Can I create a shader that uses the distance to the first opaque object behind it? I'd like to create a 'haze' shader, which is like a translucent shader but which attenuates the translucency depending on the depth of the scene behind it.  If this were a game engine, I would do it by first drawing all opaque objects in a z-buffer pass and then when I draw the haze shader in a transparent pass, I'd use the distance from the fragment to the stored z-value to calculate the amount of translucency I need.

Is there a way to do this in Blender?

you can get a "haze" effect without material shader nodes. Under composite, you can set a Z pass (or distance to camera pass), and you can then blur it, where the intensity of the blur is controlled by the "distance".
You can consider Z pass as a black to white raster/mask, where black conceals and white reveals, and also where black to white values represent 2.5D information on Z towards the camera. With that in mind, you can manipulate this "mask", or even create it (manually) in third party software (gimp, photoshop, etc.), then import the raster layer, and use this layer as the Z pass.

About haze. Naturally haze is a "blur effect" caused by different compositions and densities in the atmosphere. You can achieve a more natural haze effect with: you set a "domain" for your atmosphere (a big cube or sphere will be enough), then you set the material of this atmosphere object to volumetric. Using the volumetric shader nodes, you will be able to have more control on the "atmosphere".


Is it possible to color correct individual video segments in VSE in a video without affecting the other segments? I have a 5 minute video consisting of multiple strips--some are mp4, some are PNG image sequences. I would like to color correct individual strips, independent of the others. Most of the video has superimposed green screen foregrounds, which are mainly what need color correcting. There is no artifact.
I have tried highlighting the strip I am trying to change, and placing the cursor over it, but any changes I make affect the adjacent strip. I am using  under the Eevee render engine.
I have blender 2.8.3, Windows 10 64bit

In the Video Sequence Editor you can add Modifiers to each strip individually, such as Color Balance, Hue Correct, Curves etc.


Cant Exit Isolation Mode? I'm doing Blender Guru's Chair on yt. At one point he isolated a part so we could work on the seams. Now I can't seem to exit the Isolation mode for this part? In Layout Mode it's stuck but in all other modes I can see the parts. I've tried Alt+H and Ctrl+H and 'H' on it's own but nothing seems to change. The outliner shows the parts as visibile.

Any Ideas?

David

Layout Mode - Brace 1 is isolated but other parts are visible in outliner:

All parts visible in other modes

That's called Local view.

Switch it on/off through View > Local View > Toggle Local View
Shortcut: Numpad /


Casting shadows for transparent textured material Blend file here

I have two concentric cubes, both UV-textured, and sharing a material. The outer cube has a texture that is partially transparent.

When I render the scene, the inner cube acts as if the outer cube is fully opaque, and no light falls upon it.
I'd like the outer cube to only cast a shadow for the opaque parts of its texture, rather than all of it.

The problem seems to be the lighting. Both the ambient occlusion and the environment lighting are ignoring the transparent part of the outer cube, leaving the inner part completely shadowed.
To work around this, you could:

Use lamps. Lamps seem to illuminate the inner cube through the transparent texture fine.

Use cycles. The transparent part of the texture is lets light from environment lighting and AO as well as lamps through correctly when rendered with a node setup like this:

Bake AO in cycles (this is currently only available in development builds, but it will be in 2.71) and then use it in BI.

Model actual geometry for the outer hat instead of using an alpha texture.


Increase poly smoothness What is the best way to increase smoothness on this model?
Specially on that highlighted part which is too noticeable.

If you duplicated your mesh and mirrored it, you have two halves that are still unconnected.

The Subsurf modifier stops at the places where when you have unconnected vertices:

To fix this, enter edit mode, select all of your vertices (kbd>A,), press CtrlV and select remove doubles


Is running cloth physics without animation, or an endless non-looping animation possible? Background: Essentially I'm doing some stuff with cloth and multiple pinning groups, and moving those groups around via empties which the cloth is hooked to (so, a person picking up a napkin in both hands and then moving their hands together). This requires me to move the empties while animation is running, as if I move the empties before running the animation (or let the animation loop) it applies the empties' location as a pre-animation position, which results in stretching the mesh by displacing the vertex groups and results in ugly bad behavior.

However, I'm not actually looking for an animation, I just want a single frame after cloth physics have had time to run. So ideally I wouldn't be time-limited in how long I have to tinker around with moving the hooks based on however long I set the animation to. Is there a way to accomplish this? Or would my best bet just be to lower the FPS of the animation and crank the number of frames way up to give myself more time to tinker around with positions?

Unfortunately, this is not possible. The simulation is geared towards having a 'start' point and moving on frame by frame, storing the result in the Cloth Cache so that it can be replayed at a later point in time - there is no facility for a 'continuous' simulation. Even if there was, you would have the difficulty of stopping the simulation at the desired point in time and capturing the 'state' - currently this is achieved by simply scrubbing back through the frames until you get to the desired point and then 'applying' the cloth modifier to capture that frame from the cache and apply it to the mesh (or as a Shape Key).

So, yes, your best way forward is to increase the length of the simulation to give you enough time to tinker with the pinned vertices to get to the desired state before pausing the simulation to capture your 'frame'.

However, that said, once your cloth simulation has been baked you can use the Particle Edit mode to manipulate the mesh manually - this could be a way of achieving your goal. ie, run the simulation to get it 'almost there' and then use the Particle Edit to 'comb' the cloth (and the paths each vertex takes) into shape (as you would with Hair).


Remove edges in mirror I want to modify the topology of a model, but when I was eliminating edge loops with symmetry, I realized that the edges of the opposite side were not erased along with the ones I had selected.

Is there a way to erase the geometry in both parts without resorting to cutting the mesh in half and using the mirror modifier?
I use blender 2.91 and testing 2.92.
Thanks!

Press A to select whole mesh, then F3 and search for Symmetrize; make sure to choose the correct direction.


How are texture maps imported into Blender? How are various maps such as diffuse, AO, cavity, or displacement imported into Blender?

I saw the Texture tab has import image, would you do this for all maps and connect them somehow?

Cycles is node based, meaning the material is comprised of nodes. Unlike the blender internal where you go to a different tab and add textures, in cycles everything can be done from with in the node editor.

First make sure you are using cycles. To use Cycles, it must be set as the active render engine in the top header.
Open the node editor, change the node type to Shader Nodes You should now see something like this.

You can drag your textures from any file browser in to the node editor. That will create a new Image Texture node for each image.
Here is the whole node tree.

The color or diffuse map would go straight in to the Color socket of the Diffuse BSDF node, but because we are adding a AO map, cavity, or any black and white map to effect the color, that gets multiplied with the diffuse map then plugged in to the Diffuse BSDF.
The normal map gets plugged in to a Normal Map node, witch goes it to the Normal socket on the Diffuse BSDF.
The bump map is plugged in to a Bump node, which is connected between the normal map and the Diffuse BSDF.


Why is my bisect tool not working? It says Report: "Error Selected edges/faces required". It might be because i am working on a metaball that has "Object> Apply> Visual Geometry to Mesh"

You can restart blender and then maybe it'll work fine.
If it still not working go and try this...
menu>mesh>bisect I know only these two methods.
Hope it'll help you.


Snap object on top of surface of other object How do you snap an object on top of the surface of another object? I tried using the shrinkwrap modifier but that produced weird results.

If I have a cone, and a cube - I want to move the cone around so that it snaps perfectly along the faces of the cube

Use Blender's snapping feature with Snap Element set to Face. The configuration group is right on the 3D View's header.

If you activate Snap during Transform (Shift + Tab or the magnet button), you don't have to hold Ctrl while grabbing the object.

You can also Align rotation with Snapping Target (2nd button from the right) so the snapped object aligns its orientation with the face's normal.

It's possible to snap the lower (-Z) part of an object to another's surface, by placing the object above its intended target. It seems snapping uses the nearest point of grabbed object, and its relative position to target before transformation. I get these inconsistent snapping positions if the object's moved from above the target, and need manual adjustment to keep it outside the surface:


Why do I have these little dots? I made an animation in other blend file (with keyframes).
Now when I imported it into a new file, the animation has one of these dots per frame intead a keyframe inserted.

Why does this happen? I added an ordinary keyframe to compare.

These appear to be Moving Hold keyframes. From the Blender Manual:

Moving Hold (slight orange diamond)
A keyframe that adds a small amount of motion around a holding pose. In the Dope Sheet it will also draw a bar between them.

These keyframes are intended to add small bits of motion in between more major keyframes so that characters in a single position don't look like statues. Since they don't signify major movements, the DopeSheet draws lines through them when connecting identical keyframes.
Moving Hold keyframes can be added by changing the New Keyframe Type in the timeline:

Since the icons for Moving Hold and standard keyframes are very similar (the Moving Hold icon is slightly smaller and a little bit orange), it appears that you accidentally selected Moving Hold instead of Keyframe before animating.
This won't affect the animation; the different keyframe types are just to help you keep your animation organized.


Using Cell Fracture the object that is supposed to break, explodes or breaks before impact I found a lot of similar questions about the Cell Fracture add-on, but all with different issues.
As you will notice from the screenshots, (Blender version 2.83 LTS) between frame 125 and 126 you can see how Suzanne explodes just before the impact of the spiked ball, although she has set the Margin to 0.0001 as well as the shape has been set to Mesh and not Convex Hull. Below, following some tutorials, I also followed the advice to fix the bug of the chain that breaks, decreasing the speed and increasing the steps per frame and the solver iterations (unlike version 2.92 for example, which terms change to '' substeps per frame '').
Let me know and you need the file which in this case I will load it.
Thanks in advance.

