Part of my drawing disappears depending on perspective/zoom I installed Blender yesterday, so I'm still trying to figure things out. I'm working on a 2D/3D hybrid animation thing with grease pencil, but one of my drawings (the lollipop) clips/disappears depending on perspective/zoom. The lollipop is supposed to be in front of the box, so I'm not sure why this is happening?

Here are some possibilities;

As a quick fix you could try and set the Candy object strokes setting to 3D Location if it's not already. By default they're set to 2D Layers and this is generally the more useful setting but 3D might resolve your issue here. (Object Data properties - Strokes - Stroke Depth Order)

I would guess that the issue is because your object is set to 2D Layers and has items in the foreground and background/different planes. Blender can struggle calculating whether you want the image as a foreground or background image if you have items in different places, especially if the settings are set to 2D Layers mode (as above). Try separating each drawing on a different visual plane into their own objects (to separate tab into edit mode, use the  B key to border select the drawing, then  P to separate).

Sometimes if you try and draw in the wrong orientation (object set to draw on front and you try and draw on the side) blender adds a nasty invisible line through it which confuses it's layering. ↹ Tab into Edit Mode, use  A to select all, all the vertices should be highlighted now, You might see a line that shouldn't be there. Deleting it should resolve layering problems.


How to bake dynamic paint surfaces headlessly? I have had a look at Baking smoke on a headless machine, however, I cannot figure out my way from there to bake dynamic paint on a headless machine. This is what I have come up with by now:

import bpy

for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
    for object in scene.objects:
        for modifier in object.modifiers:
            if modifier.type == 'DYNAMIC_PAINT':
                override = {'scene': scene, 'object': object}
                bpy.ops.dpaint.bake(override)
                break

However, I get:

PyContext 'window' not found
PyContext 'window' not found
PyContext 'window' not found
Error: Bake failed: invalid canvas
Error: Bake failed: invalid canvas

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/horazont/baker.py", line 8, in <module>
    bpy.ops.dpaint.bake(override)
  File "/usr/share/blender/2.69/scripts/modules/bpy/ops.py", line 186, in __call__
    ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), C_dict, kw, C_exec, C_undo)
RuntimeError: Error: Bake failed: invalid canvas

Blender quit

Which parameters do I have to pass to the operator?

import bpy

obj=bpy.data.objects['Cube']
modifier=obj.modifiers['Dynamic Paint']
canvas_surface=modifier.canvas_settings.canvas_surfaces['Surface']
point_cache=canvas_surface.point_cache

context={}
context['blend_data']=bpy.data
context['scene']=bpy.data.scenes['Scene']
context['active_object']=obj
context['point_cache']=point_cache

bpy.ops.ptcache.bake(context,bake=True)

Objects can be both a brush and a canvas. The baking is done by the surfaces of the canvas. So an additional iteration is necessary.

#...
for modifier in obj.modifiers:
    if modifier.type=='DYNAMIC_PAINT':
        #additional iteration
        for canvas_surface in modifier.canvas_settings.canvas_surfaces:
             context['active_object']=obj
             context['point_cache']=canvas_surface.point_cache
             bpy.ops.ptcache.bake(context,bake=True)


Creation parameters menu greyed out When adding a UV Sphere mesh in Blender 2.8, the creation parameters menu on the bottom left of the attached image for this UV Sphere seems to be greyed out. Any idea why this might be? Thanks.

It should be an option in the preferences (menu 'edit' and 'preferences').

Check global undo:


How to apply subdivision surface to this geometry? I have this simple geometry (I'm using also a mirror modifier) and I want to apply a subdivision modifier. When I add it the geometry gets all messy. I added some loop cuts but the result is not clean. The issue is in the zone where I made a bevel. What am I missing here?

If you don't want to use Bevel modifier then change ngonal face of your mesh to quads, like in the image below. Then you won't have any troubles with subdivision.


Particle system not linking particles at the object origin I'm attempting to make a cherry tree in blender, but the particle system displays all of the cherry blossoms inside the branch despite their object origin being on the very tip of the stem. How do I get the particle system to start rendering it from the stem instead of the middle of the flower?

Okay it looks like the main problem is actually pretty simple. The particle system is set to render from the collection FlowerBunch1, but it looks like Bunch1 is the collection you've been working on. So changing that fixed the worst of the problem. (You can also check Pick Random so it randomly selects a blossom in the collection instead of cycling sequentially)

As an aside, the collections listed with an F (including FlowerBunch1) have a fake user (see also: term in 2.79 manual) keeping them in the blend file, even though they aren't in the scene anymore. If you want to remove these entirely (and you're sure they aren't needed or referenced elsewhere), you can switch the outliner to show the blend file, then right click the collection to delete it from the file.

Or alternatively the fake user can be set/removed in the ID Data sub-menu and the collection added back in with Link to Scene.

At this point the blossoms should be mostly connected correctly. Just make sure to check that all the objects in the collection have their origin where you want it to connect to the branch. The bent blossom Circle.006 is a touch off, and the large bunch object Circle.004 is a little disconnected. It may need to be modified to have the stems come together closer to its origin, so they all appear connected to the branch.

And this goes a bit beyond the scope of your question, but the rotation of the blossoms is also making it hard to tell sometimes where it's connecting. Here's a couple suggestions as a starting point, but do whatever will get the results you're looking for:

Rotating the blossoms to be aligned with the X axis allows the particle system to know which way the blossom is facing

Orienting the particles to the branch's normal so it points outward. Using a bit less random rotation, but with more random phase (spin).

Note: To keep it simple, I removed the bunch (and the empty) from the collection Bunch1 for these examples, so that only the single blossoms would be added to the tree.


why is my t-shirt doesn't sharpen? Hi, I used subsurface modifier, and as you can see the end of the shirt, everything is sharp except for the front ones. I just tried everything to make them sharp instead of being curved. I don't know what is wrong..

[duplicate] You have bad normals all over the place, that's what those odd dark shadings are.  Select all verts in edit mode, control n to recalculate normals.


In 2.92 how do I show the 3D cursor in 2D drawing mode? I am trying to rotate a stroke object in 3D space, but I need to rotate at the 3D cursor.  In 2D mode, you never see the 3D cursor, and clicking the 'cursor' Icon doesn't display anything. I can see the location of the 3D cursor is changing in the View details, but I can't see it anywhere in any view.
To reproduce start with a new 2D Drawing, then rotate the view with the number pad and 4,6,8 or 2.
Is there a way to turn the cursor back on???

You need to go to Viewport Overlays > 3D Cursor


Get rotation of object without decimals? import bge
from bge import logic

from bge import logic
cont = logic.getCurrentController()
obj = cont.owner
rotation = obj.worldOrientation.to_euler()
print(rotation.x)
print(rotation.y)
print(rotation.z)

Here's my code (above), which works fine, but the console prints really long digits. I am trying to get an object to rotate according to another object's rotation by taking the objects rotation, comparing it to the other, and adding/subtraction to x, y, or z. The problem I have is that the rotations have decimals when they aren't supposed to (, or atleast I think). The object has 0, 0, 0 as its rotation when I go to the object panel, but if I add 10 degrees to z, the script will print a long number (10.01231234923) when I added 10 and only 10. The object is static. In other words, I dont need the small and specific value. How can I have it only print the whole number, i.e. without decimals? Thanks.

Blender uses radians natively for rotation.  You see degrees in the panels because the default setting for Units under Scene properties is to show degrees.

There are only 2Pi radians in 360 degrees, hence 10 radians is more than a revolution. To add 10 degrees to a rotation use the radians(degrees) method.  eg rot += radians(10)

You can use formatting when printing to reduce the amount of decimal places. %.0f prints a float (decimal) type with no decimal places.  %5.2f is print a float in a 5 digit field with 2 decimal places.

import bge
from bge import logic
from math import degrees

cont = logic.getCurrentController()
obj = cont.owner
rotation = obj.worldOrientation.to_euler()

print("%.0f" % degrees(rotation.x))
print("%.0f" % degrees(rotation.y))
print("%.0f" % degrees(rotation.z))


stop render from console? What I'm doing:
Running a script from the Scripting workspace in Blender UI.

What the script does:
There is a main 'for loop' that append objects one by one from another .blend file and render them individually.

What's my issue:
Sometimes I want to stop a script before it end because I'm not happy with the renders. When a script is running you can't access Blender UI (it's basically frozen), therefore I have two options to stop it. Shutting down Blender or doing CTRL+C in the System Console. Shutting down Blender is annoying, and CTRL+C doesn't work when Blender is currently rendering (<- this is important!).

What I want to be able to do:
I want to find a way to stop Blender from rendering in order to access Blender UI faster and make my adjustments before starting the script again.

Typical code line that handle my renders:

bpy.ops.render.render()

I'm not going to post any more code than that, the rest is irrelevant. If you are after the bounty just create a basic scene and render it from a script with the line above and see for yourself how the UI freeze and you can't do anything to stop the render.

To my knowledge there isn't really a good way to do this from a single Blender process. But I will give a few suggestions how it can be done.

Option 1: Render in a subprocess

This can be done using render farm or net rendering software. The idea is that your master will then create the scene that needs to be rendered, save the scene to disk and use python to start a sub process to do the actual rendering.

Option 2: Construct the scene in a subprocess

A variant of the previous version where the master will create a python script with how to construct the scene and perform the rendering. You can then start blender as a subprocess to the the scene constructing + actual rendering. The subprocess can be stopped by python script.

Option 3: Sample Batch Rendering

With sample batch rendering you will render a number of samples. (15 for example) and after 15 samples when you want to continue you offset the seed and render the next 15 samples. and do that until all the samples have been rendered. During the rendering you can combine the renders using the compositor, python script or external image tool. You could also do that from a master blender process.

The open movie spring was rendered this way so at an early stage of rendering you could check if all textures could be found.


call exporter with python I see that it's possible to call a basic exporter, like fbx, with a command like:

bpy.ops.export_scene.fbx(...)

But, what if I want to use any of the other exporting format like STL, PLY, or Babylon? Is there a way call these other exporters? Or any other exporters that could be defined in an addon?

A way to call any exporters by just specifying the name of the addon.

Thanks

I actually found a way to track all operations by typing

bpy.app.debug_wm = True

in the script window.

From this, you see too much information, but you can see the actually operations.

