How to add linked groups symmetrically around an object So I've been learning lots and getting better at blender. Today I learned about linked objects, and after much research managed to get them to behave as desired using groups.

I'm working on creating a model for the engine for a light cycle, based off this image: http://www.filmedge.net/Tron/hello/SP_lightcycle_engine.jpg

I created two .blend files, one for the basic shape, and the second for the "fins" (the repeated angled blue bits that go from left to right). As you can see this one object is repeated lots, so using linked objects / groups makes sense. By my reckoning there should be 12 of these around the central cylinder. Which means they should be placed at 30 degree angles around the outside.

Googling suggests that you can use the spin dup tool, however that needs to be in edit mode, and because I'm using linked groups, I can't get into edit mode for that. I also read about the mirror modifier, but you can't apply modifies to linked groups either.

Is there a way to do this automatically?

Thanks

EDIT: I've been reading about pivot points, which would at least let me duplicate the group and manually rotate around the correct centre. Except you can't set the pivot point of a linked group.

I would suggest Array modifier. You need to turn off the two checkboxes for constant and relative displacement, and place an empty on top of the object you want to duplicate. Then, you change the center of rotation to the 3D cursor, then set the empty as the object in the Array modifier, and move the 3D cursor to the center of your model. Increase the number of array iterations by however many objects you want on the outside, then divide 360 by the number of iterations to find out how much you need to rotate the empty. It's a slightly convoluted way of using the array modifier, but it works for me.

Sometimes there will be a freaky scaling problem when you turn on the array modifier, but it can be fixed by pressing ctrl A --> apply scale.


Why is "Smooth" shading slower than "Flat" shading in the viewport? When I set a Mesh to shade as "Smooth" vs "Flat" on a high-poly Mesh Object (such as one with a subdivision modifier), it makes Blender much slower than normal, sometimes almost unusable.

Why does this occur?

Since I don't know how many polys you are talking about, and what hardware you are using, there is a general answer that smooth shading is always slower than flat.  Flat shading uses one normal per face to calculate the color of the entire face.  Smooth shading interpolates between the normals of each vertex to render a smoothly curved face. Since a face is at least 3 vertices (i.e. a triangle) then smooth shading will always be at least 3x as slow as flat.

In most cases, even 3-4x as slow is a matter of milliseconds so you don't really notice, but on older hardware with a ton of faces you certainly could.


Delete un-seen mesh with Blender I am wondering if there is a way to delete un-seen mesh with Blender. Here's an example. I have a cube, and it has 3 cubes inside of that cube.

Is there a way to delete the mesh inside of the cube without selecting the cubes manually? This would clear up lots of extra mesh and speed up my render engine. I am using Cycles, so if Cycles has an option to not render hidden meshes, that would be good too. (although deleting them would be better). A Python script would also do. :)

Thanks!

The fastest way I can think of which works for the cube case is:

Select part of the outer cube (a single vert will do)
Press CtrlL to select connected vertices
Press CtrlI to invert the selection
Delete.

To delete geometry not visible from the camera:

Enter camera view (Numpad 0)
Ensure you are in solid shading and that Limit selection to visible is enabled
Use border select (B) to select all visible vertices (you may also want to do this with face select enabled to select visible faces too)
Grow the selection (Numpad +)
Delete.

From the camera, there isn't much indication that there are missing faces. Note however that shadows and reflections will be affected.


Extruding faces are locked to a translation along a odd axis Now, when I press E for extrusion, this wired thing happens:

And then if I try to move it, this happens:

This also happens when I try to scale.

One reason that things are looking strange is that you're editing with the SubSurf modifier turned on. I usually don't show the subsurf in edit mode, but there's nothing wrong with that.

The other thing that's making things act "strange" is that your "Pivot Point" is set to "Individual Origins," instead of "Median." To find that, look for a button that has two overlapping circles, and each circle has a blue dot in the center. It's between the "Display Mode" button and the "Show Manipulator" button. The "Display Mode" button has a wireframe sphere on it, and the "Show Manipulator" button looks like the three-axis manipulator that you see in the viewport.

Click on the "Pivot Point" button and choose the selection that has a single dot between both circles. This is "Median" and is the default. It will behave a bit more like you expect.

With "Individual Origins," it's trying to extrude each face along its own normal. you can find more information in the Blender Manual.


Delayed copy rotation...? I'm trying to make a constraint or some kind of system in 2.80, where i have a vehicle, driving on a path (follow path constraint, also rotating, but only on z axis) and a third person camera, attached to an empty following the vehicle. by using copy rotation, i can make the camera follow the vehicle without rotating and can then manually animate rotation. i just wonder if its possible to automate this, so that the camera will rotate on the z axis just like the vehicle on the path, only slightly delayed, but without delaying the location (preferably in real time). I know that the slow parent feature got removed :(

You can bake the motion to an empty and then edit the keyframes.

Add an empty.
Parent the empty to the vehicle and the camera to the empty.
Go to Object > Animation > Bake and simply check all the boxes, then press bake.
Now that the motion has been transfered onto the empty, open the graph editor and select the empty. You can edit the keyframes by selecting them and pressing ⎇ AltO to smooth them or move them to a later frame with GX >  LMB confirm


How to cut line in a face without Knife? I have this square and I want to make cut along the green lines.

The problem is, I try to use the knife tool (K+C) and the proper camera angling to connect the vertices and the edge, but the knife wont cut.

I want to be able to "loop divide" (line?) the face and drag a line so I can line the needed line to it's location. Or, atleast get the knife tool working properly.

How can I do this?

Knife should work for this:

I suspect the darker face on the right is the result of a second, super-imposed face which is preventing the knife tool from working. To fix it, delete the face or use W> Remove Doubles:

That said, there might be a faster way to get the desired result, for example Subdivide and Bevel:

I also used triangulate (⎈ CtrlT) at the end; not sure if those diagonal edges were desired or not.


Render object twice with different materials I am rendering a transparent material with a lot of inter-refractions, which works pretty fine. I now want to add some raytraced mirror to the same object but I am only interested in the mirroring of the surface - no refracted rays should be considered by mirror shader, since this is rather expensive.

How can I render twice, one time only with refrection and another time only with mirror and blend the renderings to get a final result?

I already tried something with with RenderLayers but I can't see any option to set a specific material for a specific mesh in a specific RenderLayer.

You can use multiple scenes:

Add a new scene by pressing the + at the top of the screen and selecting Link Objects:

This will link the objects into a new scene. This way modifying an object will change it in both scenes.
In the new scene, select the refractive object and pres U> Object. Now the refractive object in the new scene is no longer linked to the refractive object in the old scene, but the object data is still linked.

This mostly means that changes to the object transforms will not be copied between scenes, but changes to object data like materials and UV maps etc. will.
Still in the new scene, set the material to be stored in the object, not the object data:

Since the object is local to each scene, by setting the material to be stored in the object, we can now set the material individually for both scenes.

Remove the refractive material and add the reflective material. I made the reflective material slightly transparent with mask transparency so that it doesn't completely replace the refractive image they are combined, but you can do this in compositing too.
Still in the new scene, set the alpha to Transparent in Render settings > Shading, so the the sky is rendered as transparent alpha:

You only need to do this for the new scene.
In the old scene, add some composite nodes to combine the results of both scenes:

It doesn't really matter which scene you put the composite nodes in, but I like to keep everything in the "base" or "bottom" scene on top of which everything is overlaid. Just remember to render from the scene with the composite nodes.
Render. Both scenes should automatically render and combine.

Example .blend


Zebra Stripes Procedurally Is there a way to reliably create a zebra/tiger stripe sort of pattern with nodes?

I'm hoping to apply the principle to the back of a cello

A vaguely similar pattern could procedurally be achieved with a Wave texture. Is it physically accurate? No. Is it quick and dirty? Hell yes
Set it to Rings mode and stretch it in one direction using a Texture Mapping node (here in this example the $Z$ axis).
Adjust the Detail to a low-ish value, and the distortion to a high value to your taste.
Lastly run it through a Color Ramp node set to Constant interpolation.
Behold, my potato zebruh with a fake pattern.


Solidify of simple object I'm new in blender but not in 3D modeling. I've just install Blender, watch some tutorials...and of course, when I try to modeling my first 3d model, I stuck in with solidify.

I try to modeling my office which has a little bit strange geometry but I can't get strait lines, normal to the surface:

this is how it looks before I applied solidify

...and after (I try all options Solidify has in properties)

You can download the file here:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AoXovnN-smCh6DpZ3NAXiqpF4GkW?e=Rz05Q3

Thanks!

Part of your problem is that you have some extra overlapping vertices in there that are confusing the modifier. You have planes that only have two dimensions, to you can't really calculate a surface normal for them.

You can clear these out by selecting everything A, then hitting Alt + M > B or select By Distance to merge doubles.

Some of your other problems are the result of your initial geometry. Take a look at the corner to the right of the door. You're putting 0.33 on your solidify modifier, but the wall is only 0.211 there, so that's why you're getting that awkward protrusion. The same thing happens where the two walls come together at a fairly acute angle. The solidify is thick enough that it's pushing the created walls into each other.

Finally, I suspect you're going to have to do some manual clean up work around the door. The geometry that you likely want can't be created just by a solidify modifier. A lot of the problems you're running into have to do from this being one continuous mesh. I would strongly suggest modelling the walls, ceiling, and flood as separate meshes, if not separate objects entirely.

The other possibility would be to do it in stages, using the Shrink/Fatten tool Alt + S. Select all the walls, Extrude them, and then fatten them out. Then do the floors and ceilings separately.


