How can I texture a complex road system? Is there any easy way to texture this road model or any other way to achieve the goal?  There are some small roads in the model as well. I want to apply the road texture to all the roads in the model according to their size and shapes. Thanks in advance !!

"3dscity.blend" file link:
http://1drv.ms/V3RVvJ

What I do with road textures is to differentiate the roads by type. Multi-lane, controlled access, divided throughways, might be one type; multi-lane urban roadways, where there may be four, six, or more rarely more, lanes in each direction, but where the roadways have frequent junctions with perpendicular streets, two land urban streets, two lane rural roads, &c. Then I create a material and texture for each type of roadway, and apply it to the appropriate sections of roadway. It's relatively easy, but not particularly fast, as sections have to be created, and materials mapped to them individually.

REVISED ANSWER

I have found that in many cases, software packages like Blender are so easy to use that it's easy to do virtual doodling, and then because of the time put into a project, we start seeing the doodling as something more. When this happens it can become a challenge to do something different due to the time we have invested in the doodle. But sometimes it is expedient to let the doodle remain a doodle, and go back and start over with a better, and more thoughtfully considered workflow. Using the screenshot posted by the OP as an example, there are a number of considerations that could benefit from this. For example, the screenshot seems to suggest only two types of roads, but the sizes may not be of the proper proportion. Some of the wider lines, might represent 4 lane roads, while others might be 6 lanes wide. Same with the smaller lines. Some might be two lane streets, and others might be one and one-half lane alleys. And the overall layout of the streets might not be quite what one would wish, either, given a bit more thought.

What I frequently do, after having a map such as the one in the image, is to create a screenshot of it, then scale the image to the sizes I might imagine it to be. So, suppose I decide that the image needs to be transformed a bit: I want it somewhat rescaled, so that what is the vertical dimension (as seen on the screen) is 2 units, and the horizontal dimension is 3. I'll create a plane object in Blender that is 2 units x 3 units, and use the image as a UV texture to place the map on the plane. With the lighting and camera in layer 1, I place the background image in Blender layer 2. Next, also in layer 2, I create a grid mesh as a separate object, but the same size as the background image. I place a separate grid mesh object in layer 3, to use as the basis for my modeling. Unless the city is unusually flat, I mark terrain contour lines first, usually outlining these in the base grid. Then I place waterways--streams, rivers, ponds, and lakes--second, since that is the usual natural order of things. These are created as separate objects at the beginning, so that I can hide and reveal them at the click of the eye button in the outliner window. Third, I place the roads. Having previously considered the size and nature of the roadways, I start by creating a small segment to the desired profile, using appropriate profiles for various types of roads. a lane and a half alley in an urban area may be simply a flat surface. The two line street with which it intersects will have a more complex profile: created with a pedestrian walkway and curb on each side, with the two lanes each with a small grade which goes from a peak in the center of the street, to a low point at the curb edge. Generally speaking, each lane of the roadway will be represented by a separate division of the roadway. When I have a profile for a particular type of road way defined to my satisfaction, then I'll copy the profile to a point over the background image, and extrude it a short distance, then define the necessary materials (and textures, if I use any) and assign them to the section of road created. Then I extrude the road sections, which will generally reproduce the assigned materials and textures on each new section of roadway created by extrusion.


How do I make sure everything in my scene is in proportion to my character? I'm looking at modeling a little scene and I'm looking for some advice. I want a short animation where my character moves from one room to another then heads outside and walks down a street. What my issue is I'm not sure about sizes. I want everything to be in proportion so that nothing looks ridiculously to large or small etc. and when outside I dont want my character to look out of place. I hope someone gets the jist of what im trying to explain and may be able to advise me.

This is a very common problem in (architectural) modeling.
I'll answer it as objectively as I can.

To get a good sense of real world scale:

Universal tips

Learn the size of everyday objects.
Get up and manually measure your windows, doors, ceiling height, etc.
You'll find that nothing is arbitrary, everything has a purpose.
Model by blueprints
Nothing beats physical experience, but blueprints and floor plans help to save time considerably, when modeling extra large/tiny objects.
Get a reference source.
Architects are one step ahead of you there.  Neufert's Architects' Data is a reference book for spatial requirements in architecture. From optimal height of door handles, to minimal size of toilet bowls /s.

Blender tips

Model in real world scale.
Set Blender to a unit system that you use in everyday life.
Properties panel > Scene > Units

Use orthographic view - this will allow for a more precise modeling
Shortcut: Numpad 5


Alpha in Cycles isn't totally transparent, possible Mix node issue Having a rather frustrating and nearly impossible to search for issue with transparency in Cycles, specifically a dark outline around the texture as you can see in the included images. I seem to have narrowed it down to an issue with the mix node, because alpha on the image itself (1500x1000 aliased pixel art PNG) is 100% perfect and works fine in Eevee, and if I bypass that mix node it also works in Cycles... but that means the effects—including brighter glow and scanlines—aren't doable anymore.

At least I'm reasonably sure it's the mix node, because I've tried a bunch of things including messing with the material's blend mode in Eevee (whatever good that does in Cycles), adjusting fac and strength on the node setup in any number of combinations, adjusting transparency light paths, scene and world properties, etc.

EDIT: Solution! In addition to the answer below, there's a slightly simpler fix: Swapping out the MixRGB node for a Math node setup and swapping out the Mix for an Add node.

Okay there you have the image going straight in to base color an image doesn't have transparency. You need to put it though a RGB to BW>ColorRamp> Fac in mix shader
As HoboFSlapfight had pointed out you could make these changes  "But swapping out the Mix for an Add, and switching the mixRGB for a pair of Math nodes set to multiply (as pointed out by a friend earlier) also seems to have corrected the issue."
Transparent needs to be it's own shader.


Blender VSE - background color of video from imported image sequence I'm looking into the Blender Video Sequence Editor to create animations out of existing sequences of images. The image sequences are generated with POV-ray. I've downloaded Blender 2.79, I run W7 64-bit.

I did a test and I noticed that in the rendered video the background color was quite different from the source. For the source images the background color is White: RGB(255,255,255). In the rendered video the background color is a bluish grey. I took a screenshot, copypasted it in GIMP, and according to GIMP the color is RGB(234,234,245).

What can be the cause of that change of color, and is there a way to prevent that from happening?

Original:

Rendered:

For rendering settings I followed as much as possible the recommendations in the VSE tutorial series by Mikeycal Meyers.

Mikeycal Meyers recommends for the 'encoding': Xvid, and the dropdown menu does show that option:

Note that after clicking on the option 'Xvid' the text displayed in the 'encoding' field remains 'presets', so it is unknown whether or not Blender has accepted the 'Xvid' selection.

I have zero knowledge of which 'container' setting and which 'codec' setting will suit my purposes. I chose 'mpeg-4' pretty much at random.

The video that I have in mind will be a combination of some 2D scenes (white background), some 3D scenes (white background), and a couple of shots filmed with some form of video camera.

I assume that all the shots that are to be combined into a video must be rendered with the same codec. Since some of the shots will be camera shots I assume the codec that is to be used needs to be a general purpose codec rather than some special purpose codec.

What can be the cause of the change of the background color? Is it perhaps something that the Blender VSE has done, or is it perhaps an artifact of the codec that was used (or perhaps a combination of both)?

Is it perhaps the case that the codec that was used is not designed to preserve color? I did expect the type of barely noticible color blurring that you get with jpeg compression, but the sweeping change of background color comes as a total surprise to me.

Since multiple difference image sequences will be incorporated in the final video it is essential that the background color is absolutely consistent, otherwise there will be a jarring change of background color going from scene to scene.

[LATER EDIT]
Let me try and upload a screenshot of the full window.
(I have a dual display setup, with both displays in portrait orientation)
For this first test this is the current screen layout.

[LATER EDIT]
I gave Blender a good night's sleep, and after restarting the computer and restarting Blender I noticed something had returned that was gone the previous session: a video editor preview. (See the screenshot of the full Blender window: only a checkerboard pattern, but no preview.)

When I drag the vertical green line in the video sequence editor the preview displays the corresponding frame from the source image sequence.

It now appears that I was wrong in suspecting this was something going wrong in the stage of rendering from image sequence to video. That is, it doesn't seem to be a Blender problem.

Timeline of my efforts:
I had viewed the rendered video with Windows Media Player, with Firefox, and with VLC player, same background color in each. With these three players giving the same result the error seemed to be in the video file itself.

For comparison I downloaded and installed Openshot video editor. Rendered a video (displayed with the same wrong background in the three players), then re-imported that video in Openshot. Then in the Openshot preview display the background color was correct: White.

Next I transfered a Blender rendered video to another computer, played it with VLC player, took a screnshot of a still and checked the background color, came back as RGB(255,255,254).

All of this indicates that the root of the problem is some misconfiguration of my graphics card.  Somehow display of the video goes wrong for each of the players that I used : Windows Media Player, Firefox, and VLC player.

While I don't know how to address the misconfiguration problem, it's pretty clear now that it never was a Blender problem.


How to use unwrapped mesh on different images at different locations? I am a beginner, and I tried searching a lot for the solution to my problem but couldn't find it. I hope you guys have been through it and understand it.

So I unwrapped my mesh, and scaled the mesh on an image texture, and it got applied, simple. Now, I want to use another image texture for the details.

But if I move my unwrapped mesh on the second image, the mesh on the first image moves too, disturbing my first image texture. I want to give a separate location and scale to my unwrapped mesh for different images, and not let the positioning of my mesh on one of the image affects its position on another.

I would be very grateful if someone can help me with this.

Thanks a lot.

Okay, so moonboots told me I can create a separate UV map, in Object data panel, and insert Input>UV map node to the shader editor, to specify the UV map.

Thank you so much!


How to cut a hole in a subdivided mesh? Without actually applying the subdivision modifier, how can we cut a hole through the subdivided mesh? I tried using loop cuts but the topology turned out bad:

Using the boolean modifier it had some artifacts and you also need to apply the modifier:

Further trying to fix them with loop cuts gave this strange edges:

and scaling them along the y axis to zero did no good. So How can we cut a hole through a subdivisioned mesh without actually applying the modifiers? I know disabling the boolean modifier would give a nice hole in the render but what if we have to do some editing with the part, like adding a drawer object(particularly in this case)?