To export with

Babylon.js: bpy.ops.scene.babylon(filepath="test.babylon")
STL: bpy.ops.export_mesh.stl(filepath="untitled.stl")

Hope this will help other people.


How to create a graph(ANN) with blender 2.9+ I want create a graph, or similar, like this:

How to do this with geometry nodes(a procedural method) and/or with modifier?

Blockquote

I used Animation nodes to do something like this
my result:

first of all this is not a fast way to do this so I unchecked Always and set it to change if AN graph changed

so I made a grid to have some points and used noise and offset matrix nodes like this

then using those matrix transforms instance and placed spheres

so now its time for splines between them
there is a node(find close point) which gets a list of points and makes some edges based on distance or amount of edges you like to make for each point
but the problem is in your picture there is no intersected lines so we have to remove them by masking that edge list I learned this here
so for finding those intersected lines we need some values like starting and end points of each line I also got length just in case(later I use it for deleting the longer edge for each two intersecting edges not the little one)

properties we need to do this:

maybe there is a better solution (rather than two nested for loops) but I looped through lines and using this method found intersected lines and then changed corresponding index in result array to False so it wont be in edge list connected to spline making nodes
here is the code:
def orientation(p1, p2, p3):

    # to find the orientation of
    # an ordered triplet (p1,p2,p3)
    # function returns the following values:
    # 0 : Colinear points
    # 1 : Clockwise points
    # 2 : Counterclockwise
    val = (float(p2.y - p1.y) * (p3.x - p2.x)) - (float(p2.x - p1.x) * (p3.y - p2.y))
    if (val > 0):

        # Clockwise orientation
        return 1
    elif (val < 0):

        # Counterclockwise orientation
        return 2
    else:

        # Colinear orientation
        return 0

def doIntersect(p1,q1,p2,q2):

    # Find the 4 orientations required for
    # the general and special cases
    o1 = orientation(p1, q1, p2)
    o2 = orientation(p1, q1, q2)
    o3 = orientation(p2, q2, p1)
    o4 = orientation(p2, q2, q1)

    if (o1*o2*o3*o4 == 0 ):
        return False

    if ((o1 != o2) and (o3 != o4)):
        return True

    return False

results=[True]*edge_size

for i in range (edge_size):
    for j in range (edge_size):
        if  i == j :
           break

        if (results[i]==False):
            break

        if(doIntersect(starts[i],ends[i],starts[j],ends[j])):
            if (lenghts[i]>lenghts[j]):
                results[i] = False
            else:
                results[j] = False


Blender does not recognize imagemagick to run Bligify I'm trying to run the Bligify extension, but he asked me to install gifsicle and imagemagik, I installed both using linux commands

apt-get install gifsicle
apt-get install imagemagick

but still, blender doesn't recognize imagemagik, I installed it using the debian app store, but it still doesn't work, I don't know what else to do.

Thank you for your help!

Edit ~/.config/blender/*/scripts/addons/bligify/__init__.py file, search for default_magick_path = "" variable and set your value to $ which convert output (in my system, the output is /usr/bin/convert).


Prodecural ring texture iam trying to make a procedural ring texture animation, i have managed to make the ring texture but the animation is not infinite. I use the mapping scale values but the textures just scales. Do you have any idea for different set up?

Here is an image of my node set up:

After you answer in the comments, here's a simple setup:

The square root of the dot product is the distance to the center (in this case, the distance to an empty object).
Adding some value to it before the module operation will just make the colors to cycle.
Scaling the rings loop is also possible by multiplying the distance with some other value, before the add node. Values less than 1 will produce wider rings, and values bigger than 1, thinner rings.


Rope modelling issue - curve modifier breaks up if object moved from origin I have succesfully created a rope object using the screw and curve modifiers. But when I move the object away from the origin the path gets more distorted the further I move it away.

The only way I've been able to fix it is to apply both modifiers. This leaves me with no ability to modify the object path or rope strand dimensions easily. See below for examples. You can see the underlying sine curve

If you move the object away from the curve, on some axis, it may mess up the array, so put the origin of the curve at its beginning point, put the object at the same position, give it the Array and the Curve modifiers, and if you want your object to be somewhere else, select BOTH the object and the curve. As Metaphor said, to make it easier you can parent the curve to the object.


How do you create a fluffy cloud in blender 2.82? I'm trying to create an image similar to this. Just a simple fluffy cloud.

But I'm struggling to find any tutorials for this.

I'm not sure that this is a complete answer, but maybe what I found will help you. I also wanted to make such clouds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPAYX8z9i8M Creating Procedural Volumetric Clouds with Blender Eevee (48:35)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhMQN4vVMIU Create Procedural Clouds Fast (Blender Tutorial) (3:12)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJMol3CLHEE How To Make Clouds in Blender - Procedural Volumetrics (19:47)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb1jQ9UsTAw How to Make Volumetric Clouds In Blender (2.83) (8:15)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br_ldLJPtxU Volumetric clouds in EEVEE - Blender 2.8 [ Beginners ] (12:07)
For water you can use Ocean Modifier and shader with "Glass BSDF" to Surface output with "Volume Absorbtion" to Volume output
Edited:
I found this in reccomendations. He creating clouds from metaballs and then adding displacement with voronoi texture and other textures, using "Principlied Volume" for volume absorbtion material.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QxCa-bsbK0 Creating Fluffy Clouds in Blender (10:48)


Seeing holes in mesh while in texture mode I have just started teaching myself 3D modeling so that I can start making some simple 3D games in Unity. I am already familiar enough with code to start making things, but I lacked the 3D model assets. I been teaching myself Blender and created some very simple models. The problem I am finding is that I get what appears to be holes in the mesh. For example if I put the model into Texture mode I see what looks like a Face that is see through or another color. If I start moving Vertices in Edit mode I can make the hole disappear.

Just wondering what I might be doing wrong to cause this problem. I know you are suppose to try and keep all faces quads so that is what I continue to do.   Basically all I am doing right now is making a flat model in a Top Ortho view and then extruding to add a 3rd dimension to the model. Am I doing things wrong? Just making a simple model of a ghost yet I somehow have this other section that appears to be a different color when viewed in texture mode.

Here is the same model in Solid Shading mode

Thank you in advance for any help with this.

I think there mainly are two problems in your mesh.

Face normals are inverted.
You are using material node which is invalid to use by current render engine.

To fix them, you can switch to Edit Mode, then CtrlN to re-calculate normals, then deal with the material node as you wish.


Help replicating a material I'm trying to replicate this material in Cycles (the outer shell of the cell)

I think it's a principled shader with 0.94 transmission and 1.0 IOR, and a bump map, but when I use this parameters in Cycles this is what I get

My question is, in the example material, the surface has some roughness that is missing in my material, mine is shinier.  Could it be an effect of the lighting setup?  I would like to achieve this "silk" appearance of the reference material without sacrificing transparency.

Thank you!

IMO it might be as simple as a Glossy shader mixed to a Transparent shader:

I also added a little roughness control, as your reference looks like it has some kind of noise.


how can i calculate mass of broken glass when I do calculate mass of broken glass it only sets for one cell not for all so please how can i calculate mass for all the cells of object?

Select all the pieces, then go to the left side panel(t)>Physics>Calculate Mass>Glass (Broken), then select Copy from Active.


Import .obj with vertices' UV specified into Cycles? I have (1) a .obj file in which I specified the UV coordinates for each vertex, (2) a .mtl file pointing to a diffuse texture map, and (3) the said texture map.

When I import the .obj into Blender Internal, the object is correctly and automatically textured. However, when I import it into Cycles, there is no texture. This post seems to suggest I need to manually set the texture, which is actually fine for me.

What confuses me is, if I am to manually set the texture, how can I use the UV already specified in the .obj file instead of doing another UV unwrapping?

When you imported the .obj file, it should have also imported the UV Map that was stored within it. You can verify this under the mesh tab of the properties panel. With the object selected, go to the properties panel (bottom right by default) and click on the mesh tab (looks like a triangle made up of three dots joined by lines).

If you scroll down to UV Maps, you can see all UV Maps applicable to your object. If you have just imported your object and done nothing else, you should see one entry, being the UV Map that you imported along with your object.

Cycles will use that UV Map by default for any image texture in any material that you assign to the object. If you have more than one UV Map on an object you can select the relevant UV Map using the UV Map node, but you should not need to do this unless you have created a second UV Map.


How to glue one selected face of a mesh precisely to a selected face on another mesh? I found some sort of answer to the question here, but did not understand the procedure at all. May be some on can help me understand it.

I have one mesh with a face of it selected and I want to "glue" that face to a selected face on a different mesh. For example, suppose two cubes are facing each other and I want to glue the faces that are facing each other to one another, or suppose I am modeling a starship. The wings are one mesh, and the body is another mesh. Now I want to connect the body and the wings  permanently at a very specific place on each. I thought to choose the faces on the wing mesh and on the body mesh that should be glued together and then blender glues them.

Something like this.

I think you need to use 'Snap to face' to place object, and then you could join them into single mesh if you wish.


how to combine blender internal and cycles? How can we combine the two render engines to make one scene affect the other? Especially, since cycles doesn't do halos, how can we make it so that the halos created with the internal, enlighten a scene in cycles? For instance, if we created a bunch of firefiles rendered with the internal and have to make it so that a room rendered with cycles have to be enlightened with the fireflies, how do we achieve it?

You'll have to render every image two times: one in Internal and one in Cycles, and then combine them in the compositor, using transparency instead of sky for the overlay images (and series of PNG's as format).


Why blender keeps crashing while rendering this simple animation? I'm running blender on Windows, and every time I try to render the animation to an .mp4 H264 video with audio blender crashes between the frames 300-400. This video has about 16,000 frames. Each frame takes about 4 seconds to render
By reading on other forums I found that sometimes the problem is that blender runs out of memory but I think this is no the case because blender is always using about 450MB of ram in my 8GB computer.
Here are my specs and some of the rendering settings:

Intel Core i7 2.4GHz

8 GB Ram

Windows 10

Shading (Textures, Shadows, Ray Tracing, etc...) - All disabled

Antialiasing 8x

Render size: 1920 x 1080 at 30fps

Threads: Auto (4)

Tile size: (Tested with both 64 and 512)

Video codec: MPEG-4 H.264

Audio codec: AAC at 192 bps
I haven't modified any other performance settings

The scene is a music video done with animated cubes with GxAV and a plane with a particle emitter with 10,000 billboard particles
Is there a way to reliable render this with blender?