The Cell Fracture and physics process by default start at frame 1, and that has to be delayed.  After you do the fracture, select all segments and press  Ctrl + L  to link them all. Choose Animation data.
Now what you keyframe on one will affect them all.  Select one segment, set and keyframe it's physics to Animated at frame 1. Untick and keyframe the Dynamic box also.
Move the timeline to the collision frame (or there-abouts) and keyframe the boxes in reverse.  Animated unticked and Dynamic ticked.
Addendum 1st April 2021

One thing further to the above.  If the physics are still activating at frame 1, save the file and exit Blender.  Reload it.  This will clear the physics cache.

Apparently the procedure has been changed in vers 2.8+ and the new method is set out here -
linking objects in blender 2.8


Strange Lines Appearing In Object View Wireframe Mode I'm new to Blender, having learnt about it from watching YouTube videos. I have created a model of a shoulder pad for use with a scale model, with a view to 3D printing it. The model itself looks fine in Solid Object view, and also looks fine in Edit view. However, when I look at it in Wireframe Object view, I see a lot of strange lines that shouldn't be there. Can anyone help explain why these lines are showing?

I have tried deleting all the edges and faces where these lines show, and then reconnecting the vertexes manually to rebuild the quad-faces, but the strange lines still show in Wireframe Object mode even after doing this. I have also deleted any duplicate vertexes using the remove doubles button after selecting all the vertexes in Edit mode.

Here is an image of the shoulder pad in Solid Object view:

Here is it in Edit view:

And here is what it looks like in Wireframe Object view:

Any assistance you can provide to help me understand why this is happening, and how to improve my modelling to stop it happening in the future, would be most appreciated! Thanks!

Here is a link to my .blend file:

You need to tell Blender to draw all edges in the Object Display Panel:

I believe that Blender does this essentially as a way to conserve processing power as well as to keep wireframe scenes uncluttered for easier navigation.


Automate the rotation of camera around an object with python I have a 3D model of a liver and I wanted to get the rendered images of the model from various angles like the ones shown below.

The path the camera would traverse would be roughly circular/elliptical with a fixed height from the X-Y plane. The problem is in every iteration I'm also doing some other computations in python with a script. So I wanted to add the automation of rotation along with my script in Python rather than doing it one at a time but am not able to figure out how to do so.

Try using Python Scripting. The following script rotates the camera from initial position
X: 7m
Y: 1m
Z: 1m
Rotation_Z = 90 degrees (a.k.a cam.rotation_euler[2])

upto 90 degrees and captures num_steps frames. Change it to 360 for a complete view. R describes the distance from the target object (The Default Cube in my case). The radius_range contains all the radii to rotate in.
import bpy
import os
from math import *
from mathutils import *

#set your own target here
target = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
cam = bpy.data.objects['Camera']
t_loc_x = target.location.x
t_loc_y = target.location.y
cam_loc_x = cam.location.x
cam_loc_y = cam.location.y
# The different radii range
radius_range = range(3,9)

R = (target.location.xy-cam.location.xy).length # Radius

init_angle  = (1-2*bool((cam_loc_y-t_loc_y)<0))*acos((cam_loc_x-t_loc_x)/R)-2*pi*bool((cam_loc_y-t_loc_y)<0) # 8.13 degrees
target_angle = (pi/2 - init_angle) # Go 90-8 deg more
num_steps = 10 #how many rotation steps

for r in radius_range:
    for x in range(num_steps):
        alpha = init_angle + (x)*target_angle/num_steps
        cam.rotation_euler[2] = pi/2 + alpha #
        cam.location.x = t_loc_x+cos(alpha)*r
        cam.location.y = t_loc_y+sin(alpha)*r

        # Define SAVEPATH and output filename
        file = os.path.join('renders/', str(x)+'_'+ str(r)+'_'+str(round(alpha,2))+'_'+str(round(cam.location.x, 2))+'_'+str(round(cam.location.y, 2)))

        # Render
        bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = file
        bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)

In my, case, all cameras positions produced by this code look like

I hope it helps :)


VSE: No Audio In Rendered File, Mixdown causes crash Ever since switching from Windows to Linux, I have been unable to render any videos in Blender's VSE with the audio tracks.
The audio codec is selected in the scene tab:

However after rendering with Render > Render Animation the created file has no audio data whatsoever. ffprobe gives this result:
$ ffprobe -i wheel.mp4
...snip...
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'wheel.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41
    date            : 2020/08/13 09:38:02
    encoder         : Lavf58.49.100
  Duration: 00:00:06.67, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 5835 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 5832 kb/s, 30 fps, 30 tbr, 90k tbn, 60 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : VideoHandler
$

When I attempt to render the audio on it's own via Render > Render Audio > Mixdown, Blender crashes without a log file regardless of how I attempt to mixdown the file.
This is happening regardless of my choice of rendering engine, and I don't think it's an out of memory error since I have plenty of available memory before the crash and the video portion renders fine.
Has something changed between rendering files from the VSE between 2.7 and 2.8, or is there something I don't know about rendering audio in Blender on Linux that's causing a crash?

After a few comments on the above post and some experimentation, it seems not all distro packages are created equal. If you're experiencing some weird bugs like this, try downloading a tarball right from Blender.org.


True relationship between bones/armature and rigginh Is it true that the armature/bone structure really only depends on the Head of a bone, in particular with regards to rigging/skinning a model?

I am using niftools to import models into Blender, but several of the bones are pointing in the wrong direction. The location/rotation of the head of the bone is fine, it's just the tail is positioned incorrectly. However, when the model is used in-game (Morrowind), everything appears to be functioning properly.

Vertex movements are referred to the head bone, tail position is important only in case of automatic weighting or bone heat weighting, and - of course - in case of IK chain or other connected bones.

After weighting is done, if your bone isn't parent connected with another bone, you can freely move the tail in edit mode (i.e. to align axes with world axes) without affecting the behaviour of the rig.


change background color from script How to do this: Render shadow on transparent background with Blender Render from script? I need to set a transparent background color before render a mesh.

When you hover over a property, you can see its Python property.

Here, it is simply :

scene.render.alpha_mode = 'SKY' # in ['TRANSPARENT', 'SKY']


Baking specific channels only for an animation When baking an action we can select which bones to bake, by choosing selected only option. But can you have more control over which types of channels to bake? For example if I would like to only bake translation and rotation channels of the bones, is this possible to achieve with or without scripting? Locking channels in the transform panel for each bone prevents those channels from being keyframed but they still get baked.

Script Solution

Can look at the datapath of an fcurve of an action.  Here is the fcurves of default armature object of  single pose bone with a LocRotScale action

>>> a = C.object.animation_data.action

>>> for fc in a.fcurves:
...     fc.data_path
...
'pose.bones["Bone"].location'
'pose.bones["Bone"].location'
'pose.bones["Bone"].location'
'pose.bones["Bone"].rotation_quaternion'
'pose.bones["Bone"].rotation_quaternion'
'pose.bones["Bone"].rotation_quaternion'
'pose.bones["Bone"].rotation_quaternion'
'pose.bones["Bone"].scale'
'pose.bones["Bone"].scale'
'pose.bones["Bone"].scale'

A script to convert any fcurve of an action to samples (bake it) that has a datapath that ends with "location" or "rotation_quaternion"

import bpy

context = bpy.context

ob = context.object
action = ob.animation_data.action

to_bake = ("location",
           "rotation_quaternion",
           )

fcs = (fc for fc in action.fcurves
       if any(fc.data_path.endswith(p) for p in to_bake))

for fc in fcs:
    fc.convert_to_samples(*action.frame_range)

Further to this, can make a lookup dictionary of the fcurves, then use it based on selected pose bones

The first part of the datapath from a pose bone

>>> C.active_pose_bone.path_from_id()
'pose.bones["Bone"]'

Similar to above, but only baking the location and quat rot of selected pose bones.

import bpy
from collections import defaultdict

context = bpy.context

ob = context.object
action = ob.animation_data.action

to_bake = ("location",
           "rotation_quaternion",
           )

fcurves = defaultdict(list)

for fc in action.fcurves:
    fcurves[fc.data_path].append(fc)

for pb in context.selected_pose_bones:
    path = pb.path_from_id()
    for sfx in to_bake:
        fcs = fcurves[f"{path}.{sfx}"]
        for fc in fcs:
            print("Bake", fc.data_path, "xyzw"[fc.array_index])
            fc.convert_to_samples(*action.frame_range)


How do I fix pixelated fluid? I'm making a water sim and I noticed when I rendered a frame that some of the water reflected the light weirdly, like a square or polygon.
The fluid closest to the camera also looks square-ish. How can I fix this and make it smoother?
[.blend file] https://pasteall.org/blend/19c9ec28feac4a66b8cd4d5c3370761c

Going into object and pressing shade smooth seemed to fix it while on the inflow object.


Animated procedural stylized water ripple in Cycles material I'm trying to find out how to create a procedural material that creates an animated diffuse ripple around any intersection or 'edge'.

e.g. cube lands on water surface, edge of water touching the side of a pot, etc.

On the top right of the picture below is a quick breakdown of a few of the elements.

A thick inner 'ring' ripple that wraps around the cube.
A thinner outer ring.
The foam at the edge of the water.

I'm not a math wizard, so I kinda followed a thread and got this node setup:

I hope I understood and got the description for the nodes right. Here's the result:

A few problems come up here.

Is there a way to 'distort' the circle into a wavy ripple around the cube as shown in the breakdown?
The ripples don't follow the shape of the cube since it's
calculating from the origin point.

For problem #1, I'm thinking of using #noise.random() to generate random values which then goes into a sine math node but I have no idea how to make it only affect the edge of the circle.

For problem #2, I believe that I'll have to start over and use a different approach but before I do that, I'm hoping that there's someone here that knows where to go from here.

I did try to tinker with dynamic paint but it doesn't work with fluid sim. It outputs an error saying no UV data is found.

I don't want to ask too much, so if there's a solution just for making the circle 'distort' around the cube over time, that would be good enough. Thanks in advanced.

Cheers.

