How do a put a movie over a rotating cube? For a project i need to have a video play over a rotating cube.
Each side of the cube needs to be a continuation of the next frame of the movie.
I have put a reference image down below.

This is mildly tricky but because it is a cube, not terribly difficult.
You need to UV Map the cube so that each face is a separate UV "island".
Select the cube
Enter edit mode
Select all.
The use the edge menu to 'mark seam' all of the seams.  You bring up the edge menu by typing CTRL-E[![Marking all the edges as seams][1]][1]
Now create a shader for the cube by going to Material Properties and clicking the '+' sign.
In the shader editor window you will have a new shader that consists of only the principled shader.
Add an image texture node.
[![added an image texture node][2]][2]
connect its color to the shader's color input
connect its alpha to the shader's alpha, as shown.
Click the file icon and select your movie.  In my example I picked an mp3.
Set the file type to movie
Set the number of frames to the number of frames in the movie.
Now comes the 'fun' part.  Your movie won't have the same aspect ratio as a cube.  So you need to unwrap and position the cube's faces one at a time.  Here's how.
Open a UV editor window and a 3D window.  (In 2.9 you can go to the "UV Editing Tab"
In the drop down window of UV editor, select your movie[![selecting a movie][3]][3]
In the 3d view select the cube and go into edit mode.  Select one face of the cube.
Type UU.  The first U will bring up a menu: [![unwrapping menu][4]][4]
The second U selects the first entry "unwrap"
Now a square will appear on your movie[![The unwrapped face.][5]][5]
You need to do this for each of the six faces.  You may need to move and rotate the squares in the UV editor to get the movie in the orientation you want.
[1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/iqcYq.png
[2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/rUcYY.png
[3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/425j8.png
[4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/m3xDd.png
[5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/iTDqV.png


How to make all faces convex? Assuming I have a model with several n-gonal faces, out of which some might not be convex polygons, what can I do to make blender split those that are concave to make sure all polygons are convex?

I know about the "Triangulate" tool, but is there something that only splits the faces if they're convex?

Edit:

Added screenshot clarifying what I need:

So again: I need a tool that lets me select it all, and then subdivides the concave polugons into only convex ones.

Blender 2.75 now has a feature a tool to perform exactly this operation.

Mesh > Cleanup > Split Concave Faces


How am I supposed to move only Gizmo when in Edit mode? Yes.. I know cursor to origin funtion with 3D cursor.

but i can't find way to only changing pivot in Edit mode.

I want move Only Gizmo in edit mode... like zbrush transform tool.

There is no snap menu in right click.

Is this situation need 3D cursor use?

Do you have Any other Idea?

Exactly... You can easily solve this using the 3d cursor...

First be sure that you set the pivot point to the 3d cursor (in object mode):

Back in edit mode you select the edge where you want the center of rotation and hit Shift+S to set the 3d cursor to that edge:

Problem solved, if your cursor is at the right place you can rotate everything around that point:


How can I speed up rendering an animation with Cycles? I started to render an animation (of 200 frames), using 1000 samples, at 1920x1080 pixels, of a scene including a fog object and mesh files  (from Alias).
It took almost 10 hours for 1 frame, so I think that something is wrong. Is this a usual amount of render time?
I want to keep the quality as high as possible.
I'm using Cycles rendering with CPU, because when I try to use GPU, Blender shuts down.
Specs:
AMD Ryzen 5 3600- 6 core processor
16 Gb RAM
GTX 1660 SUPER

I'd recommend you use the GPU. Blender probably shuts down because you didn't set it to use the GPU at the preferences tab. Go to Edit > Preferences > System > Set it to the GPU you use, NVIDIA is CUDA, AMD is OpenGl. Other things you can do is optimize the amount of bounces in Render Properties > Light Paths > Max Bounces.


How do you scale both sides in axis Z while the other side is less affected? As you can see in the link below, I have a horizontal row of rectangles standing up and need the ones on the left side to shrink in height ONLY like a volume level. I am kinda stuck here...

http://advancessss.deviantart.com/art/Help-627857402?ga_submit_new=10%253A1471051916

If you're referring to creating this effect with a mesh, you could use an array with a custom object offset, like in this blend here:

All you need is a Plane (Or Cube) plus an empty. The empty should be created at the origin of the Cube to easily understand how the effect works. Then, add an array modifier to the cube.

Instead of using the Relative Offset, which is the default, you can use the object offset and choose the Empty. Now, each element of the array receives the Transform differences between the cube and the empty. Move the empty to the side a bit, and you'll see what it means. If you now scale the empty only in the Z direction, you get the effect which (I think) you want. Each array element is a scaled down version of the element before. So the first one has Z = 0.9, the second one Z = 0.9 * 0.9, and so on.

To put it on a circle, use 'Simple Deform' or curve modifiers, whatever works best for you.


Edge effects on almost completely transparent objects I've got a semi-transparent outer block, and two semi-transparent inner blocks. I'm trying to animate the inner blocks fading out by bringing the transparency alpha to zero. I'm using Blender Internal.

My model looks like this:

These are wax blocks, with objects embedded inside. First, the small inner blocks are created separately as 2x1 blocks. Then they're placed next to each other to make a large 2x2 block. Once the outer wax is in place (a boolean modifier/plane reveals the outer wax) the inner wax should fade away, "melting" as it's replaced by the the outer wax.

The problem I'm having is that the sharp edges of the inner wax don't fade away as alpha approaches zero. My guess about what's going on is the amount of light that's reflected off the inner faces is unaffected by their material's transparency.

Effectively, I don't like the discontinuity between when alpha is very small, and when alpha is zero. Here's is the difference between the inner blocks transparency alpha at 0.001, and 0.000:

Turns out the problem goes away if I switched the transparency of the outer block from raytraced to z-transparency.


UV Unwrap at seams gives unexpected result I'm trying to learn UV unwrapping.

I've an object where I marked the seems. When I UV unwrap it, some (planar polygon) faces unwrap in an unexpected way:

It appears blender detects something that is not there.

What causes the distortion and how do I get rid of it?

Is this because I use polygons (all polygons are planar) instead of triangles?

Update
I posted the .blend file on blendexchange:

I unwrapped your model again and the other side also gave the same result. Then I tried Smart UV Project and all your shapes came out nicely. In conclusion I think you are better off doing the Smart UV Project instead of the standard Unwrap and as far as why the standard unwrap does this, I think it's because of the way Blender's default unwrap algorithm works.

Hope this helps


Unaligned camera: red and yellow squares I'm having the following problem: camera has a trembling yellow square that moves when I move the camera view. Hoy could I align this squares ?

I don't know if this is a bug or just something that I don't understand deeply. The thing is that changing the clip start value within the camera lenses solves the issue.


how to fix "object has no uniform scale"? I try to unwrap uv on first ever 3d model i made in blender which is Baymax., then that message shows up in upper right corner of screen. The uv map looks so grotesque. I already tried remove double but nothing changed.
Help me pls.
Thanks.
Im noob at blender btw.

Select the object and press CTRL+A in 'Object Mode'. Apply the Scale, then try to unwrap.

You can also see the fragment of Blender Guru's tutorial, where he's talking about it:
https://youtu.be/XCEN0qQOsIA?t=345


Cycles - 2.79 vs 2.82 texture difference I have a simple example: image_textured cube. In v2.82 the cube is not textured if I choose cycles, however it works with Eevee. This worked in Blender v2.79. Am I missing something?

Use All for your Material Output node,

Since 2.82 provide the ability to preview your scene like what EEVEE does in Cycles mode, the shader is actually using EEVEE rendering information despite that you set Cycles as rendering engine. See the example below:


Blender 2.75 to 2.76 When adding an object I can't find the tool menu now!? Add (Vertices / Depth etc) Please see picture.. When I add an object there used to bne a place where i could adjust it before clicking off of it -- now that menu has gone somewhere and I can't find it. Am I missing something, I didn't turn on?

Click the + icon at the bottom of the region.
When the redo menu is resized to nothing, it is hidden and the + button for re-showing it appears:


Synchronizing animation with a beat I want to make a music video for a techno song with a constant beat. I want to simulate strobe lights that flash in time with the beat (one set of lamps for the kicks, one for the snare etc).

Q what is the easiest, most efficient and most accurate way to do this? Bear in mind the song is several minutes long so doing it all by hand would be very time consuming. I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty with programming (though I have not done that with Blender before). Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks

In the current development of my own Blender AMV, I answered a similar question in another post. Have a look and see if this helps.

Tips for creating an animated music video?

Read through it before continuing to read this answer.

Once you map out your song with the drum beat and place it in Blender, you can scrub through your drum track and manually animate the lights. I know that you can keyframe their values, meaning you won't spend as much time animating each light.

And an idea to go with that is to copy and paste keyframes in the dope sheet. That will save you some time instead of manually keying each value.

Be aware that your framerate must match the beats per minute of your song, otherwise syncing will be off and you'll end up with a headache. To avoid this problem, determine the BPM of your song here. https://getsongbpm.com/tools/audio

Once you have the BPM, calculate the frames per beat here. https://www.vjamm.com/support_av_bpm.php%3Flang=en.html
Adjust the value of the framerate until the frames per beat is a whole number. Then you can adjust your framerate in Blender to match with the one shown when you determined your frames per beat.

From there, start animating!

Hope this helps!


Smoke in a bottle - smoke not colliding I would like to simulate smoke swirling in a "bottled", enclosed sphere.

The smoke interacts and collides with the outside sphere, when emitted from outside, but not inside.

I also tried to emit the smoke into a concave hull (a capped sphere with thickness added) and the smoke just travels straight through.

How can I get this to work ? Are there any extra settings to switch on to get smoke to interact with concave or enclosed objects ? Or are they not compatible yet ?

I ran in to this problem. I was trying to simulate smoke in a sphere. I am using 2.83.
Eevee materials are not currently capable of rendering volumetrics other than the bounding box of an object. Look Under Volume Objects
If you are using cycles and having this problem then I believe how I fixed it was by selecting Is Planar under the Effector settings for the object that you want as the limit.