Checker Shader Node - strange distortion Blender 2.92.0 I've been working on a long-term project and am in the process of unwrapping the objects.
One of the materials I'm using is created from Checker Shader Node. I tend to use this during unwrapping to help me determine if any major distortion is appearing during the unwrap process.
I've noticed recently that the Checker node seems to be distorting the check pattern on pipe objects. what's weird though is the distortion seems to be happening on any new objects I am unwrapping, older pipe object using the same material seem to be ok (using an earlier version of blender)
In comparison I also used a UV Grid BitMap Image . which does apply well to the pipe I have linked an example of the problem in pdf format and supplied an example .blend file

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iXF1xu5QfLYeyFJDWpkGEXw6O1TUcZS0

as Jachym correctly said, just plugin the texture coordinate node, UV to vector and play with scale and you will get:


VSE: Can you make a script to code in more filters? (add/multiply/subtract) So specifically in blender you have 3 settings really: add/subtract/multiply. Image editors such as gimp give you these and a total of 21 setting.

Are these settings in blender just a mashup of modifier settings applied across 2 strips? Or is there some kind of generic coding that all programs share for these settings? Add/subtract/multiply are found across all programs really for example.
I was just curious if the other filters from gimp could be put into blender via a script.

Kinda open ended given I don't know how to script for blender, but just curious if any insights. If each filter has a generically shared code then I'm guessing you could just make a new filter name for blender and plop in these codes for each?

Turns out your build of Blender may be old.
They were updated as of this commit https://developer.blender.org/D2872
In fact there are a bunch of new blend types available.


Rendering Freestyle strokes behind objects using alpha transparency Is there any way to render Freestyle edges according to their real visibility on camera, by taking in consideration the alpha transparency maps of occluding objects, without compositing multiple render layers ?

There is scenarios where compositing RenderLayers cannot be done, because the occluding object surrounds the target (ex. particle field) or because of the scene complexity (too much objects, camera paths...).

In the following example, green strokes aren't rendered when occluded by the plane with a red overlay that uses Z transparency and a circle texture as alpha.

This is not possible in the current implementation of Freestyle.

Blender 2.79, Freestyle Known Limitations

  Transparent faces are treated as opaque faces.

@gandalf3 / Blender 2.6


Inconsistant edges and lights rendering for orthogonal pixel art with freestyle I'm trying to recreate a Gameboy pixel-art style using a front-facing orthogonal view and freestyle for edges. My reference is this well-known picture from a pokemon game:

My main problem is that edges and lights are not rendering constantly. On the render below, the three spheres are duplicated objects, but render differently:

The lightning is a simple sun facing the center of the scene as you can see here:

My output properties have 160*144px for the resolution.
My render properties and other relevant settings are set like this:

Here is my very simple composition setup using only a color ramp:

What am I missing? It's like the only one rendering rather correctly is the one at the center of the scene.
I uploaded the file here.

What you can see is the effect of sub-pixel movement. If an area that produces a pixel, has different contents than another area producing a pixel, those pixels can differ. Therefore what you need is to snap your objects to pixels.
I've set up my camera at 60° angle, and scaled down the unit scale to get a satisfying grid - something that could be my resolution. I decided that I want a lower resolution than yours, so that I can count the pixels easier and the screenshots are more readable here on SE site. I made sure that the grid aligns with camera borders.

Keep in mind, this is only a pixel grid in the Top Orthographic View, while in the camera view, every grid cell has only half (perceived) height, so each pixel is two grid cells tall.
Now when I duplicate the sphere in camera mode, and move them with CTRL held, my sphere is aligned to the pixel grid:

And if I render the image, all spheres look the same:

However, if you look in a Free view, you might notice the positions of spheres don't exactly illustrate how you would position them in a real scenario:

So let's repeat, this time disabling Z axis (SHIFT + Z) when moving our balls:

The render:

Some balls are different. To be exact, there are two types of balls. This is because, as I said earlier, the grid on XY plane isn't the same as pixel grid - 1 pixel takes two cells. So we need to make sure to align all our objects to even vertical cells (or all objects to odd vertical cells, but we have to be consistent):

And the render:


Edit Mode Changes not showing up in Object Mode When I made changes to my model in EDIT Mode, then swap into either Pose or Object mode, or simply click off the model. My changes go away, but when I click back on the model and go into Edit mode, the changes I made are still there.

How do I make my changes visible outside of edit mode?

The object is a mesh model imported from MakeHuman as an MHX file. I have been using this file type in blender the last few days and this issue has only recently arisen, with a new file.

I am VERY new to Blender and don't know much jargon so if you can please dumb down any solutions I would be massively appreciative!

I'm not editing the weight painting, as I am in edit mode. I am editing the actual mesh, pulling and pushing vertices, sculpting etc.

If your active Object is an armature

When you have an Armature in Edit mode, then you always see the Bones in Rest Pose. While when you switch to Pose Mode or Object mode, then you see the object in its current pose.

You can get out of this by resetting your pose to pose mode:

enter pose mode
Select all bones ( A )
Then type: ALT RALT SALT G to reset rotations, scales and locations of your pose bones. Or alternatively from within the 3D Viewport footer navigate to: Pose -> Clear Transform -> All

If your active Object is a Rigged Mesh

Then the object is (most probably) assigned to an Armature via the modifier Stack. In that case the Object by default gets displayed in Rest Pose when you edit the mesh. In the image below you see the object aligned to the Armature Pose when in Object mode(left side), but displayed in Rest Pose when in edit mode(right side).

However, you can force to display the effect of the Modifier in edit mode as well:

Open the Modifier Stack
In the Armature modifier set the options (see image)

Display Modifier in edit Mode
Adjust edit Cage to Modifier result (see note below)

Note: The tool tip text is from upcoming Blender 2.72 In older Blender releases the text was: Apply modifier to editing cage during edit mode


Why blender doesn't render my trees I created this particle plane with trees, but when I render cycles or eevee it doesn't render trees.
What I could do?

https://we.tl/t-wyAYR30YpS blender file

you did something, which Blender does not support this way.
You cannot put a particle system as rendered object for another particle system.
If you change the rendered object to e.g. path here:

then Blender renders something - of course NOT what you want. But this answers your question.
Then you get this render output:

By the way: Why did you use hair as particle system? For trees the "normal" particles are good to go...


Difference between subdivide smooth and multiresolution? I wonder if there is any difference when i select multiresolution modifier on an object instead of going to [edit mode] choose whole mesh then press [W] subdevide smooth. If yes where both are used for and what reason.

Reference Link
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/modeling/modifiers/generate/multiresolution.html

DESCRIPTION
The Multiresolution Modifier (often shortened to “Multires”) gives you the ability to subdivide a mesh similarly to the Subdivision Surface Modifier, but also allows you to edit the new subdivision levels in sculpt mode.

To Conclude:
Multiresolution modifier is used when you want to do 3d brush sculpting work. As you sculpt from low resolution and progress to higher resolution the modifier allow you to step up your mesh resolution. Example of such models are cloth, faces, landscapes or fine details.

For the regular subdivide its used for subviding models that does not require sculpting. Often used along with box modeling technique where you start your model with a regular box or single polygon plane. Usually applied on models like cars, planes or any hard surface models.

Hope that answer your question.


why does my roundcube create a cube when here it creates a ball? i think the ball shape i want was called a polyshpere or a quadsphere.
im using this tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlaMfIgS2ns
the roundcube thing im trying to make is at 1:58 seconds into the video

It's probably a bad default setting, to have a sphere you need to go into the Operator box and increase the Radius up to 1:


How do I Set Parent to Armature? So I actually had this working, and without changing anything (or so I thought) it stopped working, and the error I get is just a "this won't work" without even pointing me to a line or anything.  Here's the code:

import bpy

#Set parent
bpy.context.scene.objects.active = bpy.data.objects['Armature']

ob= bpy.data.objects['Tuxedo Shirt']
arma = bpy.data.objects['Armature']

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
arma.select = True
bpy.context.scene.objects.active = arma

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

parent_bone = 'CC_Base_BoneRoot' # choose the bone name which you want to be the parent

arma.data.edit_bones.active = arma.data.edit_bones[parent_bone]

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

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT') #deselect all objects
ob.select = True
arma.select = True
bpy.context.scene.objects.active = arma    #the active object will be the parent of all selected object

bpy.ops.object.parent_set(type='BONE', keep_transform=True)

I know there are redundancies there, but it was how the code got built and I didn't want to alter anything from what was working.  And, yes, those are the right names of the mesh and bone (like I said, it was working just fine -- obviously I must have changed something but I have no idea what it was).

Well, I got it working, but I'm still not quite sure why it works now.  I started by getting rid of all the extraneous crap but where it was crapping out seemed to be at the bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT') statement, which still seems to me to be harmless.  Anyway, here's the code that works:

import bpy

#deselect all objects
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

ob= bpy.data.objects['Tuxedo Shirt']
arma = bpy.data.objects['Armature']
arma.select = True
bpy.context.scene.objects.active = arma

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

parent_bone = 'CC_Base_BoneRoot' # choose the bone name which you want to be the parent

arma.data.edit_bones.active = arma.data.edit_bones[parent_bone]

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

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT') #deselect all objects
ob.select = True
arma.select = True
bpy.context.scene.objects.active = arma    #the active object will be the parent of all selected object

bpy.ops.object.parent_set(type='BONE', keep_transform=True)

I kind of hate it when it looks like magic and I don't understand why, but at least I'm not going to worry about it for now (if anyone has an explanation for it, though, I'd love to hear).


Can mining rig be used for blender rendering? I have seen some mining rig with 6 gpu in one motherboard, can you use that for rendering?
edit: http://www.coinminingrigs.com/how-to-build-a-6-gpu-mining-rig/
1x 1200 Watt Power Supply
1x 6 GPU Motherboard
1x Skylake Dual Core CPU
1x 4 GB RAM (system memory)
6x Nvidia GTX 1070 GPU’s (6 of these, I like EVGA and Gigabyte)
1x USB Riser Cables (6 pack)
1x Solid State Drive (for OS / mining software)
1x Custom Mining Case
heres what it looks like

I went out and purchased a P106-90 video card for about $70.
The card showed up properly on windows 10 and automatically installed the drivers.

Blender automatically detected the card

And it cut renders down from
1:32 to 49 seconds
Which means I was able to cut my render times in half.

