How do I force the netrender to render everything on GPU? I have a server with an Nvidia GPU card and I want to render my images using Cycles on it. I set up Master and Slave instances on the server and a Client instance on my laptop.

The rendering works, but the server renders the net tasks on CPU, instead of GPU.

If I just run Cycles render locally on the server - GPU works.
If I run a client on the server itself and before switching to the netrender choose "GPU Compute" in the render properties - GPU works.

But I cannot select "GPU Compute" on my laptop, because there is no Nvidia GPU card on it.

How do I force the netrender to use GPU instead? Also, is it possible to use different tile sizes for the local render and the netrender, as switching them from preview to final render is too tedious every time.

Network Render plugin does not have this functionality.
Render the scene remotely via the command line. You can run your own script with it to set proper rendering device or render tile-size.
blender -b file.blend -E CYCLES -t 0 -o //file -P script.py

In the script.py:
import bpy

bpy.context.user_preferences.addons['cycles'].preferences.compute_device_type = 'CUDA'
bpy.context.user_preferences.addons['cycles'].preferences.devices[0].use= True

bpy.context.scene.cycles.device = 'GPU'

bpy.context.scene.render.tile_x = 256
bpy.context.scene.render.tile_y = 256

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

Blender 2.8+
There's an API change for Blender versions 2.8+, it's only bpy.context.preferences (not user_preferences anymore)


Creating Base for non-flat surface Can You tell me how to create a base for 3d scanned sculpture (with some surrounding - roots, rocks etc.) where such thing like "flat surface" does not exist (please take a look at attached pic).

Model has it's texture and I would like to preserve it :) Maybe it would be nice to apply texture or color for base.
Can You tell me how to achieve effect similar like this? (not my model unfortunately, just a random screenshot).

I'll be very, very, very grateful for help.

Thanks in advance!
Konrad

If your model has nice geometry around the edges, the first step should be a lot easier.
My answer is provided as an Imgur post (for some reason the steps are in a funny order, sorry) as I can't upload the gifs here - they're too big. I'll outline the basic steps though, just in case the link dies for any reason. All of the operations are performed in Edit mode.

Step 1: Select the vertices around the base of the mesh.
Step 2: Extrude the vertices down to whatever you want the depth to be along the z axis (E, Z, MOUSEMOVE). Then flatten them to a plane (S, Z, 0).
Step 3: Make a face by pressing F. You may want to recalculate normals at this point.


Blender 2.79 Rigging - Dependency cycle help I've read all I could find on dependency cycle issues in Blender, tried everything suggested in related posts: enabled new dependency graph, unchecked stretch in IK setting, checked Extra Object Update and Extra Data Update on IK controls and bones. Nothing seem to work, still getting a lag in animation and the following console output:

Default dependency graph:

Dependency cycle detected:
WristMarker depends on Armature through Bone Parent.
indexIKpole.L depends on WristMarker through Parent.
Armature depends on indexIKpole.L through IK.

New dependency graph:

  Dependency cycle detected:
  'OBindexIKgoal.L.TRANSFORM_LOCAL()' depends on 'OBWristMarker.TRANSFORM_FINAL()' through 'Parent'
  'OBWristMarker.TRANSFORM_FINAL()' depends on 'OBWristMarker.OBJECT_UBEREVAL()' through 'Temp Ubereval'
  'OBWristMarker.OBJECT_UBEREVAL()' depends on 'OBWristMarker.TRANSFORM_PARENT()' through 'Temp Ubereval'
  'OBWristMarker.TRANSFORM_PARENT()' depends on 'OBWristMarker.TRANSFORM_LOCAL()' through '[ObLocal -> ObParent]'
  'OBWristMarker.TRANSFORM_LOCAL()' depends on 'OBArmature.wrist.L.BONE_DONE()' through 'Bone Parent'
  'OBArmature.wrist.L.BONE_DONE()' depends on 'OBArmature.wrist.L.BONE_READY()' through 'Ready -> Done'
  'OBArmature.wrist.L.BONE_READY()' depends on 'OBArmature.wrist.L.BONE_POSE_PARENT()' through 'Pose -> Ready'
  'OBArmature.wrist.L.BONE_POSE_PARENT()' depends on 'OBArmature.forearm.L.BONE_DONE()' through '[Parent Bone -> Child
 Bone]'
  'OBArmature.forearm.L.BONE_DONE()' depends on 'OBArmature.POSE_IK_SOLVER()' through 'IK Solver Result'
  'OBArmature.POSE_IK_SOLVER()' depends on 'OBArmature.arm.L.BONE_READY()' through 'IK Chain Parent'
  'OBArmature.arm.L.BONE_READY()' depends on 'OBArmature.arm.L.BONE_POSE_PARENT()' through 'Pose -> Ready'
  'OBArmature.arm.L.BONE_POSE_PARENT()' depends on 'OBArmature.arm.L.BONE_LOCAL()' through 'Bone Local - PoseSpace Lin
k'
  'OBArmature.arm.L.BONE_LOCAL()' depends on 'OBArmature.POSE_INIT()' through 'PoseEval Source-Bone Link'
  'OBArmature.POSE_INIT()' depends on 'OBindexIKgoal.L.TRANSFORM_FINAL()' through 'IK'
  'OBindexIKgoal.L.TRANSFORM_FINAL()' depends on 'OBindexIKgoal.L.OBJECT_UBEREVAL()' through 'Temp Ubereval'
  'OBindexIKgoal.L.OBJECT_UBEREVAL()' depends on 'OBindexIKgoal.L.TRANSFORM_PARENT()' through 'Temp Ubereval'
  'OBindexIKgoal.L.TRANSFORM_PARENT()' depends on 'OBindexIKgoal.L.TRANSFORM_LOCAL()' through '[ObLocal -> ObParent]'