How to effect scale based on frame number Animation Nodes Okay, so I am creating a countdown using animation nodes, where the text rotates along the Y-axis. The goal is each time the text is rotated 90 degrees I want the object to flip along the X-axis (scale x * -1). I have set it up to where the numbers countdown every 25 frames and are also rotated to a 90 degree angle every 50 seconds starting at frame 25.
Here is what I have:

Here is the goal:

Here is my current animation nodes setup:

Once I recreated your node tree I realized what you want is for the text to always read forward. To accomplish that I used the sign of the cosine of your rotation angle output, which is negative when the text is rotated away from the viewer, and used a 'copy sign' math node to build the scale vector.


Texture baking turns part of my object black I'm trying to bake a texture of mine, but it keeps making the circular window fully black, I'm not sure if it is a problem with the mesh, any idea how to fix it?

I know, 9 months late. I'm new to blender, but I figured this one out. If you have gloss in your material, you have to make a separate gloss map. The color is there. Save the diffuse map first, then make the glossy with a new texture map (save that), and finish by reloading the diffuse map. You now have 2 maps, plug them in where appropriate, and all should be fine.


There are 6 different logos on the 2.8 splash screen. What is the meaning of them? There are 6 different logos on the 2.8 splash screen. What is the meaning of them?

Those are the icons for the different levels of donation subscriptions:
https://fund.blender.org/

Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Titanium, Diamond


How to disable backface-culling? I'm trying to create a mesh with faces that are semitransparent in such a manner that I can see the back faces through the front faces.

Setting the transparency of the material allowed me to see a completely different mesh if it were behind the "transparent" mesh, but it didn't allow me to see through to its own faces.

The mesh as a whole got transparent, but the faces all kept an opaque appearance (if that makes any sense).

Using a simplified version of the node setup from my answer here, you can do this with cycles (click on the image to get a bigger version):


Morph targets: A sphere shape turning into a cylindrical unwrapped sphere shape I'd like to do an animation where a globe will unwrap it's texture.

Go from this

to this

, but in 3D space, so it will look exactly as its unwrapped form.

The only methods I have on mind are extremely tedious, anyone there more clever than I care to give a hint on how to achieve the effect?

I would do this backwards.

Crate a plane, enter edit mode (Tab) and subdivide it.

Press (U) and select Unwrap to create a UV map.

Exit edit mode Tab and in the properties panel create two shape keys by pressing the + box TWICE.That will create a base shape key for the plane and one for the deformed plane (a sphere).

Back in edit mode Tab, rotate the plane 90 degrees in the Z axis RZ90

Then rotate 90 degrees in X RX90

Move the plane up on the Y axis (this distance will be the radius of the sphere)

Press Space Bar type warp and select it.
On the warp settings change the WarpAngle to 180 degrees

Rotate the plane 90 degrees in the Y axis RY90 and warp again. This time make change the WarpAngle to 360 degrees.

At this point you should have a SPHERE!!

When you switch back to Object Mode your sphere will go back to a flat plane, don't worry you can control (and animate) the transformation by moving the value slider on the Shape Keys.

Then you can use UVs as the texture's coordinates in a material.


Does Blender work in Windows 10? Windows upgraded itself (from 8.1) without uninstalling Blender, but Blender wouldn't correctly work after this (look at the error message below).

Video won't show.

Does Blender work with Windows 10? What's the proper way to install it?

Here's the message:

It might be a matter of my hardware not being correctly detected by the new Windows, but anyway it's a good question. Does Blender work in Windows 10? Has anybody succeeded installing any version?

Yes. Blender 2.75a works in Windows 10.

But I had some trouble making it work. After the upgrade from W8.1 to W10 it didn't work, but it was a problem of the new windows not having the correct drivers.

I didn't have to spend much time working it out. Windows 10 did, after some time and a few reboots, offer to install the correct drivers. That fixed most of the problems, including the usual trouble with hardware controls in laptops.

So, if you are upgrading to Windows 10, you might have some problems, but Blender will work well once your computer has Windows properly installed. At least it does with my Hardware.


Fill in space between multiple objects I created a model basically composed of a number of spherical shapes in 3D. I would know like to fill the space between the these objects. More or less like cement around bricks.

I have looked around wuite a bit and could either not find a solution or not understand it.

Any help would be very appreciated.

Using boolean operations you can add the cement as one object. Then subtract it by setting a boolean modifier to difference and adding the objects in between as the subtractor.


Changing amount of decimal digits in dimensions, without source code? I had a short, but quick question. I was posting this as a bug by going to "Report a Bug" within Blender. It's version 2.79. But when something exceeds 100m or 100', it won't show any decimal digits at all.

So, I was wondering, is it possible to get the decimals back by simply using the Python Console within Blender?

When you set blender to show units, it doesn't display zero only fractional values. Values that have a fractional component will display as you expect.

You can get the values via python, see the object api reference for property names.

>>> bpy.context.object.location
Vector((1.2345000505447388, 0.0, 0.0))

>>> bpy.context.object.dimensions
Vector((100.12300109863281, 2.0, 2.0))

As you can see, you also get floating point binary storage issues.


High start clipping causing dashed edges in 3d view? I read up that issues sometimes occur with a too low start clipping distance, and since the model I'm working on is pretty huge, I set the start clipping to 1 blender unit. However, I noticed that the edges in edit mode became dashed after doing this:

However, from straight down instead of a grazing angle, it looks normal, even with the high start clipping:

And, just for comparison, here's what it looks like with a start clipping of 0.01:

I'm completely fine just using the lowered start clipping, since I can't see any artifacts, but I'm still curious as to why this happens?

its because Graphic cards Render the depth to a 16 - 32 Bit Depth Buffer where the start Clipping is 0 and the end Clipping is the max Value. But that Depth Buffers are only 32 Bit and 1e-40 is equal to 2e-40 there because its rounded.
And when that happens the Graphics card can't figure out whats in the front and whats behind. You can also see this if you add 2 Planes is the exact same spot and then color them differently. You can even experiment with the distance between that planes and the clipping.


Revert extrusion of plane after save I want to take down the walls of my house.  I extruded them and saved, but now I can't control+z to fix\change anything.  If I want to take all my planes down to zero as if they were never extruded, how do I go about doing that?

If you're just talking about ordinary planes being used for walls, or even 3D walls with thickness, select them each in turn, goto Edit mode, select the upper vertices ONLY and press X to delete them.

You might find it easier to switch the view to 'Wireframe' beforehand.

The floor from which they were extruded in the first place will remain.

If you're going to need to replace them again, just drag the vertices down to near 0.  Their texture (if any) should return when you raise them back up again.


Fire + Smoke disappears I am creating a presentation for a conference on cancer radiation therapy. This includes a 15 second animation of a linac machine.

I'm trying to show a helix of smoke created by the machine spinning around the patient (That's the best idea I had sorry). But there is just no way I can keep the fire going. It disappears after frame 90.

I would appreciate any advice. Thanks. I have to attach the file because I have tried for a long time without success.

In the end I would like to show a helix of smoke (or any other material) with something like 8 or 10 loops. Right now I'm only getting two.

Your emitter exits the domain after that frame. Enlarge the domain to encompass the full animation of your emitter. Also, you should set sampling subframes on the emitter to stop it from making that dotty effect. It will sample the motion in between frames. The emitter is moving too fast to produce a smooth stream of smoke.


How can I texture individual tiles? As the pic above , in the tile there us small squares , each square have its own drawnings , how can make the same tile in blender ?

if you have some image editor like Gimp or Photoshop you can create the composition with the diferent textures.

1.- Unwarp the rectangle
2.- export the Uv Layout

  Than create your composition in Gimp or Photoshop, with the exported UV-Layout
  3.- In Cycles, create a Material
  4.- and add the Image Texture Nodes with your composition image.


How to add object to a specific layer with Python? I have the following code which generates an object:

mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new("Raw Curve")
mesh.from_pydata(self.rawCurve, edges, [])  # verts, edges, faces
mesh.update()

profile_object = bpy.data.objects.new("Raw Curve", mesh)
profile_object.data = mesh  # this line is redundant .. it simply overwrites .data

scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.objects.link(profile_object)

How can I add this object to a specific layer (e.g. to layer 2)?

#add to layer 2 first - needs to be on at least one layer
profile_object.layers[1] = True

#wipe other layers
for i in range(20):
    profile_object.layers[i] = (i == 1)


How to build a cylinder from 2 vertices? By this question, I mean how to build a perfect cylinder (not a subdivided prism) from 2 distant vertices, with a specified radius ? I have been trying so hard to find an easy way to do it.
Thanks if you can help !

This is a bit complex but here goes.
in edit mode:
Select one vertex
snap the 3Dcursor to vertex with (Shift s - snap to selected)
exit edit mode
create a circle of the desired diameter and fill with triangle fan. (Shift a) The middle vertex of the triangle fan is needed later for snapping.
select the other vertex (in edit mode in the object with the vertex)
again snap the 3Dcursor to vertex
create an empty (Shift a)
select the circle
add an object constraint: track to
and select the empty as the target
The circle should now be perpendicular to the line between the two vertices.
now select the circle and enter edit mode of the circle
enable snap to vertex
and finally extrude the circle towards the second vertex.
if needed you can join the objects to create a single mesh.
I home that helps,
Cheers


How do I get the bounding box of all objects in a scene I have a scene with objects organized hierarchically like this:

I would like to get the overall  bounding box of the 00000_361.L3B EMPTY object - however, since this is an empty it has no dimensions, and its bounding box also has no dimensions.
I am thinking of recursing through the hierarchy like explained here but I wonder if there is a better/easier way to do that at the scene level.