Additionally, searching the blender benchmark data shows benchmarks from users with the cards p106-90 and p106-100
https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/query/?device_name=P106-090&device_type=CUDA
Note: According to some sources, the eevee render only uses the first gpu, so its likely adding a second gpu won't increase the speed of previews. Only Cycles renderer is able to use multiple GPUs.
Also these cards can only be leveraged for blender, since nvidia blocks the ability to use these cards for video games.
Additional information

Motherboard: ECS A885GM-A2
Windows 10 Home


Creating vertical thin coloured strips on sphere I have attached an image with an explanation of the issue I have.
https://www.mediafire.com/view/qs0nu64aov4rou8/Vertical_Strips.PNG/file

-Loop select horizontal line

-Select similar (shift + G) > direction

-Delete edges

-Add modifier > Skin

-Select all edges > Ctrl + A to resize the thickness of skin

(optional)

-add subdivision modifier to smooth things out


how to make a 360 video (turntable) of an Object using a python script How to make a video of a PLY mesh from python script? I need to place the model in space and rotate it of 360 degrees on an axis.

Here is a ply example: http://156.54.99.175/3d/sodark.zip

You could use the add-ons linked to in the comments, but if you already have some form of script it's easy enough to plug in a small bit of code to get the same effect. Something like this. This adds a Camera (child) and an Empty (parent), then rotates the Empty on the Z-axis and keyframes each rotation, for frame: (1..num_frames+1).

import math
import bpy

def add_cam(location, rotation):
    bpy.ops.object.camera_add(location=location, rotation=rotation)
    return bpy.context.active_object

def add_empty(location):
    bpy.ops.object.empty_add(location=location)
    return bpy.context.active_object

cam = add_cam(location=(0, -5, 0), rotation=(math.pi/2, 0, 0))
empty = add_empty(location=(0, 0, 0))
cam.parent = empty

num_frames = 90
gamma = math.pi * 2 / num_frames
for i in range(1, num_frames+1):
    empty.rotation_euler[2] = gamma * i
    empty.keyframe_insert(data_path='rotation_euler', frame=i, index=-1)

You might perform some calculations to figure out based on the size and orientation of the Object, where to place the Empty and how far away to place the Camera and which Euler axis to rotate around.

animation example

Then you set your render resolution x, y and quality and output type, and scene.frame_start, scene.frame_end. A smart approach is to render the sequence as separate frames first, using the .png format. Then decide on the kind of final video format. A popular webformat is GIF or MP4. Blender can output a couple of video formats, but GIF is not one of them.

MP4
Blender can load a directory full of .png in the Video Sequence Editor  (VSE) and render directly to a video video format/container (mp4, avi...etc). See Save rendered images in different formats

GIF (animated)
Unfortunately there's no feature that lets you convert a sequence of .png straight to GIF built in. But there are add-ons that use tools like ImageMagick and ffmpeg to do the conversion.

spritify by Fweeb
roll your own scripts using ffmpeg: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/24014/creating-a-gif-animation-from-png-files


Relative image files not found. Background render. No error, just magenta textures Another one of these problems...

Renders fine on Windows desktop, but not on headless Linux box.  Image files are in the same dir as the blend file, like on the desktop.  Using relative paths.  CLI output shows it's loading image files, but gives no error as it probably should since the I get the magenta textures.

Using identical blender versions btw desktop and Linux, v2.76.

Using --debug-all is no help.

Command:
blender -b --debug-all -noaudio internet3.blend -s 1069 -e 1069 -a

Any suggestions?

Edit: The strange thing is, a referenced movie file IS successfully found and included in the render even though the images are not.

Got it.  The clue was that another asset, a movie, was found and rendered, but it was in a subdir instead of being the the same dir as the blend file.  So, I moved the images from the same dir as the blend file to their own images subdir.  Then, open the blend file and select File > External Data > Make all files relative.  Save.


Copy Custom Properties from one object to another How to copy all object properties to another object with Python?

Could you suggest the simplest way.

Custom Properties on object level are contained in Object.keys(), but there's also a helper property _RNA_UI and some API-defined properties such as cycles_visibility.

Therefore, it's better to test for _RNA_UI and get all actual Custom Properties there:

import bpy

ob_sel = bpy.context.selected_editable_objects
ob_act = bpy.context.object

try:
    props = ob_act["_RNA_UI"]
except KeyError:
    pass
else:
    for ob in ob_sel:
        if ob == ob_act:
            continue
        for p in props.keys():
            print(p, ob_act[p])
            ob[p] = ob_act[p]

Note that properties will added or overwritten, but not removed if the target has some the source does not have. You could change that by deleting all Custom Properties of the target before copying the properties from the source object.


Render Setting for Cycles Plz provide a best render setting. The problem im facing is in Rendered mode the light reflection looks good and and satisfied to click the render button. After rendering taking 1hr it need to give some brightness/contrast in photoshop which i dont want to jump in other software. Any perfect setting which i can match render mode and final render. Im just rendering and image. Thanks

It's difficult to give advice without image references.

May be the problem binded with Filmic View which reduces contrast.

There is no "best render setting", different settings are suitable for different situations: architectural or interior visualization, character or product rendering.

To adjust final render you can:

Tune Color Management Look, Exposure, Gamma or Use Curves

The whole spectrum of Color nodes in Compositor:


Ocean plane shader with transparency I've made this ocean scene following a tutorial.

I want the shader to be transparent so I can see sharks or whatever though the water.
But adding transmission doesn't seem to work. And since it's a plane I also can't use volume absorption (I think)

Any suggestions?

My scene:

Reference:

This isn't so much about Blender as physics.

Real ocean water is very light. Like almost white.
Aim your camera more downwards, to decrease reflections.
Add a shallow seabed to better control your ocean color.


Can Blender make a timelapse video? I was wondering if there is a script or addon that allows me to make timelapse videos of my blender projects?

For example, is it possible to add a camera to the scene which takes a quick image of the scene from that point of view every couple of seconds or moves?

The built-in Screencast tool is configurable such that you only get one frame every few seconds... or minutes.

From the docs:

  The default settings will generate a screencast consisting of a series of PNG images captured every 50 ms... The FPS for video Screencasts and time between each Screenshot for an image series Screencast can be set from the System panel of the User Preferences window.

If you're wanting a fixed-position shot of the current state of your model, though, this won't work. It'll just take a screenshot of whatever your Blender screen looks like at that moment.


Bone Heat Weighting Failed, no solution works I've been trying to get the headband connected to the bone. The selected piece
I used Vertex Cleanup but it did nothing and deformed my mesh so I'm trying to find some solutions

It's probably failing due to too much small topology. Try to reduce the number of vertices again. Or scale everything up so that more space exists between headband vertices.


VSE-Background image behind foreground video. Alpha over, alpha under don't work A png image to be used for background.

A video sequence of numbered png files ( which were rendered in Blender with alpha.) is to be the foreground.

Selected backgound png, then video sequence, add effect strip alpha over. No background visible. (Tried every combination I could think of. If use alpha over the background is the only image visible. Use alpha under the foreground is only image visible.  display is sRGB)

Tried with single .png file as forground. Same results.

I am wondering if the video sequenced pngs have lost the alpha channel. On the video display there is no checkerboard as there was within the 3d scene for the background. (The black part of the video looks solid black on the display rather than checkerboard)

Your PNGs were probably not exported with the alpha channel.

Make sure you export the PNGs as RGBA

To check if  your image has an alpha channel load it in the UV/Image editor.

An image with alpha channel will look like this, with a checker pattern on the alpha:

An image with no alpha channel will not show that pattern, but a solid color:

To make the alpha channel transparent on the VSE, select the strip with the pngs, presss N to make the panel visible, and in the blend type select alpha over.


How to duplicate keyframes? How do i duplicate keyframes into the same object? I need this for a cyclic animation. I press Shift+D and move the keyframes in the Dopesheet, but the animation doesn't continue after the original keyframes.

Update : It seems that I'm not able to animate any bone after frame 30. Is this a bug? I use Blender 2.78a

Update : This is my set up :

To copy/paste keyframes you use the highlighted buttons below:

To fix the other issue You need to unpin the animation in the NLA editor as shown below and the animation will be there after frame 30 normally


it is possible to rig a character with multiples objects? I just want to know if I make a rigging for a 3D character who has at least 6 differents objects (lower body, boots, upper body, head, eyes, hair&eyeslashes...see the picture.

I do not want to joint all the mesh parts , because I am afraid to lose their own UVs map , (I see some post to not loose uv of every single objects) but I am not user well how to do, by the way, I am asking a punctual asking, can I rig differents pieces of the mesh ? (boots, pants , head, jacket, hand,eyes) what about the vertex weith ? (I am going to use riggify addon).

Yes you can:
Actually the armature is a modifier that creates relationship between a bone and a vertex group with the same exact name. If a mesh receives form an armature a request to move a non existing vertex group, it simply ignores the instruction.
So you will have to add an armature modifier to every mesh and create as many vertex groups as bones related with that part of the mesh.
You will have to manually assign weights.

For the main part of the armature you can select the relative mesh, select the armature press Ctrl+P and choose "with empty groups"; this procedure will automatically create a vertex group for every bone of the armature marked as "deform", ready to be weighted (you can then delete the unnecessary vertex groups).


Is it possible to change the order of objects in a group? Simply put, is it possible to change the order of objects in a group?

I would like to change it due to using  the Animation Nodes addon effecting objects in an undesired order.

In the provided GIF, you can see that one block in the bottom left scales up at the end instead of near the beginning or so.

The Blend File:

You can sort the group (actually any list type) by using Sort List node:

Tip: You can apply multiple/cascading sorting rules to a list. For example, in my case , I first sorted all objects based on their Y location, then sorted the result again by X location.

Update:

You can try applying round math here for better sorting, due to the precision, for example:

round(e.location.y, 3)

round(e.location.x, 3)


I cant add loop cuts I have a model and want to shrink or press or bend on red axis show in the image to make the shape as shown in reference image. I cant add loop cut & if i add sub division modifier i loose all the sharpness of the edges. U can try with my model i have attach the file.....