You can use the Inset tool. That way you can keep the topology as quads.

Select the faces where you need the cut, press I to activate the inset tool, and then by dragging the mouse you can determine the size of the hole.

After just extrude (E) and delete the faces as needed.


Where are the Motion Blur controls in 2.76b as shown in the Manual? Under the Render tab (Cycles Render), the motion blur options are very simple compared to what I see in the Manual:  https://www.blender.org/manual/render/cycles/settings/motion_blur.html#options

Where can I find these extra motion blur controls?

Looks like they already updated the documentation for the the upcoming 2.77 release. The test builds do have these extended controls.


Determine which way Bezier path is 'facing' I'm working on a script that will need to know which way a curve is facing, meaning if all the points on the curve share the same X value, it's facing the X direction. I have the script below that will correctly show the global space vector positions of each control point of the curve.

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.active_object
curve = obj.data
spline = curve.splines[0]
# setup array for points to be written to
pathPoints = []
# Iterate through the control points in the spline and append them to the array
for i in range(0, len(spline.bezier_points)):
    pathPoints.append(obj.matrix_world @ spline.bezier_points[i].co)

# determine if path is facing X, Y, or Z
# TODO

# DEBUGGING
print(pathPoints)

Here's the code that I got working to solve this problem:

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.active_object
curve = obj.data
spline = curve.splines[0]
# setup array for points to be written to
xGlobalPathPoints = []
yGlobalPathPoints = []
zGlobalPathPoints = []
# Iterate through the control points in the spline and append them to the array
for i in range(0, len(spline.bezier_points)):
    if float("{:.3f}".format(float(obj.location.x)))+0 != 0:
        xGlobalPathPoint = obj.location.x * spline.bezier_points[i].co.x
    else:
        xGlobalPathPoint = spline.bezier_points[i].co.x
    xGlobalPathPoint = "{:.3f}".format(float(xGlobalPathPoint))
    xGlobalPathPoints.append(float(xGlobalPathPoint) + 0)
    if float("{:.3f}".format(float(obj.location.y)))+0 != 0:
        yGlobalPathPoint = obj.location.y * spline.bezier_points[i].co.y
    else:
        yGlobalPathPoint = spline.bezier_points[i].co.y
    yGlobalPathPoint = "{:.3f}".format(float(yGlobalPathPoint))
    yGlobalPathPoints.append(float(yGlobalPathPoint) + 0)
    if float("{:.3f}".format(float(obj.location.z)))+0 != 0:
        zGlobalPathPoint = obj.location.z * spline.bezier_points[i].co.z
    else:
        zGlobalPathPoint = spline.bezier_points[i].co.z
    zGlobalPathPoint = "{:.3f}".format(float(zGlobalPathPoint))
    zGlobalPathPoints.append(float(zGlobalPathPoint) + 0)
# determine if path is facing X, Y, or Z
if len(set(xGlobalPathPoints))==1:
    print("faces X")
if len(set(yGlobalPathPoints))==1:
    print("faces Y")
if len(set(zGlobalPathPoints))==1:
    print("faces Z")


Short-cut for "cursor to selected" Can I program a direct short-cut (keyboard) for the functions "cursor to selected" and "selection to cursor"? Couldn't find them under the User Preference/Input tab. I know they're under Shift+S, but then I still have to select from the pull-down menu, and that is too cumbersome.

Bring up your snap menu with Shift+S.
Hover your mouse over 'cursor to selected', and then click on it with the RMB . You will see an option to either add or change the keyboard shortcut.
Hover your mouse over the box that appears, (it should tell you to press a key), and then press the desired shortcut one key at a time while still holding them down to create your new shortcut.
Make sure to save your new shortcut as defaults by going to user preferences by pressing Ctrl+Alt+U,  and then save user settings.

In 2.8 and later, you can add a new shortcut to Quick Favorites which will give you a small menu with the keyboard shortcut Q
Simply RMB  and select Add to Quick Favorites from the choices that appear.


How do I drop an object to the sand? When any object is dropped onto the material like sand in real life it changes it's surface like it's shown in the photo.

How can I do it in Blender having the object and a subdivided plane that are shown below using physics?

Thanks for help !

The quick answer is whilst Blender has some excellent physics solutions. What you are trying to do could be a little past the scope of the current physics solvers.
There may be ways to do it using fluid particles or even the molecular add-on, although I'm not sure what the current skinning capabilities of these are.
I will however point you to a cool little tip from one of Nikolaus Gradwohl's blogs, showing denting using dynamic paint. This might help you towards your result.
http://www.local-guru.net/blog/2017/8/9/blender-dynamicpaint-displacement


How to make a cylinder / pipe with slanted ends (like pasta penne)? I am trying to recreate a penne pasta. I am creating a cylinder removing the two end faces and then I solidify the mesh.

However I do not know how to extrude (or cut away) the two ends to make them pointy like in the picture of the penne below. I have tried to use bisect and mirror, but without successful results.

Any idea?

In edit mode select all the vertices and use the shear tool (shift+control+alt+S)


How can I use an array modifier to create individually manipulatable objects? I often use an array modifier (or two) to quickly create a grid of identical or symmetric objects, which can be really useful when modeling all sorts of man-made objects. Once I've made the grid, though, is there any way for me to make it so that each of the objects are individually manipulatable?

Simply applying the modifier does not seem to be the full answer, since it still only allows me to select the grid-of-objects as a whole in object mode. Is there any way to separate them so I work with them each individually?

Apply the modifier to make the data real
Enter edit mode on the object and press P > Separate by loose parts
Select all separated objects and press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+C > Origin to Geometry

This will make each piece an individual object with the origin located at the origin of the original object. Now you can manipulate them as you wish.

Note: Original object has to be one mesh. If original object consists from more parts (like Monkey head + 2eyes) you will have to connect them together by simple edge.


I can't find Smoke material in shader editor I have watched many tutorials and am still unable to find where it is. I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or what.

There are three shader nodes in Blender 2.80 that could be what you're searching for. None of them are called "smoke", but they can all be used to create (a part of) a smoke material. You can find them in the shader editor under Add > Shader.

Principled Volume
Volume Absorption
Volume Scatter


Problem in mesh due to boolean modifier Using boolean, I removed a cube which has an inclination of 45 degree. I have included the image to explain the situation. Thanks :)

In your case using a boolean to dig this slot seems like the thing to do. Maybe first simplify your topology, i.e. delete one edge loop out of 2 like this (ring select edge loops, then checker deselect, then select edge loops then dissolve edge loops):

Once you apply the Boolean modifier you have this shape:

You need to work on it to have a clean topology and a sharp angle, begin by creating a bevel along the slope:

You must end up with something like this, a topology with quads only:

Here is what it gives with a Subdivision Surface modifier:


Shortest path key makes edges freestyle instead I use a heavily modified shortcuts for blender. I have set "select shortest path" to ctrl+right click and it has worked for a long time until today.
I am not aware of changing anything recently but suddenly instead of "shortest path" the above shortcut does something weird:
-selects the shortest path
-makes all selected edges freestyle edges
-deselects all

Any idea what's happening?

Here's a fix, I had same problem for  a while where shortest path edge select marked them as freestyle

Apparently I have changed some options on Edge Select mode and forgot. Hope this fixes it


Can no longer scale objects in object-mode (though edit-mode works) (Gray nodes?) Can no longer scale objects in object-mode though it works in edit-mode. I feel like I noticed the appearance of these gray nodes around the 3D view around the same time that these issues began occurring.

You have the Manipulate Center Points option enabled at the bottom of the 3d view. It's the little button with the 3 dots that is located to the right of the arrow you have pointing to the object mode menu. Click on the icon again and you should be good to go.


How to increase size of physics time steps (delta t) in BGE? I am evolving A.I. and I need to run blender as fast as possible, somewhere around 400-600 FPS, but when I increase FPS in World > Physics section it increases both number of logical steps and physics steps while decreasing size so physics steps Δt so physics stays same compared to real world time as opposed to staying same compared to logical steps. Is there no way to change Δt of bullet physics other than to go into source code?

What I basically want is to make physics frame-rate dependent.

You can set/reduce the physics substeps, but that only works in reverse (ie 10 physics steps per frame).

But what you may actually be looking for is bge.logic.setLogicTickRate(), so your logic can go faster without increasing frame-rate.

While I have not used them, the API in 2.77 provides some control over time-flow. The one you're probably looking for is bge.logic.setTimeScale(), which allows you to scale the speed of the simulation. Bear in mind that this won't influence physics substeps, so the faster you go, the worse the simulation accuracy will be.


How to find models in scene without changing origin point? I have been doing some experiments with photogrammetry and i imported some models into Blender but I realized after I imported them all that I could not find my models.
I rechecked my photogrammetry program and found that I had left the models positioned over in the next county from the origin point before I imported into blender.
I imported into Blender four models that each had between I dunno 1-4 millions verts each.
Anyway I already started rebuilding my photogrammetry models with the same settings from the actual origin point so i'll reimport into blender later.
But if I do this again and my models end up 50 real life miles from the origin (not an exaggeration) how can i zoom to my models in blender without changing their position in relation to their origin point? I can't change their position or scale because i'll be taking the models back into my photogrammetry program later for textures and uvs and etc., And i need all my old depth map and density cloud data to stick perfectly.
Trying to rescale and reorient 3d models after messing up their placement and size is a nightmare FUBAR so I absolutely need their origin to stay the same while i work in Blender.
Thanks in advance.

frame all:home key
view selected:  In the outliner, select the model, and press the period key on your Numpad.
To move the entire model to the world origin:  In the outliner, select the model, press shift+s on your keyboard, and there should be a pie menu that says "selection to cursor".
Your settings may be different, but the actions should be the same.


Is it possible to join all objects into one and their animations into one? SITUATION: I want to create an animated "3D experiment" which will be imported to Unity for Vuforia AR. The animated 3D model will include lots of small 3D objects(10 chemical equipments,...).