Maybe there is something fundamentally wrong with my rig? I haven't rigged in a long time in Blender or any other program for that matter. In the past I did some rigs in Maya and Cinema4D and, as far as I can recall, I used similar parenting technique without issues.

I have an arm rig for this test. I have one IK chain from forearm to shoulder, another one from index finger tip to index finger base. I have an empty called wristmarker parented to wrist bone. I have indexIKgoal and indexIKpole parented to the wristMarker, so that when the whole arm moves, finger position stays relative to the wrist.

Appreciate any help.

blend file:

https://ufile.io/pgafy
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=44699481485193911373

The problem is that the wristmarker is an empty object. You can make it a bone and give it a custom shape.

Blender has a limitaion with cycle evaluation on object level, something that even new dependency graph does not solve. This does not exist in Maya, Cinema 4D, etc., where you would use empties in rigging.

In Blender it is convenient to keep all the relations inside the armature object. If you link something to an empty and back to the same rig, it will create dependency on object level.

If you really need to constraint or parent to different object (like when using curves and spline IK), you cannot link back to the same rig, but you have to use a different one to stay clear of any dependency cycles. This can be solved like this:

Rigging question about Spline IK and having all controls on one armature

Another reason to use only bones for any controls the animator will interact with is for linking characters into another .blend files. This also does not work conveniently as in other apps, you have to create a proxy object from your armature. If you had the rig setup with empties outside the armature, your rig would fall apart when making that proxy.


bpy.ops.object.lamp_add not found I am trying to run some old script example which states
# Add a sun lamp above the grid.
bpy.ops.object.lamp_add(type='SUN', radius=1.0, location=(0.0, 0.0, extents * 0.667))

and it says
AttributeError: Calling operator "bpy.ops.object.lamp_add" error, could not be found
Error: Python script failed, check the message in the system console

How to do the same in modern Blender 2.91.0? How to find replacements for old constructs systematically?

Recommended way is to use low level API calls anyway. Create a new data block, create an object, link the data block and add the object to the collection in context:
import bpy

# Create light datablock
light_data = bpy.data.lights.new(name="my-light-data", type='POINT')
light_data.energy = 100

# Create new object, pass the light data
light_object = bpy.data.objects.new(name="my-light", object_data=light_data)

# Link object to collection in context
bpy.context.collection.objects.link(light_object)

# Change light position
light_object.location = (0, 0, 3)


How can I delete or shift certain sections of the Timeline? I'm using a single Blender file to create a 2D slideshow (with animated graphs and stuff). So all the "slides" are in this file. They are of course not actual slides, but sections of the Timeline (so the entire slideshow is run by pressing alt+A). How can I make space in the Timeline to "insert" a new "slide", or how can I "delete" a "slide"?

In the Dope Sheet editor, you can select a specific keyframe, or several of them (use B to border select), and move them with G. You can delete the keys with Suppr or X.

To go further, maybe you could create an Action for each slide, that's a great way to manipulate them using the NLA editor (basically, each slide will act like a movie clip in a video editor). NLA Editor Action Editor


How to make an object only collides with the terrain? I have a question to the the collision in the Blender Game Engine. I made an character (a simple sphere). This character is on layer 2. A empty object is on layer 1. This empty spawns every 5 seconds a character from layer 2 (Add Object). Is it possible to disable the collision
of all the characters? They should only collide with the terrain but not with each other.

