general topology work I'd advise to stay completely clear of them.

The "perfect topology" doesn't exist, what you can make is clean topology, clean topology is made of mostly quads (four sided polygons) of very similar edge length, there are other rules and guidelines, but as long as you adhere to those two points you will be in the clear for the most part.

Have a look at the site Duarte linked: Topology it has a lot of very good examples.

This object as far as I understand has 16 holes and 8 spikes, so you can make just an 8th of the full spin and then instance it around a circle using the array modifier and an empty.

Like this:

Create a piece matching the "period" of your full model, in this case this is dictated by the spikes, there are 8 spikes, so you need to pick a 45° section and model it:

I'm using looptools to make sure my square holes are perfectly square, you can do something similar without enabling looptools by using spherify, ALT+SHIFT+S.

This is how it looks with Subsurf:

Finally you use an empty and an array modifier to copy the piece and rotate it around its origin:

Hope this helps, I'd advise starting over and keeping the un subdivided mesh fairly simple.


How to select meshes with transparent materials applied to them only? I want to select all meshes which a transparent material (e.g. glass) has been applied, when using Cycles (if it matters at all)? I just know how to select meshes with any kind of material applied to them as follow:

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    if obj.type == 'MESH':
        for slot in obj.material_slots:
            if slot.material:
                obj.select = True

How can I instead only select meshes with transparent materials? You can also work with nodes. In that case, you may want to download this object that I'm currently using and need to select its transparent meshes. If you want to use the mesh I am providing, select Cycles renderer first and then load the mesh you will get something like this in the node editor:

Generally determining if a given node setup is transparent is rather tricky; for instance, a material may be transparent only in some areas (textured transparency) and other such complications. However, in your case, it seems that checking if the value of the "Mix Color/Alpha" node is < 1 should be sufficient.

for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    if obj.type == 'MESH':
        for slot in obj.material_slots:
            if slot.material:
                mat = slot.material
                for node in mat.node_tree.nodes:
                    if node.label == "Mix Color/Alpha":
                        if node.inputs[1].default_value[0] < 1:
                            print("Material '%s' on object '%s' seems transparent" % (mat.name, obj.name))

The importer seems to create both cycles and BI materials, so you could also check the BI material property (even while cycles is active):

for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    if obj.type == 'MESH':
        for slot in obj.material_slots:
            if slot.material:
                mat = slot.material
                if mat.use_transparency:
                    print("Material '%s' on object '%s' seems transparent" % (mat.name, obj.name))


Scale not centred on selection or origin Scale not centred on selection or origin. I have an image showing this. Am I just not aware of a feature that is for some reason active or is this an issue? In the image the bottom half is showing the actual objects origin which is centred. And the top portion is showing how it is scaling. the object is symmetrical in all direction. Apart from seeing the offset of the scaled selection the actual scale indicator, thin black line with across on the end, is consistent with the selection. I just don't know why that scale centre point is where it is.

I just created a movie but I can't seem to upload it. It's only 11mb. Link here. Sorry.

Movie demonstrating the issue more clearly 1

Movie demonstrating the issue more clearly 2. Extra info and interesting outcome - read comments for more.

Your scale is always relative to the location of the 3D cursor when you have it set as the pivot point. Place your cursor in the center of the selected section and try again. Type [SHIFT-S] and use "Cursor to Selected". Make sure your pivot point is set to 3D cursor. Then the selected vertexes will scale as you are expecting them to.


Creating a mesh on any object, duplicating the mesh and editing faces Id like to create an atomic model of a nanoparticle, a truncated octahedron to be precise. I know I can use the "set parent" function using small spheres to superimpose on an octahedron (itself created after bevelling a cube). Like I have shown in the picture.

I am facing a problem in making the new structure (truncated octahedron made of small spheres) independently editable. For example, id like to change its orientation wrt to the camera and also colour/texture different faces differently.

Thanks in advance!

So, assuming your problem is getting actual geometry out of the Dupli-Objects that you generate in the vertex-positions of your octahedron:

Create the object to be duplicated. In this example: the octahedron
Create the object whose vertices indicate the positions of the Dupli-Objects. In this example: the cube
Parent the octahedron to the cube
Set the Duplication Mode in the Object Tab to Verts
Select the object whose vertices position the clones (the cube)
Create actual geometry from the clones by using the Make Duplicates Real function


Why does my cycles preview cause my PC to freeze Whenever i switch to the rendered view my whole PC freezes every so many seconds is there something not right in blender or is my PC just not up to it anymore?

It seems like your CPU/GPU can't handle the cycles render.
Cycles samples the scene as fast as it can, I think your computer freezes while trying to sample the scene:
 (You can find this at the top of the 3D view.)
I suggest trying a simple scene and see if that stops freezing the scene. If it doesn't, I believe there is a problem with your CPU/GPU or it is not supported for Cycles.
It may just be a problem with selecting the wrong computing device. If you have a supported GPU you can select it like me under User Pref > System:

And then selecting GPU under the rendering tab:

And if that still doesn't work, try selecting the CPU instead.
And if all that fails, I recommend getting a better GPU/CPU. You can compare and find the best one for your price here: http://olivieramrein.com/2012/02/25/blender-cycles-best-hardware-using-the-benchmark-spreadsheet-analysis/


Move object relative to camera instead of moving camera relative to object I have created a complex animation where the camera moves relative to a target object which does not move.
Now I would like to keep the same relative movement between camera and target object.
But the target object should move relative to the camera and the camera should not move.

You can do that by copying and manipulating the F-Curves in the Graph Editor.
Essentially, you need to copy the f-curves relating to Location (you can do this with Ctrl+C when you have selected them) and paste them into the F-Curves for the object (using Ctrl+V) (you'll need to add a keyframe first to create the curves for the object).
Once you've copied the f-curves you can add a Generator modifier with a 1st order polynomial in the format y = c + mx, setting m to '-1' (so as to 'flip' the curve) and 'c' equal to an offset matching the difference between the coordinate of the Camera and your object at the start of the animation.
Once you've done this you should get the same (but opposite) motion between your camera and object - so all that's left is to remove the keyframes from the camera so that it remains static while the object moves in the opposite way to which the camera previously animated.


Partial see through material for clothing I am trying to get the model to look similar to what's seen here, but I don't know how to make the underwear partial see through like in the reference pic (top right).

mouse over to see the picture, which some might find Not Safe For Work (NSFW)

I think some sort of image file is required to get the partial see though happening but I don't know how it works exactly.

The Blend Download is about 80MB, download link (Google Drive)

What you want to use is a transparency mask! You can do this directly in Blender, or use an image editor, if it's easier. First unwrap your panties, then go to your UV/Image editor and create and save the file at the resolution you want. Remember that file name; it should have appeared automatically in the materials (check all of them if you have more than one), but if it doesn't, you can simply import it manually.

You may have to adjust the setup, anyway. Switch back to wherever you have your node editor open. Once you have your Image Texture with that file you saved (it should be black, but that's actually perfect for this), add a Texture Coordinate node (you'll find it under 'input' in the 'add' menu). Hook the UV slot to the Image Texture's vector slot. From this point onwards, you have a couple of options, as far as setup is concerned. If you're already using a principled shader node, simply plug that right into the transmission slot. (You may have to make it wider to see all the words, so you can find the right one.) If you already have a completely different setup, no worries! Add a transparent shader and a mix shader. Plug your original setup to the top slot, and the transparent shader to the bottom slot. Now hook up your Image Texture to the mix slot.

If you've done everything right, at this point, your panties should still look the same. If they've vanished, or look partly transparent, you've done something wrong (don't fret, if you did, it's easy to do; try zooming in with the mouse wheel and connecting your nodes, and then rearranging them after). Once you have that sorted, make sure you have your Image Texture selected, then go back to where you've been working on your model. Go to material view and zoom in to where you want the panties to be see-through. It's time to switch to texture paint! Make sure you use only a black-and-white brush for this. It can be gray. The idea is all the parts you paint white will be completely transparent, and the parts that stay black will be completely opaque. Gray will mix between the two. To this end, I recommend using a brush with a soft edge to get that gradual affect you're after. As you're painting, you should see it turning transparent under your brush. If you add too much, you can soften or remove it by using gray or black instead of white. Make sure to save your image in the UV/Image Editor before you close Blender. Blender won't do it for you, even if you save the .blend file! You can always pick back up where you left off, if you're not finished, yet.

I hope this helps! Happy Blending!


Segmentation based on normal directions I'd like to segment the object surface into K patches. In each patch, all vertices have their normal directions within e.g. 5% difference from the average. Is there any K-means or similar add-on? Thank you very much for your kind help.