Added lattice and modified little bit to get the shape

confused problem

with the reference video i have yet to error

press Shift+A and add a lattice

after that, select the object to be deformed and add a lattice modifier
 Under the modifier, make sure you select the lattice as the object  select your lattice, and go to edit mode, pressing TAB key; press Shift+leftclick to select the 4 vertices on the -Y direction of the lattice, press S to scale them. I've uploaded your blend file with the lattice:


Curve rotation problem I've been trying to figure this out for a while now without getting anywhere so could somebody help me please?

I'm trying to create a shape that starts flat and ends the same way as on the image below.

Instead I've been achieving these results image2 and image3. I've been trying to rotate but without getting the result that I wanted.

How can I get one curved shape that starts as in image 3 and ends as in image 2?
To create this I made a curve and applied two modifiers array modifier and curve modifier.

Try to rotate an object in 'Edit Mode' (using proportional editing). Remember to match the curve origin with the object origin.

Here is the result:


Why is Keyboard C selecting the Cursor and not Circle Select? When I press C on the Keyboard in Edit Mode in 2.8, it activates the Cursor tool, instead of Circle Select.
I tried to verify the shortcut in Preferences by searching for Circle Select, but became more confused, because while mask.select_circle is bound to Keyboard C, there are multiple entries, and some such as view3d.select_circle have the Ctrl modifier set to Subtract mode and Shift set to Extend: however the behaviour I observe is that Shift Subtracts and Ctrl does nothing.
How should I interpret these keymaps? And what is the correct way to set a shortcut for Circle Select in Edit mode?

I'm not sure how to fix this but u have a cover up , you can get into circle select by clicking on the small triangle in the select box tool and then select the circle select


Blender python process killed after rendering I want to render about 2000 scenes. It goes well with the following script, until about rendering the 200th scene, then I get "killed" in the terminal and the process is dead.
I'm suspect there is some kind of bug in my code, maybe I'm not free memory correctly?
Any ideas how to fix it?

import bpy
import os
import pickle
import math
import random

def deg_to_rad(deg):
    return deg / 180 * math.pi

scenarios = pickle.load(open("./scenarios0.p", 'rb'))

NUM_MAGES = 2000
context = bpy.context

d = './model_collection/'
my_dirs  = [os.path.join(d, o) for o in os.listdir(d) if os.path.isdir(os.path.join(d,o))]
num_models = len(my_dirs)

for i in range(NUM_MAGES):
    old_objs = set(context.scene.objects)
    my_c = scenarios[i]
    for j in range(len(my_cars)):
        rand_idx = random.randint(0, num_models-1)
        file_loc = os.path.join(my_dirs[rand_idx],'model.obj')
        print(file_loc)
        cur_objs = set(context.scene.objects)
        bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath=file_loc)

        imported_obj = set(context.scene.objects) - cur_objs

        for obj in imported_obj:
            obj.scale = (5.3, 5.3, 5.3)
            obj.rotation_euler = (deg_to_rad(90), 0, deg_to_rad(my_c[j][1])) #Roll, Pitch, Yaw
            obj.location.x = my_cars[j][0][0]
            obj.location.y = my_cars[j][0][1]

    scene = bpy.context.scene
    scene.render.filepath = './renders/' + str(i) + '.png'
    bpy.ops.render.render("EXEC_DEFAULT", write_still=True)

    to_delete_objs = set(context.scene.objects) - old_objs
    for obj in to_delete_objs :
        bpy.data.objects.remove(obj)

I ran the script at the background using simple python script:

import os
import sys

if __name__ == '__main__':
    blender = sys.argv[-4]
    amount = int(sys.argv[-3])
    scene = sys.argv[-2]
    script = sys.argv[-1]

    os.system('rm -rf ./temp_idx.p')
    for i in range(amount):
        os.system(blender + ' ' + scene + ' --background -P ' + script)

To overcome the loop issue (how can I keep the correct index) I dumped the index to a file and read it each time:

import bpy
import os
import pickle
import math
import random
import sys

def deg_to_rad(deg):
    return deg / 180 * math.pi

scenarios = pickle.load(open("./scenarios0.p", 'rb'))

START = 0

context = bpy.context

try:
    idx = pickle.load(open("./temp_idx.p", 'rb'))
    pickle.dump(idx+1, open("./temp_idx.p", "wb"))
except FileNotFoundError:
    idx = START
    pickle.dump(idx+1, open("./temp_idx.p", "wb"))

try:
    my_dirs, num_models = pickle.load(open("./temp_dirs.p", 'rb'))
except FileNotFoundError:
    d = './car_collection/'
    my_dirs = [os.path.join(d, o) for o in os.listdir(d) if os.path.isdir(os.path.join(d, o))]
    my_dirs.sort()
    num_models = len(my_dirs)
    pickle.dump((my_dirs, num_models), open("./temp_dirs.p", "wb"))

old_objs = set(context.scene.objects)
my_cars = scenarios[idx]
for j in range(len(my_cars)):
    rand_idx = random.randint(0, num_models - 1)
    file_loc = os.path.join(my_dirs[rand_idx], 'model.obj')
    cur_objs = set(context.scene.objects)
    bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath=file_loc)

    imported_obj = set(context.scene.objects) - cur_objs

    for obj in imported_obj:
        obj.scale = (5.3, 5.3, 5.3)
        obj.rotation_euler = (deg_to_rad(90), 0, deg_to_rad(my_cars[j][1]))  # Roll, Pitch, Yaw
        obj.location.x = my_cars[j][0][0]
        obj.location.y = my_cars[j][0][1]

scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.render.filepath = './renders_wed/' + str(idx) + '.png'
# bpy.ops.render.render("INVOKE_DEFAULT", write_still=True)
bpy.ops.render.render("EXEC_DEFAULT", write_still=True)

to_delete_objs = set(context.scene.objects) - old_objs
for obj in to_delete_objs:
    bpy.data.objects.remove(obj)


How can I do a 3d animation where inbetween frames are jumping to one value to another without easing in? I say kinda stop motion like, what I'm really looking for is a step animation where there are no middle part between two frames. The result should be an object jump cutting to another location.

Just curious if there is a simple method of making all animation like this in the dope sheet.

Many different ways:
If you want no interpolation between two keyframe you can set the interpolation mode to "constant" in the user preferences panel.

You can also do it after the programming: open the graph editor, select all keyframes and press T and choose constant interpolation mode.

Another way is to use the dopesheet (expecially useful if you want some keyframes to "jump" and others to have a linear or bezier ease interpolation): select the first keyframe of the "jump" section and copy it near the last keyframe (one or two frames before).

The video you posted seems to be not completely "jumping": it uses short interpolations but not constant at all. The constant mode is also very useful during the Blocking phase of the animation, for preparing the "animatic" version of the movie.


Why does memory and file size increase when objects are joined? Why does memory file size increase when objects are joined?

As you can see from the pic I am working on a building.
When the objects are not joined file size is 50MB

When I join them the file size goes up to 80MB.

Is there a way I could conserve the original file size or even reduce it after joining?

The way I see it the issue is twofold.
Instancing
Separate objects benefit from instancing optimizations. If objects share the same object data (geometry) Blender only stores such geometry once, and objects share it internally.
This yields both smaller file size and corresponding savings reading and loading the file. Once the scene is loaded memory is also saved by only recycling the shape of the object both into RAM and VRAM.
Joining all into one objects removes the benefit of instancing, and worsens it by creating a massive single mesh full of unique data.
Memory Consumption
Other than that joining, separating or preforming any other operation on objects creates undo steps which are stored in memory, requiring additional memory consumption until it is flushed or released.

Overall joining objects doesn't really add any benefit at all, other than possible viewport performance and working responsiveness. Blender tends to get slow when the object database is very large, and the viewport tends to slow down if large amounts of objects are visible.
Under certain situations Blender may behave faster with a single large mesh as opposed to several thousands of instances containing the same geometry, generally at the expense of memory consumption, editability and file size.


how to put image on normal? I'm trying to put the JBL logo on stereo normal, I've tried using texture paint but it doesn't work

how to make PNG image blending with the normal

I might be wrong but I don't think you can blend the logo with a Normal map only.
You want to paint the logo on the threads of the fabric/cover and mask out the holes. For this, you need a Height or Displacement texture that has the info where the holes are.
For the example, I used the Displacement and the Roughness textures of this fabric. Got the logo, inverted the colors, then painted it with the Stencil mode of the brush on a new texture. For the Math node which is used to mask the logo, I've inverted the colors (logo=white=1, background=black=0). Of course, you can just use an Invert node before the Math node.
Once the Image Texture nodes are set up, you can mix the logo with the Mix RBG node and mask the logo with a Math node (mode: Multiply). The Color Ramp controls the opacity of the "paint"/logo. The Displacement texture (black & white) is used for the mixed color because plain white still looks too strong. You can use another Color Ramp to colorize the logo.
Shader setup to mix logo and fabric
The Normal texture is omitted from the example since there is already the Displacement texture and the images are big. The Bump node does the job.
The box with the material and a LED light
Update: After I had a closer look at the material, it looks more like hard plastic with holes in it than a fabric. In this case, you can get away with just an image that has dots on it.
The logo has now an extra UV map. So you don't need an extra texture and no need to paint it.
The image with dots can be used for the Roughness and Specular slots. Mask the holes with Color Ramps and you can create little black holes. (With the Alpha slot they even can become transparent).


How can I apply the same change to multiple channels in Graph Editor? I'm a beginner and learning with a video course in Blender Cloud.
I would like to apply the same modification to two channels such as the X Scale and Z Scale in one action in the Graph Editor.
In the video course, Animation Fundamentals, 101 Simple Bouncing Ball (Part02), around 22:55, the instructor edit both the X scale and Z scale at once.

Use the eye icon to show only the curves you want to edit, then select all keyframes you want to edit, then press G to move, G X to move along time, G Y to move along values, S X to scale along time, S Y to scale along values. Confirm with enter or Left click.

You can set the pivot point of scaling with the usual pivot icon (Bounding box, individual center or 2D cursor).


