Can one render scenes in a flat LOG color space for outside grading work? Filmic LOG rendering question from a newbie:

Hypothetically, I have a finished scene that I want to use as a background layer for my live action/CG short. However, the live action footage I shot was shot in a generic LOG picture style. My plan was to have my scene also be in LOG, so that I could composite them together in After Effects (my compositor of choice) before finally color correcting/grading the whole thing in Resolve or Premiere. What is the most effective way (if any) to render the scene in a flat LOG picture style for outside composition and grading?

A few notes to set the stage for an answer:

LOG is not a color space. It is a way to encode data (designed to scale large dynamic range Scene Referred data to fit within containers for Display Referred formats (0 to 1)).
Proper compositing should be done using linear data, in a common color- space.
Data from cameras should be linearized first (sometimes called "de-loged"), or converted to scene referred linear value for compositing (as per previous statement).
Blender's data is already linear and using scene referred values.

Attempt to answer

Sure you could create log files, but know that log files have to be converted back to linear for proper compositing. Why work twice, and miss the opportunity to carry the full contents of the render layer created in blender?

As per statement 4. Blender already generates data in a format that is perfectly suited for compositing. Rendered images, with all of their passes (composite, Alpha, Z depth and any number of other passes you want) can be easily stored in OpenEXR multilayer files, and that way the information will never distorted or re-interpreted.

Statement no 3 and 2 carry the information for your compositing workflow

Bring those EXRs files from Blender into Resolve, and composite using Fusion (now part of Resolve). Fusion can deal correctly with linear scene referred data. The linearized (de-logged) footage from your cameras should be easy to integrate that way.

On the settings for the project use "Davinci color managed", set the timeline to use Rec709(scene). In the media tab in Resolve you can set the correct color transform for the footage. Use the "gamut" node, (or OCIO Colorspace nodes) to remove any curves (Log is a "curve") and make sure that the color primaries for gamut are set to sRGB/709.

Once the data from camera and blender is all linear, and in a common color space, you can go ahead and composite, and color grade the result.

To finish, just encode the final images to the delivery format and codec of your choice.

For more detail refer to this link: I have tried to import EXR files to Davinci Resolve with the LUT's


How can i merge one object smoothly into another while animating? so i have a baby as one object and a toilet as one object and the baby grows. at the end it is supposed to have the toilet as a head like the first grown person on the right.
how can i merge the toilet head with the fully grown baby at the end while animating so that i can keep on animating it as one object together and so that the colours are a nicer gradient?
does it work somehow with shape keys? but then i'd have to rebuild the whole toilet and i'd need it to look (at least almost) exactly like the first so copying the toilet would be kind of necessary.
if someone could help me that would be fantastic. :)

You may use shape keys to make such animation, but it demands joining the objects together.

Join the meshes with Ctrl+J. Connect the meshes' vertices in Edit Mode. Try to keep the topology clean. After making it one solid mesh add two additional edge loops (Ctrl+R) and place them as pictured below. These will be helpful for further creasing.

Go to Data header-->Shape Keys panel and add two shape keys being in Object Mode. Select the second one, press apply shapekeys in edit mode button and change its value to 1.000. Select the bottom of the character's neck in Edit Mode and press Shift+S-->Cursor to Selected (with a 3D cursor as a pivot point set). Use a border select tool (B) to select all the body vertices. Then press Ctrl+Num- to unselect the very top edge loop. Press S,0 to scale vertices. Slide the edge loops pictured above (press G twice) to crease the edge of a toilet. Your transformation animation is ready.

Now being in Object Mode apply the transformations to the object (Ctrl+A). Change the value of the shape key to 1.000 and keyframe it with I. Select the object and move it down (G,Z). Place it on the grid floor, then press I-->Location. Now go further on a timeline, press Alt+G to reset location, then keyframe the location again with I. Change the value of a shape key to 0.000 and keyframe it again.

Here's the .blend


Apply a Picture Texture I'm making a quasi-3d model for Sanic the Hegehog where it's just a cut out of an image that was given depth. However, I'm trying to put the same image as the texture, but it's shrunk down and tiled. How could I blow up the image so that way it fits out the cutout

It seems that your cutout model is already extruded.

Select the outline of your cutout and mark seams for unwrap.

Select all the front faces and unwrap them (Project from View is best in this case).
Load your sonic picture in uv window and adjust the resize the unwrap (if the picture is in box size like 400x400, 512x512, it's going to fit perfect)

After this, in 3d view, Press Ctrl+I to invert the selection and unwrap it too. In Uv Window, press w and select weld (This turns the other selected faces into 1 single dot) and place the result where ever you seem appropriate.

Give material to your model and add the sonic texture sheet.


Can not import Blender animation into Unity I am relatively new to Blender and Unity. Please help me understand what do I do wrong. I try to have a simple curve animation imported into Unity. Idea is that curve grows along his path and then turns back. Here is that animation in Blender: https://www.screencast.com/t/t9FedC1Jh I achieved that by making keyframes for Bevel Factor property of a curve.

BUT, I can not import this animation into Unity. I want to have that curve as an object in Unity that animates repeatedly.

When I import .blender file into unity I have some "Default Take" animation but it does nothing. When I export Blender project into .fbx - there is no animation there at all. See here: https://www.screencast.com/t/0NMko6TGFoxy

Please point me into right direction - how can I import that object into Unity correctly? Thank you in advance!

Unity uses Blender's FBX export functionality to throw your model over the wall to Unity.  The FBX file spec only allows for Meshes (and derivatives thereof, such as bones and bone weights), Animations of Meshes, Materials, and Textures, and Blender's FBX implementation is incomplete.  Right now, there is no way to export bezier animations directly.

You could, theoretically, export your animations by binding your animation to an armature, exporting the armature to Unity through FBX, and using a plugin like Bezier Mesh to render the curve and parenting it's controls to your imported mesh.  This is pure speculation on my part, though.


Screen layout with python scripting possible Is it possible to make layout changes in the interface of blender?

What I want to do:
My aim is to code an operator which removes all unnessesary areas or regions like the 'HEADER' of some areas or the 'INFO' area.

I have taken a look into

# areas[0] is 'PROPERTIES'
# regions[0] is 'HEADER'
bpy.data.screens['Scripting'].areas[0].regions[0].heigth = 0

but it ends with

AttributeError: bpy_struct: attribute "height" from "Region" is read-only

Is there a way to get my values into these variables?

No, currently the screen layout/geometry is read-only from Python's perspective.

(Can only be edited via interactive operators).

You can:

Change space types.
Change screens.
Change scenes.

But not resize spaces/regions.


How do I get rid of this annoying axis? I'm working on a Roblox rig in Blender. Everytime I set the pivot point (origin) to the selected mesh of the bones, an axis seems to be following it and showing up anywhere I set the origin of the object. It also appears under the root bone. How do I get rid of this?

I have resolved the problem. I realized that I had "Axis" checked under "Display" while looking at the properties of the object.


When using turbulance to create a grass animation, the effect of the turbulance eventually fades out I used a turbulence force field to create a grass animation for 300 frames. At the start the turbulence is affecting the grass very much but about at 100 frames it starts to slow down and eventually nearly stops at around 200 frames. What to do to keep the effect going?
(Using Blender 2.90.1)
Here's a video of the issue I am facing.
These are the particle setting for the Grass:

And here are the physics propeties for the turbulance:

I didn't get this process to work, still don't know why. But then I simply animated my force field to go from one position to another and that seems to do the job.


How to parent one vertex group to a specific bone in Blender 2.8 I made a bunch of vertices (in this case in the grease pencil mode but it doesn't matter how in practice) and I want to parent them to a specific bone.

To add the vertices to the individual vertex groups I clicked on the parent "Stroke" object, scrolled down to "Vertex Groups", clicked the + button and created four vertex groups.  Then in edit mode, I selected the vertices I wanted in each group and pressed "assign".

I then made a bone as a separate object and created four bones.

Now what I want to do is pretty simple, I want to assign the vertices in the four vertex groups to the four bones.

However, this is proving to be a little challenging.  Clicking a vertex group does not highlight the vertices.  I have to be in edit mode, click on the vertex group and click "select" to select the group of vertices.

Then when I go into object mode the whole object is selected so I do not know which vertices are selected.

Even more confusing is that to parent this vertex group to a specific bone feels impossible because when in object mode, clicking on one bone and shift selected the mesh object selects both *not indicating which individual bone is responsible for the vertices).

So the real question is:
How do I know which bone is responsible for affecting vertices. In the following image - how do I know which bone is responsible for affecting the vertices in red?

and

How do I simply parent a vertex group to a bone and keep track of that, one bone at a time?

Thanks for your help

In my opinion you’re not working with the good method, if you were you would not ask some of these questions, but to answer:

I don't think there's any way to see what is the bone affecting a group of randomly selected vertices, because for example a group of vertices may be affected by several bones and each will have a different influence, so I it may be technically possible to display them but it won’t help a lot.

That said, you can see what bones affect one particular vertex, and how much they affect if, if you select the vertex and open the N panel > Item tab > Vertex Weights.

It's a bit tedious though and I don't think that's what you want.

The easiest way to know how bones affect vertices: Select your armature, switch to Pose mode, then shift select your object, switch it to Weight Paint mode, then select a bone and visually see its influence on the mesh. Also in that same mode, if you select a vertex group in the Vertex Groups list, you’ll see what part of the object it enlights. But you may miss some small influences because at a low value the weight won’t be visually noticeable.

But as I say I’m not sure you use the good logic to rig.

When you parent your object to your armature With Automatic Weight, the vertex groups will be automatically created with the name of the bones that control them.

Once done you can check the bones influences, and you can correct it, either in Weight Paint mode, or giving more or less weight to some vertices with the Assign or Remove button on the bottom of the Vertex Groups list. Or even use the N panel if you like this mode, but again, a bit tedious.

You can always create an additional bone. Give it the name you want. If you want some vertices to be affected by this bone, select them, create a new vertex group with the name of the bone, and click Assign. As the mesh is parent With Automatic Weight this vertex group will automatically be controlled by the bone that has the same name. And again you can play with the weight value to increase or decrease the influence.