I found the solution, that is to render with console only and limit the number of threads to 2 instead of auto with the command:

blender -b "file name.blend" -a -t 2


Blender 2.8 status bar I am writing with the help of Google translator.
 In the blender 2.8, the status bar went down (there is information about layers and vertices). How to raise the whole thing up? Is there any addon or customization?

Append to the top bar.

The top bar in blender 2.8x is on the top, and the status bar is on the bottom.  The status bar can be toggled on and off with python.

bpy.context.screen.show_statusbar = False # off

AFAIK there is no way to move statusbar to top using python.  Would need to alter blender's source code.

As a workaround, the statistics previously in 2.79 displayed on info header (often at top of screen) are now in the status bar at bottom of screen.

Run the script below to append scene statistics to the top bar.

import bpy

def draw(self, context):
    scene = context.scene
    vl = context.view_layer
    self.layout.label(text=scene.statistics(vl))

def register():
    bpy.types.TOPBAR_HT_upper_bar.append(draw)

def unregister():
    bpy.types.TOPBAR_HT_upper_bar.remove(draw)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Alternatively could prepend the whole statusbar to the top bar, but this doesn't work as expected.

import bpy

bpy.types.TOPBAR_HT_upper_bar.prepend(bpy.types.STATUSBAR_HT_header.draw)

Change the theme colors of the topbar header text

To run automatically for all blend files, save the script, with a .py extension, eg topbar_stats.py in your 2.80/scripts/startup folder, or for on a blend by blend basis: save in blend file, making sure once again the name has a .py extension,  and check the register checkbox.


Animate wireframe slider Blender 2.8 Is it possible to animate the wireframe slider in the viewport overlays using Python?

Not with keyframes or drivers

The overlay is a member of the 3d view space. bpy.types.SpaceView3D  Each property in blender has an is_animatable property, declaring if it can be animated.  Visually if you right click and there is no add driver or insert keyframes

Step thru this in the python console where C = bpy.context

Find which area is the 3d view

>>> for i, a in enumerate(C.screen.areas):
...     i, a.type
...
(0, 'PROPERTIES')
(1, 'CONSOLE')
(2, 'VIEW_3D')
(3, 'TEXT_EDITOR')

>>> a = C.screen.areas[2]

Its 3d view space will be the active one

>>> s = a.spaces.active

And here is the overlay wireframe threshold

>>> s.overlay.wireframe_threshold
0.0

Let's see if the property def says it is animatable.

>>> p = s.overlay.bl_rna.properties['wireframe_threshold']
>>> p.is_animatable
False

Confirmed ... Nope.

There are some dodgy ways this could be achieved, but will wait for further details on animation required to elaborate.


My whole scene is not being rendered I've googled and tried a lot, like the common answer changing the ''Camera Clipping End'' the rendered version changes each time depending on the camera view but nothing seems to be working, I'm quite new to Blender

What are your "Clipping start" and "Clipping end" settings, the "Clipping start" option can too be too low, but you could also try setting the "Clipping end" option really high, because your scene could be scaled up, so what you think is a couple of meters actually could be hundreds of meters.
These settings are second to the top in the n menu


How can I make lens and prism simulations in Blender Game Engine for optics experiments? I am very new to Blender and I'm trying to use the BGE to simulate some interactive optics experiments. I need to model a lens which is made up of a definite refractive index and of a desired focal length. The prism too should be of a definite refractive index. I am able to model the lens and the prism in Cycles Render but to make the experiment interactive I need to model them in the BGE, but I do not find the same material options in the Blender Game Materials panel. How do I proceed ahead?

As of now I do not need the dispersion, I only need the refraction to form images (virtual images or real images) on a screen.

Game engines are vastly different to rendering engines. Rendering engines are optimized for accuracy, game engines for speed.
Caustics (refraction) is something that is incredibly computationally expensive. It's only in the last decade that it is possible to do it on a home computer, and even then it is slow.

Do my knowledge, not a single commercially or freely available game engine supports real-time caustics accurate enough to be used as a demonstration.
Rendering out preset movies and using buttons to switch between them can be done really easily....

That said, with some creative coding, there is no reason it can't be faked really well, but you'd have to be really heavily into your math for that.


Blender can't find GPU on Quadro 4000 and Quadro 2000M I've spent several days trying to figure out why Blender can't find my GPU in both of my workstations. On one, I have Quadro 4000. On the other, is Quadro 2000M.

One year ago I was able to install a special CUDA build from Graphic all and that version found my GPU for some reason. That version is now deleted from my PC, but none of the official builds of Blender show my GPU which is totally weird because there is nothing wrong with my hardware.
It feels such a waste of time digging for secondary builds on Graphic all when I know my hardware deserves better and I simply cannot understand why Blender refuses to find my perfectly fine equipment. (HP Z Workstation 420) plus another Z workstation laptop, on none of them finds Blender my GPU but Blender works fine on my CPU.

I have the latest Nvidia Quadro drivers for my graphic cards plus CUDA toolkit installed and all of this is perfectly healthy and running outside of Blender. Blender simply cannot see my existing CUDA stuff, visible in Nvidia Control panel.

My GPUs are not visible in ANY build of Blender (2.79 Official Stable Newest, 2.8 Official) I've installed so far, as I mentioned only was visible/usable (the GPU) in that single rare GraphicAll one (build) which I can't even find anymore. Forgot what to search/Google for.

Any tips would be super amazing.
Thanks

(Update: I was able to install 2.79b and it finds my GPU but it would still be nice to be able to use GPU on 2.8 which is still Mission Impossible for me) :/
// Daniel

The Quadro 4000 supports CUDA compute capability v2.0 as seen here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Quadro#Quadro

Blender 2.79 supports NVIDIA cards with CUDA compute capability v2.0-v6.1 as seen here
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.79/render/cycles/gpu_rendering.html#cuda

Blender 2.8 supports NVIDIA cards with CUDA compute capability v3.0 onwards as seen here
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.80/render/cycles/gpu_rendering.html#nvidia-cuda

I believe the latest CUDA toolkit to still include support for the Quadro 4000 is v8.0 GA2 which can be found here
https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit-archive
or here https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-80-ga2-download-archive


Why my mesh turns black? I'm new here.

My problem is.... my mesh turns black, I don't know why also when I create a new object like a cube it turns black as well, I recalculated the normals and nothing happened, please help me?

What can I do for solving my problem?

Thanks for your help

Screenshot

My file

Make sure that the light is set in the correct direction.

Also, you are working in texture mode, switching to solid mode might be easier to work the model until you are ready to add a texture to it.


Render queue, more layers? I'm using particles to create letters (on Cycles), but there's a little problem: I have 15 separate letters, that are geometry, every single one have two particle system, so with those I have 30 layers already (I didn't have created every single one for now) plus the light layers and another important objects..

The thing is Blender is only able to keep 20 layers but I'll need at least 40 layers, so I can properly put everything on its place. Maybe I can just open two files and it'll be the solution but still there's the problem that I need to render 15 renders (because after that I'll change the duration of each one in After Effects) and 15 more because I need the render with different textures...

So, it's a big problem now, I may be able to solve it with two separate files, but how do I render more than just one item? I mean, can I make a render queue attached to a layer in Blender? If not, I'll just have to manually modify the 15 particles with different speeds and timing...

Can you not assign different materials to the different particle systems (Mat 1 and Mat 2) each with a Pass ID, and then assign an Object ID (Letter A, Letter B, etc) to each geometry mesh, and then do one render and separate everything in Compositing? You could then pipe each combination into a File Output node OR you could render to MultiLayer EXR frame files and handle the layer separations in After Effects.


Why mirror modifier material not work I have a mirror modifier and applied material on it. Why i cant see same material on the other side.

Any suggestion or help. Thanks

I assume because the mirrored mesh doesn't really have vertex position in the memory(just fake), something that the generated node needs. you can see the only green side of the mirror to left.

but you can use the mapping node and move it.

UPDATE: just for sake of testing I came up with something. there's no real reason of why I did what I did, just experimented.
you can adjust the amount of the mirrored part by shrinking or fattening the "bell" shape in the vector curves node.


Generate vertex groups from objects I have multiple mesh objects I'd like to combine into a single object. However, I'd also like to retain the name of these objects as vertex groups, and assign those objects to those vertex groups. Does blender feature a way of automatically doing this when joining objects? Or even one-click generate a vertex group for a singular object from its object name?

Give object A a vertex group named A. In edit mode, select all vertices and assign them to that group.
Same thing for object B with a group named B.
Then join A and B like normal. The vertex groups are preserved.

Script to do this automatically. Select the objects you want to join, make sure you're in Object mode, then run it from the text editor.
import bpy
assert bpy.context.mode == 'OBJECT'
for ob in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    if ob.type != 'MESH': continue
    vg = ob.vertex_groups.new(name=ob.name)
    vg.add(list(range(len(ob.data.vertices))), 1.0, 'REPLACE')
bpy.ops.object.join()


Normal maps are not baking I'm trying to bake a normal map from my high-poly meshes to my low-poly meshes, for the past couple of tries I've had the same result that is shown in the picture below

After about an hour of baking the map is empty of detail, there are only empty spots surrounded by blue. On the left hand side is my cage, in the middle my low-poly mesh and on the right, my high-poly mesh although with multiresolution modifier unapplied for now because my computer lags a bit when I have objects on 6 subdivisions.

I've tried multiple baking settings, remeshing the low- poly object, using cage, using a ray cast and nothing seems to work. I've had the same problem in my previous object but remeshing it fixed it, may it be caused due to the objects having multiple loose parts?

The gate, windlass and the rod above are all one object in my low-poly mesh, although in my high-poly mesh they are 4 different objects, one for vertical gate beams, one for horizontal gate beams, one for the windlass and one for the rod. I am selecting all 4 high-poly meshes and my low-poly mesh last.

I think I have found the answer in another thread. I don't have a link to it but people there proposed that the missing normal map sections are due to too high multiresolution. I have lowered the multiresolution from 6 to 4 and it has baked fast and nicely.


