Problem with Rigging and IK-Bone when changing between rest and animated position im pretty new to animating in Blender. But I really need help with this animation of a rower.  I imported the figure from MakeaHuman. In the beginning I didnt knew that IK- Bones exist, so I animated just with moving every Bone from Keyframe to Keyframe. I wasn´pleased with the outcome cause the person was alway pushing very unnaturally through the baseplate.

What I did after I found out that I can make a Bone to a IK Bone was linking the shin-bone to the thigh-bone as a IK Bone. Now the Movement seems to be very good when I open the .blend and let the animation play. but If I change between the animated pose and the rest pose and back the whole animation is wrong and the legs are stuck to the position in the rest position. I really hope somebody could help me and I dont have to restart everything! :) attached the .blend file!

Thanke you so much! Fabian

https://www.dropbox.com/s/20q4m3g3s8cewyb/131117_05_Ruderbewegungsanalyse.blend?dl=0

There are a few mistakes in your rig that are causing you the problems you are seeing.

First, the chain length on the leg IK bones is set to 0. You'll want to set it to 2. What the chain length does is determine how many bones the IK constraint will affect. 0 means that moving the foot bone around will affect every bone in the chain, which includes the hip bone, while setting it to 2 will make it affect only the shin and thigh bones. Your IK foot bone should only be affecting the leg, and not the hips. You'll need to change this for both IK constraints.

Second, you have the location on your foot bones locked. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but from looking at your file it appears this was done to 'fix' another issue, but after properly fixing everything it won't be necessary.

Which brings me to issue 3. This is the issue that's causing you most of the problems. Your foot bones which are used to control the legs via the IK constraint, are still parented to the legs. What's happening is you have a circular relationship going in here. Your foot bone is telling your leg bones where to be because of the IK constraint, while the leg bones define the position on the foot bones since they are connected. That is why any edit such as changing to rest pose and back or going into edit mode and back are causing issues. Locking the foot bones location seemed to be what you did to fix this issue, but as you found out it doesn't truly fix it.

To fix the IK issue, you'll want to (in edit mode) duplicate each foot bone, rename them to be Foot_IK.R/L or something like that, clear the parent on them with Alt-P, and use them as the Bone in the IK constraint. You can also then add a copy rotation constraint to the original foot bone and have it copy the rotation of the new IK bone so that the IK bone can control the whole foot. You will most likely have to set the space from world space to local space in both menus to ensure it works properly.

The reason for using a separate bone instead of clearing the parent on the foot bone is that using the foot bone as the control will also allow you to pull the foot bone away from the ankle, stretching the leg. Using a separate bone will just fully extend the leg and not stretch any of the leg.

I think you should only have to reposition the foot IK bones once you've made all of these changes, so you won't have to redo much.


extrude shape from sphere I wanted model a robot for nothing else than improving my blender skills. I've started with an image I found online but have hit a hurdle early on. I started with a sphere to get the main head shape but have not found a good way to extrude the detail shown by the red arrows.

Apart from extruding I also tried modelling the detail as a separate piece of geo with snapping to faces turned on. I almost got what I wanted but the results were not great - I am sure there is a simpler way.

What would you recommend ?

Thanks
rob

One option would be to make a mesh that from the front has the profile you want, but is a prism/cylinder with flat ends; then do a boolean intersect with a sphere of slightly larger radius.  Then you can union that with the rest of the robot head.

Once you are confident you will not longer have to adjust the geometry of any of the elements of the boolean you can apply the modifiers to create a final mesh.  or not.

Also, you probably want to use a UVsphere with the poles on the sides where the ears are.

If the fact that the sides of the "face" are coplanar to the YZ plane is a problem, an alternate technique would be to discard all but the outer face polygon and then extrude/scale relative to the origin to give it conical sides.  (this way the rim polygons would be perpendicular to the sphere's surface instead of perpendicular to the X axis).


How to Name Node Groups According to the docs when I select some nodes and click "Add Node Group" there should be a green bar at the top where I can name the node group, but I don't see that anywhere. I am in cycles. Am I missing it? Also, I can I remove node groups from the list permanently?

You can name your node group after exiting node group edit view, by selecting the Node Group and editing the text in the name box directly, or on the Properties Tool Shelf > Properties Panel to the left, while the group is selected.

Your Node Groups will be automatically erased once they have no users in your file, that means it is not used in any material and they have no Fake Users (pressing the F button to the right of the name.

Have in mind that in Blender data isn't truly deleted until your restart Blender.
That means Materials, Node Groups, Mesh or Object data, and everything else.

If you press the delete button it will stick around during that session with a Zero number in front of the name stating that it as no users. It will only be truly deleted after you restart Blender


Mirror Modifier making ugly smoothing on mirrored faces The model is vivisected right down the middle along the z axis. The right leg is rendering funny and I assume if I can get that fixed everything else will fall into place. I tried flipping normals, changing shading types - can't think of anything else to do.

.blend FIle

You have custom normals on this model, the normals for some reason now point in strange directions.

In the mesh properties navigate to "Geometry Data" and press "Clear Custom Split Normal Data".


Why does lighten change the color of the dark part in mix rgb? I understand that the add is adding that color, and multiply is coloring the brightness.
But I don't understand why the lighten only colors dark areas. Unlike the name, why does the lighten add color to the dark part?

Lighten = pick the highest value color
As shown in the manual:

Blender is using the transformations as described in the Gimp specifications:

Lighten only mode compares each component of each pixel in the upper
layer with the corresponding one in the lower layer and uses the
larger value in the resulting image. Completely black layers have no
effect on the final image and completely white layers result in a
white image.

So it's basically using the highest value color, thet's why it's more probable to affect the darker areas as your shadows
https://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-concepts-layer-modes.html


Making realistic emission shaders Whenever I make an emission shader, it will be exactly the color/texture I assign, without shading. Is there a way to create a material that is both emissive and shaded?

Place a light near the object to be shaded.
Turn the Cycles Camera visibility to False.
Lights do not have to appear in the camera.


NLA - Repeating an action progressively I know the title isn't very descriptive, but that's because I can't describe it better in short.
I'm having fun using the NLA editor, but I've run into a problem I'd really like to solve automatically, not manually.
Let's say I have an object that has a short action:

Now, if I put this action into a track in the NLA editor and turn up the repeat number, the cube will obviously snap back to the beginning. What I'd like is for the cube to start the animation where it left off. See image:

Is there a way to do this without keying each cycle manually? Thanks in advance!

You could more easily do it through the Graph Editor: open the Graph Editor, select the track that you want to repeat indifinitely, for example the X Location track, open the right panel with N, add a Cycles modifier and in the After dropdown menu choose the Repeat with Offset otion. Do the same operation for the Y Location track as your object move on both these axis.


How to render the fire and smoke as different passes? Is it possible to render the fire and smoke (the same simulation), in Cycles, separately, for example as different passes?

Yes.

Just do it as you normally would. Select both the domain and the smoke emitter and change their "pass index".

(in the illustration, the sphere is your smoke domain. It also shows how to get it on another pass in the compositor.)

Or you can change their layer, and render them on a different render layer.


object sharing bevel after joined I have one object with 1 bevel modifier and second with 2 bevel modifier, when I join both (ctrl j) the 2 bevel changes bevel to the first one...

is there any way for each individual object keep their bevel modifier after joined?

Once several objects are joined they will discard their modifiers and inherit those on the last selected object so it's not possible to join objects with modifiers on them and keep them unique, but you can limit the the modifier to a certain  vertex group :

Join the objects
Assign each object to a vertex group
Add two Bevel modifiers
Set each modifier to effect only one vertex group


too much light causes noise Usually happens the opposite.. but today I have too much noise caused by too much light! (at least, I suppose It is because of that...)

I have also Volume scatter and absorption applied to a cyclinder that surround an area lamp

Here my setups:

light:

and there's also an environment texture:

It is a part of the scene where all the lights are on for a while:

any idea on how to get rid of all this noise? It occurs only when all the lights are on.. as You can see from this render (same samples)

As cegaton suggested, I've increased the number of samples (doubled) and the noisy decreased so much!! :)


Put complex shape flat on the table I have a complex (i.e. irregular, concave) shape obtained by photogrammetry. Now, I'd like to put it flat on a table. How to achieve this? (It ridiculously balances one point now. )

Is there a smart way (method, heuristic, approach) of manipulating it using Blenders' transform tools?
Can it be done using physics?

(I tried using physics. It works when I choose a 'box' for collision bounds, but when I choose 'triangle mesh', it wobbles on the table and then falls throug :D )

For simple situations you can probably get away with snapping or the drop to ground addon.

For more complex situations, rigid body physics can be used:

You can probably use the convex hull collision shape (also see unexpected reactions in a quiet simple rigidbody physics simulation), but if you need concave collisions then you'll have to use the Mesh collision shape.

The mesh collision shape can be quite unstable, mesh to mesh collisions in particular.

One way to mitigate this is by increase the number of simulation steps in Properties > Scene > Rigid Body World:

But this doesn't always work completely. If you need to use the mesh collision shape, try to have it collide with a non-mesh shape if possible.

Also see Tips for making Mesh Rigid-body collision shapes more stable


Can I make a deep image with OpenEXR? I went through the OpenEXR technical introduction found here: it says that besides multi-channel files, OpenEXR also allows for the creation of "deep" files: i.e. it allows for assigning multiple recordings of a value (or a set of values) to the same channel.

I am using Blender to simulate reflection spectra. For this I loop through a parameter that takes on more than 300 different values, and for every value I use Cycles to render a new image of my scene. Instead of assigning every RGBA-output of every rendered image to a new channel, I would like to assign all 300 images to the same channel, in an ordered way. All 300 values of the parameter should be stored together (also ordered) in another channel of the multichannel EXR.
This would mean that within the same file, I would be able to look up every one of the 300 rendered images (beauty passes) by its corresponding value of the parameter.

Is there a way to do this with Blender? I found good explanation about how to create multichannel EXR, but nothing on how to make a channel in such a multichannel file "deep". I tried connecting many input nodes to the same output channel but this isn't possible.