You can also create a vertex group and create its bone afterwards, as long as it has the same name as the vertex group, it will control it.


New to Blender, how to make texture paint transparent? I'm completely new to Blender.  I'm using 2.79.  This is my first model.  My question is, when I select my model (not completed yet), and go to 'User Persp", and select 'Texture Paint', I'm able to draw different colors on it.  That part is good, but eventually I'll be adding seats and engine to the model.  How can I make the seats and engine see through from the outside?

I already tried clicking on the 'Transparency' check box, but the model is still 'solid'.  I'm attaching an image of what I have so far.

This is the link to my model.  Its not complete yet.  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Alr1C2c8XKotmqUeJwA6Ldbtf_fvK3sL

In the latest version of Blender (version 2.82), you can setup brush, alpha blend, render engine and nodes like this to get your results:


Why are some materials not showing up in Solid view? I have been having a lot of trouble getting materials to show up, not just in solid view, but at all. I have gone through a large number of versions of this file and thought maybe something got screwed up somewhere along the way, so I deleted all the materials and started rebuilding them. But the problem shows signs of returning, as now one material is visible in solid view, but as I create more they are only visible in material or render view. They are just basic flat colors.

I don't know a lot - I've been switching back and forth between Blender and Cycles Render as I've been building this. Could that be the issue?

When you set a material in the Blender Internal render engine, then it automatically sets the viewport color for you, unlike the Cycles render engine which you have to do manually. When you switch from Blender Internal to Cycles, the Viewport Colors remain.

To set it in Cycles, go to Materials > Settings and change the Viewport Color value:


Camera Shadow in Cycles live render and final render? This might be a simple fix, however I have never done close up stills or animations before.

I just started building a logo animation for the company I work for. Barely even getting around to animating anything, I have noticed that a "circular shadow" seems to be following the camera. I have tried turning off the lights, it doesnt modify the shadow in any way.

I've tried researching the issue to no avail. I might be searching in the wrong places, but have not found anything related to it yet.

Below are a couple low quality stills for reference. Has anybody encountered this before? Am I missing something basic?

The problem seems to be that the normals of the two faces that connect the horizontal bars of the letter E are pointing into the opposite direction as the rest of the front facing part of the E.

Make sure the normals of your meshes are consistent (meaning that the normals of two neighboring faces are pointing to the same side of the volume, optimally outside).
The normals are used for lighting calculations. Since the direction of the normals is inconsistent over the front of the E, the lighting calculations generate artifacts.
Do you really need these faces? They make the E look like a block. If not you can delete them.
Otherwise you need to flip the normals of the faces or separate the faces from the rest of the mesh. You can flip the normals by selecting the two faces and clicking the Flip Direction button in the toolbar to the right side of the 3D view. If the toolbar is not visible press [T] while your mouse cursor is in the 3D view.

The result should look like this:

To separate the faces instead select them and press [Y].
Both methods ensure the normals of the E are consistent on the front face:

In general you should avoid non-manifold meshes. A mesh is called non-manifold if an edge connects more than two faces. Just imagine your mesh was made out of a rubber sheet. If you can cut out a region around any edge and find a way to press it flat onto the table without faces overlapping, your mesh is manifold and you are ready for production.
If you have a manifold mesh, Blender can even calculate the normals for you: Go into editmode, select the faces whose normals you want to calculate and press [Ctrl+N] to calculate the outwards facing normals or [Ctrl+Shift+N] to calculate the normals facing inside.


Blender system console character encoding I'm using Blender on Korean Windows 10.
While studying Blender Python I opened the System Console to check for error messages.
By the way, some characters are displayed correctly in English and others are displayed as random characters that have no meaning.
As far as I know, it's probably an encoding issue.
But I don't know how to fix this.
Help...

I realized that the Translation option in the Interface tab of the User Preferences causes this problem.
I hope there is no interference between UI Translation and the Systeme Console.


How to make Eevee viewport background transparent? I would like to view my meshes in Eevee rendered viewport with an alpha background when using HDRI lighting.

How do I use HDRI lighting without seeing the HDRI image in the background of my Eevee viewport?

You can use chosen color for EEVEE viewport using Light Path trick.

In the Shader Editor, go to World view and mix HDRI Background with Solid Color Background using Is Camera Ray. This way your HDRI will have influence over the scene, but it will not be visible in viewport/camera.

To make it transparent you can set Alpha in Solid Background Color to 0 but it will be pure black color then.

If you want to render with actual transparent background you will need to set Film > Alpha to Transparent:


Denoising Animations in Cycles I've made a simple animation in blender 2.81a and am now trying to render it.

My system specs: CPU i7-6500U; GPU Nvidia Geforce GTX 950M; RAM 16gb DDR4
So far, I've done two test renders (both in cycles):

8 samples, 8 light bounces, denoising on, 60fps (240 frames). Total render time was about 3 hours. Looking at single frames, they were flawless, but if you play the animation, you see that the denoiser is producing some kind of jitter (like in this video).
256 samples, 4 light bounces, denoising on. I set the framerate to 24fps and used time remapping to maintain animation speed (96 frames). The jitter has become far less, but is still there. However, the time remapping made the animation look kind of not-fluent.
So I figured that I probably need 512 samples to reduce the jitter and render at 60fps. However, this will probably take about 16 hours to render.
Are there any other ways to
change the framerate without changing the animation speed? (except for manually repositioning keyframes)
decrease general render time/reduce the jitter (aka denoising for animations)
Thanks in advance!

Edit: I heard that Blender 2.83 and 2.90 (which is not yet oficially released) have improved the denoising system, e.g. AI-accellerated denoise, adaptive sampling and optix viewport denoising. Do any of these also apply to video or is there now any option for better denoising for animations?

The default denoise options currently offered in blender (AI, Optix and the original blender denoiser) produce jittering because they do only Spatial Denoising, meaning that they use only one frame for input, so all images are denoised separately. The main problem with this approach is that noise patterns might not be consistent or homogeneous from one frame to the next. Sometimes this kind of denoising might actually create more problems than using no denoising at all.

Edit
For proper temporal denoising in blender read:
How to denoise animations using Blender's Temporal Denoiser?

In case of animation, you could also use denoise tools created specifically for video. Those tools not only can do Temporal Noise Reduction, by analysing several frames to understand how noise is transforming from frame to frame, but also use some spatial noise reduction as well.
Some suggested tools:
Neat
This denoiser can remove noise from video sequence, and it uses information from neighboring frames to denoise images. The best use for this plug-in - render animation without denoising, then remove noise from sequense in Natron (for example). Unfortunately, this Ofx plugin is commercial.
Deflicker
This Ofx  plug-in can remove jittering from denoised sequence. Instead  Neat, it can not remove noise, only flickering. As Neat, this plug-in can work in Natron and, unfortunately, it is also commercial.
Resolve
This video editor also has sophisticated noise reduction tools (only in studio version) and it is also commercial.


Scaling multiple faces along their y axis My goal is to have these faces scaled down so it's symmetrical, any help?
It should be a knob just for making clear my objective.

Set your Transformation Orientation to 'Normal', your Pivot to 'Individual Origins', and then perform a scale in the Normal space using either SXX or SYY.. you'll be able to see the direction of the constraint .. I can't tell which it will be from this illustration. (Or if you want to make the extrusions shallower, that would be a translation..GZZ)


Using datatoc.c to make the splash screen blender 2.79 I´ve read this:
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.4/Doc/How_to/Edit_the_SplashScreen
The page points to a c conversor "datatoc.c"
I´m on Blender 2.79 at the moment, with all the source code downloaded.
I am looking into: blender-git\blender\release\datafiles and I see no datatoc.c

I see a ctodata.py and I cite from the same webpage:
If you do use blender 2.5, than there is a python script (that supports .png files) that does this. Invoke it with:
./datatoc.py splash.png

First: I am using this on the command line on windows 7x64:
ctodata.py splash.png

I get this error:
G:\blender-git\blender\release\datafiles>ctodata.py splash.png
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "G:\blender-git\blender\release\datafiles\ctodata.py", line 47, in
    data = [int(v) for v in data]
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: '\x89PNG'

I don´t know where to get that file "datatoc.c" to run it on the command window. It is not on the source code of blender 2.79 dependencies.
Please help.

While this is still considered off-topic -

You are mixing up two similar names, you want to use datatoc but you are running ctodata.py. The page you read is out of date.

datatoc is a c program built as part of building blender. You can find it's source files in source/blender/datatoc/. When you build blender it will be in the build/bin folder.

Tou make use of a custom splash screen you need to build your own copy of blender, therefore the easiest way is to save your image as release/datafiles/splash.png and let the build process merge it into your blender.


Rings in Smoke Render - Cycles I'm building an animated logo where some text punches through the logo. However there are weird turbulence rings in the smoke that I can't get rid of. I have smoke domains on different layers (for each smoke color). All domains are set up identically other than the node color.
I also have a section of smoke that is hidden diagonally which makes no sense to me.
Any idea how I can solve these issues? I've tried baking the simulation and freeing the bake with no difference in how it is rendered.

It turns out that the rings in the smoke were caused due to the fact that I had my 3 smoke domains positioned at exactly the same location and were the same size. I changed the size of each domain and their locations slightly which resulted in good smoke. I'm still not sure what caused the smoke to be hidden diagonally but that seemed to go away as well.


How do I force a refresh after rendering animation? This has probably been asked and answered elsewhere, but I can't find it, so....

I designed a simple animated logo in Blender, with a spinning earth between two light-emitting text objects, with two point lamps for extra light. I rendered and saved the animation, and then used a gif conversion utility to save it as a gif. That all worked fine, but ...

... I decided I wasn't satisfied with the lighting. So I did Save As to start a new file, deleted the two point lamps from my original file, then added two Sun lamps (a Sun emitting a golden color from the left, a Moon emitting a pale blue from the right) and two dim Hemi lamps for high- and low-fill.