I'VE DONE: At first, I had them animated in Blender by changing each "equipment's" state, one by one at each keyframe (140 keyframes in total). Then I exported the file to .fbx and put it in Unity.

I EXPECT:: The "experiment" had all of its equipment animated, which means there would be only one big model - The "experiment" and its one Animation.

TURNED OUT:  each object has their own animation, 10 "equipments" - 10 animations, each lasts 140 keyframes. The inspector only let one animation run at a time.
(I haven't tried but I guess: to make all of them animate in parallel in Unity we have to assign each "chemical equipment" to its according animation, somehow...)

MY QUESTION is that: Is It Possible to make all 10 "chemical equipment" as only one big object and all the animations into one animation, so that when animating each "equipment" is just like animating a part of an object and when exporting the file, we will have only: ONE big model and ONE animation for that model.

If I understand your question you have several animations to put in one.

It would use a null object (empty) and link your animations + mesh top.


How to rig a shirt with buttons so that the buttons follow the mesh of the shirt I didn't address this in a while because I was busy with something else, but now it has cycled back into my schedule.
Right now I have a shirt modeled and bones set in place. It's already technically rigged, but the only issue is the buttons.

I'm not entirely sure how to go about connecting them to the shirt's deformations.
I tried to combine them and the shirt into one object, but because of the shirt's modifiers, (Solidify and subsurf, which I don't want to apply yet), the buttons become extremely deformed.
I've tried to match the weight painting intensity where a button is at in correspondence with the shirt, but that doesn't seem to work, maybe it has to do with the specifics of where the button is?

Is there a way to make the buttons follow the shirt's deformations without deforming the mesh vertices of the button?
I know that if I probably apply the modifiers on the shirt and combine it with the buttons, it would be okay, but I'm not okay with doing that just yet with the shirt.

I rigged the shirt by deleting all vertex groups, assigning empty groups to the mesh from the armature, and then assigned automatic groups in the weight paint menu.

Is there a way to do this?

You may do it using vertex and object parenting.

Select the vertex where you want to place the button and snap the cursor to it. In Object Mode add an Empty there.

Now select the Empty, then the mesh and enter Edit Mode. Select three vertices around the button and press Ctrl+P-->Make Vertex Parent. Finally parent the button object to an Empty. (Ctrl+P-->Object (Keep Transform)).


Smooth shade gives unusual shading I know this may be a rookie issue, but I'm new to blender and haven't really got a clue what I'm doing. I've been working on a knight piece model and have encountered a issue when shading smooth. I've tried recalculating normals, as well as turning auto smooth on, but neither seem to do much. The shading just looks weird in the render. Does anyone know any way to fix this?

Click on Object Data Properties (green triangle) then the Normals down arrow and finally check Auto Smooth.


Is there a good reason to ever start modelling with something other than a subsurfed cube? I have concluded that starting a (reasonably high poly) model with a subdivided cube is always better than anything else. Even if I have to model a pipe, or a cone a cube is the better choice.

In the case of the pipe, if I start with a cylinder I have to commit to the resolution from the beginning, since Catmull-Clark subdivision doesn't work well on it and simple doesn't preserve curvature. It's also harder to create bends than with a subdivided cube where a single 45° loop makes for a nice 90° bend.

In case of the cone, the inability to create edge loops is enough to make the subdivided cube a better proposition.

The spheres have one or both of the above disadvantages depending on the type and orientation.

I have little experience with torus-like objects so I can't say anything about them.

Is the above conclusion right? If not, please explain why, or in which cases it is better to start with which primitive.

UV spheres are good. If you subsurf a cube until it is smooth, you will get a spheroid, but, not a perfect sphere. To get a perfect sphere you must start with a sphere.


Why do these two have different shading? This is weird. Why do these two have different shading, despite having very similar geometry? I thought the problem was the shading mode (one is smooth, one is flat), but when I enable shading smooth on the left shape, its shading remains unchanged. So, what's the problem?

Here's my Blend File.

One of your object is auto-smoothed, the other is not. You have smoothed both your objects in the Tools panel > Tools > Edit > Shading > Smooth. Blender can't smooth a very angular and low-poly mesh without apparent artefacts. With Auto Smooth it will only smooth below the chosen angle and therefore you will avoid these kind of artefacts for the superior values.


Objects with big dimensions are not centered when their dimensions is decreased I have problem with dimensions of some objects that i download. For example this one, downloaded as .obj file.

When i import it in Blender i see that it has very big dimensions:

After this i press S and i am decreasing its scale so i can get real dimensions.
But after i decrease its size object is not centered. I tried with Shift+Ctrl+Alt+C to center the object but with no success.

I tried searching for object margins but couldn't find them. I need to  be sure that object is centered and there is no margins around the visible are.
Thanks in advance.

When importing obj, set the Transform Clamp Size to 0.01 or 0.001 and import it.

Set the object set Origin.


Pivoting an object with respect to two objects I have created a quick set up to demonstrate my question.

The red cylinder needs to rotate around the small blue box and the bottom of the cylinder must remain in the same x,y,z, location.
The cylinder must also rotate with respect to the small grey box. The top of the cylinder needs to remain attached to the grey box. The grey box rotates around the larger grey box in the center.

If I rotate the cylinder at the blue box with the same rotation (or even a corrected rotation) the cylinder does not remain attached to the grey box.

I set the small grey box to rotate at 1 degree per frame.

How can I keep the cylinder attached to the small grey box and the small blue box and have the cylinder rotate with the same rotational speed as the grey box?

I actually figured this problem out. I selected the cylinder. Entered into edit mode. Then selected the top vertices of the cylinder. I hit "CTRL H" and selected "Hook To New Object". This created an empty which I then parented to the floating grey box using "CTRL P". I deselected all and then selected the bottom vertices of the cylinder. I hooked these to a new object also which I parented to the blue box. This way if the blue or grey box moves the red cylinder is attached to both of them.


How to access the Context Menu Info? I want to access these commands through code and add them in the array
it helps me to make a tool like photoshop actions

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(enter_editmode=False, align='WORLD', location=(0, 0, 0))
bpy.context.space_data.context = 'OBJECT'
bpy.context.object.location[0] = 5
bpy.context.object.location[1] = 10
bpy.context.object.location[2] = 15
bpy.context.object.rotation_euler[0] = 0.523599
bpy.context.object.rotation_euler[1] = 1.22173
bpy.context.object.rotation_euler[2] = 0.349066

Copy and Paste.
Previously available via bpy.ops.ui.reports_to_textblock()
How to read all ‘recent reports’ from info window
How do I get the Info window's log text with Python?
The operator appears unavailable in 2.8, however it is a simple matter of selecting and copying from the info area
Silly test script, toggles into the info area, selects all, copies, toggles back to text area and pastes.
import bpy

context = bpy.context

# change to info
context.area.type = 'INFO'
bpy.ops.info.select_all()
bpy.ops.info.report_copy()
context.area.type = 'TEXT_EDITOR'
bpy.ops.text.paste() # silly

The clipboard contents
>>> for line in C.window_manager.clipboard.splitlines():
...     line
...
"bpy.context.area.ui_type = 'INFO'"
"bpy.context.area.ui_type = 'TEXT_EDITOR'"
'bpy.ops.text.run_script()'
'Python script failed, check the message in the system console'
"bpy.context.area.ui_type = 'TEXT_EDITOR'"
"bpy.context.area.ui_type = 'INFO'"
"bpy.context.area.ui_type = 'TEXT_EDITOR'"
'bpy.ops.text.run_script()'

See the docs for info area space on toggling info report types.  a is an 'INFO' type area
>>> a.type
'INFO'

>>> a.spaces.active.show_
                         locked_time
                         region_header
                         report_debug
                         report_error
                         report_info
                         report_operator
                         report_warning


Materials not rendering! I'm pretty new to blender and trying to finish a simple animation of a kaleidoscope that I modeled. It looks fine in the viewport and all of the materials are assigned, but when I render it shows up pink. All of my materials were made by changing settings for the Principled BSDF. This is what the render looks like,  and this is what I'm seeing in the viewport. Here's the top of my materials panel. I don't know what's helpful to show, but I can upload any other screenshots, just let me know! I'm sure I'm just missing something simple but I've tried everything I can think of. Any tips are appreciated! Thanks!

It can be a little confusing at first to figure out how materials are applied and to which objects. Are you sure the object you're rendering is the one to which you've applied the pictured texture? You seem to have a lot of similarly named objects in the animation.
I'd recommend you make sure you don't have duplicate objects in the same space, and then make sure the material is applied to the one visible in the render.
Good luck!


Messed up Armature Deformation I made an armature for my character and it moves well until it is applied. I have, again and again, applied all my mirror modifiers so the solutions in "Weird Armature Deformation" have not worked for me. The armature was applied with automatic weights but none of my other models have had this issue before. I have unparented the model and reparented it time and time again but nothing seems to work. Here's the model before:

and here is the model after:

(Note the arm's weird bend and the legs moving together) Remember, I have tried to use all the solutions given in "Weird Armature Deformation" but nothing has worked yet. Suggestions? Tell me if you need me to upload my model, I would be happy to so that I can fix this issue.

There are two problems with your mesh. First, your normals are inside out, which will give you some problems if you try to skin (or anything else, really). Go into edit mode, select all of your mesh, press ctrl-n. A good way to visualize the normals of a mesh is to turn off double-sided lighting. You can do this in the mesh data tab, where you find your vertex groups. Disable the option; if the mesh looks really light, the normals are facing the right way. If it looks dark, the normals are facing inward and need to be reversed. Your screenshots show inverted normals.

Now you can rig the mesh. You already have certain bones set up to deform and not deform, which is good.

First you need to delete your vertex groups on the mesh. This will remove any old weight data on the mesh so you can start clean and fresh. From here, just use automatic weighting. You will certainly need to fine-tune your weights after.

The reason your mesh was deforming so terribly was because your weights were spread out over the whole mesh, not localized to the area with the respective bone. Leg bones were affecting mesh on the opposite side, torso bones had weight up in your arms, etc.