Blender is not the right tool to do this. You can do almost everything in Blender, but sometimes coding and doing it yourself is required.

You cannot obtain the deep image directly, because there is no renderer (as my knowledge goes) that can output that (a volumetric output).

You get multi-channel output at most (beauty pass, z-depth, shadow pass,..) - and this is what most 3d apps will let you save:

Save all render passes to a single EXR image

Some will let you save this as deep image, for example MentalRay.

To get your image with deep pixels, you would have to create it from all the rendered images. To be able to do this inside Blender, you would have to use the OpenEXR source code and code it yourself and run it from Blender through python bindings. Some compositing applications offer creation of openEXR deep images, like Nuke for example.

A deep image is nothing else than volumetric data structure in camera space. You cannot 'render' such data in Blender, but you can create them (smoke, fire, ..) and export as Alembic (in global space). From there it might be easier to handle such data externally.

If you need to convert particles or geometry into volumetric data structures, Houdini is a good tool to do that.


Blender Compositing view ( move left & right ) How can I go right and left after I zoomed in image part in Compositing view?

In 2.82 you can move with Shift + middle click. Try that maybe?


How to fix this Mesh please (two planes with merged vertices) (two planes with merged vertices)

Select all of the mesh A in edit mode and press CtrlShiftN.
This will recalculate the normals.


what is the meaning of 4x4 projection matrix? I want to know the meaning of 4x4 projection matrix and how can I transform it 3x4 usual shape.
I understand that, in Blender, I can compute projection matrix as following,
camera = bpy.data.objects['Camera']  # bpy.types.Camera
render = bpy.context.scene.render

# get dependency graph
dg = bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].view_layres['View Layer'].depsgraph

# compute projection matrix -> Returns: 4x4 projection matrix
projection_mat = camera.calc_matrix_camera(dg,
                                           x=render.resolution_x,
                                           y=render.resolution_y,
                                           scale_x=render.pixel_aspect_x,
                                           scale_y=render.pixel_aspect_y)

can anyone help me?

Camera matrix.
Answer here relates wiki link in title to produce the matrix based on camera data.
How can I get the camera's projection matrix?
What is blender's camera projection matrix model?
3x4 camera matrix from blender camera
Blender by default uses mostly 4x4 matrices to transform 3d vectors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogeneous_coordinates#Use_in_computer_graphics_and_computer_vision enabling the use of a singular matrix for rotation, translation and scale.
It slackly lets us multiply a 4x4 matrix by a 3d column vector to produce a 3d result.
Similarly the 3x4 camera projection matrix is used producing a 2D result,
Further from Camera matrix wiki.
Finally, also the 3D coordinates are expressed in a homogeneous representation ${x}$ and this is how the camera matrix appears:
$$ \begin{pmatrix} y_1 \\ y_2 \\ 1 \end{pmatrix} \sim \begin{pmatrix} 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & 1 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & \frac{1}{f} & 0 \end{pmatrix} \, \begin{pmatrix} x_1 \\ x_2 \\ x_3 \\ 1 \end{pmatrix}  $$   or   $$ \mathbf{y} \sim \mathbf{C} \, \mathbf{x} $$
However we are also interested in projection giving the depth from image plane.
To the other bit, to convert to 3 rows 4 columns.  Blender matrices are defined in row order.
import bpy
from mathutils import Matrix

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
camera = scene.camera  # bpy.types.Camera
render = scene.render

# compute projection matrix -> Returns: 4x4 projection matrix
projection_mat = camera.calc_matrix_camera(
        context.evaluated_depsgraph_get(),
        x=render.resolution_x,
        y=render.resolution_y,
        scale_x=render.pixel_aspect_x,
        scale_y=render.pixel_aspect_y
        )

print(projection_mat)

M = Matrix(projection_mat[:-1])
print(M)

Result on default scene
<Matrix 4x4 (2.7778, 0.0000,  0.0000,  0.0000)
            (0.0000, 4.9383,  0.0000,  0.0000)
            (0.0000, 0.0000, -1.0020, -0.2002)
            (0.0000, 0.0000, -1.0000,  0.0000)>

<Matrix 3x4 (2.7778, 0.0000,  0.0000,  0.0000)
            (0.0000, 4.9383,  0.0000,  0.0000)
            (0.0000, 0.0000, -1.0020, -0.2002)>

Somewhat related in projecting scene objects onto camera plane. https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/160388/15543


Material that can catch shadows but wont cast itself Is it possible to create material in blender that can catch/stop shadows without generating itself a shadow? So far i have used material called holdout, but this material is still generating weird shading effects.

As you can see this material can catch well shadows but it itself leavs an ugly shadow. So how can I create a material witch can catch shadow (as this material did) and not cast itself a shadow. If some of you can give me answer I would be very thankful :)

Maybe you want to use the Input > Light Path node like so:

If the cycles ray is a shadow ray, use the transparent BSDF, otherwise use the Diffuse node (or whatever material nodes you want).

The grey cube casts a shadow on the plane and the blue cube, but the blue cube casts no shadow.


How to make freestyle look hand drawn? I'm still learning blender 3d so I'm sorry if this is hard to understand.

I'm trying to edit the stroke/textures on the freestyle editor so where it looks hand drawn/sketchy I'm hoping to get some result like this https://youtu.be/5jZvFuaNNlY but I'm still new to blender and I know nothing about textures.

I heard about uv mapping but I don't know what to do with it when it comes to freestyle lines.

As far as I know, Freestyle doesn't stylize shading, only affects geometry lines (correct me if I am wrong). You can combine Freestyle lines in compositor with shading converted to strokes.

Basic plan for shading is to separate simple material to shading layers, and assign "stroke" textures with different density/color/orientation in according with these shading layers.

You can separate shading to layers inside materials using ColorRamp node. (Pic is not mine, taken from tutorial)

Also check .Blend file example on Blender site here (Blue Pencil Shark at the bottom of the page)


Wood texture in cross section I'm modeling a guitar. I have the top wood texture applied. I would like to know how to get some variation in the extruded sides. Right now it looks more like a butcher block table top, there should be some sort of variation in grain pattern. Thanks.

(source: ibanezcollectors.com)

it varies with render engine. Although with cycles this setup should give
basic variance

There's many more solutions


Mask an Image Using Freestyle Lines I'm trying to achieve a stylized ink wash or watercolor effect where the image ground remains visible. Since freestyle generates such energetic lines, I want to use them to mask my render during compositing, defining the areas where the ground will show through. So far I haven't had much success.

With the node set-up below, I'm able to apply transparent lines to my image by inverting the alpha of my freestyle render layer before combining my render layers with an "alpha over" node. Unfortunately, flipping the alpha blocks out all areas of the image that aren't freestyle lines. I'm sure I'm missing an obvious step, but so far I haven't been able to figure it out. Does anyone know what I should do?

An ID Mask seems like it would be just about perfect, but as far as I can tell, it's not possible to create one for freestyle lines.

Here's a simple test blend

You may use the Set alpha node to mask the render result with the parts where the freestyles lines are by picking the freestyle layer alpha cannel.

Notice that I also switch the Base Thickness mode from Center to Inside (see the panel on the right) to be sure to always mask parts that are actually rendered geometry and not background.
With higher values of thickness you may have some problems with the cap in the angles. I would suggest to multiply the two incoming alpha to create a mask capable of cutting them away (Multiply Math node runs the same operation of a Logic AND):

Now that we've "mastered" the alpha channel in a simpe way, we can Invert it's apha channel (check the RGB box to invert its values as if it was an image from the colr channel) to get a stencil look to the image:

You can make the jiggled edges by using one (or a comobo of more) of the several modifiers available, for example a Noise for the Thinkness parameter:

If you need to use the freestyle layer color to mask the rendered object, you'll need to set it of a different color from total black, or you won't be able to get its information without accessing the alpha channel anyway.


How to resize a loaded image? I'm currently hand-painting my character's texture using Blender's Texture Paint mode. However, halfway through painting, I realized that the image I created for texture painting is in a smaller resolution than what I want. The image is currently at 1024x1024. Is it possible to resize/scale it to 2048x2048 inside Blender?

Type this in the blender console:

bpy.data.images["ImageName"].scale(x, y)

x, y = desired size of the image

In your case:

bpy.data.images["texture_paint_..."].scale(2048, 2048)

Old topic, but I found this code in the 2.78's API.  So we officially have a way to resize image inside blender.


Geforce Gtx1070 - Supported or not? I'm thinking of buying a new computer for 3d modelling.
I read that there are/were problems with geforce gtx1070.
is this still a thing or is it fixed by now?

Yes, Blender 2.78 and above versions all have support for Pascal architecture (10 series)


How to set UV coordinates for a mesh in Blender 2.8x with script? It's 1am, and I googled every outdated site on the net, I give up.

In 2.79 I had a code:

mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new(mesh_nev)
mesh.uv_textures.new()
...
mesh.uv_textures[0].data[i].image = meshhez_tartozo_texturak[textúraindex]
...
mesh.uv_layers[0].data[o * 3].uv = (u,v)

what is no longer working for me in 2.81 and I find no good info on the net how I can do this right now. Can someone please help me out?

Thank you!

That code worked in 2.79?

Please when posting code in future make sure you leave in all relevant lines. eg in question what is o, i, u, v

Very little difference between this answer and the following, real toss up between answering and closing as duplicate, which I'll leave for others. Quicker to answer and hence confirm in 2.82.

Get/Set coordinates for UV vertices using Python

Add uv_layer to mesh, add uv-coords, with python

Add a new layer (same). Notice if a new layer is added, but there is an existing layer, it will not be index 0. Will be the last, or easier keep the reference returned.

>>> me.uv_layers.new(
new()
UVLoopLayers.new(name="UVMap", do_init=True)
Add a UV map layer to Mesh

get or set the active layer, it can be None a gotcha in answers to links above.