But when I Render I still get my original lighting. Similarly, if I Render Animation, I still get the original lighting.

How do I refresh the render process so I can see my new lighting?

Here is the Blender file:

UPDATE: Simply, it's not performing new renders. I deleted all of the original render frames, then clicked Render ... and I get a blank screen, because render image it had been displaying is no longer there.

UPDATE2: I went back and reopened the original file, from which I did a Save-As to create this new file ... and the original will not perform a new render either.

If I click the Render button, I get a blank screen, because the previous render (that it had been displaying) has been deleted.

Again, this is not about what I see in my 3D View. I see my lighting changes there. But I can't render a new image, or a new animation, at all.

UPDATE3: The solution was, per the answer below, to turn off Sequencing and Compositing in Properties > Render > Post Processing.

The relighted animation starts with this frame:

In the 180th frame, the earth has almost completed one rotation:

The lighting looks as I'd hoped: warm sunlight from direct left and cool moonlight from direct right, with dim neutral lights along the centerline to mute what would otherwise be a deep shadow at the sunset-moonrise horizon.

In clock terms, it's 12:00 noon on the left rim of the earth, and 12:00 midnight on the right rim. In terms of physics, my moonlight is far too bright; it's 1/2 the intensity of the sunlight, whereas in reality the ratio is about 1:400,000. But with the cooler color, it gives the effect I wanted.

You don't need to refresh anything, lighting is always up to date and recalculated per render, unless you somehow baked it into the objects.

How are you rendering this, using Cycles? Could you post some screenshots or perhaps a blender file?

Hemi lights are not supported in Cycles, they will render as point lights as stated in the Blender Manual, and in most situations you will want only one sun light in your scene, so perhaps use some area lights instead, and use the world background for ambient light.

Edit

You scene is updating real time as expected, see bellow.

Deleting lights updates the scene immediately

Some random tips

Hemi lights are like ambient lights, they emit light from a 180º dome, you generally do not want many of them in your scene. Many will cause a washed out and bland lighting that will absorb details.

Also sun lights are generally used sparingly in most scenes because they emit parallel rays of light. Try using a mix of spot lights, point lights and area lamps instead.

Edit II
Disable Compositing and Sequencer in the Properties Window > Render > Post Processing


Constrain Transforms Empty to Sphere Vertex (Not Sphere Itself) I'm very new at this, and have found how to constrain an empty's transforms to an object...but I'm unable to constrain an empty's transforms to a specific vertex of an object (I'm using solidified icospheres and the vertex is essentially the "north pole"...but I plan on having several special locations).

It seems that if I place the empty on the correct vertex, select the empty, and then create a transform constraint I can only pick the sphere as a whole for what I constrain to...not a vertex on the sphere's surface. It won't let me go into edit mode in the middle of picking what I am constraining to, and the vertex itself is not individually available for selection.

When my sphere rotates or translates I want several empties to stay on the surface of various special points on my icosphere, and the plane of the original point of mounting the empty should remain parallel to the tangent of the sphere surface (I'm placing empties with xy plane tangent to the sphere surface).

Perhaps this is better done with parenting (though I'd still need constraints for location, scaling, and rotation) plus constraints? Think of it as marking the location of cities on a globe and knowing which way is up or north.

You can use "make vertex parent" to do that:

It is some kind of the invert of the hook:

Place the empty as wanted
Select it
Shift select the sphere
Enter edit mode for the sphere (maintaining the empty selected)
Select the wanted vertex of the sphere + 2 other vertices: because 3 vertices are needed to define an orientation plane
The make them parent of the empty using CtrlP

The result is visible here:


How to make shift drag even slower? In blender you can use shift when moving something, this will reduce the amount it is moved giving you finer control. Is there a way to make the shift drag slower than it already is?

Yes, you can use Alt and ShiftAlt too. However, this only seems to work in a few places.

It worked in some number sliders, it didn't in others. It didn't work in any of the modal operators I tested


Making a shape key with a value that is the average of other shape keys I have an object called "Template" and it has several shape keys, one of which is called "Speaking". Another is called "[AVERAGE]", which I want to be the value of the average of all its other shape keys. This is for animation.

Where I'm running into the problem is with the RNA syntax.

Here is where I am trying to add the variable for the Shape Key named "Speaking" to the Driver of the Shape Key named "[AVERAGE]" and as you can see by the red - it's not a valid path:rm

Here is where I have found the RNA path of the object in the Outliner:

What am I doing wrong? I have tried various variations of syntax, but nothing has worked.

Thanks

The data_path on a driver variable is relative to the ID object you select, in your case objects "Template".  The location x path from here would be "location.x" or "location[0]" for example.

Select key as an ID object instead and your keyset.  An example path to "Key 1" key's value is demonstrated in image.

Alternatively from the mesh  bpy.context.object.data.shape_keys which returns a pointer to a bpy.data.shape_keys keyblock.

Screenshot of average shapekey driver setup

PS.  The panel on RHS is a shameless plug for my Driver Manager Addon.


Can't Parent one bone to another - this option is inactive I'm trying to create a pop-up book, using this lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6GjavMTaiQ

But I can't Parent bone that moves the page of the book to the bone that moves the cover of the book - in the setting of the bone, this option is inactive:

I tried the usual parent (Ctrl+P) but in this case, the position of the bone that moves the page, is not recorded in the library of poses, when I move the bone that moves the cover of the book.

If you want a bone to have a parent bone you have to do the parenting while in 'Edit Mode'. At the minute you are in 'Object Mode'. From the header of the 3D view, with the armature selected, choose 'Edit Mode':

(The bone you want to be the parent will also have to be in the same armature for it to be available as the parent).


How to merge (boolean) two objects that share faces/edges I'm working on some modeling for a jewelry box and I'm doing most of the modeling with primitives. I frequently end up doing something like the following: I want a bar with a bulb in the middle.

So I create a box: 48x10x10. Then I create a cylinder: 20x20x10. Both of these are at the origin. So this puts the cylinder right in the middle of the box and the top/bottom faces of both the box and cylinder are on the same plane.

At this point if you try to add a boolean modifier to one and select the other as the target; then you get some . . . odd results. Sometimes the initial one will work but then future boolean modifiers will cause crazy stuff.

I understand from previous posts that this has something to do with them sharing a face/edge/etc. and lovely divide by zero errors or something.

Is there a good way to do this type of operation? I just want these to objects to be one single one so that when I make another cylinder later I can cut a hole out of the middle of it.

In the past I've gotten around this by just not joining them at all and letting them overlap. Then when I pull the model into Cura for 3D printing Cura doesn't care about overlapping items or shared walls etc. But this is less than ideal for the modeling portion because any time I want to move the thing I have to make sure to select all the individual parts that comprise my "unit".

EDIT: Per requests here are sample images. Horizontal bar and cylinder are the items I want to join/merge/keep. The vertical bar is for a difference boolean to show the issue.

Now I am going to put two boolean modifiers on the horizontal bar. The first one is a "union" with the cylinder. The second is a difference with the vertical bar. This is the result. You can see by the highlighted wires and the odd interior faces that something strange is going on.

However if I move the cylinder up one unit so it doesn't have top/bottom faces on the same plane as the horizontal bar then it works as expected.

Boolean operation doesnt handle this co-planar faces, known issue. That is why I used in thelink Remesh. In your case (from screens) it can be done by several ways.

like in your last screen higher cylinder, after boolean select upper vertices, scale (S) Z = 0, than delete (X) Limited Disolve (or after boolean ad another cube and cut it from both sides at once)
on top of cylinder add rectangle in edit mode and use Knife Project so you got edges on place were cube cross cylinder, select faces and extrude
or try Remesh Modifier with some luck https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/165574/2214

... or any other technique, but there is no direct setup for Booleans to fix this issue, sorry.


How to model glass with octogonal base and cylindrical top? I'm struggling about how to model this kind of cup. How should I do it ?
This cup is something like a cylinder, with ends are straight edges with different resolutions

I'm not completely sure about the transition between the sharp faces and the circular part but basically you can try it this way:
Create a 8 vertex circle, subdivide it 7 times:

Keep only 1/8, array it around an empty:

Extrude up:

Create the mid-edge, apply the Array, round the top edge with LoopTools > Circle:

Create another edge, round it with LoopTools > Circle:

Begin to scale the edge loops, add some new ones:

Here is what it gives:


Pinball flasher dome I had a topic/ question about a pinball flasher light with some great answers.

Can you do the same trick as in my other question to a dome flasher light you can see in the picture?

I tried it but couldn't figure out how tot make the dome
and the inside pattern.
Thanks

Note:

  This answer is connected to this one so I'll not go into details
  as much.

Final result:

Steps:

Create Sphere and remove bottom half of it.
Add Solidify Modifier and set desired thickness. Apply this modifier.

Select outer side of the object (you can select top vertex and hit Ctrl+NumPad+ couple of times), then hide it H.

From the inner part of the mesh select needed edges and scale them down.

You can make bottom edge even by scaling it 0 on the Z axis.
Alt+H to unhide outer part of the mesh.
Select all and Recalculate Normals.
In Object Mode choose Smooth Shading and Auto Smooth in Data tab.