I hope you can help me.

It's simple: use collision masks. Download the example file here.

The concept is pretty easy:

Collision Group are the collision 'layers' that the object belongs to. Multiple can be selected.
Collision Mask are the collision 'layers' that the object can collide with. Multiple can be selected.

For example, if Ball2 belongs to Collision Group 2, but can only collide with objects on Collision Group 1 (through the use of Collision Mask), it will not collide with itself.


how to extrude along face normals evenly? Please see the attached pic. I've researched many ways to extrude faces evenly but none of the methods I have seen will actually do it evenly. They all result in face A being extruded far less than face B. What am I doing wrong here?  It's like there is some weighting going on somewhere , somehow. If I create a long cuboid in a fresh scene and try it , it works as expected... all faces extrude an even amount. I'm getting this happen all over this mesh though so I need to fix it in this scene really.

Strangely, if i create a new cuboid in this scene I get the faulty results.. Is there something wrong with the scene?

In This case the problem was that the mesh object had non-uniform scale transformations. The solution was to Apply the transforms Ctrl - A , then choose Scale.


How to repair cylinder mesh with misplaced vertices? I realized, for the first time, I now have the skill to visualize and manifest a 3D object of some complexity!

Do you see this rocket?

It looks pretty cool.  But, nobody would put this thing on the launchpad with an screw-up like this on it.

This thing started life as a cylinder, but and was then highly processed.  But, I don't know an efficient or elegant way of healing this.  I could do it manually - vertex by vertex - but there must be a better way!

Thanks for any help in advance....

If your rocket is symmetrical you could delete the upper half of the vertices, add a mirror modifier and apply (for an easier selection, I would isolate the tip).

You are right, Gunslinger, here is a picture:


Weird anomalies with mesh deform I've applied mesh deform on my mesh and I'm getting some strange results

I'm absolutely sure there are no intersecting faces and it seems that my deform mesh only affects certain vertices of my mesh

I think your meshes are a bit too complicated, too many vertices etc... For example, if I simplify the MeshDeform modifier cage, it works correctly:


Is there a way to transition between 2 textures? I have searched extensively and all the help seems to be having 2 textures next to each other and making a smooth transition between them. This is NOT what I want. I want to have 2 cloud textures overlapping and have 1 see invisible and the other one opaque. I then want the opaque one to slowly disappear as the other one becomes visible or even have them blend into each other as they change from one to the other. Is this possible?

You may want to consider MixRGB or Mix Shader node to achieve this effect.

In the example gif I provided I plugged two different noise textures into a MixRGB node to blend between them, you could animate the 'Factor' slider using a 'value' node. You can also Change the mix dropdown to another blend type, such as add, multiply, or overlay (similar to blend types in photoshop). The resulting mix is then plugged into the Base Color for the Principled BSDF Material.

Hope this helps.


How to use Image Mapping to repeat cut-in-half textures with X and Y in Cycles? thank you for your time, the method works but not for every model

To mirror the texture you can split the UV Coordinates using a Separate XYZ node and then manipulate them using Maths nodes.

The UV and Image Texture range is from 0.0 to 1.0 and so you can mirror one side by Subtracting 0.5 (so it's from -0.5 to 0.5), applying Absolute (so negatives become positive) and Adding the 0.5 back in (so the range ends at 1.0) as follows :

To mirror the opposite side you can simply add another Subtract node to subtract the result from 1.0 to reverse the range :

EDIT The above solution assumes that the UV map is covering the entire 'face' of your model - ie, with the 'mirror' at 0.5 of the UV map. If this is not the case (eg, if the centre line is actually at 1.0) then you can simply use Mapping nodes to shift/scale the range before the mirroring and shift/scale back again afterwards.

For example, consider the following UV map for Suzanne :

Note how the 'centre-line' is at U = 1.0, rather than 0.5. For this we can use the following nodes to achieve the mirroring :

Note how the first mapping nodes scales by 0.5 in the X direction (note that it's in 'Point' mode - if using 'Texture' node, invert the scale to 1/0.5 = 2.0 instead). The final mapping node reverses the scale.

This produces the following result :


Driver variable not updating This is probably a dumb question, but I can't see what I'm doing wrong.

I want to animate a material (actually the y offset of a procedural texture) according to the value of a shape key that's applied to a different object.