>>> me.uv_layers.active
bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].uv_layers["UVMap"]

>>> me.uv_layers.active = None

Silly example adds random UV (a scribbly mess) to each UV

import bpy
from random import random
context = bpy.context

ob = context.object
me = ob.data
uvlayer = me.uv_layers.new() # default naem and do_init

me.uv_layers.active = uvlayer

for face in me.polygons:
    for vert_idx, loop_idx in zip(face.vertices, face.loop_indices):
        uvlayer.data[loop_idx].uv = (random(), random()) # ie UV coord for each face with vert  me.vertices[vert_idx]


How to get rid of black edges from XYZ function mesh? Blender newbie here. I used XYZ function in the add-ons to generate several meshes. Right now, the meshes are dense with black edges. How do I get these edges to be invisible when the object is not selected? For example, the UV sphere at the bottom looks lovely.

By default the meshes generated by this operator have Wireframe Display enabled in the viewport.
If you have already generated the mesh :
Go the object properties > Viewport Display > Uncheck Wireframe

If you just created the mesh using the operator, look into the lower left, you can expand a panel or use the shortcut F9, then look into the lower part of the panel. Uncheck "Show Wireframe".

Note 1 : This setting will be remembered in the current Blender session.
Note 2 : If you want to change the behaviour for all sessions, go to your blender install folder and then 2.** / scripts / addons / add_mesh_extra_objects and open add_mesh_3d_function_surface.py (use notepad)
Search for "AddXYZFunctionSurface" class in the file, go down to the lines
show_wire : BoolProperty(
        name="Show wireframe",
        default=True,
        description="Add the object’s wireframe over solid drawing"
        )

500 to 504 in my file, and replace
    default=True,

with
    default=False,

Save the file, close it, open blender, the setting will be set to False by default.


Texture Atlas resolution I am pretty new to 3D modelling and the question might be stupid to some of you.

I was wondering, for example I have three different objects with three different UVs.

Let's say the texture of an object is 2048 x 2048. The texture atlas should have 6144 x 6144? I mean it makes sense, I think.

Thank you guys.

You could, but I would not recommend it, for these reasons:

Keep in mind that some GPUs out there do not support high
resolution textures.  For instance some older iDevices (and more, but that's off the top of my head).  Blender is very flexible, but some other programs are not.
That is not a power of 2 (the primary reason that we use 1024, 2048,
4096, 8192, etc.), and may not work on some GPUs.  Very bad memory usage.
Texture management becomes really hard.  Versions, overflow from one to another, using layers to keep track of everything, etc.

So my recommendation is to have the textures separated out, still at the 2048x2048.  This allows you to use the GPU efficiently, have good support for GPU RAM, and for instance if you were using GIMP, easily apply filters without having to worry about messing up other parts of the texture.


Overlapping structure when beveling (SVG) curve I hope somebody can give me some tipps although I don't really know how to phrase my problem for a suitable title.

I want to create a path in Inkscape and import it as an SVG to blender. When I create the path only two nodes can be joined, not 3 or more, so I get an overlapping path.

When I import the path to blender, bevel it and create a mesh with it, the structure is still overlapping which causes problems when slicing the object for the 3D printer.

Is there a way to avoid overlapping or get rid of it? I hope you know what I mean.

Thanks so much.

You can do this quite easy with help from TinyCAD add-on and some modifiers.

Steps:

After importing SVG convert it to a mesh - Alt+C > Mesh from Curve/Meta/Surf/Text.
Enable TinyCAD add-on.
In Edit Mode select two crossing edges and W > TinyCAD > VTX Auto.

  Important! You should have only two edges. Sometimes a little clean up
  could be needed as in example below. Use X > Dissolve Vertices to do this.

Add Skin and Subdivision (use level as needed) modifiers.
In Edit Mode after selecting all vertices scale them with Ctrl+A and tweak Branch Smoothing in Skin modifier as needed.


UV unwrapped ico sphere not showing up in UV editor I've got an Ico sphere. First I marked the seam:

Then I Selected the whole thing and UV unwrapped:

However, when I go into the UV image editor, nothing comes up:

I'm using cycles

You're on the Render Result image in your UV editor.  Render results don't have texture coordinates.  Use the Image menu in the UV editor to load an existing image or create a new image.


Bad Shading on Imported Mesh I have imported a mesh (AutoCad DXF) and I'm experiencing strange shading behavior. I've done the following to try and address the problem with no luck:

Recalculate Normals
Remove Doubles
Delete Loose Geometry
Cleared Seam, Sharp, and Bevel Weights

There are no modifiers on the mesh.

The original imported mesh looks fine in smooth shading but I need the mesh to be in quads which causes the shading to mess up as shown in photo. I can add my .blend file but I'm not sure how to do that.

This is generally caused by custom normal data.

Under the Properties Window > Object Data > Geometry Data press Clear Custom Split Normals to get rid of it.


How can I connect a texture node to a material with Python? The Setup:

I was trying to create a material and a texture, and then attach the texture to the material's Displacement slot, but I couldn't find the texture node's outputs through the Python api.

Here's my test scene:

import os, bpy

bpy.context.scene.render.engine = 'CYCLES'

# new texture
texture=bpy.data.textures.new('tex', 'IMAGE')
texture.use_nodes = True
texnodes = texture.node_tree.nodes

# new material
mat = bpy.data.materials.new('mat')
mat.use_nodes = True
matnodes = mat.node_tree.nodes

# assign texture to material's displacement
disp = matnodes['Material Output'].inputs['Displacement']
mat.node_tree.links.new(disp, texnodes["Output"].color)

That last line threw the error:

  TypeError: NodeLinks.new(): error with argument 2, "output" -  Function.output expected a NodeSocket type, not Color

I've seen this method used elsewhere:

mat.node_tree.links.new(disp, texture.outputs[0])

But if I try it in this situation, it throws this error:

  AttributeError: 'ImageTexture' object has no attribute 'outputs'

???

The Plot Twist:

Then I discovered that if I create the texture directly on the material, like so:

texture=matnodes.new("ShaderNodeTexImage")

...the texture.outputs[0] method works, although then the texture node claims it doesn't have a node_tree property.

Questions:

What's the difference between these two textures? Is there a way to make my first try work like the second? What's the best way to do this?

The cool thing about Blender is you can try stuff in the Python Console and see exactly what's happening!

The first way is NOT creating a node that can be used in a shader.  It's simply creating a texture that Blender can use for various things.

You don't want to say use_nodes=True because it doesn't make this texture into a node that can be used in a shader anyway, it just makes the Image inaccessible via the UI (if you care about that):

Anyway, this is NOT a node for a shader graph, it's JUST a texture.  Therefore, even with the use_nodes=True, the "color" output gives you simply the RGB values of the color, and you can't connect that to a node socket (and that's why you get the error message).

>>> print (texnodes["Output"].color)
<Color (r=0.6080, g=0.6080, b=0.6080)>

The second way is actually creating a node for a shader network.  It does have outputs that are socket connections, so that's why you can connect it.

When you run this:

>>> mat = bpy.data.materials.new('mat')
>>> mat.use_nodes = True

Then in your Node Editor you can actually see it:

And you run this:

>>> texture=matnodes.new("ShaderNodeTexImage")

The node pops up:

...and in the console:

>>> print (texture.outputs.keys())
['Color', 'Alpha']

you can see that the outputs look like what you see in the node, and the type is a nice socket connection type instead of an RGB value:

>>> print (texture.outputs["Color"])
<bpy_struct, NodeSocketColor("Color")>

BUT, if you notice in our node, there actually is no image.  THAT'S how we can tie this to the first method.  So supposing we had created a texture via the first method added an image to it, then:

>>> print (firstway.image)
<bpy_struct, Image("01.PNG")>

...the .image property holds the image file from the texture.  To use that in our texture node, you simply set the node .image equal to this one:

>>> texture.image = firstway.image

...and you can see in the UI that it's now set in the node:

The nice thing is that you can re-use the texture in other shaders or nodes if you want to.

I hope this helps to understand the difference.  TL;DR is that a Texture NODE contains a Texture, but a Texture cannot be used as a node itself.


Blender cycles CUDA out of memory error in archviz scene I have made an arcviz scene with different objects that are complex (level of detail pretty good and I prepared render but there is a problem: the cuda memory (3 gb) is not enough for the scene. I am trying to solve the thing without actually losing precision or realism, but the problem still persist (I tried rendering layers separated but there is still the problem of the objects being connected  (shadows or others) one another, so if i render one, it seems out of place because it hsn't the shadow or reflexed of other objects of the scene. Do you have any suggestion?

I'm guessing the rug is causing the problem, due to the number of hair particles. If that is the cause, try changing the particle settings or use geometry instead of the hair strands as strand.

Or invest in a better graphics cards, Gtx 1060 with 6 gig of memory works great for my projects.


The controller doesn't match the mesh The controllers or my rig are created outside the mesh when I generate. Is it normal ?

In object mode, Hit Ctrl + A, and select the menus one by one as shown below:

After applying please try to generate it


How change text of text node in animation node at different frame? I have a list of texts of different length.
I have an animation node tree and i have succeeded at showing my text list iteratively at a constant rate (example each 120 frames) in text object output node.
My problem is the constant rate because my texts are of different length.
I would like to show in the text object output each text in the text list but with a different duration (example : text[0] = 120 frames, text[1] = 258 frames, text[2] = 76 frames).
I am wondering if this is achievable with animation node tree.

Thanks.

I can think of two ways to do it -

the manual way is to add an Integer List node and type in the length or offset you want to use for each string. The advantage is you can adjust the timing to taste for each string.

The automatic way is to use a Text Length node to use the length of the string to calculate the offset.


How to make this texture use displacement modifier? The result came out just bad, and I can not make it a round shape with a noise texture, it shows as squares instead of circles. Please advice. Thanks a lot!

If you want circles, i'd suggest to use the Voronoi Texture in combination with a Color Ramp.

To get the offset from the border you will need to use the mapping node with 0.5 offset in x and y. You can play around with the scale of the voronoi texture, but there are only certain value ranges where you get the circle shapes. Important that "Randomness" is set to 0!

Also regarding the highly subdivided geometry, you can use the "Experimental" Cycles setup, where you can use adaptive subdivision.