Difference Between Edit and Draw Mode I have some problems with my grease pencil. Sometimes some of my new drawings do not show in draw mode. It looks like blender do not take into account the new strokes? But when I look to the edit mode it seems that the stroke is there!
It looks like I have some problems with key frames settings or key frames recording. If I set a new key frame I can add new stroke but the old one disapears and I do not want to start again (even if it is looking very simple I know)

Welcome to the stack exchange! It sounds like you are having some hiccups with keyframes.
Firstly you're going to want to be able to see your keyframes. Grease Pencil Key frames are not visible in the Timeline so you might want to change the timeline at the bottom to Dope Sheet and then choose Grease Pencil in the adjoining drop down box. You should now be able to see your key frames when you select a Grease Pencil Object.
Why do your drawings delete on a new key frame? Well that's because when you move to a new frame whatever you draw on that keyframe lives on that keyframe only. Blender will show the last keyframe until you add a new one and that's why your previous frame appears to disappear when you add a new drawing. You can copy the previous frame quite easily, either click the draw button in the top left when in Draw mode then Animation, and Duplicate all layer or I tend to go into the new frame and enter edit mode, Select all with A, then click G and hit enter that effectively copies the frame.
In answer to your final question regarding some items appearing in edit mode and not Draw, do you have any modifiers, lattices or armatures at play here? Usually their effect is turned off when in edit mode so that would be my guess although being able to see your keyframes may unearth something else going on.
Hope that helps!
Matt


How to I subdivide a mesh so that it fits into a bounding box? This is a python question. What I want is a function that takes a mesh M and a bounding box B (This bounding box can be axis aligned or on an arbitrary angle. This detail isn't important, which ever is easier to implement, so it's okay to restrict B to be an axis aligned box if it helps) I want a new mesh M' that is subdivided so that M' fits perfectly into the bounding box B. To make it more clear, if a polygon P in mesh M is partially inside B and outside B, then that polygon needs to be split into P1 to Pn, and only the polygons inside B are returned; the rest are discarded.

I want this to be non-destructive, so M' shouldn't be added to the scene, nor should M be changed in anyway. I just want a new mesh that's not a part of the scene, so that I can export it. I already know how to split polygons by planes and implement this from scratch, however, I want to know how much of this is already implemented/not implemented for me within blender's libraries. It seems non-trivial to do this from scratch, and just using my linear algebra knowledge.

This slices a mesh object into axis-aligned parts (changing the active object):

import bpy, bmesh
from bpy import context as C

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(C.object.data)

edges = []

for i in range(-10, 10):
        ret = bmesh.ops.bisect_plane(bm, geom=bm.verts[:]+bm.edges[:]+bm.faces[:], plane_co=(i,0,0), plane_no=(-1,0,0))
        bmesh.ops.split_edges(bm, edges=[e for e in ret['geom_cut'] if isinstance(e, bmesh.types.BMEdge)])

for i in range(-10, 10):
        ret = bmesh.ops.bisect_plane(bm, geom=bm.verts[:]+bm.edges[:]+bm.faces[:], plane_co=(0,i,0), plane_no=(0,1,0))
        bmesh.ops.split_edges(bm, edges=[e for e in ret['geom_cut'] if isinstance(e, bmesh.types.BMEdge)])

for i in range(-10, 10):
        ret = bmesh.ops.bisect_plane(bm, geom=bm.verts[:]+bm.edges[:]+bm.faces[:], plane_co=(0,0,i), plane_no=(0,0,1))
        bmesh.ops.split_edges(bm, edges=[e for e in ret['geom_cut'] if isinstance(e, bmesh.types.BMEdge)])

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(C.object.data)

bpy.ops.mesh.separate(type='LOOSE')
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

The separate operator is needed, but you could write the bmesh to a new mesh datablock and temporarily bind it to a new object and run this operator. Then unlink it from the scene and delete, keeping the sliced mesh. Bmesh syntax in short:

bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(me) # or from_object(ob, scene)
#...
me2 = bpy.data.meshes.new("Sliced")
bm.to_mesh(me2)
#...


What does selecting "Normal map" in the image sampling panel actually do? Whenever I import an image in Blender to be used as a normal map I have to select "Normal map" in "Image Sampling" under "Texture". I remember that this was not always the case, at least I don't remember having to do that in older versions (aroung 8 years ago) though I could be misremembering. I'm also asking because as a programmer I've used normal maps in OpenGL and they went through the usual texture pipeline, no special treatment needed. So I wonder what Blender is doing with this information.

Assuming you're using the old Blender Render engine, this checkbox just tells Blender that the texture in question is a normal map rather than a bump map so that it knows which shader to use.


How to manipulate a smoke simulation to look like a realistic candle flame I'm trying to figure out how to adjust my flame. It's a calm flame with Noise Method-Strength set to zero and all Vorticity settings all set to zero. My flame currently tapers flat like a cone and somewhat rounded and wavy at the tip. I'd like to have it go straight up for about two thirds and then taper into a point but not a flat taper. I'd like the taper to be a bit rounded. What settings do I need to play with to get this effect? The effect I'm looking for would be like a candle or lighter flame.

Also, I'd like to know what settings to play with to change the curve of color transitions in the flame? I'm currently only able to, either have the two colors blend flat and gradient or a hard transition in color where the top color curves like an arc downward to the next blend of color and I'd like to reverse that curvature upward like the effect is in a real candle flame. All arc curvatures in color transitions are upward in a real flame.

You can control the shape of the flames quite well by shaping the flow object. Here I've used a transparent cone as the flow object. I added some loop cuts to its sides to be able to make it slightly rounded, but I don't think this shape is exactly what you want. You will have to model the shape to fit your needs.

The flow object's material:

The domain material:

The flame texture:

The colour ramp is simply the default one from Quick Smoke, with just changed alpha levels.

The domain settings:

The flow object settings:

And the result:

If you use high transparency on the flames, the flow object may become visible although it's fully transparent. This is because you see where the flames are emitted from. To get around this, simply hide the flow object inside the lighter and make the lighter a collision object, to prevent the flames from seeping through its faces. Depending on whether you want to move the lighter around or not, you will need to change the Collision type. Animated = manual animation, Rigid = automatic animation by rigid body physics, Static = not moving.

And an example .blend file

As I said, you will probably need to model the shape further, and also tweak the settings to your liking. This is simply meant to be a pointer in the right direction.

Furthermore, you have your flames rising far to fast, and they reach the upper boundary of the domain object before they come together into a singular point. If I were you, I'd delete the entire sim, keeping only the lighter object and start over with the flow and domain objects.


Baked normal maps getting altered on save When baking normal maps in Cycles, the map comes out correct if baked "selected to active", otherwise it comes out too bright and blown-out.

The real problem begins when I try to save the map to PNG, after which even the correct normal map gets brightened and blown-out. The Color Space in the image texture panel also gets changed automatically to sRGB regardless of how I had it set before saving.

This brightened, incorrect normal map CAN be used in blender by setting the color space of the image texture node to "Color" as opposed to the usual "Non-Color Data" associated with normal maps, but it is practically useless for any other application. It certainly does not work in Unity for example.

Has anyone else seen this happen and how would I go about fixing it?

The problem was solved by checking the "Save as render" option on the Save Image page.


Struggling to get a nice Shade smooth on Low poly despite the fact that I'm using Blender for a couple of years (non-professionally), I'm still struggling to create a good smooth shading of a low-poly model.
For example, in the screenshot below I'm trying to bevel one corner of a cube, then bevel one of its sides. When I apply smooth shading (setting auto smooth to 65 degrees) I get a messy looking surface. Can you please give me a hint what I'm doing wrong? Is it possible to get nice shading in this case at all?
PS: I'm creating models for exporting to a game engine, so first I make a low-poly, then I make a high-poly with Subdiv, and then bake one to another. As far as I understand it, the low-poly shading should not have any errors for a model to look nice in a game.

UPDATE: Here's what I got after following @moonboots advice (my actual model is a bit more complicated). I think this is the best I can get.

With low-poly objects like this one you’ll have this kind of artefacts because Blender tries to smooth between these faces and Auto-Smooth won’t be able to fix it completely, it only takes the face angles into account.
A good way to improve your shading is to use the WeightedNormal modifier in addition to the Auto-Smooth option. This modifier, like Shade Smooth or Auto-Smooth, will act on the split normals. The split normals are the normals at each corner of the face that determine the shading between the faces. If they converge they will tend to round the shading, if they diverge they will tend to flatten the shading. Here, the same cube, the left one with Shade Flat, the right one with Shade Smooth:

The WeightedNormal modifier will make the split normals converge but their direction will take the face size into account: The higher the Weight value is, the more the large faces will weigh on the split normals. Therefore to preserve the large faces and to smooth the smaller faces, keep the value very low. Here, without and with the modifier:

Note that you can choose a vertex group.


Texture not importing properly When trying to import certain items into blender for Roblox GFX purposes, the texture does not show how it is supposed to. I have tried re exporting the object and importing it to blender, but I get the same result.
The item:

Imported to blender:

Does anyone know how to fix this?
Here is the blend file
https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/7jkAmRaV/

Your mesh contains two sets of wings, right on top of each other, with the dark wings "below" the red ones. Here is how you can disentangle them.
First, go into Edit mode and bring up a UV editor. You can see that there are bunch of verts with their UVs in the dark part of the texture. Those are the ones we want to grab.

Turn on "UV Sync Selection". This syncs the selection between the UV editor and 3D view.

Select the blob in the dark part of the texture...

Hold shift to add to the selection, and select the small blob near the top too...

You now have all the verts for the dark wings selected. Move the mouse back to the 3D view, hit g to drag the selected verts, and move them away. You should now see both pairs of wings.


How to make curved (bent) rectangle, and add material? This question has two parts.

• First – I'd like to know how to make a rectangle with a curve on it. Don't misunderstand me, I DON'T need to know how to make a rectangle with rounded curves. I want the actual rectangle to be curved. See the screenshot below.

• Second – Once I get that rounded rectangle, I'm having problems with making a material go along the curve. Again, this will be explained throughout my question.

Here is a mockup of what I want.

The Curve.

As you can see in this image, I have a rectangle curved along the top/bottom faces. Its corners are not rounded (meaning they look sharp), but the rest of it is smooth. It doesn't look like a bunch of small rectangles (like it would if I merely subdivided it), it looks like a rounded rectangle. A curved rectangle.

The Appearance.

Also shown in the above image, the corners are colored black. The mass-majority of each of the faces is a grey color, but the edges are black. I would think it's a simple task, but I'm still beginner at Blender.

What I Have Tried.

I have already tried making a curved rectangle, but I'm having problems making it look smooth like I explained above. Applying a "Smooth Shading" makes the curve look smooth, but the edges aren't sharp like a normal rectangle. I have tried applying a Bézier Curve, but that is a little complicated for my limited experience. All the tutorials I can find are either irrelevant or unhelpful.