This is a good overview of what weight painting is and how to do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0VS0IVylzg

For documentation on weight painting, see the manual here: https://www.blender.org/manual/rigging/skinning/obdata.html


Can you have a timer on suspended dynamics in blender game engine? Can you have a timer on suspended dynamics in blender game engine?


Select Connected Bones in Pose Mode I want to select all bones of the left Hand without having to click or box select each individual bone.

Quote from: http://blender-manual-i18n.readthedocs.io/ja/latest/rigging/armatures/selecting.html

  You can select at once all the bones in the chain which the active
  (last selected) bone belongs to by using the linked selection tool,
  L.

Doesn't seem to work for me. Ctr+L does nothing, L only selects bones directly under the mouse pointer, no matter what bone chain it belongs to.

It is difficult to diagnose this without the Blender file. One issue could be that although the bones are parented to one another, they are not "connected". To correct this, go into edit mode, and make sure that "connected" is enabled for the bones:

Using L will select all bones that are connected though, which may include the entire rig, not just the hand, depending on your setup.

Alternatively, you should consider using Bone Groups for making such selections: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/rigging/armatures/properties/bone_groups.html


whenever smooth vertex is pressed it breaks up mirrored objects whenever smoth vertex is presssed it breaks up mirrored objects and i dont know why could somebody help please? i have tried: using diffrent axis,re-building the whole thing and others. please help. Result After Using Smooth Vertex:

You are doing this:

Cutting a cube and sticking a Mirror Modifier on it.

Then doing Ctrl+V, and picking 'Smooth Vertex'

This produces exactly what you show, and that's exactly what we would expect.

Smooth Vertex tries to pull all real vertices together. As mentioned in the docs

  This will apply once the Smooth Tool.

You must remember you are performing this Vertex operation on only half a cube, (the rest is mirrored) and therefor the real center of all these real vertices (shaded in orange) lies within their collective coordinates, not on the mirror axis - the mirrored portion is not taken into account.

Objects with a bit more definition tend to smooth much more subtle, retaining much of the silhouette and scale.

I think your main confusion was that you where performing this operation on an object that relies on a Mirror Modifier for half of it's visual geometry. Maybe you are looking for the Laplacian Smooth deform modifier. (which will work ontop of the Mirror Modifier)

Or perhaps the Subdivision Surface Modifier.


Adding Textures to Glove Rig So I have made an animation for a pair of gloves, more specifically https://gamebanana.com/models/4308
The problem that I have with this is that I do not know how to apply the textures to the gloves themselves, as whenever I try to select the gloves mesh I always end up selecting the rig, and not the gloves. I had tried hiding the rig but could not select the mesh. I went into the shading tab and there was no option to create a new material for the mesh. If any could help out, that would be appreciated. Also sorry if this post might be a little, "nooby(?)" I've never posted on here before and am still a beginner. Thank you.

The selection of the mesh is disabled, you need to enable it first. It's a 2.79 blend file and for some reason, the materials are not shown correctly in Blender 2.8+. But you can recreate them:

Add the Shading workspace: [+] → Sculpting → Shading
Click the Filter icon, and select the first 5 Restriction Toggles. This includes Selection, the arrow icon.
The mesh is parented to the armature. Expand it and look for CSGOMotogloves. Activate Selection (arrow icon). Now you can select the mesh. Select it.
Materials exist already. Select one to recreate
Check Use Nodes in the shading editor
Add the Image Texture nodes and the Normal Map node. Select the images for the Image Texture nodes. Don't forget to set Color Space to Non-Color for the normal map image.

Repeat steps 4 to 6 for the remaining 2 materials. That's it :-)


Deformation of a plate with a curved profile I have a plane with small thickness, I fold this plate in three steps.
step 1: folding the middle of the plate.
step 2: folding of the two dimensions of the plate.
step 3: wrap the two ends of the plate.
The following figures show these steps in detail.
I tried to modify it (Bend simple, curve, ...) without succeeding in getting only step one !!
My question, is there a way or how to trace these steps from a plate to get the final shape. I want these steps to be mobile and I want to save each deformation separately.

Add a curve.

Give it the extrusion you need (In the properties edtitor: Geometry>Extrude)

Give the curve a flat shape.
Add as many subdivisions to the curve as you will need for the final shape. Adding new subdivisions later complicates things.

Exit edit mode. Add a shape key (use the + sign on the right). That will be the basis shape.

Create another shape key it will be called Key 1

Enter edit mode again and move the control points to where you need.

Exit edit mode. Don't worry if your shape go back to the basic shape. The deformation has been recorded. Just set the value for Key 1 to 1.00
Make a new Shape Key, but this time click on the little triangle on the right and add "New Shape from mix" (Key 2)

Enter edit mode again and keep reshaping the curve and adding shape keys.

When you exit edit mode change the value of Key 1 to 0 and bring up the value to Key 2 to 1 before making the next key shape.
Keep making key shapes and deformations until you get to where you want.
To view all of the different shapes just bring up the value for individual keyshapes. To make an animation from this, add keyframes for the key shape key values.


Adding geometry (Ctrl+1) does not work as expected Sorry for the weird title, I didn't know how to express it better.

I have created a cube to form a hat.
I then extruded the 4 bottom vertices.
I did not move them after extruding, but I simply scaled them.

Then I pressed Ctrl+1 to add geometry.
For some reason, the hat brim is much smaller than I expected.

Shouldn't the hat brim be as large as the 4 extruded, scaled bottom vertices?

And does anybody perhaps see why the hat brim gets doubled vertices?

Thank you for the help!

By pressing Ctrl 1 you added a Subsurf Modifier with one subdivision. The default subdivision agorithm is Catmull-Clark, which tends to round off the geometry, hence the roundness you see in the ghosted image. On the modifier you can change the subdivision from Catmull-Clark to Simple.


How to move the keyframes for specified shape keys with Python I've created an object that has a few shape keys that have keyframes inserted. I've made a script that moves keyframes for shapekeys, but I can't get it to work for individual shape keys ones. Instead, the script moves the keyframes for all of the shapekeys in the scene. Does any one have an idea of how to get a specific objects keyframes moved?

Code:

for key in bpy.data.shape_keys:
    if key.animation_data is not None:
        action = key.animation_data.action
        if action is not None:
            for fc in action.fcurves:
                for kf in fc.keyframe_points:
                    kf.co.x += 90

Let's say I have a key named "Key 2" and I want the keyframes for only that shape key to be affected. This script simply doesn't function to do so.

I've searched and tried many methods including using lists or variables like this (to only alter the shape key of a selected object):

ob = bpy.context.scene.objects

sel_shape_keys = ob.active.data.shape_keys

for key in sel_shape_keys:
    if key.animation_data is not None:
        action = key.animation_data.action
        if action is not None:
            for fc in action.fcurves:
                for kf in fc.keyframe_points:
                    kf.co.x += 90

but I get error messages every time. I'll admit that I'm a bit new to working with keyframes in Blender's Python API - any help with this would be greatly appreciated as I'm stumped in solving the issue.

This script gives you the ability to list the names of the shapekeys you want to shift, then move only them by the keyframeInterval value you want.

It uses a regular expression pattern to match the shapekey name to the fcurve data path string.

import bpy, re

o = bpy.context.object

sk  = o.data.shape_keys
act = sk.animation_data.action if sk and sk.animation_data else None

keyframeInterval = 10 # Number of frames to move shape keys
keysToShift = ['Key 2', 'Key 3'] # List of shape keys you want to move (names)

# Regular expression pattern to find key in fcurve data path.
# Example: 'key_blocks["Key 1"].value'
pat = '^key_blocks\["(.+)"\]\.value$'

if act:
    for fc in act.fcurves:
        m = re.match( pat, fc.data_path )
        if m and m.groups() and m.groups()[0] in keysToShift:
            for kf in fc.keyframe_points:
                kf.co.x += keyframeInterval


Why rotation with snapping is not working? I am trying to snap edge in edit mode to selected object and can't do it easily though. It only snaps in one view.

I've tried to enable/disable "Align rotation with snapping target", but still without good result:

I am not looking for other ways like modifiers, etc, because it is quite limited in some cases.

This might seem a bit long-winded, but... a variation on this..

Set snap to 'Active' and 'Vertex', and in the snap panel, set it to affect rotation
Set Pivot to '3D Cursor'
Set Transform Orientation to 'View'
Establish one end of the snap. With all selected, make the vertex at one end of the source (moving) object active, and snap it to the corresponding end of the target edge. ShiftS > send the 3D cursor to the same spot. It will be the center of rotation.
Establish the plane of rotation. ShiftD duplicate the vertex at the other end of the source object, and snap the duplicate to the other end of the target. With all source vertices selected, F create a temporary triangular face, and ShiftNumpad 7 align the view to the face
Delete the duplicate vertex, (and the face, with it)
With all source vertices selected, and the loose end vertex active, R rotate it into place.

This takes longer to describe than it takes to do.. usually there are convenient faces / whatever already hanging around.. you wouldn't have to create them specially, as in this example. Maybe, instead of using the View orientation, you would create a Custom Orientation from a selection of vertices, edges, or faces (either existing, or temporarily created for the purpose).


Insert keyframe menu does not show up When I press I to activate the Insert Keyframe Menu (in the 3d-view/pose mode) a keyframe is created immediately instead of showing the menu.

This used to bring up the menu. I must have changed some setting but I have no idea which.

How do I get the menu back?

Seems like you've chosen some keying set in the timeline header.

You can clear this by pressing the X next to the name if the selected keying set.


Interior Vertexes and Faces Post Boolean I am attempting to model a screw so that I can 3d print them if my son looses them.  I thought this would be a good time for me to play with the new blender 2.80. (why do people keep calling this Blender 2.8?)  I have modeled all of the cylinders and the Philips cavity into one part (I used bools to merge all of this but always check for clean results) and then the screw threads in a separate object.  Both of these objects (named "Screw" for the cylindrical post and "Threads" for the threads) are manifold and look good from a geometry point of view.  When I try to do a boolean union between the two, I get a lot of internal faces and manifold problems.  I have two clean meshes here which I thought would play nicely with the boolean operations.