The picture above should be self explanatory, but important to note is that you will have to use the "Experimental" Cycles Engine setup to gain access to the adaptive subdivision as shown below:

Here you need to adjust the dicing scale to get a smoother result.
In the "Surface" panel option in the material, as shown below, you can set the "Displacement Only" or "Displacement and Bump".

You can always fall back to using Bump only which does not need the "Experimental" Setting and should be a lot less strain on the system. But that would depend on how close/detailed you want to go.


Is it possible to see glare streaks in transparent areas too? Attached you see my problem. Is it possible to see the glare FX in the transparent areas "outside" the rendered content too?

Thank you in advance.

This is a solution that worked perfect for me. Seperating and mixing one glare color channel with glare alpha output works great and supports nearly all situations, even for other FX nodes.

Here the node tree:

And the file:


How to reduce the convex shape of a surface, to make it more planar? How to reduce the curved shape of a surface, to make it more planar ?. Doesn't have to be perfectly flat like a plane or grid. I want to 'relax' the shape so become less convex.

There is this neat trick that works in almost every 3d software out there that forces vertices to go to same plane.
Simply go to edit mode by pressing TAB select all by pressing A, press S to scale, then X or Y or Z depending which plane you want them to be thrown at, and then press 0.


Simple deform > Bend modifier doesn't work as expected I thought it would be easy to use the simple deform modifier, just bending a simple flat cube on x - axis. if i try this in the origin, everything works as expected. (left on image)
Unfortunately I want the same deforming a little more far right (right side) on the y - axis....and it didn't work. I tried with empty, with empty moving...ctrl-a ...nothing. it must be pretty easy, but i cannot figure it out...
Here is my blend file to reproduce:

To get the expected result your object needs to be subdivided first. See more at https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/modifiers/deform/simple_deform.html?highlight=simple%20deform%20bend


After Generate rig, the pole doesn't work. why? After Generate rig.

Press Alt+H to find pole.
Click the Pole and moves sideways.

But the knee does not work... why?

Here's a video that shows the problem: https://youtu.be/24uUGUPolzc

Here's the .blend file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bt614qj16vdnsjt/2b_07.blend?dl=0

Well, Blenrig has 2 variants of manipulation pole rotation. First is a rotation bone itself (two arrow bone), next is a pole target, witch is hidden by script. And the reason that script always hides the pole target is because it does not use.

There is a switcher between bone rotation and pole target rotation is in N-panel has name pole_vector:

when it sets to 1, bone rotation disables, and pole target shows.

To find this switch select Foot_IK bone.


Why does the paintbrush keep freezing while texture painting? I'm new to blender, and I'm working on a project where I'm making a character. I already UV mapped it and added texture, etc. But, once I tried texture painting, the paintbrush kept freezing, and the cursor wouldn't unfreeze. I'm currently in Blender Render mode, and I have a Mac. I have version 2.77. Please let me know what I'm doing wrong, and how I can fix this.
Thanks!

For painting, you need to be aware of how big your image resolution is and how big your brush is in the view. Close up, your brush is dealing with fewer pixels and will have better response  - further away, it is covering a larger number of pixels to update and will 'freeze' til it calculates each pixel per face.

Freezing can also be due to too much going on to calculate the GLSL feedback , so sometimes it is best to switch to Multitexture in the N panel to focus on just one image texture at a time, clicking the texture Slot that you want active in the Slots tab.


Why is my rendered object faceted? I dont know why its not smooth, can someone please help me, Im a beginner in blender and I saw this tutorial online and seen this output not the same as him

The answer is simple. Select your object and then right click and click shade smooth. I would reccommend you see a complete beginner tutorial series.


All meshes have different color, but they do have the same texture I used the same texture for all these meshes, but why does the "footboard" have a different color (red arrow)?

I'm now working with 2.92 but started with 2.79, could that be related to it?
Also, I have a strange "reflection" when I rotate only on the rear fender / rear fender.

unfortunately, all linked answers did not help.
Blend file:

UPDATE: you should try Gordon's proposal - he is an experienced PRO Blender user - i just started using Blender a few month ago...so scroll down to his professional answer.
repair your face orientation like this:
mesh -> normals -> recalculate outside

UPDATE:
i know, the "moderators" here are very fast with closing questions although they appearantly didn't check your blend file.
I never saw something like this, but i found a "workaround" for you.
Check this video how you can "repair" it.
https://youtu.be/UyEyzjV2r9k
Essentially you can at least improve it by adding some loop cuts at the right positions.
So here is Gordons answer:
Solution is quite easy, the darker part has some "thickness" to it and smoothing goes around the edges. Not even deleting the solidifying faces helps. Autosmooth would normally take care of that, but if you enable it you see the "30°" is greyed out. That's because there is some custom Geometry Data on the object. Click on Clear Custom Split Normals Data to remove it and Autosmooth works as expected. I've made some screenshots for explanation, too. –


How make glow in Compositing if emission is behind glass? Why I can't make glow in Compositing in Cycles if emission is behind glass?
If use Glare, everything in picture will be glow, but I don't need it. I need only certain parts to glow, for example, like here - bulbs in headlights.

As an alternative to blur, use a glare node. It will give you finer control since the effect is based on a threshold, to effect the picture based on the brightness of the pixels.

Read:
Any way to control light halos in the compositor based on emission level?
Also, the default glass shader will not work correctly for a light that is behind glass.
Try something like this:

Read: How to illuminate the darkness inside glass objects in Cycles?

If you must use glow, you can use a pass index to determine what gets blurred.

For complete instructions on how to set this up read:
One part of the render layer glowing?


How create a map based edge wear shader? So basically what I have done is made a high poly bake in blender, now using said bake, I want to add edge wear. That is have procedural texture detect the height in the maps and shade the maps "edges". [For reference : This feature is found in substance painter]

The only way I know to do anything like this is to take the heightmap into the Compositor (I connected it as an emission, aligned the camera and rendered to get it this way - choose whatever method works best for you). The next step is to take the difference between a blurred version of the image and the original. Anywhere with a "sharp cutoff" will be highlighted (assisted by a ColorRamp). It isn't perfect, as you can see from the photos. I picked a "noisy" texture on purpose to how many non-edges I could eliminate, but it's still rather noisy. The success will depend on the "cleanliness" of the original heightmap.
Here is my node setup in the compositor. The original heightmap image is on the left.

Here are just the nodes (for easier viewing). You will have to adjust the ColorRamp to your needs (it can be rather finicky finding the correct range).

From here, it's just a matter of saving your image and using it as a mask for your material. Here's my original material without and with the whites of a Noise Texture added to the "edges" using the mask I made (color channel only).
Without "edge wear" mask:

With "edge wear" mask:

As you can see, it's not perfect. It's still a bit "noisy", however it is obeying the "rules", so to speak. The areas that are highlighted are the ones that have the harshest cuttoffs, it's just that I picked a "bumpy" texture to begin with. Hopefully your heightmap will be a bit cleaner (as I said, I picked the noisiest one I could find), and you will have more success.
Here's an example with a "clean" heightmap (keyboard):

Again, here is final material without "edge wear":

And here it is with the edge wear. Note- I know noise is not a great texture to emulate wear - I just used it as a quick way to get some distortion to the white.


Curves in plain edges I'm following a course in Blender. My assignment is to replicate a Bobcat S175:

I'm stuck at the part where I need to create the arms and back of the vehicle. This is how far I got:

For the arms I will need some sort of curves in the plains. I am wondering how to to this. To be more clear, I want to create these parts:

I hope someone has suggestions!

Edit: I tried making a mesh which looks like the back of the vehicle. I applied the sub surf modifier to this object and tried to play with the edge creases. However, I can't seem to get it better than this:

For those kind of shapes you can try using curves.
Start with a bézier curve, trace your object and make it a closed curve by selecting the first and last segments and pressing AltC

Make the curve a 2D curve and give it some extrusion.

Repeat that for the rest of the pieces.


Which Mac setup would be any good for blender? I have to use a Mac for work but also generate blender renders. Could anyone tell me what setup I should aim for?
Much appreciated.

A Mac might not be an ideal choice to work with Blender at the moment. The hardware configurations are limiting (GPUs available with Macs are far from optimal for rendering), price/value ratio tends to be very much not to your advantage as well when we start looking at the specs that would be better suited for rendering and similar alternatives. OpenGL technology that Blender relies on entirely was recently deprecated in the OS as well making it a questionable choice for any developers thinking about the future of Blender so the support for the platform might not be as good and might not be improving any time soon. You should carefully consider if it is in your best interest to choose a Mac at all if you need it primarily for 3d work and especially if you are planning to use mostly Blender.


UV export layout for baking in cycles just a quick question : is it possible to save the UV map with the UV export layout when we create a mesh,  so we can just use it for do the baking and dont be obliged to unwrap again?

I hope im clear enought with my broken english.

Thanks

UV layouts are saved withing the mesh itself, not exported. You should never have to "unwrap again" unless you change your mesh, exporting is used for editing textures in external applications like Photoshop, GIMP, or other image editing software – Duarte Farrajota Ramos


Can not select object in other collection I'm using Blender 2.8 (Windows 10).  I have two collections.  One With a plane that I would like to hold a projection of an image I would like to convert into an object.  The other collection with the object I am modelling.  Somehow the wedge object is unselectable and I can only select the plane object.  Trying to access it from the objects list and choosing "select" just results in the image below (but does not allow me to edit it using the "Edit mode" options.

Can not select object in other collection:

Can kind of selected object in other collection but not really by using the "Select" option.  This does not let you actually edit the object though.

This is a classic gotcha.

If you see this in the 3D viewport ...

You're still in Edit Mode and although it looks like you've selected another object, you really haven't ... you've added a secondary object to the selection.

Hit the TAB key to go back to Object Mode, then you should be able to select objects normally again.

Alternatively if you want to stay in edit mode but switch objects then you can simply click the Edit Mesh toggle in the outliner.

This is a real pain in the -Z, something I hope is addressed in the future.  It catches me out daily.


Find the color at a particular surface point on a mesh Is there a way to sample the color at a particular point on the mesh's surface?

Let's take this cube for example. It has a procedural texture applied on an emission material in cycles (but I'm open to solutions in BI or regardless of the rendering engine).