Bmesh script

Result of running script on grid above, each separated object is represented with a different colour  Will notice some quad faces are "bent".  Suggest Triangulating first
Find the average normal.  Remember for objects like the cube this could be a zero vector.  Could also consider using an arbitrary vector eg z axis rather than average normal
Since want to separate into surfaces have used face normals.
Then run thru the script and look at the tangent (grade) of the face normal to the average face normal.
Test script.  Splits the current edit mesh into chunks with 0.05 grade intervals from the average normal.
When the script has run will still be in edit mode with a faceless mesh, all having been moved to separate objects.
import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector
from math import tan
grade = 0.05

context = bpy.context
ob = context.object
me = ob.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

# use the average of all face normals
norm = sum((f.normal for f in bm.faces), Vector()) / len(bm.faces)

# use the local Z axis
#norm = (0, 0, 1)

# use the global z axis
#norm = ob.matrix_world.inverted() @ Vector((0, 0, 1))

# use the active element (will error if edge or none)
#norm = bm.select_history.active.normal

while bm.faces:
    for f in bm.faces:
        f.select = tan(f.normal.angle(norm)) < grade
    if any(f.select for f in bm.faces):
        bpy.ops.mesh.separate()
    grade += grade

# pop out of edit mode remove original


How can I control which borders are affected by the insetting tool? I am trying to modify geometry in a model I am working on. I want to inset one of my forms but only want the border at the top and not the sides as I want to extrude it inwards. I have tried with the boundary and individual options "on" but I can't get it. Am including an image. I must be close, but would need a hint as to how I can do it. Thank you.

You can only control the boundary edge.
It's easier to

Select the top part
Extrude along normals
Check Offset Even


Head/Neck Rigging Problem I'm having difficulty fixing a problem with the head/neck bones on a character I'm working on. I modified the character "Elaine" (a .blend that I downloaded from BlendSwap)

Elaine.blend: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/32132

in order to create a new character "Maria":

Maria.blend: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/32133

In the process of making my modifications, I accidentally deleted the "head" bone in Maria's rig (unfortunately, I didn't realize I'd deleted it right away). By carefully inspecting the two rigs, I recreated the head bone in Maria's rig, and parented the bones as they are in the Elaine rig.

The repaired rig almost works. When I rotate the head bone around the global x-axis, the head moves in the same way as in the Elaine rig. However, when I rotate the bone around the global z-axis, her head doesn't rotate horizontally, instead it just twists.

Here is the correct behaviour (with the head bone highlighted):

Elaine with head bone highlighted http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=78534

And here is the problematic behaviour:

Maria with head bone highlighted http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=78535

Is it possible for me to fix this rig or do I need to start over? I would greatly appreciate any rig-debugging tips other users could offer.

You have a broken constraint on the bone named : DEF_head (in the last bone layer of the armature).

Just select the bone named "head" in the "copy rotation" constraint.


Baking multiple objects with seperate maps at once? Are there any scripts or add-ons to bake maps for several objects at once?

For example, could you select a list of objects for the low poly and another list for the high poly then export a series of normal and any other wanted maps for each of those objects?

Cycles:

Bake Tool offers support for high to low poly baking of multiple objects. Set it up one object (high poly) and target (low poly) per job. Use multiple jobs for each additional set of objects. Bake Tool can also be used for baking multiple maps in BI. (This is helpful for displacement map baking.)

Meltdown also offers similar support.

As of version 2.78c, Bake Helper does not support high to low poly baking.


I somehow made edit/object mode monochrome. How do I revert to default render settings? Relatively new to Blender here.  While doing a bunch of Control-Z undos in edit mode, I somehow made both edit and object mode monochrome when I fat-fingered something.  I've been searching through all the render settings but can't figure out how I got it to this state.

https://imgur.com/a/ZZYphit

I don't know if this is what you mean but you are in Texture display mode...see that little red and white checked ball to the right of the "Object Mode" dropdown?  Just hit 'Z' once to go to wireframe, or twice to go to Solid display mode...or click on that ball to choose a different rendering mode.  You probably hit Alt-Z instead of Ctrl-Z.


Blender as an image editor software? As a 3D/2D hobbyist myself who try to use the most free/open source software when I can, blender has become my default 3D software. For the 2D side (texturing and image editing) GIMP was the default one for many years but I start to reconsider it. It may be just me but I think most people start to change their work-flow from a destructive one to a non destructive one. In that regard, GIMP work-flow is mostly destructive. For example, if you apply a color curve tool in GIMP, its effects are "merged" with the layer and you lose the ability to change the curve later on. So I wonder, could Blender be used as an image manipulator in an efficient way or does the compositing in blender lack features for being a great (non-destructive) image manipulation tool ? Then, what free/open source software would you recommend for this task ?

I realize that the question is a bit broader that blender itself but I think it is fair to say that in order to do anything related to 3D, you will need, sooner or later, a good image manipulation software.

I'd say it depends on what you want.

For something like photo-manipulation (by that I mean color grading, adding effects like vignetting, etc.), the compositor can work very well (and non-destructively). After all, it's almost what the compositor was designed for. The only major difference is that the images were rendered with a camera, not Cycles or some other render engine.

However for creating images from scratch with 2D techniques like painting, blender is probably almost certainly not the best around. And using blender's image editor it won't be non-destructive (though for something like this I'm not sure if a non-destructive workflow makes a lot of sense?).

Painting is not my strong suit, but there have been some pretty amazing things done with blender's painting tools. Also note that blender's painting tools recently got a nice upgrade as part of the GSoC.

That said, if painting is what you are looking for, you might be better off with a program designed for painting, like Krita or MyPaint.


Damped Steering>Seek via Python I'm attempting to have a central turret object turn to point to a moving target. The turret is always in the center of the scene (un-moving). Using the Steering>Seek actuator is too fast and allows the turret to lock immediately to the target. I need to be able to have the turret slowly turn clockwise or counterclockwise (depending on which is shorter) at a set rotation speed until it eventually points to the target.

I found the getVectTo() Python function, which I can use to pull a local vector from the turret to the target. Unfortunately, I can't figure a way to use that vector to determine the shortest turning direction to reach the target; i.e. clockwise or counter-clockwise.

To clarify, the logic would look like this:

if shortestRotationAngleToTarget = Counterclockwise:
    rotateTurret(turretRotationStep)
else
    rotateTurret(-turretRotationStep)

EDIT:
I've done more digging and tried to implement some of the suggestions provided so far. I believe I need to be using the .angleSigned() method applied to the turret's currently facing angle, but can't figure out how to get it working. The following screen shot shows the testing scene I'm using to figure this out. I am attempting to get the output of +90.0 returned where the error occurs.

I've posted the Blend here: GetVectTo.blend

Thanks for any suggestions!

Use a Edit Object actuator > Track to instead of Steering actutator.

KX_TrackToActuator Change the time to meet your requeriments of rotation speed time = 0 = instant track to. Between 10 and 30 feels ok.

I made a demo:

Script:

from bge import logic
from random import choice

def change_objective():
    try:
        return choice([obj for obj in logic.getCurrentScene().objects if 'enemy' in obj.getPropertyNames()])
    except Exception as e:
        add_enemies()

def add_enemies():
    for obj in logic.spawn_list:
        logic.getCurrentScene().addObject('enemy',choice(logic.spawn_list))

if not hasattr(logic, 'spawn_list'):
    logic.spawn_list = [obj for obj in logic.getCurrentScene().objects if 'spawn_point' in obj.getPropertyNames()]
    add_enemies()

if logic.getCurrentController().actuators['track'].object is None:
    logic.getCurrentController().actuators['track'].object = change_objective()
    logic.getCurrentController().activate(logic.getCurrentController().actuators['track'])

if logic.getCurrentController().sensors['Ray'].hitObject:
    logic.getCurrentController().sensors['Ray'].hitObject.endObject()
    logic.getCurrentController().actuators['track'].object = None


How can I activate an actuator if A is false and B is true? I have two Random sensors on an object. One is triggering the spawning of an object, and the second I would like to use to spawn a second object from the same spawner. The issue is sometimes the spawn times coincide so the objects end up colliding with each other and ending up on top of each other. I would like to detect if random sensor B is true, and if so, see if random sensor A is false. If it is then proceed to spawning the object.

Can this be done using logic bricks? And if not, can Python be used?

Assumptions
You have two AddObjectActuators?
You activate both randomly?
You want that only one at the time gets activated?
Analysis
It seams you have two independent random results that both decide when a certain object gets created.

Possible solution
How about changing the decisions? One random result decides when an object gets created and a second random result decides what object gets created.
How to decide what object to create?
You have two (or more actuators to activate) so you need a random result that represents one of the possible actuators. The simplest representation is you number them:

Actuator A
Actuator B

This way you can use the random actuator to generate a random number between 1 and you maximum (2) to be placed in a property. With the random actuator you can decide the likelihood what actuator to activate (e.g. you want 50:50 so you use "Int Uniform"

How to decide when to activate the actuator?
You already did that with the random sensor. It acts as "Bool Uniform" which means 50:50 chance.

How to connect both aspects?
This example just show how to randomly generate a random object number:

Now you add the actuators dependent on the previous choice:

You check what actuator to activate either 1 or 2 and activate the actuators. Only one condition can be positive at the same time.
We do this after the random actuator completed (actuator sensor). Otherwise there can be another object after a one frame delay, which looks like it created a second object at the same time.

Another Possible solution
You decide the what as above. You decide the when the same way. The benefit is that you get better control how to generate the wait time.
Now you get two properties:

one with the actuator number (actuatorNumber) and
one with the time to wait (waittime).

The timer property counts upwards so we generate negative wait times. When the wait time gets positive it is time to generate a new actuator number, new wait time and activate one of the actuators.
Interestingly the activation logic is the same as in the above solution. So I do not repeat it here.
I hope it helps
PS: I forgot to mention:
When deciding what to activate you can add "unmapped" numbers. This way it decides to activate nothing (e.g. 0=nothing, 1=Actuator A, 2=Actuator B).