I obviously need to have a clean mesh to support the printing efforts.  I have attached the blend file here for easy checking.  Any pointers?

As an aside, I typically avoid using booleans but it seemed in this case that would be the easier approach.

Answer: Stop trying to use booleans so much...

I moved away from using the boolean operators for the heavy lifting and instead used a curve with a screw modifier as the base and then began to manually build the rest of the object by hand.  I was careful to check for non-manifold elements along the way.  The hex head top was added with a boolean however.

I think it came out quite nice.

That being said, there are a few things that look as though they could be improved.

I have attached the final blend file for those who are curious.


Error in exporting .pod with PVRGeoPOD I'm using PVRGeoPOD trying to export a model with simple rotating animation, however, I kept getting this error message. Wonder if anyone came across this and could give me a hand. Thanks a lot.
Blender file attached to the post.

According to Imgtec, the problem is not all meshes are triangulated. This python script fixes that.

Full discussion here.


unable to edit in edit mode I was following a tutorial in blender on basic stuff like nodes, texturing and what not, i tried to hide one of the meshes when I was in edit mode and it went grey. I'm no longer able to edit nor select the mesh. i'm a beginner so you may have to go in depth on how to fix the issue.

A screenshot will help to give a clear answer!

Try going to object mode again and going to edit mode. if you are not able to select the vertices or faces means that the object is a different from what you are trying to edit.


Blender 2.82 - 2D Grease Pencil Colours seem dimmed in Renders? So I'm testing out more of Blender's Grease Pencil for animation, but I'm noticing that the colours I draw in the Viewpoint do not render out the exact same, and look darkened.

As a test, I drew a simple face on a scuplted sphere, with just black and white, however the White of the eyes looks darkened when rendered...

Does anyone have a solution for this? Thank you in advance.

EDIT - Thanks to Leander for the solution, the issue was using having it set to Filmic colour rather than Standard.

Answer - Thanks to Leander for the advice, the default Filmic colour space in Colour Management had to be set to Standard for the render to come out correctly.

One thing else to check, if you are setting up a Grease Pencil object from scratch and light is having an effect on the color: With the grease pencil object selected, inside Properties panel, go to the Object Data Properties tab. It's the tab that uses the green squiggle line.
In the tab, you should see your Layers expandable menu. Expand it and look below the Opacity slider, you'll see a checkbox called Use Lights. If you click this off, your grease pencil object will display colors as expected, if you leave it on then you can light the grease pencil objects using a normal light source.


How to make a rope winding animation? How can one create a rope winding animation as shown here:

Source: https://vimeo.com/238181837

A helix is described using the parametric equation:

$$
\vec{r} = \begin{bmatrix} \alpha t \\ r\cos{t} \\ r\sin{t} \end{bmatrix}
$$

Where $\alpha$ is some scalar controlling the "wavelength" of the helix and $r$ is the radius. Sampling some points and creating a spline from them, we get:

By driving the amount of samples based on time, we get:

We can see in the reference that the helix extends tangentially for some units. To compute the position of the point that creates that extension, we have to compute the tangent of the helix at the last point. So by differentiating the parametric equation we get:

$$
\vec{r}^{\, \prime} = \begin{bmatrix} \alpha \\ -r\sin{t} \\ r\cos{t} \end{bmatrix}
$$

The position of the new point is the position of the last point plus a scalar multiple of the tangent at it. So the node tree becomes:

Where the index $-1$ gets us the last point. Note that instead of computing the tangent from scratch, we used the similarity between the function and its derivative to compute the tangent.

We notice that the spline intersects the cylinder, to fix that, we add the radius of the spline to the radius of the helix:


How to disable loop playback of animation? Is there a way to stop looping playback in the timeline? I want to avoid sending additional animation data from blender by stopping the animation at the end frame and in another case to prevent recording of animation from the end to start frame.

Currently up to version 2.74 there is no option to disable looping playback.
There is a solution with a script from CoDEmanX:

import bpy

def stop_playback(scene):
    if scene.frame_current == scene.frame_end:
        bpy.ops.screen.animation_cancel(restore_frame=False)

# or restore frames:
def stop_playback_restore(scene):
    if scene.frame_current == scene.frame_end + 1:
        bpy.ops.screen.animation_cancel(restore_frame=True)

# add one of these functions to frame_change_pre handler:
bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(stop_playback)


Armature Disappeared I was working with my character earlier today, saved it and everything (I'm 100% sure because I've been working on it for a couple of days now) and after switching into rendered view-port mode for the first time on that file (since I was done with modelling and rigging) and switching out of it, my armature suddenly disappeared. I've checked the Hide option, checked the layers, checked the bone layers, checked even Google and other Blender Stack Exchange questions but nothing worked. I'm not sure what's going on, I've made many other characters with rigging before but this has never happened to me before. I didn't delete them, because the armatures are still visible in the outliner. Even when I enter edit mode, the armature is still invisible. Please help me!
Here's the .blend file:

You have the Only Render option enabled. Uncheck it in Display panel of the properties shelf (N).


Mirroring bones not working correctly Hello I am having problems with my rigging in blender.

as you can see rotating my left arm rotates both the left and right arm, but when I rotate just the right arm it doesn't move any of the mesh.

I dont know how to fix this and was hoping someone could help me out.

I used a mirror modifier to mirror the whole right side of my character, and I think this is causing the problem but I dont know how to fix it.

Fixed my problem, the mirrored bones were given a name with .001 at the end.
I took the .001 off every mirrored bone and it fixed my issue.


Is there some way I can update the viewer node during background rendering to output the correct results? I'm rendering several images from one blender file and I would like to manipulate the pixels of the render output directly. I implemented the workaround from https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/71264/245. Here the pixel values get extracted from the viewer node.

My problem is, that the viewer node does not get updated when running blender with the -b "background" command line argument.

Considering the following code to print the max value and the size of the viewer node pixels:

import bpy
import numpy as np
from mathutils import *
from math import *

bpy.context.scene.render.use_compositing = True
bpy.context.scene.use_nodes = True
tree = bpy.context.scene.node_tree
links = tree.links
for n in tree.nodes:
    tree.nodes.remove(n)
rl = tree.nodes.new('CompositorNodeRLayers')
vl = tree.nodes.new('CompositorNodeViewer')
vl.use_alpha = True
links.new(rl.outputs[0], vl.inputs[0])

bpy.ops.render.render()
rl.update()
vl.update()
print(max(np.array(bpy.data.images['Viewer Node'].pixels[:][::4])))
print(len(np.array(bpy.data.images['Viewer Node'].pixels[:][::4])))

when running in background it will print

0 #print(max(np.array(bpy.data.images['Viewer Node'].pixels[:][::4])))
65536 #print(len(np.array(bpy.data.images['Viewer Node'].pixels[:][::4])))

Instead of the correct values.

is there some way I can update the viewer node during background rendering to output the correct results?

It doesn't look like it's possible at this point, at least not directly through Python:

https://developer.blender.org/T54314


Why does my scene take longer to render on two modern GPUs, than on CPU? I have a performance issue with cycles GPU rendering.

The scene I built takes 2:35s  on CPU, but 8:47s on two HD 7950s. I tried all tile sizes from 16x16 all the way to 640x1024, and 8:47s was the quickest time I got.

I have two 3GB Radeon HD 7950 graphic cards in my desktop. I have the latest driver on a fresh install of Linux Mint 17. The benchmark performance is great. The standard BMW benchmark scene takes just 48.06 seconds, even with 480x540 tiles. My laptops CPU, an i7 3632QM, needs 5:19s for the same job.

What is going on? I was expecting a rendering time of around 23s not 527s! It makes sense that my heavier scene would take longer, but it does not make sense that CPU would be faster than GPU. Why is the benchmark behaving as expected, but my scene is so slow?

I only use diffuse surfaces, a few simple models and one sun light.

Is there a setting I missed that really slows down GPU rendering?

Oh FFS! There is actually a second switch you have to enable in order for cycles to render on the GPU!

So the answer to why my two Radeon HD 7950 graphics cards where so slow, is that cycles wasn`t using them! It was still rendering on the CPU.

It is simply not enough to "enable" GPU computing under the Blender User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U) -> System -> Compute Device!

What you have to do, to actually render your scene on your GPU is:

Use Cycles to render your scene
"enable" GPU computing under the Blender User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U) -> System -> Compute Device
After this a "Device" option pops up under the "Render" options. Which you have to switch to GPU.

then, and only then, your scene will render on your GPU.

Now that i got this figured out, i have a few follow up questions:

Why is there a second switch for the same option?

Why is the default selection for this option CPU?

Who thought this would be a good idea?


When i try to move my object it teleports to the location it was originally placed. I am really new to blender I have no idea how to fix this. There is a yellow line that appears when i try to move the object. Don't know if that has something to do with it.

Does your object have animation keyframes? If so, blender won't 'let' you change it's location unless you have auto-keying turned on (the button with the little circle next to the 'play' buttons in the timeline panel), or if you manually insert a keyframe after moving, rotating or scaling your object.
As for the yellow line, it's probably because you have snapping turned on (the little magnet button on top of the viewport), but I don't think that has anything to do with what's preventing you from moving the object. Can you post a screenshot?


Venus flytrap rigging 2 I need to set the armature of the plant so I can move all of it from the head. I already made an IK that works fine to move the body of the plant the way it is intended. However the head doesnt move, except for some of the teeth of the plant (deforming the mesh in a weird way). I also need to set the armature to open or close the head of the plant but I dont know if it is possible to make all of this in the same armature.
Here is the file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1whUS_-gnd5Oj7HQHEhdVyNwGl4vWdlXm/view?usp=sharing
It would really help me if someone could do this for me, I already searched everywhere and cant find a solution. This piece is a part of a much bigger project and it has been paused due to this issue.