Seperate mesh into multiple ones I'm a developer that is doing a little mini VR game. I will buy all my assets since Im not a skilled artist. I bought a pistol on Unity Asset store.

Problem is the main mesh called G17 in the picture below contains both the Main body, the slide and the trigger, I need to seperate these 3 into 3 meshes. You can see that there are vertex vertex groups for Slide and trigger. Can I somehow use this to separate the mesh? I'm a complete noob at blender so please a step, by step, guide :D Thanks

update: Edit mode loooks like this, pressing ctrl+l does nothing as far as i can see

You can manually select the faces you want to separate (or entire continuous chunks with Ctrl+L) then break up the meshes by pressing P while still in Edit mode then choosing "Selected".


How to align mesh for Seamless Texture Baking? I'm trying to create a chainmail pattern in Cycles by creating interlinking chains, and then baking them using an Emission shader to generate a black and white image, to then use as a Bump Map and mask to generate a mail material and texture. I only modelled two chains and then used Arrays to make copys of them.

The problem though, is that I can't seem to align the Camera in a way that generates me a seamless texture.

As you can see, the result is not seamless and it's very obvious, so how can I align the camera perfectly that makes the baking a lot more easy.

Blend:

Two things to make it work.

1. Make your camera Orthographic
This will help you avoid distortion in corners, and will make it 'infinitely flat'.
It's like using an infinitely long lens.

2. Make the array 1:1 aspect ratio
Your chainmail array is ever so slightly taller-than-wide.
Move the rings a bit along the X axis, so they fit nicely.

Voilá. Seamless.

Notes
If you want the mail evenly-spaced, you'll have to adjust the whole array (I was just lazy).
I also moved the camera a bit, instead of moving the whole array.

Adjusted .blendfile is here


how do i store a value when using animation nodes? I am translating a list of objects but I only want the translation in the x,y,z plane to occur during frame one then after frame one the translation to happen only in the x,y plane.

Any help is appreciated.

I found a way to create the numbers that I needed. I created a line of vertices that were in the z range that I wanted, then made sure the vert count was equal to my particle count. I then iterated the vert locations through the loop and separated the z values and reinserted them into the translation data. Thank you for all the help and suggestions. They looked viable just a lot more complicated.


cell division to simulate cancer cells duplicating out of control I want to create a procedural animation of cells dividing and multiplying. I would like to use animation nodes and have 1 cell divide into 2 - then those divide, etc., etc. This is an example of what I'm trying to do.

I am new to animation nodes, but think that it should be possible with the loop subprogram.

Has anyone created anything like this?

Meta-balls work great for cells, look under add/meta-balls/balls.
Meta-balls animated looks like mitosis


Move bone to a certain location python I have a bone and two empties, how in edit mode I can move the head of the bone to the location of empty1 and the tip to the location of empty2 using python?

I'm trying the below script but it doesn't work as I want it to move to the empty location as highlighted below.

import bpy

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
obj = bpy.data.objects['metarig']
obj.select = True
bpy.context.scene.objects.active = obj
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
emp = bpy.data.objects['Empty']
for bone in obj.data.edit_bones:
    if bone.name == 'hips':
        bone.head = emp.location

My .blend file can be found here:

Calculate the local coordinates by applying the inverse matrix of the armature to the global coordinates.

# obj       the armature (scaled)
# emp       the empty in world space (no parent)

bone.head =  obj.matrix_world.inverted() * emp.location


How to make object transparent I have a added a cube and delete the top and bottom faces. And given plastic material. I have added a ico-sphere inside that cube and given emission light to it. I want the light should come out from the cube. I want to get the lantern effect. Image of lantern is attached. i want to achieve that effect. I have attach my blender file   to know what material i have use.

Use a translucent shader and mix it with your current shader.


Colt 1911 meshes are different colors Basically the meshes on my 1911 model are becoming different colors and I have no idea why. It doesn't really seem like a problem to me, but I'd like to know how to fix it if it can be fixed. I'm using Cycles and I've already recalculated and even tried flipping the normals but nothing worked. By the way this model is not complete(clearly).

This is probably because some parts of your model have a material and some parts don't. Though if they all do/ don't have a material then one thing you could do is manually set the viewport color for the model as seen in the screenshot.


UV mapping, unexpected faces use the texture I unwrapped a specific part of my item and made a texture image for it in Photoshop, but there is a couple of unexpected faces that catch that texture too in some were else in the item .

I thought maybe I selected them by mistake before and unwrapped them with that part, so I deleted all textures and materials and started unwrapping that part all over again, and I was pretty sure that I unwrapped that part exactly. Once I made a texture again for it, the same previous faces catch that texture too. I kept deleting textures and starting unwrapping all over again many times, but no change that random faces catch the other part texture. It drives me crazy I don't know what to do. How can I tell blender that I don't want those faces catch any texture?
I`m using blender 2.78

Thanks very much Sackadoo ... I found those UV maps and after I selected them I chose option weld from UVs menu .. The Textures and UV maps disappeared and those faces took the same material of it`s area which I wanted Since the beginning.


Where or how do you find the keyframes for properties in the Dope Sheet? I have some keyframes for the Radius of DoF on the camera. Let's say I want to change the interpolation on the value changing from Linear to Bezier or the other way around.

I know I have show only selected in the dope sheet, but otherwise it gets way too cluttered, and would take minutes just to find it, and I'm not sure if it is there.

How do I find the keyframes of properties so that I can edit them?

You can also filter by type, in this example I have turned off all dope sheet keyframes except camera:

To change interpolation of keyframes select the keyframe that you want the change to occur after, then press the T key.

However changing interpolation will not be apparent without showing the animation in the Graph or F-Curve editor.


Skinning rigged model - Fine adjustments in Weight Painting for twisted skin I made a very basic human body mesh and want to make my very first character animation with it. I rigged the model and when I made the rig the parent of the mesh I chose the option to apply automatic weights. When I move the head and legs in Pose Mode I am pretty happy with which parts of the Mesh are affected. But the arms are a desaster: I modelled them stretched out and when I try to bring them down in Pose Mode there is too much going on in the chest area, when I move the lower part of the arm the area around the "elbow" the "flesh/skin" is twisted; same is true for the hands and wrists. So I tried to adjust weights in Weight Painting Mode around these bones (and also tried to remove Faces from the Vertex Groups) but then I ended up getting this:

The problem I think is that I cannot subtract weight in small amounts, I can choose my brush to be just 10px but it will always be a very huge area (like a whole vertex) be selected while painting. Can that be more fine-tunded somehow? I ended up selecting my Mesh and applying weight from bones again. What can I do to not have twisted "flesh/skin" and to have the right (fine) amount of weight in the chest area influenced by the upper arm bones? This is my blend file.

You can subtract weight in small amounts, but it will still affect a large area, because the weight is per-vertex.

To change how much you add/subtract/etc., change the Strength slider in the left (T) panel.

As for exactly how much weight you need, I can't help you there. (:

(With your particular model, it's so low-poly I might just tweak the weights manually, from the Vertex Weights section in the right (N) panel.)


Is there a way to import .mx or .mxa files? A game called Forsaken (1998) has models in .mx and .mxa format. Although I'm not sure what's the difference between them, I'd like to know if there's some import script available for them.

I searched for md3 importing scripts before, I bet there should be some for mx too.

Now there is a at least partially implemented importer (prints a lot of stuff to the console) All you need to do is copy the script in the editor and
edit this (last) line before pressing the run button:

importMX("c:\\path\\avatar.mx", 'Avatar')

The first argument is the path to the file to import, second the object name in Blender.

import bpy
import mathutils
import struct

def read_n_items(file, n, func):
    for i in range(n):
        func(i, file)

def read_struct_from_file(file, fmt):
    return struct.unpack(fmt, file.read(struct.calcsize(fmt)))

def skip_string(file):
    s=''
    while True:
        c = struct.unpack('c', file.read(1))[0]
        s = s + c.decode("utf-8")
        if c == b'\x00':
            print(s)
            return

def importMX(filename, obj_name):
    verts=[]
    faces=[]
    with open(filename, 'rb') as file:
        prjx = read_struct_from_file(file, '8ch')
        print(prjx)
        num_texture_files = prjx[8]
        print(num_texture_files)
        while num_texture_files > 0:
            num_texture_files = num_texture_files - 1
            skip_string(file)
            groups = read_struct_from_file(file, 'h')[0]
            exec_lists = read_struct_from_file(file, 'I')[0]
            exec_type = read_struct_from_file(file, 'h')[0]
            vertices = read_struct_from_file(file, 'h')[0]
            #groups,exec_lists,exec_type,vertices = read_struct_from_file(file, 'hIhh')
        print( 'vertices=%d' % vertices )
        idx=0
        while idx < vertices:
            x,y,z,reserved,colour,specular,tu,tv = read_struct_from_file(file,'fffIIIII')
            print('%d %f %f %f' % (idx,x,y,z))
            verts.append((x,y,z))
            idx = idx + 1

        num_tex_groups = read_struct_from_file(file, 'h')[0]
        print(num_tex_groups)

        while num_tex_groups > 0:
            texture_type,start_vertex,num_vertices,texture_no,num_triangles = read_struct_from_file( file, 'hhhhh' )
            num_tex_groups = num_tex_groups - 1
            print( "tt=%d sv=%d nv=%d tno=%d tria=%d" % (texture_type,start_vertex,num_vertices,texture_no,num_triangles ))
            while num_triangles > 0:
                v0,v1,v2,pa = read_struct_from_file( file, 'hhhh' )
                nx,ny,nz = read_struct_from_file( file, 'fff' )
                print('%d,%d,%d %f %f %f' %  (v0,v1,v2,nx,ny,nz))
                num_triangles = num_triangles - 1
                faces.append((v0,v1,v2))
        print(verts)
        print(faces)
        mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new( obj_name )
        object = bpy.data.objects.new( obj_name, mesh)
        object.location = (0,0,0)
        bpy.context.scene.objects.link(object)
        mesh.from_pydata(verts,[],faces)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    importMX("c:\\path\\avatar.mx", 'Avatar')

Result:

avatar.mx

airmoble.mx

To get started you can extend on the following code, there is also an undocumented 8 byte "PRJX...." id at beginning of the file besides that the format seems to match.

