I'm having flickering problems with meshes in blender2.83 especially in edit mode After I opened blender 2.83, I deleted all objects in the default scene and added a cube. When I tabbed into edit mode, the faces are flickering. I tried to change the clipping distance to no avail. Since the cube is the only object in the scene, the problem can't be with overlapping geometry. What must I do? Notice the top face of the cube.

This problem is caused by an anti-aliasing bug. You can disable anti-aliasing in "Preferences > Viewport > Quality", or wait for the next release.


Curve rope around corner Is there a simple way to curve my rope along the red line?

Everything I find on curves seems quite complex, and I just make a mess of it.

Just borrow bits from your existing geometry. (If you model a lot, you learn to be lazy)

CtrlR cut a loop round the middle of your spool, if there isn't one there already
ShiftD duplicate it and P separate the selection into a new object
In Edit Mode, S scale it out about its median point a bit, Xdelete its bottom 2 edges
E Zextrude the new end vertices down in Z
.. and Header > Object Menu > convert to a curve.

You can bevel the curve in its Data tab > Geometry panel, and keep the bevel resolution down for a low-poly rope, or in the Header menu again, Edit Mode, all selected,Curve > Set Spline type to Bezier, and V set the control points to automatic to get a smooth rope... all sorts.


How to apply textures with alpha channel? I am doing the Introduction to Camera Tracking tutorial by Blender Guru and at some point he is applying a texture to create cracks in the road (around the hole, see image below).

As you can see there are no cracks visible in this image. I think the problem is that I don't know how to apply textures with an alpha channel ? But perhaps it has to with the node tree in the compositor. Blender Guru is working with Blender Render, I use Cycles.

Who can help ? Blend file with texture packed attached.

P.S I know there is also an issue with the floor but I think I can only ask one question

It looks like the ground that you are trying to apply the texture to is on the Background layer and is being used as a sort of a mask, so it is not being rendered.  What I did to fix your problem is duplicate the ground, move the duplicate in the Z direction just slightly to avoid it intersecting with your ground that is being used as a mask, and then move the duplicated ground onto the foreground layer, which you have defined as the first layer, by pressing M.

Now the ground will render.  Next, you need to apply the cracks as a texture to the new ground.  Applying textures with alpha channels is simple using cycles.  Here is the node setup that is used:

Now if you render your should be able to see the cracks.

\


Removing polygon grid from displacement map? Is there a way to remove the squares that show up when baking a displacement map in Blender Internal when baking from a high to a low poly object?

For example,

Blender Internal generated displacement map:

zBrush generated displacement map:

A grid that follows the uv shape is created on the Blender displacement map. In Maya there was a way to smooth uvs to get rid of the squares. Is there something similar in Blender? I rendered an example of a zbrush displacement map without the grid as an example.

Blend file:

In this case the grid effect on the map was caused by the amount of geometry on the low poly object.

To remove the grid effect on a baked map (cycles/BI):

On the low poly object, Modifiers >> Add Modifier >> Subsurf >> use the default >> apply
Create image for the map: UV Image Editor >> Create new (choose wanted size and rename), select the new image in the Node Editor so it is active
Select high poly, low poly, go to edit mode so uvs are visible
BI: Render >> Bake >> Bake Type: (choose map type, ex. Displacement), [x] Normalized, [x] Selected to active, [x] clear, Distance: (choose distance, ex. 0.18), Bias: (ex. 0.125, usually about 50-70% of the distance number), Margin: optional (default is ok) (should also work in cycles with cycles defaults)
Bake (without grid)! :D

If your object has less polys you may have to up the subsurf modifier to level 2 instead. My low poly had 1008 quads in this case and lv 1 worked to remove the grid. Also as a side note, in zbrush I started to have the grid appear again at higher poly counts (at the equivalent of a level 3 subsurf) for the low poly so it is kind of a test what poly count works best for the map problem. Usually about 4-5k poly is a good number to bake from to avoid the grid.

Example of fixed Blender displacement map:


Creating a scene with huge amount of geometry I'm fascinated by the beautiful images Lee Griggs is able to create with Maya modelling and Arnold rendering.. e.g:

I'm attempting to reproduce his effect in Blender. My first stab at it is adding a big pile of cubes to the scene, displacing them according to an external texture, and adding a common material with colour based on object position. This massive number of objects seems to be too much for Blender to handle (or maybe I just need to get a better computer?).

Should it be possible to create such an image in Blender? If so, what tricks might one need to know about, in order to get around computational limitations? Or should I accept that some things just can't be done?

Try using dupliverts:

It's not really that pretty, but this is just a demo.. Rendered in 6 minutes

Create a very subdivided plane, then delete only edges and face so that you are left with just vertices.
Add a cube and parent it to the plane.
Add a displace modifier on the plane, and setup a texture to use a displacement.
Enable dupliverts on the plane.


How to set the key animation down from 250 I see in the animation bar it goes up to 250. how can I put these down?

Change the number in the "End" box under the timeline.


Deleting occluded faces I am trying to rig models for an old game using Blender. There is a poly limit of 5000. One thing has has proven to be a bit of a problem is that some of the models I am trying to rig have the clothes as separate objects from the base model, leading to unnecessary faces in the sense that the "skin" is not visible as it is blocked out by the clothes.
What I am wondering is, do I have a better way of deleting these occluded faces other than manually selecting them by hand?
What I've tried so far:

Merging nearby vertices and then selecting interior faces and deleting them. This kind of works, but merging them leads to vertices placed in between where the skin was and where the clothes were. This deforms the clothes. Perhaps there is a way to pick the outer vertices as the point where the merged ones should be?

Using the boolean modifier. This kind of works? Some faces definitely do get deleted on the "difference" mode, but not all of them. And, worse, depending on the object selected, sometimes it'll delete the entire body (e.g., in this particular case, the hair just nukes the whole model - example: http://sis.sy/WhiteTimidBeta).

If you can't tell, I'm a total noob, but I have tried (and failed).

You could write a shader in your engine that gets rid of unwanted faces. The best practice though - depending on the game style - might be to redo the model and make each bodypart piecewise - which is typically what games like half life, n64 and psx titles have done
meaning you start off with one mesh like a head - and then once its where you want it to be in edit mode - you add another mesh for, say a jacket IN EDIT MODE SO ITS ALL PART OF THE SAME MESH GROUP
Its a strange concept at first if you're used to having everything in one mesh but its actually what many games used to do and to top it all off, since youre working with simple geometry rigging and texturing will be super easy
I get what you're saying though. Unfortunantly if you dont want to write a shader you will have to manually delete, shape, and reunwrap your model as fit. It sucks and I understand the pain. Ive done it before myself.


Circle Array Modifier for face rotation I know how to add a circular array modifier, it is shown e.g. in a video like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whjFb0xFoLk

But what I want to do is to create such a circular array that is snapped to a face of an object - so that the whole array is rotated / aligned to the rotation of the face.

Any ideas?

3 Vertex Parenting

Assume you have set up the empty and object with array modifier as
explained in youtube video in question.

In example I have a cone with array modifier controlled by an empty
displayed as axis.
For simplicity sake added a 3 vertex filled circle.  It has one face.
In edit mode select 3 vertices of the face to parent empty to.
In object mode, select the empty, then the mesh and choose
CtrlPT Parent Vertex (Triangle)

The array empty will now be rotated when the face rotates.
This may be difficult to set up depending on the alignment of the
face.  A similar method could be done via the copy rotation
constraint on the empty, using the face object as a target and the vertices of the face in a vertex group as the subtarget.

In this setup only the global Y rotation of the empty is effected by the rotation of our target face


display a grease pencil object ontop of a 3d model(despite location) I want the entirety of the grease pencil object to be displayed in front of the model

Is this possible to do without needing to move the grease pencil object?

If you mean to make the GP object always be in front of everything, then there is a setting for it. Check out this tutorial video to find out where (because I can't specifically remember where....):

https://youtu.be/1HRYC4Q1ajI

it's somewhere near the end, like past halfway. it had to do with depth order... may have moved from 2.8 to 2.82.

Hope that helps...


How to change the color of hair in blender internal? In cycles I made a hair simulation with multi colored hair

How can I do this in blender internal? This is what I have so far:

There are no material nodes needed. (Before cycles the material node were hardly ever used.)

The following steps assume you already have two materials on your object, one for the emitter and one for the particles.

With the material used for the hair active, go to the texture tab.

Add a texture and set the type to "Blend"
Set the mapping to "Strand"
Check the "Ramp" checkbox in the Colors section.
Add colors to your heart's content.

That's really all there is to it. The Strand mapping is the key.

A little bonus if you miss the thickness settings from cycles hair, then you will like the Strand section of the materials tab.
Here you can set the thickness of the root and tip, and the shape (all very similar to cycles counterpart). The one feature BI's hair has over cycles is you can specify the size in blender units instead of just pixels.


Adding meshes onto an existing mesh Follow up of:
How to remove duplicate verts after spin tool?
How can I add bolts onto an existing mesh? If I create a separate object (as a single bolt) and duplicate it so that it looks like the inner part of the rim (ITALIERI) below:

how can I merge them with the existing mesh so that there are no ngons? Additionally, the new vertexes will also inherit the subsurf, right? meaning that each needs an  extra edge loop or crease.

Just add more loopcuts to have enough verts and then connect a circle.

Add more loopcuts and make a hole in the mesh
Position the 3D cursor there (Mesh > Snap > Cursor to selected)
Add a circle with proper number of verts and connect it


GPU Rendering with Mac Book Pro with AMD Radeon R9 M370X 2048 MB? I just bought the mac book pro with the AMD Radeon R9 M370X. Unfortunately rendering is quite slow. I've read in different forums that i need to switch to GPU in user preferences -> system and change to GPU computing on the right hand side of the screen. I did it but the rendering process is still slower than rendering with just cpu. Can sb tell me what i am doing wrong?
Thanks a lot!!
Marc

With GPU rendering it's usually best to increase the tile size to about 256x256.
That way you're not going to-and-from CPU and GPU memory so much.


How do I light up bookshelfs? What type of lamp and settings should I use to achieve any of these (link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4) effects on my bookshelfs?