Blender 2.8 resize single edge where rest follow proportionally I'm trying to resize a rectangular cubiod, currently 5 meters on it's longest sides and 2 meters on it's shortest sides (as shown in the diagram) I'd like a method that allows me to just set a new length of one edge that proportionally sets the length of the rest of the edges in the cuboid.

So for example: I'd like to be able to type in a new length for one of it's 5 meter edges and make it 2.5 meters. After I do so I need the rest of the edges all to shrink by a half.  The result of this example will make the 4 of the edges 2.5 meters long and the remaining 8 edges 1 meter long.

i think this is what you want to achieve..

select this vertex, then shift+s cursor to selection

change the pivot point to cursor

scale down to 0.5, and it should give you this result


How do I smooth hexagonal shapes more into cylinders? NOTE: I'm new to Blender/3D modeling, and this is my first project.

Here is a mesh of a clone trooper from a game from 2005 that I'm trying to "modernize." This hexagonal prism on his back is supposed to be more of a cylinder, but due to it's low-poly nature, it's obviously not. I've tried subdividing and smoothing the rectangular faces, but it bows the cylinder out in the middle as well as messing up the 90 degree angles between the rectangular faces and the hexagonal faces (possibly in an attempt to smooth those angles? which I don't want).

What's the best way to achieve a more cylindrical shape without having to manually bisect each face and translate the sides diagonally to make it more round? (If this is the only way, how can I perfectly translate the sides on the X and Z-axis EQUALLY so that I don't have to eyeball it?)

In edit mode, use Ctrl-R to add loop cuts to the sides of the 6 sided cylinder. Once you have an even division, select the vertices of the cap or end hexagon. Using Loop Tools addon, choose LoopTools> Circle, and the new vertices will form a circle. Repeat for the other hexagon.
edit:
Here is how I would approach it.
1. Original 2. Tris to quads 3. Delete the vert in center of the hexagon 4. ctrl-R loop cut the faces 5. LoopTools Circle to get the round 6. Extrude and carefully fill with quads


Cycles: is there a case-switch node? since you can't have multiple override material per renderlayer, I need to create one material that assigns different nodes depending on the ObjectID.
At the moment I use a combination of 'mix' nodes with 'greater than' nodes driving the blend value.

This setup assigns colors for IDs 11-13 and renders everything else black.
I would rather have a switch node where I plug in an integer at the top, and having color or material inputs for each number.
Does such a thing exist?   (Also could I use a custom attribute instead of ObjID? ...but that should probably a seperate question...)
thx

Since there is no switch node, I just created groups of the setup that I did earlier (switch shader and switch color). It's limited to 10 inputs, but that should be enough for what I'm doing...otherwise I will extend it.
But a real switch node where you can set any number of inputs would be great...just sayin...


Associate one emitter with a specific curve Is there any way to make an emitter follow a specific curve path and be affected by other curves that are on the same layer?

The Idea is to simulate air flowing through a group of openings in a model: so far the only way I could do that is by moving every emitter and its curve to a dedicated layer but that is a nightmare, because the number of curves I need is not small.

Any help would be appreciated.

Regards to all

Hani

To ensure that particles from an emitter are following a curve guide force field do the following:

Make a simple emittor object e.g. a cube
Change to edit mode, select one vertex and add this single vertex to a vertex group
In the particle systems tab, scroll down to Vertex Groups and select the vertex group with the single emitter vertex - this will cause the particles to be emitted from just this one vertex
Place the emitter vertex close to the curve guide path
(Optional) Adjust the force field settings to control the effective distance of the field (to avoid overlaps with other fields)
If you need multiple emitters and paths you can parent the emitter to the path and duplicate as needed.

Setting this up, can be a bit tricky sometimes, since it can happen, that particles drop out of the force field, but with a bit of fiddling it can be done.

I used this technique to create the arrows in this video: http://rheologic.net/en/urban-wind-assessment#wind-effects


Normalize / Create a unit quaternion number / calculation using Python and Blender I'm trying to work with quaternion math in Blender 2.82a and Python I need to normalize a quaternion number in Blender 2.82a using Python before I do calculations on it but I'm getting an error.

TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for /: 'Quaternion' and 'float' for the line
quat1_norm = quat1 / math.sqrt(ww**2 + ii**2 + jj**2 + kk**2)

The code below is:

import math
import mathutils
import numpy as np

new_angle_rad = np.deg2rad(10)
ww = np.cos(new_angle_rad/2)
ii = np.sin(new_angle_rad/2)*0
jj = np.sin(new_angle_rad/2)*1
kk = np.sin(new_angle_rad/2)*0

quat1 = mathutils.Quaternion((ww, ii, jj, kk))

#Normalize quaternion to length 1 (unit quaternion).
quat1_norm = quat1 / math.sqrt(ww**2 + ii**2 + jj**2 + kk**2)

print(ww,ii,jj,kk)
print(quat1)

I'm trying to convert Octave code to work in Python and Blender
https://octave.sourceforge.io/quaternion/function/@quaternion/unit.html

Here's the Octave math code I'm trying to convert.

Function File: qn = unit (q)

    Normalize quaternion to length 1 (unit quaternion).

              q = w + x*i + y*j + z*k
              unit (q) = q ./ sqrt (w.^2 + x.^2 + y.^2 + z.^2)

Package: quaternion

I did try:

quat1_norm=mathutils.Quaternion.normalize(mathutils.Quaternion((1, 2, 3, 4)))
print(quat1_norm)

it comes back with None.

When a similar command is done in Octave I get this

unit(quaternion(1,2,3,4))
ans = 0.1826 + 0.3651i + 0.5477j + 0.7303k

This can be done making and using the function below:

Original:

def normalize(v, tolerance=0.00001):
    mag2 = sum(n * n for n in v)
    if abs(mag2 - 1.0) > tolerance:
        mag = math.sqrt(mag2)
        v = tuple(n / mag for n in v)
    return np.array(v)

Updated Version using batFINGER suggestion: April 26 2020

def normalize(v, tolerance=0.00001):
    mag2 = sum(n * n for n in v)
    if mag2 > tolerance:
        mag = math.sqrt(mag2)
        v = tuple(n / mag for n in v)
    return np.array(v)

Or using the built in Function

import mathutils
quat1 = mathutils.Quaternion((1, 2, 3, 4))
quat1_norm = quat1.normalized()
print(quat1_norm)


Loop Tools not in Add-On menu in 2.78 can anyone help me out with this? I am trying to find the loop tools (i'm using 2.78) and it's nowhere to be found in the add-on menu in user preferences. is anyone else having this problem or is it somewhere else?
just don't feel like downloading it if it's already here somewhere...
i tried typing it in to find it but nothing came up!

Thanks!

Im using 2.78c and it is in my add-ons list.

Maybe somehow it got deleted.


How do I make the camera follow two objects at .5 influence each in blender game engine? In blender, in the constraints tab, I can parent the camera to two objects, both with 50% influence. Now in the blender game engine, I have not found a way to do this.  When I start my game, the constraints I set don't do anything in the game engine.

Instead of attempting to give the camera multiple parents (which is impossible, an object can have unlimited children, but only one parent) you can put an object in between your two other objects that dynamically moves to the new average position.

scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
one = scene.objects["one"]
two = scene.objects["two"]

sense = cont.sensors["Always"]

if sense.positive:
    PosX = two.worldPosition.x + one.worldPosition.x
    PosY = two.worldPosition.y + one.worldPosition.y
    PosZ = two.worldPosition.z + one.worldPosition.z

    print(PosX, PosY, PosZ)

    own.worldPosition = (PosX/2, PosY/2, PosZ/2)`

The code looks like that. You will notice that it is simply taking the average of position on each axis and applying it to the new object. Now all you have to do is make your camera track the center object, which will dynamically place itself in the right position.

Please note that there is probably an easier way to get the average, but seeing as I am fairly terrible at python, this is the best I can come up with. THe workflow, however is the correct one.

here is the test file:


Convert OBJ files to FBX files pros and cons I would like to know what happens when I decide to change my mesh in OBJ to FBX files.

For example, I had make a retopo in topogun, which only supports OBJ and their respective files convention. When I open it in Blender, everything seems to be right, but I use Unity often for exporting animations and for me, it works easier with FBX.

What happen with normals projections from the mesh in the conversion from file to file?
Is it the same type of mesh (collada, mesh, etc.)?
Is it a good idea to convert obj to fbx for animations for use in an engine?
I use xnormal for baking normal maps and I always use OBJ for both models in case I have got a HP and LP. I create the maps, go back to Blender and see the results, but when I decided to export the whole model with textures an animation, I change the OBJ to FBX. I do not see visual changes, everything seems to be right, but I would like to know the pros and cons, or whatever to develop my game or startup project.

My target: lowpoly games 2k to 20k, animations in Blender to use in Unity.

you have to understand that .obj files and .fbx files are following different concepts.

The .obj file format is a simple data-format that represents 3D geometry alone. In other words, its a simple text-based file that is primary for storing Meshes.

And a .fbx file format (and collada file as an open source equivalent) can store whole scenes (Camera, Armatures, Meshes, Curves, Empties, Lights, etc).