See https://docs.python.org/3.4/library/struct.html for the format strings like: h=uint16 and I=uint32 etc.


How to rename an object's mesh data with Python? I know how to rename the transform node.

But I don't know how to access the object data node.

import bpy

obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
obj.name = "test"

A
What should I do?

Maybe you should consider to use interactive python console provided in Blender. With Ctrl+space, it will list all possible candidate complete word in current sentence. It will help you guess the desired command that you want. No need to ask at here and wait.

And the answer: object.data.shape_keys.key_blocks is a list of shape key for object.


How can I make some edges on my model sharper and others more rounded? I have an image explanation of what I want to achieve. Here it is:

Right now the whole edge is sharp. It is giving me a really hard time.
Also here is the model:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zvempvps0r4815j/glock_forum2.blend

Thanks in advance :)

Mean Crease

I think the function you are looking for is called Mean Crease. It makes sharper edges when you are using a Subsurface modifier for example. Here's how it's used:

If you want, once you have the edges selected in Edit mode, instead of manually adjusting the Mean Crease value as shown above, you can use the keyboard hotkeys for Mean Crease with the mouse:
SHIFTE -> drag the mouse


How to use CSV values to drive object scale? CONTEXT:

I am trying to create a 3D Data-Viz project that will take values from a CSV file and use certain values to drive the Z-scale of simple cubes that will stretch vertically as a value gets higher.  It would function similarly to this 3D-Viz asset from the Unity Asset Store, except instead of longitude and latitude, it would take custom tags assigned by hand: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/systems/globe-data-visualizer-80008

I have tried looking at a lot of SE questions, and Python/Blender API as well to try and reverse engineer some other approaches; some of the pages I have gone through:

https://docs.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_current/bpy.types.bpy_struct.html#bpy.types.bpy_struct.values

https://docs.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_current/bpy.types.GameProperty.html#bpy.types.GameProperty.name

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21265676/how-do-i-read-out-custom-properties-in-blender-with-python

How to read a csv file and use the values as x and y points in blender?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50137473/how-to-change-properties-of-objects-in-blender-with-python

MY EFFORT(S):

My CSV File has a format that fits like

08-S33,Grind,2018,1,118654,1015122,1168.864432
04-LSE200,Gear,2018,1,61,1798,339.2658509

My scene currently has a few simple primitives with names "Cube.001" and Cube.002"  I have given them Game Properties that have values that match the first column in my CSV  like '04-LSE200':

I have tried to write my own script that says:

import bpy, csv

fp = "E:\Data_Viz_Prototype\Data Files\Workcenter_DPPM.csv"

with open( fp ) as csvfile:
    rdr = csv.reader ( csvfile)
    for i, row in enumerate (rdr):
        if i == 0: continue #Skip colum titles
        if row[2:3] != 2018: continue #Skip any rows not from 2018
        if row[3:2] != 1: continue #Skip any rows not from January
        wc, dept, year, month, run, rej, dppm = row[:]

if bpy.data.objects["Cube.002"]['Work_Center'] == '04-LSE200':
    bpy.data.objects["Cube.002"].scale = (.5, .5, dppm)

However I get the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
KeyError: 'bpy_struct[key]: key "Work_Center" not found'

I have tried some of the following code in the console window to make sure I can talk to Game properties:

import bpy
bpy.ops.object.game_property_new(type='FLOAT', name="Test")

obj = bpy.data.objects["Cube.002"]
cube = obj.data
print(bpy.types.GameStringProperty.values(cube))

Which will create a new property upon compile, but returns an empty list "[]"

FINAL THOUGHTS:

I am very aware this could be an "X-Y Problem"; in which case I think I need some serious redirection.  I found this one SE question where they were trying to drive values from a CSV file using the node editor; maybe this is the correct approach but I don't even know how to start:

Animation nodes - Driving scale attribute from a CSV list to create a bar chart

My co-worker and I combined have a fair amount of experience in coding, game engines, and modeling; but neither of us is notably familiar with Blender.

It seems I was confusing "Game Properties" in the Game Editor and "Custom Properties" in the Properties Editor.  By moving my Game Property to a Custom Property, I was able to manipulate my cube through script.

My script had a handful of problems with it, distinctly: calling '.scale' instead of '.dimensions'.

My working code looks like this:

import bpy, csv

fp = "E:\Data_Viz_Prototype\Data Files\Workcenter_DPPM.csv"

obj = bpy.data.objects["Cube.002"]
cube = obj.data

with open( fp ) as csvfile:
    rdr = csv.reader ( csvfile)
    for i, row in enumerate (rdr):
        if i == 0: continue #Skip colum titles
        if row[2:3] != 2018: continue #Skip any rows not from 2018
        if row[3:2] != 1: continue #Skip any rows not from January
    wc, dept, year, month, run, rej, dppm = row[:]

if obj['Work_Center'] == '04-LSE200':
    obj.dimensions = (.5, .5, float(dppm))


How to get blooming effect in cycles without compositing How to achieve bloom effect for a emission material in cycles . I want to do it without compositing As shown in the picture there is an emission material (blue in color) Is there any way to achieve this without compositing?

As Jachym Michal says you can create a box with volumetric. A lighter solution is to fake the glowing with a Layer Weight/Facing node:

Create your object.
Create a sphere that contains your object (here displayed as wireframe) and give it a Subdivision Surface modifier to make it smooth.
Give it the following material, which is a mix between Emission (with the color of your cube) and Transparent, with the Layer Weight as Factor in the Mix Shader.

Of course you can increase the Emission' Strength. Also the node organization can be improved with a second Mix Shader to add more transparency, or you can control the Layer Weight with a ColorRamp, or add noise, etc... And you can scale the sphere on whatever axis you want if the object is a long one.


Scaling or Thinning Bones I have created a dragon mesh. Eventually, it will fly.

Right now, I am trying to add a bone to the mesh (near the "elbow" of the wing), but it is a huge piece of mesh and the armature bone becomes huge, too i.e. it doesn't fit inside the wing. Please see what I am trying to do below and how it currently looks. Note that I am new to Blender.

Maybe it isn't a problem if the bone sticks out; I don't know. In the end, when animating, can I hide the bones and only see the mesh? If so, there would be no problem for the bone size, I guess. Tried to look this up on the internet, but could not find exactly this issue addressed. Thank you in advance.

An Armature never shows up during a render. If it sticking out is annoying while modeling, you can choose between five options for its shape. To change, select the armature and go to the Properties panel > Skeleton tab > Display dropdown and choose. I would describe the five, but it would take a while, so I'll just say that I believe Stick is the smallest.

Note that the image is a cropped version of one belonging to chichige bobo in this YouTube video.

Lastly, just thought I'd add that Octahedral bones (what is currently displaying) do stretch out like in your third image, but only when using a Stretch To Constraint. You would not want to employ this for just basic rigging.


Rendering a region in solid viewport shading? Is it possible to render a region where it is rendered by cycles, but everything outside the render region is in solid viewport shading?

Use case is if I have multiple objects lined up one by one and I want to work on their materials. I would like to be able to see the objects in the viewport, but render region doesn't allow that in rendered viewport shading.

I am not asking how to render a region (CTRL+B). I already know how to do that.*

It looks like it's a bug, or missing feature, from what I could gather from this bug report: https://developer.blender.org/T63064


Are animation markers part of the timeline or part of an action? I'm trying to use animation markers for events in a game engine. I added several actions to a test file and a few markers.

The markers seem to be the same in all actions, and editing a marker with one action active changes the marker in the other actions.

So the question is, are animation markers stored similar to keyframes inside an action, or are they stored outside the animation? Are they purely meant as an editing tool? Is there a separate mechanism to mark animation events or do I need to script something myself?

It depends, there are Timeline Markers and Pose Markers.

Timeline markers are stored at scene level, whereas Pose markers are stored in an action:

# Timeline markers of current scene
bpy.context.scene.timeline_markers

# Pose markers for 'CubeAction'
bpy.data.actions['CubeAction'].pose_markers

In the Dope Sheet editor, switch to Action Editor.

Click the menu Marker > Show Pose Markers to see pose markers.

With this enabled, creating markers will add pose markers!
(Pose markers show a diamond-shaped icon)

With Show Pose Markers disabled, you may select Timeline markers (they show a triangular icon) and click Marker > Make Markers Local to convert them to Pose markers. Note that the original Timeline marker will be gone. If you want to keep it, make a duplicate before you convert (ShiftD, Esc).


JPG aplha maps with Cycles I searched everywhere and I can't find an answer on how to do this with Blender and Cycles:

I have a pre-made model with textures
Some materials have a Diffuse map (JPG) with a separate Alpha Map, another JPG.

What kind of texture setup do I need to make these two maps give me a texture with alpha that I can use in a Cycles material?

Thanks in advance.

Actually you just need to use the output of the second texture (Alpha Map) as the alpha. For example: using it as the transparency:

Note that the Alpha is Non-Color Data


FFMPEG from Inside Blender Can I use FFMPEG straight from blender instead of using the available formats and codecs? Can someone show me an alternative for that?

Here's a solution to launch ffmpeg automatically following Blender's completion of rendering out an image sequence:

import bpy
import os

bpy.ops.render.render(animation=True)

ffmpegPath = "YOUR-PATH-TO-FFMPEG-APP"

imgPath = "YOUR-PATH-TO-IMAGE-OUTPUT-FOLDER"

#frame filename format assuming "0001.png"
imgNamePattern = "%04d.png"
vidOut = "test.avi"
vCodec = "mpeg4"

ffmCMD = ffmpegPath
ffmCMD += " -start_number 1 -i "
ffmCMD += imgPath + imgNamePattern
ffmCMD += " -vcodec " + vCodec + " "
ffmCMD += imgPath + vidOut

print("launching ffmpeg")
os.system(ffmCMD)


Align model to camera view In camera view, how do I perfectly align my model? For example, I want a side view of my space ship (or front/back)
I can move the camera around but that's not exact!
Thank you

If it's aligning the view to an object or element you're after, explore the ShiftNumpad 1, ShiftNumpad 3 and ShiftNumpad 7 combinations.
They will align the view down the selected element's Y, X, and Z axes, respectively.