Correct approach to hip topology? Just like the issue with shoulders, building hip joints causes a lot of trouble for me. Rotating the leg forward distorts the character's bottom, while rotating it back or to the side causes pinching in other areas. What's the correct approach to topology for hips?

Personally I would recommend something like this:

(Granted, this is a low poly character that contains triangles. You don't want triangles in a mesh that will be using subsurface. However, it forms the general shape.)

(FYI Here's a page linking to a bunch of examples of body topology: Polycount wiki: Body Topology), and of course, there's always Blender Cookie (archive).


How do you calculate square root with nodes? I'm creating my own merge functions in the compositor, but I've run into a bit of a wall. How do you calculate the square root with nodes? Would one have to write a python node to do this? If so, what would that look like?

The square root of x equals x^.5, so use a math node set to Power and put the value whose square root you want in the upper socket, and set the lower value to .5.


How to smoothen out a pit in a curved surface TL;DR: What is the best way to make the selected part in the image an as smooth as possible extension of the surrounding curved surface?

I've been searching extensively the past hour, but cannot find the Q&A that I am looking for. I am trying to smoothen out pits in a curved surface. This is my mesh:

I have been asked to create a snap fitting for an airpod from this 3D scan. To do so, I am gonna subtract the shape of the airpod out of a bigger block. But to to that, I need a smooth surface to start with. I can not make a snap fit from an airpod with pits (you wouldn't be able to press the airpod in the snap fit).

I tried doing a limited dissolve, after which I deleted all the surfaces that were part of the pit. The hole that is created this way I tried to fill with the Fill and Grid fill functions, but this either gave non smooth or irregular surfaces.

One way is to use the Cast modifier.

Select the area you want to 'smoothen' and add it to a vertex group (I named it ball part)
Add a Cast modifier set to Sphere and limited to the vertex group.
Use the Factor, Radius and Size sliders to correct the shape.


Improve lighting and walls This is a render (with Cycles) of a building entrance hall.
First, I need a cement walls painted white. How can I do it using only nodes?
For lighting I'm using two point lights on the roof and one emission node inside the elevator. How can I improve de lighting of the scene to achieve photorealism?

For the cement you could overlap 2 (or more) levels of noise, one very thin for the cement texture, and one much bigger for some holes. Also maybe try a bit of glossiness with a Layer Weight as factor. Iit would give something like that:

It can also be more subtle:


Can 3DView Border Select behavior be changed? Trying to dive in to Blender again and really struggling to understand some of the basic selection logic.

Specifically border selecting edges in Edit Mode.

When dragging out the marquee I've intersected 4 edges and completely encapsulated 1 edge.

In most programs this would result in 5 selected edges.

But here you can see only 1 edge is selected.

So you would think this meant that Border Select only selects edges when all their verts are completely surrounded by the selection border.

But here comes the twist!

Here you see only 1 vert is surrounded, yet the result is 3 selected edges!

This seems both inconsistent and counter-intuitive.

Is this the intended selection behavior for this tool? If so, why is this desirable? What's the advantage to this approach? I'm trying to understand the logic so using it isn't so frustrating.

Otherwise, is there another mode for Border Select that makes it behave more like you'd expect it to?

Thanks!

Interesting question, never gave it much though, but now that you mention I did some investigation and came to the conclusion that I find it a smart and consistent system even if apparently unexpected at first.

If you border select only one corner, imagining you are in vertex selection mode, you are technically selecting one vertex only; so Blender automatically extends the selection to all the concurrent edges.

If you fully encapsulate an arbitrary number of edge then Blender will assume you want to select them and ignore the "vertex-extension" mode.

If no vertex is selected and no edge is fully encaspulated then "crossing-mode" is used instead, and any touched edge is selected regardless of being fully inside the border or not.


texturing-Uv mapping sculpted mesh I tried watching and googleing almost everything.
I can not find any tutorial how i correctly uv-mapping-texturing high poly sculpted mesh,maybe i should retopology first?

I think you should probably retopo.

I feel that it's much more difficult to unwrap a high poly mesh because edit mode for very complex models may be less responsive, and it will be more difficult to get a good selection of edges for adding seams since the geometry is so small and there are so many edges

you probably want to retopo for your own convenience, and if you need the extra detail, you can bake the high poly as a normal map for the low poly model

if you really need to sketch out a simple texture on a very high poly mesh, maybe you can use vertex paint? it won't be as detailed or look as nice as a real texture, but if you need to visualize something for planning it might be useful


Specify tile size for Blender Cycles rendering via the command line I'd like to write a little piece of code which splits a frame into a few tiles and uses all available devices to render the still image. It seems like the Blender developers are working on such a feature, but this seems to be quite far in the future: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.6/Source/Render/Cycles/Devices.

Because I render images which are composited into photographs (resolution about 5300 x 3800) I want to use all the resources I have available (CPU & GPU in main workstation, CPU in laptop and CPU in old desktop).
I have found the documentation for the command line (http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Command_Line), but it doesn't specify the options I need (tile mode, tile size x and y, number of tiles to render).

Does anybody know how to do this?

AFAIK, there is no option to set tile sizes directly from the command line.

However, you could use the python api to do this, and execute a python script in blender from the command line. (see this question)

To set tile sizes from python, you can use
bpy.context.scene.render.tile_x
and bpy.context.scene.render.tile_y.

Tile order can be set with bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].cycles.tile_order.
This can be set to 'CENTER', 'RIGHT_TO_LEFT', 'LEFT_TO_RIGHT', 'TOP_TO_BOTTOM', or 'BOTTOM_TO_TOP'

An example script to set the tile size to 32x32 and set the order to Right to Left:

import bpy

for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
    scene.render.tile_x = 32
    scene.render.tile_y = 32
    scene.cycles.tile_order = 'RIGHT_TO_LEFT'

Note that it loops through each scene to set these properties globally. (see this)
You can run this from the command line with

blender --background /path/to/my.blend --python /path/to/script.py --render-anim
# or the short version:
blender -b /path/to/my.blend -P /path/to/script.py -a

Borders:

AFAIK, it's not possible to tell blender to only render n amount of tiles, when n is less than the total tiles needed to render the complete image.
(blender does print a new line to stdout for every tile that is rendered, so you might be able to make some hack to stop blender once n tiles have been rendered, but I don't know if you could save output.)

Because of this, you might be better off using the Render Border; this will allow you to exactly define what section of the image to render.
You could then call blender to render repeatedly, using a script to pass different render border dimensions to do your own "tile render".

You can enable border with bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].render.use_border = True

The border region is defined by four values between 0 and 1 corresponding to the locations of the four sides of the render border relative to the camera where 0 is the left or bottom edge of the camera, and 1 is the right or top edge.

You can set the min and max xy values for the camera border with

bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].render.border_max_x
bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].render.border_min_x
bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].render.border_max_y
bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].render.border_min_y

You may also want to enable Crop to border with bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].render.use_crop_to_border = True

So to render half of the image vertically, you could run this:

import bpy

for scene in bpy.data.scenes:

    scene.render.use_border = True
    scene.render.use_crop_to_border = True
    #this sets the render border to the left half of the camera.
    #to render the right half, set max_x to 1 and min_x to .5
    scene.render.border_max_x = .5
    scene.render.border_min_x = 0
    scene.render.border_min_y = 0
    scene.render.border_max_y = 1
    scene.render.tile_x = 32
    scene.render.tile_y = 32
#then render:
bpy.ops.render.render()

Note that to set the viewport border you must use this instead, but you most likely are interested in camera border as viewport border is only relevant for using the realtime rendering feature. (see this post for more info)

Seeds:

This does not answer your question about tiles, but as you mentioned you want to do this for rendering on multiple machines, I thought I would mention this.

You could also combine different Cycles renders by using the Seed value. (See this post for more info)

This also is a good way to remove fireflies.


How do I prevent the body mesh from protruding through the clothes mesh? I have tried deleting vertices, but that doesn't work. Is there another way to hide this problem?

If you don't want any geometry under your model's clothing at all, the simplest thing to do is to export it using the option to hide faces under clothes in MakeHuman.

This way, all faces under clothes will be hidden for you.


Blender does not utilize full amount of VRAM When trying to render my scene with my GTX 970 and cycles I get a cuda error saying that I was out of memory. However according to gpu-z I only got up to using 3228MB of VRAM, and according to blender my scene was using a little over 2GB, somewhere in the 2200MB range. Is there a work around, or a know reason for this?

Unless you have multiple graphics cards you are unlikely to be able to max out the memory use.  Some of the memory will be used by other processes and windows.  I've found it is always worth closing all other windows and any other unnecessary processes when I'm close to the limit.  They all use RAM which could affect your render but they all will likely have staked a claim on some VRAM too.  I don't know whether minimising the Blender program windows makes any difference but I do it anyway.  If you are on Windows I've also found that switching themes can help.  Current Windows versions and their UI effects are not a particularly efficient users of VRAM so dropping back to the Classic theme will probably help.  I've also read that changing font size to normal and switching off clear type and anti-aliasing can help although I've no evidence to support that.


What is the term used to create a mesh with less vertices using shrinkwrap? I used to know this term but I haven't thought about it in over a year, so I completely forgot about what it's called. The term refers to using the shrink-wrap modifier to maker a new mesh over an old one to change the amount of vertices when the old one has too many?

I think you're referring to Retopology. And yes, in Blender the Shrinkwrap modifier is commonly used in combination with other modifiers to perform retopology.


Coordinates of corners of camera view border How to get coordinates of corners of camera border in camera view relative to the viewport area?

After checking

import bpy
print('-----')
print()
print()
for a in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if a.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        for s in a.spaces:
            print(s)
            for d in dir(s):
                print(d)
print('-----')

I have no idea how to find out where I can get this

There are 2 things to consider here:

The camera frame. The camera frame is not as simple as you might expect since its effected by the field-of-view, aspect & x/y shift.
The 2D view pixel coords, The user can pan & zoom the view, so this also has to be calculated.