If I would simplify this question, how would I iterate over surface points and then check if each is black or white?

Is there a way to access the RGB value of a surface point prior to or after rendering? Even a vertex would do if there's no way to access the color at a surface point, but I'm looking for a more flexible solution.

It would be best if this can be achieved without baking to a UV mapped image, but if there's no other way, how would one go about accessing the data then?

Particle System

You can generate cubes or other as particles.
Convert them in the modifier panel.
Join them into Single Mesh
Vertex [Remove Doubles] may produce large surfaces if desired

Above image. Plane with UV Map Bounds.  Particle System Grid Resolution 50.  Adjust to Needs.

Image above. Particle System Texture affects density. Blender Internal Render.

Image Above. Converted Particles with [Convert] in Edit Mode.

Image Above. Vertex Remove Doubles with a Tolerance. Only the top surface had Remove Doubles. The original cubes had spaces for sake of explanation

Above image.  Sphere shape which is a high density Cube to Sphere Transform.  UV Mapped while in Cube appearance.  Thus 6 repeating UV faces even though the repetition is difficult to see.


I can't rotate or pan but I can zoom I have been having problems with blender recently where I will open a new project and all of a sudden I can rotate or pan.

I can still zoom and the issue usually just stops after I change views a couple of times, however today I opened a new file and the problem won't go away.

I am using a 3 button mouse, and these are my user preferences:

After exploring other options with view locking and having no results, I finally found a setting in my User Preferences under the Interface tab called Auto Depth.

Checking this seemed to allow me to pan and rotate again. I am not sure how it got unchecked, but if all else fails, might as well try before performing a reset.

(v2.78a)


Colour shift when viewing render outside of blender So this is what occurs the left is original right is when its saved

knowing tiff saves it raw, I did it and was able to open it in Photoshop the same way(correct) it was in blender but just like blender when I tried to save it in Photoshop the colour keeps changing

Blender saves to different formats using different techniques and curving according to some file based assumptions. TIFFs do not save "raw" by default, nor does the term "raw" have any real meaning here. Some examples file formats may have on output include:

Saving to a JPEG or TIFF at 8 bits per channel will apply a nonlinear sRGB curve to the data, and may change the internal float format to the respective format's storage type.
Saving to an EXR will transfer the internal reference space buffers unchanged which, by nature of EXR, is a linearized float scene referred format.

From what I can deduce from your screenshot(?) it appears that a subtle shifting is happening in the intensity along the trunk. This suggests that the right image is being color managed for your display from within Photoshop.

Blender does not use ICCs for color management, nor is the display corrected by default[1]. Further, it will not tag images with ICC profile information when saving. This means that the software will make a guess as to what reference space the image is in when it is loaded.

If I had to speculate, I would guess that the image viewer on the right is color correcting the assumed sRGB image format you have loaded. This effectively takes the theoretical sRGB values output from Blender and attempts to emulate the correct sRGB values based on a profile of your display. It may also have to do with an incorrect reference space being set from within your image viewer.

So without further information, it would be impossible to diagnose what is happening with absolute certainty. That said, if you open the color management settings in Photoshop, you will likely find a display correction profile in place there, or an incorrect working reference space ICC profile. In the case of the former, you can disable the display profile and see the raw dump to the screen as Blender rendered it. In the case of the latter, there are sadly many sRGB ICC profiles out there that are not identical to each other, and some are even outright incorrect[2].

Hope this helps you make a little progress into figuring out the issue.

Blender can be augmented to display color critical and accurate results, hardware depending. This involves profiling one's display, converting the resulting profile into a 3D LUT, and inserting it into the OpenColorIO configuration set.
The sRGB.icm ICC file included with the Argyll color management system is accurate and should deliver proper output.


Can't rotate or move view with mouse wheel i don't know if i pressed something or not but for some reason i couldn't move using my mouse wheel. i can zoom in and out using the wheel but i can't rotate or move view. I tried looking at similar posts but they were very old and could not find out what they were meaning in my version of blender 2.8.

Change your screen to some other window and then return , that solves the problem whenever i do that , by the way even i dont know what makes that happen


How to clear unused materials in 2.79? I noticed Blender 2.79 doesn't show the "save & reload" option anymore.  I used to use that to clear any unused materials.  How can I do this?  I tried making all objects single users, the orphan add-on, nothing seems to work.

As an alternative to the other answer, if the material isn't assigned to anything, select "orphaned data" in the outliner and expand the "materials" category.  you can then right-click and delete any material you don't want anymore and it will be removed from the file immediately, no need to save and reopen.


How can I delete selected faces? I am making this house. But you see the highlighted faces in my door?

I don't know where they came from. I tried to delete them by pressing X and then choosing faces  but it doesn't do anything..

It looks like you tried to extrude the doors inwards. This leaves the edges in between the two doors, and there are now duplicate faces there. There also appears to be duplicate faces at the bottom of the doors.

Try going to vertex select mode and use box select (B) in wireframe mode to select all of the verticies in the area. Then you can delete them.


Cycles not rendering with background image So two problems I am having. First, I have a background image with it set to all views. I went into the node editor and added the image and connected it to the alpha over node along with the render layers node. No background image! it does show on up the camera view (numpad 0).

Second problem I'm having is that the side of the cylinder is all charcoal looking when the texture is set to be just gray. The gray rings are suppose to be mirrored glass and reflect the background, that may be working? Hopefully it reflects my background image once it's working.

I am on Blender 2.69

One thing is the background image you see in the view port to guide with your setup and another is the background you render. Here is the setup to create a background image in your rendered scene.

Regarding your second question, this type of setup wont reflect the background in your final render, to do that you should follow the previous answer about HDRI.


How to sequence actuators to perform two or more tasks in sequence I am new to the Blender Game Engine. I am trying to create a simple game.  I have an object (enemy) that I want to move forward then rotate 180 degrees and then repeat, so that it is moving back and forth along a straight path.  I can create the actuators to move it forward or to rotate, but not one after the other.  Does this require a python script?  Or is there a way to do it just in logic bricks?

You need to sense the end of the previous operation to start the next one.

As motion actuators (mentioned in your screen shoot) have no end you can start the followup operation when you deactivate the current one.

According to your description I suggest to use steering actuators with enabled self-termination together with the method described in How to start second action after check that first one is done in bge?.

This allows you to let the enemies patrol between various checkpoints. Moving to a specific checkpoint is represented/performed by a single steering actuator.

I hope it helps.


Fluid Sim is not being emmited Whenever I try to add any type of liquid or smoke simulation the object set to inflow doesn't emit anything i tried changing the setting for both the inflow and domain.Could it be due to my hardware as i don't have a powerful system.Plz help. My computer specs are:Graphics - GT710, RAM - 4GB, CPU - i3 6100 @3.70 GHz.

depends on what the inflow object is, if it's flat you need to check "is planar" and add some surface emission, also if the object is smaller then the voxel size, which is represented by the cube inside the domain, it may not emit particles


Blending Floor and Background to appear as one How can I make my horizon/edge of my reflective floor either transparent or blended with the background, so you only see the RVs with shadows and reflections? So far all I've been able to do is set up more lights over the floor's background edge to blend in more, but I need it gone. I'm attaching a picture. I'm still new to blender, so please be specific. Thank you in advance.

The best way to make your floor blend into your background is to composite the two together from separate layers and feather the edge of the floor layer.

In the node network below I've used a Rectangular Mask node into a Blur node to create the blurred masked that is used to set the alpha channel of the floor layer.

In this image, you can see the size and orientation of the mask node (indicated by the white outline).

And the final effect:

This technique works best with still images, but can be used with animations if the floor edge does not move a lot in relation to the screen.


Why do the hair particles go crazy when rendering? I have created hair on a character I am making for animating. I combed the hair and it looked good in the 3D viewport.

I then rendered it and got this result.

I then went back to the 3d viewport, and everything looked normal until I right clicked to rotate and then the hair was crazy there as well.

I loaded a previous save and combed the hair again a few times with the same results every time I rendered it, so I'm thinking it's got something to do with my particle system settings, so here are all my settings for the particle system.

Any help in resolving my hair problem would be great, THANKS!

That is probably because your modifiers are in wrong position.
If the mesh with hair particles has a subsurf modifier it should be in the bottom of them.


How to make text tracing animation? How to make tracing animation for texts using arbitrary font? Basically I want to do something like below:

As shown in the image, I want to trace the strokes, NOT outlines.

You can try to use offset (bevel, extrude area ...) or to look for a font similar that does it, but I think the result will have to be edited a lot anyway for direction, points etc.

If you want to use this as paint/mask for a writing effect, I would do it this way:

grease pencil, manual place the strokes in order and direction that is convenient. (I doubt that you can actually get that too out of a font/offset)

I think is the most controllable way.. and grease pencil is kinda made for animated strokes

I use poly for convenience, may further use convert/bezier or so, you'll have to test your way
convert to curve with lots of options
use curve with options, with dyna paint or use it with addons (btrace, animation nodes etc) to generate your Alpha/mask...
if the text is very, very long (many lines) may want to make these into a blender font and then convert again to curves. But the process is worth only if you will use this template many times, for lot of text, imho.

An example. Note that for tracing, my path is not quite following your proposal, but more the way the paint will go.

PS: I post this as per comment where you say you use it to trace the text. Maybe that should be in the question too.


The edge disappeared in object mode, but show up in edit mode Anyone have the same issue? How to fix it?

Blender does hide some edges in object mode in an attempt to not show unnecessary edges in wireframe view or with the wire option enabled, however as you can see its not always perfect. The simple solution is to go to the Object data panel and under display check 'Draw all edges'.


Position multiple vertex to an exact location without changing shape of object I have 3 equilateral triangles.

The red triangle is the base and then at 90 degrees I have two green other triangles.

View 1 and 2 shows this setup from two different angles.

Below I have a kite like shape that I have marked as (P) that I want to place against the two green triangles.

As you can see in image 4 ... I'm having a really hard time getting the 3 vertex's on shape P to be places exactly on the vertex's for the two green triangles.