An .obj file can store:

Meshes information (Vertices, Edges, Faces) in multiple objects
Normals
UVs
Object information like Position, Rotation, Scale (in relation to each other!, I've often found that the obj exporter created files which had different dimensions in Blender to Meshes that had the same bounding size after importing to a different engine (Please correct me if I am wrong)
Some basic material information in a Separate .mtl File (nothing like complex cycles nodes)
Some Programs(Zbrush, XNormal, not Blender) can read and write Vertex colors to the obj file
It is possible to create .obj animations and some engines are even capable to read them. But you have to know that blender creates for every frame a new objfiles. So, most of the time, nothing you would like to have in your realtime engine

As mentioned above, a fbx file can store a lot of things.  Essential is what your exporter(Blender) and your importer (Game engine) is capable of reading and writing.

I definitely would recommend to use fbx or collada for any kind of exchange. I had significant problems with obj.

to answer your questions:

  What happen with normals projections from the mesh in the conversion from file to file?

Normals should be the same in every file format

  Is it the same type of mesh (collada, mesh, etc.)?

Yes, it is the same type of mesh.

  Is it a good idea to convert obj to fbx for animations for use in an engine?

Definitely

  I create the maps, go back to Blender and see the results, but when I decided to export the whole model with textures an animation, I change the OBJ to FBX.

What you do in the process of creating your models doesn’t matter. You only want to prevent data loss. Obj is ok for texture generation with XNormal. Fbx is also ok.


Backface culling from blender to unity I've got a finished model which is made up of circles on top of circles with a cylinder on the bottom, trying to resemble a pine tree.

When i export the model as .fbx with the 6.1 ACII to unity, the model shows up in a wierd way and i have no idea why and how to fix it. It looke like this:

Thank you.

You can preview the backface culling in Blender with the check box in the shading panel. To fix your problem, just tab into edit mode, then hit Ctrl + N to recalculate normals.


How to compute the centroid of a mesh with triangular faces without using Blender's built-in functions? I do not want to use Blender's built-in functions for computing centroids as explained here as it seems that they do not give me the kind of centroid I expect to get. I want to compute a new centroid for my meshes given the following description. First, I want to compute the centers of faces (triangle) of a mesh centroid of a mesh. Then I need to compute the faces area. The new centroid is the average of the mesh faces' centers, weighted by their area. How can I do this using Blender's Python API?

Bmesh approach

The bmesh module has for faces the methods to calculate centre and area.

There are three methods to calculate the centre of the face.

  calc_center_bounds()

Return bounds center of the face.
Returns:  a 3D vector.
Return type:  mathutils.Vector

  calc_center_median()

Return median center of the face.
Returns:  a 3D vector.
Return type:  mathutils.Vector

  calc_center_median_weighted()

Return median center of the face weighted by edge lengths.
Returns:  a 3D vector.
Return type:  mathutils.Vector

I've used calc_center_median() for $x_i$ and BMFace.calc_area() for the weight $w_i$ for each face of index $i$ the weighted mean is

$$\tilde x = \frac {w_0x_0 + w_1x_1 + ... + w_nx_n}{w_0 + w_1 + ... + w_n}$$

import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector
context = bpy.context

ob = context.object
me = ob.data
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(me)

weights = [f.calc_area() for f in bm.faces]
weighted_centres = [f.calc_area() * f.calc_center_median()
        for f in bm.faces]

local_weighted_mean = sum(weighted_centres, Vector()) / sum(weights)
print(local_weighted_mean)

# set as new origin
for v in bm.verts:
    v.co -= local_weighted_mean
mw = ob.matrix_world
mw.translation = mw * local_weighted_mean
bm.to_mesh(me)
me.update()

Result of running on newly added Suzanne. Scene cursor shows old origin.

Note: if modifiers are used on the object to triangulate, or subdivide, can (for example) use

bm.from_object(ob, context.scene, render=True)

to calculate weighted origin of modified mesh.


Where is the Name option in dynamic paint canvas v 2.79 I am trying to follow this "Freezing/Frost Text Effect" tutorial from version 2.65 on how to add frost to text.  At 3 min 47 sec he changes the name of the canvas in the dynamic paint section.  I don't see that option in 2.79

Mouse click twice on default Surface name to enter rename-function.


Texture painting seams on joined/loose parts (same UVs, joined mesh) I joined meshes together and unwrap the whole piece in one UV map. When I try to paint two loose parts there is an area that is not covered by brush but still visible on the mesh. I can unchek "occlude" and mask the part I dont want to paint but some parts are too imbricates to use this technique. I tried to increase bleed value but it seems to not changing anyting at all.
Any idea of how to get rid of these "seams"?

You have artifacts caused by incorrect topology. Viewed from the side, your topology looks like this:

You have to correct the topology by joining the faces together, so that no face goes through another:

You could do it by first adding loop cuts (CTRL + R), and moving them as close to the extrusion as possible without going underneath it:

Then by aligning all vertices of those loopcuts with the extruding shape by selecting them, pressing G to move and then either X or Y to move along only one axis and on the surface of the shape. If the faces of your shape aren't conveniently horizontal like mine, you can use custom orientation.

Now it's time to align middle vertices of the base with middle vertices of the extrusion: select them one by one, press G twice, and move them along the line.

Next step is to go to Face Selection Mode (press 3), select a few faces and hide them (H). Now Select the faces of the base that you no longer need and press X, then F to remove them. Repeat this for the faces of the extrusion, that you also no longer need. Press ALT + H to unhide the faces.

Now switch to vertex snapping mode:

Go back to vertex selection mode (1), Press Z, then W for wireframe mode, select vertices of the extrusion, that are below the base's top and move them onto newly created vertices:

Press A, to select all vertices, then M, then B to remove doubles. Now your topology should be fixed. Press Z, then S to go back to solid mode.


Assign Material Slot to no material via python I'd like to, in code, remove a material from a material slot without deleting that material slot (because deleting it would remove the connections between that material slot and the vertices). The only code I've found that can remove materials also deletes the material slot: bpy.ops.object.material_slot_remove()

I've also tried to use the property_unset function in the material slot, but it just doesn't seem to do anything. For example: C.object.material_slots[0].property_unset('material')

Setting the material to something else is fairly straightforward, but setting it to NULL seems impossible, even though it's easy to do via the interface.

This is related to, but not solved by:Python - Set material to material slot

Its as easy as bpy.context.object.data.materials[0] = None. Check this answer How to assign a new material to an object in the scene from Python? to see why and how it works.


Is it possible to unwrap materials made in Vertex Paint? I painted an group of objects in Blender using the Vertex Paint and was wondering if it would be possible to unwrap the mutliple materials(when the objects are joined together using Ctrl+J)? Do I have to paint it all over again?

You can bake Vertex colors to a texure.

Starting from a vertex color layer as in the picture below

you must unwrap your model (which may consist of one or multiple meshes) and create a new image to bake onto ("untitled" in my case)

Than go in the Bake panel of the Render tab and set Bake mode to Vertex color.

When the process is completed you should see something like the picture above.


Blender keeps flashing not responding I am using windows 10 and the latest version of blender and even tried to reset windows however blender keeps flashing not responding and the complete UI flashes.
Please help

There are a number of things that could cause this problem. It could be an old video driver. It could be a corrupt download.

The first thing I'd try is browse to C:\Users[user]\AppData\Roaming and delete the folder called "Blender Foundation." This is where Blender keeps all kinds of caches, settings, configurations, etc. Deleting this folder is like resetting Blender to the factory default configuration.

If that doesn't help, post your problem on BlenderArtists.org with a bit more detail about what "flashing" means, what GPU you have, when you last updated your drivers, and whether you're on a laptop or desktop.

Hope that helps!


UV Projection not working I've honestly looked at so may tutorials and can not fix this problem. My Projection seems to be completely different to what I'm seeing in the Uv view.

The UV project modifier requires a lot of geometry to project the image properly.

Either subdivide your geometry manually by switching into Edit Mode > RMB > Subdivide (also accessible from the Edge menu) or just add a Subdivision Surface modifier to your geometry and set it to Simple which essentially does the same but in a non-destructive way:

No UVs are required but you'd have to make sure that the Aspect Ratio of the image matches the X and Y properties of the modifier eg. for a 16:9 or 4:3 image, set the values accordingly:

Related: Camera projection without generating UV's?


How to make particles stick to mesh when Molecular Script is enabled? I’m trying to make particles stick to a mesh and stay on it even if it moves. Setting Friction=1 seems to do the trick unless the Molecular Script is enabled. I also tried setting Stickiness=10, but that didn’t help.

Is there any way to make particles stick when Molecular Script is enabled?

With Molecular Script off:

With Molecular Script on:

Collision settings:

Here is the test file:

I maybe have solved it using particles in the lower cubes, and particle linking on collision while simulating everything with molecular. Check the provided blend for more
details. (there is a text file inside, with a few small hints)

Short version: Cube particles are linked on birth, and also perform linking on collision with nearby plane particles.

Note, the particle linking may slow down the simulation.


How to activate the output of a dynamic paint canvas via python? I have a bunch of objects that I have converted into a DP canvas. The thing is that I have to activate manually all the outputs for that objects. I have created a small script but it's not working:

import bpy
dynamic = bpy.context.selected_objects
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
for i in dynamic:
    i.select = True
    bpy.ops.dpaint.output_toggle(output='A')
    i.select = False

PD: Works with on single object selected. But don´t know why it faill with a broader selection

Try this:

import bpy
dynamic = bpy.context.selected_objects[:]
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
for i in dynamic:
    i.select = True
    bpy.context.scene.objects.active = i
    bpy.ops.dpaint.output_toggle(output='A')
    i.select = False

The [:] bit at the end of line 2 creates a copy of the list instead of using a reference to the bpy.context.selected_objects, that might be affected by changes in the state of selection of the scene's objects.