This script gets the camera bounds and prints the pixel boundaries.
import bpy

def view3d_find():
    # returns first 3d view, normally we get from context
    for area in bpy.context.window.screen.areas:
        if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
            v3d = area.spaces[0]
            rv3d = v3d.region_3d
            for region in area.regions:
                if region.type == 'WINDOW':
                    return region, rv3d
    return None, None

def view3d_camera_border(scene):
    obj = scene.camera
    cam = obj.data

    frame = cam.view_frame(scene=scene)

    # move from object-space into world-space
    frame = [obj.matrix_world @ v for v in frame]

    # move into pixelspace
    from bpy_extras.view3d_utils import location_3d_to_region_2d
    region, rv3d = view3d_find()
    frame_px = [location_3d_to_region_2d(region, rv3d, v) for v in frame]
    return frame_px

frame_px = view3d_camera_border(bpy.context.scene)
print("Camera frame:", frame_px)

See API docs for the important functions used here:

bpy.types.Camera.view_frame
bpy_extras.view3d_utils.location_3d_to_region_2d


Updating curve handles by location of other objects I'd like to use blender to animate motion of nodes in a graph (~50000 nodes) that I've exported from gephi (different layouts of the same graph). Let's call them spheres to avoid confusing them with Blender's material/compositing nodes. Similarly, instead of graph edges, let's call them connections.

I'm pretty sure the best way to handle the spheres is with duplivert, but I'm having trouble with the connections.

I'm trying things out on a small graph before I scale up. Here I have bezier curves set up for the connections, getting the appropriate curvature by scaling the handles. Looks fine for a static image, but will quickly break down when the spheres start moving.

The first thing to do is hook the curve ends to the spheres. This way, the curves move around when the spheres do. The problem now is getting the handles rotated and scaled based on the new sphere positions:

Is there a way to get the connections' curve handles to be pointed in the right direction, and scaled to give appropriate curvature, based on the position of the speheres?

Assumption: If your graph has approx 50k junctions, I will assume you will import/generate such graph with python in blender.

If I were you, I would do all the animating also with python. If you do that, you also don't need to set all the hooks with python (yay!).

When you'll be building the graph, store junctions and connections into some list. You should use some nice classes for them and remember inside them what belongs to what and also remember data paths to each connection ends and handles vertices.
Then you create a function that will receive such list via a global variable and that will edit all junction positions and connections vertices and handles according to current frame. The function only takes 1 parameter - the scene.

def update_fce(scene):
    # get data
    global list

    # get frame
    frame = scene.frame_current

    # here move stuff to where it is supposed to be at frame
    return

The last step is to add this function into frame change callback list so it is called everytime the frame is changed:

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(update_fce)


Install blender on CAELinux i am a newbie at the linux environment, please how can i install blender on Linux? what are the commands i type on the terminal window? i just download it from the website. thank you

CAELinux is based on Debian, right? If so, these are the commands.

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:thomas-schiex/blender

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install blender

sudo apt-get install nvidia-cuda-toolkit`

Heres a video in case you don't understand some of these.

Source: I've been a Blender guru since 2009. Best program ever created if you ask me!


Connect parent bone tail to child head I'd like to connect the tail of a parent bone to the head of a child bone, because it looks more organized.

This is how it currently looks like

This is how it should look like

Since there are a lot of bones involved, I'd like to make this programmatically in python to save time.

I tried to overwrite the .tail property of a bone but it didn't save it or something. Nothing changed.

First, you have to switch to the object mode.

In a python console, enter something like this. Make sure to change the name of the armature to what you have. The .tail property is not what you want to overwrite, it's the tail_local.

for bone in bpy.data.armatures['Armature'].bones:
    if bone.parent is not None:
        bone.parent.tail_local = bone.head_local

Then switch to edit mode to see the effect

If your parents can have multiple children and if you only want to move those tails that have a single children, you can try to use this code snippet:

parent2children = {}

for bone in bpy.data.armatures['Armature'].bones:
    if bone.parent is not None:
        if bone.parent.name in parent2children:
            parent2children[bone.parent.name].append(bone)
        else:
            parent2children[bone.parent.name] = [bone]

for name in parent2children:
    if len(parent2children[name]) == 1:
        parent = bpy.data.armatures['Armature'].bones[name]
        parent.tail_local = parent2children[name][0].head_local

make sure to switch to object mode first here as well


Align View to plane of selection Hi,
I am trying to create a mesh out of bezier curve extrude section...

Then going into edit mode and selecting 2 vertices as shown and cursor to selected.

In this view if I try to rotate then the rotation is about the view axis and is wrong.

If instead I first align the view manually to the plane of vertices

and then rotate the vertices by 90 deg then it is done correctly.

How can I make blender align the view to the plane of rotation?

Ctrl + Shift + NUMPAD 3 doesn't always align the view to the front view of the plane of selection.

I am ok to code this in python if anyone can throw me some pointers...

Many thanks,
Cody

Selecting your face and using Shift+(NUMPAD 1,3, or 7) should allow you to get all the angles you want. Also hitting Numpad 9 will flip you 180 to the other side of the face.


How to scale the edges along a curved surface Im trying to scale the edges along a curved surface. When I do the method scale and X, it scales with no problem, but when I try to scale along the Y axis, it distorts the face, the edges dont scale proportional

Creating custom orientations will help you in many situations where you have to move or scale many faces/edges/vertices along directions that are off the usual orientations.
However, if you only have one face like the one in your screenshot it is a bit easier. And if you have multiple ones pointing in different directions, creating a custom orientation for each of them might be very uncomfortable.
Instead you can select the face and set the orientation to Normal (which would also be used if you created a custom orientation) and then scale along the face normal's X or Y axis with simply using S > X (or Y). You don't have to press the key for the axis twice - that will use Global orientation.
It's only important that you use the face selection instead of only selecting the opposing edges you want to scale, because this might result in an unwanted orientation (see picture on the left).


Dashed Object attached to primary object I hit some keys on accident and then noticed that there was a dashed box that is somehow attached to the object.  It is visible in object and edit mode but I cannot select it.
I thought it was a parenting issue, but I cannot find anything it is attached to and it is not a bounding box.  (It is a child of an empty).

See attached image.  Orange arrow pointing at mystery object.

Here is my Question:
What is it?
What does it do?
Do I need to get rid of it?

This is a texture space coordinates, that can be  enabled accidentally by pressing Shift+T

You can disable it from display in Object properties on display panel:


Baked texture map shows weird distortions, is it mistake or not? After i baked diffuse map i got these weird distortions, but i don't know if i should worry about them and unwrap mesh differently.

You are subdividing your UV map with a subdivision modifier.

Go to the subdivision modifier and uncheck UV Smooth, if you don't want to subdivide the UV map.

From the manual:

  UV Smooth
  How to handle UVs during subdivision.


How can i make Blender export multiple meshes with PLY/STL format for printing in 3D? I'm trying to export a 3D character into a file format that a 3D printer can print. I have a 3D character made of different meshes (body, hair, eyes, mouth and two accesories) and i've already put them in the 3D world in a pose i like. (I dont know why but the eyes mesh looks like unaligned with the head but when i do the render it appears just fine)

So now what i want to do is to export this 3D character in either STL format or PLY format. I've tried to do what this question's answer propose: link

but when joining meshes i lost the pose that i did, so i undo-ed the joining.
Also i tried selecting all the meshes and exporting them to PLY directly but only the body mesh without color was exported.

What should i do?

You can (maybe on a file copy, or even temporary just to export) convert the posed mesh to "mesh": select the posed mesh in object mode and press ALTC, select "convert to mesh". Or, you can apply the armature modifier, is the same.

Then the posed mesh is permanent, still parented in the same way but no more deformed, so you can join it to other objects, and then export.

However, joined object may pose some problem to 3d printing, since they were not modeled as a single mesh: they will not be connected, for sure, and may have overlaps, etc. You may need to edit the joined shape to fix any 3d printing issue.

In some case 3d printing software can address lesser problems, but you can also check with the (bundled, but disabled by default) addon "3d printing toolbox" to find and address most of them.


How to render very high resolutions without running out of memory? I tried to render a file at %1000 res first my mouse locked up then it returned to normal, blender entered the render screen but never started rendering. after about 10 mins blender crashed and quit. Is it possible to render a image this good, would having a better PC help, could my PC have run out of free RAM(I think it has 2 GB).

If you want to render scenes that require more memory then your system has, I think your best option is to render the image in sections (tiles).

I think there are more then one script to do this, but I found one here:
    http://blenderscripting.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/calculate-tile-render-ratio-snippet.html

Update: made an improved version of the script linked above:

This uses environment variables so you don't have to do manual edits to the file to change settings.

Example usage:

TILE_X=10 TILE_Y=10 PERCENT=1000 blender -b /path/to.blend -P render_tiles.py

You can also save the file with very high resolution and omit the PERCENT var(which will be set to 100).

Once completed, the montage command to join the images is printed.
This depends on ImageMagick's montage command, eg:

Run this command to join images:
    montage -tile 10x10 -border 0 -mode concatenate '/tmp/render_*.*' final.png

Heres the script: render_tiles.py

def main():
    import os
    import bpy
    from bpy import context

    scene = context.scene
    render = scene.render

    tiles_x = int(os.environ.get("TILE_X", "4"))
    tiles_y = int(os.environ.get("TILE_Y", "4"))
    resolution_percentage = int(os.environ.get("PERCENT", "100"))

    slice_x = 1.0 / tiles_x
    slice_y = 1.0 / tiles_y

    # use border and crop
    render.use_border = True
    render.use_crop_to_border = True

    # set resolution percentage
    render.resolution_percentage = resolution_percentage

    filepath_orig = render.filepath

    # track progress
    tiles_done = 0
    tiles_total = tiles_x * tiles_y

    for div_y in range(tiles_x):
        for div_x in range(tiles_y):

            render.border_min_x = slice_x * div_x
            render.border_max_x = slice_x * (div_x + 1)
            render.border_min_y = 1.0 - (slice_y * (div_y + 1))
            render.border_max_y = 1.0 - (slice_y * div_y)

            cell_name = "%04d_%02d_%02d" % (tiles_done + 1, div_x + 1, div_y + 1)

            render.filepath = "%s_%s" % (filepath_orig, cell_name)

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

            print("Rendered %s (%d of %d)" % (cell_name, tiles_done, tiles_total))

            tiles_done += 1

    print("Finished: %d tiles" % tiles_done)

    print("Run this command to join images:")
    print("    montage -tile %dx%d -border 0 -mode concatenate %r final.png" %
          (tiles_x, tiles_y, bpy.path.abspath(filepath_orig) + "*.*" ))

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()


Inverse Kinematics constraint with pole target Salutations,

I am currently trying to make a rig for a project involving 2D planes to create some kind of equivalent of DragonBones in Blender (I'm working on Linux and DragonBones isn't available there plus I thought this'd be a good way to learn rigging).
I am using inverse kinematics and managed to use the "Inverse Kinematics" tab to have my bones only rotate around the x-axis. It worked quite well but on certain angles, the bones would bend the wrong way. I decided to add a pole target to fix this and it kinda does but apparently using a pole target nullifies the effect of the "Inverse Kinematics" tab and now I have my bones rotating in ways that I don't want them to.