Distorting The Circle

I did some more experimenting and I got like a 50% success in distorting the circle.

I added 2 cross product nodes and 1 normalize node to screw around with the x y z values before plugging it into the multiply nodes which are now in the 'circles' node group.

The theory: The 'circle' node group draws an infinite amount of n unit lines from the origin of the cube, creating a sphere with a radius of n units. Where the sphere intersects the fluid, a circle of diffuse material appears on the fluid.

To achieve the distortion, a relative IRL suggests that I randomize the radius of the sphere by jumbling up the x y z location data of the cube. It should be able to mess up the radius enough to make a wavy looking circle. I used cross product because it was the one that came close to the desired result.

I wish I could explain this better, but then again, I'm no math wiz.

It looks close but when I render out the animation...

I got electricity instead. Coooooooooool but still not what my project team needs.

Aside from how it looks like electricity, it still doesn't hug around the cube as much as it should and there's very limited controls on how much it spreads out.

Trying Out Dynamic Paint

I never considered trying out the vertex format but as suggested, I looked deeper into what it does and it works like a charm for problem #2. The setup is shown below.

The node setup doesn't look like a nightmare anymore. Thanks, Duarte!

This is still an incomplete answer. I might update this answer as I find out more stuff. Feel free to add on top of this or come up with a better solution altogether.

What's Next: How to make the distortion behave properly (or find something else that behaves properly) and hopefully, apply that on top of the dynamic paint.

.blend file with the electric ripple thing:

.blend file with dynamic paint:


Axis flip when converting matrix4 to quaternions i have a hard time figuring out why i get an axis flip when i try to convert the second matrix to quaternion. First matrix (f1) gives me positive quaternion values while the second matrix (f2) gives me negative values in x, y, and z. If i convert to euler instead, the values are stable ...
Am i doing something wrong?

Thanks alot for your help!

from mathutils import Matrix

print("\n")

f1 = ((-0.8030, 0.2867, 0.5255, 1),
      ( 0.2980,-0.5660, 0.7686, 1),
      ( 0.5161, 0.7729, 0.3691, 1),
      ( 0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000, 1))

f2 = ((-0.8153, 0.3279, 0.4773, 1),
      ( 0.2633,-0.5243, 0.8098, 1),
      ( 0.5158, 0.7859, 0.3412, 1),
      ( 0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000, 1))

matrix_f1 = Matrix(f1)
matrix_f2 = Matrix(f2)

quat_f1 = matrix_f1.to_quaternion()
quat_f2 = matrix_f2.to_quaternion()
euler_f1 = matrix_f1.to_euler()
euler_f2 = matrix_f2.to_euler()

print(quat_f1)
print(quat_f2)
print(euler_f1)
print(euler_f2)

No, you are not doing anything wrong. It is rotation expressed as a normalized 4-dimensional vector. Do not worry about the values there, if they need to be negative that is fine - it is still a representation of the same rotation, it is only expressed in a way that makes some math easier. It is really hard to make sense of quaternion values just by looking at them.

You can make a plane and test the rotations on it. You need to set the rotation mode to quaternion in the n panel to be able to change bpy.context.object.rotation_quaternion and see it on the object.
If you create another plane and run the script again changing the rotation in euler mode for bpy.context.object.rotation_euler instead, you will see the rotations match despite the negative values that happen to exist in a normalized 4-dimentional vector notation of the rotation. You can add this to the end of your code to see this. You will need a new object created and selected as the active object:

import bpy
#bpy.context.object.rotation_quaternion = quat_f2
bpy.context.object.rotation_euler = euler_f2

You will be able to observe floating point/binary conversion precision errors if you decide to compare the results of quaternion to euler conversions by the numerical values doing something like this:

print( quat_f2.to_euler() )
print( euler_f2 )

The rotations are the same. Numbers differ because of the precision errors during the calculations. That is normal.

If you need to interpolate between the quaternions you face a problem that the same rotaion can be expresed with a negative and a positive quaternion and it is possible to rotate the long way or the short way around to the same rotation. If I am reading this correctly, the short path would be between two quaternions the dot product of which would be positive, so you can check if your current rotation from the previous is the short one evaluating if the dot product of the quaternions is negative or positive and then negate your current quaternion if needed:

if quat_f1.dot(quat_f2) < 0:
    quat_f2.negate()


How can I render painted image texture in cycles? I want to paint a specific colour on a specific area of an image used as texture in cycles. I set it that so that it shows correctly in texture mode, but I cannot make it show in render mode. How can I do that?

Texture paint will only show in Cycles when saved and refreshed. Save the paint work to disk and then tab in and out of edit mode to refresh your render view, or press render again to get the update.


Armature Deform With Automated Weights only on selected bones :)
How can i use Armature Deform With Automated Weights while Blender only considers some bones of the armature and not all of them?
In my case i only want to use the two selected bones while the other ones that controll the eyes are completely ignored.
Thanks for the help!

You will find that option in weight paint mode.


Is it necessary to join the mesh before adding bones? I'm Modeling a Character for animation, but still, I'm not sure about the final result of its shape, so I'm trying to add bones, but still, my character isn't joined in one object, it is still objects parented to each other, and it has the eyelids are connected to lettuce and a controller's bones. so I'm Wondering if it Is necessary to join all the mesh parts together(In one selection) Before I add the final bone controllers. So the point is the body controllers are different from the eyelids controllers, If I joined it I would lose my work There. Plus The mesh is always losing its appearance when I add bones with automatic weights in it. so I think it's a cause of not joining everything in one mesh.

It is not necessary to have all meshes in one object to control it with a single armature. I’ve done multiple objects with one armature many times, Usually because I wanted to preserve two UV maps and did not know yet how to merge them.
Thus, I guess your rigging system and weight painting needs adjustment. There are answered questions to this elsewhere, or you can ask your own new question. As always, I recommend the Blender Manual at docs.blender.org
PS: basically, you create vertex groups that have the same names as bones, and the bones will drag around vertices in those groups. If the vertex is part of multiple vertex groups, it will be controlled by two bones, ending up somewhere between them. This is where weights come in: we can have the vertex have less weight in one group so it will follow the other bone more but not entirely.


Imported object is locked to world origin I try to import an fbx file which I have done many times before. Now suddenly it is locked to world origin so I can't move it. It is getting deformed when I try to move it because it is locked there.

The object is an animation figure from Mixamo. I am using Blender 2.81. I have even tried to restore factory settings, it won't help either.

A few things you could do to fix this:

1) set the origin of the fbx file you imported to it's own geometry.

You can do this by going to object > transform > origin to geometry in object mode with the object selected.

2) you can set the object to be it's own user.

This is a fix for an error caused by linking objects from other scenes. Somehow your object might have a similar response, so setting it to have it's own user may help.

You can do that by going to object > make single user > object. Or if it has a material or data then object > make single user > object & data & materials & tex.


How to create a gradient texture from one material to another (opaque to clear)? I am trying to render an object that has opaque base and gradually becomes clear/translucent at the top in Blender cycles.

Please see the attached image (which was not made with blender).

All you need to do is use a Gradient Texture (see how to create it procedurally here: How to create a gradient texture?) as a mask for the transition between two materials.

Set up the nodes as pictured below. Try to experiment with a Mapping Node settings (adjust the Location, Rotation and Scale parameters) to achieve a desired effect.

To have a better control between materials transition add a Color Ramp node and experiment with its slider.


How can I place vertices on the very center of the uv image? I am trying to move the selected vertices to slap onto the very center of the image, the resolution is 1000x1000 so I want it on the 500px mark. When I tried to center it myself I noticed that the black color on the right was starting to "leak" on to the edge as shown here, kind of hard to see but it's those black spots

There might be a better way, but here's a quick and dirty method:

In the UV/Image editor, select all vertices.
In the UV/Image editor's N-panel, set the UV vertex position to X: 500; Y: 500.
With all vertices still selected, scale 50% in the x-direction by tapping S, X, then typing ".5", Return.
In the N-panel, set the UV vertex position to X: 250.


How to mask one image and layer it over another? I'm trying to add parts of a blurred picture over the crisp version of the picture. I want to create a blurred corners effect.

This is the original picture:

This is the vignette I want to overlay:

I tried to combine the two using Alpha Over, but the blurred version doesn't show:

I tried using Mix with a variety of modes (Add, Overlay, Multiply), but I don't get the right results. Multiply is closest but too dark:

I tried adding a Set Alpha node in various places, but if that's the solution, I don't know where to put it.

How can I layer the vignetted image over the original image?

Use the blurred ellipse mask as alpha with the set alpha node.

I guess you wanted the white to be none blurred, hence the following Invert node with Alpha checked.


Changing texture slot mapping size has no effect I'm trying to flip image vertically by changing Texture slot > Mapping > Size property.

But when i changing X, Y, Z values, the textures on the object is still not flipped. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Maybe I should do something after I changed the values?

why you expect changing size or offset values to be affecting rotation or flipping? Btw, if you use "UV" as mapping coordinates, you should use a  UV map, which would give better texturing control on your object... (later on this)

If you try, eg, "global" coordinates (projection "flat" in my example using a plane mesh):

you can invert X/Y slots and get the texture rotated...

is this what you want?

If you used UV mapping (you have to "UV unwrap" before your mesh in edit mode) instead:

you could assign your texture to that UV map, in the UV/image editor (on the left below), then set the UV mapping type using your unwrapped UV:

then, rotating the UV map in the UV/image editor, you can use the UV map and rotate, scale, modify it, to adjust your texture precisely, to your mesh:

Most people use UV mapping because it gives total freedom, but the other (old) way still works, it is just different.


How to slide some vertices along a slant, until it lines up vertically with another vertex I started out with the default cube. I went into edit mode and moved the two top, rear vertices up a bit. That's the two positioned in the positive Y-direction. Go to face select mode and select the top face. Press E to extrude and drag up just a little. You now have a "birdbox" with a nice roof. I want to have that nice angle in the front end of the roof (negative Y), but I want to have the top, rear end (positive Y) of the roof aligned with the rest of the rear wall. Using S Y 0 on the two rear faces distorts the roof.