The object with the shape key is shown here:

The object is "LATTICE_HP_bladder_for_pistoned". This is a lattice modifier for a geometric object. The shape key's value changes as expected when I scrub through my timeline.

When I copy the data path of the shape key's value, I get

key_blocks["Pistoned"].value

So I apply this to the driver I've added to the texture's y offset as follows:

However, nothing happens when I scrub the timeline. The "Value" field never changes from 0.000, even though the shape key is certainly animating correctly in my scene.

What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

Please note material drivers can be different than a Scale driver. Sometimes you will need to take this somewhat inconvenient step of adding a driver to datablocks view of the outliner.  Get ready for a surprise.

Your material is not shown above.

Select key from the menu ... note the key on panel below.

Note the note from the tooltip from the Lattice Panel which you have already seen. Keys["Key.002"] in my case. Adjust to your case please.  So the toolip is showing two items which must be noted.  Two Strings.

Tooltip above for reference.

Panel entries.  The two pieces of information from the tooltip are entered above.

In Blender User Preferences verify that scripts are enabled.  You may want to seek fuller explanations of that concept here at BSE.

You may want to see this link about materials.
Driver Expression


Copying Armature through Python API I'm writing an exporter, and I want to transform an armature to Y-Up coordinates without actually saving it back to the blend file.

So, here's my transformation matrix:

conversionMatrix = axis_conversion(from_forward='Y', from_up='Z', to_forward='Z', to_up='Y').to_4x4()

I get the armature, copy it, and transform it for exporting:

armature = ob.find_armature().copy()
armature.data.transform(conversionMatrix)
# Export...

However, the actual armature in blender is transformed, 90 degrees, which would ruin the model if I were to save the file.

It seems like the armature isn't actually copied. Is there something wrong with what I'm doing?

Blender 2.72b

You copied the armature OBJECT, not the armature data.  The copied object referred to the same datablock (armature.data).  If you look at the properties panel in the armature tab (as opposed to the object or materials tab) you will see a [2] next to the name of the armature datablock

Instead:

ao = ob.find_armature()
a2 = ao.data.copy()
a2.transform(conversionMatrix)

This copies the armature datablock instead of the object datablock.


hotkey "I" for insert keyframes does not work in pose mode Hotkey "I" for inserting keyframes does not show up in pose mode although, I has not activate "keying set".  "I" works in object mode though.  Using Blender 2.8.
How can I fix this?
thx

your mouse should be in the view port to add key frames , or else enable auto key framing


Why does my cylinder turns into a plane in cloth animation I made a long cylinder directly from 'shift+A' as a cotton rope, then divided it into 10 parts and applied 'cloth' modifier. But it turns into plane later in the animation. I have no idea about what's wrong with my modeling.

I also tried to make a plane and then use 'solidify' to give the thickness. But it also turns out to be a plane.

Here is the animation of that cylinder.

How to prevent the cylinder from being a plane? I want to make a falling rope.

Thanks.

So, it is quite simple, you dont tell blender what is the physic of your rope. A cynlindre with cloth simulation is like an empty cylindre made of fabric.

If you want to create a rope simulation, you will need to apply the simulation on a line and not a cylindre, then draw a cylindre around the line.

I found this video that could help you to achieve what you want.


Blender 2.8 I can't see vertices, edges or faces in edit mode I was working just fine and suddenly when I changed from object to edit mode, neither vertices, edges nor faces were highlighted as usual. I can still select them but can't see them, the object is displayed as in object mode. It happens with all my objects in the scene. Does anybody know why this could happen? I'm using 2.8

This is my viewport. I have one edge selected

The problem is that OVERLAYS is turned off, this feature is added in Blender 2.8, press the icon that looks like two intersecting circles next to Overlays.

In your image, it appears at the bottom of the 3D Viewport, by default it's at the top.


Extrusion creates black artifacts I am a complete beginner to Blender and to modeling, and am taking a tutorial for Absolute Beginners to create my first house.  No problems creating the point for the roof, but when I select the edges to try and extrude out the roof and create an overhang, the part I have extruded turns a scratchy grey color.  Later on when I try to add texture or color to the roof, the extended edges turn the same color as the face of the house, not the rest of the roof.  If anyone is able to translate my poor description and help, it would be much appreciated!  Thanks!!

You might have accidentally extruded twice earlier. If you press E and right click, it looks like nothing happened, but you actually extruded to the same place. Hope this helps somehow.