Link to your fixed blend file
There were a lot of minor problems here that I have fixed for you, such as turning on rotation in the Ik Parameters to allow for greater control and easier animating of the flytrap. I also noticed that due to the weight painting on the stalk, when fully extended there were weird creases created. Rebaking the weight paints fixed this. I created extra bones to control the "jaws" of the flytrap, disconnected them and the teeth from the rest of the mesh, then weight painted them onto the bones. I also noticed you somehow had over 200 bone vertex weight groups. Most of them having zero effect on anything, so I made sure to delete those too. I also remeshed and retopologized quite a bit of the mesh since it had a lot of holes and unnecessary geometry. I even added a small test animation as well, good luck with your project.


Removing internal geometry before 3D printing I am pretty new to Blender but I looked at some tutorials on how to build my own structure etc. I found one Youtube video at about 2:05 minutes, where they select all inner vertices with some clicks and removes them afterwards.

Can somebody help me to redo this on my objects? I have for example two cubes and they intersect each other. My next steps are joining these two cubes, I click in edit mode on Mesh > Faces > Intersect
Then I choose Self intersect and now I am losing track of the video, where he does Link select and inverts the selection and then magically he just removes the selected parts...

Can somebody help me on this a little.

If I let the internal geometry stay, my printouts in the printer get holes and other ugly stuff...

EDIT

Since I got now an answer where some people up voted but it is still not working in my example.

I added a screenshot
Here I have two cubes moved against each other. The answer from Gwenn suggests to use Select > Internal Faces but in my case there is only Select > Interior Faces. I guess this is a typo but it is also selecting nothing. When I click on Select > Non Manyfolds there is also no selection :-(

After following some links and checking the '3D Printing Tools' add on, I found the check function there which tells me how many problems where found in before printing (visible in the screenshot). It says no Manyfolds, maybe thats the reason. But I still have the problem of empty spaces within the 3D print where the two cubes overlap.

Again, I just created two cubes and moved them against each other until they intersect.

The only possible solution by now is to use a boolean modification, Difference and select the second cube. In this case the overlapping part gets removed from one of the cubes. Not very handy but by now the only solution which works.

All internal faces can be selected by using Select > Internal Faces in the bar on the bottom of the 3D View in Edit Mode.

Since internal faces are Non-manifold geometry, you can also use the shortcut CtrlShiftAltM to select them, along with all other non-manifold geometry.

Once you have the offending faces selected, you can use Del>Faces to remove them without affecting the rest of your geometry.


Rendering with CUDA NVidia RTX 2080 Super GPU same speed as CPU (3900x Ryzen) In system prefs the CUDA tab shows my card GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER. I've selected this option, and de-selected my CPU (3900x). I then select via the inspector tab the Scene options, then select :
Render Engine : Cycles
Feature Set : Supported
Device : GPU Compute
I then render the scene via
Render->Render Animation
The CPU is being used first (can see via task manager), and the GPU goes to about 8% per png image rendered. Switch to CPU not GPU and the the CPU goes up to 90% and GPU still uses 8%. It takes the same amount of time to generate an image ~30 seconds.
What is the expected speed up for a 7.5 rated CUDA card, with > 3000 cores on it ? Does anyone else have any stats when using CUDA with Super 2080 please ?
I'm using
Blender 2.83 LTS
Windows 10
CUDA 11 Installed
NVidia Driver : 451.48 for RTX Super 2080
I've noticed the fastest rendering settings are Cycles, Supported, GPU Compute - but setting the OptiX in the system settings - with this each PNG renders in around 20 seconds.

Brainscattered answer:
Use RTX not CUDA if you want to see an improvement in render speed.
The CPU is never idle when rendering in GPU, there will always be activity.
If the scene uses only 8% of the GPU it means that the scene is not very complex, hardly a challenge for the graphics card. Blender will not use more than what is needed. With a more complex scene and more samples, etc you will see the GPU work harder (Can you make the cpu go to 100% when typing in word or when reading email? )
In GPU one tile per GPU is rendered, whereas the CPU renders many tiles simultaneously, one per thread, so it is perfectly possible that a multicore-multithread CPU can be faster than GPU.
And forget about measuring CPU and GPU usage, those numbers say very little when it comes to the overall performance of blender.


How to animate particles spraying on an object I'm trying to make an animation of the sun throwing up sprinkles on icecream.
I want to make the particles stick on ice cream as they fall but I'm too noob to figure it out.
I tried to make the ice cream both as collision and soft body but wasn't sure what to change.
Please help me :'( If this is an easy solution, let me know what to search for to find a tutorial!

Here is how to make the particles stick to the surface (thanks to Bibi09):

Give your ground surface a Physics > Collision.
Select your emitter object and in the Particle panel >  Physics > Deflection > activate Die on Hit, and in Render > Extra > activate Dead:


How to show render-stamp for arbitrary values? Is it possible to take arbitrary properties and display them in the render stamp as some other software do.

(Click the image for larger version)

While Blender has no build-in support for this feature. You can do this using Python:
Add a script into your file, call it stamp_init.py (for example).

Press Run Script (only need to do once)
Enable the Register option in the text editor (so it runs automatically)

Here is a sample script.
import bpy

def stamp_set(scene):
    note =    "Samples: "         + str(scene.cycles.samples)
    note += ", ApertireBlades: "  + str(scene.camera.data.cycles.aperture_blades)
    note += ", Version: "         + bpy.app.version_string
    scene.render.stamp_note_text = note

bpy.app.handlers.render_pre.append(stamp_set)

To add more settings you can find the data-paths to them by right clicking and selecting Copy Data-Path.

Global Stamp (applies to any file you render)
Having to define a script in every-file could be tedious, if you want to use these extra stamp options in all your files, you can make this a persistent handler.
If you want to have the same stamp notes apply to all your renders (where the Note is enabled). You can add the same script into your startup file and
@bpy.app.handlers.persistent
def stamp_set(scene):
    .... same as before ...

String Formatting (further reading if you're new to Python)
Python has some clever ways you can format strings, see Python docs.
This uses the format method which some people may prefer.
def stamp_set(scene):
    scene.render.stamp_note_text = \
        "Samples: {samples}, Blades: {blades}, Version: {ver}".format(
        samples=scene.cycles.samples,
        blades=scene.camera.data.cycles.aperture_blades,
        ver=bpy.app.version_string,
        )

New Lines
As of 2.77 the note will be wrapped onto new lines, you can also add in explicit \n newline characters to format the text yourself.

Floating point numbers
A lot could be written on this, just a quick hint, if you have unwanted precision removed, eg:2.514000002324 displayed as 2.51, there are a few ways to go about it.

If you used "Text " + str(some.number) you can use round, eg:"Text " + str(round(some.number, 2))
If you use the format() method you can replace:{myvar} with {myvar:.2f}.

For more details see https://stackoverflow.com/a/455634/432509


Python coding environment Blender is said to have perfect Python scripting capabilities. I just cannot find an environment, where I could try it all. Can you give an advise for the noob?

I have a problem with defining an environment for python coding. Once I complained about inability to use keys to select the current command line the command line or even delete it, IRC advised that command line is bad, especially because I also should not define any functions in it. I should better use the Text Editor instead.

However, I have discovered that I cannot run the Text Editor-defined scripts in the command line. Basically, I should forget about the command line and do everything in the Text Editor. Fortunately, it has the Run Script button. However, it is very boring to save every script before running. I better used external editor if I need to save the file before running it anyway. It also does not display me the errors. How can I program anything without seeing the errors. It says that my error msg was printed somewhere into unknown console. I came back to the command line but its view is too tiny. Can I make it in another window to switch easily between the 3D scene and the pycommand line? Probably, you have a better advise to make the operational python environment.

I hoped that I can store the successul lines of code in external editor and fiddler them into the console. But the following lines

for o in D.objects: o.select = True ; bpy.ops.object.delete()
earth = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add()

succeed only if I paste them one-by-one and fail if I paste them two at once.

I use PyCharm Professional for Blender add-on development. It has debugging support (the Community edition does not) and limited auto-completion if you create auto-completion files for it with this tool.

Here's a tutorial and a Blender add-on to connect Blender to the PyCharm debugger.

My workflow then is like this:

Create an add-on and enable it in Blender. An add-on is basically a Python package you create inside a new package folder under <version>\scripts\addons.
Edit its code in PyCharm.
Reload the add-on in Blender with F8. This requires the __init__.py of the package to have a specific layout. Here are the bare bones I always use: I added some comments to the end of the lines and left several modules in there as an example (which you'd create accordingly in python code files inside the package directory):

bl_info = {
    "name": "Title as it appears in settings",
    "description": "Smaller description below it",
    "author": "Your name",
    "version": (1, 0, 0), # A tuple of version numbers
    "blender": (2, 75, 0), # The minimum required Blender version
    "location": "File > Import-Export", # Where it will be located. These strings are hard-code in Blender
    "warning": "This add-on is under development.", # A warning with a yellow triangle if you want.
    "wiki_url": "https://github.com/Syroot/io_scene_kcl/wiki", # Link to a wiki
    "tracker_url": "https://github.com/Syroot/io_scene_kcl/issues", # Link to an issue tracker
    "support": "COMMUNITY", # Probably just COMMUNITY since you're not an official developer etc.
    "category": "Import-Export" # Also hardcode
}

# Reload the package modules when reloading add-ons in Blender with F8.
if "bpy" in locals():
    import importlib
    if "log"       in locals(): importlib.reload(log)
    if "binary_io" in locals(): importlib.reload(binary_io)
    if "kcl_file"  in locals(): importlib.reload(kcl_file)
    if "importing" in locals(): importlib.reload(importing)
    if "editing"   in locals(): importlib.reload(editing)
    if "exporting" in locals(): importlib.reload(exporting)

import bpy
from . import log
from . import binary_io
from . import importing
from . import editing
from . import exporting

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)
    # Importing
    bpy.types.INFO_MT_file_import.append(importing.ImportOperator.menu_func_import) # Add menu entry to File > Import
    # Editing
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_edit_mesh_select_similar.append(editing.KclSelectSimilar.menu_func) # Add custom properties to a mesh
    bpy.app.handlers.scene_update_post.append(editing.scene_update_post_handler) # Listen to global Blender-wide events
    # Exporting
    bpy.types.INFO_MT_file_export.append(exporting.ExportOperator.menu_func_export) # Add menu entry to File > Export

def unregister(): # Basically just undo the stuff done in register()
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)
    # Importing
    bpy.types.INFO_MT_file_import.remove(importing.ImportOperator.menu_func_import)
    # Editing
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_edit_mesh_select_similar.remove(editing.KclSelectSimilar.menu_func)
    bpy.app.handlers.scene_update_post.remove(editing.scene_update_post_handler)
    # Exporting
    bpy.types.INFO_MT_file_export.remove(exporting.ExportOperator.menu_func_export)

# Register the package modules when Blender runs this script.
if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Optionally, set breakpoints and connect Blender to the remote debugger of PyCharm.
Call operators the add-on defines, test the stuff it adds.
Fix errors, reload with F8, rinse, repeat.