I only have sky texture and a sun in my scene and no ceiling.

Simply make the shelf and add a stripes of "light" to every part U wanna have lit. As U could see on the picture below (top-right corner) the lights are only a polygons with an emission material applied - that could be seen on the right. Set the power of light as U need and done!

Hope it helps my buddy, Jan.


How can I safely call another addon? How can I check to see if an operator from another addon is installed from my addon? This my current attempt.

def doCoolThing():
   try:
           bpy.ops.coolAddon.foo()
    except AttributeError:
           print("COOL ADDON NOT INSTALLED!")

Knowing where the addon should be found is the first thing to sort out. You can either look at the addon source and see where it attaches to, or investigate by hand. Generally you'll find it in the bl_idname of the Operator.

For example I have an addon called autoVTX for which the Operator code has these lines at the top:

class AutoVTX(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = 'view3d.autovtx'
    bl_label = 'autoVTX'

    # ...

This Operator can be accessed from bpy.ops.view3d.autovtx()

The try/except route is fine btw, as CoDEmanX rightfully points out in the comment. If you know where an addon or operator should be when installed then this should work.

def doCoolThing():
   try:
       bpy.ops.view3d.coolAddon.foo()
   except AttributeError:
       print("COOL ADDON NOT INSTALLED!")


How to create a shape in the UV image editor for using as a mask in VSE? I'm using Blender for editing desktop recordings that I make using Open Broadcaster software.

I would like to highlight areas of the screen to draw attention to them by surrounding them with a red rectangular box.

I've created a previous post that asks: How to highlight areas of a desktop recording in video sequence editor

The answer to that post is fantastic, and I would like to now understand how to create an image in the UV editor for using as the mask. How can I do this?

I'm a complete Blender noob and have not used any part of Blender except for the VSE.

What you want to do is split a screen and open a UV/Image Editor, or just open one up through the bottom, lefthand icon:

Load in an image with the Open button (you can screenshot a frame of your video) so that you know where to put your mask.

Still in the footer of the UV/Image Editor, add switch from View mode to Mask mode.

 -->

Add a new mask:

Now there are three keys to remember:

Ctrl +  LMB adds a Control Point where you click.
Once you have three or more points, use A to select all/deselect all.
If every point is selected (yellow), use Alt + C to connect the points.


I added a bump to a material, but the color doesn't seem right I made a texture with nodes on Blender Cycles, i added a image texture then a bump, and the bump works but the image looks too ''white''.
I need the color back to normal but with the bump, is this possible or i'll have to also make a new material?

The problem you are having is being caused by the fact that you have three shaders, but only one is influenced by the image texture.

Plug your colour map (top image texture) into the colour input of the other diffuse shader and the glossy shader.


If two add-ons use the same application handler, is there a way to see (or force) which add-on executes first? I wrote an add-on which uses frame_change_pre as an application handler.  Other add-ons may also use frame_change_pre as their application handler.
If two add-ons use the same application handler, is there a way to see (or force) which add-on executes first?

The callable is been called in sequence where in bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre
As a easy snippet here:
import bpy
#pre and post running seq are same direction
fcp = bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre
fcp.clear() #clear the list for testing only

def myfunction(*args):
    print("My first func")

fcp.append(myfunction)
fcp.append(lambda *args:print("Second lambda"))

print(fcp)

After excute, change 1 frame and the console output:
[<function myfunction at 0x000002A5E4C37A68>, <function <lambda> at 0x000002A5E4BF4F78>]
My first func
Second lambda

So you can some how insert your code at the begin of list:

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.insert(0, your_function)

Or determine where your function is in the right position:
my_index = fcp.index(myfunction)
fcp.pop(index = my_index)
fcp.insert(0, myfunction)


How to align Wave Texture to the curve I'm making waving texture, but the band is not aligned with the direction of the curve,like this,

What I want to achieve is the band should be directed by the curve direction as the red line shows, but how to setup properly, I've tried different texture coordinate all the same result.
Edit:My shader, but I do not see any UV map after press "U" on my keyboard

Edit2:I've tried the direction is all right but it gave me un-evenly bands, do you know why this is happening,thanks.

You don't tell a lot about your node setup, but try the Generated or the UV output socket of the Texture Coordinate node:


Why is lighting broken while using shade smooth? I have a problem with my mesh (blend file at the bottom), I want to connect these two sides of the object so the mesh creates something like a loop.
Mesh is fine and smooth if those sides are not connected, but every time I try to connect them with "merge by distance" the lighting on "shade smooth" will break and the mesh will end up looking weird. I have no idea why is that.  My mesh is not that bad (I personally think it's clean).  I was trying to make this mesh as simple and clean as I could.
Here is my blend file.

The normals of your faces are pointing in opposite directions, possibly due to a scale by -1 ?

AltN > Recalculate Normals (outside) fixes that.


I can't save my animation as a .mov and thats the only thing that plays on my mac I can't save my animation as a .mov and thats the only thing that plays on my mac.

Is there a way that i can add file formats such as .mov

The MP4 (.mp4) container format is derived from the the Quicktime MOV, and also widely supported on Apple products. A MP4 file containing H.264 video and, optionally AAC audio, will play on all Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, and many older PowerPC Macs as well. Simply configure your output settings as shown:

It is important to understand that MP4, MOV, Matroska, AVI and others are CONTAINER formats, not video formats. A video file as we commonly deal with it today is a wrapper around 1 or more video streams(in formats such as H.264, VC-1, DNxHD, and ProRes, and so on), and may include audio and subtitle data as well. Whether you can play a file or not requires your software to both be able to understand the container format, and the video compression format of the video stream within. So referring to things such as a ".mov video" or a "h264 video" is not enough information to troubleshoot playback and encoding issues.
Additionally, it's important to distinguish video compression formats (like h.264) from software libraries that create them (such as x264, a popular open source h.264 encoder)


why doesn't my emitter emit particles anymore normally? I want to move my emitter but when i plug in my nodes as in the picture below, the emitter emits just for a frame or so, not the whole frames. What am i doing wrong?

You can parent emitter to an empty object and try animating empty using animation nodes.
or
Bake AN animation using Set Keyframes Node


Arm joint Mesh not moving with Chest mesh when animating Im currently animating a run cycle for my mech and it seems that the arm joint mesh doesn't want to move with the Chest mesh. I had the mesh joined to the chest mesh. Is there something im missing?

blend file

If you switch your armature to Pose mode then your mesh to Weight Paint mode you'll see that the chest bone has zero influence on the arm joints. If you join a mesh to another one Blender can't guess what group the new mesh vertices are supposed to be part of. So use a weight paint brush or assign these vertices to the chest group.


Foreground Render washes out background Photo I have a Photo of some work colleagues with a small table in the foreground.
I have made (in blender) a bright shinny trophy to go on the Table.
The trophy renders up really nicely when just done as a render scene. When I try to place it on the table in the foreground with all the lighting etc it washes out the photo.
I suspect there is a simple answer I'm just not too sure what to search for.
Any help appreciated.

Cheers Willy

I have changed the picture as I can't use the original but you should get the idea.  Im using Cycles, v2.73a
I have played with some settings on the background image, its just a mesh plane with an image texture.  I really don't know how to achieve what I'm after.  To light up the rendered cup appropriately the image gets overexposed.  I presume there is some way to create a mask or filter but I haven't been able to find anything that seems to explain how this might be done.

Image with cup in Material view

Render View

needs some work but looking good, I'll play with FoV and some more/less lighting Many Thanks :-)

I used the Node Editor and added the Emission shader between the Image Texture and the Material Output. I set the Emission shader to 0.85 this seemed to give the right balance of light to offset the lighting that I was using and mostly restored the colours in the background image.

I'll add some more lighting to match the image lighting better, adjust the Field of view, camera distance etc to get the focus looking right and match the image blur.

Many thanks for the advice.


Workflow Baking and Retopo question? In This tutorial at 5:28 he selects his Hi-Res mesh and then selects his Lo-Res mesh, and then proceeds to bake. Why not just bake the Hi-Res mesh? Why do you need to also select a Lo-Res mesh?

Also, is it common practice to do your re-topology first and then do all the Baking?

Without watching the video tutorial, a high and low resolution model cannot share the same UV-map therefore geometric details from the higher resolved mesh are baked into a normal- (or other type) map which is unwrapped from the low res model.

The generated map is used to create details (fake geometry) for lower rendering time which is very common in games.

The workflow in this normal map example :

Unwrap the low res model
add a matrial and texture
select high res and then low res model
bake from selected to active


How to select a strip in the video sequence editor? I can't seem to select a clip in the sequencer. When I try, all it does is move the scrub point. I don't want to move the scrub point, I want to select the clip. I want to move the clip around. I want to delete the clip. But I can't select the clip!

I have tried ⇧ Shift clicking, ⎈ Ctrl clicking, ⌘ Cmd clicking, ⌥ Opt clicking, and every combination I could think of...

Selecting is done with  RMB. Also make sure you click more in the middle of the strip, as the ends of a strip can be selected separately.


Extrude along normals problem Im trying to extrude this edges along normals over Z axis. Median point selected and Z is pointing correctly as shown in this picture.

But as soon as I press E to extrude and Z Z to use normals restriction, normals Z axis changes to this:

So extrusion is not what expected.

What am I missing? Thanks in advance.

Answer by Paul Gonet in the comments. Thank you so much.

Select the edge loop around the hole and fill it with F. Set the transformation orientation type to Normal and then extrude. – Paul Gonet

That worked as expected. Thanks a lot, Paul Gonet.