Will Cycles eventually replace Blender Internal? I remember reading (I can't remember where though), that the Blender Internal render engine had become difficult to maintain and is not based on a modern architecture (hence - Cycles was created).

My question then is this:

Will Cycles ultimately replace the internal renderer?

I have grown somewhat fond of the internal renderer (because I'm accustomed to it and setting up scenes for it), and wish it could be more modern, but I know things might have to change.

Update (5 years later)

Yes, for the upcoming Blender 2.8 release, Blender Internal has finally been superseded by Cycles.

As far as I know, It is not yet officially confirmed. I asked a developer on IRC and he said No. However, one of the other developers has this on his blog.

  The goal of Cycles is to probably replace the Internal Render Engine
  in 1-2 years and have a fast and modern Render/Shading system which
  can be used for production rendering and for animation as well.

from code.blender.. the main developer also hints with..

  There may of course be developers that want to continue developing
  Blender Internal, and the intention is not to drop it immediately.

From BlenderGuru

  Cycles will eventually replace the internal rendering engine, becoming
  the standard that every Blender user will soon use. The sooner you can
  jump aboard, the better.

It seems such a decision was made a long time ago too.

  @andrewpprice There has been no further development for the BI (for
  about 2 years now) apart from critical crash fixes. That won't change.

It also seems that there is an ongoing project that is extending the Internal Renderer

It is all inconsistent information here and there but all very credible sources, so a definitive answer for this would be, It has not yet been confirmed.


Why is the object on the right being selected when I select the object on the left? I need to understand the reason of a specific behaviour. I'm in Object mode and when I select one feather on the left wing, automatically the corresponding feather on the right wing lights up, BUT I have no Mirror modifier, no X mirror, no Topology mirror activated. Do you know if there are others reason that explain this behaviour?

Check the attached video below:

attached video

At the very beginning of your movie, while you're still in Edit Mode you can see that both feathers are actually one object with two unconnected mesh parts.

When you select one of the feathers, the other one is highlited as well because it is the same object.


How to update the dependencies of a driver via python script? i need to be able to update the dependencies of my drivers via script, does anyone knows how to? thank you very much in advance!
my script works on changing the values of the drivers , but sometimes i may need to update

import bpy
import random # Random floating point number between lo and hi
def randf(lo, hi):
    return random.uniform(lo, hi)
bpy.app.driver_namespace["randf"] = randf

Here, an awesome guy gave me the solution!

  Looking at the source code, the button appears to be a direct function
  rather than a python operator:

but = uiDefIconTextBut(block, UI_BTYPE_BUT, B_IPO_DEPCHANGE,
ICON_FILE_REFRESH, IFACE_("Update Dependencies"),
0, 0, 10 * UI_UNIT_X, UI_UNIT_Y,
NULL, 0.0, 0.0, 0, 0,
TIP_("Force updates of dependencies"));
UI_but_func_set(but, driver_update_flags_cb, fcu, NULL);

  The way I update a driver in my add-on is by adding and removing a
  space on the driver’s expression attribute. As far as I could tell, it
  acts the same way:

driver.expression += " "
driver.expression = driver.expression[:-1]


How can I make my stone objects look less shiny? I'm trying to replicate a scene made in UE4 using the same assets, but I'm struggling with the textures a great deal.

In this case, a lot of my objects appear overly shiny rather than looking like they're made of stone, it looks more like plastic.

How can I remove the shine effect almost entirely from these objects?

I am assuming you are using the Blender Game Engine. Try turning down the Specular Intensity on your materials.


Is there a way to render on my NVIDIA card without having to run the entire Mac OS on it as well? Wondering if there is a way to render on my nvidia card without having to run my entire machine on it. Whenever I render on gpu, it causes the whole OS and all other apps to lag. Mission control, resizing windows, scrolling, and any other graphics related process outside of Blender become super choppy.

When I set my Mac to run on the default OS driver (using the nvidia Graphics Driver Manager in SysPrefs) GPU rendering is unavailable in Blender. If I set my Mac to run on nvidia, gpu rendering is available again, but results in the same lag issues.

Is there some kind of 3rd party gpu manager that would let me enable nvidia for Blender while continuing to run the rest of my Mac on its default gpu?

Thanks in advance!

Specs: Late 2013 iMac 27" - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775m (2GB) - High Sierra 10.13.6 - Blender 2.79

Rendering is a very resource-intense task thus I'd highly recommend you to avoid doing anything else on your machine while rendering: it will either clutter the system or simply work out poorly.