If the element is an object, that's down the object's axes, towards its origin.
If a face, Z is down its normal, X and Y look straight across its plane.
If it's an edge, Y looks straight down it, and X, Z, align the edge
parallel to the screen,
and finally, if a vertex, Z looks straight down the vertex normal,
and the others bring the vertex normal parallel to the screen.

Adding Ctrl to the key combinations gives you the reverse angles of the above.
CtrlAltNumpad 0 will align the active camera to whichever view you are in.


Help with a simple 3d Print I have a 3d model of a simple object I am trying to print. No matter what i try to do to make it unbroken (ctrl-opt-shift-m) I can not fix it, I checked all of the vertices and put new faces on every spot multiple times. It is a messed up object when i export to stl and load in simplify 3D. Looking at it, I can not see where any problems lie. I attached a picture of the object.

For the File

Here is after I did the triangulate modifier and tried to fix it. Stilll issues

You have a lot of big and ugly n-gons and non planar geometry.

Most of it can be fixed by bridging edge loops.

Start by selecting the faces of the n-gons on the main ring and delete them.

Next thing is making it so both sides of this ring have the same number of vertices for each loop.

The center circle has 32 vertices, the outer one only has 30...

How would do you know how many are selected? look at the top of the screen:

In any case you are missing two vertices on the outer ring, so select this long edges, press w to subdivide, and make one subdivision on each.

Now that you have two rings with the same number of vertices you can do Bridge Edge Loops.

The main ring has now some nice quads.

Repeat this for the bottom part of the object.

On the side you have some triangles at the top and bottom

To turn all of this area into quads, select these edge loop:

and do Edge Dissolve to get this:

Repeat this for the other side.

Now on to the most problematic area, delete this faces to get rid of this n-gons on top and bottom of the object :

The next task is to connect the inner ring to the outer shape. The ring has 32 veritces and the outer shape only 8, so we need to create some more vertices.

2 loop cuts here:

11 cuts here:

And 11 more on the other side. Next is selecting the edges on the ring and the outer edge and connecting them with Bridge Edge Loops.

To get something like this:

Repeat this on the bottom and on the other side of the object.

Your object should be now all quads and manifold...

Last stop is making sure your normals are consistent, so select all the faces and press CtrlN


Switching camera view on multiple cameras form python I've created 3 cameras in my scene and I need to go from the first to the last always in camera view.

What's wrong is that if I start my code in camera perspective, the camera changes and so do the view correctly.

But if i launch my code in user perspective, the cameras will switch correctly but the view not until the end, where it will go in the last camera's perspective

for w in bpy.context.window_manager.windows:
    s = w.screen
    for a in s:
        if a.type = 'VIEW_3D':
            for r in a.regions:
                if r.type='WINDOW':
                    override = {'window':w, 'screen':s, 'area':a, 'region':r}

by.ops.view3d.viewnumpad(override, type='CAMERA')
for c in [c for c in bpy.context.scene.objects if c.type == 'CAMERA']:
    bpy.context.scene.camera = c
    bpy.ops.wm.redraw_timer(type='DRAW_WIN_SWAP', iterations = 1)

Seems like the viewnumpad() is not triggering correctly the view before the switching. How can fix it?

The problem appears clearly when moving from any view to camera_view but it is also present when moving from camera_view to another (you can see that the view change from camera than hold still and then change at last) and it is caused by the ED_view3d_smooth_view_ex() ( source code ) function  and as you can see in the source code it is skipped if you are in render view , so for checking you can switch to render view and the code will run as expected

here some code to make the transition clear (watch the view and console ) :

def main(context):
    print('******************************************************')
    bpy.ops.view3d.viewnumpad(type='CAMERA')
    bpy.ops.wm.redraw_timer(type='DRAW_WIN_SWAP', iterations = 1)
    print('sleep')
    time.sleep(8)
    print('wake')

( it may have something to do with timers )


using samples in blender cycles render layer tab I recently ran into the samples in the blender cycles layer tab (see picture). Somewhere I read I could change the sample rate for a specific layer. This can be useful if one layer doesn't need as many sample rates as others.

Does someone know how to use this? Would be awesome.

Regards

As indicated by the tooltip when hovering the mouse pointer over it, the Render Layer Samples setting allows you to override the Number of samples used. Setting it to 0 (the default) tells Blender to use whatever is the default for the scene (ie, the number of samples set in the Samples panel of the Render properties). Setting it to a non-zero value will use that number of samples for that render layer.

Eg, setting it to ‘1’ will render that layer as if the Render Samples is set to 1.


Use 3 films (front, side, top) for motion tracking? When I use motion tracking and I have 3 films: 1 filmed from front, 1 filmed from the side and 1 filmed from top. First I track the objects in the first movie and click the solve button, which makes some empties. Can I use the same empties for tracking the next film for more precision? If it doesn't work with empties, how can I achieve this?

Empties are added to the scene as a result of the perspective information obtained during tracking. So no, you cannot use the empties from one solution to track a different camera.

Watch "Track, Match, Blend" to learn how tracking data is gleaned from following features.


How to use the array modifier with imperial units Pretty new to Blender, I'm trying to learn how to make a studded wall.

How do I use the array modifier to use imperial units? For example, I would like to create a stud, and have them spaced 16 inches on center a set distance.

Thank you much!

Edit I've accepted the below answer, however, I had another issue I had to fix. The culprit was that when I scaled the initial object, I didn't apply the scale. Because I didn't apply the scale before the modifier, it wasn't working as expcted. Thank you much to Manu G for helping me through this issue!

You can readily use inches by entering the inches value you need into the offset distance box, as "16 inch". It will automatically convert it to be the corresponding meter value. Or you could go ahead and change the unit system that Blender is currently using.

Refer to the Blender Documentation for more info about the Array modifier.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/modifiers/generate/array.html


How would I make a Cube look like a text box? I have been trying to figure this out for the past 2 days and I simply can't seem to figure out. How would I make this:

Look like this?

I am by no means a good modeler, but this is how I would do it.

Start with a plane in top view (NUM 7)
Scale on X so its a rectangle.
CTRL R in edit view to add edge loops, Slide them over how I did in video.
Pull down middle vertex to add the tail.
Select all 4 corner vertices and hit CNTRL + Shift + B for vertex bevel, slide up on mouse wheel for smoother corner.
Select all in edit mode and then hit E to extrude.

I am sure someone can find a quick and cleaner solution but this is my best effort.

EDIT:

Added in how I would do it with curves (Thanks to Cegaton comment)

Start by adding a 2D Curve object (Rectangle) in top view (NUM 7)
Scale on X so its a rectangle.
Select the bottom two corners in edit mode and hit W to subdive, CTRLR to duplicate a couple times.
Grab the curve vertices where you want the tail to be.
You will have to play with the handles in edit mode to get the desired look.
Go to your curve editor and change the extrude and bevel to taste.


I want to make a nasty wriggling worms procedural shader I saw a tutorial to make a spaghetti shader in substance designer, and in that they used some default noise texture that they altered to look like noodles. I want to do something similar in blender, whether it be spaghetti or nasty worms like in the title.
Is there a way to make these kind of shapes procedurally:

Or does anyone have any tips or ideas to help make a noodley wormy shader.

You can start with a Musgrave texture.
Set it to Ridged Multifractal and you'll get some nice creepy worms :)


Displace objects to surface My Skill level: Beginner
I am sure this issue is due to my skill level and it is easily achievable.
I was able to do this in Parametric modeling software like Solidworks.

I was wondering if it was possible to do the following in an easier fashion:

Think of the formation like "Coastal Columnar Basalt".

I had a large amount of patterned objects I wanted to displace to a curved surface.

What I tried:

Shrinkwrap
Particles on surface (Hair): The issue here is since the surface is curved, the vertices and faces in orthogonal view are not evenly spaced. This causes a lot of gaps between the objects.

What I am doing currently:
I have the tiled objects and the surface in the scene and I am manually moving each object up till it touches the surface.
I have close to 80000 objects :(

One easy way is to use a displace modifier with a heightmap. Then use 'UV mapping.' If you use a field of shapes, and set the UV for the top of each cylinder to zero size, then it will be flat on top.

Example blend:


Navigate normally from camera perspective? When I'm in camera view Numpad 0 and I want to navigate in the 3D-view with e.g. ⇧ Shift MMB the view jumps to a completely different location.
I actually jump from Camera Perspective to User Perspective.
Can I avoid this?

Is there perhaps a way to set the "User Persp" view to the camera location and rotation?
Or a way to avoid that you when you start navigating in Camera view that you jump back to the last location in User view?

I do not mean "Lock camera to View".
I just want to start navigation from the camera's position without moving the camera itself.

Thanks for the elaborate and visualized replies.
The hacks are very clever. However, as I just want to be able to continue navigating the world starting from camera view, they take too much effort and attention.
As I've been pondering as to why this feature hasn't been added yet to Blender it became apparent that it's not that straightforward.
After all, user view and camera view are most likely in diffent perspective. User view could be in ortho view and if not, it would still be in a different focal lenght than the camera. So  a seamless navigation from your camera view would result in a changed perspective of your user view and that might be equally annoying as the problem I'm describing in my picture.
Oh well, I guess I have to get over this little limitation.
Thanks again!

If you wish, you can lock the Camera to the perspective view. That means that whenever you navigate in the 3D viewport the camera will 'follow' you in the view, copying the location and rotation of your navigation. In effect, in this mode it will look like you have never left the camera perspective as the dark border around the camera and the camera border itself, will remain visible.

It can be enabled in the properties panel (N) under the 'View' section:

At any point you can then disable the option and the camera will remain at the position you navigated to meaning you can use this to move you camera into position and then leave it at the desired location.


Blender 2.80 Objects have sound attached to them? I want to create a simple grease pencil animation, but don't want to have to add sound later on, but would prefer for example an object to have sound attached, like a cloud rain and thunder. The sound should them be picked up by the camera, in stereo, depending on where the object is in relation to the camera, being louder or softer, left or right. So if the camera gets closer to the object, it the sound gets louder.
I know that there was a functionality in the Blender Game Engine, which is no more as of 2.80. This is possible at all anymore?

Add a speaker object to your scene.

The speaker object has just the functionality you are after.

  Speaker

  The speaker object is used to give sound in the 3D View. After adding the object, the various settings can be changed in the
  Properties editor.

Add a speaker to the scene Add > Object > Speaker

Add sound and fill in the properties accordingly.