Normally when creating roofs like this I also select the front and two side faces (3 faces total) of the roof and use Alt E then Esc, Alt S, drag to create "overhang".

Is there a way to slide the top, rear end of the roof until it lines up with the rear wall?

This is just one example, but I find myself often wanting to either move or extrude until it lines up with other geometry.

The above example can be solved by creating a double roof (mirror) and then delete one half later, but that is not really interesting. I hope there is some modeling trick I have missed.

You'd need a combination of custom transform orientation and snapping tool, but the workflow is reversed a bit:

Slant the top face any which way (by moving some vertices upwards, etc.),

Extrude the face along main axis, in this case vertically,

With the new face still selected, set it as the new transform orientation by pressing + button to the right of 3D View > Navigation menu > Transform Orientations group's dropdown menu, or pressing CtrlAlt-Spacebar.

Set the Snap Element to Vertices, its selection menu accessible through 3D View header > snap elements dropdown menu, or by pressing CtrlShift-Tab.

Using the manipulation widget oriented to the slanted face, select and move any vertices of the new face,

If you translate the vertices this way, and snap them to a vertex below, it will be aligned along the slant of the face:

I use this workflow because it's easier to move and align along a slant, than align along a main axis while moving along a slant.


How can I update a popup while shown? I'd like to display a popup, that shows some custom properties. Which properties are drawn or enabled depends on the settings of some other properties of this popup. The popup is invoked by context.window_manager.invoke_props_dialog().

Here's a small example (properties are coming from the addon-preferences):

box = layout.box()
if not( up and up.preferences.simplify_ui):
    box.prop(up.preferences, "simplify_ui")

if up and up.preferences.simplify_ui:
    row = box.row()
    row.prop(prefs, "simplify_ui")

    row.prop(prefs, "auto_simplify_ui")

    #...

How can I update the popup?
Thanks.

While your Operator.check(...) method returns True the popup will redraw.

Simple return True method used in bpy.types.Operator Dialog Box example.  Setting the boolean prop, my_bool,  to True reveals more in draw method.

import bpy

class DialogOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "object.dialog_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Dialog Operator"

    my_float = bpy.props.FloatProperty(name="Some Floating Point")
    my_bool = bpy.props.BoolProperty(name="Toggle Option")
    my_string = bpy.props.StringProperty(name="String Value")

    def execute(self, context):
        message = "Popup Values: %f, %d, '%s'" % \
            (self.my_float, self.my_bool, self.my_string)
        self.report({'INFO'}, message)
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def check(self, context):
        return True

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.prop(self, "my_bool")
        if self.my_bool:
            layout.label("It's TRUE")
            layout.prop(self, "my_string")

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        wm = context.window_manager
        return wm.invoke_props_dialog(self)

bpy.utils.register_class(DialogOperator)

# test call
bpy.ops.object.dialog_operator('INVOKE_DEFAULT')


Blackness in Radeon ProRender I'm trying to use Radeon ProRender and it's materials library, however I meet a problem: some parts of objects with default materials (Bronze Brushed and Fabric Matte Solid Beige) look black:

How can I fix these black parts?

I found that I can fix the Fabric material setting lower value to the Reflection Weight than default 1.0:

Result:

However, the same doesn't fix the Bronze material, so additional answer would be very appreciated.


How to see texture with a "node viewer" using node wrangler addon I am trying to build a grungey texture and in order to see it I want to use a node viewer.  In this video at minute 1:28 he talks about enabling node wrangler addon and then control + shift to activate the vewier when he adds a node. THAT control + shift does not work in Blender 2.76. Is this a version difference?

As mentioned by @mr-zak:

Node wrangler uses Shift + Ctrl + Left-Mouse as default mapping. That means, you have to keep Shift and Ctrl keys pressed and Left-Click the node.


How to create procedurally generated surface bubbles on a liquid I am trying to procedurally generated surface bubbles on coffee. I know that you can use a UV map to do this, but I'd like to have more control. There is a nice demo of doing this with animation is 3ds Max, but I haven't worked out a way to do it in Blender.

http://www.3dtotal.com/tutorial/1878-creating-and-animating-bubbles-3ds-max-misc-by-alvaro-moreira-particle-flow-frost

I have tried using metaballs, but without much success. Here is the look I'd like simulate.

The new microdisplacment feature can help with that. Here is a simple node setup as a proof of concept:

After duplicating this effect a couple of time you can obtain that:


Unwanted UV Vertices EDIT: Here is the link to my .blend file~

I'm new to the blender software specifically. An issue I'm having with Blender that I have never experienced with other software is the inability to remove unwanted vertices from my UV texture map.

Because the texture on my mug model is going to be a flat band of pattern and color, I want to line my vertices up in my uv map so there are no distortions in the pattern. However, whenever I weld two corresponding vertices in my map, this happens:

I noticed there is a sort of stack of faces and vertices in this one little spot. I can't delete it to remove it from my uv, so I tried just grabbing it and moving it off the uv area, but that doesn't help me when it comes to welding and tidying up my map. This little stack is made up of all of the faces I don't want to put my image texture on, so it's causing a bit of a roadblock for me.

I tried searching for a solution but I am not too good at describing this problem in search engines and generic searches didn't seem to hold any answers.  Any help is greatly appreciated!

To get even texture pattern I think the seams on the mug indeed should be re-arranged.

That "vertice" in the original UV map actually represents all the inner faces of the mug together with mug's handle. That's why the model should be unwrapped and so the seams can be put in this way:

In this example the seams are placed on:

The outer mesh handle's loopcut; it starts on the bottom of it outside and ends on the bottom inside.
The inner mesh handle's loopcut.
The loopcut opposite the mug' handle.
The very top loopcut of the mesh (inner one, so as not to be seen from the outside).

After some UV map tweaking (scaling loopcuts so the shape to be more quad-like and without distortions) and arranging islands, it can look like this:

Note: if texture on the bottom of the mesh will be seen somehow, then topology there should be rebuilt.

Thus the texture on your mug will be placed in this way:

Blend file


Not showing colors in material mode I'm making this alarm clock, and after going to material mode from solid, it's not showing me the colors. Mine is like this
And colors are definitely there
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks :)

Ok here is the box you need to change. I think you got it wrong way round when you explain your issue too. You went from material to solid mode ... not the other way round I guess.

Basically, what's happening here is that. The solid mode is an opengl operation so it uses a different color operation for showing color on screen. Where material mode takes the material color into consideration. Solid mode are usually usually a quick way to set up simple color to work on the models before heading onto material creation.

And here is the same file with the colors changed!


fixating rotation around a dynamicly moving plain I have the following situation

The entire object is rigid. The bottom plate can rotate around the blue(z) axis. The torso should be rotation with it and the arm should rotate around the side of the torso.

Whenever I put the objects as parent of bone they will work in their default positions. However if I turn the base around 45° and then the arm the rotation will not be around the torso. Instead the arm detaches a bit.

Here is a video of what I mean:

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

I just want the bones to only rotate 90° to the normal of the location surface

Is there a way I can fix my rotation to a plain (torsoside) with its two axis as references?

When you click r for rotation you can limit the rotation on world axis by hitting ( xy or z) or on local axis ( xx, yy or zz)

first place the bones in a good way

rotate around the local axis
or
select the bone in pose mode
in Bone Constraints add Limit rotation constraint
setup the constraint according to your needs (in this case see the image )
now the bone will only rotate around the desired axis

Bones setup:

Bone constraint :

result :


Can I color the empty space between two objects? How do I color in the space between the torus and the cylinder? I want to do this without changing the color outside the torus.

you have many options :

create another material with a different color
select the face you want to color and click on assign in the Material tab

OR

create another object that fits inside the torus and give it another material

OR

use a texture  and unwrap the object to map it correctly


Process meshes that have multiple users only once in script I would like to subdivide all edges of the selected objects. This is what I've done so far:

def execute(self, context):
    theScene = bpy.context.scene

    # Store selected objects
    theSelected = bpy.context.selected_objects
    theObjects = set([obj for obj in theSelected if obj.type == 'MESH'])

    # Iterate over selected objects
    for obj in theObjects:
        # Set this object as active
        theScene.objects.active = obj

        # Select all edges in edit mode
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
        bpy.ops.mesh.select_mode(type='EDGE')
        bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action = 'SELECT')

        # Subdivide
        bpy.ops.mesh.subdivide()

    return {'FINISHED'}

How to adjust this operator to process meshes only once when they are used in multiple objects?

You could use an array to check if a mesh has been already modified.

theScene = bpy.context.scene

# Store selected objects
theSelected = bpy.context.selected_objects
theObjects = set([obj for obj in theSelected if obj.type == 'MESH'])

#all the meshes here:
meshes = []

# Iterate over selected objects
for obj in theObjects:
    # Set this object as active
    theScene.objects.active = obj
    mesh = obj.data

    # Do something if the mesh isn't in the array yet
    if (not mesh in meshes):
        meshes.append(mesh)

        # Select all edges in edit mode
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
        bpy.ops.mesh.select_mode(type='EDGE')
        bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action = 'SELECT')

        print(meshes)

        # Subdivide
        bpy.ops.mesh.subdivide()

        # Toggle Object Mode to select next object
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')


How to melt an object then reverse the melt into another object Hi I am trying to have a text that says "Hi" then melts into liquid, then that liquid reverse melts into text that says "my name is" then melts again. Does anyone have any idea how i can do this?

You could use fluid 'Control' objects to control the fluid in a fluid simulation. These allow you to set up a mesh that acts as a force that attracts the liquid. By controling the force (using keyframes) on multiple control objects (each set up for different text) you should be able to manipulate the fluid as desired.