The bpy.context.scene.objects.active = i makes each object active as well as selected. Many operators act on the active object only and ignore other selected objects.


Problems with Texturing in Blender Game Engine Posting this question again and maybe I'll find any help this time. So, recently I was trying to port model from Mass Effect, this model is a helmet on the image below.

So, the problem is that I had to apply the texture on it using Blender Game Engine, not the cycles or Blender Render. And the outcome after UV mapping the helmet resulted in this:
Can someone please tell me what I had to do to get rid of it? I am just losing hope atm. It worked fine in the Cycles but not in the Blender Game engine.

Any pieces of advice would be helpful!

Judging by the images you posted, this is probably what's wrong with you scene.
Flipped normals

Steps to fix:-

1. Select your object and go to edit mode
2. Move over to the shadings and UV tab
3. Select everything in your mesh
4. Click on recalculate

5. Go to properties panel and find the shading section and turn off Backface culling

Explanation:-

What Backface culling does is cull or clip the back sides of the face, and the back side is determined by the normals. Your model, judging from the picture, has its normals flipped inside out, and you have backface culling on therefore it's culling all the backfaces. If recalculation does not work, then it means some of the faces are flipped unevenly, thus they need to be manually flipped by using the Flip Direction button in the same shading panel in the tools tab region.


Consistent unwrapping I have a set of different shapes that align on a 1m x 3m grid as you can see in the following image:

Is there a way to unwrap them so that the texture will be aligned to my grid?

Wanted outcome:

What you want is Project from View (Bounds). That will take what you see in the view and put it over top of the image, stretching it to fit.

Note that since the image you're mapping it to is square, this will likely make it too tall for your figure; you'll then have to scale your UV map down in the UV/Image Editor to make the squares actually be square. (Of course, you can just crop your image in an external program like GIMP to  have the right number of squares.)


mesh edges still slightly visible after subdividing and shading smooth I am modeling a mesh in blender 2.9, and I gave it a subdivision surface modifier, then shaded it smooth.  Most of it worked great, but there are still some parts of the mesh where I can still see some edges (example below)

I do not want those edges to be visible.  Is there anything I could do to eliminate this effect?  Any help is appreciated! : )
(PS, I will give the link to my file below)

try selecting the faces with visible edges(by that I mean press alt click the face to select all the faces surrounding the top and bottom part of the object), split, then limited dissolve. You would notice a significant difference.
PS. you need to fix the topology afterwards though.


New fill - two different meshes I have removed a face inside one of my meshes, and now I'm trying to create a new one but based on 2 vertices from another mesh. In my tutorial it fills if with "F" key and creates new "quad", but at me it fills whole all area, not just 4 vertices.
May be the reason is that I have a newer Blender version 2.81 while tut version is 2.79(smth). So I can't get a new fill with quad (pictures added). What am I doing wrong or not getting here? Thank you in advance.

Fc.jpg

You can't have vertices, edges or faces across different objects. Different objects need to be joined first. Select both objects and press Ctrl+J

In case you forgot to "join" mashes here is a useful link on how to do it Thanks!


How to save an animation using python I have written a python code to build a simple animation. I need to save this animation (.blend) in a specific path. I used Save(path) in Blender 2.49b but I don't know how to use in Blender 2.74.
Any tips?

This works, you can even name the file during the save:

fp = "/home/username/SomeFolder/doubles.blend"  # or whatever you use.
bpy.ops.wm.save_as_mainfile(filepath=fp)


Time shift between tracked camera motion and original movie I tracked a sample movie clip and put a cube in the center. It animated quite well, and I was even able to see the video by playing (Render > Play) a set of PNG files.

I then changed options to export to H.264 and the result was quite bad - it looks like I somehow created a lag between the camera tracking and the video. It seems object on frame X is shown as if the camera is on frame X + 1, so the object moves just slightly ahead of the video.

What did I break?

Thanks.

I think the problem was with the video settings not matching the render settings. The video was recorded with a cellphone camera, and came out as 24.856 frames per second. Strange indeed.
If I repeat the process on a list of PNGs, or a video shot with a decent camera that produces a decent frame rate, this works fine.

Thanks for all the helpful comments.


VSE playback frame rate drops down with effects Am learning Blender for video editing and having a great time with it (brain hurts a bit, though).

Have added the gamma cross effect to a project and it is all working beautifully, except ... as the fade in happens using the gamma cross, the frame rate drops to 25fps. The project is in 50fps.

All worked fine with no dropped frames at 50fps prior to adding the effect.

On Xubuntu-core 15.10 and Blender 2.74. GTX 970, 16Gb RAM and i7 6700.

TIA and just ask if any further info required.

The Preview Frame Rate of a project in the Video Sequence Editor depends on many things:

Speed of your CPU.
Amount/speed of RAM available.
Size of the original image vs that of the project.
Compression scheme (codec) and bitrate of the file.
Speed of the hard drives.
Complexity of the effects applied.
Number of simultaneous streams.
Size of the preview screen.

The first time you play the timeline, blender will decode the original frames form your file, compute whatever transformations you applied to them, and cache the resulting frames into RAM. Some of those operations it can do in real time and most of them it can't, depending on the factors listed above.

Once the timeline has been cached, the timeline should preview in real-time at the project's frame rate (if your machine is indeed capable of that), or at least it should play at a constant speed.

Changes on elements of the timeline strips will invalidate the cache and new frames will need to be recalculated.

Usually you can only cache a few seconds for playback in real-time.

The amount of frames you can cache is limited by the amount of RAM designated  in User_Preferences/System/Sequencer-Clip_Editor/Memory_Cache_Limit.

To evaluate complex effects it's recommended to limit the range of frames to preview. Use the P key and drag to create a preview-range. To clear the preview range use AltP or press on the clock icon on the bottom of the VSE or Timeline window.

Playing frames that have not been cached will mean that blender has to calculate things on-the-fly, which might have an impact on performance and result in fluctuating frame rates.

The preview frame rate in the timeline will not affect how the final product will playback. Once you've rendered to a video file you are just playing a single video stream with all of the effects baked into it, meaning that all of the transitions and effects are part of the images, so no more complex computations need to take place, and you should expect a constant playback speed (again, depending on your computer's power and the compression scheme being used).


cycles isnt working when rendering I'm used to rendering heavier files but cycles isn't rendering the one I'm currently working on for some reason, it renders just fine in the viewport even with the sampling increased exponentially and it still only takes around 60mb of memory but when I render the scene it says out of memory and doesn't render. plus the model isn't visible through the camera with viewport render.

You have two problems:

The first one is that you have set the subsurf modifier to a very high number of subdivisions for rendering.

You have to be careful when using the subsurf modifier, as it increases the number of vertices exponentially. Using a large number of vertices will require more RAM and will use more computing resources.
I doubt you need 6 levels of subdivision ever. With 6 levels of subdivision your very simple scene needs 6.5GB of RAM to render.

Use a more reasonable number. Read: Blender render crash when using subsurf modifiers.

The second problem is that you are trying to use depth of field on the camera, but have set the focus distance to zero, so your scene is completely out of focus, and it renders all gray.

Set the focus  to the distance of the object , or select the object as your focus target.

Read:

Rendered image is just grey


What are the practical differences between beziers, nurbs and paths? I know that Beziers, Nurbs curves and Paths have different controls:

Bezier handles have control over tangents, and the curve always touches the control point.

Nurbs curves don't touch the control points, they just bend towards them. The curve doesn't reach the first or last control points, but ends around the second/second-last point.

Paths are the same as Nurbs curves, except the curve continues to reach the first and last control points.

But what are the practical differences between them? What can each of them be used for that the others can't, or what about each of them makes them easier to use for certain tasks?