As far as the material, I am completely stumped here. I can't draw it on, because it turns out looking horrible. I don't know how to work the "UV Editing" window. I have looked for tutorials, but they are again unhelpful.

What Do I Need?

I would appreciate a full-length description. Maybe add in some screenshots (gifs would be amazing!). OR, I would also appreciate some links to tutorials that would help me. Like I already said multiple times, I can't find very much on Youtube. Some help would be appreciated.

Thanks for any tips you can give me! If my question needs revising, please let me know so that I can fix it!! I absolutely need some answers here.

The shape of the object.

Cube scaled as appropriate in Edit Mode
Loop Cut to provide vertex density to allow the next step to work.  The edges are shown above.
Curve Modifier.
Smooth Shading
Edge Split Modifier to keep sharp corner where needed and keep smooth shading where needed
I hesitate to comment on material yet I will comment that the dark lines can be achieved with Freestyle which requires more searching and learning.

You can search [Curve Modifier] and [Edge Split].  There will be many matches at BSE.

Hopefully you get more than one answer with different approaches as well.


Moving an f-curve from an object to a bone I'm altering some animations from direct animations on the object to animations on the bone that influences the object.
I've appended the action to the .blend from the original .blend and applied it to the armature. However, I want the f-curves in the action to apply to one of the bones in the armature, not the armature itself. The only way I've found to move the data is to insert keyframes on the bone then copy the keyframes in the graph editor.

Yes you can. The workflow would be:

Append the action;
Switch to Dope Sheet Editor (shortcut is ShiftF12), then change Editor Mode to Action Editor;
Select the appended action from the dropdown list in the header, select keys you want, then CtrlC (or click the second last button at the right-end of the header);
Select the target bone in Pose Mode, add necessary channels by keying if there isn't any yet. Make sure the cursor is at the expected position, select channels you want to add action on, then CtrlV to paste (or click the last button at the right-end of the header). You can also do this step in Graph Editor.

PS:

The action can be transformed between objects and bones, as long as they got same channel types. However, the result may be not always as expected as you really want.
One thing that you should be aware of is the consistency of the rotation mode. For example, if the action for the appended action uses rotation mode as XYZ Euler, and the bone uses Quaternion (WXYZ), then it will fail, either.


How to Make Metal Mesh using PBR texture....? I dowloaded this texture form CC0 textures. I am trying to appy it for long time using node editor but i dont know where i am lacking. Please help me out.

Here is the node which i used in blender 2.8 and Out put result

But in EEVEE engine for perfect result we have to choose blend mode as "Alpha Hashed" in the setting of Node editor using "N" key. if we use Alpha Blend then their will be some problem in mesh as we clearly see in image.


Two different objects at first then merge them, but keep them seperate on the former frames I got two different objects, I want them to move seperately between first 40 seconds(frames), then want to merge them into one. However, if I would use CTRL+P after selecting the two, they also started to move together in the previous frames. I want two objects to be joint only after some point and want them to be seperate before that particular moment.

Thank you for your help!

There are a couple of techniques that could be used:

make a new Empty object E that is a child of object A that represents the position of object B after B and A lock together.  Give B a Copy Transforms constraint from Empty E, but keyframe its influence so it is 0 before they lock together and 1 after they lock together.
Keyframe A and B independently for the beginning, and after they lock together, you only have to keyframe A because B will copy its transform from empty E which moves with A because E is a child of A

Make 3 objects: A, B, and C.  C is a combination of a copy of A and a copy of B.  A and B are animated and renderable (the camera icon of the outliner) for the first part of the animation, but C is not renderable.  Then at the point where they combine A and B are keyframed to stop being renderable, and C is keyframed to become renderable, and then C is keyframed to move through the second part of the animation.
To create C you will need to make copies of A and B (shift-d duplicates, not linked duplicates) and then combine those copies without altering the original A and B.


Adding Keyframes to Evaluation-Time Using Python I am writing a script where I want to automate the animation of Shapekeys. I tried to use the following command:
obj1.keyframe_insert(data_path = 'eval_time'), obj1 is the object containing the Shape Keys.
The command should add a keyframe to the "Evaluation Time" setting for the absoulte Shape-Key:

'eval_time' is the data path I have copied via the command "Copy Data Path":

However, I get the following message in the system console.
TypeError: bpy_struct.keyframe_insert() property "eval_time" not found
Using other data-paths like 'scale' or 'rotation_euler' works just fine, 'eval_time' fails, however.
Since this reference I seek to get is nested I have also tried the command using the full ID-path:
obj1.keyframe_insert(data_path = "bpy.data.shape_keys['Key.002'].eval_time"), but that didn't work out either.
Can anybody help me out how I can add a keyframe to the "Evaluation Time" attribute using the python API?
Thank you very much in advance.

actually you must see where is each property
the current  API show that is a main property of all shapekeys
in this case:
bpy.context.active_object.data.shape_keys.keyframe_insert(data_path='eval_time', frame=1)

this is different for example of "value", that is a specific float in each keyblock
bpy.context.active_object.data.shape_keys.key_blocks['Key 1'].keyframe_insert(data_path='value', frame=1)


enhanced 3d cursor. ''..blender redraws itself..'' This addon can show/hide the 3d cursor. When you mouse over on the button it says:

Does that mean that it takes a lot of CPU usage to compute the addon and in general slows down the application ? Asking this because I have a really turtle computer.

Yes. When you want to hide the 3D cursor then i would suggest to use the custom Blender build from fjuhec where this is better implemented. https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?370568-Custom-Build-Blender-pigeon-v2-78a-%28October-27th%29&highlight=custom+blender+build


Scale changes when applying curve modifier very annoying as sometimes it happen and sometime it doesn't (first curve is fine) i just want the cube to stay the same exact scale it has originally... i also apply both scale + rotation on both ... what can be done to fix it ?

If you've scaled your curve and applied its scale, the radius of its vertices is no longer 1. So select your curve, go in Edit mode, select all the vertices, and W > Set Curve Radius (value 1 by default, that's what you want, but you can change it on the bottom of the T panel), or in the Tools panel of your 3D view (displayed with T on the left of the 3D view) go in Tools > Curve Tools > Set Curve Radius and choose a value of 1.


Particle System Instances Retaining Dimensions of Original Object i have used a hair particle system to distribute the mesh on the bottom left as seen here. i want the particle system instances of this mesh to retain the same dimensions as the original mesh. ( i know for this simple example i can use an array modifier but i am showing a simplified situation.)

Particle System properties > Emission > Hair Length 1
Particle System properties > Render > Scale 1

Notes:

If Hair length is set 2, than Render Scale should be 0.5, and so on to keep size equal.
If dimension of source object is not 1 check also if Particle System properties > Render > Object > Object Scale is ON


2.81.16 No Rock Generator I want to install the rock generator for v2.81.16 and I found this answer, v2.81 Rock generator

I have downloaded the zip and installed it as described but I still do not have the rock generator. I have lots of other addons so I think I placed the contents in the correct directory. Has something changed since this linked question was answered?

The linked answer is obsolete since the Rock Generator is now part of Extra Objects add-on since commit rBA7347930a0fa14e752929e28c9b48adf74597b018. The separate Rock Generator add-on has been removed from the add-ons contrib repository by commit rBAC70b649775eeeebedb02c1c7b7aa996a7f6294177.

If you are using a 2.82 alpha build from the 12th of December or later, enable the Extra Objects add-on. The Rock Generator operator will appear in the Add > Mesh menu.

If you are using a build of 2.82 which doesn't include the commit, because it was compiled before the 12th of December, you will need to download a more recent version.

If you don't want to use the latest 2.82 alpha which includes this change, you will have to clone the repository and either manually replace your older Extra Objects add-on with the updated version or revert to a commit where the Rock Generator was still a separate add-on. Both options require experience with git.


Displaying tangents as colors I'm trying to view tangents used in sceneview and that will be exported.
I found two options:

Using cycles material:

geometry or just tangent-node
but both doesn't work - i got only black screen. (Normals work great)

Using glsl shader in BGE:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/GLSL_Programming/Blender/Lighting_of_Bumpy_Surfaces but shader.setAttrib(bge.logic.SHD_TANGENT) doesnt work(same tangent for entire mesh). I also can view everything except tangents :(

So, maybe I miss some ways to do it?

My bad, tangents successfully appears in shader when I switched viewport shading to "Material".

Testing code:

import bge

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()

VertexShader = """
    attribute vec4 tangent;
    varying vec4 frag_tangent;
    void main()
    {
        frag_tangent = tangent;
        gl_Position = gl_ModelViewProjectionMatrix * gl_Vertex;
    }
"""

FragmentShader = """
    varying vec4 frag_tangent;
    void main()
    {
        gl_FragColor = frag_tangent;
    }
"""

mesh = cont.owner.meshes[0]
for mat in mesh.materials:
    shader = mat.getShader()
    if shader != None:
        if not shader.isValid():
            shader.setSource(VertexShader, FragmentShader, 1)
shader.setAttrib(bge.logic.SHD_TANGENT)

It works great when viewport is in right shading mode.

Thanks :)


Dimensions changed cube (prism) is still a cube when UV unwrapped I've changed dimensions of a cube to make it a prism. Then unwrapped it for UV mapping, but it is still a cube in UV view when unwrapped.

What am I doing wrong?

UV unwrap is here applied on an uniformly scaled object.

If the scale is non uniform (for instance X=1, Y=1, Z=2), the unwrap will be applied on a non scaled version of the mesh.

This can be seen if you stretch the information panel a bit (on top of this picture) :

So as a solution :

Use Ctrl + A
And select scale
Then unwrap again

Concerning the reason (as you asked in the comments of your question), I presume this is due to the fact UVs are part of the mesh data and scale is relative to the object data. So this allow to have uniform UV for several objects sharing the same mesh data, but having different scales.


Problem after joining meshes After I've joined 3 meshes into a single mesh with ctrl+j, part of it becomes transparent after I import it to Unity (see left side of the image). What could cause this and how can I fix it?

It looks like the normals of the bottom part are inverted, resulting in a transparent look due to back-face culling.