Everything I try either changes the shape of the object .. or as I move one vertex I change the position of another vertex that I have already placed correctly.

Here's a link the file itself: enter link description here

Based on the comments i build the setup myself, created the "P" face as it was called in place, took it down flat according to comments again and then started working it back in place.

Here a visual step by step:

It's based on the following:

Begin by creating a support triangle.
For that use K knife tool and hold Ctrl to snap on the middle of the base triangle edge that lies opposite of the tip where the "P" face has to go.
Select the top 2 vertices from each of the "green" standing triangles and press F to generate an edge between them.
Select the edge and press Ctrl+R to cut the edge in half, confirm with Enter
Now create a triangle from the new created vertex and the 2 vertices along the cut you made through the triangle. This will help aligning the "P" face.
Now go to the "P" face and in edit mode, then press Shift+S to snap the cursor to the selected vertex on the thin "P" face tip.
Go in object mode and set the origin to the cursor using the context-menu.
Switch to the other object and select the vertex where the thin tip of the "P" face has to go, snap the cursor there.
Back to the "P" face object use Shift+S "snap selected to cursor"
The "P" face object is now at least with the tip at the right location.
Adjust the settings for the snapping like so:

Now it's important that all vertices of the "P" face object are selected, BUT the last selected(active) vertex has to be the one at the tip opposite the thin tip where the origin is.

Press R, followed by Z, locking the rotation to Z axis and then hold Ctrl to snap based on the active vertex onto the vertex the support triangle, where it divides the base triangle edge.
Now back to the base object, in edit mode select one of the 2 edges of the divided edge on the base triangle opposite to the thin tip of the "P" face.
With the edge selected create a custom orientation like this:

It will create and select a custom orientation we need to rotate the "P" face.
Back to the "P" face object, select again all vertices of and make sure the last/active vertex is the one like we used last. Opposite the thin side.
Now press R, followed by Y (is the axis of the custom orientation we need), then hold Ctrl and snap based on the active vertex onto the top vertex of the support triangle.
All that is now needed is cleaning up the support triangle.
If you have multiple "P" faces that need to be placed, you can create a duplicate it and after removing the custom orientation snap each copy to the 2 other corners of the base object, after which you only need to rotate them with R, followed by Z with 120 degree either plus or minus.

With one extra "P" face it should then look like this:

I have looked at the file, and i had to notice that the "P" faces were slightly too long...

Little extra, as i was already mostly done with the answer:
To round it up i think it might help showing you how i build the version i used:

Add a circle mesh with 3 vertices, radius 1
Select an edge and create a custom orientation from it.
Snap the cursor to the edge
Select the vertex opposite the edge, copy it with Shift+D, cancel with RMB to leave it where it was.
Press R, then Y followed by -90 to position the vertex where it needs to be to form a new triangle you can now build by selecting the new vertex and the two on each side of the edge in between which the cursor is.
Do the same on the other side and you have the 2 "green" triangles standing.
Now select the 2 vertices each top of the "green" vertices and press F to create an edge between them.
Cut the edge with Ctrl+R, confirmed with LMB.
Select that new vertex and the vertex in the corner where the "P" face thin side will be and press F, creating an edge we can use to find the opposite tip of the "P" face.
Looking from top, select the vertex between the tips of the 2 "green" triangles and press G twice to start sliding the vertex along the long edge downwards.
While in this slide mode, press C to disable the clamping.
Now move along the long edge and over the cross-section towards the center of the base triangle. We can sadly not snap in this mode yet, but you will find that the closer to 0 on x and y you come the more you come closer to 2 on Z.
That said, with the values used the exact position would be 0,0,2.
Now with the vertex in place, you can create a face on each side and then dissolve the edge in the middle.

Based on what values you used i believe it should have come to fit, but since the version in the file was overlapping, either moving the vertices caused that or some measurements could have been slightly off.

Happy Blending.


How to get grease pencil rim effect? I am trying to find rim effect. I have attached a picture showing dialogue box of "add effect, offset, rim colour and mask colour" that I have seen being used, but I cannot find this option. I would be grateful if for any advice on this. Thank you.

i

What version of Blender are you using?

The stable version (Blender 2.79) doesn't have the "new" Grease Pencil, which comes with the rim effect.

To experiment with the new tools, you might want to try the version of Blender currently being tested: Blender 2.8 alpha. It is an alpha so it's not guaranteed to be stable nor will necessarily stay the same until the final release early next year.

More information about the Grease Pencil improvements in this and this video.


Is it possible to obtain float RAW pixel values using the Viewer node? I am going to do millions of renderings and want to get around the IO overhead by directly storing the rendering results into Numpy arrays. To store the results into Numpy arrays, I am currently using the Viewer node to access bpy.data.images['Viewer Node'].pixels to store the pixel values. For my application, I need to make sure that each pixel value is NOT quantized to integers of range [0, 255] and then normalized to [0, 1]. Does anyone know if it is possible to access RAW values of each pixel using viewer? Or suggest an analysis method so that I asses that myself.

If people here think that it not possible to get the raw values using the Viewer node, then I need to change my rendering pipeline and store the raw data in OpenEXR files.

Also, I noticed that the image in bpy.data.images['Viewer Node'].pixels is an RGBA image although I have set bpy.context.scene.render.image_settings.color_mode to RGB. Why is that? I'm afraid the pixel values are also in 8-bit not 16-bit or 32-bit. Is there a way to make find out the number of bits used per pixel?

The API doc says:

pixels

  Image pixels in floating point values

  Type: float in [-inf, inf], default 0.0

src: https://docs.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_75_1/bpy.types.Image.html#bpy.types.Image


How can correctly scale a rigged model along with its armature? I downloaded this rigged model (from this 3D artist). How can I scale the model? When I shrink the model in pose mode the ears and face deformation goes weird. When I scale as an object, the eyes don't scale with the body.

Is there a way to scale the model properly?

Probably,your entire mesh is parented to the main armature.
Scaling the armature deforms the object.
The best solution I found in that case is by creating a new empty and parenting the main armature to the empty. Now,scaling the empty scales the model without deformation.
Otherwise,try parenting every single mesh to that empty and scale the empty.


Action editor's active action I'm designing a stack of animations for a game, and once in a while the display will get stuck on an animation, regardless of the action I edit. How do I change the active action displayed in the rectangle I show in the arrow?

I figured it's because appended/new actions are added under the current selected item, which can be a mesh or an armature.


Converting global object location to local location in Python I'm trying to use ray_cast() in Blender Python and I found that you need the local location of every object instead of the global location.

I started searching on the web and people said you have to do it this way:

localPos = object.matrix_world_inverted() * target.location

But this gives me the same coordinates as the global location...

Converting global coordinates of object B to local coordinates of object A

The global coordinate of object A (obj_a)

global_coord = obj_a.matrix_world.translation

To convert from a global coordinate to the local space of object A

local_coord = obj_a.matrix_world.inverted() * global_coord

Using the global coordinate of object A in the local coordinate equation above yeilds Matrix.Identity().translation ,  since multiplying a matrix by its inverse results in the identity matrix, which has a translation component of (0, 9, 0) aka the origin of our local coordinate system.

Putting it altogether in a test script.  Object A is represented by the context object   All #other selected objects are  iterated as object B.

import bpy
# context for test code
from bpy import context

selected_obs = context.selected_objects
ob_a = context.object
#selected_obs.remove(ob_a) # will be at local origin
mwi = ob_a.matrix_world.inverted()
print("local coordinates of", ob_a.name)
for ob_b in selected_obs:
    local_pos = mwi * ob_b.matrix_world.translation
    print(ob_b.name, local_pos)

Result of running on Default Scene, with cube then camera as active object

local coordinates of Cube
Cube <Vector (0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000)>
Lamp <Vector (4.0762, 1.0055, 5.9039)>
Camera <Vector (7.4811, -6.5076, 5.3437)>

local coordinates of Camera
Cube <Vector (-0.3382, -0.3767, -11.2523)>
Lamp <Vector (3.1254, 3.9298, -6.5683)>
Camera <Vector (0.0000, 0.0000, -0.0000)>

Global locs from console

>>> for o in C.scene.objects:
...     o.name, o.matrix_world.translation
...
('Cube', Vector((0.0, 0.0, 0.0)))
('Lamp', Vector((4.076245307922363, 1.0054539442062378, 5.903861999511719)))
('Camera', Vector((7.481131553649902, -6.5076398849487305, 5.34366512298584)))

>>>


How to automatically/dynamically repel control points on a path/curve? I am trying to generate a 3D path which will be then object-bevelled with a circle. The aim is to make some sort of spaguetti. The problem I face is that once I extrude my circle along the path, (as expected) the 3dimensional knot crosses itself.

Is there a way to automatically repell the control points in such a way that once the extruded shape goes along the path, there won't be crossing-over?

There is no built in tool to do this automatically, nor any specific tool to do what you want. I don't think blender as any sort of curve intersection tool, let alone one that takes bevel objects into account.

That being said you could use a few other workarounds.

Either select all your intersecting vertex and scale them out relative to the selection center. That should move them apart eventually enough to avoid all intersections, or

You could use Proportional Editing for more localized control, to move only vertex within intersection radius. Select one vertex with close-by intersections, press O key to turn Proportional Editing on then scale it up. Control the influence radius with the Mousewheel to affect only neighbouring vertex in the desired influence area.


Animation & Complexity of Graph Editor This is an example. The character's arm is passing through space using all X, Y, and Z axes.

I tried to get the least key, but many keys were created to represent the curve.

I don't have the knowledge to edit 3D animations, so I am not confident to adjust the timing in this situation to create a nice tension sense.

Imagine a moving character with various poses. Rigify will create more channels.

From my point of view, the graph editor is too complex to represent good timing and smooth arcs.

But I think there will be channel management methods and graph editing methods that I don't know.

Please let me know the keywords of the techniques needed to solve my problem and I will study hard.

Thank you.

Additional questions:

I want to be checked by you to see if what I have realized is correct.

3D character animation seems to be better suited to frame-by-frame work, such as drawing animation or stop-motion animation.