I must say that I make quite extensive use of Bezier Curve objects in Blender, I use them a lot more than I actually use mesh objects.
I work mainly in architecture mostly doing archviz, design and interior decoration projects. I know this is not a popular nor a 'standard' modeling technique, I am perfectly aware how exotic it is and that most people's workflow is far different from mine, even in similar business areas.
Curve objects in Blender suffer from severe limitations when compared to meshes, like limited availability of modifiers, poor texture mapping capabilities, can't be unwrapped, can't have particles or participate in Boolean Operations, and can't be rigged or animated like meshes do.
That being said I find that bezier curve objects kept live and without converting to mesh have certain advantages and also particular constraints that make them well suited for these use cases.
Bezier Curves
By being inherently bidimensional, bezier curve objects (in 2D Mode) automatically guarantee a flat 2D surface avoiding dealing non planar surfaces originating from unintentional snapping, which is a frequent requirement recreating real world situations.
Because they you don't have to work with faces directly, you don't have to worry about topology nor maintaining a good edge flow, like you would with mesh objects. This lifts a huge burden and frees you from worrying about mico-managing
geometry.
Since curves have a builtin quality setting for curved segments smoothness you also don't have to use Subdiv Modifiers which are often a source of concern for topology. Mixed straight and curved shapes live happily together automatically handled by the bezier curve fill engine as well; so you also avoid having to worry about adding support edge loops or unwanted smoothing in straight areas.
Because the fill engine also handles automatically inner curves and recursive shapes inside shapes it easily creates holes and islands inside outlines, avoiding extensive use of Booleans, which are slow, error prone and often source of frequent problems and frustration.
The builtin beveling, offsetting and extrusion features allow for a non destructive workflow, which can easily go back to and change parametric without having to redo manually.
Bevel objects also allow defining extrusion shapes along complex paths, common in metal work, frames and railings frequently found in architecture, and often provided in CAD format by manufacturers.
In building and construction area, Bezier curve objects end up being very versatile in designing:

Building walls, which can conveniently be defined as an extrusion of an architectural plan outline that is often provided by the client, guaranteeing planar closed shapes.
Facades, curtain walls, and elevations can also be easily defined from client provided elevation drawings, since again they are mainly bi-dimensional extrusion structures with holes and island that are well defined from a 2D closed curve with holes for windows, doors, openings and stonework around them.
Pavement or floor finish areas (like an room with a certain type of wood, carpet or ceramic tile finish) which often a closed boundary combining complex shapes with mixed curved and straight geometries.
Concrete slabs, or extensive ceilings with arbitrarily shaped and numerous openings for lighting and holes for installed equipment, are also easy to define because you don't have to worry about topology, manually deal with gaps, fill holes nor use booleans.
Railings, metal work, extrusion profiles and frames along complex paths are easily handled by the builtin Bevel objects.
A lot of other real world objects made from sheet materials (like table tops, wood board, wood furniture benefit from the same advantages like easy extrusion, tessellation and beveling.

Other than that, they are also very useful as complement for illustration based graphical design type of work, like Logo design and symbol creation, or 2D type of motion graphics often used in TV, video and animation work.
NURBS
NURBS surfaces on the other hand are more suited for smooth almost organic-like shapes used in vehicle design like cars, boats, airplanes, or more aerodynamic industrial design objects.
They differ from subdivision surface because you never deal with faces directly, the emphasis on precision, trimming, and Boolean operations.
Looking at Blender alone it's hard to imagine using them as an actual full features modelling tool, since Blender's NURBS tools are admittedly a stub, with very limited features and lacking tools.
They are there more as a remnant of the past than as an actual production ready tool. Other dedicated software like Rhino, MoI, Katia, etc. have actually usable and full featured NURBS modelling tools, capable of very accurate surface definition, surface trimming, Boolean operations, etc.
They are very suited for actual technical drawing extraction from models, since correct and exact elevations, plans and sections can be extracted from a NURBS or Solid based 3D model.
Paths
I don't frequently use them myself, but from what I gather they are mostly used for animations purposes, mainly to define animation paths objects must follow, sort like a railway. They are mathematically more accurately and precisely defined, yielding smoother animations and avoiding jitters and sudden movements while animating.


What is the config to attach transparent face to object I'm blender noob.

In the bottom picture, that selected face detached to the mesh.

Let me know the config to attach that transparent face to the mesh like the upper picture.
Thanks for helping me.

The little black square is always at the center of verts which creates the face. So if you have concave or non-flat ngons then the square won't be located on the surface, but this isn't a useful thing.


Why is blender not using all of my ram? So I'm rendering this scene with blender cycles and I'm wondering why I get this

when my computer has much more processing power.
Here's the computer I have: http://www.costco.com/.product.1128978.html  It has 16GB of ram, it should be able to do more than 181M right? If not, please explain to me why. Do I just need to get a better graphics card?

Simply because it doesn't need to use more.

My guess is that you assume that the rendering would be faster if used more memory. Sadly, it's untrue. And due to various bottleneck like memory latency, memory bandwidth (and probably more) : using more ram than it strictly need to use would probably slow down the rendering, not speed it up.

i have 32GB of RAM, my current rendering use ~32MB (which is ~1024  time than what it could use if it needed to).

EDIT : i'd like to add that RAM isn't "processing power", it's "storage"
 (temporary, and many order of magnitude faster than disk but storage nonetheless). In the same way, it won't go faster if you add more disk.


Is there any way to get single pixel wide aliased lines? I'm trying to get clean, one pixel wide lines on my renders like the pic below, but nothing I try seems to work.

I've tried freestyle with one sample, but I get extra pixels at some parts of the strokes and the low sampling makes the rest of the render look really bad.

I also tried this compositor nodegroup and this script, but I can't make the nodegroup's lines thin enough and the script just doesn't work at all.

These were the thinnest lines I could get with the nodegroup.

So is there any way to render lines like the first pic, or am I out of luck?

I'm fine with using either engine.

If you're ok with using the Workbench engine, you can simply go to User Preferences → Viewport → Smooth Wires and disable Overlay.

You can choose the Workbench engine just like Cycles or Eevee in the Render Properties tab, and since frames can still be rendered with transparency you could easily composite them into frames rendered with any other engine.

Result


Unable to attach bones to 3D model or create vertex groups I have created a creature for the project and I am supposed to create an animation where the creature is running. This is where my problem comes in, I cannot get the bones used on my creature to attach or create vertex groups for the individual parts. If you could reply with directions or instructions as soon as possible that’d be lovely. Thanks.

Have you tried linking your model to the rig using automatic weights? (i.e. By selecting your model first and then your rig, then pressing control+P, and then choosing: With Automatic Weights)
You could then vertex paint the weight of each bone individually by hand to your liking.


How to animate Ardoni death? (Songs of War (Minecraft Animation)) I am using Black Plasma Studios' Songs of War asset pack for the Ardoni rigs. In Songs of War, when Ardoni die, their markings lose color. Does anyone know how to do that? I tried to play around with the materials, but I can't see any way to do it except to change the skin, which I'm not sure I can animate. I want the color to gradually fade into black. I also want to be able to dim the colors, so I can show that the character is partly dead.

Oops lol. The answer was so easy. I wasn't in rendered mode when I was turning down the emission textures, so it didn't show.


How best to make a clip of a burning house? I plan to make a clip of a burning house in Blender. My objective is to make this photorealistic as possible. Now I think I can model the house and its environment (including the right materials and textures) and set it on fire and make an animation of that.

But recently I had some first experience with the movie clip editor and the camera tracking possibilities of Blender. And now I think maybe you could also make a movie of a house (with a camera) and also make an animation of a 3D model on fire and integrate the original movie and the Blender made animation.

So my question is what would be the best approach. Either the "modelling approach" or the "VFX approach" ??? The house should be a typical "american suburban house".

I hope that this is not a subjective question. If it is, maybe some people are willing to give me some advice in the chat room ?

Feasible to do this on footage, with caveats. A few quick and ridiculous thoughts:

A pretty decent estimation of the scene referred transform for your footage. Absolutely mandatory, otherwise it is the nasty After Effects Hacks-All-The-Way-Down approach.
Good deal of reference photos of the house in question. You'd be needing these for the texturing, lighting, and supplementing the geometry I'd suspect.
A very compelling fire sim.

If the goal is absolute mimesis, most should be able to deduce that using photogrammetry techniques coupled with real footage is going to be infinitely more plausible than any from-scratch approach.

That said, no easy task by a long shot, but likely only feasible using real world footage coupled with CGI.


how to control an rgb node's color through a custom property I have a couple of objects that are procedurally textured and colored. I want to make versions of it, and adjust the base color (defined by a rgb node) on everyone of them in one step.
So, I know how to create a custom property with color as a property value, but I do not know how to epecify the parameters in the driver editor when in the rgb node to make it work (as you can tell, I'm new to drivers in blender).

Thanks!

You can do it like any other custom property, but you have to set a different driver for each channel.
Expand the color wheel by clicking on the custom property color field, set it to R,G,B and right click on the first channel, choose Copy as new driver.
Then expand the RGB node color wheel by clicking on the color field, set it to R,G,B and right click in the first channel, choose Paste driver.
Now repeat that for the Green, Blue, and Alpha channel and the two colors will be synched.


Achieve blur-like glow effect in an specific object I would like to learn how to make a kind of glow that looks good in well-illuminated environments, something like this. Any suggestions?

Apply an Emission shader to an object, move it on another render layer and in the compositor add a Glare node and set it to "Fog Glow".


Emit particles from a plane based on the alpha channel of it's texture Is it possible to have a particle system emit particles based on the alpha channel of a texture? I would need to emit particles only from the parts of an image texture that are not transparent.

you can add texture to the particle system :

then change the influence from time to density in the texture tab :

in the texture tab you can change the mapping, enable/disable Alpha ;
by default it will use the alpha channel and emit from the non transparent part


Change shape to circle I am doing this Blenderguru tutorial to work on my modelling skills.

Question At about 28:30 min in the tutorial it is demonstrated how to assign a material to a selected parts of the mesh. It should become a black circle and a white circle (green in my image). But I guess my shape is not a circle. I think the reason for that is this loop cut I made and that is not there in the tutorial.

But how to change my shape to a circle ? I have tried deleting edges but that does not work.

Just select the edge loop (Alt +RMB). You will need to scale it flat if it isn't already, and since from your image it looks like "Y" is your local axis, scale it to zero on the y S > Y axis. In my image, "Z" is the local axis, I will scale to zero on the "Z" axis.

Before Scaling:

After scaling:

Now use the "to sphere" tool. since it only has two dimensions, there won't be any sphere going on, just circle.

you can find this tool with Spacebar and then searching or Shift+Alt+S.