You can find some samples of add-ons of me in my GitHub repos (check out those named with the io_scene_* name prefix).


Material is too dark in AR I have a 3D model of a chair which I want to use for an Augmented Reality App. In Object Mode and AR Quick Look (Mac) the colours look fine. In render mode (cycles render) and when I place the object in my AR app (iOS), the colours of the material are too dark.

Can somebody help me and explain how I can fix this problem?

Thanks!

Edit: I have added light sources which brighten up the render image but don't effect the object brightness within my AR App.

If the albedo are reasonable, the problem is your light transport in your AR API. Specifically, it is literally too dark in the estimated scene. Unsurprisingly, given how janky AR is.


Looking for equivalent of Fusion 360 Sweep with Path and Guiderail in Blender I am newbie to Blender and totally loving it. My focus to date has been on modeling and 3D printing.  I was using Autodesk Fusion 360 but have moved all my projects to Blender except one. I created the attached Tea Light in Fusion using a Sweep with a Path and Guiderail on a Curve.  Trying to find the equivalent inside Blender. I got close using a combination of modifiers both with and without Bezier Curves but can't quite seem to lock it in. Wondering if anyone might have a suggestion.

You can actually do all this directly from a bezier curve object, mostly without any modifiers or destructive workflows.

You need the classic three-bezier curve objects system:

One for the actual $Body$ of the Tea Light

One defining its $Section$,

And one has a Taper Object to adjust the radius expansion interactively.

Assign them all to the correct slot of your body object, then play around with the taper shape to control the profile of the light.

For the Taper Object $Y$ coordinates of the points control the scaling ratio. At
$Y=1$ there is no deformation, bellow that it reduces radius, and above it increases.

You can use Tilt to rotate the base. Adjust interpolation settings to improve smoothness.

This may require a conversion to mesh to take care of the closed cap at the base. Alternatively if you prefer avoiding the destructive last step, use a mesh object with an Array Modifier and Curve Modifier, deformed along the same "Body" curve, then use an End cap representing the base.


How to fix issues with the "Back to Black" theme? Camera, Empty, Grease Pencil and some other objects in the 3d view are not visible in the 3d view when not selected. Why?

For some reason the devs of Blender have added this theme few versions earlier but haven't noticed that indeed edges in wire edit mode, grease pencil, empties,cameras and some other visible things in the 3d view are set to black, while the background color of the 3d view is black itself, which makes these objects impossible to see if not intersecting with the visible 3d grid if they are not selected (the ones which can be selected that is).

Solution is changing their colors in the User Preferences->Themes menu and then pressing "Save User Settings" so your own colors will remain when you restart Blender.
Blender devs should be notified of this. It's a good theme for people working at night but annoying and also difficult to newbies to fix yourself to make it usable.


Cycles option to turn off texture tiling? Update

As of 2.76 there is a built-in option to handle this.

In Blender Internal there was an option to turn this off (called Clip)

Is there a way to do this with Cycles?
I know you can just scale your textures up with a transparent background, but you end up with textures much bigger than they need to be.

Is there a way to this, and if not, why not?

Cycles node system is very flexible and allows you to manipulate the UVs in pretty much any way you like.

The UV channel can be used as if it were just an image where U and V correspond to red and green channels.
These can be separated and manipulated using math nodes to create a mask you can use to clip the texture.
Here's a screenshot of a node setup doing that:

This uses the clip mask group to mix the texture to black. You could also use it in a mix material node to mix with a transparent shader or the like.

While making such node groups is a relatively long process, you can append or link the node group whenever necessary after you've made it once.


how to add vse content in the 3d view I currently try to manipulate the different aspect of the vse and one thing is blocking me.

I want to add a 3d scene on top of a video, so far so good, I know how to use transparent bg.
But what I want to do is for example, put a glass shader on a sphere and when i render, the video is deformed inside the sphere.

I understand thats something that must be done inside the 3d section but I did'nt found any option to add the content of the vse on the background of the 3d scene or something like this.

Even for preview to place correctly the different object could be nice instead of retry multiple times

Contents on the VSE cannot be used on the 3D scene directly.

They would need to be rendered as image sequence or video and used as textures.


Edit armature with existing animations As far as I know, this is not possible, but I just want to be sure there's no way before discarding the idea completely.

So, I have a character rig that's animated, and I want to use it with another model of a character with a different build and I need to adjust some bones in edit mode. After doing this I tried to reset the bones in pose mode with Alt + G, Alt + R, and Alt + S, but none worked. I tried to apply the pose, yet that didn't work either; the bones didn't change size. It looks as it should when I'm in Pose Mode and have it set it to Rest Pose, but then I can't animate it.

Does anyone know if there's a way?

Editing armature with existing animations is totally possible.

When you edit the armature in edit-mode, you directly change the rest-position. Any transformation (animation) is relative to this rest-position, so by changing the rest-pose you might break the animation (but if the animation is mostly rotations and you change only proportions of bones there should be no problem)

The rest-position is identical to pose-position without any transformations or constraints. This is by definition, so when you Alt + G, Alt + R, and Alt + S, and you turn off all constraints you must get the rest-position.

You can also apply any pose as a rest-position by Pose > Apply > Apply Pose As Rest Pose. How to do that with already binded mesh is here: Can I set my pose position like the new rest position?

Any animation can be also edited so it is not ruined:
How do I resize an armature without ruining its poses?


When exporting a .obj or .fbx how do you keep the color/texture? I've been looking up tutorials and sites for days now to help me figure this question out, but nothing has been working for me. I am fairly new to Blender, so this is a new experience for me! I know that UV Mapping may have something to do with it, not quite sure.

Here is a simple tree I made on the right. I followed this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqjOiBvrVtg

However, every time I try to export it and import it into ROBLOX Studio, I get the picture on the left:

What would the best solution be? I also would like to know how to do it if I did add textures and not just plain colors (unless they follow the same procedure).

Sorry for the nooby question, thanks again:)

Unwrap your model, create new material and assign a jpg texture to it (or create new in in Blender's UV/Image editor and paint it in Texture Paint mode).

Export the model to FBX.
Open Roblox Studio, create MeshPart object and import the FBX using the Open Mesh File button

Texture should be assigned automatically

If you want to use simple colors instead of textures, you can use Vertex Paint mode and color your model using this method. Roblox can import vertex colors contained in your model (if not, make sure you have ticked export vertex colors in the FBX/OBJ exporter dialog in Blender).


Nodes: can't find material output or Diffuse BSDF I'm a new user of Blender and I wanted to try using bump maps.

I've watched a few tutorials online, looked here on Blender.SE and on the Blender guide, but I'm a bit stumped because I have different options than what I saw in the tutorials:

This is what the tutorial show.

I cannot find the material output or the Diffuse BSDF node anywhere. I'm wondering if I need to change my settings or if I am doing something wrong. I made sure to look at tutorials for the same version of Blender than what I use, in case it might be an issue.

Maybe you're not in Cycles Render mode (top horizontal menu bar), or maybe you are, but in the Node editor you are not in Shader mode (bottom horizontal menu bar)?


Object Data Path Input node needed in Animation Nodes There is Object Data Path Output but no Input

How can I manipulate spline Bevel Curve Points Radiuses with Animation Nodes?

How to get array of splines[0].bezier_points[n].radius,
modify it and copy to other spline.
Input spline is freehand drawn with tablet.

Spline Info node can be used to get the radii of the points, while Set Spline Radius node can be used to set the radii of the points.


Normal map texture does not render on all faces I am using Blender Internal (BI). I have an object with a texture applied to it. The object is UV unwrapped.
The following happens:

Viewport: color texture is visible
Render: color texture is visible
Viewport: normal texture is visible
Render: normal texture is not visible

The following is a figure of a render (left: normal, right: color):

The lightning in the scene consists of:

Environment Lighting (0.200, White)
Sun (1.00; default settings)

The normal map does appear when the sun is changed from "Ray Shadow" to "No Shadow", although it appears inverted (or something):

But evidently I do want shadows being cast by the sun light.

What is wrong?

(((While preparing this question by reproducing my problem in a clean Blender file, to my surprise the problem did not exist. By slowly rebuilding my original scene, I found where the problem comes from, hence I am posting this self-answer.)))

The problem re-appeared as soon as I changed the lighting to "Sun" and turned on "Environment Lighting" to lit the parts not directly lit by the sun. As a consequence, the faces that were not directly lit by the sun did not render their normal maps applied to them.

Therefore, it seems that "Environment Lighting" does not cast rays. Then, if rays do not hit the face, there are no rays to be reflected in different directions depending on the precise location that the rays are incident (which is what the normal map does), and therefore the "normal map will not render".

Now, to have lighting on faces not lit directly by the sun, "Environment Lighting" may be replaced by adding a "Hemi" lamp. This lamp behaves the same as "Environment Lighting" (i.e., light on all directions), but apparently does cast rays, allowing the normal map to be rendered correctly:

Still unsolved questions:

What happened when the sun was changed to "No Shadow" in the OP?
Why does Environmental Lighting work the way it does? Is there a particular reason for which that would be the desired behaviour?


How to make empty show in front Just want to find a way for this empty to be in front of the character I have(kind of like x-ray)

You can do it with any object. Just enable "In Front" under the "Viewport Display" inside the "Object Properties" tab.


How to avoid transparency behind the volumetric world shader? I have a volumetric shader set up for the World.