Bounding box coords of all meshes in scene.
Pretty sure this has been answered before, but finding it is another matter.
Here is some numpy code I use to create a bounding box for all mesh objects in a scene
Basically, list coordinates of all bounding box coordinates of all mesh objects in the scene.
Use the  minima / maxima of each axis produce an axis aligned bounding box encompassing all others.
import bpy
from mathutils import Vector
from bpy import context
import numpy as np
import itertools

# multiply 3d coord list by matrix
def np_matmul_coords(coords, matrix, space=None):
    M = (space @ matrix @ space.inverted()
         if space else matrix).transposed()
    ones = np.ones((coords.shape[0], 1))
    coords4d = np.hstack((coords, ones))

    return np.dot(coords4d, M)[:,:-1]
    return coords4d[:,:-1]

# get the global coordinates of all object bounding box corners
coords = np.vstack(
    tuple(np_matmul_coords(np.array(o.bound_box), o.matrix_world.copy())
         for o in
            context.scene.objects
            if o.type == 'MESH'
            )
        )
print("#" * 72)
# bottom front left (all the mins)
bfl = coords.min(axis=0)
# top back right
tbr = coords.max(axis=0)
G  = np.array((bfl, tbr)).T
# bound box coords ie the 8 combinations of bfl tbr.
bbc = [i for i in itertools.product(*G)]
print(np.array(bbc))


How do I fade a procedural clouds on the edges of a bounding box? I have procedural clouds made following Default Cube's tutorial, the node group looks like this:

The whole thing is bounded by a large cube, and I want to fade the clouds near the edges so that they don't just cut off. Clouds are distributed using the Voronoi texture, so originally, I wanted to do this by adjusting the Voronoi texture using a Separate XYZ node and a color ramp, but it didn't work how I thought it would. How should I do it?
Here is the blend file:

Basically you can try it with this setup and tweak a bit the values to your needs:
What it does: a spherical gradient texture influences (multiplies) the value of the clouds so that they "disappear" to the edges of the sphere.
Of course you could do something similar with a box if you prefer box-like-clouds.

result:


Blender UI panel custom property doesn't show up I am currently learning how to create addons in Blender and now I got a problem.
I try to create an addon which creates x times a math node.
But when I try to create an IntProperty, it doesn't show up in the panel

import bpy
from bpy.props import IntProperty

class AddManyNodesOP(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = ".add_many_nodes"
    bl_label = "Adds many Nodes"
    bl_description = "Adds many Nodes"

    number_Nodes : bpy.props.IntProperty(
        name ="number_Nodes",
        default =5,
        min = 1
        )

    def execute(self,context):
        tree = bpy.context.scene.node_tree
        for i in range(self.number_Nodes):
           math_node = tree.nodes.new(type="CompositorNodeMath")
           math_node.location = (100*i,0)

        return {'FINISHED'}

class TooManyNodesPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Too many Nodes"
    bl_idname = "TOO_MANY_NODES"
    bl_space_type = 'NODE_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(context.scene.node_tree, 'number_Nodes')
        row = layout.row()
        row.operator(".add_many_nodes",text= "Add")

classes = [AddManyNodesOP,TooManyNodesPanel]
def register():
    for cls in classes:
        bpy.utils.register_class(cls)

def unregister():
    for cls in classes:
        bpy.utils.unregister_class(cls)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Setter / Getter on property

Something like this can be done with an update, or setter and getter on a blender property.  The operator has been ditched altogether.

Because the compositor is being used, the Scene type is a natural choice. For shader nodes choose  Material.

The getter returns how many math nodes are in the node tree.

The setter adds more if greater.

Haven't wired in removing the nodes. Would consider removing nodes to match input number as long as they have no links.

import bpy
from bpy.props import IntProperty

class NODES_PT_math_nodes(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Too many Nodes"
    bl_idname = "NODES_PT_math_nodes"
    bl_space_type = 'NODE_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        scene = context.scene
        col = layout.column()
        col.prop(scene, 'math_nodes')

def get_math_nodes(self):
    node_tree = self.node_tree
    return len([n for n in node_tree.nodes if n.type == "MATH"])

def set_math_nodes(self, value):
    node_tree = self.node_tree
    nodes = node_tree.nodes
    m = get_math_nodes(self)
    delta = value - m
    if delta > 0:
        for i in range(delta):
            n = nodes.new(type="CompositorNodeMath")
            n.location.x += (m) * (n.width + 20)

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(NODES_PT_math_nodes)
    bpy.types.Scene.math_nodes = IntProperty(
            min=0,
            soft_max=10,
            get=get_math_nodes,
            set=set_math_nodes)

register()


how to extrude neighboring vertices without creating a face in between? As in question. Check the picture. I do not want any faces inbetween.
Kind regards.

Please see the picture:
1) - original
2) - after extruding using E (+Z)
3) - after 2) and deleting the faces (not what i want)
4) - after using Edge -> Extrude edges (as in answer below) -> That is what I want, sorted. Thanks

use CtrlV to get to vertices menu, then extrude vertices will extrude only the vertices.


Stairs along bezier path I'm trying to figure out how to make a stair case along a complicated bezier curve.  The stairs are just made of wooden planks, so it's simple model, I'm just having trouble keeping them all level and flat and following the curve correctly.  Is there a way to keep the rotation of the planks as zero instead of following the normals of the bezier curve?

Here's an approach which you may be able to vary according to your needs.

I'm assuming you would like the steps to be of equal depth .. so first, scale your curve to 0 in Z.
Ensure the Preview U setting on the curve, times the number of segments in the curve, is twice the number of steps you will need
In Object Mode, Alt C convert the curve to a mesh, and use the Loop Tools add-on > Space to space the vertices evenly along the mesh.

With Proportional Editing switched on to 'Connected' and 'Linear' move the topmost vertex back up to where it belongs. Set the radius of the proportional Edit large enough just to see some movement in the bottom-most vertex. As soon as the Z-dimension is significantly greater than 0, you can switch off proportional, and adjust by scaling/moving all in Z.
Use Select > Checker Deselect to select every other vertex, (Ctrl I invert the selection if necessary, to make the bottom vertex unselected.)

G G slide the selected vertices down their edges, until they meet the vertex below. (Do not have Automatic Merge switched on)
With Snap set to 'Vertex' and 'Active', with the existing selection, make a convenient vertex active, and (G Z) move it vertically until it snaps in Z to the vertex above it.

In the N sidebar of the 3D view > Mesh Display, show edge length, and take a note of the depth of your steps
Assign an Array Modifier, with Constant Z Offset of that length, and the Count set to more than the number of steps - 'Merge' switched on.
With all doubles removed, F fill the faces.

Select all the faces, and AltE > Extrude by Vertex Normals
As you can see, because of the boundary effect on vertex normals, the top layer of steps is wonky. I've tried a ton of things to get round this-if anyone can make a suggestion I'd really appreciate it -
So it's necessary to GG slide down the top  layer onto the one below twice, CtrlV > R removing doubles as you go, and X dissolving the surplus diagonal edge.

But in the end, you get this.

I'm really hoping someone will come along and improve this.


Do I need to optimize PNGs after I will output them from Blender and before I will import them to video editing software? I want to make animation in Blender. It will be transition for video. In video editing software I will put this animation over junction of two parts of video.

In Blender I will make output as PNG sequence. Next step I will import PNG sequence to some video editing software. Maybe OpenShot, Shotcut, Kdenlive, DaVinci Resolve. Maybe some else.

Do I need to optimize PNGs after I will output them from Blender and before I will import them to video editing software?

No, assuming by optimize you mean with an optimizer such as pngcrush. These optimizers are designed to strip out extra information in the file in order to reach the smallest acceptable file size, which seems unlikely to matter much for files that will only be used while you're editing your video. If optimizing accomplishes anything, it'll be to optimize away information which might have been useful when making further tweaks in your video editor.

As brockmann pointed out in the comments, using EXR is preferable to PNG, if your video editing software supports it.


.dae file imported without armature I tried to import a video-game model (.dae) but it was imported without the bones. The armature modifier is there but the bones are gone.
In Maya it got imported correctly but I am only using the free trial-version so it's not a solution to use Maya...

Ok guys, I figuredit out by myself.
The armature is missing because the Default bone view is set to octraheder.
But this one only Supports wires as bones.
So to get your lovely bones you just select 'Armature' in the outliner
and then you go to armature Settings in the properties.
Now you Change the Display Settings from Octraheder to wire.


BGE Problem with Automated Door (Can't Pass Through) I've created an automated garage door that opens when a Near sensor is triggered by a vehicle that comes close to it. The door is composed of panels (meshes) parented to a chain of bones that slide them up and down. All of this works fine, but when I drive the vehicle up to the door and it opens, the vehicle can't pass through the opening.

Here's my blend file. You'll have to drive the vehicle to the garage door on the building to see what I'm talking about. If you can tell me what the problem is and how I might fix it, I would really appreciate it!

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/42002

The physics mesh for an object is created at game start, and is not updated based on animations. For some reason armatures, even if they move the whole object, don't seem to update the physics mesh

In this case, it would be easiest to make the elements of the door non-collision, and animate a separate object (eg a cube) that slides up and down to let the player in - without an armature.


Can multiple video cards benefit to Cycles Preview? I know that multiple video cards can speedup the final render for Cycles. Now I'm just wondering whether it is also true for Cycles Preview mode (i.e. the Rendered display mode in 3D View).

If it is, then how?

Just got chance to receive first-hand answer from Cycles developer:

  Yes, multiple GPUs will also help in 3D View, no extra settings or so needed. It works already.

  Actually, in 3D View, it does the same as regular render (by pressing F12)
  if "Progressive Refine" is enabled, which renders all tiles with 1 sample, then again, all tiles with another sample.

  One thing should be mentioned is that although GPU got advangtages on speed, a lot of optimizations these days still are CPU only.


Animating rocking horse with a spring base hello, I want to animate this rocking horse swinging back and forth (not up down)
I tried proportional editing and inserting keyframes
is there any modifier that i can use for more smooth transition?

Can be done with one spiral curve and a few modifiers, order is important

add Extra curve (addon) > Spiral
search Convert to Mesh
deform by Simple Deform modifier > Bend
add Skin modifier (after deform so spring is not squized/stretched)
add Subdivision Surface modifier is needed to smooth shape

Animate Deform Angle in Simple Deform modifier properties. For nicer result you can use Elastic keyframe interpolation T on animation curve in Curve Editor.