Try recalculating the normals with ⎈ CtrlN in edit mode (↹ Tab) with everything selected (A). Note that it's possible to create topology which cannot have consistent normals, which could be why this didn't work for you before.


Method for drooping mesh vertices over rounded objects So i'm modeling a gun and i want to cover the top of the barrel with a shape that droops over the mesh like a table cloth over a table.

Me being new to blender, i guess the shrinkwrap modifier is the go-to answer for this but it doesnt product the exact result i want.

How would i get the shape i want for this object without manually having to play with the vertices?

Just from the looks of it, I'd say that the object you want to shrink has a way too low vertex count to fit the model. Try to add some loop cuts and then try the shrink wrap modifier again.

Depending on what you want the end result look like, it's also possible to copy a part of your mesh, convert that part into a new object (hit P) and go from there.

There is also the possibility of using physics but I never tried it with solid objects.


Resurfacing Mesh After Spin Operation I'm using Blender to create models for 3D printing.  Right now I'm using the spin tool to revolve a basic 3D shape around a center axis so that it create a set of overlapping identical units.  Think 24 cubes spun around the z-axis to create a ring of overlapping cubes.

This creates 24 overlapping cubes that intersect one another as a single object.  What I need is to remove the intersected areas and create a mesh that is just the surface of this new shape, rather than multiple intersected units.

So far I have tried using the Remesh modifier on the object, but it has not proved helpful.  I'm not sure if this is the correct tool for this purpose or if I am even using it correctly.

What would be the correct way (or at least "a correct way") to do this and achieve the result I am looking for? (Exterior unified mesh with no overlapping internals).

Assuming you got something like that by spinning a cube (Alt-R):

You could simply use a plane for spinning to avoid the issues:

Note: Use Shift-D to remove duplicates and spin operator was invoked  in Edit Mode (Top Ortho View)


How can you split an edge in 3 or more edges? Is there a way to split an edge into more than 2 equal edges? Same for faces I was using another program that had this option and it was quite handy.

Thank you for your time.

First of all, go to Edit Mode and select the edge you want to split, then click the Subdivide button (step 1 in the picture below) and adjust the number of cuts in the panel that appears below (step 2). Also make sure you don't do anything else before adjusting the number of cuts, or the panel will disappear because Blender doesn't store that kind of information in its history, so even if you do Ctrl+Z the edge will return as it was before subdividing but the panel will not reappear and you'll have to do the procedure again.


Why is GPU rendering is so slow compared to the CPU? I recently bought a new configuration to increase rendering performance with Cycles. It's  an Intel Xeon E5-2620V3 6 core 2.40 GHz with 32GB of DDR4 ram. Video card is Nvidia Quadro M4000 8GB GDDR5. I assumed that GPU rendering should be faster than CPU rendering on this machine, but the opposite is true. For a rather simple scene (1000 samples), CPU rendering took about 18 minutes whereas rendering it with GPU took one hour and 23 minutes ... (which is even way slower than when rendering it with GPU on a lower performance computer). Blender does recognise the card (it shows up in the system settings) but does not really seems to use it, I guess. Anyone any idea what I might be doing wrong here or why the GPU rendering is so slow?
thanks,
Dominique Adriaens

Both your CPU and your GPU are quite good. Have a look at blenchmark. Your CPU is right up there and comparable to good GPUs. So it's not to be expected that the difference in render times will be huge. However, to optimise render times for CPU/GPU you should use the auto-tile add-on from user preferences. Just activate this addon and render times will be optimised.


Extracting coordinates (x y z) from a BVH file I want to extract coordinates in x y z format from a BVH file.

I read about the rotational and transational matrices used in a BVH file but cannot make any sense out of it.

At last i want to make python script to extract these coordinates and them feed them to another python script which uses BPY for animation of a character in Blender.

Any kind of references in this context would help too.

You can find a lot of helpful information by taking a look at Blender's import and export scripts for BVH located in /your/install/dir/2.80/scripts/addons/io_anim_bvh or if you have cloned the repository /your/git/repo/blender-git/blender/release/scripts/addons/io_anim_bvh or online in diffusion.

As you can see in the importer (line 173), the file contains so called channels which contain the x,y,z-coordinates. Since I'm not familiar with the format I can't tell you exactly how the matrix transformations work, but given that the importer script is rather short you may be able to figure this out on your own.


Can I use an HDRI to illuminate the scene and another one for the background? I want to illuminate my scene with an HDRI, and to use another one as a background image.

In the world shader, use the light path node to differentiate between the two.

Result with a white cube :


Cycles - transparent background still renders background color through glass? Im having an issue with glass rendered where there isn't something IMMEDIATELY behind it - either objects are in distance or there actually isn't anything there. I need it to render CLEAR, meaning whatever is in background even if it is far off, like how this renders actually the transparent background texture default:
Alpha channel through glass material instead of background (Cycles)

I just have a normal glass setup, with a mix shader between transparent and glass nodes. Problem is, when I look at my glass where isn't something RIGHT behind it it turns the world color (white), despite that my film is set to Transparent and I dont render the background color:

What can I do to make glass ACTUALLY transparent?

In recent 2.79:

Under Render>Film you can check 'Transparent' and afterwards 'Transparent Glass'. It may be possible that you are using a blender version, which doesn't have this option. If you aren't bound to any particular version I suggest downloading a Daily Build from https://builder.blender.org/download/

I tried with MixShader (Transparend BSDF and Glass BSDF) and just Glass BDSF, both of them work for me.

The cubes are actually transparent, but it of course then must take some background here in the stackexchange.

Edit, because question was edited:

Enable 'Transparent'
Enable 'Transparent Glass'
Disable 'Transparent'

This way 'Transparent Glass' is enabled without making the background transparent (Imgur has problems with BSE so direct link: https://imgur.com/a/2TSKsfe)


Blender 2.8 - eevee Silver/Chrome material Attached is the blend where I am trying to add a silver/chrome material. I followed a few tutorials online but the material always looks dark and flat. I am just started to learn 2.8 so unable to figure this one out.

The mesh is lit with an area lamp and its placed on a plane for light reflection.

Activate "Screen Space Reflections" in the render tab. And may be you want to use my chnages to your shader. "Specular"s value "0.5" is more physically correct. I also cranked up the IOR value to 1.8, which is the IOR of silver (you will find huge tables
with IOR values for all kinds of materials online).

But the main reason, why the ring is dull grey in the "final" render and shiny in the viewport is: Your world material has the same dull grey color...:)
Even the most shiny silver ring will reflect only the dark when there is no light.
See attachment (the screenshot still has the wrong IOR...sorry)


Maya HumanIK to Blender I'm trying to import a full HumanIK skeleton with retargeting and all,
in how far does Blender support HumanIK?
Can I just import the basic rig with controls and no retargeting too if there's no HumanIK support?

I'm actually surprised that I can't find a similar question for that anyhwere.

Kind regards,
Andreas

As a general rule, rigs do not import from one application to another. You may be able to transfer bones or keyframes in some cases using formats like FBX, but nothing more than that. Things like IK, FK/IK switches, constraints, links to shapekey(blendshape) controls and so on are application specific. The only way to transfer them is to have a purpose-built script on the import side that recreates all of these in the new app. One does not exist for HumanIK in Blender that I am aware of.

If you have a Maya character that you want to add to a Blender scene, you are much better off either posing/animating it in Maya and sending over an Alembic cache, or re-rigging the character from scratch in Blender. While an FBX file may be able to transfer the bone structure, tearing it down to something you could make a Blender rig out of would likely be more work than just making a new Blender rig, or using an existing Blender rig or tool (such as Rigify).


How do I set up a driver to drive a node value with a node group input? I'm having trouble figuring out how to link one value to another via a driver.
Here's what I'm trying to do:

I'm making my own node group and I want to bypass having to tab into the group to change the value of XYZ rotation, but for reasons unknown to me I can't just connect the X rotation to my x_rotation value via a driver. This is the driver set up on the X rotation:

Is it just a matter of an incorrect path or am I doing something entirely wrong? Is there a different way to accomplish what I want?

The best way is to completely avoid drivers inside node groups. They do not update correctly and are only trouble.

You should make your own custom Rotate node with the angle value accessible. You can make almost any spacial transformation using the correct math put together with Math nodes. Rotating a 3d vector around Z axis θ degrees looks like this:

x' = x cos θ − y sin θ
y' = x sin θ + y cos θ
z' = z

In nodes it looks like this:

The white node is there to convert degrees into radians.

If you really need you can build your own Mapping node with translation, rotation and scale inputs exposed.


How do you enable rigid body physics for a given object in Blender 2.8? I'd like to enable the rigid body settings for a set of objects, and I don't want to use bpy.ops.rigid_body.object_add(). I see that objects have the property object.rigid_body, which is read-only. So how do I create the rigid body settings, and assign them to object.rigid_body?

This question is related to How do I add a rigidbody to an object with python?.

In 2.8 you need to use collections, so if you want to add rigid body physics to object my_object for scene 'Scene':

bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].rigidbody_world.collection.objects.link(my_object)

and verify outcome with

my_object.rigid_body is not None


how to make 3d model of 2d image I'm making a simulator and I have an image like a piece of chair and it's in 2d and I need to create a 3d model of that to be able to apply texture to it by three.js. So ,How can I convert a 2d image to a 3d model?

There is no software in the world that can do this, simply because a lot of (3D) information is missing in the 2D image. As MarcClintDion pointed out, it can be done out of multiple images from the same chair, but I doubt the result will please you. I'd encourage you to watch some basic Blender modeling tutorials and model the chair, you'll be done in 30 minutes and have a clean model.


How to record this drawing effect? I think this effect can be done with Blender grease-pencil.

I understand 3D tracking camera and object.

But how to record the drawing process in Blender?

After using the greas pencil to create your drawing, you can use the build modifier to animate the draw-in along the stroke.


Why has IK rotation constraint "envelope" stopped displaying? Uptil yesterday,for the same Ik rig,  IK rotation constraint "envelopes"(red line) were being displayed.
However today,with multidimensional constraints they no longer show.
Is there an option to toggle them ON?