For example, here's a set up with a fluid sim domain containing some fluid along with a control object in the shape of the word 'Text' set up as a Control object with suitable forces to attract the liquid :

It seems that care needs to be taken when using multiple fluid control objects - in particular, I appeared to get interference causing the fluid to be repelled from one control object when I tried to get it to be attracted to the other. It seems the solution is to ensure you always have at least some Radius to the control object's influence when it's in use. Also, it appears that you need to adjust the Strength down to zero before you disable it by keyframing its 'Enabled' property.

As mentioned in a comment, the body of fluid can be removed from the final render by way of a Boolean modifier and a mesh (eg, cuboid) to cut away the excess fluid. Also, keep the fluid domain as small as possible to avoid wasted processing - using high quality control objects really does slow down the bake.

Here's my final result :

This was achieved by keyframing between two control objects - one 'Text' and the other 'here', while varying the Radius (reducing from high to low to affect the influence away from the control mesh) and Strength (increasing to grab the fluid and reducing to zero to release it). The additional fluid reservoir was removed using the Boolean modifier to remove everything within a 'Mask' mesh.

Blend file included (you'll need to Bake the fluid domain which will take some time)


Can you edit an imported XPS model in Blender? I have found some cool models in XPS ripped from some games and have imported them into Blender using an import plugin. But I went to make an adjustment to the character and found that I cannot edit. I cannot selection or see any vertices.
Other than rigging a skeleton is there a way to edit?
I believe I was in Modeling/Edit mode.

How it work? I think that you do not need to explain how to install the addon, and simple operations in the blender!
Launch your blender! In object mode, search menu XPS Tools! (on the left side of your monitor screen)
Or just standart import:  File, Import, XNALara XPS model (ascii/mesh/xps)
Then after loading model, in outliner window (on the right, and up, on you monitor) you see armature of models, in scene!
Click Left-click on Eye icons, and close armature! After that, right-click on any model body, and push Tab! (Or enter edit mode) Enjoy! Your model editible)


Where Is Micro Displacement Setting Both/True/Bump In Blender 2.8 I'm currently following a Blender Guru tutorial for creating ropes. And in the tutorial, after adding a displacement texture, he continues to change the displacement setting under the material tab from "bump" to "true". However it seems that in Blender 2.8 this setting has been removed/relocated and I cant find it.
Researching on other websites hasn't given me the results I've been asking for. Does anybody know where this setting has been moved to?
Here is a picture of my material tab from Blender 2.8:

Here is also how I expect it to look after I have done everything correctly:

And here is how it Looks now:

I had a similar problem and found a solution that may help you.

Navigate to the Material Properties tab.
Within the Material Properties scroll down to a sub-setting titled Settings.
In settings change the displacement type from Bump to Displacement and Bump.

This seems to be the Blender 2.8 equivalent of the "True" setting.


Unwrapping tileable model for use with seamless textures I have simple model (let's name it 'cube'). I also have a collection of seamless PBR materials (represented by square diffuse/metallic/roughness/AO/normal maps).

Goal: apply such seamless material to the top face of this 'cube'.
How to unwrap this model to reach this goal without editing/scaling textures?

Should I use multiple UV maps (one for top part of this 'cube' and one for other sides)?

Edit: This particular model eventually will be exported to Unreal Engine (and it will be used with already prepared PBR materials). So approaches that use Blender's materials (= Blender's rendering system) in my case won't work.

No need to use a UV map.

Use Generated coordinates and a Box projection for the texture.
And if you want the texture only on one face, just assign a different material to others.

Use Generated coordinates and a Box projection for the seamless texture.

Assign different materials to different faces.


Which glass shader is physically correct? Maybe I should of titled this, "which way is MORE physically correct". I understand adding the light path node breaks the physically correct part.

I am messing around with glass shaders and have come across THIS post and a couple other ones on YouTube. I am looking for the most physically accurate shader but am looking to to optimize it the best I can for rendering times and fireflies.

What is the difference between these two shader setups?

I dont see a difference in render, but I see a big difference in refraction. So which is the correct set up with the correct refraction?

Notice the IOR is the same on each node.

If you take a look out of the window you can clearly see that it is refracting different. Nothing was changed but the node set up. Even the reflections look the exact same.

Technically, using Maximum is better than using Add - since with Maximum the result will be in the correct range of 0.0 to 1.0 for the Factor input of the Mix node. With Add you end up in the range 0.0 to 3.0 since you’re adding three 0.0 to 1.0 values together. While this won’t in itself cause a problem (since Factor of the Mix will auto clip to 0.0 to 1.0) it could cause a problem or unexpected results if you later use the same value for other uses, not realising it’s outside range.

Without knowing what’s outside the window it’s difficult to tell which is ‘right’ - try rendering without the glass (either hide the window pane mesh or set to 100% transparent) - the thin sheet of glass should cause hardly any displacement (since it’s two parallel surfaces) - whichever more closely matches the view without the glass is by far the most accurate..

Also related : https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/90526/29586 and https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/77806/29586

After setting up a test, the second example  is by far more realistic for the refraction :

Bad refraction :

Good refraction :

This can be made even more apparent by simply rotating the glass along the Z axis.


What does “Use the pinned node tree” do? In the Node Editor (Blender 2.67) there is pin icon in the menubar below, which is described as “Use the pinned node tree”.
What is it used for?

The pinned node tree feature enables you to stick a node tree (pin it) to one instance of the node editor, so that you can open another node editor displaying another node tree.

This feature is really useful when you need to simultaneously compare and edit Node Trees belonging to different data blocks (materials for instance).

Reference: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.67/Node_Editor


Achieving a feathered transparent effect I am wondering if a feathered transparent sphere is possible to make in the internal Blender Render.

Currently I have this:

Would it be possible to feather off the edges or make the sphere get more transparent as it gets to the edges? Thanks.

You can do this with a Fresnel node or a Layer Weight node.  Both these nodes give higher values (close to 1.0) at grazing angles and lower values 0.0 straight on, and thus can be used to mix in pure transparency towards the edge of your sphere.

The difference between the two is the interpolation curve.  The Fresnel node uses the Fresnel function, which is technically meant for defining amounts of glossy reflection but still often gives pleasing gradients.  The Layer Weight's Facing output uses a linear gradient from straight on to grazing angles.

Cycles

To use this to control the transparency as you want, mix a pure white transparent shader with your colored transparent shader and plug the Fresnel or Layer Weight into the Mix Shader's Fac input.  The above result used the layer weight node, like the following nodes.

Blender Internal

Though Blender Internal has no specific Layer Weight or Fresnel node, you can make one from scratch with a little bit of vector math.  Just use it to control the alpha of the output node.

This uses a Converter > Vector Math node to take the dot product of the View vector and the Normal vector.  Here I have also added an RGB Curves node to adjust the falloff curve manually.


Wireframes with Square Cross-Sections? I am trying to generate thick wireframe meshes that do not appear so pointy.  The modifier generates faces at acute angles (see cross sections below) where I am trying to get square cross-sections.  Ideally the faces would be parallel with the faces of the original mesh, where possible.

Here is an image demonstrating what I am trying to achieve (bottom row) compared with what the wireframe modifier supplies (top row).

Is there any way to do this procedurally?  (And is there any hope of improved customization of the wireframe modifier?)

Some dirty ways

1) Inset faces

Here's a possible workaround based on Inset faces (Individually), Dissolve edges and Extrude (Vertex normals) . It won't give you perfect results, but maybe can help.

First step is select all, than press I twice and tune the inset amount.

Switch to vertex selection and invert selection. Store the selection in a vertex group. Invert again and delete the faces. Than select the items from previously created vertex group and run Dissolve Edges command.

At this point we should have obtain a pletora of n-gons, most of them will probably be non flat and have other issues, but they should approximate our mesh not too badly.

Extrude the Region along Vertex Normals by an amount that may do the section look like if it is a square (or a rectangle) and you'll get the illusion of a squared section wireframe.

Result:

This method works best when there is a smooth transition in surface's curvature. For the 90° degrees angles of the image below it was needed to fix the n-gons (with Split Non Planar Faces command) as their non-planar nature was too pronounced:

Notice how the polygon below the gizmo is clearly distorted.

2) Bevel Wireframe modifier

Another possible workaround could be to take advance of the wireframe modifier:

Add and apply a Wireframe modifier:

Select one vertex of the four that marks each hole and then extend selection to all the vertices that has the same amount of connecting edges

Invert selection and then Bevel the edges connected by the freshly selected vertices

Invert face selection, delete the faces and then delete one of the two resulting mesh pieces too.

Finish by extruding the faces with a Solidify modifier with an appropriate value of Thickness (to match the beveled edge lenght).

Final result:


Blender rendering transparent images I am a blender noob, please bare with me

Whenever i render, i get this entire transparent image, nothing showing up. I've already tried changing transparent settings, not using GPU and restarting my computer, none of these worked.

EDIT: i figured out that it seems to be the text scene causing the problem. Swapping around the text and background seems to be working fine. Looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JzGj3mZDCA

My text scene is the only cycles scene i have, rest are in internal engine.

File:

Reasked, now with file

Any help appreciated!

I tried on my Blender 2.78 and it renders this image:

Maybe it's what you want. I don't know.
I see the last node (before the composite one, I mean) is a blur.
If I delete it the image is this:

Is that what you want?

The compositing takes some time to process, and while he does in the Render on the Image Editor window is transparent. Maybe you din't wait enough to complete the compositing.


Adding an image to a model So I've created an object and I used the uv image editor to create the majority of the texture, but now i am needing to add a logo to part of the object.  I tried exporting the uv image so i can edit it in photoshop, but because my object is so complex, I cant make sense of what to do with it...

do any of you have a suggestion on what I can do? or can you tell me how to get the image onto the object?

Thank you in advance.