For a bit more advanced spring shaping you can try also this similar technique here.

Or for easy animating things like spiral cabel I highly suggest Armature, generated by aawesome addon Armature from Edge Loops, that generates armature inside of spring, but I'm not sure if ported to 2.8x version
Tutorial with blend can be found here
https://blenderartists.org/t/phone-cable-with-armature-in-3-min/520741


How to change the shortcut (F) to resize the brush in sculpt mode how can i change the shortcut to resize the brush in sculpt mode, i want to use the S Key instead of the F key.

You have to go in the "Blender Preferences" and under "Keymap" select search by "Key-Binding".

Then click in the middle of the list to be able to scroll down and search for the first entry under Sculpt

The open one is the one for the basic resize with F, so you can just click on the field i marked red to then assign a new key means click on it, then press S.
If you want to keep the functions on the same button for the different types of resize, then i'd recommend to assign the S key to the 2 other "Radial Control"s. Do only click again on the same area as before and press S, the modifier keys in the column below like Shift, Ctrl, Alt and Cmd stay the same as long as you do not click them.

It should then look like this after the change:

Happy Blending


Blender 2.77 no longer orbits around the z axis when using scroll wheel or numpad 6, 4? Does anyone have this problem and know how to fix it? I am used to being able to rotate around the global z with the number pad or using scrollwheel + ctrl + alt, without regard to which way my camera was currently facing. It is a habit formed over the last 10 years of blender use, and was a quick way to single out parts of a mesh when working. Now however, this appears to rotate around the viewport why (IE, it rotates around an imaginary fixed line drawn from the center top to center bottom of the viewport.) This change is really throwing off my work, and I have ground to a complete halt since installing blender 2.77 an hour ago.
Edit: Things I have tried so far, with no change:

Re-installing

Resetting to Factory

Switching Orbit from Turntable to Trackball
(I think the problem is that I am stuck in Trackball for some reason, but not sure.)

That's a new feature:

  The View3D NumPad4/6 keys have no more a 'turntable' type of rotation, but (as all other rotating numpad keys) use a view axis (the vertical one, see T47263 and rBfe0ca82b232d).

As it caused some confusion, the developers for now reverted this new behaviour in 2.77a, so you should just update.


Displaying the wireframe of a beveled Bezier curve I'm following a tutorial in which a Bezier curve is supposed to represent a vine. The vine is a collection of control points with their bevel depth and bevel resolution set appropriately:

However, the vine in the tutorial's included .blend file displays its wireframe over the typical solid viewport shading:

In both .blend files, Object Mode is selected. How do I get my .blend file to display a wireframed Bezier curve?

Thanks to this answer, I realized that you need to check the "Wire" checkbox within the Object Properties panel.


How do you change the materials of linked instances stored in another blend file? I'm creating roughly 15 product models with several color variation as well as product sets.
I am having a problem as one product can be used to sell in a set with other products for example, or one product can have up to 8 color variations.  As we've continued our work, I'm asked to make a tweak to the model itself, or perhaps the color is a little off and I need to tweak the color, now I have a nightmare of a problem because I have to go and locate every single product model, and update several models, and several materials across multiple blend files!!
So I'm learning about creating instances and linking to the product models and materials stored in other files.  So for example, I now have each product model, stored in it's own blend file.  I also have a separate blend file which stores all the materials.  I'll go to File>Link, locate the product blend file and link the collection from that file that make up the model.
I do the same for the materials, File>Link, locate the materials blend file and select all the Materials in the Materials folder.
Now I have another problem.  I have no way to change the materials of the linked models!  In fact!  There is no material panel at all!
I do also see the materials available if I create a sphere for example, and I can change the material to one of the linked materials.  So I know they have imported and still remain linked.
I can also go into the master blend files and make changes to the model and materials and they update!
So I'm half way there.  I've figured out how to import the linked models and materials.  But I cannot figure out how to change the linked model's material.
So to clarify, I need to know, how do I "unlink" the material from the linked model only, and change it to one of the link materials I've imported instead?  All while being able to make tweaks to the model and material master blend files and have them update properly?

This is what worked for me.
I have two master blend files.  One containing the materials, which are specific to the product.  And another one of the product model.
When I create a new blend file to create a scene with the product using the materials, I need to be able to update the master files and see them update in the new blend file. For example, when I show the final scene to the client and they want you to make a tweak to one of the materials, or a tweak to the product model, I would be able to go to the master blend files, make the tweaks and any other blend file that is linked will automatically update.

This is how I set it up:
First I need to create a link to the model or material

Then I navigate to the master blend file for that model and import it.  Here I have the product saved as a collection, so I select the collection the model contains:

I repeat the same steps to import the materials, except this time I navigate to the materials folder inside the blend file and select all the materials I want to link:

Next I make sure the model is selected and while in Object Model I go to Object>Relations>Make Library Override and confirm:

Now I can access the materials panel, but in order to update the material to one of the linked materials I have to switch it from Data to Object:

Now if I click the icon to change the material, I now have access to my linked materials and can update the models material in the scene:

Now if I need to make a tweak to the material or model, I can open either of those master blend files, make the tweaks and save.  If I'm working with the current scene and master files and have two instances of Blender open, I can force an update by doing the following:
First I change the outliner from View Layer to Blend File:

I scroll the outliner to the bottom until I see the two linked files, indicated by the link chain icon.  I right click one of those and select reload.  Then it updates the scene to reveal the latest tweaks!


Exporting a Blender image sequence animation to unity I am a beginner with both blender and unity. I have created animation in blender using an image sequence and a displacement modifier (attached image).

i want to export this animation to unity. currently i am exporting as fbx with only armature and mesh selected when exporting.

When importing this file (fbx) in unity, i can see the result however it is not animating. i want it to be in an animation loop when imported in unity...

Any help in this direction is much appreciated..

You can't export modifiers through fbx, even less modifiers with animations. Model animation wise, fbx can only store skeletal animations and shape keys.

For this particular one, you have two real options:

Apply each frame as shape key (go to each frame individually, make copy of the modifier, then click "Apply as Shape Key". As result you should have key for each frame in "Properties > Data" tab. Fbx will export shape keys to unity (called "blend shapes" in unity), though you will need to use unity's animation tools and/or scripting to cycle through the blend shapes. There's also unity plugins for doing this.
Script that in unity. For that simple and seemingly random displacement script/shader works just as well if not better and more efficiently. (details of implementing this are not topic of this site but of Unity answers or Game development SE)


How Can I Rotate a Bone by More Than 360 Degrees? I have downloaded a model from Sketchfab. It's a space ship.
This ship was not rigged, so I've tried to rig it myself. But I have a problem: I would like to rotate the rotors of the aircraft. So I tried to rotate the bone that I attached to the rotor, but I found out that when I try to rotate the bone it rotates only by 360°.
Can somebody tell me how I can rotate my rotor by any amount?

As Markus von Broady says, "It's impossible to go outside of 360 degrees range in quaternion".
So open the N panel, choose Euler instead of Quaternion and enter the value you want on the rotation axis you want.


Pose and Edit bones are not matching I mirrored my bones so i can have a simetric skeleton, problem is when i enter Pose mode, the bones are all messed up
What im doing wrong?

Have you checked to see if you have key frames stored on your bones? To check, select all and choose Pose>Clear Transform>All, and see if the problem continues.


Texture mapping with nodes on walls So I'm using nodes to make my brick texture tile, but it always get stretched on one side of the wall.   It's just one plane subdivided and extended faces. How do I make it look same on all walls?

You have to unwrap your wall: In the 3D view, in Edit mode, select your whole mesh and press U, and choose for example Smart UV Project or Cube Projection option, then in the Node Editor plug the UV output of your Texture Coordinate node into your Image Texture node, then in UV/Image Editor, rotate or scale the parts of mesh you want so that the bricks appear correctly in your 3D view.


What does "users" means in term of datablocks? I found that there is a "fake user" button (with a F icon) on object data tab in properties editor. What is the exact meaning of users and its usage?

Blender organizes its data in datablocks. These are chunks of data (bits and bytes) that belong together, like all the settings of a material or the verts and faces of a mesh. When you give a mesh a material, this data isn't merged, but linked. You tell Blender: whenever you use mesh X, display it with material Y.

When a material is linked to something, it has a user. Another datablock that uses this material. When a material is used by a lot of objects or meshes, it has many users, displayed by the number to the right of it's name.

That way you can have a thousand objects all using the same mesh, which takes up less memory and enables you to edit one mesh and affect all linked objects simultaneously.

Fake users are a way to keep a material alive even if no object or mesh uses this material. If a datablock has no users, it will not be saved when you save the file in order to decrease file size. Think of it as some kind of garbage collection. However, the fake user takes care of this problem.

To illustrate that, I have resurrected Blender 2.28 because it has a view called OOPS schematic that shows the linking very well. Below, you have four objects all linking to one Suzanne mesh. I'm in the edit mode of the upper left Suzie and mess with her ears. Since all four objects use the same mesh, all objects are changed simultaneously.

One easily overlooked feature is copying lamps with altD. All the lamps then share the same data. This way you can change every lamp's brightness in one go. Think of a row of street lamps.


manuelbastioni add-on: hair library and clothes I'm a bit of newbie with blender.
I'm trying to create humans by using the Manuel-Bastioni add-on.
I would like to export them as Collada-files and import them into OpenSim / Second Life.

Creating a human itself is very comfortable using this add-on.

There are only 2 problems I couldn't solve:

According to the documentation, there is a hair library to be found.
I just can't find this library.
Where is this and how do I use it?
I'm not very good at making clothes.
Are there clothes templates that can be downloaded from somewhere?
Make-Human has a couple of those but only for Make-Human afaik.

Any ideas?
Thanks very much in advance!

I can answer your first question. You need to be using Manuel-Bastioni Lab 1.6 or higher. You must design a character and then finalize it (Finalize Tools), after which an ASSETS button appears. As of my writing hair is the only asset available. For best results choose hair with the same prefix as the human type you created. Press Load Element From Library. To fit it to the head you have to shift select the character's body mesh then look under Proxy Fitting to find and press Fit Proxy. I use the defaults with both options selected, but you can experiment in whatever context you later use the character. To change the hair colour use the Main Color node found in the Node Editor.