Script to export gltf fails with 'Context' object has no attribute 'active_object' I'm trying to convert a batch of files to glb using blender with the script bellow. That i modified from How to batch convert between file formats?
But i'm getting the error

'Context' object has no attribute 'active_object'

If I change the output to obj it works with no problem
I'm using blender v2.81a
CONVERT_DIR = "my/dir"

import os

def file_iter(path, ext):
    for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(path):
        for filename in filenames:
            ext = os.path.splitext(filename)[1]
            if ext.lower().endswith(ext):
                yield os.path.join(dirpath, filename)

import bpy

def reset_blend():
    bpy.ops.wm.read_factory_settings(use_empty=True)

def convert_recursive(base_path):
    for filepath_src in file_iter(base_path, ".fbx"):
        filepath_dst = os.path.splitext(filepath_src)[0] + ".glb"

        print("Converting %r -> %r" % (filepath_src, filepath_dst))

        reset_blend()

        bpy.ops.import_scene.fbx(filepath=filepath_src)

        bpy.ops.export_scene.gltf(export_format="GLB",filepath=filepath_dst)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    convert_recursive(CONVERT_DIR)

But it fails with the error bellow
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Text", line 32, in <module>
  File "/Text", line 28, in convert_recursive
  File "/home/user/App/blender-2.81a-linux-glibc217-x86_64/2.81/scripts/modules/bpy/ops.py", line 201, in __call__
    ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw)
RuntimeError: Error: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/user/App/blender-2.81a-linux-glibc217-x86_64/2.81/scripts/addons/io_scene_gltf2/__init__.py", line 483, in execute
    return gltf2_blender_export.save(context, export_settings)
  File "/home/user/App/blender-2.81a-linux-glibc217-x86_64/2.81/scripts/addons/io_scene_gltf2/blender/exp/gltf2_blender_export.py", line 31, in save
    if bpy.context.active_object is not None:
AttributeError: 'Context' object has no attribute 'active_object'

location: /home/user/App/blender-2.81a-linux-glibc217-x86_64/2.81/scripts/modules/bpy/ops.py:201

location: <unknown location>:-1

Creating a fake active object attribute on the context and passing it to the operator should work. Try this:
CONVERT_DIR = "my/dir"

import os

def file_iter(path, ext):
    for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(path):
        for filename in filenames:
            ext = os.path.splitext(filename)[1]
            if ext.lower().endswith(ext):
                yield os.path.join(dirpath, filename)

import bpy

def reset_blend():
    bpy.ops.wm.read_factory_settings(use_empty=True)

def convert_recursive(base_path):
    for filepath_src in file_iter(base_path, ".fbx"):
        filepath_dst = os.path.splitext(filepath_src)[0] + ".glb"

        print("Converting %r -> %r" % (filepath_src, filepath_dst))

        reset_blend()

        bpy.ops.import_scene.fbx(filepath=filepath_src)

        # create a copy of the context
        ctx = bpy.context.copy()

        # because the active_object attribute isn't created until the user interacts
        # with the scene we create one here but we don't need to set it to anything
        ctx['active_object'] = None

        # pass our context copy with active object attribute to the operator
        bpy.ops.export_scene.gltf(ctx, export_format="GLB",filepath=filepath_dst)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    convert_recursive(CONVERT_DIR)


How can I get the intersecting face from two overlapping faces? I want to have the resulting faces (the orange part) of two faces. How can this be done?
In the end I want to script this but I want to know if there is an operator that could help with this.

use Boolean modifier on 1 of the planes and select other plane in the modifier tab then choose the Boolean option you need and apply if you want only the mesh being left BUT probably you got to make These planes to cubes  and 1 of them must be smaller from hight and after applying the modifier you need just to delete vertices to make it plane again


How to set origin point in center? Can't believe I'm asking this question right now, but how do I set my origin point to the center of my plane? I'm trying to apply a mirror modifier but the center of origin is throwing everything off track. I have the shrink-wrap modifier on if that makes a difference.

I figured it out. Set my 3D cursor to center, set origin point to 3D cursor, apply the shrink wrap, set the target to the character, then applied the mirror modifier.


Black line appears when rendering in cycles When rendering using cycles the hair mesh overlaps with the face mesh and a black line appears.

How do I get rid of the black line?

Updated: Wire frame view

Your hair mesh is going inside the face and due to that line is showing while render.

you may edit the hair mesh and pull outside few vertices to remove this line.
So while you are in edit mode Edges should look like this:

Updated:
Problem area is seems to be here:

These 2 vertices are going under the face mesh.

I cant reproduce the black line though, but here is how it might be issue and fix

Problem:

Grab these vertices :

Move vertices out of the face like this:


How to rename active or first texture slot of a material from script I have a tool that I've written that takes blend files and converts them into quake 3 maps. This automates a ton of stuff that saves me a lot of time, but there's still several tedious steps before getting to that. One of those steps is splitting complex meshes up and generating textures and materials for each object. To keep things simple for editing, I'd like to have object name, mesh name, material name and texture name be the same for each object.

To accomplish this, I've found and used the batch rename data blocks script located here. For how great this script is, there's one thing it lacks, that being the ability to rename the active or first texture for the materials. I've attempted to access material.texture_slots[n].name and change this value, but got an error that it was read-only.

What is the appropriate api/process to rename images attached to materials? For what it's worth, all images are packed, generated textures.

I realize I just posted the question but I solved this myself not long after. You can also rename the texture names and texture image names with this script by modifying the block of code that renames materials like so:

        if self.rename_material:
            if ob.material_slots:
                for m_slot in ob.material_slots:
                    if m_slot.material:
                        if m_slot.material.users == 1:
                            if (self.rename_use_prefix
                            and self.prefix_material):
                                m_slot.material.name = self.rename_prefix + name
                            else:
                                m_slot.material.name = name
                        if m_slot.material.texture_slots:
                            ~~~~VVV Added The Following VVV~~~
                            if(len(m_slot.material.texture_slots) > 0):
                                m_tex = m_slot.material.texture_slots[0]
                                m_tex.texture.name = name
                                m_tex.texture.image.name = name

Obviously there's some checks that could be done such as number of users and such. I'll post back as I polish the script.


Principled Shader Material Stretching I am trying to apply a principled bsdf material to an object. When I made the object in 1m x 1m, the material looks great. After stretching the object and apply its scale to 10m x 1m, the material becomes stretched.
1m x 1m:
[
10m x 1m:

Node setup:

Notes:

Scale has been applied
There are no image texture

If not supplied a Texture Coordinate node, Blender's procedural textures default to using Generated coordinates. These put X,Y,Z = 0 at the minimum XYZ of an object's bounding box, and X,Y,Z = 1 at the  maximums. So if the object's dimensions are not equal (scaled or not), the texture will be stretched.
You can transform the Generated texture space in the object's Data tab > Texture Space panel, but it's more common to add a Texture Coordinate node, and  explicitly put the texture into the Object's own space, which is measured from 0 at the object's origin, in Blender units along the object's local axes, before any object-level transformation.
If the texture is in the Object space, then it will rotate, translate, and scale with the object. (Then, if you scale in Object mode, the texture will stretch. If you scale the object's mesh, in Edit mode, or bake the object's scale transform into its mesh by Applying the scale, it will not.)


Edge Slide slide vertices too I want to slide an edge but the vertices is also slips

It seems you're using Grab. With Grab (g) you're simply moving the edge, which is made out of vertices that it shares with the adjacent edges, hence they are also manipulated.
Try using Extrude (e) instead. This will create a new edge (a set of two vertices) in the exact same location that you can manipulate independent of the adjacent geometry.
If you then set the Transformation orientation to 'Local' , you can move it along the axis in the same direction as the original roof:


Shape key collection name How can I call up this name (Key.001) in python?
Every object has it's own one Key name (Key, Key.001, Key.002, Key.003...)

Here it is in the in the console. in order to show it up I had to drag the value slider of the shape key:

So what I'm asking for is what is the name of the variable that puts the "Key.001" there.

I figured it out. I also added the basis name, shape key name and shape key index:
import bpy

#Defines the selected shape key index.
selected_shape_key_index = bpy.context.object.active_shape_key_index
print("The selected shape key index is",selected_shape_key_index)

#Defines the selected shape key name.
selected_shape_key_name = bpy.context.object.active_shape_key.name
print("The selected shape key name is",selected_shape_key_name)

#Defines the selected shape key collection.
selected_shape_key_collection = bpy.context.object.active_shape_key.id_data.name
print("The selected shape key collection is called",selected_shape_key_collection)

#Defines the Basis name
basis_name = bpy.data.shape_keys[selected_shape_key_collection].key_blocks[0].name
print("The basis name is",basis_name)


Incorrect matrix_world after transformation This script changes the active object's location, it could also change the rotation or scale, it also prints the object's world matrix before and after changing the location.

import bpy
obj = bpy.context.object
print(obj.matrix_world)
obj.location = 1, 2, 3
print(obj.matrix_world)

The output shows the same matrix as before and after the translation:

<Matrix 4x4 (1.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000)
            (0.0000, 1.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000)
            (0.0000, 0.0000, 1.0000, 0.0000)
            (0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000, 1.0000)>
<Matrix 4x4 (1.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000)
            (0.0000, 1.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000)
            (0.0000, 0.0000, 1.0000, 0.0000)
            (0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000, 1.0000)>

However accessing the matrix from the python console, bpy.context.object.matrix_world, shows the correct world matrix with the translation (the last column):

Matrix(((1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0),
        (0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 2.0),
        (0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 3.0),
        (0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0)))

Therefore, what is the correct way to access the modified matrix values after changing an object's
location, rotation, or scale?

Note for those using blender 2.8x: scene.update() has been removed as of 2.80. Use bpy.context.view_layer.update() instead, as per this post.


Need Bar Animation Gradient Fixed I have searched all over the Internet and here, but no success. I am relatively new to Blender, only used it a few months so far.

The project I'm working on is a Bar Chart. In the scene the bars are cubes with their top faces Hooked to an Empty that is animated via Python.

What I need is a way to fix the gradient position across all bars. As they grow taller, they reveal more of that gradient.

This image I made in illustrator to give you a better idea.

This is a solution based on the world position in relation to the object. You can adjust the height by changing the denominator on the math-divide node.


Why do I get an "no suitable context info for active keying action" message when trying to keyframe a camera? When I try to do it, it says "no suitable context info for active keying action". How do I fix this and deploy the camera to different angles in different keyframes?

I parented the camera to an empty and then keyframed the empty. I couldn't find any other solution to the problem.


Normalized and anti-aliased Z pass? In Blender Cycles a Z pass can be automatically normalized with a Normalize node.
A Mist pass is anti-aliased and have smooth shading.