Does anyone know how I could have both a pole target (or any way that wouldn't make the bones suddenly bend the other way) AND restrict the rotation around the x-axis ?

Maybe I'm wrong and someone will find a solution with the IK limits but it looks like you can't prevent the knee twisting this way.

You need to use your Pole Target bone to fix the problem, and anyway the Pole Target is here for that.

So, in Pose mode when you see that the leg rotation make your knee twist in the bad direction, just move the Pole Target and give it a Keyframe so that the knee comes back to the right bending.


UV mapping - multi-texture material shared by multiple meshes I am currently working on an import/export plugin for Blender. The problem I have is with UV mapping of textures. Lets say I have two objects using same material. This material has multiple textures. Also every object uses its own UV mapping for textures, so I need to create different UV mapping for every object sharing one material with multiple textures. I tried two ways, but each has some issues:

Creating UV layer for mesh, it works fine for materials with one texture - every objects is using its own UV mapping even when they are sharing single material. But when the material has multiple textures, then all textures for my mesh are using same UV map - which is definitely something I do not want - each texture has to have its own UV map. I can create multiple layers, but only one layer can be active at the time.
Creating UV mapping for every material texture. It works fine for materials used by single mesh - every texture of material has different UV mapping, which is fine. But when I have more meshes sharing single material, then all meshes are using same UV map - again, its something I do not want.

I also want to keep single material - do not want to duplicate it. Is there any way how to achieve this (like create multiple UV layers for every mesh, assign each layer to one texture and activate them all)?

So I finally figured out how to fix my problem. The solution is pretty simple - just create new uv_layer for texture with same name as uv_layer in mesh.

Here is fix for my plugin for everyone who is interested in: blender-plugin-vietcong


Applying high quality textures to a UV Map I have a fairly high quality 2960x3000 px (300dpi) brick texture. I'm trying to composite this texture onto a Blender UV Map (.png) (exported at 2048x2048px). I resize the texture down to the size of the map and immediately lose quality texture (Using GIMP). What am I doing wrong? Should I be exporting a mahoosive resolution UV Map image in order to not have to perform any down-scaling of the texture?

PS. Even when maintaining scale texture aspect ratio, the image becomes pixelated. I'm very sure this is a fools question but I'd appreciate any help.

There are some points to clarify first:

A « UV map » is a 2D projection of a 3D mesh. This is what you can see and manipulate in Blender's UV Editor and it's what's define how any 2D texture is applied onto your 3D model.
When you create a picture file out of that UV map, it's called a « UV layout », and really is only a picture of your UV map, not the UV map itself. It's like cooking your meal and taking a picture of your finished plate, it's only the photo of your plate, you won't eat that (I hope) but you might use it somewhere else.

I recommend using those words, to avoid confusion.

The reason to export a UV layout is usually in order to use it as a reference to create a picture file in some external software which suits your UV mapping.
It's necessary only if you need to take parts of a picture (or several pictures), move them around and fit them into pieces of UV. If you just want to apply a picture file without the need of such editing, you just have to plug your picture file in your shader.
The resolution of your UV layout doesn't really matter, it just has to be precise enough for you to see the limits of each UV island. You don't have to adapt your final picture resolution to your UV layout.

What does matter is the resolution of the picture you want to use in your shader. But also the ratio. As long as possible, use square pictures. Non-square pictures usually create unwanted deformations as the UV mapping format is a square and will conform any picture you plug in.

What you could do in your case, is either copy/pasting parts of your initial picture  under UV islands as you want and export the resulting picture alone. Or take your 2960x3000px picture and cut it down to 2960x2960px and save it as is.


How to move an object along given normal after applying rotation I know that one can move rotated object along one of the normals' axis by G + Z + Z (or whichever desired axis). I also know that after applying rotation, a face or edge can be moved in similar manner in edit mode. But if you selcet all of that object elements, it can only be moved along its general axis (which is different fro the default world axis, because the rotation was applied and the values of XYZ were reset to 0).

My question is, how to move an object along one of the normals of that object, in object mode, after ctrl + A -> apply rotation. Let's say I have an object, I cut out and duplicate a piece of it, I then apply rotation and want to move it along one of the titled / rotated normals of that object. For the life of me I cannot figure this out.

Any helps is greatly appreciated. I am not uploading a blender file, because I do not think it is necessary in this case, but I will if it is needed.

You can create your own axis selecting at least 3 vertices, then ctrl alt space, and in the bottom horizontal menu bar you'll see this new axis appears as one of the Transformation Orientation axis. You can manage these new axis in the 3D view properties panel (enabled with N) > Transform Orientations.


How to combine objects without losing specific properties I want to create a bunch of Marbles, each has three colored blades inside. The blades are connected to a Color Ramp and Random Node, the orb has its own node setup.

How can I combine these objects without losing the effects I get from the nodes? Joining gives the blades just one color, parenting does not copy the blades when creating instances.

The best way to do this, is to put the four objects into a Collection.
You can duplicate the Collection or use it in a Particle System. Select Collection >Whole Collection to make sure that all the objects stay together as one.


Transparent faces even with Limit Selection to Visible I was wondering why the objects of this file are always displayed transparent in Edit mode, even with the Limit Selection to Visible option enabled, and no Shading enabled in the 3D properties panel. I think I miss something. Here is the file.

Thanks a lot.

Your 3D View far clipping distance is set to a very high value. The floating point representation of depth in Blenders Viewport is not layed out to handle these high values.

You can easily recreate the problem, by

Opening a new Blender file.
Selecting the cube and going into edit mode.
Switching to orthographic view.
Setting the View > Clip > End to 100000.

In your file, the end clipping distance is set to 1km. However, since your Scene > Unit Scale is set to 0.001, this value translates to ~1000000 BUs.


Rig model with existing armature I imported a model from a game that already has it's own weighted armature.

I was wondering if there is away to use that armature to rig the model to use in Blender.

I've spent quite a long time looking up how to do but, I haven't been able to find a answer.

So in short, you have a "deform rig" and you would like to combine it with a complete rig like rigify (which includes its own deform rig, controllers rig, mechanical rig, ...)?

Sadly it isn't possible. Not in an automated way I mean. You can't mix two different rigs and expect them to work together, they don't know how to "communicate" with each other.

But you have different options to choose from:

Start from the original deform rig and manually build your own controls and mechanics around.
Discard the original deform rig and create a whole new one with rigify.
Try to rename the meshes's vertex groups to the corresponding rigify's deform bones so that the rigify rig uses the original vertex groups for deformation, and make some adaptations when needed.

There isn't one best solution IMHO, they each have their pros and cons. But depending on your situation and goals, some might be more adapted.
If you just want to have an animation ready rig as soon as possible and you feel comfortable with retargeting weights, then the third option looks fine.
If you want your rig asap but don't quite enjoy the tricks of retargeting, then the second option looks more appropriate.
If you want to learn how to rig and skin, then the first option is hand on the best. Or even start from scratch, it's even more instructive.
If you know how to rig, then... Well, whatever, really.


How can I make a particular Blender rendering pause as soon as another thing is being rendered? I'm rendering an animation, but it's a low priority task.
I want that rendering to pause every time I render something else and resume as soon as that's finished.

I just want to use all idle time of my GPU to render that animation, but prioritize other tasks.

I'm running Linux Mint and have an Nvidia GTX 960 GPU.

Since you're runnning Linux and Nvidia GPU, you can use nvidia-smi and a simple bash script to see what is occupying your Nvidia graphics card at the moment, and pause your rendering accordingly.

My code is based on grep regular expressions matching the rendering process you want to be of idle priority and the rest of the Blender CUDA jobs.

I've come up with a Bash one-liner that does the job for me:

while [ True ]; do nvidia-smi | grep ".*[1-9]*.*C.*blender" | grep -v $(pgrep -f "blender Idle_Animation.blend")  && { pkill -SIGSTOP -f "blender Idle_Animation.blend"; echo "pause"; } || { pkill  -SIGCONT -f "blender Idle_Animation.blend"; echo "go"; }; sleep 5s; done

How this works?

It loops forever
Runs nvidia-smi that returns a nice table with processes using the GPU
It uses grep to find blender processes that use the CUDA functionality
It uses grep again with a -v switch to exclude the IDLE process from the search
If there's anything left after that filtering it'll send SIGSTOP to all blender processes matching "blender Idle_Animation.blend" command
If not - it'll send a SIGCONT effectively un-pausing (or doing nothing if they weren't stopped) all IDLE processes
It waits 5 seconds before checking again

You need to just replace the "blender Idle_Animation.blend" with whatever string that'll identify your idle rendering processes. The pgrep -f will analyze the full command used to start a process, so if you run blender -b Idle_Animation.blend -a you can use exactly the same string to identify all processes belonging to that job.


How to use the new cycles mist pass in 2.68? How to make cycles mist work in 2.68?
I turned on the render pass, then fiddled with the start and depth settings in Properties > World > Mist Pass, but with no result.