Why is symmetry not working in Texture Paint with my posed character? I have a model that I am using texture paint on and I have it posed with an armature. I turned on Texture Paint and have been painting along and realized that some things are not lining up, so I backtracked to document this for others. Here you can see the initial problem with a multiresolution model being painted while in pose and the way the paint doesn't seem to respect the placement regardless of the use of symmetry in paint.

After trial and error I discovered that by turning off visibility in the armature modifier, the symmetry goes back to working. This taught me that the painting symmetry is based on the global coordinates and original position, not the pose it happens to be in.
If using Texture Paint with symmetry, toggle the visibility of the armature modifier off for the session unless the misalignment is intentional.


Convexing and Concaving Cylinder Bodies I'm currently working on a Saber Hilt project, and I've hit a roadblock. I'm not overly skilled with Blender, but willing to learn.

My design has two parts, the outer hilt, and inner hilt. What I'm looking for, is how to shrink our expand the middle of the cylinders, so they look like they have been sucked in, or inflated out slightly. I know I can take the long way, and extrude a bunch of sections, and shrink them incrementally, but I get the feeling there is a better and faster way to do so.

Thanks for your help!

One way is to use multiple loocuts.

Set Pivot center to Individual Origins
Scale and move the secondary loopcuts
Use the Shear tool to adjust the rotation.


Restrict objects motion when using curve modifier I am trying to create a swim cycle animation for a fish by adding a curve modifier to the fish then moving the curve through the fish. As you can see at first the fish is roughly centered on the origin

but then when I move the curve the fish ends up about a meter behind the origin

I think this is a result of the fish trying to move at a constant speed along the longer curved path but do not know how to fix it by locking the movement of the fish, changing the speed, or doing it in another, better way.

Maybe your problem is that you didn't put the curve origin at its beginning point?

About the speed, you can change it as much as you want if you create some new keyframes for the curve and play with their position or with the curve handles in the Graph Editor.

Another simple way to do what you want is tu use a Lattice modifier:

Create a Lattice object.
Stay in Object mode, give it the size and proportion you need, of course it needs to be bigger than your fish.
In the Properties panel > Data, give your lattice some edge loops in the U axis (or in the V axis, depending on its orientation). You can even reduce the V and W values to 1.
In Edit mode, deform your lattice, use the Proportional Editing option to make it smooth.
Select your fish, give it a Lattice modifier, choose the lattice as Object.
Move your fish or move your lattice to make the fish bend.


How to add a working navigation mesh and path finding to a maze in blender game engine? I have generated a maze:

Top view in wireframe:

Solid view:

For a game I'm making, I need the enemy to follow the player around the maze, but when I try to generate a navigation mesh, nothing happens. (It says theres a Navmesh, but it doesn't seem to be made.

Your mesh is not recognized by blender.It pops an error.
It seems like it was corrupted.

I tried changing it by deleting all the top vertices(there are also 4 vertices I think a bit missplaced) but even with the basic scaled plane, the same error pops.

I created a new plane in your file and it worked just fine. I don't know if it is fixable without remaking it from scratch though.

This guy here disagrees: same error


Why does the object turn black in the Edit Mode? This object looks fine in this mode. It has a shiny material on 2 selected faces.

However, it turns black in this mode. It looks like wire, with hundreds of edges.

You have an extremely large number of faces (and edges, and vertices). If you hit 'A' a few times in edit mode it will toggle orange/black/orange, etc.

Depending on what you intend to use this for, it may be far too many faces.

It is possible that you have a subdivision-surface modifier on this object, and the 'view subdivision' count is too high. Check your Modifiers tab to find out.


How to save settings before a factory reset? I'm getting errors that I can't figure out how to fix, so I'm thinking my best option at this point is a factory reset.

I see that I can export key configurations, but how do I export my Theme? I'd rather not remake it.

Are there any other settings I should make sure to save before I conduct the reset?

By clicking the + next to the theme name you can save your current settings for your own theme. You can then select your theme after you choose factory default settings.

A gotcha with this is that the theme gets saved inside the blender installed files, so can be overwritten or deleted as blender is updated. To keep your theme for future versions you should find the saved file and move it into your configuration folder. Within the files installed for blender you will find your theme inside 2.75/scripts/presets/interface_theme (adjust 2.75 to match your current blender version). Locate your blender configuration folder and create a matching path and move your theme there. On a *nix system that would be $HOME/.config/blender/2.75/scripts/presets/interface_theme/MyTheme.xml


How to create concentric circle ripples in an upright emissions image plane, in cycles? I would like to create a concentric circle ripple effect in an upright emissions image plane.  I have already tried a haphazard method using an invisible torus and sphere, and making the image plane a pinned cloth, which has created a modest ripple.  I have a screencast video of this but I am currently not sure how to imbed the video in this question, and the ripple really is not even noticeable in a still image:

Here is the setup:

There is a torus that becomes larger, and then a sphere is sent through the image which has a cloth modifier.

I was unable to figure out how to use displace modifier, wave modifier, or fluid to achieve a good effect.  But i am sure there is a better way to do this, possibly using nodes.

I would prefer if the edges stayed within the original confines of the image, but this is not 100% critical.

The ripple could be 3D or 2D (some kind of image disruption using nodes, or maybe something I know nothing about yet!).  I am interested in any possible solution!!!  The more I can learn, the better.

EDIT:

The difficulty here is making the ripple visible on an emissions image plane, from the front.  The 3D ripple would have to be at an outward angle to obscure the image as the wave expands, or it would have to stretch the image visibly as it moves outward...and be visible from the front!  Right now the wave modifier is not visible from the front even at its most extreme, but perhaps there is a way to make that work, and I am not aware of it yet!

Thank you!

Have your tried the Wave Modifier? Play the animation afterwards to see the effect


Blender scripting connect nodes I'am beginner at python and blender. I' am trying to create simple addon for myself as part of learning process. I want to achieve that, if i run the script, mixrgb node is added to node tree and link to shader, and if i run script again another mixrgb node is added and linked to shader instead of previous one and previous one link to new one input. Here is the code
import bpy
nodes = bpy.context.active_object.active_material.node_tree.nodes
links = bpy.context.active_object.active_material.node_tree.links
mix = nodes.new('ShaderNodeMixRGB')

mix.location = (-300, -200)
mix.label = "mix"

for n in nodes :
    if n.label == "mix" :
    n.location.y -= 200
links.new(mix.outputs[0], nodes['Principled BSDF'].inputs[0])

Node is created and linked to shader, if i run the script again , new node is created and conected to shader ,previous one change its y location , and here i would like to link old node output to new node input.
I tried
links.new(mix.outputs[0] , mix.inputs[1])

But it conects to itself.
I dont want to make separate nodes like mixrgb2 mixrgb3, because i would like to be able to add infinite number of nodes , which are linked to previous.
If somebody can show me the correct way or creating that, iam stuck in that point for few days already. I was searching for solution here and every other forum, but no success, that 's why i decided to make a post.

Look for the link.

Each run of script, offsetting old mix node
's location.x

Put all current mix nodes into a list.
Find any links between a mix node and the principle shader
Make a new mix node.
If there's a link attach the from node (a mix node) output to the
input of new mix node
Make link new mix node to principled shader
Move the old mix nodes.  Could do this prior... sometimes handy to post-process incase a prior step is aborted.)

Test script
import bpy
context = bpy.context
nodes = context.active_object.active_material.node_tree.nodes
links = context.active_object.active_material.node_tree.links
ps = nodes.get('Principled BSDF')

mixnodes = [n for n in nodes if n.label == "mix"]
mix_ps_links = [l for l in links if l.from_node.label == "mix" and l.to_node == ps]

# add new mix node
mix = nodes.new('ShaderNodeMixRGB')
mix.location = (-300, -200)
mix.label = "mix"

if mix_ps_links:
    link = mix_ps_links.pop()
    links.new(link.from_node.outputs[0], mix.inputs[0])

links.new(mix.outputs[0], ps.inputs[0])

for mix in mixnodes:
    mix.location.y -= 200

Note: I use the line in test code context = bpy.context to make it cut and paste directly into methods where context is passed, eg def execute(self, context):


Which Exposure control to use? There are two Exposure controls: In the Film section of the Render Tab and the Color Management section of the Scene Tab.  The effects of changing the Exposure in Color Management can be seen in both the Cycles preview and in the final render.  Changes to Exposure in the Render tab seem to only affect the final render.

Other than this, are there any practical differences?  In what situation would one prefer to use the Render Exposure instead of the Color Management Exposure control?

There is a subtle difference between the "Film" exposure setting and the CM panel exposure setting that may elude many folks.

The "Film" version, while functionally equivalent to the CM version (IE 2^EV_adjustment * scene_referred_render_value), is applied on the data. In the colour management panel, on the other hand, it is applied purely on the view.

If you are rendering out to display referred imaging encodes, such as JPEG, TIFF, etc., in all instances the impact will appear identical as the data is baked into the display referred format, with all view transforms.

However, if you save as a proper image pipeline format such as EXR, you will see the difference. In the case of the Film variant, the exposure adjustment ends up baked into the EXR's scene referred data. In the colour management variant however, being only on the View, the EXR will bear the original scene referred values as present in the direct render. If you save both versions, only in the latter will the data be saved at its original exposure value, while the former will actually adjust the encoded data.


I've been trying to run the Quick Smoke simulation And below is the result:

The smoke is confined to the cube.

I'm guessing there are parameters that I need to adjust but I have not made any changes to the default settings since installing Blender.

Any ideas how to fix this issue?

Thanks in advance.

Additional information:

When on loop it appears to extend above the cube occasionally and when I was tinkering with Physics/Behaviour/Density it actually flowed like it should for one cycle. This may have been coincidence as I've not been able to replicate it. Is this an indication that my computer is unable to simulate properly?