Anyway, I suggest you to try rendering your final scenes or animations from the command line. I noticed that renders done that way tend to be kinda faster and the machine is more stable without the overhead of Blender's GUI.

Make sure to set up your blend file so to make it use the GPU for rendering and make sure to specify all the output options (select a path, a filename, the file format, etc.). Save the blend and close the GUI.
Copy the path to your blend file. Then, move into your Blender's executable path via Terminal (note that your path might differ, so I suggest you to also see this answer):

cd /Applications/Blender/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender
Run:

./blender -b "pathToYourBlendFile" -f 1

(-b tells it to run in background, -f 1 tells it to render the first frame only).

Now the render should start with all of your preferences. Try to see if the system is more usable while rendering this way (mine usually is, but I suppose YMMV).


how to align object according to specific axes i've created two obejcts in blender (in different files).
Here is the first one

The y axis (green) is perpendicular to object surface. Object has no rotation.

and i have the second object

It has z axis (blue) perpendicular to object surface. Second object also has no rotation.

The question is why axes that are perpendicular to those object are different (y axis in first case and z axis in second), if objects has no rotation?
Is it possible to make directions of axes identical in first and second cases?
Thanks.

Answer: Rotate the object you want to change and then apply the rotation.

Explanation

One way to change the orientation of an object is to rotate it and then apply the rotation.

For instance, I create a torus (SHIFT A -> mesh -> torus).

Next I go to the object tab of the properties editor and check Display -> Axis. I don't need to do this to complete the steps, but it makes it easier to see what happens.

As you can see, there is now a yellow axis. You can see 'Z', but 'X' and 'Y' are within the torus

Now, in object mode, I rotate the torus on the X axis 90 degrees (R 9 0 ENTER) The world axis has not changed, but the yellow Z axis now points along the green (Y) world axis.

This is because there are two different coordinate systems.  There is a coordinate system that is shared by all objects. It is called the 'world' coordinate system.

But the second coordinate system is unique to each object. it is called the 'local' coordinate system.  When I move an object in object mode, I move the origin of the object.  When I rotate the object in object mode, I change the orientation of its axes. (Moving and rotating in edit mode do not change the orientation.)

When you add an object in blender, it is positioned so that its local axis align with the world axis.  When you rotate the object, while in object mode the axis changes.

You can apply the rotation. If you do this the object will remain in its orientation but the axis will realign with world axis. (CTRL-A R)

with the result


How to detect clicks on empty space via python? To elaborate - I want a setup where LMB clicking (in the LMB to select setup) on an empty space in the 3D View causes all of the mesh to be deselected when in Edit Mode, all objects when in Object mode, etc. I specifically would like to do it via an addon, but any help is appreciated.

It's actually really simple:

Go to User Preferences > Input and change the filter type from Name to Key-Binding
Search for action and find the 3D View category
Change view3d.cursor3d to object.select_all
Set Action to Deselect

Clear search filter
Expand 3D View > Mesh and Add New
Set it to mesh.select_all and Deselect
Bind it to Mouse, Action and Press


frame_change_pre.append(handler) doesn't work I wanna run a function each frame. So I create a new script and type in the following:

import bpy

def my_handler(scene):
    print("Frame Change", scene.frame_current)

print("test")
bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(my_handler)

The problem is, that it simply doesn't work. When I hit "Run Script", "test" is written to the console, but nothing else happens then.

From link below: "By default handlers are freed when loading new files. In some cases you may want the handler to stay running across multiple files (when the handler is part of an add-on for example)."
You may need to use the persistent decorator:

import bpy
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent

@persistent
def my_handler(scene):
    print("Frame Change", scene.frame_current)

print("test")
bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(my_handler)

see https://docs.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_60_6/bpy.app.handlers.html


Need help with simple turnaround render This is my first time using blender so bear with me please. When trying to render a turnaround gif I keep running into problems- so far:

The keyframes auto changing to match each other. If frame 1 is 0 rotation, and I change frame 36 to 355 rotation, frame 1 will become 355 as well.
My rig isnt turning with my mesh, despite being parented. this leads to the arms freaking out like so

The platform + tools rotate on a very different axis than the character model mesh does.

any help would be greatly appreciated, youtube and google have been no help with these :(

Turnarounds are generally made leaving the character still, and having the camera orbiting: this can be achieved creating an empty in the center of the orbit, parenting the camera to the empty and rotating the empty: you will have to set at frame 1 a rot keyframe value of 0, then set at frame 37 a Z rotation of 360 (Euler rotation), then go to graph editor, select all keyframes, press T and set the interpolation to "linear" and run the animation from 1 to 36.