How to get automatically normalized and anti-aliased depth map?

I tried the method with Ray Length input, normalizing works fine but I got an unsatisfied result with compositing — the thin gray background that I have to add to normalize the image:

The Mist pass can't be automatically normalized properly, because all the space behind the object is equal 1.

Or should I do it in the other proper way?

Thanks!

Ok, I finally solve it.
The normalized mist pass node group with and without alpha mask:


Fluid going through an obstacle I couldn't find an answer anywhere else, so I'm posting here. I have a fluid simulation that works well mostly, but it is going through part of an obstacle. This obstacle is a corridor that holds fluid, but two thirds down the way it just pours through the wall. It is all the same mesh. Image and .blend file included.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YJIbvaZd_Otu4WXngIhwV_7y7j1T_ehx

The reason here is clearly low resolution of the fluid. Just increase the resolution. If your mesh walls are thinner than the fluid simulation cells, this will happen.


Is it possible to recover deleted files in the file browser? I just spent a month rendering an animation, and in the process of importing all the images into the sequencer, I accidentally deleted all of them.

Oops.

I still have Blender open; is it possible to recover them? Were they moved to a temporary directory somewhere to be deleted later? Despite being several gigabytes of data, the images disappeared instantly, leading me to believe that they're not truly deleted, just moved.

No.
Sorry :/
Blender only really has mechanisms for recovering blendfiles.
But wait..
Deleting files is likely fast because usually files are deleted by flipping a single bit which indicates to the operating system that this space is now available for use. The data is still there, but the longer you use the system the more likely it is some other program will overwrite it.
If you can, unmount/eject the drive until you can mount it read-only. If the disk in question is the one the OS is on, shut down the system and use a livecd (or an OS on another disk) to mount it (read-only, of course).
It's probable that can you can at least recover some of the files (possibly all) using conventional undelete methods such as photorec. How exactly to do this will depend on the format of filesystem your drive has, among other things. I recommend searching around for instructions for your specific operating system/filesystem.
Good luck!


Rigid Body not working with Passive / Animated / Mesh / Deforming I've read other issues that look similar but this doesn't seem to be what I'm experiencing.
I'm making a conveyor belt type thing. The conveyor belt is a long array of blocks (array modifier was applied) that has a curve modifier. I'm animating the x position of the blocks which turns the conveyor belt around.
The conveyor belt object is a rigid body that is passive / animated true / shape: mesh / source: deform (I tried final and it doesn't make a difference). Deforming is checked.
I have a bunch of rigid body boxes that are set to active. The boxes rest on top of the conveyor belt as if it wasn't modified with the curve.
Any thoughts?

This is a bug with Blender 2.9. Works fine in Blender 2.8.


show ambient occlusion in render output I have discovered Ambient Occlusion and I really dig the effect it has on my model in Object mode / solid view. However when I change to Render view I don't see the effect. Can I get it in the render?

UPDATE: got part of the way but still not seeing the result in the render. New screenshots below.
/update

Generally speaking is there a way / are there ways to have the render come out more like the 3D View?

Blender 2.79b, Cycles render.

The option in that menu is for the viewport only. To achieve the same effect in a cycles render you must either enable the setting in the world tab of the properties menu.

The best way to do this would be to enable an AO pass, which should be enabled by default.

You can then composite the AO pass with your image and control the effect after you've rendered. This is usually the node setup I use to control AO when compositing.


Is there a way to get custom properties panel in a custom t panel? I already created a custom t panel and use the custom properties often, was hoping to add them to the panel, but do not know how to grab the custom properties panel and copy it to my t panel.
Any help is appreciated.

Here is the answer from Custom properties on an action, any place for UI visibility?

Add a custom property panel to the Action Editor, much the same way as it is added to other parts of the UI.  Import the rna_prop_ui.PropertyPanel class and set the path from context to "object.animation_data.action" and the type to bpy.types.Action.

The default bl_label if not defined  is "Custom Properties".

import bpy

from bpy.types import Panel
from rna_prop_ui import PropertyPanel

class ACTION_PT_custom_props(PropertyPanel, Panel):
    bl_label = "Action Properties"
    bl_idname = "ACTION_PT_custom_props"
    bl_space_type = 'DOPESHEET_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'
    # required for PropertyPanel
    #COMPAT_ENGINES = {'BLENDER_RENDER', 'BLENDER_GAME'}
    _context_path = "object.animation_data.action"
    _property_type = bpy.types.Action

    @classmethod
    def poll(self, context):
        obj = getattr(context, "object", None)
        ad = getattr(obj, "animation_data", None)
        action = getattr(ad, "action", None)
        return action is not None

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":  # only for live edit.
    register()

Note this example is for actions. For object

    _context_path = "object"
    _property_type = bpy.types.Object


Accidentally made backdrop viewer size zero. How to get it back? I accidentally decreased the size of the viewer in the backdrop to zero. Now it displays as a small cross and I cannot reach the handles to enlarge it again. Does anyone know how to get it back, without needing to rebuild my project?

Open the sidebar in the compositor N
Open the View tab
Increase the Zoom property in the Backdrop panel. Alternatively you can use Fit to fit the background image into the view or Reset Backdrop to reset the offset and zoom.


Duplicated objects created in Blender Render are invisible in Cycles I cannot figure it out. Perhaps you guys can help me out. I have created several objects in blender render, I forgot to switch to cycles at start. Anyways, the first object that I crearted shows up in cycles render, no problem. Any other objects (they were all duplicated meshes from the first object) are gone. I checked the visibility in outliner, all are listed as none under object->duplication. None has any textures applied, not even materials. Any help would he appreciated.

Blender file:

I tried to consult this thread, but no luck:
Why does my object not show up?

Navigate to Object properties, Cycles settings tab:

Turn on all Ray Visibility types:

Leave Shadow catcher unchecked.

But i will vote for close, becouse it's #5 from here: Why does my object not show up?

  Cycles camera visibility disabled in object settings


F-curves disappeared but keyframes still work Perhaps another basic question about a mysterious disappearance. I am using Blender to edit video, and my F-curves have vanished. The keyframes are still visible and apparently functional in the keyframe editor, and a post on reddit suggests that I might have pushed an action down (?) whatever that means. There is an action (SceneAction.001) visible in the NLA editor, but there is nothing to see in the Action Editor.

Screenshots of the Action Editor, Dope Sheet, and NLA Editor below.

Any pointers would be very much appreciated!

Now that you have turned it into an NLA strip, you have to select the strip in the NLA editor and press TAB to begin editing the action in that strip.  One problem is that if you add keyframes outside the boundaries of the strip they will not affect the object.  There are other complications surrounding the strip extrapolation settings.

Alternately, you should be able to "undo" the stripification by selecting the object and using the dope sheet's Action Editor mode to assign its primary action to the one that was there before the stripification (make sure you are not tabbed into the strip or your change will affect the strip instead of the primary action).  It's the combo box left of the Push Down button.  At that point the object will have a primary action AND an NLA track with strip. You can delete the NLA track by selecting the track in the NLA editor and using the x to delete the track.


Cycles - Adding an object with emission shader makes part of my scene darker? When I turn an object (with an emission shader) in my scene on it makes part of the scene actually go darker.

The light in question is on the outside of a vehicle (which has lights on the inside of the vehicle too) The light on the outside of the vehicle cannot reach the inside of the vehicle as it has no path.

I have made a quick example of the problem. But the problem I am seeing is more pronounced than this example, in my scene even if I turn the samples up to 2000 I never recover the light and it still appears darker and more grainy.

Here is a quick 100 sample render with the light disabled:

And here is a render with the light enabled:

Notice that in the second picture that the scene inside the vehicle actually becomes darker

What can I do to tackle this issue???

Update

I have got clamp Direct set to 4 and indirect set to 2 which tackles a lot of the grainy-ness but adding this light just makes my scene look terrible... but i need this light as it is integral to the scene.

What's happening here, is you have your light inside. Cycles is throwing a lot of samples there because there aren't any other lights. Then, you added your other light and it had multiple importance enabled.

Cycles will of coarse have to throw some samples at that light, so that in it's self will make it noisier, but in addition to that, having multiple importance on, tells Cycles that that light is more important than the other light, so it throws even more samples at it.

So basically what you're seeing, is your render getting noisier, and therefore appearing darker, because of the extra lights.


Adding low-poly clothing I have a bit of experience with Blender such as basic modelling and rigging. I've created my first character model before:

She's all rigged and ready for posing, but I'd like to know what the best route is to add clothes to her. I'd like it so that I can easily swap the clothing she's wearing as well. I've tried modelling clothes over top and then using fabric physics but most of the time I end up with awful clipping with the faces.

I'd still go with the cloth physics approach but instead of using your character model as a base for the cloth simulation I'd create another simplified version of the parts that are going to be covered by clothes. This dummy then would get a simple displacement modifier with a low value so that it always stays over the character model's surface - like a cage.


Animations Disappear When Loading Up Blender So, I was working on some animations the day before, and I saved my file and clicked the F in the action editor next to the ones I wanted saved (There were some other animations that I didn't know how to delete), and went to bed. When I woke up the next day, I started up the file, and all of my animations were gone. Does anyone know why this is? Is there some sort of way to save your animation, or is that what the F does, even though I pressed it?

By the way, I got then back by re-loading my old save file, I just want to know why that happened. Let me know if you need any extra details. Thanks!

The F toggle is something many of us animators have complaints about. Yes it has to be selected to keep Actions if you start a new Action. The F toggle stands for Fake User. When you start a new Action via the Action Editor the Action that you had is removed from the Armature. As objects can only use 1 Action at a time.

The correct way to use multiple actions is to use the NLA Editor. There are new buttons in the Action Editor's Header: Push Down and Stash. You can use those to save your Actions in the NLA Editor so that they don't get deleted.


How to achieve a dotted landscape i try to achieve a dotted landscape like in this example.

I tried to solve it by an array but i dint get the landscape displacement to work.
an easy way would be to add a sphere to each point of a landscape mesh but i don't know how to do this.
Sorry if this is easy to solve, but i am kinda new to blender.