Not much documentation yet, but it looks like you could use it in the compositor to get a mist/fading effect.

just straight, it returns a black and white map based on the settings in Properties > World  > Mist


How to select and scale same time help how I can make this scale on selection at the same time

Selecting just the outer edges doesn't work in this case, this is how I would do it:

In Edit Mode use Face Select, select all the inner faces of those grooves.
Make sure you have set the Transform Pivot Point set to Individual Origins.
Hit S and then Z to scale them on the Z axis as far as you want the outer edges to be.
Then hit Ctrl+Numpad Minus to reduce the selection of the inner faces.
Scale them back again on the Z axis with S and Z.


Blender Camera Controls Stopped Working Was retopologizing a dress when suddenly I was no longer able to zoom (in nor out) or pan the camera. I can only rotate the camera.

I closed Blender and restarted it, loading my project from a save point BEFORE this started happening and the camera controls are still messed up, only allowing me to rotate.

I tried changing the input shortcuts, and that didn't help either.

It's not a case of being zoomed too far in or out, I can still see the dress, at a normal distance I'm usually at, just a case of zooming & panning suddenly not working.

Anyway, I then loaded an even earlier save, I was then able to pan & zoom, but rotating no longer worked. Then when I zoomed in closer to the dress, the ability to zoom & pan stopped working again (I still wasn't really close to it though, could still see most of the top of the dress)

Anyway, when I start a new, blank file, everything works fine. Can zoom, pan & rotate like normal (and yes, zoom much further in than I was when it stopped working)

So, I'm at a complete loss as to what happened. I would ask if I should reinstall Blender, but it works fine in a new, fresh file. What did I do in my project that is messing it up.

Edit: The issue seems to be due to Surface Deform. When I choose that modifier and bind it to another layer and then apply it, then while in Object Mode the camera locks up if I zoom even remotely close to the dress. However, the camera still works normally if I'm in Edit Mode, which may be by design, but seems like something that may want to be looked into.

Just had the exact thing happen to me and fixed it in last ditch effort. Phew

Can't re-trace my steps exactly to emulate the problem, however the fix is still fresh. Screen Split 3D viewport in two, in the new viewport I hit numpad 0 and from there navigating the virtual cam - Shift pan and Ctrl zoom - seemed to return the initial viewport back to functioning as it should.

Would love to know how that happened in the first place. Did I accidentally hit a slider or dropdown? Or is this a bug?


how to ad a panel in the properties/data Speaker specific I can't find anywhere how can i add the panel of an operator in the Speaker properties data tab only.
it appears in all other objects data tab and i can't find a context list

class HelloWorldPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
"""Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
bl_label = "Hello World Panel"
bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_hello"
bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
bl_context = "data"

Thank you.

Add a poll method.
To narrow it down could look to see if context object is of type 'SPEAKER' or since it is in the properties space, there is a speaker context member available when the object is not a  speaker it will be none.
class HelloWorldPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
    bl_label = "Hello World Panel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_hello"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "data"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.speaker is not None

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout

        obj = context.object

        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text="Hello world!", icon='WORLD_DATA')


Weight painting using Auto Rig Pro on Blender 2.8 I need help with painting weights on a rig made with auto rig pro. I cant find the correct vertex groups for the bone I'm painting. There's an arm twist offset and an arm stretch vertex groups to paint on. Which of these is the arm really?

Theres an arm twist offset vertex group

Also an arm stretch vertex group

Here you can see the fk controller driving the left arm bone

So which of these is the correct vertex group to paint on? I see the fk controller for the shoulder is driving the c_arm_fk.L bone, but it doesn't show up in the list of vertex groups for the weight painting on the arm. This is my first time using auto rig pro and I'm used to rigging in Maya.

If I am correct, You are supposed to weight paint based on the bones that are in layer 31. It should look like this when you view it.

Artell has provided the character Mike in his manual for weight paint reference.You can check it out in here : http://lucky3d.fr/auto-rig-pro/doc/auto_rig.html#how-to-paint-the-weights

I hope this helps


How come I can't rotate? I am making a model and in object mode, you can't rotate, scale, mirror, etc a mesh. The only way to do it is to got to edit mode, select and then rotate. That worked for me until I made a armature and you can't rotate it in pose mode!

It sounds like you have Manipulate origins (⎇ Alt,) enabled in 3D view > Header:

This setting makes it so transforms will only affect the origins of objects, rather than the objects themselves. This is only really very useful when you have multiple objects/bones selected.

Also see What does the button next to the Pivot Point button do?


What does the cuda option do in blender? As I understand, this thing just makes your gpu render scene with your cpu, but I can't see any good results using it with cycle render.Can you tell me how to activate it right, or why won't it do anythng?

CUDA uses the CUDA cores of your GPU to do the rendering. In short, they're stream processors and do not affect how the output render looks. There is no difference between that and your GPU, in essence. I don't even think you can run an NVIDIA card without using CUDA cores for rendering for two reasons: 1. it may turn to molasses (analogous to running a PC on a USB ver. 1.0 instead of a harddrive), and 2. Blender won't know how. This is specific to NVIDIA. OpenCL is used for AMD cards. Since you have an NVIDIA card enabled, it will process the render. Otherwise, you're going to have to use your CPU. Do whatever is faster. I use a 635M and it is faster for me to use my Intel i5 3210 than the graphics card. You can read more about this here: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/cycles/gpu_rendering.html

Also this reference is good for explaining what CUDA cores are: https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-nvidia-cuda-834095


unexpected reactions in a quiet simple rigidbody physics simulation Try the following scenario:

scene:
Add a cube; add a UVsphere; move sphere on X axis until less than half sphere intersects the cube. make a duplicate of sphere; apply boolean on cube (difference with sphere); add a plane; move it just a little below of them.

physics:
set rigidbody for all; adjust collision-shape (c.s) for plane=mesh; cutted-cube={chull, mesh) and sphere={sph, chull, mesh}. adjust mass to whatever you like; set in the world setting: check impulse; increase steps 300; iteration 50. play as you can.

Now check the following animations: Unfortunately we couldn't find a setting that makes this very simple physics working properly. The cube and sphere shouldn't react each other horizontally at all, bouncing should stop immediately! our simulations are just disappointing so far, for us :(

scaling objects even 20 times didn't work but added additional problems.

 original sizes

 all scaled 20 times

Note: there are some similar posts such as one of ours. here we aimed to go to details with a simplistic model possible. In complex simulations, such odd things are too hard to be seen. We think there should be quiet technical reasons for these unrealistic effects and hopefully a way to solve them.

I had no problems with the following settings:

Split Impulse enabled in Scene > Rigid body world:

Both the cube and the sphere with Mesh collision shape and Margin set to 0.

It is important in this case to set the Margin to 0 because the collision margin for mesh is not embedded into the object, so it will collide with objects that are near the object's surface but not actually touching it (unless it's set to 0).

It is also important to use the Mesh collision shape in this case, because Convex hull will collide with any objects in a convex part of the mesh.

To visualize this, have a look at the convex hull operator. Try applying it on a Suzanne, the result is roughly what Suzanne's collision shape would be if it was set to convex hull:

Applied to your cube object, you can see why it was causing a collision with the sphere:

Mesh is currently the only collision shape that can handle collisions with concave shapes. There was another shape developed in GSoC 2013 which also could handle concave shapes by breaking them into smaller convex shapes, however this is not yet integrated with blender officially.

The reason why Mesh is necessary for the sphere is because the sphere you are using is not a perfect sphere, while the collision shape is.

Since the concave depression in the cube exactly matches the "facets" of the UV sphere and the Sphere collision shape's radius is equal to the longest dimension of the object's bounding box, the sphere collision shape will intersect the cube slightly and cause a collision.

To visualize this, I have added a highly subdivided sphere to simulate the perfect sphere of the collision shape and scaled it so that it's radius is equal to the dimension of the UV sphere. I then used Clipping border to make only a tiny cross section visible:

As you can see, the "perfect sphere" intersects the cube, causing a collision to be detected:

The ground cube set to Box collision shape with a .04 margin (the margin is embedded for the box collision shape).
All objects have scale applied (CtrlA) and origins centered (ShiftCtrlAltC).

Result:

Example blendfile


Is it possible to render AO with the OpenGL render? Is it possible to render AO with the openGL render?

I know there is a technique called SSAO which is used in some video games, so it should be possible.

How can I achieve this?

I have come up with a hack to fake AO in the viewport using negative lamps.

The way this works is with a negative point lamp parented at the center of each cube, and an array of negative point lamps below the floor plane:

For the floor it would be more ideal to use an area lamp, however these are only supported in the BGE candy branch.

The world is set to Paper with a pure white Horizon Color. The Ambient color is also set to white.

GLSL shading and Only Render are also enabled.

Blendfile


Camera isn't working properly So down below is the current 3D viewport of the project I'm working on:

As you can see, I have my camera selected and all I want to do is enter the camera view so that I can position it properly to face my car, but the problem is that when I enter the camera view, it's not working properly at all. Here's what I mean:

When I press 0 on my number pad, this comes:

That's what it shows for some reason even though I clearly positioned the camera to face the car. Once I press 0, I noticed that the viewport goes down inside the car instead of going to the view of the camera for some reason.

Then when I pan away and zoom out from that view by using the middle mouse button then press CTRL + ALT + 0, something worse happens:

In the first pic, you can see that my camera is still in the same position where I placed it at and it hasn't moved to the position where I pressed CTRL + ALT + 0.
Then at the second pic, when I pressed the middle mouse button to pan around and see what happened, my car has suddenly moved to the position where I pressed CTRL + ALT + 0 at and I have no clue how that happened.

Can someone pls help me fix my camera? I feel like the car is acting as the camera but I'm not so sure. I'm using the latest version of Blender, 2.82.

The triangle on the top of an active camera is full yellow. The camera you've selected is not the active one, actually when you press 0 you switch to the current active one, and when you press CtrlAlt0 you just move the active one to the current view. To make a camera active, select it and press Ctrl0. Then, next time, you can use 0.