If you really want to rotate the character, as it is posed, every movement has to be performed by the armature in pose mode, do not rotate the mesh in object mode, because the character is child of the armature, not the inverse. If it is not present, you will have to create a "Main" bone and set all others bones child of the main, eventually parenting all tools and platform to it, then animate the rotation of the main bone.


Can't select bones in weightpaint mode I watched a lot of tutorials but I don't know what to do further.

When I go into weightpaint mode it looks lie in the picture or the bone have an orange outline.

I tried to select the bone by right clicking, left clicking with ctrl and shift. I even tried to select the bone by name.

But it doesn't work.

The easiest way to change "bone" during weight paint is to select the corresponding vertex group.


Displacement modifier with custom height map problem here are 3 spheres. I have a problem with stretch on my sphere number 2. I used a Displacement modifier with an image texture (height map), however I guess that the texture is being projected flat, which causes stretch around the middle section.
Sphere number 1 also has a Displacement modifier but this time with blender's built in Voronoi texture. It seems to me like it's not projected flat, there are no stretches and the result is great.
How can I use Displacement modifier to get perfectly displaced object while using my own height maps? Is there a way I can avoid this flat projection with displacement modifier?

Sphere number 3 was displaced with material (the same height map as sphere 2), with this node set up. Notice the Box projection is key here as flat projection gives almost identical stretch that appears on sphere number 2.

Sphere number 3 Is what I want to achieve but by using displacement modifier instead of material because later on I want to export displaced mesh out of blender. I know I could bake height map out of material and then use it as displacement map just like in this tutorial: Convert material displacement to a mesh - youtube
However, this seems like too many extra steps and too much time wasted especially if I want to do this often and I'm only using a height map not a procedural material. Thank you for your help, have a nice day.

Here is the blend file.

Youn need to plug the "UV" output from the texture coordinate node, into the image texture node, instead of the "Object" output. If you are using a default sphere, it should already be UV unwrapped.


How to animate Rubik's Cube rotations I’ve built a blender scene of a Rubik’s Cube to create animations of different move sequences for solving the cube.  I’ve got a lot of sequences to create, so I need the simplest way possible to create each animation.  However, I’m finding that animating rotation is a nightmare.

When I rotate one side of the cube (nine pieces around the cube’s centre), I’m struggling to get the individual pieces to behave.  With XYZ Euler, the first couple of rotations are fine, but on the third rotation the pieces spin about into position.  With Quaternion WXYZ, the pieces separate slightly.

I’ve also tried creating Child Of constraints, but it’s too much work as rotating one side means that I have to create keyframes for setting the influence of the parent to 1 for the nine pieces and then again to set the influence to 0.  It takes an age.

Here’s a link to my blend file using XYZ Euler:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/pp8iztzkz5mr5ki/Cube_XYZ_Euler.blend

I got the idea to use Quaternion rotation from this video, which also uses the same method for performing the rotations as me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4fs01zdvtg0#t=855 The URL jumps to 14:15 which shows exactly how I’m doing my rotations.  However, it works for the guy in the video!

In the video description is a link to the blend file.  When you load this blend file and play it, the rotations look perfect (using Quaternion rotation).  However, if you delete all the keyframes and start rotating it yourself, the pieces start to separate.  Is this because the blend file was created on an older version of blender where the rotation worked better?

I feel like I’m close to getting it, but just missing one last piece of information.  It’s driving me insane!

I’d really appreciate some help on this, as I’ve been struggling for days on it now and I need to move on.

You definitely need to use Quaternion rotation, but you don't have to use linear interpolation. If you set it to Bezier and set the handles to Automatic, then select all in the Graph window, then hit Shift+S, you can select Flatten Handles, which will help fix the problem of different cubies moving at different rates than their neighbors.

You should also add keyframes for all cubies whenever you record a turn, so that all the handles are the same widths. These two things together will completely solve your F-Curve troubles.

You should also move the individual centers of your cubies to the center of the whole cube, so they rotate correctly, and so that the only keyframes you'll need are those of Rotation.


How to move 3D cursor to point in bezier circle? Can anyone help me find solutions for these questions:

I want to move 3D Cursor to red point.

When I left click to red point, I don't know if 3D cursor really points to red point or not.

I want to determine the point on Bezier circle (I call it P), and POD = 30. How do I determine it?