In the N panel > Display, you need to activate the Relationship Lines option. In 2.8 it's in the Viewport Overlays panel:


Why does my model become distorted when adding bones with Automatic Weights? After adding bones to the model, the whole model breaks down horribly.

Here are screenshots:

Before: https://ibb.co/Ycm9QVL

After adding bones to the model With Automatic Weights: https://ibb.co/2sXCVxx

Maybe someone knows why this happens?

Blenders automatic weights are pretty meh. especially for a model of that complexity. youll probably be better off using manual weighting or envelope weighting


Is the Texture Coordinate node currently broken for vector displacement? I have added a brief addendum to the end.
I have been getting into procedural vector displacement with shader nodes in Cycles.  The other day I created a model and tried to animate it rotating through space (not using any vector transformations in the shader itself) only to find that it messed with the texture coordinates I was using.  This is odd to me since I was using generated coordinates transformed to match object coordinates.  I figured the generated coordinates were in local space and should allow me to rotate the source mesh however I want, applying that transformation to the displacement.  Well, for some reason the global transformation changed the shape of the local displacement and distorted the object.
After trying a few things like using object coordinates and not finding any change to the results whatsoever, I did some research and found absolutely nothing relating to this issue at all.  I thought that maybe I had just messed up my math and was referencing global coordinates somewhere and I just happened to make that mistake in all three of my experimenting projects.  To be sure, I copied CGMatter's asteroid tutorial exactly as he had done it in as close to the same build of Blender as I could.  Same problem.  The product looked good, but simply rotating the model upside down turned it back into the shape of the source mesh (The project starts with a subdivided cube and ends with a very different-looking asteroid).
Next, I tried completely reinstalling Blender.  This was after updating a few days before, so I wanted to really make sure nothing was broken on my end.  That didn't work either.  This means it's either a bug or I'm dumb, at this point.  I don't have the confidence to say it's a bug, so I would appreciate it if someone could look over a quick project I created with the same problem and educate me in the ways of the Texture Coordinate node.  If I did correctly interpret its function, and this is a bug, I will actually submit a report.
In this project, I'm doing the old cube-squeezed-into-a-pyramid displacement.  If the source mesh is rotated about X or Y, it seems to invert some or all of the local coordinates (if the object is upside down, yes it should invert observed coordinates, but local should not change!).  If the source is rotated about Z, the base rotates in the opposite direction from the top.  The strangest part to me is that if you look at the coordinates being used by applying them to the output of the shader, they are mapped correctly, but the math being done appears not to be using this transformation in the same way.
Here is an image of the node setup:

Again, I could be missing something obvious, but I feel like this should work in local object space no matter the orientation of the source mesh since the transformation to local space will always give back the same position vectors.  The top of the cube should always be squished even if it's facing downwards because it's always locally the top.
Anyways, sorry for the VERY long post, I just have no clue what is going on and wanted to add as much context as possible.  Here is a brief video of me messing with the object and the exact project file from the video:
YouTube Video
Download Project
One last time, thank you to anyone who made it through this!
QUICK ADDENDUM: So I wasn't very clear about which part of this is the problem.  It's not how I have to cycle through render modes in the editor to get things to update to a global transform.  I wouldn't have any problems at all, but when I go to do the final render, it updates every frame and turns the local displacement into the weird half local-half global displacement.  My first inclination is that there is a bug in the way Blender is handling the vector displacement.

As always, open to correction, but reverse-engineering from the symptoms alone, this seems to be a caching problem.

If you plug the displacement vector straight into the Displacement
input of a Material Output node, the vector seems to be evaluated in World
space.
If you request a displacement in World space (however it is calculated,) you would expect an object to 'swim' through that displacement when it is rotated: in the viewport, it does not. The displacement appears to be cached in Object space. When the object is transformed, the displacement follows.
You can update the cache in at least two ways I've found.. flip out of Rendered to Solid mode and back again, or put a Vector Displacement node between the requested vector and the  Material Output, and switch its space from, say, 'World' to 'Object' and back again.

The cache appears only to apply in the viewport: in frames rendered through a camera the displacement is updated correctly.
I think this may qualify as a bug..or it may considered a valid optimisation for viewport performance?
TL;DR
To evaluate the displacement vector in Object space, (so it follows the object, and therefore persists through flipping between Rendered and Solid modes), put it through a Vector Displacement node, set to 'Object Space'.


Automatically smooth bevel faces on apply Is there a way to automatically set Faces to "Smooth" that where created by applying the bevel modifier?

It's for exporting, so autosmooth is not an option.

Never mind, I found an easy way. Set a material for the bevel modifier, thankfully Blender keeps the material assignment after applying. So it's easy to select and set faces to smooth.


Blender Game Engine flight simulator I'm trying to create a logic brick setup for a flight simulation of an airplane.

It shouldn't be too realistic as the purpose is to create a fun little game. (would be great though!)
There should be some 'real world like' physics involved (like gravity) because crashing is definitely something I would like to achieve.
Even struggling with a basic setup and countless hours trying different things I feel kind of stuck on this problem.

Your could add a sensor for the up w key(pulse mode(the first " button)) and then connect to a simple movement actuator that will move it in its forward local direction. Then you could use the mouse sensor and connect it to the mouse look actuator to steer the plane. You could also try to prevent it from falling by connecting your w key sensor to another simple motion that adds a force of 9.8 (m/s) on the z axis. This should cancel out the gravity. Don't forget to set the plane's physics to dynamic or rigididy.

While this is simple, it's terrible. The plane has no acceleration. It's either fully stopped or top speed. It will also fall if you let go of the w key.

If you want something better, Python scripting is the way to go. The movement will be able to be lerped (linear interpolation. In other words, get from one number to another gradually, like a gradient, in a certain amount of time, to simulate acceleration. You could also simulate "lift" by multiplying a "liftStrength" float variable with your current velocity (or speed), then apply that number to an applyForce on the z axis. This will make it to where when you're plane is moving fast enough, it will generate lift.

Still, even his isn't good enough as when you got upside down or sideways, it just gets weird. Still, you can make very realistic planes in Python, but it requires a LOT more code and knowledge.

Also, just to point this out, Python isn't hard. It's one of the easiest.

Here, click this link to get started in blender game engine Python scripting:

Blender Game Engine Python Tutorial Series: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6F4A5BAADFFADA2E

I cannot give you a definitive answer, because the question is a bit too broad, but this is just my two cents.


How to apply shape keys? I used shape keys to create a middle shape between other two. Can I now remove shape keys and 'apply' them as a modifier to the resulting mesh?

Try creating a new shapekey by pressing the arrow under the add/remove buttons and selecting new shape from mix:

This will create a new shapekey from the current mix. You can then delete all the shapekeys, making sure you delete the new one last.

This gives you a shapekey-free mesh with the shape from the original shapekey mix.


Subdivide only adding vertices, wont subdivide faces I am trying to use the subdivide tool, but when I do it only works on certain faces.  The next time I try to subdivide a face, it only adds vertices to the edge.

I'm not sure but I think you may be referring to the Loop Cut tool.
You press Ctrl+R to use the Loop Cut tool.

To subdivide a certain face, select the face in Edit mode and press W and select Subdivide. Then in the Toolshelf in the lower left Last Operator panel on the screen you can change the number of subdivisions. The maximum is 10 but if you need more you will have to subdivide again or you can type value manually.


Error when trying to import Scipy module to Blender There is an error when I want to import the scipy module into blender through the anaconda directory. How can I fix this error?

Code:

import sys

scipy_path = "C:\Users\ALAFG\AppData\Local\Continuum\anaconda3\lib\site-packages"

if not scipy_path in sys.path:
    sys.path.append(scipy_path)

import scipy

Error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
File "/Users/ALAFG/AppData/Local/Continuum/anaconda3/Lib/site-
packages\scipy\__init__.py", line 118, in <module>
from scipy._lib._ccallback import LowLevelCallable
File "/Users/ALAFG/AppData/Local/Continuum/anaconda3/Lib/site-
packages\scipy\_lib\_ccallback.py", line 1, in <module>
from . import _ccallback_c
ImportError: cannot import name '_ccallback_c'

Just a guess, but perhaps you have a different version of python installed on your system than the one being used by Blender.

To keep things simple, I usually install scipy into Blender's python.

I run the get_pip.py file in Blender's text editor.

Then I install using pip by running this in the text editor:

import pip

pip.main(['install', 'scipy'])

Doing this will allow you to import scipy without needing to append any path.

Depending on how you have Blender installed, you may need to run Blender with administrator priveledges in order to do this.


I want to add keyframes for a "Dynamic Paint" modifier setting "Alpha" Using Python When creating a brush using python I can set the Alpha state using this.
bpy.context.object.modifiers["Dynamic Paint"].brush_settings.paint_alpha = 0

However I would like to set keyframes that turn the alpha setting to 0 for a period of time then to 1 at another time using python. I can't seem to figure this one out.
you can see the problem I am trying to fix here in my latest rendering. The dynamic paint Brushes are painting even before the follow path animations are running. All of the brushes and lasers shown are generated through code.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqiVzTHOTfI

I've found that you can keyframes in many different locations along the data_path, not just at the object level.
This conversation clarified that a bit:
Adding Keyframes to Evaluation-Time Using Python
using-python
some_obj.modifiers["Dynamic Paint"].brush_settings.paint_alpha = 0
some_obj.modifiers["Dynamic Paint"].brush_settings.keyframe_insert(data_path="paint_alpha", frame=150)
some_obj.modifiers["Dynamic Paint"].brush_settings.paint_alpha = 1
some_obj.modifiers["Dynamic Paint"].brush_settings.keyframe_insert(data_path="paint_alpha", frame=190)


My Particle System just stopped working I have a big problem, I just finished making a fairly demanding scene, And i did a render just a while ago, but then i tried importing a tree into the scene before final rendering, it ended up being a bit too much for my computer. So i deleted the tree and got back to rendering, but all of a sudden blender just crashes whenever i try to render.