You can do the texture using a brick texture node.

Then use a displacement modifier a highly subdivided plane.
For the displacement use a texture that as a height map for your landscape.

For more detail read:
Landscape topography from grayscale image
For the glow use a glare node.


Applying rotation mess up model I made a model with armature and animations.Everything was working fine in unity but axis y and z were swapped. So i went back to blender and tried to apply rotation but it totally messe up model. Im not sure what exactly "rotation to deltas" does but i tried and it seems like rotation was applied correctly but i axis are still wrong in unity.

The correct way to apply a pose of a rigged character is: pose the model in its desired rest pose; select the mesh and apply its armature modifier; select the armature and in pose mode select all bones and press Ctrl A "Apply pose as rest pose"; add to the mesh a new armature modifier, pointing a the armature rig.
This procedure will not affect the weights, but can destroy any previously made animation.


How to pick target texture image for baking? I'm trying to bake bump maps into normal maps.  I am having problems with the baking process in that it seems to arbitrarily select the image that the bake renders to.  Sometimes it bakes to the texture I've created for the normal map, but sometimes it will bake to the diffuse map instead.

I'm not sure what makes the difference.  Even when I make sure the normal map image is selected in the UV editor and I've assigned a UV map to the normal texture it still sometimes bakes to the diffuse map.

How can I make sure I bake to the image that I want?

For Blender internal renderer, the important thing (as I just learned) is to understand Blender assigns textures in the Image Editor on a per face basis. So it's not enough to just load the texture in your UV/Image Editor; you have to load the texture while having the relevant UVs selected also. This way you match the image with the UVs and the image becomes the target for baking.


is it possible to write a script that renders an image in blender If i had an image on my computer which acts as a texture and an already created scene in blender which has a 3d object in it. Is it possible to write a blender script to take the image which resides in a location on my computer and use it as a texture on the 3d object in my blender scene, then render the scene and also save the rendered image in a location path on my pc ?

The simplest way to do this would be to have a project whose textures point to a files with a known location. Replacing those files with new ones with the same name would take care of the textures.

Then just render using the command line.

blender -b file.blend -a

would render the animation with no GUI.

To set the output path use:

blender -b file.blend -a -o <path>

Read:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/workflows/command_line.html

and

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/advanced/command_line/arguments.html


Blender 2.79 crashes whenever I try to open a rig I am trying to open a rig in Blender 2.79, but whenever I click "open Blender file," Blender instantly crashes, and brings me to my home screen. (I am using Blender on my Macbook) Does anyone know how to fix this/what is wrong???

disable other add ons, they could be interfering with epic rig, that worked for me, had the same problem


Blender 2.8 modifier apply Python has somebody an idea how to apply a modifier with Python in Blender 2.8 or is it just a bug and not an API / internal change?

When I apply like this:

bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(modifier=bool_mod.name)

which works with 2.79 I get this error in 2.8:

  File ".... blender-2.80.0-git.421017d24a0-windows64\2.80\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py",
  line 192,  in call
          ret = op_call(self.idname_py(),  None, kw) RuntimeError:  Operator bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply.poll() Context missing
  'modifier'

It is fixed now, was just missing in Blender 2.8 at the time I added this issue.


Clipboard erased when quitting Blender on Ubuntu If you highlight text in Blender and press CTLC to copy it, then quit Blender, you can no longer paste that text.

Why not?

I posted a bug report on this, but apparently it's not Blender's fault.
As Sergey explained in the bug report, Blender only instructs the clipboard manager to save the text, but in Ubuntu, this is a bug that affects many programs.  You can read more about why it happens here.
Going to the Ubuntu Software Center and installing the application Parcellite, which is an alternative clipboard manager has fixed the problem for me.
EDIT: I also had some problems with Parcellite and Blender working together.  You could try a different clipboard manager.


How to trigger menus from operators in Python? I am fairly experienced with both Python and Blender, but using them together is still new to me, and so I am not entirely clear on how everything referneces each other.

To avoid confusion, I have a script that is executed when clicked from the "space" menu:

At the moment, I have three variables hardcoded in, that I would like to be changable by the user. This means that rather than executing the addon's function when "Slow" is clicked, I instead want a menu to be brought up, with sliders I can change the variables with, much like "Bake Action":

I then want it to execute when I press "OK".

However, I don't know where to put the actual code. At the moment it is just in the file that adds "Slow" to the menu, but if I add another menu, should I put the code in the second one, and the first just triggers the second?

Or should it be seperate from both, but then how would the sliders change the values?

Currently the values are coded like this:

        bpy.types.Scene.firstSlowFrame= bpy.props.IntProperty(
            name = "First Slow Frame:", # as you want it to appear on the slider
            default = 40, # optional
            description = "This is the first frame that will be in slow motion"
            )

        bpy.types.Scene.lastSlowFrame= bpy.props.IntProperty(
            name = "Last Slow Frame:", # as you want it to appear on the slider
            default = 60, # optional
            description = "This is the last frame that will be in slow motion"
            )

        bpy.types.Scene.scaleFactor= bpy.props.IntProperty(
            name = "Slow Factor:", # as you want it to appear on the slider
            default = 1, # optional
            description = "This is how much it will be slowed by (1 is nothing, 2 is half as fast"
            )

Since I read this is the way to put them in sliders, however I tried keeping my code in the first and making a panel that used them in sliders and it didn't work.

Overall, I am looking for someone to explain the proper way of using multiple menus, and where various bits of code should go for what I described to happen.

Thank you

Okay, so it took me a little while (and a lot of searching online), but it was this link (https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Py/Scripts/Cookbook/Code_snippets/Interface#A_popup_dialog) that showed me what I needed.

What I have done is definitely a hack, and there are more elegant solutions, but if you are just looking for a way that works, then this will help a lot.
(Warning: Lots of code)

So it works by having three classes, which call each other in turn.

The "Clicked On" Operator

The first is an operator that simply exists to invoke the dialog box when clicked in the "search menu".

class slowClick(bpy.types.Operator):
bl_idname = "slowclick.move_operator"
bl_label = "Slow"

def execute(self, context):
    # Default can be used since I only have a single dialog
    bpy.ops.object.dialog_operator('INVOKE_DEFAULT')

    return {'FINISHED'}

The Dialog Box

The second is the dialog box itself. This is invoked in the line bpy.ops.object.dialog_operator('INVOKE_DEFAULT'), and then displayed.

The actual dialog box is built somewhat counter-intuitively. Rather than putting in sliders using the standard layout.row().prop, all you actually do is define the variables, and on creation they can be changed. In my program that looked like this:

# create the sliders (and checkbox) in the dialog box so the user can change where the slo-mo starts and ends
firstSlowFrameP = bpy.props.IntProperty(
    name="First Slow Frame:",  # as you want it to appear on the slider
    default=40,  # optional
    description="This is the first frame that will be in slow motion"
)

globalSelect = bpy.props.BoolProperty(
    name="Global",  # affect all objects in scene
    default=False,
    description="If true, all available objects will be affected"
)

As with normal panels, how you define the property defines what kind of item it will be (e.g. slider for 'Int' and checkbox for 'Bool'), and at the bottom it has an "OK" button.

def execute(self, context):
    # first thing is to globalise the variables needed, and yes I know this isn't the best way
    global firstSlowFrame, globalSelect

    # reassign the variables based on the user's input on the sliders
    firstSlowFrame = self.firstSlowFrameP
    globalSelect = self.globalSelect

    # this actually calls the operator that does the editing
    bpy.ops.slow.move_operator()
    return {'FINISHED'}

def invoke(self, context, event):
    # call itself and run
    wm = context.window_manager
    return wm.invoke_props_dialog(self)

So the def execute() details what happens when the "OK" button is pressed. It globalises all the variables that were changed in the slider, so they can be accessed by the main and final function.

(The def invoke() just describes its creation when invoked)

The Main Function

Finally we get to the actual function. I won't put the main code here (If you want the addon go to How can I slow down or animate time?), but this is just your standard operator:

class Slow(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "slow.move_operator"
    bl_label = "OK"

    # get the global variables since this is in a class
    global firstSlowFrame, globalSelect

    #PROGRAM

All you have to do is get the variables that were changed by the sliders, and it all works nicely.

(Technically, if you press "space" and type "OK" you will get this and it will probably not work since the variables don't exist yet, so at the very beginning of the program I would define a "default" value for each that will be used if the user accidentally bypasses the whole dialog box.)

Example

This is a template that can be used, feel free to use it, modify it, I doubt I invented this hack so I mean credit me if you want but I'm really not fussed, just hope this can help someone.

import bpy
import math
from bpy.props import *

scn = bpy.context.scene

# initialising the variables that will be in the dialog
intVariable = 10
strVariable = "Hello"
boolVariable = True

# This is the operator that is clicked by the user, triggering the dialog box
class ToBeClicked(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "toBeClicked.move_operator"
    bl_label = "WHATEVER YOU WANT YOUR USER TO TYPE IN"

    def execute(self, context):
        # Default can be used since I only have a single dialog
        bpy.ops.object.dialog_operator('INVOKE_DEFAULT')

        return {'FINISHED'}

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

    # create the sliders (and checkbox) in the dialog box
    intVariableProperty = bpy.props.IntProperty(
        name="Integer Variable:",  # as you want it to appear on the slider
        default=10,  # optional
        description="This is an integer"  # what you get when you hover over
    )

    strVariableProperty = bpy.props.StringProperty(
        name="String Variable:",  # as you want it to appear on the bar
        default="Hello",  # optional
        description="This is a string"  # what you get when you hover over
    )

    boolVariableProperty = bpy.props.BoolProperty(
        name="Boolean Variable:",  # as you want it to appear on the checkbox
        default=True,
        description="This is a boolean checkbox"  # what you get when you hover over
    )

    # This is what happens when "OK is pressed
    def execute(self, context):
        # first thing is to globalise the variables needed, and yes I know this isn't the best way
        global intVariable, strVariable, boolVariable

        # this is just for troubleshooting
        print("Dialog Runs")
        print(self.intVariableProperty, self.strVariableProperty, self.boolVariableProperty)

        # reassign the variables based on the user's input on the sliders
        intVariable = self.intVariableProperty
        strVariable = self.strVariableProperty
        boolVariable = self.boolVariableProperty

        # this actually calls the operator that does the editing
        bpy.ops.slow.move_operator()
        return {'FINISHED'}

    # This is just saying that when it is invoked, how to display it
    def invoke(self, context, event):
        # call itself and run
        wm = context.window_manager
        return wm.invoke_props_dialog(self)

# This is the actual program that does something with the variables
class Main(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "main.move_operator"
    bl_label = "OK"

    # get the global variables since this is in a class
    global intVariable, strVariable, boolVariable

    # This just makes sure that everything can be applied
    # if (CONDITION):
    # PROGRAM

    return {'FINISHED'}

    # This can give an error if you want certain conditions met
    # else:
    # self.report({'ERROR'}, 'There is no animation')
    # return {'CANCELLED'}

# registers everything
def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(Main)
    bpy.utils.register_class(ToBeClicked)
    bpy.utils.register_class(DialogOperator)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

I know this is really very long, in answer to a very unimportant question, but it took me a while to solve this and I'm pretty pleased with it, so I hope other people can find it just as useful.