It seems that my computer wasn't able to handle 20fps and I managed to get the Quick Smoke simulation to run at 10fps & even better at 8fps.

I made this adjustment under Frame Rate 'custom' on the bottom right here:


Is there a way to make Armature follows Mesh? I know that you move the mesh with the armature.

But is there a way to make the armature attach/follow the mesh when it's moved (Not by the armature but itself, the mesh)?

Thank for the answer.

If you really need it, you can parent both mesh and armature to an empty, and then use the empty to move both (but it's more usual to leave the mesh in a 0,0,0 location in object mode, and move it using the armature controls only).


How do I subdivie Ctrl+n an object in Python? I have discovered that I can create an object like

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(size);
sphere1 = bpy.context.active_object

I also see that Blender logs something like

bpy.ops.object.subdivision_set(level)

when I press Ctrl+N in the macro window. But what is the object that the op is applied to? How can I apply it to the sphere1 in the script?

subdivion_set, it seems, is the Subdivison Surface modifier (by default actually is Ctrl+2 for me).

Those bpy.ops. methods apply to the currently active object. It's good that you created one by bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(size), because it creates all all necessary things AND selects the created object. There is good page about different methods for creating meshes in the documentation at 3 ways of creating objects.

TLDR, right after you created object with bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(size), call bpy.ops.object.subdivision_set(level) without any variable setting for sphere.


Is it possible to make a property update other nodes like a link update does? I'm trying to make neural network in Blender nodes, and I'm currently stuck on getting the entire NodeTree to update after manually changing an input value.

Is it at all possible to manually update the entire tree without pulling on a socket/updating a link?

Looks like I forgot to add the update parameter in the custom property:

#Custom properties are basically a struct, you can have any number of built in (bpy) datatypes defined here:
weight= FloatProperty(default = 1.0) #no update triggered
value = FloatProperty(default = 1.0, update=uda) #update triggered

Additionally the node socket needed to have it's update callback initialised

def init(self, context):
    self.inputs.new("SynapseSocket", "Value 1").callback(self.name, "uda")

For anyone else that manages to stumble across this problem, see my previous question as well: Alternative update callback for PointerProperty?


Adding surface scratches I recently saw Andrew Price's tutorial on how to do realistic texturing.  At the end of the tutorial he said something along  the lines of needing to just "add scratches" to increase the realism.  How do you simply add scratches?  I understand that there are probably multiple methods, and I am interested in hearing as many as possible.  Thank you.

The way Todd is completely right,but you can go even complex for scratches,like using the pointiness feature in blender,here I used two different scratches texture to do the material,check the node tree for more information.


How can I paint uniform sized textures on large surfaces? I've just started discovering the paint tool, but no matter what I press in the brush options or size up and down, when I zoom out of the model in the 3d view and when I zoom in while painting, the textures are of different sizes. In Photoshop as an example no matter how much zoomed in or our you are, if the brush is set to 15 pixels, it will always paint in 15 pixels.

So what do I have to do (hopefully without the nodes) in order to paint in the same thickness, regardless of the level of zoom.

Btw. I spent the entire day trying to find an exact answer to this, so if there is one, please reply with an exact answer rather than ,,duplicate". I've had duplicated topics a few times and those duplicate threads were never the same thing I asked, slightly similar, but not the same thing and I still have no idea what the answers are to those topics that got duplicated..

If you paint in the 3d view, the brush will increase based on your view. If you instead use the UV/2d Image Editor, then you will see a more constant relationship with the brush size/texture size. There are benefits to both behaviors, but hopefully this helps you get farther along.


Adding an edge loop to a pyramid I have created a pyramid by adding a cube, then selecting the 4 upper vertices and clicking Alt + m, then "To Center":

I would not like to make the sharp top "dull".

There should not be a sharp end anymore, but instead I would like to create something like this:

To do that, I tried to insert an edge loop into the pyramid.

However, this doesn't work: It only wants to insert an edge loop at the "ground" of the pyramid (where we still have 4 vertices), but not on top.

I'm stuck. How could I resolve this?

Thank you!

Edit: I found out that the Knife tool allows me to cut my pyramid. Is there a smarter solution anyways?

One quick way is to use Offset Edge Slide tool. Select bottom face and run it (depending on the version) either with Ctrl+Shift+R or via viewport menus:

  Add two edge loops on either side of selected loops.

Offset Edge Slide

Since there aren't any faces on the other side of the selected face before using the command, no extraneous edges will be added and you don't need to dissolve any unnecessary geometry in this case.


How to animate multiple lines I wonder what would be the best way of animating multiple 2 dimensional lines in blender.

Lets say I have lots of line, that are parallel and have some sort of rule, kind of like a PCB board with hundreds of circuits.

The starting frame would be when nothing is visible and during the animation the lines would slowly build up from nothing all the way to the end forming the finished lines.

I have a couple of ideas that might work, but all include heavy hand animation, like:

grease pencil animation, drawing them one by one, converting to curve, then build up modifier
some dynamic paint hack

There maybe other more efficient methods that I don't know of and if so, please let me know.

You can use Curves and animate the Start bevel and End Bevel factors:

  These options determine where to start the Bevel operation on the
  Curve being beveled. Increasing the Start Bevel Factor to 0.5 will
  start beveling the Curve 50% of the distance from the start of the
  Curve (in effect shortening the Curve). Decreasing the End Bevel
  Factor by 0.25 will start beveling the Curve 25% of the distance from
  the end of the Curve (again, shortening the Curve).

These settings are in Properties > Object Data > Geometry:


Rendering issue: light artifacts [EEVEE Blender 2.81A] I am trying to render an animation scene with a volumetric effect in EEVEE.

As shown below, some frames contain light artifacts in form of white spots with a touch of RGB on the sides. They seem to appear in random places throughout all 950 frames, though only in rendering, never in viewport. I tried to increase the sampling of the volumetric effect and final rendering, but it had no impact.

Does anyone know what might cause this issue and how to solve this problem? I'll be very grateful for any guidance.

EDIT: added .blend file under http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=52772

The issue was solved by changing the value of Light Treshold from 0.1 to 1.0 (under render -> shadows)


Is there anyway to match a sun lamp to the direction of the sun in an environment map? I'm in the process of building a shadow catcher for a Cycles scene lit with a .jpg Environment Texture (equirectangular) - but it seems that the shadowpass will only work with a lamp in-scene.

I'd like my sun light to match the angle of the light from the Environment Texture. Can anybody think of a way to get the sun light angle from the Environment Texture without just eyeballing it?

--Rev

If the sun is clearly visible in the HDR, you can put a camera at scene origin, look around in rendered viewport mode and locate it.

If the sun is hard to locate precisely, you need to put a sun clock into the scene: put a vertical pole into the scene and measure the angle and distance of the shadow. Then you know where the sun is and how best to match the shadow.

It will work for sunny HDRs with clear shadows the best. Also to get accurate shadows from HDR use environment setup like this.

For diffused shadow HDRs you will have to guess where the center of shadow is and how long it is, and substitude sun lamp for a point/spot lamp with some size. You can get the distance-size ratio from how the penumbra of the shadow looks:


How to fix last bone in armature? I have a small trouble with the last armature(Situation "b" on the screenshot below). They bend with all chains. I use IK constraint and it does not include the first bone from the left. But not the last. I solve this problem by Copy Rotation bone constraint (Situation "a" on the screenshot below) and rotate the target bone because my ending Empties will be animated in the future (will change position and rotation). So, Limit Rotation constraint and unchecked Inherit Rotation checkbox is not my variant.
But I think that is not the best solution. Maybe this situation has another more ellegant solution?

Set up your bone chain with a spline IK, which is a different bone constraint than the standard IK. In Object Mode, create a path with Add > Curve > Path. Adjust it in Edit Mode to take the shape you want. Return to Object Mode and select your bone chain, then switch to Pose Mode. Go to the Bone Constraints Tab in the Properties Panel to create a Spline IK constraint. Give it the curve path you already created as its target. Provide the maximum number of bones to be effected, which presumably, is all of them in your case. After doing this, you can manipulate your bone chain by moving the control points of the path curve while in Edit Mode.
To keyframe changes to this rig, you will need a hook modifier. In Object Mode, create an empty and snap it at the outermost tip of your "1 position" bone. Select this empty, then hold  Shift, and select the Spline also, then go into Edit Mode, select the end point of the path which is closest to the "1 position" bone. Finally, press Ctrl + h to bring up the Hook menu. From the list, choose Hook to Selected Object. Now your rig will follow your empty, and you can keyframe the position of the empty in Object Mode.


How to export a .fbx file with vertex colors for substance painter I am trying to use vertex colors in order to utilize substance painter's ID mask baking functionality.  Is there any way to export vertex colors in the high-poly .fbx file to generate the ID map?  I have painted the vertex colors but there has been no change upon rebaking in SP.

I discovered the problem.  I had failed to select vertex colors as the ID map color source in Substance Painter.


Blender stuck in Cycles render I am new to Blender. My model doesn't have subsurf modifier or any materials. In Blender Render my model renders properly, but in Cycles Render blender stuck. I have no idea why this is happening.

My model link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ucDpaQ2jrebaJRdSSQLY0wbUsF11_Yi9

This is what I get from your file, cycles render, after a few seconds.

Maybe some driver/graphic card problem?

Hope it can help your troubleshooting.


Combine 2 Scenes / Volumetric Fog from BI to Cyles I have a complex scene rendered in cycles and now like to add some volumetric fog rendered in BI.

I have linked some objects from my cycles scene to a new BI scene and added a  cube with a volume material. Now the fog is in front and behind my linked objects.

Now I like to render the Volume Fog and combine it with my cycles scene. How can I block rendering the fog behind my objects from my cycles scene without rendering them self?

Okay after some tries i found a simple solution.

create a new BI-Material, set diffuse and spec to "0" enable transparency and change to mask and alpha to "0".

This works fine for me!


Help with Video Editor, Speed control effect strip and keyframing newbie here. I need some help with the Video Sequencer. I'm trying to change the speed control of a video accelerating and decelerating some parts and using curves to smoothen the effect. My problem is very basic, about keyframing.