Only a few in-betweens are automatic. It is a little convenient point of 3D animation.

Graph editing appears to be effective for camera or simple object motion.

Did I realized exactly?

and what is the best interpolation for in-between?

For timing adjust use the dopesheet instead: if you select some keyframes, you can grab them and scale them (time cursor is the pivot point).

Put the timeline in a point: if you right click an the left you will select all keyframes before the timeline, if you right click on the right you will select all keyframes after.

Try also select a group of keyframes and press Shift T and move the mouse, for easing in and out.

Another great way to control the timing is to use the breakdowner in the T panel, pose tools tab (but you have to start with less keyframes).


horizon mapping in cycles I am rendering a scene using cycle and I have set up a background with a Sky texture. Now I want to adjust the height of the horizon. I tried to use a Mapping node but what it does is changing the background in a solid color (which varies depending on the Z value).

This didn't work because the Texture Coordinates node wasnt added. You should plug one of its output sockets (e.g. Generated or Object) into the Vector input socket of the Mapping node (this is a common approach if texturing anything in Cycles. Otherwise, in Cycles, texture won't appear on the mesh, just solid base color).

Thus you'll be able to adjust the position of the horizon simply by changing Location value by Z axis of the Mapping node (not sure if this is good idea to manipulate horizon like that).

(I changed Location value to 0.3 here).


Sun lamp gives horizon glow not direct light? Simple scene: cycles , add sun lamp and the lighting is coming from the horizon, not from one singular direction?

Clearly a setting somewhere i've missed. any ideas?

Blend file:

https://imgur.com/gallery/4IFHx

Thanks
JK

Considering the scene units I was using, my sun lamp was astronomically huge. I reduced its size and it began functioning properly.


How do I change text on a panel row or hide it depending on the value of an EnumProperty? I want to put four or five choices in an EnumProperty so I can pick a choice of actions. Most choices won't need additional input, but one (possibly two) will need more input. For example, let's say Choice 4 needs a StringProperty and Choice 5 needs a BooleanProperty.
If I pick 1, 2, 3, or 5, I'd like both of the extra properties hidden, but if I pick Choice 4 from the Enum, I'd like the row with the StringProperty to appear. If I pick 5, I'd like the StringProperty (From 4) to disappear and the BooleanProperty to appear.
Also, I want to specify, with another row, info on the current status, so when the EnumProperty changes, I need to make another row visible or not and I need to change the string in my status row.
I've been looking this over and it looks like if a set the text in a row to something like:
row.label(text="My test status: " + context.scene.TestStatus)

and I do this along the way:
bpy.types.Scene.TestStatus = "Current Test Status"

that whenever I change the value of bpy.types.Scene.TestStatus that the value in the row on the panel will change. Am I right about that? Does Blender handle all that so I don't have to do something like "on value change" for the Enum? I've seen a few partial examples, but I'm not quite sure how this works. The same is true in reading the Enum value - where would I put the code to read the Enum value and show or hide the String and Boolean properties?

Given a defined enumerated list:
proplist: bpy.props.EnumProperty(
    items=(("BoolProperty", "Bool", "Boolean"),
    ("BoolVectorProperty", "Bool", "Boolean"), # duplicate name, desc
    ("FloatProperty", "Float", "Floating Point"),
    ("FloatVectorProperty", "Float Vector", "Floating Point Vector"),
    ("IntProperty", "Int", "Integer"),
    ("IntVectorProperty", "Int Vector", "Integer Vector"),
    ("PointerProperty", "Pointer", "Pointer Property"),
    ),
    name="proplist",
    description="Selectable properties to add",
    default="BoolProperty",
    )

The items require an identifier (unique to the list), a name (potentially duplicated internal to a list), and a description (potentially duplicated internal to a list).

items (sequence of string tuples or a function) – sequence of enum
items formatted: [(identifier, name, description, icon, number), ...].
The first three elements of the tuples are mandatory.

As such any test should be performed against the identifier of the list.
Within the panel you can then perform logical test:
if items[props.proplist].identifier == 'PointerProperty':
    col.prop(props, 'test_str')
if items[props.proplist].identifier == 'BoolProperty':
    col.prop(props, 'test_bool')

And provide information based on the selection:
items = props.bl_rna.properties['proplist'].enum_items
col.label(text=f"item [ identifier ] : {items[props.proplist].identifier}")
col.label(text=f"item [ name ] : {items[props.proplist].name}")
col.label(text=f"item [ description ] : {items[props.proplist].description}")

An overall example script below:
import bpy

class TEST_PG(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    proplist: bpy.props.EnumProperty(
        items=(("BoolProperty", "Bool", "Boolean"),
        ("BoolVectorProperty", "Bool", "Boolean"), # duplicate name, desc
        ("FloatProperty", "Float", "Floating Point"),
        ("FloatVectorProperty", "Float Vector", "Floating Point Vector"),
        ("IntProperty", "Int", "Integer"),
        ("IntVectorProperty", "Int Vector", "Integer Vector"),
        ("PointerProperty", "Pointer", "Pointer Property"),
        ),
        name="proplist",
        description="Selectable properties to add",
        default="BoolProperty",
        )
    test_str: bpy.props.StringProperty(
        name="test_str",
        description="str",
        default="Junk",
        )
    test_bool: bpy.props.BoolProperty(
        name="test_bool",
        description="bool",
        default=True,
        )

class VIEW3D_PT_test():
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'
    bl_category = "Test Panel"

class TEST_PT_sub_01(VIEW3D_PT_test, bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_idname = "VIEW3D_PT_test_panel_1"
    bl_label = "Test Panel 1"

    def draw(self, context):
        props = context.scene.my_property_group
        layout = self.layout
        box = layout.box()
        col = box.column(align=True)
        col.prop(props, "proplist")
        items = props.bl_rna.properties['proplist'].enum_items
        col.label(text=f"item [ identifier ] : {items[props.proplist].identifier}")
        col.label(text=f"item [ name ] : {items[props.proplist].name}")
        col.label(text=f"item [ description ] : {items[props.proplist].description}")

        if items[props.proplist].identifier == 'PointerProperty':
            col.prop(props, 'test_str')
        if items[props.proplist].identifier == 'BoolProperty':
            col.prop(props, 'test_bool')
        row = col.row()

classes = [TEST_PG,
        TEST_PT_sub_01,
        ]

def register():
    for cls in classes:
        bpy.utils.register_class(cls)
    bpy.types.Scene.my_property_group= bpy.props.PointerProperty(
            type=TEST_PG)

def unregister():
    for cls in classes:
        bpy.utils.unregister_class(cls)
    del bpy.types.Scene.my_property_group

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Save Custom Layout in Blender 2.67b? How can I save my custom layout in Blender 2.67b?

Changing the name of the default layout, clicking the plus-sign to the right of it, and "Save User Settings" in User Preferences all don't work!

Is this a bug? (because all the above does work in previous versions of Blender).

The User preferences such as addons have been separated from the startup .blend in Blender 2.66

So as of Blender 2.66 clicking "save user settings" in the User Preferences menu will only save settings such as enabled addons, themes, shortcuts/hotkeys, etc..

To save the current blendfile (includes layout(s)/materals/models/settings etc.. Pretty much everything.)  as the startup .blend, press Ctrl+U and click "save startup .blend" (Note that this includes User Preference settings)
To save a different screen layout so it is accessible in the selector at the top of the window,

Press the + to the right of the drop down selector, Arrange the screen the way you want it, then name it whatever you want. (Note that to have it defaulted when you start Blender you then have to save the startup .blend (Ctrl+U)


Linked objects with a rotation offset? I have 2 linked objects, and I want them to retain the same mesh data, but, on the object level, I want one to have a rotation different than that of the other one. e.g, I want object 1 to have no rotation (at the object level, at least), and I want the second one to be rotated 45 degrees on the z axis. Also, I want it so that when I rotate object 1, object 2 also gets rotated. So, if I rotate object 1 10 degrees on the z axis, then object 2 should be rotated 55 degrees. Is there any way to do this?

This can easily be accomplished with a Copy Rotation constraint.

Create your first object, and Apply location and rotation. Then ALTD to make a linked duplicate. Then, in Object mode, rotate your second object on the Z axis.

Now, add a Copy Rotation constraint to the second object, targetting the first object. The trick is to map the World space of the first object to the Local space of the second object.


Is there a way to have a transparent distorted material in Blender Render? I'm trying to render a transparent glass cube that distorts the objects behind it (with the Blender Renderer). The glass object is basically a very thin cube. I have tried to apply the Raytrace effect to the material like this:

But when I render, I obtain this result:

I would like that the red cube behind this glass and the floor are a bit distorted. I tried to modify the index of refraction but didn't work. Is there a way to achieve what I am looking for in Blender Render?

Is this the kind of distortion you wish to obtain?

I used a curved subdivided smooth glass and played with some raytrace transparency settings...


What does blue object line mean? See attached image. I'm not aware that this object had special settings.

Ok, figured it out. It is a rigid body joint, can be removed when you click the corresponding scene layer, and then pick the constraint panel (symbol with 2 chains) .


How to make F12 invoke a render tab and not open a new window? The new window opening is annoying and I would prefer to just see the render progress in the render tab.

If you go to:

Edit > Preferences > Interface,

under the Editors drop down there is another drop down called Temporary Windows. If you open this drop down, you will see a setting for Render in. If you change this to image editor, instead of it opening a new window it will change your editor type to image editor.


Generate geometry using geometry shader I have some points which represent polylines. I want to convert this polylines into geometry for which I am creating a curve and an object containing this object.

    curveData = bpy.data.curves.new('myCurve', type='CURVE')
    curveData.dimensions = '3D'
    curveData.bevel_resolution = 0
    curveData.bevel_depth = 1

    polyline = curveData.splines.new(type='POLY')
    polyline.points.add(len(yarn)-1)
    for point, node in zip(polyline.points, yarn):
        point.co = positions[node]
        point.radius = radii[node]

    # create Object
    obj = bpy.data.objects.new('yarn', curveData)
    obj.active_material = mat

This code normally works fine, but for some data sets that I have it takes ages to generate all the geometry I need (~ 15 minutes).