And it seems like its a problem that has occurred with the particle system, because I can't even turn it off or deleting it without crashing blender, And also before this happened i could render at 60000 particles now it crashes even if i pull it down to 1.

Another thing is, I can disable it from rendering, and at least render without the particles, but it doesn't seem to be a performance issue, as i couldn't even render it at 1 particle.

Do anybody know what might be going on?

(Also just one more thing, I can't even move the object that has the particle system applied to it without crashing blender.)

Try selecting the source of emission set your key frames back to 0 (it must be 0 even if your animation starts on key frame 50) and hit alt+a, this should reset the animation or I might have missed the boat entirely, ether way it doesn't hurt to try


Texture Mask paints mesh with a grid instead of random So I changed the Mask Mapping from Tiled to Random, added a bit of Jitter, and when I click to paint on my mesh, after a while it starts to look like it's following a grid. Is there a way to make it look like there is no grid at all, and it follows a random order?

Found the answer with a little tinkering. Checking Rake or Random or both removes the grid it keeps locking onto.

If anyone knows why or how this works, comment.


Play a sound triggered from emitting a particle I have a spaceship and it has a particle system for firing lasers. I am wondering if there is a way to play a sound when it emits a particle.

I have tried grouping the particle with the speaker and emitting the whole group but that doesn't work. I don't know if it should or if I am doing something wrong.

In 3D animation the sound and video are generally two separate things. Supposing you did get your sound to play with the particle system, you would still need to out put the whole animation to a video format including sound. Which rules out a image sequence, the best way to render an animation.

It will be easier to just render out your animation of the ship firing its lasers. Then in something like the video sequence editor (or any other video editor) just add the sound file at the right time to match the firing lasers.


Get glossy shading but no reflections (Cycles) If you use a glossy/shiny material, it will have certain shading. It will also reflect the world environment color, and nearby objects in the scene. Is there a way to make it so that you still have glossy shading, but that you don't get reflections?

EDIT: Picture for clarification. Here we have a sphere with Diffuse and Glossy mixed based on fresnel, with no roughness. So it is a very shiny, reflective sphere. We can see that it is shaded by the glossy node, being lighter towards the edges (as fresnel does.) It is also reflecting the blue cube. I would like it to keep its shading, but not pick up reflections of nearby objects. If I increase its roughness, it still reflects the cube, it just looks more blurred.

The purpose of this is to be able to do non-photorealism where I can control what my shading looks like without it also increasing reflections. For example, the settings that you would use it have large, hard-edged toony specular highlights would also result in those areas being very reflective, which is not how they behave in toon styles.

Here I have a sphere reflecting the two objects and environment.

If you don't want an object to be reflected just select it, go to the Object header and uncheck the Glossy box in the Ray Visibility panel.

If you want to see the objects reflected, but without the reflection of the environment, go to the World material settings in a Node Editor and set up the nodes as pictured below.


How to make a sideways bone? This may seem sort of confusing after you read the title, but it is fairly simple. First, look at the following handgun below (glock):

Imagine I recreated this in blender, and I started rigging. Look at the magazine, it does not fall straight down. It falls at an angle. How would I make a bone that controls a piece of the model (I know how to do this part), but can move it at an angle? Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Bones in blender are not limited to one axis, thus moving them along an angle is easy.

You can constrain it to 2 axes (say X and Z by pressing SHIFT+Y after pressing G) when moving, and this is likely what you want. Insert a keyframe at the bone's resting position, then advance a few frames, and move the bone along the 2 axes so that it lines up with the grip. You can even start to rotate it after its exiting the grip. There is no need for it to follow the grip exactly, because this wont even happen in real life. Just move it approximately and you should get great results.


How do I remove subdivision loops? I am trying to manipulate a cube into a car; and I was able to make edge loops by pressing  Ctrl+R. However, when I am trying to make a wheel well, I want to make new subdivision loops to do that; yet the old ones are getting in they way.

How do I remove subdivision loops so that I can manipulate my object without old loops effecting the new ones?

Or basically, the opposite of what Ctrl+R does?

You can select them with AltRMB (or AltShiftRMB to keep the existing selection), and then delete them with Delete > Edge loops, or DeleteG if you want to take advantage of menu hotkeys.

If you have many loops which you want to select, but don't want to click on each one, you can use Multi select loops, either from 3D view > Header > Select > Edge loops, or Space> Multi select loops.


What does it mean when I click "Bake" and it says "no active UV layer found in object"? I am UVmapping the plane and making a new image for the UV map. Afterwards I put it in the node. After I click Bake, it says "no active UV layer found".
What I can do to solve this problem?

Go to the node editor. ⇧ Shift+A to add image texture. Select your image. (No need to connect the node)... now try to bake and it should work. I'm not on blender at the moment but off the top of my head I believe the steps should work....


How to map procedural bricks on a Pyramid Part II I created a pyramid from a default cube and applied uv unwrap > cube projection. That works great for a flat pyramid, but in the setup shown below, it gives distortion on the bottom and inner faces:

If I switch the Texture Coordinate from "UV" to "Object" I get a much better result, but then I have the problem of one face being horizontal bricks and one being vertical. This was originally solved by using cube project and UV but then, as I said, the inside and bottoms get distorted.

The question is how do I get a workable, procedural brick texture that matches up on all surfaces? And the goal is to have the main face of the pyramid all display horizontal bricks. Guidance greatly appreciated!

One method: Go to UV editor, and mark proper seams, then orient each face to show the bricks lined up the way you want, while using UV texture coordinates.


why the background image I add not show in render? blender 2.81
I press shift+a to add image - background, and then go to render image, and the background image does not show up in the render result.

There's a great addon exactly for this.

Go to Preferences > Addons  and search for Images as Planes addon.
Check it to enable it.

Then you can easily add a new image that will appear in your render.
Add > Image > Images as Planes

Note:
The way you described is for reference images only - thy're not supposed to be visible in a render.


Can I use my ubuntu server without a gfx card to render? Can I use my ubuntu server without a gfx card to render?
I already got blender installed and when I tried to render a test file (cpu/cycles) I get multiple errors, file itself is ok, it renders fine on my laptop. So before I go bughunting it might be good to get an answer on my question :)

Much appreciated.

If you have packaged your external assets with your .blend file, such that when referencing these assets you're looking for UV map images in, say, "//Assets/UVMaps/", you should be able to simply use the command line to render.  The trick is to use the -b (batch) switch:

blender -b [file].blend

which will give you headless (no GUI) operation.  Next up are a few command line options:

-S : select the scene to be rendered
-a : render the full animation (only applicable if you're doing an animation)
-f : render a specific frame (should not be used with -a)
-F : the output format to utilize (this may already be set up in your .blend)
-o : save the rendered output to a specific file (not needed if you've already set this up in your .blend)

For a single frame of an animation, your command line may look like this:

blender -b [file].blend -S [scene] -f [frame number] -F PNG -o frame_######.png

For the full animation, your command line may look like this, assuming you've already set the format and output parameters in the .blend file:

blender -b [file].blend -S [scene] -a

Note that if your .blend has only one scene, or if you have saved your .blend such that the active scene is the one you wish to have rendered, -S is optional.

If you're still getting errors, to better diagnose what's going on I know that I for one will need to see what the actual error log is.


problem with the roll of camera tracking an object I created an camera following a path and tracking an object and I don't understand why this camera is rotating around his z-axis (for example between frame 50 and frame 100 ).
How can I solve this problem?
Thank you.

my file is dowloading here https://ufile.io/86d2b

The Trackto constraint defines what axis points towards the target and which axis is considered "up". As the camera passes under the target, moving from being on one side to being on the other, the camera is being flipped to maintain the correct "up" orientation.

The solution is to change the constraint to use local space, this will change the initial orientation so you will also want to change the up axis to X


What's wrong with the cube projection? I had to use it for the first time (using UV's for more than a year). Well, I messed it up. Please help.

If you tried to rotate the coordinates of object's texture space and box mapping stopped working, that's because of how the box mapping works. It uses normals and when you rotate the object's texture space, the normals remain in the same orientation. To solve that you need to do box mapping with nodes instead of the function that comes with the Image node because it cannot take normal orientation into account when you rotate object's texture space. I have discussed this with someone on Blenderartists.org forums some time ago and came up with this to solve the issue:

You might want to put all those nodes into a group probably.
Here is the .blend file to play around:


Animate the peeling of top sealed packaging I'm working on my first blender project for a product concept. It's comprised of a cup and seal (both seperate objects), of which I want to give the top seal an animation of being pealed off.

The best comparison would probably be instant noodles, where you remove this seal by pulling. I tried using the simple deformation and hook modifiers, without the desired effect.
I've attached pictures of the viewport and mesh.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Well, hook is right way. But, you need to add some Cloth Simulation.

To make cloth appeal like a plastic seal, I reduce mass, add more Viscosity and add more bending stiffness:

Next, you need to "Pin" vertexes, that are glued to top of a cup. Also, vertexes (that are moving by hook) must be pined. I made it from edit mode, but display in weight paint for appeal:

Pinned group in "Shape" panel in Cloth settings:

And here is a tricky part. You should unpin vertexes during animation. I use Vertex Weight Proximity modifier for this.

Add 2 planes: one hover "hooked" vertexes, and one for glued:

Last one will move and free pinned vertexes:

Combine two planes into one object using Boolean modifier with Union type. and use result in Vertex Weight Proximity modifier. Setup modifier like this. Note, that the Lowest value more than Highest and distance by geometry.

Here the modifier stack. Note, that Hook is before Cloth and Vertex Weight Proximity before Hook.

Also, I added smooth and solidify.


How to use normal displacement instead of vector displacement in shader editor (2.8) I am creating a material in 2.8, and am using real displacement in the shader, but how do I use normal displacement, rather than vector? The reason is that when I use a black/white heightmap,  the geometry displaces in a single direction, not in the direction of the geometry's faces.

Figured it out: Use heightmap for the height value in a displacement node, use the output of the displacement node as displacement.