From what you have mentioned- you can try adding a mesh as a shrink wrap modifier. Use a Png to add the logo on top of it. since there's less details on your question - cant really say what the requirement is :\


How can you rotate a procedural material? I'm modeling our church sanctuary to assist in a lighting design and I am reusing a procedural wood material from the wood pews to kind of simulate the laminated beams that hold up the roof, but those beams are vertical, not horizontal like the pews.

I've tried just adjusting rotation in the vector transforms, and I've tried switching the scaling to favor the z-axis rather than the x-axis.  Neither attempt has worked.

(This procedural wood is courtesy of an old thread on blenderartists.org)

The horizontally striped beam is the test beam (on the right, in the light)

Following @gandalf3's suggestion above, I switched to having my values affect the texture, restarted all values from scale of 1 and rotation of 0, and then started playing with them until I got something that's sort of acceptable.  It really helped to partition my screen so the node editor was large but above it was the 3D View wherein I had isolated my beam (Numpad /) and had the 3D View set for "Rendered view" That allowed me to see the effect of my changes quite quickly.


Fix Rotation of Origin For some reason my origin's rotation got terribly messed up. I have been trying to fix it by aligning the origin to a face or a vertex but it only gets worse. I need to make an array and for that reason clean up the origin's rotation. Because as it is right now I don't get a regular and even offset.

I would be grateful for any input because I am out of ideas on how to fix it.

Thank you in advance!

It's 'easier' than it used to be, here's one way, using the 'View' Transform Orientation.

Find a reference rectangular face, preferably facing down your intended Z, select it in Edit Mode, and set the Transform Orientation to 'View'
Orthographic: ShiftNumpad 7 align your view to the face.
ShiftS > Cursor to Selected .. now the cursor should be centred on the face.
In Object Mode, with the Header > Options set to 'Origins', move the origin:  ShiftS > Selected to Cursor
Header > Object  > Transform menu.. Align to Transform Orientation. Now the Origin shoould be aligned with the view, and the face.

There may be some 90 degree swivels to do while in the view, to get your X,Y and Z on the right axes, and don't forget to switch the 'Origins' option off.


How to copy an object without linking it to the first one? I would like to copy an object without it remaining connected to the first, in the sense that I would like it to be independent (not linked)
I've been looking for a long time but I can't find anything about it, the current method I'm trying is:

example on default delected cube

import bpy

ob = bpy.context.active_object
new_ob = ob.copy()
new_ob.location.x = ob.location.x + 3
bpy.context.scene.collection.objects.link(new_ob)

But this creates problems for me, since it remains linked to the first cube, I would like the second cube to become independent of the first one.

You simply copied the object data block, but it remained linked to the same mesh data block.

After copying the object datablock with new_ob = ob.copy(), add a line to copy the datablock.

new_ob.data = ob.data.copy()


ReferenceError: StructRNA of type Object has been removed between modal and execute I want to create locator and move it with my mouse, and eventually correct its position with floatProperty.
But I get error in execute : ReferenceError: StructRNA of type Object has been removed
What did I miss ? (Blender 2.8)

import bpy
from bpy.props import IntProperty, FloatProperty

class ModalOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Move an object with the mouse, example"""
    bl_idname = "object.modal_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Modal Operator"
    bl_options = {"REGISTER","UNDO"}

    x_translation = FloatProperty()

    def execute(self, context):
        print (self.locator.name)
        self.locator.location.x += self.x_translation
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if event.type == 'MOUSEMOVE':
            self.x_translation = (self.first_mouse_x - event.mouse_x) * 0.01
            context.object.location.x = self.first_value + self.x_translation

        elif event.type == 'LEFTMOUSE':
            return {'FINISHED'}

        elif event.type in {'RIGHTMOUSE', 'ESC'}:
            context.object.location.x = self.first_value
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        bpy.ops.object.empty_add(type='ARROWS')
        context.active_object.name = "locator_start"
        self.locator = context.active_object
        print (self.locator.name)
        if context.object:
            self.first_mouse_x = event.mouse_x
            self.first_value = context.object.location.x

            context.window_manager.modal_handler_add(self)
            return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}
        else:
            self.report({'WARNING'}, "No active object, could not finish")
            return {'CANCELLED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(ModalOperator)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ModalOperator)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Solution was provided on blenderartist by tricotou:
https://blenderartists.org/t/referenceerror-structrna-of-type-object-has-been-removed-between-modal-and-execute/1186026

import bpy
from bpy.props import IntProperty, FloatProperty

def get_locator():
    bpy.ops.object.empty_add(type='ARROWS')
    bpy.context.active_object.name = "locator_start"
    locator = bpy.context.active_object
    return locator

class ModalOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Move an object with the mouse, example"""
    bl_idname = "object.modal_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Modal Operator"
    bl_options = {"REGISTER","UNDO"}

    x_translation = FloatProperty()
    loc = {}
    def execute(self, context):
        locator = get_locator()
        locator.location.x += self.first_value + self.x_translation
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if event.type == 'MOUSEMOVE':
            self.x_translation = (self.first_mouse_x - event.mouse_x) * 0.01
            context.object.location.x = self.first_value + self.x_translation

        elif event.type == 'LEFTMOUSE':
            return {'FINISHED'}

        elif event.type in {'RIGHTMOUSE', 'ESC'}:
            context.object.location.x = self.first_value
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        self.locator = get_locator()
        self.first_mouse_x = event.mouse_x
        self.first_value = context.object.location.x
        context.window_manager.modal_handler_add(self)
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(ModalOperator)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ModalOperator)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

The class ModalOperator runs a 1st time with invoke and modal, creates the locator, then finished. When we modify properties in panel, an undo is performed on what modal did (no more locator here), then execute is launched. So we have to recreate it in execute. (thanks to rjg for the precision)


Can I fix the alpha display problems on material viewport on new Blender 2.73? I'm making a Low poly model for videogame, but I got some problems on displaying 8bit alpha (partialy tranparent pixels) in material viewport in Blender 2.72b. Now in Blender 2.73a some of these bugs was fixed, that was great, but some other appeared too.

As you can see, the partially transparent pixels from the plane with a round ring texture of the goggles are clipping through the red lens that are right behind it.

This bug doesn't occur while in edit mode. And this didn't happen in 2.72b.

And in the Left view (3rd frame), the light wire from his exoskeleton clip through the other wire from the other leg. But not viewing from the right view (4th frame).
and these occurs no mater the backface/normal direction.

Of course none of these bugs are shown on render. But i was worried about porting these models for a game engine like Unity and get the same problems.

Do I need to worry about this on viewport? If yes. Is there a way to fix it?

Do I need to worry about this on viewport?

No, I don't think so. The external game engine will be using it's own rendering pipeline, so any problems with the rendering then will be a separate and unrelated issue (with the possible exception of a problem with the data itself, e.g. double faces resulting in Z fighting etc. However this doesn't seem like the case here).

  Is there a way to fix it?

Try enabling Transparent in Properties > Object > Display on all the objects with transparency.


Editing group node sockets, with no external input? Blender 2.76

Is it possible to edit a group node's inputs by only editing the sockets? Without connecting external nodes to the sockets?

I have created a group node containing two diffuse shaders, connected to a mix shader, that uses a gradient texture as the factor.

I then connect the colours of the diffuse shaders to colour inputs.

If I change the colours in the group's sockets, it doesn't change the colours of the object. It still uses the default colours, which in this case were taken from the colours of the diffuse shaders.

However, if I connect a colour output to the colour socket, those colours overwrite the default colours.

I'd like to edit the colours by changing the colours in the sockets of the group. It seems that, since I can change the colour of the socket, it should affect the shader, shouldn't it? Is this possible?

This gif might help:

And here is the .blend file:

I downloaded Blender 2.76b, opened my .blend file inside it, and it didn't have this problem. Perhaps it was as easy as that?


Download platform specific animation nodes 2.0 I've looked high and low and can not find the platform specific (win64) precompiled AN 2.0 download described in the release notes.
Thanks,
Mike

The platform specific variations of Animation Nodes 2.0 can be found while viewing this release of the add-on via its Github page: https://github.com/JacquesLucke/animation_nodes/releases/tag/v2.0


Move imported model to the center of the scene via python Can't find the way to move model to the center via Python API. When model is imported

object.location = (0, 0, 0).

I tried to use

object.dimensions

to shift model, but when model has empty spaces around - it does't work. How can I get this data or it may be a better way to do this?

If you import a model, the origin is typically at (0,0,0) - setting the location to the center has no effect. The trick is to set the geometry to the origin via origin_set operator:

bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='GEOMETRY_ORIGIN')

Related: How to place objects on the center of the ground plane via python?


How do I chain shape keys? I need to animate a multi step change in a mesh like this

I set a shape key for the base and then step 2 fine but when I used new shape key from mix it applied the transformation for both step 2 and 3.

How can I get the shape key to only apply changes from step 2 to 3 and not from 1 to 3?

If you add two shape keys without the new shape key from mix option, you can animate them separately. It is Important is that you keyframe the 2nd part of the animation with influence 0 for the duration of the first part. This way the 2nd part does not start before it is supposed to do.

Editing the shape for extrusion: In Edit Mode a loopcut is added at the top of the extruded cube to create the geometry required for the second part of the animation.


Triangulating 3D Text Im trying to create a triangulated .obj file with 3D text.
Problem is, after creating the text I can't find a way to properly triangulate it.
Converting it to a mesh only triangualte parts of it.

Is there a simple way to do something like that?

P.S Im a complete newbie with Blender :S

Thanks

Go into edit mode after you create the object from text, select all with A and use CtrlT to triangulate. Alternatively, when exporting to obj, there is an option to triangulate on export in the tool shelf.