I want to know if there is any way to send the points in my data set to the GPU and use a geometry shader to create the geoemtry I want to render. I would like to render it using the Principled BSDF shader, so the geometry shader should produce data for this shader.

A workaround can be generating all the splines in the same object.

Should be around 1 minute or less from the given information (20K splines of 500 vertices).
Of course here, I've used generated coordinates.

import bpy

n_curves = 20000
n_points = 500

curveData = bpy.data.curves.new('myCurve', type='CURVE')
curveData.dimensions = '3D'
curveData.bevel_resolution = 0
curveData.bevel_depth = 1

for i in range( n_curves ):

    # splines.new adds a new spline inside the data (in the same object)
    polyline = curveData.splines.new(type='POLY')
    polyline.points.add(n_points)

    for n, point in zip( range( n_points ), polyline.points ):
        point.co = (n, 2*i, 0, 1)
        point.radius = 1

# create Object
obj = bpy.data.objects.new('yarn', curveData)
#obj.active_material = mat
bpy.context.scene.collection.objects.link(obj)

Note: I don't think you can use GPU to accelerate things. Even if possible don't think either that could be faster because of I/O needed between Blender's memory and gpu memory. (and there is no 'geometry generation shader').


Mesh unwraps in undesired way (seams are not obeyed) I have bird model with symmetric wings on its left and right side. Wings are cutted by the seams from the rest of the body. One wing unwraps correctly, following the seam but second doens't. No matter if there is a seam or not the wing always unwraps as if there was some seam. Even with my symmetric seam it unwraps like there was some extra seam near to my.

I attached the screenshot of unwraped model with selected undesired edge cut.

Here is link to blend file:
https://www.wetransfer.com/downloads/db48ae49a47dd31103bb5bdd1c233aaa20160405141634/d98e72b1b5847bc4dde682751860aaba20160405141634/a98a07

Your mesh has some problems.  You have not joined the wing to the body correctly which has left unconnected edges and interior faces. This is the cause of the extra UV islands.

You can see the problem area by clicking Select -> Select All By Trait -> Non-manifold.  You should remove the interior faces and connect the wing to body for the mesh to unwrap properly.

You also have several nasty poles that may affect the way the mesh deforms once rigged.  If you are intending to fix these, it might be worth altering the topology before you UV the mesh.


Is there colour picker in texture paint mode? Is there colour picker in texture paint mode? similar to photoshop or gimp

You can find the color picker by clicking on left or right Brush Color rectangles.

A faster way will be using S keyboard shortcut to sample color under the cursor location in 3D window or UV/Image Editor.


Render out of compositor without rendering scene? I don't understand how I can just render out of the compositor without rerendering the entire scene. The editor appears to be based on Softimages Post editor, where you just hit an execute for that window.
I understand I could render out a sequence and run that in as an image but the render layer is already rendering out that information. Why can't I use it.

Alternative 1

Know that by default the Compositor renders the current scene and that image is used by the RenderLayer Node.  The compositor can use any combination of live Rendered Layers or previously created image files.  The render layer can come from any scene present.  See the nodes options above.

If your Compositor work only requires a few changes and your scene take a long time to render, your work may be more efficient by saving files in PNG format or other more flexible format. Then reuse the images without rendering again.

You may direct the image compositor to read in files from an image sequence on hard disk or similar, and ignore the render layer node.

In the image above the Compositor uses an Image Sequence Node.  The Render layer Node is not used, it has no connections.  A camera exists and non renderable text.  The arrows show the setting for the Compositor.  Please click on the image to see a larger version.

Alternative 2.

You can create a single image plane and map previously created images to it as an image sequence. Perhaps Shadeless for Blender Render and a different setting for Cycles or other. You may need to place a camera and non renderable object such as a non rendered cube

Create the initial set of Image Files.

Render your complex scene as images to a PNG file sequence with some file name sequence such as base name sequence001.  No compositing.  The idea is multiple compositing nodes will be used later.
In a separate scene, for convenience, use the compositor, read in the file sequence001.  Composite these images in the compositor.
You might put some non renderable text object in the scene such as "See the compositor" as a form of notes.  Otherwise this blender scene might have very few objects.
Repeat step 02 if necessary to achieve your goal.
The assumption is that your compositor nodes are doing more the the Blender VSE can.  VSE and the Compositor are sometimes in Competition.
Some Blender Users may have special file writing needs.


Remove addons from tabs in 3d window I made my own tab SV, but there are addons that I do not need, Oscurart Tools ,Contour Retopolgy and Object Tools. Why are they not in their own tabs?

green - my panels, red - not mine

If I activate new addons they appear here in my tab also. How to delete the other addons from my list, or how to move my own on top?

When an addon defines a panel for the toolbar it should add a property called bl_category which defines the name of the tab it will be shown in. If this property is not defined then the panel will be shown in every toolbar tab.

Current repository versions of Contours and Oscurart Tools have been updated to have their own tabs. Contours was updated in January and Oscurart Tools in February. The solution for these would be to update them.

class CGCOOKIE_OT_retopo_contour_panel(bpy.types.Panel):
    '''Retopologize Forms with Contour Strokes'''
    bl_category = "Retopology"
    bl_label = "Contour Retopolgy"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'

I don't know which addon Object Tools belongs to. To manually fix this edit it's source file by right-clicking on one of it's buttons and select Edit Source. Then add a bl_category property to the panel. If this addon is located within the official addons or addons_contrib then you will need to repeat this when you upgrade, if the addon still hasn't been updated. If it is an official addon or from addon_contrib them submit a bug report (include a patch?) to get it updated.


Why does my model look this weird? My units are mm - meters. Why Am I not seeing my model completely solid?

cheers

In your screenshot in the right panel the camera far plane clipping is set to 1000km which is far to high. set it to somewhat around 10m to 1km depending on what you need


Boolean difference modifier not working on a custom mesh I'm trying to cut away a curved part inside a custom mesh with the help of a cylinder but the boolean modifier doesn't seems to work, When I try it with another  inbuilt meshes it works I have applied the boolean modifier on the custom mesh and then selected the cylinder for boolean

(Assuming Blender 2.80)
The anvil has a defect geometry. To fix this, select the anvil, go edit mode.
Then "Merge Vertice->By Distance" and leave Edit mode. Then it looks like this:

PS: I switched the cylinder into "Wire" display...


Decal projection on complex shapes I'm trying to add decals to stairs. I've set up a image as plane on the $X$ axis, and all I want is blender to do is project the image along the $X$ axis. However, through all the methods I try it doesn't work. It textures the top of the steps and I end up with a triangle like texture. All I want is to have an image and then along one axis just apply it to the object

Get an angle of your object "front on" by using one of the orthographoc angles (Numpad 1 for front, Numpad 3 for side, Numpad 7 for top, or Numpad 9 to flip any angle by 180deg), and then press U (unwrap), and select "Project from view" This will make your UV map resemble a "snapshot" from that angle.

After that, connect your image texture as normal. It comes out looking like this:

If you want to stop the image from appearing on the top and sides of the stairs. you can use the respective axes from the Normal Vector as a mix factor between your image and whatever other material (I used plain white for the example). The Normal vector doesn't like being recombined without a third axes, so you have to do it in 2 stages - one for each respective axis that you need "erased":


Setting camera clip end via Python Is there a Python command that will allow me to set the camera clip end for viewing my objects in Blender (via scripting)? According to http://www.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_69_release/bpy.context.html the "bpy.context.space_data" variable is read-only.

bpy.context.space_data is read-only, but it's properties are not.

For the active scene camera

context.scene.camera.data.clip_end

This gets the clip_end value for the active camera from the current scene, assuming there is one. If the current scene doesn't have an active camera, then context.scene.camera is None and this will raise an AttributeError.

For the viewport:

for a in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if a.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        for s in a.spaces:
            if s.type == 'VIEW_3D':
                s.clip_end = <your value>

This iterates through all areas in the current screen until it finds a 3D view, then iterates through all spaces in the 3D view until it finds a 3D view space, which is the object containing the clip_end property.


How to create feather wings and attach them on sphere? I want to create a wing to attach it on a sphere in blender. How can this be done? Should i use grease pencil to achieve this or use other tools? I am new to the blender.

I want this in 3d and very similar to the attached image.

Using your reference image, here is a quick solution:
Under the Properties panel in the 3D viewport, enable Background Images, then click Add Image. Pressing Open will bring you to a file browser; here, select your winged ball image.

Switch to orthographic view (5 on the numpad), than press (on the numpad) 7.
Add a plane, then go into edit mode. Select all of the points but one and delete them. Move the point to the edge of the wing in the picture. Then, pressing E (for extrude) make a line around the wing. After getting to the end, select both end points and press F to fill in a line.

The line is finished along the whole wing:

Now that the whole outline is created, press F to fill the area with a face.
Exit "Top Orthographic" view. Press E while the whole outline is selected to extrude the outline and add depth to the wing.
Here is the finished wing:

Here is what I made with this:

Hope this helps!


Armature twitches out of position for single frame during animation render I am running Blender 2.82 and rendering with Eevee.

I have a rigged character performing a simple swiping animation with it's arm. The animation plays correctly in the viewport and renders correctly if I render a single frame. However, if I render an animation, the arm will occasionally twitch out of position for a single frame and then snap back to where it's meant to be throughout the animation. If I go back in and manually render the single frames where the arm twitches out of place it will be positioned correctly.

In this manner I'm able to repair the animation, but manually re-rendering a dozen frames over the course of a 9 second animation gets tedious if I have to go back and make changes.

I previously had a similar issue where I was animating render visibility on objects and they would pop back in and out for single frames when I rendered animation, but would remain invisible if I rendered single frames.

Any insight into what might be happening would be helpful.

Thank you.

I can't speak for vers's 2.8+ but this is a common occurance and the solution has often turned out to be as simple as saving the Blend file, exiting Blender, deleting any cache folder(s) found in both the project folder and Blender's 'Temporary' folder (as designated in pref's), then reloading the project again. Hope this helps in your case... It may also be that the armature is working against some other modifier or constraint