I add the video, add the speed control effect strip, uncheck 'stretch input ...' and uncheck 'use as speed'. Then I keyframe the 'frame number' control in a specific frame with a specific 'multiply speed'. I repeat a with other frame.

The result is that the video shows as a still image, with some bumpy movementt at the keyframes that does not reflect the speed changes.

What am I missing? any help please?

thanks!

I recommend animating the Speed Factor value not the Frame Number. If you animate the frame number then you have to keep track of what frame you are up to. And you would have to generate an f-curve angle that constantly progressed at 1 frame per frame upwards.

Using the Speed Factor however you just animate the playback speed and ignore the Multiply Speed (in fact it can't be animated) which should be left at 1.00 (unless you want a global speed change for the clip).

In the example above, the strip begins playback at full speed or 100%, or Speed Factor 1.00. Then when I want the video to slow down I place a new keyframe with the same value 1.00. This acts as a Hold value, so the media plays full speed up to this point.

Then I place a new key frame and makes its Speed Factor 0.00 or 0% speed. This pauses the video. If I move the 0% keyframe to the right, I create a slope in the f-curve, this is the deceleration, the steeper the slope the faster the deceleration. A vertical slope is the same as pressing pause.

The problem with this approach is that it is very difficult to land at exactly the right frame for your pause. That is why you may want to use the constant slope style of Frame Number.

In the Frame Number example notice that the curve must also be a vector or straight line, as a bezier curve will generate ramping that you might find undesirable (odd frame duplication).

Notice that I have placed a keyframe at the first frame and the end frame of the same values, 0 - 803.

To make a pause hold , you need to split and slide this f-curve so that its angle does not change. In this case I selected the middle keyframe (which I made at the exact frame that I wanted) and the last keyframe, then duplicated them and slid the right. I then deleted the first end keyframe.


bmesh - extrude face and end up with closed mesh When you extrude the only face of a plane via the GUI you get a (closed) cube. If you do the same thing using bmesh you get a cube that is open on the bottom side.

I am trying to achieve the normal result through bmesh. (using regular operators is not an option because the mesh is still not linked to the scene). Right now I duplicate the original face before extrusion, extrude, and then remove doubles.

allfaces = bm.faces[:]
bmesh.ops.duplicate(bm, geom=allfaces)
r = bmesh.ops.extrude_discrete_faces(bm, faces=allfaces)
bmesh.ops.translate(bm, vec=Vector((0,0,height)), verts=r['faces'][0].verts)
bmesh.ops.remove_doubles(bm, verts=bm.verts[:], dist=0.01)

This however doesn't strike me as a very elegant way to do it. Is there some other way?

You don't need to duplicate the geometry prior to extruding (this will remove the need for removing doubles as well), and using bmesh.ops.extrude_face_region is what you're looking for to generate a closed mesh from the extruded face/s.

This worked code fine with a 1-face plane with its sole face selected in edit mode:

import bpy, bmesh
from mathutils import Vector

bm      = bmesh.from_edit_mesh( bpy.context.object.data )
newGeom = bmesh.ops.extrude_face_region( bm, geom = bm.faces, use_select_history = True )

bmesh.ops.translate( bm, vec = Vector((0,0,1)), verts = bm.select_history[0].verts )

bmesh.update_edit_mesh( bpy.context.object.data )


Use color ramp to mix materials I'm trying to set up a material that shades the topography of a spherical model of the Earth based on distance to the center of the Earth.  Setting up a ColorRamp based on distance from the center of the sphere is easy:

But each color in the ramp needs a different texture applied to it. In 3ds Max this is done by applying textures to each stop in the Gradient Ramp:

Can something similar be done in Blender? I found a related Blender question, but I can't see how the answer would apply to this situation.

Use a color ramp to control the mix between different shaders.

To mix more shaders use other ramps with different values.


Solid colours with no shading Im trying to make an image sequence of a scene with solid colours and no lighting effects. I need each object to keep its HEX value I assigned to it as I'm transferred the image to an AI. The problem I am facing is the render seems to produce a slightly different hex value which is confusing the AI.
The method I was trying was to create a scene with only emission shaders but the emission seems to darken or brighten the value.
Any solutions to assigning true HEX values to an object with no shadows/ lighting effects (almost like cell shading)
Cheers
AI colours:

Blender render (same hex value with emission shader):

Standard combined with a transparent background solved the issue. World material was changing the colours of the objects in the scene


Writing contents of bpy.data.texts to folder with bpy.ops.text.save I am reading my scripts from a folder with:
import bpy
import pathlib
for file in pathlib.Path("C:\\awesome\\scripts\\folder").iterdir():
    bpy.ops.text.open(filepath = str(file))

Now i can use the scripts in blender itself and may change some stuff here and there. To save a script as a user i can use Alt + S. For scripting this procedure, blender shows a tooltip with bpy.ops.text.save() but i don't know how to define which text i want to save. I guess it will be something like:
import bpy
for text in bpy.data.texts:
    bpy.data.texts.active = text
    bpy.ops.text.save()

But bpy.data.texts.active is actually not available.
TL;DR: Where to define the active text?
Best,
Mamu

You can find current active text object in screen.areas of text editor
area = next(area for area in context.screen.areas if area.type == 'TEXT_EDITOR')
text_obj = area.spaces.active.text

Assume that you know your text-block name, then assign that text type to active text:
area.spaces.active.text = bpy.data.texts['Text.001']

This will change the current active text object.


Can't rotate view around selected object (macbook pro) So I'm trying to figure out how to rotate my view around an object. When I press and hold the 3rd mouse wheel button to rotate my view, it freely rotates around a non-existent point rather than my selected object. This makes it very difficult

Blender rotates its view around an invisible, non-consistent point in space, which can be changed through several operations, including shifting the view with shift+mmb.

You can precisely position that point by

moving the view to the selected object (view > align view > view selected)
centering the view to the 3d cursor (view > align view > center view to cursor)

You can add a single-button shortcut to both these options, allowing you quickly set the center point with high precision.


Material not rendering properly in blender cycles So I am trying to render a simple glass cube using a tutorial from youtube. I did exactly as shown in the video but i am not getting the desired image

Material is rendered properly.Its your nodes that need to be configured properly in order to match the one in tutorial, and your lighting setup doesn't seem to match the one in tutorial, along with perspective.


Make plane fold in curve (arc) while conserving its length I want to fold a plane such that it forms an arc (curved plane). I initially used bevel modifier, but the problem is the plane length is not conserved.

You can see that the length is shorten after beveling. I want to fold the plane such that the plane length is conserved.

When you say length should be "conserved," do you mean this in an approximate sense or a mathematically strict sense?  Doing it in a strict sense might be more difficult.

I am a little confused when you are talking about using a bevel modifier but you're showing the use of an armature.  You could certainly use them together, but why not simply parent the plane to the bones of your armature with weight paints to control the influence of each bone in a graduated/curved fashion?

For this example I used linear gradient weight paints for each bone:

I am sure you could tweak the gradients to get the curvature more to your liking.

But maybe this isn't what you had in mind?


How to remove grid/graph lines while using zoom in orthographic view? I'm working with a 2D cad model and need to zoom in and out a lot to make sure what I'm editing is still similar to another part of the model. When I zoom in i'm getting these white graph/grid lines and was wondering if there was a way to remove them or make them lighter as I don't need them.

This might not be the smart way to do it, but I managed to remove the lines:

opened side panel
set scale to 0


I downloaded a font from an online website, how do I apply it to my text I downloaded the pistoleer font from this website https://www.wfonts.com/font/pistoleer-3d and i want to apply this font to my 3d text. When I click on the folder next to font and search for the pistoleer font, it is not there. Is there a way I can use this font?

This is a common way to select font from your directory.

To get directly to specific directory you store fonts, you can set path in User Preferences.

If you don't see your font listed, file format of your font is not probably supported, but in your case I can see it (TTF or OTF is OK file format).


Faces left behind when I move a face back This is probably one of the easiest things in blender, but I am a plain beginner and can't find any way to solve this. When I select a face and move it back in, the "faces" outside it stay. Not 100% sure how to describe it so I got a picture below.

Is there something like a "separate" function? opposite of merge?

There is a Mesh-Ripping tool activated with V.

Make sure, your mouse cursor is below the vertex (left picture)

You can rip complete Edges as well.


Import and render 3d objects with python I just started learning blender and python.
Is it possible to write a script that does this?

imports a 3d model from a folder
creates 100 cameras with random positions (the 3d model should fit the picture)
creates random exposure
renders images from all 100 cameras and saves them
does it with all 3d models in the folder

I believe this is possible and not too difficult. The trick is: Do one iteration manually by clicking in the menus etc. and Blender will create most of the code for you. Then you just switch to the Scripting layout (or change one of your panels to Scripting -> Info type) and there is the code Blender used to perform your operations.
For example I just added a camera in my scene and I see this line:
bpy.ops.object.camera_add(enter_editmode=False, align='VIEW', location=(0, 37.462, -0.0662922), rotation=(1.5708, -0, 1.5708))

You then need to change the numbers into variables and make some for-loops and you are done in no time.


Realistic Material viewport without rendering? I would like to see my materials & the actual lights in the material so it looks as render but with no rendering and in a viewport mode. Is there anyway I can do this? Are there any other options

You will not be able to have real: transparent raytracing, mirroring, subsurface scattering, generated texture coordinates, multiple light bounces

Set the 3D View Shading to Material. In the Display section of the Properties Panel check "Only Render" and "World Background". In the Shading section select GLSL shading and check ambient occlusion.

In the Viewport you can use the Blender Game Shaders / Lights.

Utilize Texture baking all Textures Channels except Specular/Glossy.

There are many different techniques to fake rendering effects.

I advise you to check out these two tutorials:

Viewport Rendering: Blender Game Engine Material
Hacking The Viewport: Many Hacks and Fake Effects

EDIT: Jerryno's comment suggests PBR, which is an important resource as well.