Why does my mesh have lots of square on it? I made a render animation but the mesh seems to be too bright and it seems too square if you understand. Well, I'll add a screenshot, and I want to know what can I do to make it look better.

First, select the mesh. Then click on the Tools Tab, and under Shading click Smooth.  Another option would be to subdivide the mesh.

Edit:
Also, if you don't want the bright spots, go to Properties > Material and change the Specular Intensity to zero.


Off-frame animation cycle? Quick question:

Is it possible to cycle an animation in Blender in such a way that it does not repeat on an exact frame, but so that it is slightly off?

Here is an example to clarify what I'm on about. I want to tell Blender:

"Repeat the animation 30 times for the duration of 1000 frames (= animation repeats every 33.3333333.... frames)"

How can this be achieved?

Yes, this is possible.
Create the Action you want to repeat in the Dopesheet.

For clarity, my action is going to be 9.1 frames long and going to repeated 10 times.
Note, that the the length of 9.1 will come from the start and and frames: 1 to 10.1.

endframe - startframe = duration
10.1     -         1  = 9.1

Go to the NLA Editor.
Press the Push Action Down button.
Go to the properties panel in the NLA editor and to the Action Clip section.
Set the start frame to your start frame (1)
Set the end frame to your end frame (10.1)
Set the repeat property to the numer of times, you want to repeat the action clip.

The Action will no be repeat with an offset of 0.1 frames.


How to Micro Manage Manipulator When in Edit Mode, I find sometimes I want to move an edge, or at least two vertices, in a direction that would be perpendicular to their orientation along their existing edge.

At that moment, the Transformation Orientation selections (Normal, Local, Global, et al) have no vectors pointing in that direction.

How might I, or is it possible to, change the "polarity" of those manipulator vectors (independent of the given selections: Global, Local, Normal, Gimble, View) so that one of them is pointing in the perpendicular direction to the line/edge between the vertices?

Enter Edit Mode, switch to Edge selection mode, select any edge, go to the Transform Orientations panel and press the + button to add a new transform orientation while that edge is selected.

You can name your new transform orientation whatever you want, and then use it afterwards. There will additionally be created a new transform orientation named "Edge" that will hold the orientation you want.

You can then move along that edge direction, or perpendicularly to it, relative to the surrounding faces normals.


Cycles GPU render does not work I am struggling for a week now, trying my blender to work with CUDA GPU Cyclea Rendering, did so many fresh installation, still no luck.

Current situation:

Fresh install of Blender 2.69 (from repository )
Installed Nvidia GeForce GT 640 driver from official website using text base terminal.
Installed CUDA 5.5 from official website using text base terminal.

My system:
Intel core i7, nvidia 640, OS ubuntu 12.04 64bit.

What I want to achieve:
I Want to run blender with CUDA GPU cycles rendering.
I also want to run some program which requires 32bit lib installed.

Current Problem:

Blender works fine, I can see the CUDA option but when I try to render using Cycles GPU render it does not work, no rendered image is produced.
Other program which needs 32bit lib does not work, it says it requires 32 bit lib, when I try to install that 32 bit lib it says its already there.

any help will be highly appreciated. thanks.

I had also such a problem and solved it by deselecting WITH_CYCLES_CUDA_BINARIES in cmake(-gui).

Without this blender will compile the correct .cubin file when you first try to render with the GPU. This will take a while (a few minutes on my i7), but it works.

To solve the problem with 32-bit you probably need to install glibc-devel-32bit (or similar, so called on openSUSE). There was some error about missing a header out of this while compiling blender.


Is it possible to drive the length of hair particles via texture using Cycles? I am aware of this question, however it appears to be for Blender Internal exclusively. Is there a way to do this in Cycles (Blender 2.7+)? And would an animated texture work as well?

It works the same way for cycles. Also if you have an animated texture (image sequence or procedural) the animation will effect the length as well.

In the Textures section of the Particle settings for your Particle system, add a new texture.

Now in the Texture tab, change the Influence to Length.

This animation was made by animating the Size on the Distorted Noise texture that is controlling the length of the particles.


Keep bone constraints from custom bones in Rigify metarig? (Not entirely SFW) I'd like to know if there's any way to preserve bone constraints from the metarig into the generated rig. I could imagine multiple uses for this (basically any unconventional type of limb or body part), but my current use is that I want to replicate the popular 2B character model's breast bones in my own characters while using a Rigify armature. Rigify's default of a single bone just doesn't deform right and I'm a stickler for details.

This setup requires a few 2-bone chains with IK constraints that target the central breast bone, and I can't seem to copy the IK constraints automatically. Considering I'd like to reuse this setup for multiple characters, doing it manually after generating each rig is out of the question.

Thanks in advance!

When you add bones to the metarig, and don't set their "rigify_type" property, the script just adds those bones to the last layer with prefix "ORG-". It also keeps any constraints intact. But none of such bones are deforming ones. Of course, you can assign their Deform property after the generation is done, but that's not we want. :-) So, if you want some bones to be deforming ones, you need to find the first bones of each bone chain, what supposed to be deforming, and set for these bones rigify_type = basic.copy (or basic.copy-chain), and set the "Deform" option of that type. In that case you will have all your bones in the resulting rig with "ORG-" prefix, with all the constraints in last layer. Also you will have all the Deform bones copied to "DEF-" ones in third to last layer, all parented to their "ORG-" equivalents. Hope, it will help.
See "Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Rigging/Rigify" for details on rigify types.


Copy Location constraint is applied to all bones in armature even though I want to apply a different constraints to each bone I'm working on a project where I'm using multiple tracking points to which I want to link bones that deform a mesh. I want to use a copy location constraint to link each individual bone to a different track, but whenever I apply a copy location constraint to a bone the constraint is applied to every bone in the armature. While working earlier the constraints were applied to just the bones I had selected but for some reason now it's applying it to all of them. I've looked through various forums but haven't found an answer. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

This is the tutorial I am basing my workflow off of (stage I am at is around 21:10) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNK8S19OSmA

You have given an Object Constraint to your armature instead of a Bone Constraint to your bone (those are 2 different tabs in the Properties panel).


How can I align the handles of control points from a curve? I made a curve but part of the same curve doesn't fit in a regular line, I need to align the points/vertices with each other, how can I do this? I need to put those in order.

What you need to do is scale along a single axis, in this case the Y axis. Select the vertices you want to have in a straight line, and press S-Y-0.

Instead of this:

You will now have this:

This works best for the Vector handle type, but can be used in many cases for the other types as well.


How can I make the texture to appear once the game is played? I had to add letter on the cube so i did it using UV mapping

 but once I play the game only materials are displayed and not the image.

How can I make the letter on the top face of the cube to appear once the game is played?

Select the cube and go to material and make 2 new material.
Select the 1st material and
Go to texture tab
Go below in the type and change --- Image or movie
and below 3 tabs -- Texture, material, both
Click on Material
In the below image select or open your image
Mapping -- coordinates -- UV
In the N panel go to Shading and change to -- GLSL
Select the cube go to edit mode and click the face u want to texture and press u and unwrap
Go to UV/Image editor and select the image
Now change the view from solid to texture.

Go to the material and select the 2nd color and change ur color.

Change Blender render to game engine


Change material projection method? I'm new to Blender (coming from Cinema 4D) and wondering how I change the material projection method? Also, I'm wondering how to tile a material on a specific mesh?

In C4D, if I click on the "Texture Tag", I'm able to choose between a few different projection methods for the material, for example, "Spherical" and "Cubic". This is useful for applying materials to meshes with no or problematic UV mapping. How would I, for example, apply a "Spherical" or "Cubic" material projection to a mesh in Blender?

Also, how do I tile/repeat a texture on a mesh?

I do really appreciate all the help I can get.

Are you using Blender Render or Cycles Render? (This is shown at the top of the window.)

If you are using Blender, go to the "Textures" tab in properties, select "Projection" in the mapping tab, and change it to how you like. To tile it, change the size property.

If you are using Cycles, open up Node Editing. Link the Image Texture to the Material, link the Mapping Vector to Image Vector, and link The Texture Coordinate to Mapping. (It makes more sense in an image.) Click "Flat" in the Image Texture, and select a projection. Change the "Scale" values in mapping to tile.


Use a collection as object inputs in Animation nodes i;m trying to use animation nodes for the first time. I've made a sub program which does what it's supposed to (scale objects up as a sweeper object goes past them in the X axis) , but How can i make it do this for all objects in a collection instead of having to put an object input for each object i want to affect?

Something like " for each object in Collection, set it as input for Subprogram"

I have hundreds or maybe thousands of objects i want this to apply to so its really not practical to add them all one by one.

Use a Loop Subprogram to do "for each something in somehing":


Why doesn't my light beam render? I made a light beam, very similar to this: https://cloud.blender.org/p/caminandes-3/56c6da5cc379cf0079716873, but for some reason I can't render it. If I switch to rendered view mode, I see everything in place, but when I render it, there's nothing in place of the beam, except for some lighter and yellower rain drops.
on the top half, you can see 3d rendered view mode, on the bottom half, you can see actual rendered image. I have checked in outliner, that everything should render (which is also visible from the image).
Here is my nodesetup:
I am using cycles render.