3D model photogrammetry in blender software I would like to know a 3D photogrammetry model is it more difficult to read in blender versus a normal or cartoon model ? I send screenshots of 3D photogrammetry model (if I'm not mistaken) and normal model, to better understand. Also, can I modify or customize a 3D photogrammetry model in the blender software, without difficulty ? I mean can I take the cars off the streets from the 3D photogrammetry model and other things, if I want ? I noticed that the colletion scene at the top right (screenshot) of the 3D photogrammetry model has fewer files than the 3D cartoon or normal model. Does this mean that the 3D photogrammetry mode is nothing more than a block, even impossible to modify ? Help please

If I'm not mistaken, the only way to remove things like vehicles in a photogrammetry model, is to remove the vertices that the vehicle is made out of.
I would assume the photogrammetry model would be harder to read because it's not as clean as the other model and it has texture on 100% of it.


Input script of Mix Shader node for create link? I am scripting an add-on and I need to create link between Glossy BSDF node and Mix shader node's "shader"
material_realistic_gold.node_tree.links.new(BsdfGlossy3_node.outputs[0], MixShader_node.outputs.inputs[0])
This is not working and get an error
Python: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Yeung\Downloads\Shader 1.0\Script 001.blend\test.py", line 237, in execute
AttributeError: 'bpy_prop_collection' object has no attribute 'inputs'

location: <unknown location>:-1

What is the script of input shader of Mix material node?

I finally figure it out
I need to type
material_realistic_gold.node_tree.links.new(MixShader_node.inputs[1], BsdfGlossy3_node.outputs[0])


My Character from Mixamo has no shading in Blender When I import my character as a Collada file - it looks completely flat with no shading. I have not seen that before in Blender. Why is this happening?

Under Material Properties>Viewport Display>Colour - then click the colour and slide the Alpha to 1


Apply scaling to rigged model without affecting visual aspect I rigged my model and I realized that it has a scale of -1 on X axis (left/right).
Then if I mirror the model the left bones deform the right and vice versa, I tried "Mirror vertex groups" but it does strange things (seems a buggy function). I though about applying a inverse scaling to the vertices and the scaling the the object but it doesn't work. I don't know how to do.
Is there a script or something to do so ?
Thanks

Ctrl-A>Apply Scale will set all scale values to one. This will fix that issue, but be careful it could mess up scale animation and anything depended on the scale (save your file before trying it).


How can I fix the weight painting? What's going on here?

I had done all my weight painting but I ruined it by using symmetrize. As you can see in the pic, the selected bone is moving the other arm too. I already made sure it's not weight painted and I fixed the vertex group to not include that arm. What else do I need to fix?

Also, can anyone give me a quick way to mirror weight painting already applied to one side to the other? I asked it here a while ago:

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/47671/how-to-mirror-weight-painting-already-applied-to-one-side

Thanks

It was a simple solution. I had to remove the weight painting from areas connected to the upper arm too, not just the upper arm. When I symmetrized, it copied all the weight painting on my right to left but kept it assign to the same bone/vertex group.


PBR Material Showing weird Glossy spot So I tried to render A Lykan with a PBR Shader, but I keep getting this result:

Now it's not finished yet, but as you can see the Red should be all around it, but (I'm guessing because of the fresnel part of the shader) the car has this chrome colour towards the back. I don't know how to fix this.
Any help will be appreciated.

So I found out the reason, I don't know how but the normals were facing the opposite direction. So I just recalculated the normals and that fixed it.


Is it possible to animate 2 separate objects with 1 action animation? So to simplify things lets just say I have a cannon object that does a 360 when it shoots and a cannonball object that flies out. I need to export this file as an fbx so what I need is one animation since it will be controlled via a script. I have learned to make animations for fbx files using something called the action editor in Blender. I name the animation there, click the F which I believe stands for fake user, and export it to Unity without a problem. The problem is that those have always been rigged characters that have every part connected. Now I have been trying to do this with separate objects but when I try to use one animation they get all screwed up. I have also tried parenting the objects to each other without changing the transform.

Okay so after much trial and error, it seems that the only possible way to do this is with an armature. Just rig the armature to all the objects you want to animate and create one action animation in the armature. I have 4 bones in the armature, none of which are actually connected with each other (both the bones and the objects) and I just animate the bones. ! animation to export to Unity with many different moving parts.


Rotate subdivided plane with x+y locked I’m wrapping my head around one issue that seems pretty simple:
Cube with loop cut.

Picture: I want to rotate the top planes and keep their x/y coordinates.

I don’t want to do it with proportional editing for multiple reasons

I want to start out with a flat plane.

Additional: Is there a command to align edges/vertices between two endpoints?

Use the Shear Transform from the Mesh > Transforms menu. I see you are still in 2.79. I would really recommend updating, because the Shear Tool in 2.80, which does the same thing is much more intuitive to use.


Making Loop Cuts On Same Mesh on Individual areas simultaneously I have made on my mesh using the individual origin option some inner extruded circles . what i'm trying to do is, add loop cuts in the inner section of the holes. The problem is, I have to do it one by one adding the loop cuts. Is there an option where the loop cuts can be applied simultaneously in all the holes?

Thank you.

You can use Knife project for this.

Add a plane, with edges where you want the cuts
Switch to Orthographic mode
Use Mesh > Knife Project and check Cut through


Selecting a face in a script so that you can edit eg resize it? I was trying to write a script to generate an object from primitives but came across a problem I couldn't solve.  The code generates a cylinder and finds the face as well as putting it into edit mode.  However when I try and select it in edit mode the whole object is still selected.
How do I script the selection of just that face?
When I do it by hand the selection of the face which I can do generates nothing in the info window.

import bpy

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=1, depth=2)
ob = bpy.data.objects['Cylinder']
ob.name = 'NewCylinder'
mesh = ob.data

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT')
n = 0
for face in mesh.polygons:
    face.select = False
    if len(face.vertices) > 4:
        print(' end face {}'.format(n))
        n += 1
        if n == 2:
            face.select = True
bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(0.33, 0.33, 0.33))

It might seem counter-intuitive, but you need to be in Object mode to change the selection when using .mesh.  I changed a few more things, like you can use the 'DESELECT' action in mesh.select_all else edges are still selected when you try to un-select faces

import bpy

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=1, depth=2, enter_editmode=True)
ob = bpy.context.object  # gets a reference to the newly created object
ob.name = 'NewCylinder'
mesh = ob.data

bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='DESELECT')

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'OBJECT')
n = 0
for face in mesh.polygons:
    if len(face.vertices) > 4:
        n += 1
        if n == 2:
            face.select = True

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT')
bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(0.33, 0.33, 0.33))


How to mask an imported image as a plane? I just want to make a mask for an image as plane like in Gimp or any Image Editor.

I have a transparent drawing and I want to "fill" some parts of that drawing with other images as planes and other parts fills with materials.

I have a video that shows an example of what I want to do (of somebody doing it in After Effects): https://youtu.be/wSeOrwoe5r8

Thanks.

What you can try to do, is using the image that you want to be filled with the transparent image, and convert it with a Color Ramp. This will work if you have a lot of contrast in that image. Here the Node setup:


Best way to approach dents? I was wondering what the best approach might be to replicate the dents found in the following picture?

Any help would be appreciated!

You can use a Noise Texture node (or another one) plugged into a Bump map. To get the crater effect you need to put a ColorRamp between the Noise and the Bump, and tweak the black and the white needles.


Camera moving at same speed as object Making game in BGE. I need the camera to only move back and forth(up and down the x axis) but at the same speed as my object(car). For whatever reason parenting things in BGE doesn't do anything. i have tried copying the logic bricks that make the car move but for some reason the camera does not move if the logic bricks are servo motion. Right now the camera is set as a static object and ticked as an actor. I can't change it from static to dynamic cuz this would make it respond  to gravity which i do not want.

Parent the camera to the object to follow (or to any child of the object to follow).

As each other child the camera will inherit the transformations (loc, rot, scale) from the parent.

Ensure the parent is moving as you expect.
Ensure you parent the right camera

You can move the camera (e.g. with the motion actuator) while parented

As a gimmick you can enable slow "parent". This makes the "follow" a bit softer, providing better camera feeling.


Modeling a Radiator Heater I have been attempting to model a radiator heater.

Now, my radiator in real life is made out of five vertical pipes with one cross beam arrayed seventeen times along a bottom pipe that carries the hot water through a system of pipes originating and ending at the boiler in the basement. Here are some pics of it up close:

And my recreation of it in my most recent render:

What I did to create my Blender radiator was fairly elementary. I took a cube, added some loop cuts in both directions, and added a Wireframe modifier. This created a skeleton, but not the interior.

While I am aware that I could use the Array modifier here to repeat a wireframed section over and over again, I am wondering if there is a less choppy solution, as the ends would still have to be separate, and then I'd have to combine and remove doubles and blah-di-blah. What I would like is a short and quick way to produce a more photorealistic radiator. It does not need to be high-poly, infact low-poly would be better, because the radiator is not the focus of the image.

Thoughts?

If it wouldn't be too much trouble, a reiteration of the following .blend file with a new radiator in your answer would be great! Note that I could not pack any Image Textures, as the .blend would have been too big for Blend Exchange.

First I created this profile shape and extruded it to create the vertical pipes (CTRL + E) in Edit Mode.

Then added some loop cuts and joined them for the top, middle and bottom cross sections. Added a Subserf Modifier and some additional loop cuts to clean up some edges.

Then added an Array Modifier above the Subserf Modifier and applied it.

Then extruded the feet on the two ends and modeled the pipe to the floor.


Texture painting with images I am trying to paint grass onto a plain, but the only way I can paint with that image is if the plain is textured with the image of grass I'm using.

If you set the image as a brush texture and use Stencil as the mapping option, you can drag the stencil image in the viewport to line it up with rmb, rotate with ctrl-rmb, scale with shift-rmb and paint through it to the iamge texture on the object.


Is It Possible To Do An 80's Style Anime Shading? If So How? I'm familiar with a lot of the basics of how to model, texture, apply materials, use nodes, basic rigging & animating, etc.