Feel free to add corrections in the comments!


Is there a blender UI addon that highlights the active menu the mouse cursor is hovering over? From what I understand so far about Blender, wherever the mouse cursor is hovering over, it becomes the active region.

Currently, Blender slightly changes the tint of a menu's header as you hover your cursor on and off from the menu. But that small change is barely noticeable.

Is there a blender UI addon that can let the user create a custom color for both the active and non-active Headers or active/non-active Window Backgrounds?

It helps to know what is active, especially on large high resolution monitors.

You can just customize the theme in User Preferences and choose the colors to your requirement and then save the theme as well as make it the default.

Press Ctrl+Alt+U to open the User Preferences and then goto Theme tab.

Customizing Blender Theme


Where are objects if you add them when nothing is selected? I've been trying to learn 2.8 but I ran into stupid issue. I have nothing selected and (in object mode) I try to (shift-a) add a plane, cube or anything and it is added but it is not visible and I can't find it. It is not in any collection as far as I know. I can't enter edit mode and pressing "," doesn't find it either but it is selected as its properties are open on the  right side menu (Plane.007 and so forth...). If I add object while having other object selected the new object appears normally (as the new object is added to new collection). Where is it?

Turns out blender has new feature that allows you to disable objects in viewport. For some reason all my collections except one object were disabled in viewport. Turning them back on made the objects visible once again.


Cycle 2.8 Cuda error at cuCtxCreate: Illegal Address Am trying to bake a simple object, it has one material:

And a Texture node with the right image selected:

no idea though why the Texture slot when i select the object is always empty and shows nothing:

Now if i bake that for the first time it works like it should:

Now i don't touch anything, keep the same object selected, and hit Bake again,
That baked texture is all of a sudden empty, the baking stop after 1% and i get this message:

Baking map saved to internal image. save it externally or pack it

And the worst part is that the viewport Render mode stop rendering, its all gray

And if i just press F12 to render the whole scene, i get this error:

Cuda error at cuCtxCreate: Illegal Address

Any help please ?

Thanks!

PS:
If i restart Blender 2.8 , the same thing happens again, i can render as much as i want, but if i do a texture Bake, the first time it works, and after that this problem happens all over again.

so this seems like its a known bug that has already been reported
https://developer.blender.org/T59238


Opacity animation disappears in render I'm using opacity animation to make an animated text fade out. It's working in the Video Sequence Editor, but when I render the video it doesn't work; the text doesn't fade at all.

I've tried rendering it out in different formats, including Quicktime, MPEG & H.264, but the Quicktime format is the only one I've actually been able to view afterwards.

I'm using Bender 2.77 and I've created the text animations in the 3D View as scenes, which I've then added to the VSE. I've also inserted keyframes to adjust the opacity at the end of each animation.

The reason your fades are not working is two-fold.

Firstly, the Quicktime format does not support an alpha channel (I don't know of a video format that does... maybe GIF?).

Secondly, your RGBA colors are not pre-multiplied, but are "straight alpha." A bit of explanation here.

Consequently, when your frame gets put into the video format, the alpha portion of that image is simply discarded, leaving you with grey text that's no longer transparent. This didn't happen when you rendered it to images because PNG does support an alpha channel. Thus, you had text that was still fully grey, but it was also transparent. I'll bet that if you rendered to JPGs, you'd lose the fading as well because JPG doesn't support alpha. The question would be whether Blender would pre-multiply your alpha or just discard the alpha channel. I suspect it'd do the same thing that it did with the video and just discard it.

There are two solutions. One is to render pre-multiplied alpha. It's not going to be easy to figure out how to do this because it changed recently in the VSE. And there are a couple of different places in the rendering pipeline that pre-multiplication might happen. If anyone else knows, feel free to edit my answer. But this is a poor solution because the background of your video is incidental, not deliberately chosen. It's only fading to black because all the pixels that aren't rendered HAPPEN to be black when the alpha is discarded. This is a reasonable assumption to make, but it's an assumption not a decision.

The most correct solution is to make the decision of what to fade TO. You really ought not think in terms of "fade out." Rather, you should always think "fade to..." Even in your video, you're not wanting to "fade out." You're wanting to "fade to black." There are a number of ways to accomplish this, depending on what's what's best for your project. The option I'd recommend is to add an Effect Strip -> Color to the bottom layer, and set the color to black. Thus, when your text becomes transparent, there's still something behind it to render.

You could, of course, set the color of the Effect Strip to whatever color you want, and it'd work just as well.

I hope that helps!


Replacing all mesh elements in a Mesh object I'm working on the Animation Nodes Addon and want to create some new nodes which can work with mesh data like polygons. To output the created mesh I have to put it onto an object like this:

mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new(name = "mesh")
mesh.from_pydata(vert_data, edge_data, face_data)
object.data = mesh

This works all fine but the problem is that this generates a new mesh object on each call, which means about 30 times per second.

I also tried to call .from_data on an existing Mesh but this just appends the new mesh data. Is there a clean and fast way to remove all verts, so that I can append the new data to an empty Mesh?

bm = bmesh.new()
bm.to_mesh(object.data)
object.data.from_pydata(vert_data, edge_data, face_data)

This seams to work but throws an error I don't understand (or more a warning).
This warning looks like here: https://developer.blender.org/T40571

Can someone explain this message or tell me a way to work around that?

The functions for the removal of mesh elements for Mesh(ID) are turned off in the source code.

#if 0 /* BMESH_TODO Remove until BMesh merge */
    func = RNA_def_function(srna, "remove", "ED_mesh_vertices_remove");
    RNA_def_function_flag(func, FUNC_USE_REPORTS);
    RNA_def_int(func, "count", 0, 0, INT_MAX, "Count", "Number of vertices to remove", 0, INT_MAX);
#endif
}

from_pydata is a utility function written in python. You could use bmesh but it might be slower.

I.e. (see verts.new, edges.new, faces.new)

import bmesh
bm = bmesh.new()
for co in vert_data:
    bm.verts.new(co)

#bm.verts.ensure_lookup_table()

for edge_indices in edge_data:
    bm.edges.new((
        bm.verts[edge_indices[0]],
        bm.verts[edge_indices[1]]
        ))
for face_indices in face_data:
    bm.faces.new(tuple(
        bm.verts[index] for index in face_indices
        ))

bm.to_mesh(obj.data)
bm.free()

Btw: I was able to crash blender using this simple script to test from_pydata for existing geometry.


fluid object not baking I haven't found this question answered yet and I'm stuck. I'm trying to bake a simple fluid sim. I have the domain enclosing the entire scene. My fluid object is inside a glass-shaped obstacle (closed, solidified). I want it to spill uot from the glass onto the floor, but the fluid object does not turn to fluid when baked. I have deleted every new cache so that there are never more than one in the directory and yet still the fluid object doesn't change. what am I missing?

image: domain and fluid object are highlighted, baking specs in the physics panel. The scene also includes a ground plane, two wall planes each with a displacement modifier, and two emission planes. The glass has been set as a fluid obstacle as have the ground plane and wall planes.

I closed the file and reopened, deleting all previous caches and now it seems to work. :-b


Mouse Click alone takes precedence over "Regular Key Pressed as Modifier"+ Mouse Click I'm trying to setup my hotkeys so I can more easily sculpt with a tablet. As a part of this I tried to change the hotkeys for invert and smooth sculpting. By default this is done using normal modifier keys, in this case control or shift + left click. This works. But I wanted to use a regular key as modifier, A and S in my case.

So under Blender User Preferences > Input. Then 3D View > Sculpt there are three Sculpt options: Regular, Inverted and Smooth. There's a bunch of normal modifier keys, but there's a blank field where you can enter 'Regular keys as modifier'. But when I changed the settings for invert and smooth to A+Left Click and S+Left Click and tried this, they both only did regular sculpting. After fiddling with it for a bit I noticed it's not that the hotkey doesn't work, but that the left click sends you into regular sculpt mode regardless of what regular-key-modifier you press. You can notice this when you disable the regular sculpting tool (the one that only uses left click).

I assumed the regular key as modifier should work similar to the normal modifiers, but it seemed not to.

Is this a bug? Can someone reproduce this? Can someone help? I would really like to use a regular key and not control/shift/alt for this.
Thanks :)

PS. In sculpt mode S is linked to the smooth brush, so you need to disable this hotkey if you want to reproduce this.

DerekWatts over at BlenderArtists answered my question in this topic.

Apparently it's a known issue and it's fixable by changing the order in which they appear in the hotkey list. Disabling the original left-click-only hotkey and add a duplicate at the bottom of the list fixes it.


How to create/make UV coordinates for polyhedron I am using Blender version 2.74 and I am using an OpenSCAD file someone else made. I am new to Blender.

The OpenSCAD file comes from this website:
http://kitwallace.co.uk/3d/solid-to-scad.xq?id=Tetrahedron&scad=shell
I picked "engrave" for the OpenSCAD option.