There is likely nothing wrong with your setup.
The issue is with the render viewport not being able to display emissive and transparent pixels.
To check this try either

Disabling Film>Transparent

or compositing your image over some color (or black) background,

or simply looking at the RGB image with no alpha on the viewer.
Related: Transparent Image different in viewport than render  - and How do I get the Glare node to output transparent instead of Black background


Blender 2.79 smoke simulation, domain rendering as solid cube I'm creating new file by reloading Blender Start-Up file (Ctrl+ N) moving default cube a little higher, then apply Object > Quick Effect > Quick Smoke. I can start simulation and see smoke generating, I can also see smoke using Blender Render, but when i change renderer to Cycles this happens:

What may be interesting is that in Blender 2.8 alpha I can see smoke in Cycles (But there's lots of bugs). Maybe I have to do something with domain material nodes but I just started learning Cycles and I'm really don't know how to fix it, please help.

The Quick Smoke option automatically generates the smoke material based on your currently selected Render Engine. The Blender Render renderer uses different materials to Cycles and they are not interchangeable. Therefore, if you do 'Quick Smoke' whilst Blender Render is selected and then swap to Cycles, you will not have a valid material (since it will be the Blender Render material, rather than Cycles) and you will see the Cycles material rendered as the default (Diffuse) material.

The solution is to select Cycles renderer before you select Quick Smoke. The easiest way to resolve this will be to delete your Smoke Domain, select your Cube again, and then re-select Quick Smoke - this should create a new domain with the correct smoke material.


Finding closest distance from point to mesh in BGE In BGE, I have a simple mesh, say, a cube that has been subdivided a few times to give it more than 8 vertices, like so:

What I'd like to do, generically speaking, is find the shortest distance from the surface, or alternately the bounding box, of that mesh a given location.

To be more specific, I want to find the distance from the camera (player) to the mesh. I would then pass that information into a text field on a HUD (which I already know how to do). Think of it like a range-finder, where the player always sees the distance from him/herself to the target object. I've found a few methods that work using the object's origin, but that doesn't work for me. I need the distance to the closest vertex on the object's mesh. Or alternately, at least the closest point on the object's bounding box.

I know how to get the camera's current location with object.worldPosition. I've tested that successfully.

Here's what else I've found so far, none of which works for me:

closest_point_on_mesh, an object property in BPY. This seems like it would work perfectly - I'd find the closest point, and find the distance from that point to the camera's location. Except that it's only for BPY, which doesn't help me for BGE.
Ray casting in BGE, from this similar object property list for BGE. I'm not quite understanding how ray casting works here or how I would use it to find the nearest point to my origin point (the camera location). Note, I already know what mesh I want to "hit" (the cube), I just need to find the closest vertex or closest point on its surface.
This StackExchange answer that relates to BPY. Again, I need a BGE-workable solution.
This other StackExchange answer that is in BGE, but it is only for the distance between two objects' origins. I need the distance from one point, to the closest point on the object. Not the origin-to-origin distance.

Finally, here's what I've tried to implement. Since object.closest_point_on_mesh from the first bullet above seems to be the closest to what I want, I decided why not try it in BGE and see if it works after all. It didn't.

import bge
from math import sqrt

#There's a bunch of other code in here that I won't repeat,
#but one of them is getHUDfield(), which retrieves the text
#objects in the HUD scene so that their text can be updated

def RangeUpdate():
    #Have this actuated by "Always" and reside on the camera
    #Find camera location
    cam_loc = bge.logic.getCurrentController().owner.worldPosition
    print(cam_loc) #for debugging - this works, successfully gives me the cam's location in the console
    #Find the cube object and find the closest point on its mesh
    objects = bge.logic.getCurrentScene().objects
    bounding_cube = objects["Cube_00"]
    loc, norm, idx = bounding_cube.closest_point_on_mesh(cam_loc)
    #^^^Right now the problem is here: closest_point_on_mesh might not work in BGE?

    #Find the distance between cam's location and this location
    dist = sqrt((loc[0]-cam_loc[0])**2 + (loc[1]-cam_loc[1])**2 + (loc[2]-cam_loc[2])**2)

    #Display it on the HUDfield called RangeLabel
    allhudfields = getHUDfield()
    hudfield = allhudfields["RangeLabel"]
    hudfield["Text"] = str(dist) + " blender units"

The code fails at bounding_cube.closest_point_on_mesh(cam_loc). The console output says AttributeError: 'KX_GameObject' object has no attribute 'closest_point_on_mesh' For the curious or skeptical, the part where it updates the hud field's text DOES work (if I feed it a dummy value). Clearly the failure is in finding the point on the mesh closest to the given location.

So does anyone know either how I can do something similar to calling the property closest_point_on_mesh, but in BGE instead of BPY? Or, is there a totally different method or a work-around that works in BGE? To reiterate, my objective is to find the shortest possible distance from an arbitrary point (the camera's location), to the surface of a specified object/mesh (or at least the nearest vertex on the mesh, or the closest point on its bounding box).

If it's just the distance to the Bound Box, does not require any complex function for this.

I do not usually use bge, but you can take advantage of this code to get the nearest point of a Bound_Box.

#bound.min: smaller coordinates x, y, z of Bound Box
#bound.max: greater coordinates x, y, z of Bound Box
#co coordinate of the point to test the nearest
from math import sqrt
def find_nearest_t_AABB(bound, co):
    nearest = [0.,0.,0.]
    dist = 0.
    for i in range(3):
        if (bounds.min[i] > co[i]):
            nearest[i] = bounds.min[i]
        elif (bounds.max[i] < co[i]):
            nearest[i] = bounds.max[i]
        else:
            nearest[i] = co[i]

        dist += (co[i] - nearest[i])**2
    return sqrt(dist), nearest


Audio doesn't time correctly So I made a small animation, and then I added in a simple "pow" sound in the Video Sequence editor.
But when I started it, the sound played immediately. I rewound it even more, and the sound doesn't play until a couple frames before the file, and If I pause and play it over and over near where the audio is, it restarts and plays the sound over and over, until I get to the sound, and there it stops sounding at all.
I don't know what could be causing this.
The sound is not playing where it is supposed to play.

In the Timeline window -> playback, you must check "Audio Scrubbing" AND "AV-Sync". Does it resolves the problem ?


Delay when using texture paint There is a phenomenon that the brush tool is delayed by 0.5 seconds to paint the texture in the 3D view panel.

The more problematic thing is that the delay time increase. That means, the more I paint the texture, the slower it is.

However, this problem does not occurre in UV panel.

My working environment is as follows,

CPU: Rizen 1700x
RAM: 16 GB
Graphics card: GTX 1070 (CUDA1902)

UV Image Editor will always be faster with paint because it isn't held back by projection effects like culling, cavity mask, etc. Painting in the 3d view needs to be done with small brushes for faster paint daubs, as large brush radius can cause a memory choke while waiting to project and calculate all the pixels to be affected by the paint stroke.

Also, a key factor here is how large your texture is and how many undo steps exist in your preferences. Decrease the undo steps or eliminate them altogether for the session and see if the memory spikes stop. The size of the texture and the bit depth can cause some issues with painting using projection in the 3d view, but you will see that the UV Image Editor handles them much easier.

The key difference in these two options for paint is that the UV Image Editor is one texture at a time (display) but the 3d view can display all or one (GLSL/Material Draw mode vs. Multitexture) and you can use both to their advantage to get the best effects.


How do I scale a letter how it should be? I would like to extrude & scale the outter edge of my letter like this :

but Actually it looks like this ...

I have no clue how to do it ...
Also  there is another problem,  if I scale a mesh is there a way to deactivate the z axis ?

To deactivate $Z$ you can scale pressing S followed by Shift + Z.
$X$ and $Y$ will still scale.
Also the transform panel have little lock icons that you can toggle to lock different properties (like $Z$ scale).


Using Clear Seam unwrapped my entire mesh again instead of the face i selected I had nearly completed unwrapping my uv map when i accidentally selected mark seams from islands.  Now when i try to go back and remove the seams it completely reworks the entire UV map.

I go from this:

To this:

I am hoping someone can provide some guidance to help me remove the unwanted seams.

To help add some clarification, this is how i believe it is supposed to work:

First add some seams and unwrap.

Next to optimize the mesh add or remove seams:

but the uv stays the same until you unwrap again:

But if i add or remove a seam even a single seam on my mesh i end up with this:

Hope that clears things up a bit.

Thanks!

Solved!

Apparently this option appears in more than one place.  It turns out Live Unwrap was enabled in the options menu.  Turned it off and it started behaving like i wanted.  This option does look useful though.  Will have to remember it later if manually unwrapping uv's in the future.


imported bones locked in rotation I imported a character from Daz, and it has a bunch of bones for the eyelid I need to pose. The problem is, I can't rotate them, even if I unlock the rotation and remove all bone constraints. There's some relation that pose them relative to the eye position but I don't know where this relation is. Where could it be aside from bone constraints?

Sorry, it was a driver script on the rotation values, figured it out.
EDIT: and the value must not be keyframed to remove the driver.


Diffuse material that doesn't throw shades in cycles engine I have an object, that has diffuse shader and looks great. Unfortunately it throws some shades on the objects behind it and it looks terrible. Is there any way to make the light to be fully reflected and passed through the object in the same time?

To prevent an object from casting shadows uncheck the shadow option in  Object_Tab--> Ray_Visibility--> Shadow :