I ran across a YouTube video called "TIE Fighter - short film" from a user named "OtaKing77077" and fell in LOVE with the art style as it reminded SO much of the Transformers: The Movie from the 80's. For reference here's a screen shot from the YouTube TIE Fighter video:

So I'm mainly looking for IF this is doable and if so, how would I go about doing it? I'm not AS concerned with the models themselves (unless that is somehow tied to the shading effect), mostly in this type of SHADING.

Another frame of reference would be the recent Transformers: Devastation which is I suppose an obvious answer that this is doable in 3D because it's a 3D game, but I wasn't sure if it was doable in a 3D modeling environment, outside of a game engine with GPU shaders and code and such like what they did for the game:

Another note would be I've used both Blender Render & Cycles and prefer Cycles but if this is somehow easier to achieve or of a higher quality in the internal renderer I have no problem using either.

I would appreciate ANY help anyone may have on this topic, and thanks in advance to anyone who responds.

This technique is known as Cel-shading. There are quite a few tutorials on how to handle Cel-shading in Blender; I'd recommend starting here to get a reference on how to get the basics down.
Toon Shading in Cycles


Render transperent shadows in cycles? I am trying to render an animation in cycles without the background. However, every time I have it render, the background still shows up.

I used the compositor to add a background image so I can animate the object around the background. I set the output to RGBA and set the film to transparent.

Now I want to use it in After effects and I simply want to export/render it without the background and make it transparent.  How do I do that?

I'm not sure what you want, but if I understand correctly, you can make the background image color information remain in the image while still making it completely transparent.

This can be done with the Set alpha node, with an Alpha of 0:

However, in the video you linked to the scene is rendered without any information about the background image at all.

Here is a setup that will do this:


Python: Create GizmoGroup for VSE (Video Sequence Editor) I am currently trying to create a gizmo for the transform effect in Blender's VSE (2.8). However, I can't seem to get it to work. In fact, even though I call window_manager.gizmo_group_type_ensure() in various places without and exception resulting from it, it seems like none of my class's functions are ever called. Could it be that it is not possible (yet) to create custom gizmos in the VSE or am I missing something really obvious?

Here is my code (most of it, calls to window_manager.gizmo_group_type_ensure()  not included because they occur elsewhere in a larger project. Note that actual method code is untested because it never seems to be called):

class TransformEffectGroup(bpy.types.GizmoGroup):
    bl_idname = 'CS_GGT_transform_effect'
    bl_space_type = 'SEQUENCE_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_label = 'Transform Effect Gizmo'

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        print("Transform effect gizmo polled")
        active_strip = context.scene.sequence_editor.active_strip
        return not active_strip is Null and active_strip.type == 'TRANSFORM'

    def setup(self, context):
        active_strip = context.scene.sequence_editor.active_strip
        gizmo = self.gizmos.new("GIZMO_GT_cage_2d")
        gizmo.target_set_handler("matrix", get=self.get_matrix, set=self.set_matrix)
        gizmo.dimensions = (100, 100)
        gizmo.transform = { 'SCALE_UNIFORM', 'TRANSLATE', 'ROTATE' }

    def refresh(self, context):
        active_strip = context.scene.sequence_editor.active_strip
        if not active_strip is Null and active_strip.type == 'TRANSFORM':
            self.strip = active_strip

    def get_matrix(self):
        m  = Matrix.Scale(self.strip.scale_start_x, 4, Vector(1, 0, 0))
        m *= Matrix.Scale(self.strip.scale_start_y, 4, Vector(0, 1, 0))
        m *= Matrix.Rotation(self.strip.rotation_start, 4, 'Z')
        m *= Matrix.Translation(Vector(self.strip.translate_start_x, self.strip.translate_start_y, 0))
        return m

    def set_matrix(self, matrix):
        t = matrix.to_translation()
        self.strip.translate_start_x = t[0]
        self.strip.translate_start_y = t[1]
        s = matrix.to_scale()
        self.strip.scale_start_x = s[0]
        self.strip.scale_start_x = s[1]
        self.strip.rotation_start = matrix.to_euler('ZYX')[0]

This is a bug as acknowledged by the developers here: https://developer.blender.org/T70768
But basically it works if you set bl_region_type = 'PREVIEW'


Understanding how the Modifiers Panel's Convert button affects particle systems I recently went to http://www.blendswap.com/ and downloaded this blend of a mushroom patch. I opened it in Blender and started playing around with it:

One of the first things I wanted to do was to edit an individual mushroom by selecting it, moving it around, transforming it in a number of ways (rotating it, scaling it), etc. Whereas I expected to see each individual mushroom show up in the Outliner tool (which would then allow me to select a mushroom from the Outliner and see it highlighted in the viewport), I only saw a single "Plane" object in the Outliner. Furthermore, I wasn't able to grab individual mushrooms and do anything with them. They all appeared "locked" into the plane and/or greater model at large.

I asked a question on this site and was told that these mushrooms were part of a particle system (which, as a total newbie, I had never heard of before). To make the individual mushrooms editable objects, I needed to go to the Modifiers Panel and click the Convert button. I did this, and sure enough, I am now able to edit each individual mushroom. Thank you Blender SE!

However, I was curious to find out more about particle systems and how they were related to my mushroom patch. I have now watched several video tutorials on Blender particle systems and emitters, and I'm now totally & utterly confused!

How are the individual mushrooms connected to a particle system in the original (on blendswap.com) file? Did the author somehow configure a super customized particle system that "emitted" random mushrooms at random locations?
What does Modifiers >> Convert actually do to a particle system (or anything else)? How did it break out all of the mushrooms into separate editable objects? How does it know that the entire mushroom should be the "atomic" editable object, and not allow you to decompose a mushroom into smaller parts (the umbrella, parts of the stem, etc.)?
Why were the mushrooms not editable before I clicked this Convert button? How would I convert everything back into a single object (perhaps after editing a few mushrooms), and what would that "single object" be referred to as?

Thanks in advance!

I have not downloaded the blendswap file.
Creating a particle system with objects as particles

For this example, I created three different mushrooms.
Select ⇧ Shift RMB and group the mushrooms ⎈ CtrlG.
Move the mushrooms to a unused layer.
Add a plane Ground and add a particle system to it. Set the Start to 0 and End to 1 and the Lifetime the scenes length. Set Physics to No. Starting from frame 1 the particles should not move.
Set the initial Velocity to (0, 1, 0) (because my mushrooms face up in direction of Y). Set the Render Type to Group under the Render section. There are more group settings you can use.

You now have a particle system which emits mushrooms.

You can choose the number of particles (mushrooms) in the Emission tab.
Setting the physics to No makes the particles static (not move).
Setting the Start and End between 0 and 1 ensures that all particles are emitted before frame 1.
Setting Render type to Group shows the group objects instead of other particle display objects. Don't forget to select the correct group. You can also choose object, if you only want to create multiples of a single object.
Creating a particle system in the particle tab automatically creates the particle system modifier.

You can convert Particle Systems successfully, if their render type is an object or group. The convert button of the particle modifier creates a duplicate object of the object associated with each particle. While there was a shroom1 object at particle X, converting it creates an actual duplicate object linked to shroom1 at the position, rotation, scale of particle X.
Particles are defined by the settings in the particle system. (Emitter) Particles can not be edited manually, otherwise the particle settings in the particle system couldn't be executed.
Since you can't edit (emitter) particles, there is no way to convert the array of objects back to a particle system after you converted them to individual object.

How would I convert everything back into a single object (perhaps
after editing a few mushrooms), and what would that "single object" be
referred to as?

You can't convert the individual objects to a particle system. You can convert them into one mesh, by selecting all and pressing ⎈ CtrlJ. It may be easier to handle a single object (mesh), rather than many different objects (meshes). This would just be practical for editing purposes like selecting all mushrooms when there are many more scene elements.

[...] For exporting into a game perhaps as a single file?
For game export it usualy shouldn't matter if it is a single object or multiple.

The downside of joining (⎈ CtrlJ) all mushrooms objects is that you loose the editing of multiple objects. You can no longer edit a single mushroom and all other similiar mushrooms with the same meshdata change accordingly.
See Group Instancing as a further example of combining multiple objects into a "single" group object while maintaining editability.


How do I make a rectangular mesh subdivided evenly with square faces / quads? I have a rectangle that grid mesh that I want to subdivide, however, all attempts resulted into the subdivided faces being proportional to the rectangle mesh, I would like to be able to have the rectangle mesh be made up of smaller squares, not rectangles; how would I do this?

Use loop cuts to manually subdivide the first time.  CTRL-R

Start by making a certain number of loop cuts across the short side.  Just enough to know loop cuts on the long side will result in a square.

Then make the necessary loop cuts on the long side to complete the square (or close enough to it.  In this example, I only needed one more on the long side

From there, you can subdivide normally and keep your square proportions.  If you really want to get perfect about it, and the dimensions of your plane are conducive to it, you could calculate the number of loop cuts needed by subdividing the dimensions of your plane mathmatically.  But usually not necessary.


View eevee with black background I'm using Blender 2.83 on mac. I don't use any environment map. When switch to cycle, the my viewport has black background but in eevee, the background is grey. How can i make it black in eevee ?
Thanks

In the World properties panel, you may either pick black color, or change the strength to 0.
This will cause the world not to emit any light, and render pitch black.


How can I subdivide a face which is next to a face that is already subdivided? I want to subdivide a face whose neighbour's faces are subdivided.

Here is an example of such a face:

How can I subdivide selected faces?

As these are ngons, you aren't able to use neither Loopcut, nor W > Subdivide. So you can do that in 2 ways:

Select ngon's edge in the bottom and subdivide it. Use then J to connect vertices and split faces.

Press K to activate Knife Tool. By clicking LMB you mark places where vertice will be placed.