I am trying to create UV coordinates for the shape after I import the OpenSCAD file in Blender, so that I can dynamically display a unique image on each face of the tetrahedron as an exported or "finished" JSON file using JavaScript. Whether I export into whatever format using some type of technology such as JavaScript - I don't know if that part is relevant. But the question I have is how to compute/make the UV coordinates for this shape in Blender to make this eventually happen.

Below is the JSON file, the blend file couldn't be shown in text format:

{
    "name": "Tetrahedron.001Geometry",
    "uvs": [],
    "faces": [32,0,1,2,0,1,2,32,3,2,1,3,2,1,32,3,0,2,3,0,2,32,3,1,0,3,1,0],
    "vertices": [-2.42416,0,4.19877,-2.42416,-0,-4.19877,4.84832,0,-0,-0,6.85655,-0],
    "metadata": {
        "type": "Geometry",
        "version": 3,
        "vertices": 4,
        "generator": "io_three",
        "faces": 4,
        "uvs": 0,
        "normals": 4
    },
    "normals": [-0.471389,-0.333323,0.816492,-0.471389,-0.333323,-0.816492,0.942808,-0.333323,0,0,1,0]
}

You can unwrap the tetrahedron in one of 2 ways:

You can create seams (CTRL+E > Mark Seams) running along the 3 edges from the base to the tip. Then select all vertices and press U > UV Unwrap.

You can create seams on all edges  (CTRL+E >Mark Seams) , and overlay each uv island on top of itself. Then select all vertices and press U > UV Unwrap.

Please note the tetrahedron shape in my example is an approximate shape only in order to demonstrate the unwrap technique.


sculpting and connecting from different bodyparts I am beginner and sculpt a body at the moment.
I guess my way wasn't very effective.
I created a body with different body parts. Each body part is a separate object.
I sculpt mostly and I realized I wanna connect the different object to sculpt in a better way.
This should be the way anyway at the end.
I have no idea how to do this.
I used a subdivision surface mod and it is just.. messy.
In a old video I have seen there is a kind of bridge addon?
I would be happy for any recommendation or tip.
I attach a picture.

One option is to use the Boolean modifier:
Let's say that you wanna connect one arm to the torso (this will be the main object):
0.- (Optional) Select the arm, go to Object properties > Viewport Display, select Wireframe and change the "Display on" to Wire.
1.-Select the Torso, go to Modifier > Boolean : Change the "operation" to "Union" and in "object" Select the Arm.
2.- Click "Apply" and turn Off or delete the arm Object.
Now you have one Object made with the torso and the arm.
Repeat that with every part that you wanna connect to the torso and after that, add a subdivision and apply.

Hope that helps.


Why is the boolean difference modifier not working on joined meshes? I have gotten the boolean difference modifier working on basic shapes, however, when it is applied on joined meshes (with correct normals and no duplicate vertices)  the boolean difference modifier applies a union instead of a difference
Does anyone know what could be going wrong?

I notice you're using Blender 2.90.x. I don't have that, I'm still using 2.83.4 and 2.91.
That said, I made an "O" by scaling a cube, and then making 3 duplicates with appropriate rotations and translations. I then joined all 4 objects into one. As you can see from my second screenshot, I got a difference, not a union, as expected.
One thing I would suggest for you to do is enable the "3D Print Tools" add-on and check your mesh for degenerate topology.


Drawing a simple arch with the curve tool I think I'm losing my mind. I just want to draw a simple arch shape with the curve tool so that I can extrude it into a solid. I can add a bezier curve, I can move the points around, I can move the handles, I can add and remove points. But I can't figure out how to do anything else.

How do I make my drawing symmetrical?
How do I connect the end points of the bezier curve to create a closed shape?
How do I make sure that the curve has the correct measurements and proportions?

I just want to create something like the below but I cannot figure it out. I've spent hours searching how to do it and I just can't get it to work. I don't even really know how to describe my problem to search for it.

Let's go one by one:

Add the Mirror Modifier
Go Curve > Toggle Cyclic, shortcut: Alt+C (but it will mess with the mirror modifier)
Use Orthographic view and enable Snapping to Increment (with Absolute Grid snap)

Add the Mirror modifier

Toggle cyclic curve

Set up Orthographic view (Front/Top/Side)


How to create a chrome texture? Is it possible to get that typical chrome-like angled look using the Shader Editor? I see a lot of tutorials making chrome on all types of surfaces but not on a knob geometry like the one in the following image:

Q: Is there any way to get that chrome-like surface appearance procedurally or should I just use a texture to fake it?

Easy peasy...that's just Anisotropic glossiness.  Just set Anisotropic to 1.0, and then play with the Roughness value to get the look you want.  No tutorial needed!

EDIT:

Use a Tangent node to control the axis of the anisotropy:


Link faces of an icosphere for modeling a geodesic dome I want to model a geodesic dome-like object with custom struts and joining points. I want to have it be based off of an icosphere, with each piece looking exactly the same. I have done this with a subdivision-level 1 icosphere (an icosahedron), and some array modifiers, but I don't see how this can be feasible if I want to project it to larger scales with more dense icospheres. Here is a quick example of a basic version of what I want to create:

The "belt" is in yellow, the "caps" are in orange."

Modifiers for the caps:

I didn't spend a lot of time with modeling, but it gets the point across. It is two objects, one for the "caps" and one for the "belt." They each have various array modifiers on them.

Modifiers for the belt:

Can I create this with one object, so I only have to model it once, and it merges properly?
How can I extend this to a more complicated icosphere?

Alternately, can I "link" the faces to the same geometry and avoid array modifiers all together?

I don't know an efficient way to achieve a complex geodesic dome with Blender's modelling tools, but it is feasible with the Animation Nodes add-on.

If you can differentiate between the dome's polygons, e.g. based on the polygons' area, and manage to determine the polygons' orientation, e.g. based on the lengths of their sides, you can generate a replica of the original dome with the faces replaced by other meshes.

The Blender file should work with 2v and 3v geodesic spheres. More subdivisions would require modifications to the script that differentiates between the faces.
And (at least for the 3v sphere) you only end up with a closed sphere if you start with a 20 sided icosphere and add subdivisions (one or two cuts) manually in edit mode.


Reloading scripts from a bootstrap script Pressing F8 reloads all addons. How can I call this from the python console?

Ultimately I want to make small startup script or addon that updates all the company addons. This brings up small related questions like, do startup scripts run before addons are loaded? Is reloading possible via script access?

I found this in the source code.

https://gitorious.org/blenderprojects/blender/commit/49c90bd

static int script_reload_exec(bContext *C, wmOperator *op)
{
#ifndef DISABLE_PYTHON
    BPY_eval_string(C, "__import__('bpy').utils.load_scripts(reload_scripts=True)");

    return OPERATOR_FINISHED;
#endif
    return OPERATOR_CANCELLED;
}

So I call this in python and it works.

bpy.utils.load_scripts(reload_scripts=True)


Using the Rain rig, struggling to get IK hand to be constrained to a prop I'm trying to set up a simple constraint of Rain's left hand to a baseball bat that is constrained to her right hand. But getting a really strange result where the hand follows the bat, but it glitches out. See video attached for better explanation of what's happening.
Screen capture: https://streamable.com/y5z2ay

I figured out what the issue was. It was a dependency loop thing. Earlier in the shot I had the bat constrained to the left hand when she picks the bat off of the floor. And now I added another constraint where the left hand is now constrained to the bat. So having both constraints exist is what was causing what you see in the video above.
Solution was to bake out the animation of the first constraint, delete it, and then add the new constraint. Not ideal, but it worked.


Mesh moving in the opposite direction to bones I'm very new to blender. I've meshed a basic structure and added some bones for the legs, but the mesh is moving in the wrong direction for one of the legs. See the video below:

https://gfycat.com/MagnificentThatLaughingthrush

Any idea how I can get the mesh for the right leg to move outwards?

To solve your problem follow this:

Select your mesh and apply the mirror modifier and delete the armature modifier

Delete all vertex groups in your mesh
Select your mesh then Shift
and Right-Click select your armature then hit Ctrl+P and choose parent with automatic weight and it should work


How to cut a hole through both sides of a cube? I'm trying to make a hole through the face:

So it will come out just like this hole on the other side of the mesh:

If it doesn't make sense, i'm saying this: On the first picture, It clearly has no hole.

On the second picture, It is the other side of the CUBE , i have used "knife" tool to cut the hole but it didn't go through, so i'm trying to make that exact hole, on the first pictures face so i can make a window.

After invoking the Knife Tool the status info shows:

For each cut:

Press C to align the cuts
Press Z to cut through

First cut the vertical then the horizontal edges.

After removing the faces you would need to add more edges (highlighted vertices) or use the Window creator and place a completed window at this position.


I am getting no lighting or anything else in my render So I opened blender, made new file and pressed a F12. I changed nothing and I get this as output. Is this output what I should get? I couldn't find anyone that got this result. What should I try to fix my issue? I am using amd gpu.

Issue is solved by moonboots and his suggestion to Properties panel > Render > Performance, try High Quality Normals.


How can I increase the gap between loopcuts? Using the "loopcut" function first, is there a way to widen the gap between the lines?
I think it's going to happen with "Scale". It's only increasing in volume. :.-(

You can indeed do what you want with Scale, you just need to lock the transformation to the X axis to prevent any transformation on the Y and Z axes. Press S followed immediately by X to lock the transformation to the X axis, and only the spacing between the edges will be modified.


Bizarre Outer Shell on a model? Only Appears in pose and object mode I'm new to blender (problem 1, I know) and I've been following a tutorial on character modeling, up until now without any issues that I couldn't solve on my own, but now I've run into a tough one. This issue didn't become prevalent until I started rigging the model you see.