Image from 2.83

The speaker object can be animated as other objects.


How do you overlay an image on a shader in Cycles? I'm trying to overlay an image on top of a shader to create the effect of having printed onto metal like so:

I'm using an Anisotropic shader for the underlying brushed metal and have UV Mapped a PNG (with alpha channel) for the printed portions. I've tried using a Mix and an Add shader to combine the two but it doesn't give the effect I'm after. Instead, it looks like the metal was stained with a translucent film, rather than over-printed with an opaque ink/paint.

Here's my shader so far:

How can I achieve this over-printed effect?

Take the Alpha socket from your image, and plug it in to the Fac of the Mix Shader node. Then switch the Diffuse BSDF to the bottom socket of the Mix Shader, and the Anisotropic BSDF to the top shader socket.

The black and white alpha channel will control which parts of the material get which node. A value of 0 goes to the bottom socket and a value of 1 goes to the top socket.


How do I prevent a texture from stretching when using a boolean modifier on the object? I made a lava planet and used the boolean modifier on a cube to "eat" it away.
For the planet I made a material in the Shader Workspace. When I move the cube on the planet and it eats the planet away the material is moving and stretching.

How can I "lock" the material on the planet?

So here you can see, that the material is stretching and not staying in the position it is in the first picture:

So how can I "lock" the material on the "skin" of the planet, so it doesn't move or anything, when the cube is "eating" the planet?

If using generated texture coordinates, such as:

The coordinates will be between 0 and 1, whatever the object size is.

So if we apply a boolean, the resulting object size changes and the texture stretches (which can be an interesting effect, by the way):

If we use 'object', like here:

Coordinates are stable in object space as they are the real coordinates, not remapped between 0 and 1.

So:


Texture not Showing in Rendering I have a question for the rendered image.

No matter what I do like changing the mapping into UV Maps or something like that for the texture of a material (Using image as texture), the color won't change like what I wanted.

It can be shown using Alt + Z (Textured Solid).

but with the Blender rendering, it won't show the color, just white.

If I'm using CTRL + Z and then choosing the OpenGL render image, then the texture is shown (colorful).

Here is the file if you are interested

I took a look at it , and you did something strange with the material . I deleted the material first

then i added a new material with the + button

then i did the steps to add a texture :

-Image or movie
- Wrap mode : UV

I also turned on Ambient occlusion in the world properties

My guess is that it is a bug , Or you did something i did not see.

EDIT : also make sure you dont have extension changed unless you know what it does

keep it on repeat .


BGE Add object action deforms a sphere mesh I have watched Blender Game Engine Basics Tutorial #24: Shooting While Walking (Combining Actions) video tutorial from BornCG, but when I shoot the bullet (Left Ctrl key), it appears deformed.

The bullet is a regular sphere.

Could someone help me? I'll be glad for some comments.

Here my blend file:

Opening up your file, your PlayerBound object has a scale of 1.28, 1.28, 3.70 on it.

Select PlayerBound, press ctrl+a, then click scale to reset the scale to 1, 1, 1 without changing the geometry.

Right now your spheres are inheriting PlayerBound's scale, making them about 3 times as long as they are wide.


Cut/mask multiple planes along a circle at once My challenge is to create some type of a radial chart so I created planes with an array. I scaled the planes randomly to generate "fake data". Now I want to cut all the bars (planes) along a circle which represents "0".

It is possible to do with the knife project, but this means I would have to do this for every bar?
I would prefer a mask which would automatically hide everything below the inner circle, but I was not able to manage this with the vertex groups.

Any ideas please on how I can make this in a more performant way? I'm using 2.8

Make sure all your objects's origins are in the center of the world. Go into Object mode, SHIFT + C to center the 3D cursor, then A to select all, Right Click > Set Origin > To 3D cursor.

Also, apply the scale transform with CTRL + A > Scale or go to Object > Apply > Scale

Give this material to all your objects (only the alpha part is important):

The "Length" node is obtained by using a "Vector Math" node and set the operation accordingly. Similarly for the "Greater than" node, you must first add a "Math" node and change the operation.

To give this material to all your objects, give it to one of them, then select them all with A and SHIFT click on the object with the material. Then go to Object > Make Links > Materials or SHIFT + C > Materials

If you use Eevee, make sure to set the alpha blend mode to clip :

Tweak the Math node threshold :

You can then add a driver to use your bezier circle as a visual guide, and mask the bars under it when you scale it :


Delete a scipt that autoloads that was run I ran a script that made a panel tab in N tools and I want to delete it from autoloading. Where are they stored? BTW I've blender Zip installs
thanks

Afaik you cannot delete the script from the outside, but you CAN disable its execution temporarily so you can get instide the blend file. Run blender from the system command line with the disable autoexec flag, like this:
blender —disable-autoexec

…and then open your file with that instance of Blender.
PS: note that if blender has not been added to PATH on Windows, this will not work directly. First, either navigate with Windows Explorer to blender’s program files and open the command line there, or just open the command line and navigate to the directory first:
cd C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender

.\blender —disable-autoexec

The .\ on the blender line is necessary in PowerShell.
Of course, you can also just add blender to PATH, but that’s an OS-specific question.


How can I change transform? Hi, how can I change transform pivot like this red arrows ?

I'm not sure if I got what you ask but it seems that your rectangular mesh outlined in green has its local axes not aligned to its vertical/horizontal ides (probably you applied its rotation for some reason), and now you wish to make your local axes "realigned" in order to be able to "move" the mesh along one of those axes.

If you need this, you have to help your "axes realignment" with a separate object, say an empty.

you add an empty
you place it on one of your mesh "corners" helping with snap tools
you also use snap tools to rotate the empty, aligning one of its axes to one of your mesh sides
then you copy the empty rotation value (eg: 138.516796°)
then you rotate the mesh of a value of "180° - 138.516796°"
now your mesh is perfectly aligned with the grid, so you apply this new mesh rotation, which gets you good "local" axes
then you rotate "back" your mesh of the same amount but inversed ("138.516796° - 180°" => note, in the animation below I did this wrong), to rotate back the mesh where it was at the beginning (but now you have aligned local axes)
then you can move your mesh along the desired direction

See how it works:

Hth


Custom Depth of Field in User Perspective view? Hello is it possible to set different Depth of Field when editing 3D model in Perspective view?
Not in rendering.

Yes, you can turn it on in the Shading menu, but it works only through a camera.


what's wrong with my wine glass? Still trying to model a wine glass. After applying the spin tool, removing the doubles I tried to close the holes in the stem of my wine glass. Result in the image below. After applying the subdivision surface modifier and solidify modifier the result in the other image. Somehow there is an issue in my mesh but what ? The blender file is here

I now posted two images of the wine glass after recalculating normals. Is this ok now ? Imho it still looks a bit weird ??

The dark regions are caused by inverted normals. This is a thing many people struggle with when starting to make 3D art. Blender has a function for quickly fixing most of such cases - all you need to do is (from within Edit Mode) choose Mesh > Normals > Recalculate Outside (or Ctrl+N).

The ugly "pinching" effect is a result of all the subdivided geometry pulling in toward one point, creating a spoke-like look. This can be fixed by making an all-quad mesh instead. Try selecting that center vertex, deleting it, and instead select the remaining edges and doing a Grid Fill. Tweak the Grid Fill settings until they are to your liking.

But wait... you can't do that just yet, because there is one more problem with your mesh: you're trying to create boundaries by filling in faces to section off areas of it, but this will not work. Making paper-thin hymen-like membranous faces is a topological no-no. This results in what is known as a non-manifold mesh. To explain what does or does not encompass the definition of "non-manifold" is beyond the scope of this answer, but to sum it up, understanding that concept will enable you to create geometry that will result in the shading you want to achieve.

Your wine glass: fixed (Screen Shot - The lighting is crap, but I think it illustrates the point well enough)

Your wine glass: fixed (.blend)

And here is a side profile illustrating the boundaries of the areas you want to have thickness:

For comparison, here is the geometry you had created (after the Solidify Modifier has been applied):

I've outlined the two problem areas with the Grease Pencil tool. To sum it up, you don't want all of the wine glass to be "solidified". Think about the structure of a wine glass - the foot and stem of the glass are not hollow inside, rather they are solid glass. Yet by adding a Solidify Modifier to the entire wine glass that is what you have made - a wine glass with a hollow bottom. This is where you are having difficulty, because you haven't created geometry that accurately reflects the structure of a wine glass.

The second problematic area (which is related to the first), is that to compensate for the hollow area in the stem you tried to just add some faces between the stem and the cup (what I referred to as the "membrane"). This is where you created non-manifold geometry and further confused the problem.

Understanding these concepts will help you in every 3D sculpting project you undertake from now on, so I can't stress enough how important this is.

Here's a mediocre Maya tutorial explaining non-manifold geometry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrqxp89ilM4&spfreload=10 (sorry, it's the best video explanation I could find - of course this concept is the same whether using Maya, Max, Blender, etc.). Hopefully this will help you out beginning your understanding of non-manifold vs manifold geometry. In Blender you can highlight non-manifold geometry by pressing Shift+Ctrl+Alt+M. You can also select non-man geo by going to the menu within Edit Mode and choosing Select > Non-Manifold.


Script to add and remove F-Curve Modifiers to multiple selected f-cruves I want to apply 'Cycles' modifier to multiple selected f-curves to create a  walk sequence. I want to do this with a script. How can I do this?

import bpy
D = bpy.data
# We can access by action name
fcurves = D.actions['Goon_proxyAction'].fcurves
for f in fcurves :
    # TO add
    m = f.modifiers.new('CYCLES')
    #To remove
    f.modifiers.remove(m)
    # To remove all 'CYCLES' type modifiers
    for m in f.modifiers:
       if (m.type == 'CYCLES'):
           f.modifiers.remove(m)


How to separate vector coming together i'm importing a svg vector, that is separated, but Blender puts them together, any ideas on how I could separate them in blender?

I'm a TOTAL newbie, second day using blender.

Go into edit mode, select all vertices using  A  the press  P  and from the dropdown menu select by loose parts, now you have every item in a different object.

Adittionally you can press   CTRL  +  SHIFT  +  ALT  +  C  to reset the origin to the geometry average.