Can't import UDIMs into Blender I have some problems importing UDIMS into Blender. The model was originally made in Maya and the UDIMs were created there in the tiles 1001, 1002, 1011 and 1012. The model was then imported to Substance Painter and textured. The Model was exported from Maya in FBX to both Substance and Blender. When I import the model in Blender the first image on 1001 is imported correctly when in "single image" mode but when I set it to UDIM Tiles it failes to load.

You need to open the image in the UV editor, then from the side bar click on the image :

Set the source to UDIM Tiles
Click on the + button in the UDIM Tiles tap
In there you change the attribute (count) to the number of your udims
Finally back in the image tap : click the refresh button next to the image name


How do I match an object's rotation based on the other object's face's rotation? How do I get this cylinder to match the rotation of the selected face?

I want to do something similar as shown in the 2nd image:

You can select the face you want the cylinder aligned to and then press Shift+Numpad 7. this will align the view to the face in a top down perspective.

Afterwards you can create a cylinder with the checkbox "align to view" selected.

In this case it is also good to know, that you can create a Custom Transformation orientation with pressing Ctrl+Alt+Space while selecting the face.


Best way to color only the faces that are not debossed I apologize if this is a simple question but for the life of me I cannot figure the best way to color this "warning label" I am working with a .wrl file so I just have reference to work with no materials. I know I could UV map it but don't have the exact sticker or label either. I figured there might be a way to select all of the faces that are the plate and non of the deeper faces that are inside the letters then color those faces. I'm sure someone has a much better idea than myself.
Thank you for any help you can provide!

If you want something quick and dirty, you could create a mask based on the axis co-ordinates of the faces of your "lettering" (I used X axis in my example). An unfortunate side effect, however, is that it leaves a black stripe around the edge of the object at the same X-position:

If instead, you want to select the letter faces and assign them a different material (ie: you just need a quick way to select all the faces at a certain "depth"), select one of the faces at that depth and then select > similar > co-planar. You can then assign a different material to the selected faces:


Where is the Bake button in blender 2.9 (Fluid simulation) Wheres the Bake button in Blender 2.9
I cant find it since theres no tutorials in 2.9 and the manual has no pictures.

Set the cache type from "Replay" to "Modular". Replay will simulate the fluid when you play the animation so it's good for previews, Modular will actually bake it onto the disk.


Not getting even thickness with solidfy Not getting perfect even thickness with solidfy modifier. I have simple box and i want to give 3mm box thickness to it. I tried complex and all other options inside it. Non of its working. Face are all facing correct. Scale rotation are also 0 and 1. Any suggestion why not getting thickness.

At the top of the bit that sticks out you have another face extending out at a 90 degree angle. The Solidify modifier is intersecting itself right there and making things go strange.
If you remove that overhang, switch the modifier to Simple, and enable Even Thickness you will get a better result.


Why am I unable to delete vertices? I've got a ship model

For the purpose of a simplified collision model (My archers won't be running into the sails), I would like to remove all the sails, the rigging, and the strings. However, that does not seem to be possible.

Pressing X and going "Delete" leaves me with this:

And for some reason, the rigging won't go away.

Here's a quick GIF:

And here's a link to a less-jumpy MP4:
http://i.gyazo.com/ec063d07a527f86f592495dea173bb15.mp4

Even if I select a SINGLE VERTEX, it won't delete!

http://i.gyazo.com/a863b11ce9e9f01fcc4a77297983e2ce.mp4

How can I delete these vertices?

Blender is deleting all the selected vertices, but not all the vertices you want to delete are being selected.

This is because by default blender will not select vertices hidden behind other geometry when using a selection tool like Lasso or Box. To select all geometry including vertices obscured behind other geometry, either perform the selecting in Wireframe view (Z):

Or turn off Limit selection to visible in 3D view > Header to select obscured geometry in solid view:


How do I get rid of these wrinkles in texts Whenever I add a curve modifier to this text object, It shows these weird wrinkles in some of the letters. If anyone has a solution the solve this, that would be greatly appreciated. This is Blender version 2.79 in cycles render.

Every polygon needs to get broken down into triangles.
As your mesh has a bad topology, this is expected and would not behave differently in any other software or version.
Solution: Retopologize your mesh, at least subdivide it.


Blender 2.79b crashes on start up *Sorry for my bad English.

I'm trying to install and use Blender 2.79b on my new computer which uses Windows 10 64-bit. But it always crashes on startup. After double-clicking, a console pops up and shows "found bundle python: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\python". Then the window of blender show up with grey screen and it closes.

I tried to run it in compatibility mode for Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8, updated the last GPU driver. I have installed Microsoft C++ Distributed 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2017. I tried Blender 2.79 but it had the same problem.

My specs:
Intel Pentium G4400
8 GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce GT 1030

Please make sure that your:

Drivers are up to date (GPU especially).
The installation ran without problems.
Python is correctly installed and is the latest version (3.6.4 or 3.6.5).

Something else you can try is starting up cmd.exe (on Windows 10 you can just type that in the Start Menu and it will show up) and then from the console you can run Blender.

For example, assuming Blender is located on your C: drive and the path is "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe", you'd type this line into your command window:

C:\Users\USER_NAME>"C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe"

EDIT: I think it's better I put this in my answer than a comment.

I looked up that error code which then led me to Blender's Web Manual. There are a list of commandline options to choose from, but for I suggest you run the following in cmd (single line):

"C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe" --debug-memory --debug-gpumem --debug-all > results.txt.

Please upload the results to any upload service and provide the link in your question, also check what output it gives specifically to memory


Parsing xml file with animation nodes I've an XML which includes position and rotation information and which I need to parse it in order to use it with animation nodes. This is something I already managed to do via python scripting but as its much easier to interact with nodes I would like to replicate it within AN. My problem is that even if my script works it seems that things are done differently in AN, somehow importing the xml.etree library  has no effect on my xml, this is how it looks now:

I'm almost sure it has something to do with how I'm using inputs but as I'm new to coding I can't figure it out. As you can see in the image it seems that the node script can`t access the file input (xml).

Any ideas on how it should be done?
Thanks in advance

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11N7AeNxEntrfEwEGfwxQ-vvX_lviD1mP/view?usp=sharing

The ElementTree.parse() function takes a filename or file object for the xml file as an argument. In your script node, xml is a string and not a filename or a file object and hence the error.

Instead, you can use the ElementTree.fromstring() function which takes a string representing the xml file. Note that the output is the root of the tree and thus getroot() needn't be used.

See the documentation.


Weird outline between two roughness values I'm working on a blue painted wood, which looks like this:

As you can see, the growth rings are much rougher than the base which creates this interesting 'inversion' effect. I tried to replicate that in Blender and it turned out pretty well.

But the problem is in the 'inversion' point - I noticed a strange outline around the growth rings which shouldn't be there:

Material setup is very simple - principled bsdf with blue color and a roughness map plugged in it.
What do you think causes this artifact? I tried both 8bit and 16bit roughness maps made in Photoshop just in case, although I'm sure that's not the case.
Here's a .blend file (version 2.79): https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xUJojzKJBK-hIHhCrmSxztRWELIgGTKM

I could be wrong, but I think the halo is caused by the very same phenomenon as the inversion, that it can be  expected, and it's made more obvious by the low resolution of the roughness map.

Let's divide the material into three regions for the sake of argument: glossy, semi-glossy, and rough.

Where the glossy is directly reflecting a dark backgound, the rough is lighter: it's reflecting contributions from many more directions, including the lighter areas.

Where the glossy is directly reflecting a light background,  like the sky, the rough is darker - its contributions include scattered reflections from the ground.

In the grey zone, around the inversion, it's possible for the semi-glossy to be brighter than both the glossy and the rough: imagine the cone from which reflection-samples are being taken. It's possible for the medium cone to contain a bigger fraction of light areas than both the narrow and the wide, especially if there is variation along the horizon. The semi-glossy area is particularly prominent in your texture-map - all of the anti-aliased region between light and dark.

Maybe not strictly part of the problem, but there's also an optical illusion going on, like the checker-shadow illusion illustrated here. The 'dark' areas near the top of your rough regions of grain are actually lighter than the 'light' areas toward the bottom, although they don't look it.

You might consider playing with a procedural wood using something like this method.

.. which can get the same inversion, but with a less prominent, distinct, middle-zone. The material shown above is in this .blend, and can be tweaked.


Blender - Some of the bones in armature moving mesh Ok, so the guy I made was working fine until I think I touched something or so. One half of the rig is moving just fine with the mesh, but the other half (The half I duplicated and scaled -1 on the x-axis to get it on the other side) is not moving the mesh with it. I did select the mesh then the armature and CTRL-P with automatic weights, but still something went wrong. The foot on the same side is also being affected by the foot on the first side. Does anyone see a mistake I could have done? .blend file

The issue is that you have skinned your mesh before symmetrizing your rig.
Result: the newly created part of the rig isn't skinned properly to the mesh. And I also guess your mesh may not have vertex groups for those new bones.

First, make sure you have vertex groups with the same names as each deforming bone.

Then, you'll have to edit the weights of your mesh in order to assign the right side properly to the right side bones. Either use weight paint mode, either edit mode via the vertex groups pannel.


how can i best bend/curve a mesh or fix this glitchy looking bend? i have an imported model of a tank/mech with a tank barrel on it, im planning to use this model for posing purposes, in the program it exports from i can rotate the turret and pose it in many ways however in blender i need to bent the turret backward on itself like seen in superhero movies or in movies where a gun barrel is bent.

i have tried using, bevel tool (doesnt work), the deform tool (doesnt work), and the curve modifier (partly works but glitches) wherever the vertex group mesh section connects to a non curved part of the mesh there is a straight then sudden 90 degree glitchy looking turn  i dont know how to fix this issue as any selecting just moves the next part of the mesh as the glitched turn.

Using a curve modifier and starting from this position (curve modifier on the canon) :

Go to edit mode
ctrl+R, the move to the straight cylinder part and mouse wheel or use page up to increase the number of cuts
Validate using LMB, eventually move the cuts, then LMB again (or escape to stay at the initial position)