But when I render, I see a transparent background behind where the density is too low.

Is there a way to remove transparency and add a background color or texture instead?

Check in "Render Properties > Film" and make sure Transparent is unchecked.

If you want to add a background color, but not have it affect the lighting of the scene you can hookup "Camera Ray" from the Light Path node to a mix shader.


Camera rotation in Blender I'm trying to export camera from Rhino, as soon as the OBJ does not have camera information in it what I'm doing is just copy-paste the camera coordinates and rotation.

With the rotation I have troubles. So what I'm doing is I measure the angle between the Z axis and the camera direction in the ZX plane and ZY plane projection (the camera pointing down). That works only for the small angles, the bigger angle the bigger mistake. I do not touch the third camera coordinate because it is just aligned with the x coordinate.

I will be very appreciated for the help

So, the answer is. Instead of measuring the angles between camera direction and axis I should measure the angles between axes and the local axes of the plain aligned with the camera.


Doubled image while projecting video on surface I created plane, I did't modify it. Then created material, and texture, selected video as texture. And I got video forked into two parts by diagonal.

Perhaps you forgot to unwrap the mesh.

Tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tovu1A0LxeQ

In edit mode Unwrap your plane.  Select all vertices before you Unwrap.
Your UV Mapping appears incorrect.
Perform the UV Map again.  Have exactly 1 UV Map.

The time required for this is 88 seconds or less.

BSE and famous video websites have information on the topics of

Blender UV Map and Blender Unwrap.

By searching you can find a tutorial on those topics if necessary.


How to engrave an image on an another texture What's the best way to engrave/emboss an image on top of a texture? For example if I have smooth metal buckle and want a logo engraved in it and give the engraved part a brushed texture?

You can make a bump map out of stretched noise texture for brushed effect with a black and white mask of the logo also using it for any differences in material properties of the engraved part.

Edit: Sorry, I made a mess there. With bump darker is deeper, lighter sticks out, so the texture should be inverted - white is outside and black is inside. Then it can be mixed with the stretched noise and since we want the noise inside, the mix factor should be black(0) outside, white(1) inside and if we multiply it by a value, that value becomes the factor -1(white) multiplied by the value becomes the value. So it's possible to control the amount of stretched noise mixed in. You can also only mix the property values of one shader instead of mixing two shaders.


How to Converge Complicated Mesh Points I am working on creating a funny holiday present for my family since I moved away, I used a smartphone app to create a 3D mesh of myself to create small nightlights with a 3D printed clear plastic.

I am having trouble converging the complicated mesh with a base rectangular prism to make the attachment to the light. Like so:

I have tried to heavily decimate the bottom vertices but this method doesnt seem to work and 3D printing with the internal vertices that arent converged to the rectangle seem to confuse the printer into inverse geometries at the sections, so the bust snaps off the base when printed.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions you may have, I have been Blender adequate for maybe 7 months now and still don't know how to effectively use all of the tools and features.

Thanks Guys!!
-Jack

Add a cube, scale it to fit your mesh. use Ctrl+A and select "scale" to apply the scale.
Select your complex mesh, add a boolean modifier. in the modifier, select "union" and your cube object.

If everything looks good, apply the modifier.


Mirror modifier problem for only one cube 182/5000
Hello . I try to make a low poly car with a background image, but when I try to apply a mirror modifier, it does not apply, and when I try another cube it goes. What is the problem? https://imgur.com/v1E9059

So from what I get from you question is that you are trying to model a low poly car with the mirror modifier activated. but you can't seem to apply it or add extra meshes?

To be able to apply any modifier you need to be in object mode.

So you would first create a cube and from front view in edit mode with "Control + R" create an edge loop in the middle

after that you want to delete the first set of vertices on any side.
And then apply the mirror modifier with "Clipping" checked

Then you can edit the mesh however you like and you have 2 ways of adding new meshes

While in edit mode press "shift + a" to create a new mesh
Go to object mode, press "shift + a" to create a new mesh and repeat
steps 1 / 3 with the new model.


How do I render in blender 2.8 to get the same result as I see in viewport? I set up my HDRI light image as a viewport shading.
Unchecked the scene lights and scene world.
I fiddled a lot with rotation to get the reflections I wanted.
When I render it i have no lights at all.
I understand that's because viewport shading is separate but how I can setup my render to look the same?

When I add the same image as world>background>environment texture:

First I don't have any easy way to control rotation.

Second the background lights are visible on the render - I want single color/transparent background.

Turn transparent ON in Film in Rendering Settings.

Go to Shader editor, choose World, add environnement node (open your HDRI here), mapping node, and texture coordinate and set it up like so. in mapping node you can change HDRI orientation by changing Z rotation value.

That should answer all your questions.


API: is it possible to save a variable's value for pose space deformations? Does anyone know if it is possible to make a variable

i.e.

variable = "string data"

and then have that data stored 'somewhere' such that it is saved with your file? So you change the value, save and close blender, reopen blender, and the code loads up that data from before?

I would like to avoid having to export data to a custom file, but instead have it load automatically with everything else.

I am trying to make a plugin that adds a bone constraint. In reality, it is not a bone constraint, it just connects a shape key to a particular bone in a particular direction to give the effect of easy to use pose space deformation like those found in industry level programs like Maya. And in reality, my variable is going to be a float type column vector

vector_to_save = bpy.context.selected_pose_bones[0].matrix.col[1]

Thanks to Leander's comment about custom properties to help me get on the right track.

There is the custom properties subsection in the object tab (found in the properties window). Most of us may be familiar with it, as it is fundamental to doing things such as controlling multiple shape keys or other effects. At the time I knew about these, but not as much as I thought. I didn't want to use these at first because I didn't want the rig's custom properties section to get filled up with a bunch of junk, since I feel that areas should be reserved for users. But since Leander suggested such a thing could be done with code, I looked into the topic further, now searching "properties" as my keyword, to see if I could manage to do this in a discrete way.

https://docs.blender.org/api/2.79/bpy.props.html
- "Custom properties can be added to any subclass of an ID, Bone and PoseBone."

At the mention of custom properties being used for bones as well, I looked and found that indeed, there is a hidden custom properties subsection for each individual bone. This is great because: 1 I can't think of any user who would need to go into this section, to manage custom properties per bone, so this stuff should, for the most part, stay out of users' way; 2 it helps perfectly organize where my data should be found, making the coding a bit easier.


Not updating (loading) textures each frame in animation render I am rendering animation in Cycles Renderer and I noticed that for each image render, renderer loads all textures.

Is there a way to tell renderer to use same textures for every frame (whole animation) and not to load them every time new image is being rendered?

Considering I am using over 100MB of textures it would make rendering notably faster.

(PS. I am rendering on GPU)

Edit:

Here is my simplified blend file https://www.dropbox.com/s/v5sbs56wd8pq3xh/textureLoading.blend?dl=0. It is on Dropbox because Blend-Exchange has 30MB limit. Dead link

Edit 2:

When rendering on CPU, loading is barely noticable but on GPU (I have GeForce GTX 760) it takes around one second and you can see rendering "pauses" between each frame.

Activating "Persistent Images" in Render -> Performance helped. Plus activating some other options in Performace section sped up rendering too. This article http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/4-easy-ways-to-speed-up-cycles could be useful for some. Beside the article itself a lot of comments are helpful too.


Camera not in Outliner or in 3d view My Camera is not visible in the outliner or in the 3D view but if i press num0 i can see its view. But i can't delet it because i cant find it. I can't select it or something else.
Its like it isn't realy there.

I hope you cant finde a solution

Julius

Do not need to have a camera, you can set any object as camera by selecting the object and pressing ctrl + 0, just add a camera, and with the camera selected press ctrl + 0


change highlight color in interface How do I change the highlight color of my blender interface?
I tried Preferences>Editing>Anotation>Default color. But that didn't help.

Highlight colors can be set in Preferences > Themes > User Interface.
You can set different highlight colors for different parts of UI.

In this case, it's the Menu Item > Selected

To change color for other items, go through the User Interface list.
Or download a theme :).


How can I add more than one custom property to an object? When I press ADD, the same property appears duplicated and I cannot see the properties list.

I am working in a plane design for Real Flight Simulator 8.

Actually, when clicking on ADD, a new line appears with the property default name prop, which you can change for the required value.


How do you cut a clean hole into an object that has been subdivided? I can't get it to work using any of the existing answers to this question. I have a box that has been subdivided.

I want to cut a square hole into it. I've tried using Knife Project and the Boolean modifier to cut the hole but I get the same kind of result. In both cases there are weird artifacts in the hole.

In the other questions about this type of problem they were saying something about how the subdivision modifier works better with quads but I'm not sure what that means. They were trying to cut circles and I'm trying to cut a square and a square has four points so I was hoping it would just magically be a quad or something.

Can you advise on how to cut this hole?

When 'they' say subdivision surface works best with quads, they mean that if you can get your pre-subdiv model to only use quad faces, you get a better result. Generally you would want to make the hole before applying the subdivision modifier.

To avoid 'cutting circles', you need to add supporting geometry around edges that you want to 'harden'. There are many ways to go about this. You can do it manually by simply adding additional edge loops and sliding them into place.

You could also use a bevel modifier above your subdivision modifier in the stack.


What is "Read Render Layer" actually for? I'm in a huge rendering (like over 24 hours into it). And I've accidental click on "Read Render Layer" in the image menu. Then it's like if I lost all of what i was rendering but the computer is still rendering from that point... How can I get the rest back?

Quite frankly never heard of that before.
According to the Blender manual it is used to read cached render buffers from disk, possibly after writting them to save memory
From the Python API manual

bpy.ops.image.read_renderlayers()
Read all the current scene’s render layers from cache, as needed

It is probably used with the Save Buffers option under the Performance tab of the Render panel in the Properties Window which according to the manual:

Saves all render layers and passes to the temp directory on a drive,
and read them back after rendering has finished. This saves memory
usage during rendering, particularly when using many render layers and
passes.

Haven't figured out how to restore image after using it, I'm afraid it is lost, though I don't really fully understand the purpose of this nor how to use it.