Animation Nodes: How to create splines between a particle system and an object based on distance? I would first like to mention that I am a beginner to Blender and Animation Nodes. I am trying to create an animation where an icosphere orbits above a plane that emits particles, and if the particles are close enough to the sphere as it passes, will create a spline between the icosphere and the particle. So far in my animation nodes, I am able to find the distances between the icosphere and the particles, but I am unsure how to implement a sort of if statement (like the find close points node) to select only the particles that are a certain distance away, and then use the create spline to create a spline between the icosphere and these particles. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

It is very easy to do with Animation Nodes by using the KDTree node.
Method:

First construct the KDTree from the position of the particles. Then, use the Find Points in a Radius node to find the points/particles (shown by red color) within a radius from the Vector which is the position of the object (in this case is a Sphere).

Now, to make splines from the Sphere for each red-points/particles, we have to use the Loop node, with which we create a vector list from the sphere's position and each red-points position. Then use the Spline From Points node to create the splines from the previously created vector list, and the Curve Object Output node generates the Curve Object.

Blend File:


Ctrl-Space for autocompletion in text editor for scripts doesn't work anymore? What is the new shortcut for autocompletion in the editor for scripts (macros)? CtrlSpace doesn't work anymore in Blender 2.82+?

Didn't look enough in preferences.

The new shotcut is Tab.


First time using bevel tool, doesn't bevel evenly. What am i doing wrong? First off I'll let you know I'm a total noob at blender I've used 3ds Max up until this point, but the company I'm working for at the moment needs me to use blender so I'm trying to make the transition over.

Literally all I'm making at the moment is a simple book and cannot understand how the bevel tool isn't working similar to how the chamfer tool would in 3ds Max.

I want a nice curved edge for the spine of the book however when I press control + B and try to bevel it bevels the edge unevenly with the new bevel pushing forward.

Is there a way I can get it to bevel evenly like it does in Max?

Your object has been scaled in object mode but the transformation has not been applied, so your mesh has a non-uniform scale that will prevent you from doing a clean bevel the way you want it.

Exit Edit mode (Tab) and press CtrlA and apply the scale (you can also use the menu: Object>Apply>Scale).

Back in edit mode the bevel should work evenly centered on the edge...


Is the Network Render addon able to render with openGL? I would like to render an openGL preview using my rendering network, but there is no such option in the rendering engines dropdown. What can I do?

I built the rendering network with "Network Render" addon which is working fine with other engines.

AFAIK netrender doesn't support this, as there is no opengl "render engine" defined in blender (as you noted). There is an opengl render operator, but it is not defined as a formal render engine.

However there is a simple alternative approach you might be able to use. See the following questions:

Render on more than one computer?
Cycles Netrender Returning Black
How to use baked fluid with network render?


How can I move an object on a separate layer behind another in the compositor? How can I make the light bar, after compositing (applying the blur effect on it), be displayed behind the ball, not in front of it?

ID Mask:

Expanding on Gunslinger's answer, this can be done on two render layers, using an ID Mask node:

With the foreground object selected, set the Pass index to 1 in Object properties > Relations:

Enable the Object index pass in Render Layers > Passes:

Add an ID Mask node and set the Index to 1.
Plug the IndexOB output from the Renderlayer node into the ID Mask node. This will provide a mask for the foreground object:

Mix:

Gunslinger's setup is better as it preserves the sky:

Result:

Note that you can also use ID masks on a material basis.
Enable Material index in Render layers > Passes, and set the pass index for the material:

Use Materials > Settings > Pass index to set the pass index of the material in Cycles:

Or in Blender internal use Materials > Options > Pass index:


Baking high poly model texture to low poly model (2 models) I've watched quite a few video on how to bake from hi to lo poly models in Blender, but they all dealt with a situation where the high and the low poly model were 1 object.

In my situation, I have 2 models. I imported both to Blender as OBJs.
The high poly model is textured, the low poly model isn't.

I have created UVs for the low poly model, and now I would like to bake the high poly model's textures onto the low poly model's UVs.

I have created an empty image for the low poly model, then I've selected both objects and pressed "Bake". This would however not result in what I expected.

Does anybody see my mistake here and how to resolve it?

Thank you very much!

There are a few possibilities, so here's a checklist to go through:

--Selections. I know it seems obvious, but it's actually pretty easy to accidentally deselect something, and it's not always obvious when it happens. Make sure your image texture, the one you want to bake to, is selected, and the only thing selected, in your node editor. In the viewport, check to see if you selected your high-poly object first, then your low-poly object second (click the first, shift-click the second). You can't do this with box-select, it won't have a proper active object. If you're having trouble doing this in the viewport, you can do it via the outliner window (the little one that lists all your objects in the top right).

--UVs The reason it's usually done with the same object is because Blender tries to follow the UV layouts when baking. While it doesn't have to be the same object, the UVs of the low-poly should be laid out in roughly the same way as the high-poly, so it'll show up on the right places in the texture. For example, if it were a character, the face of the low-poly character should be unwrapped to the same location as where the face of the high-poly character is unwrapped.

--Images Make sure you've named and saved your target image to your computer before baking. If you don't do this, Blender doesn't know where you want that information to ultimately go, because you don't have a physical file selected. This makes sense when you realize baking works by essentially overwriting existing information, rather than creating entirely new information from scratch. At that point, it'll only be a big black square, but Blender will overwrite it with the map you're after as you bake. Just make sure to save a second time after, too! Blender won't remember your changes for you, when it comes to external files. In addition, make sure the textures of your high-poly have been appropriately uploaded, as well. It can be easy to confuse object color, which can be baked into a file, with what the actual texture looks like.

I hope this helps! Happy Blending.


How do I add polygons to fill a face? trying to recreate this Elijah bottle. I have two sides, one of which is outlined in red. How do I fill that face with polygons so I can then grab the center (that red square dot) to pull it outward thereby creating the slight outward bowing of the bottle?

Select all the vertices on the edge and do Grid fill

Then select a few vertices on the center, enable proportional editing and pull them to create the shape you need.

In your case there is a big ugly n-gon that you need to delete in order to make grid fill work.

Now the grid fill operation also makes another issue evident in your model: the subdivisions and number of vertices are not the same on both sides of your model. Undo the grid fill, add loop cuts to fix the assymmetry making both side of the model have the same number of loop cuts. Now  select the edges and do the grid fill.  Your model should work just fine now.

Then just enable proportional editing to create the bulge you are after.


How can I add text in a non-english language? How can I add text with non Latin characters?
I'd like to get text in other languages like Arabic, Russin (Cyrilic), Japanese, Chinese, Malayalam among others, but I get rectangles instead of Arabic letters.

First of all, Blender does not support Right-to-Left text rendering, however there are ways to use a wide variety of character sets.
In a 3D text object:
The default Bfont has a very limited character set which does not include arabic.
To add arabic text to a 3D text object, you need to use a font that has the relevant glyphs (e.g. a unicode font).
Once you find a font that contains arabic characters, you need to load it into blender.
Note that you cannot use bitmap fonts, as blender needs vector data for generating curves.
##Loading a font:
You can load a font into blender from the Object data > Font panel:

Add a text object ShiftA> Text

With the text object selected, click the file icon for the appropriate styling (e.g. regular, bold, etc.) in Properties > Object Data > Font:

Navigate to a font file (.ttf .otf etc.)  on your system and click Open Font:

The font should now be used for the active text object.
##Entering characters:
If you don't have a keyboard that has Arabic characters, here are some alternate ways to input text:
method one:

Select the text object and enter edit mode Tab. You should see a bar appear that indicates the location of the cursor:

Delete the existing characters (Backspace) and enter a character. You should see a text field appear in the Redo menu at the bottom of the Tool Shelf (T in the 3D view):

Select the text box and paste the your text into it, then press Enter:

Note that you can enable International fonts in User preferences > System to display arabic charecters in the UI, making the arabic characters visible in the text field:

More about this later.
Method two:
As mentioned by kivig, there is a Paste from file feature.

Select the text object and enter edit mode (Tab)

Click Paste file in 3D view > Header > Text:

Navigate to a text file containing the text you wish to put in the text object and press Paste File.

In the Interface:
You can enable International Fonts in CtrlAltU> User preferences > System to display arabic characters:

This also enables options to translate the UI into many languages, including arabic. See the wiki for more details:

From version 2.60, Blender supports international fonts and a range of
language options for the Interface and Tooltips. To enable it, open
the User Preferences window, System tab, and toggle the International
Fonts option in the bottom right-hand corner.
This displays three new settings:

Language
drop-down menu where you can select your preferred language.

Interface
to translate the User Interface itself (e.g. controls and menus).

Tooltips
to translate tooltips.


How to connect to select/deselect event? I want when a user is selecting/deselecting an object to do something.
I'm working on an alignment tool (free to use) and I manage to make almost everything work.
If you select several objects and click align x or rotate x, it will align rotation/scale/dimension/move
But I can't figure out how to hook into select/deselect event so that I can automatically align objects based on what is checked.

I'm not going to claim this is the correct way; but it will work
import bpy

@bpy.app.handlers.persistent
def _depsgraph_update(scene):
    print(bpy.context.selected_objects)

bpy.app.handlers.depsgraph_update_post.append(_depsgraph_update)
# bpy.app.handlers.depsgraph_update_post.remove(_depsgraph_update)

The other thing you can try; is listening for the active object changing - on the basis that you can't select without changing the active object.  Note you won't get a change notification on undo
bpy.msgbus.subscribe_rna(
     key=(bpy.types.LayerObjects, "active"),
     owner=object(),
     args=tuple(),
     notify=callback,
)


Weird error when I create a blendshape I am creating a blendshape of a model that gets smaller and this happens with his hands when I shrink it:

Why does this happen?

It appears, that there is a relative deformation applied to the mesh after the shapekey.

This is likely to be caused by a deforming modifier, like an armature modifier. Modifiers are applied after shapekeys. To properly view your shapekey in object mode you can

turn of (the armature) modifier
reset the armature to rest pose with the Rest Position button

The armature will be unposable as long as this button is activated.
reset the transformations of the armature, by

showing all armature layers
selecting all bones in pose mode (A)
Removing keyframes which would prevent the bones from being reset.
clearing their transformations with ⎇ AltG (Translation), ⎇ AltR (Rotation) and ⎇ AltS (scale).