This is the model when in edit mode (resting pose as I've learned) but as soon as I attempt any posing with it I get a weird issue where a "ghost" starts to emerge from the body and typically follows the pose the character is doing but to a more twisted extent:

Now, there are two things to note, one being I am 90% sure this has something to do with backfaces, as this screenshot shows what it looks like after I turned on the "Backface Culling" option (before I turned it on the "Ghost" appeared as a solid version of the model with no textures, this has been the only thing to affect the ghost thus far), the other that this problem didn't occur until after I rigged it, chances are I just f'd up the rigging but I can't be too sure, so if anyone knows how to fix this issue I would be grateful!
edit: File can be found here! :

Your issue lies in the topology. You have double vertices almost everywhere (multiple vertices at the same position in space). This would probably ruin the weight painting leaving parts of the mesh stretched as shown in your pictures. On top of that, back face culling is enabled so any back facing normals will not be shown. This meant that very small slithers of the mesh was being shown making it look like as you said, a ghost mesh.

To fix it you will probably have to remove double via W in edit mode, and then the remove doubles button. Probably a good idea to recalculate your normals with ctrl+n. Then you will likely have to redo the weight painting on the bones.


Baking Normals from a Shader that gets its Normals from a Bump Node I am trying to bake a normal map from an object that gets its normals from a bump node. See the image:

I set "Bake Type" to "Normal" and leave all the other settings as-is.

The baked normal doesn't seem to have any data in it. I.E. it's all the same color (light blue). I think I'm doing this wrong...

There really shouldn't be anything too it. A little checklist
-is the output/Bake texture in your active node?
-is your bake object selected and active?


What auto rigging system should I use to rig my character? Rigify is messing up and buggy right from the converting stage.
Makehuman I have to limit my rigs to MHX2 imports. I've tried all the optional import rigs for MHX and they all lack in some measure.
Those are the ones I've tried.
I tried making my own rig but that is problematic as I can't seem to make a rig that is robust enough.
I'd like to find something that will quickly set up a rig ready to do animation with my models.
I'm trying to avoid bottleneck situations where it takes a lot of manual editing just get some aspect done, for example: I'd like to import a BVH in one click instead of having to assign each bone.
I have dozens of models and I'd like to at least get 1 completely working rig per day or sooner.

I'd like to find a rigging system that has the following:

Easy to animate FK and IK.
Phoneme mouth shapes.
Facial Expression controls.
Versatile hand controls.
Can take BVH input.
Versatile ability to use mesh deform or direct weight paint rigging.
Ability to easily add spring or jiggle systems.
Quickly go from model to rigged character.
Mostly biped but if it can do quadrupeds bonus.
Cloth simulation bonus.

Have you looked into Auto-Rig Pro(ARP)? It's a purchasable add-on. From the reviews and videos that I have seen, it looks pretty solid.


When I try to render, the camera renders from the wrong position So I am totally new to Blender and I work on blendergurus beginner series, as probably many who start with Blender. I tried to solve this now for a long time by myself but everything I read and tried did not work. Maybe you can help me :)

Somehow my camera is stuck at a weird position, if I want to render. I captured the behavior in the GIF below:

https://media.giphy.com/media/dTtyxyZqLiajfgNfUh/source.gif
(Tried to embed the GIF,but imgur is rejecting the request ¯\_(シ)_/¯)

Here are some additional screenshots of my properties, render and camera:

Check in the outliner to see if you have another camera in the scene.  The one that is shown in the Gif, doesn't have its triangle completely coloured in - it's just the outline of a triangle. If it's completely coloured in, it's the ACTIVE camera. With the visible camera you want to render from still selected, press Control and Number Pad 0.
That will throw you into the camera view of that camera and make it the active one.


How can I make a single photorealistic bird feather? I want to make a feather more like the feather on the far left or like the feather on the far right of the second image. It can't just be a texture because I want it to look good up close.

Note: I am not making a whole bird. I do not need a fast rendering feather (although that would be nice as long as it doesn't sacrifice photorealism).

Creating the stalk thing:
To make the the stalk of the feather (or whatever it is called), create a UV sphere. Then, switch to wireframe view, go into edit mode, select the entire sphere and scale it down a bit. Next select the upper half of the sphere and move it upwards and make it smaller.

Setting up the actual feathery bits:
First, subdivide the middle bit by pressing ctrl + r and then scroll downwards a lot to get about 200 or 250 divisions. To set up for feather creation, use alt + RMB on one of inner edges . Then select the same face on the other side with shift + alt + RMB. Once you have the faces selected, create a new vertex group, and click the assign button. You can rename your vertex group if you wish by double clicking it.

I decided to remodel the tip of the feather to make it a bit longer and less spherical with proportional editing. This step is optional:

Particle system settings:
Now for the exciting bit.

Create a new particle system
Switch the particle type from emitter to hair
Enable advanced settings
Switch to vertex mode
Uncheck the box marked "random"
Set the density group to the vertex group we made earlier
adjust the length to something that you like

Combing:
Now for the super exciting part.

Switch to "particle edit" mode

Change the brush to "cut"

Cut away excess hair

Switch the brush to "comb"

Comb to satisfaction

And now you are done!
The only thing left to do is to change the hair render settings to whatever you want!
Here are the cycles thickness settings that I used:

And here are some renders:

In the macro render, you will notice that the feathers aren't quite attached to the stalk. You can fix this by adding a solidify modifier to the shaft and making it a bit thicker.


Rendering Error when I press F12 in Blender I'm a newbie in blender.. and everything was going fine but I don't know whether I clicked something or what, now when I render it gives the error: "No render output note in scene".

I don't even know what this means it must be something very easy that I overlooked.

In the compositor editor type (enabling "Use Node") you should see two nodes one attached to the other. A Render layer node attached to a composite node. The message you are talking about is shown when the composite node is missing.

If it is missing press Shift + A -> output -> composite. Plug the render layer image output into the composite image input.


how do I put the 3D cursor inside an object? I want to change the pivot point of an object through quad view, but when I try to position it inside the object, the 3D cursor just jumps to the area/spot where I clicked on the face of the object. In short, How do I keep the 3D cursor from positioning itself right on the face.

Press Space and select Add Empty then Plain Axes, or add any other dummy object to your scene. Move the Empty object to your desired location using the usual G command. Then bring up the Snap menu with Shift+S and select Cursor to Selected (with access key u). Finally, press Delete to remove the Empty object.

The other techniques described in the comments (zooming in, being in wireframe mode and using Shift+S with Cursor to Grid) are quicker, whereas this technique gives you more precision.

Alternatively, you can press N to bring up the Properties pane, and manually adjust the 3D Cursor's X, Y and Z coordinates:


Having a UV maping problem, does anyone know what this is, and how to fix it? I have been looking all aver for this problem and haven't run in to what this is... Normally I mark my seems and I get a nice UVMap ready to texture but sometimes I get this and it is just kicking my butt trying to find a fix.

Sorry if someone already asked this. I just couldn't find what this is and why it only happens sometimes and what is causing this.

From your screenshot, you have pinned vertices in your UV. This will keep those vertices in place, in this case resulting in the weird unwrap result.

The shortcut for pinning vertices is P - if you want to 'unpin' them, select them and press alt + P. In this case just selecting all vertices and unpinning then should do the trick :)


How do I add a non-deformed end cap to a tube? I want to create some parts that I can reuse for models. I was trying to make a steam punkish exhaust pipe. I want to be able to make the pipe of any length, and as curvy as I like but I want to keep the end cap always undeformed. I approximated my results by hand placing the "crown" at the end of this bezier curve.

I tried to make an array modifier that included the crown as the end cap, but that results in the end cap deforming.

Thinking about this only way I could come up so far is by not using an Array Modifier at all, and using hooks instead.

It may have some downsides and limitations like less flexible texturing and not allowing more complex shapes along the length of the curve, and it wont merge the vertex automatically, but the ends wont get deformed this way, and you won't see any seams if the ends match.

Model your pipe exhaust tip regularly as you did, or append it from a library, whichever way suits you best. Can even be a collection Instance

Instead of using an Array Modifier use the bezier curve Bevel option directly, to give it geometry, you may even use another curve object as section for the bevel. Just make sure the exhaust tip and the section match perfectly so there are no visible seams.

Now align your cap object perfectly with the bezier curve end. That means both position and rotation, including curve handles so they line up perfectly. Try scaling the last curve handle to zero in all axis before hooking up.

Use the 3D cursor to snap the cap in place like Select Vertex > Shift + S Cursor to Selected, then exit edit mode select the cap and Shift + S Selection to Cursor.

Now select the Cap then the Curve (by this specific order) enter Edit Mode on the curve, select the last vertex you previously aligned, press Space Bar type Hook and select the operator Hook to Selected Object

This has the positively unexpected advantage that you can now tweak the shape of or pipe directly from object mode without ever entering Edit Mode in your curve.

On a side note, you can use this with an Array Modifier, but it will not always work perfectly. Since the array is based on segments, depending on the particular length of the curve at a given moment, it may not give an exact count of arrayed items so will get gaps at the end, between the last arrayed object and the end cap.

If you plan on applying the modifiers later you can fix it by hand, you can also use very short array segments to minimize visibility at the expense of performance.


Why does my render output change everytime I click render image? I am using Blender v2.83.0 to render a Motion Tracked car with Smoke simulation in Blender and I cannot seem to get my render settings correct.

I am getting a problem where every time I click 'render image' I get one of four options. I either get the full scene rendered correctly, just the car, just the car but it's blacked out or the full scene rendered correctly but the smoke is stretched. Image examples can be seen below:

All my layers are on the same view layer and I would really appreciate any suggestions. My compositing is simply a render layer into composite.

Thanks in advance,
Ethan

Physics must be baked before rendering.

Go to Phisics settings, find Cache tab, change type to Final and press Bake All button.

Also notice, blend-file must be saved on disc.


Is it possible to visualize the ray paths in the 3D viewport? Is there a possibility to visualize the cycles ray paths (in the 3D viewport)?

It would enable to get an impression of the field of view of multiple cameras when having reflecting and non-reflecting objects in the scene (geometrical optics simulation).

I've made a tutorial for you to explain all the steps.

The essential part is that you can't simply mirror a camera along an axis you need to parent the camera to an object/empty first and then operate on the parent to mirror it.
The video show other tricks like "clear parent inverse" to align a plane on the same camera plane.
Also "Copy Attribute" addon was used to copy the rotation (but you can do it manually)

Hope this answer your question if it does upvote :)