This is probably more general than you need:

To establish a point on the circumference of a curve circle at a known angle from its local X axis.

Shortcuts for 2.79

Assuming a circle at an arbitrary location and rotation:

Select the circle. ShiftNumpad 7 align the view to it, and ShiftS put the 3D cursor to its center.
CtrlAltSpace create a custom orientation from the circle; Check 'Use After Creation'. ShiftA create a Mesh: Single Vertex. EXX the vertex outward in X of the circle's space, with snap set to 'Vertex','Active'.  There should be a control point to snap to.
RZZ the extruded vertex through the known angle, with '3D Cursor' as pivot.(Illustrated with a duplicate edge)
With the vertex selected, ShiftS snap the 3D cursor to it.

Your circle is probably already aligned to the world, so you may be able to skip the Custom Orientation steps.

In an even worse situation, though, where the circle's own control points are not aligned with its local axes (with Custom Orientation and Snap set as before):

Extrude a vertex to any available control point on the circle to establish a radius
Extrude another vertex from the circle's center, in the X of the circle's space (EXX) to any point outside the circle
Rotate RZZ the radius vertex about the center of the circle, with snap on, until the rotation snaps to the other vertex  you sent out in local X.


Can you use two computers to render in Cycles? I have a fairly complex scene that I would like to render in cycles. However, it is taking forever (as I expected). I have two computers (a laptop and a desktop-both are Windows 10, neither has a graphics card, and from within the last 3 years.) Is it possible to somehow take advantage of both computer's power to render the scene more efficiently?

If you are rendering a single image

(Alternative solution)

Since you are using Cycles, you can render the same scene on the two computers using half the number of Render samples on each one, then compositing them (in GIMP or in Blender), superimposing one onto the other with 50% opacity.

The two computers must use two different values (like, 0 and 1) for "Seed", otherwise you'll only get the same exact image, with half the shading quality, twice.

Grant Davis in a comment suggests that each instance of blender should output an OpenEXR image, which allows for a finer memory representation of color, so that less information is lost on the way to the final image.

Once the two computers have created their renders and saved as .exr, open a new blender instance and set the render size to the same it was in your scene. Then create your compositing nodes: two image inputs and a mix node.

Here, each image was rendered with full global illumination at 128 samples. You can see the top one when I mute (M) the Mix node. The mixed version has a quality comparable to a 256 samples render.

For animations, Tooniis' solution works fine.


How to extrude the faces roundly? I follow the tutorial on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2uY7rjhhMs .
At 7 min of the clip, he extruded the faces with rounded corners. Everytime I try, it doesn't look like that one. I think the way I did is pretty much right, maybe that guy using some kinda, trick or something like that.
How can I extrude faces roundly like that guy?

I believe he has the subsurface modifier (Subdivision Surface) turned on (around 2:00).  He did not apply it so it's dynamic.


Copying exact position and pointing angles of a tracked camera with non-tracked camera working on a 900 frame animation. camera 1 is constrained / tracked to an empty, but at frame 700 i want the camera to move freely for the final 200 frames. i copied camera 1 at frame 700. camera 2 is in perfect alignment with camera 1 until i remove the constraint. camera 2 then shifts (same vector but pointing a different way) and its hard to line up again. am i missing something? is there a better way to do this?

Switching from a constrained cam (track to) to a duplicate and maintaining the exact same view as the original cam when the constraint is removed from the duplicate -

Take the timeline cursor to the switch over frame.

Duplicate the camera.

The duplicated cam will inherit the same constraint as the first.  To prevent it swinging back when the constraint is removed, select the duplicate cam and press "CTL-A --> Visual Transform".

Then delete the constraint from the duplicate.

When switched to the duplicate, the cam view should remain exactly as the original cam was.


Using particle system to array objects on vertices I would like to use the hair particle system to make a random 'fence' so at every vertex I add a particle which comes from a group. It works but it does not add a particle to every vertex. (The number or particles is the as the number of vertexes of the base object)

Is there a way to fix it?

Thanks in advance!

You need to uncheck the "Random" box.

(Note: this answer was posted before the question showed that "Random" was unchecked already.)


BGE. Is it possible to create transparent plane with blur filter? 17 09 2015
here is blend to test: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/cwpyem6zve6r2u4/blur5.blend

I'm still trying to figure out how to add blur filter to plane to make under plane objects all blurred in BGE.
Here is very final result I want to see:

I just found old script to make portals. And it still works, but it seems to be buggy sometimes, it's look like a true(fake) glass.
All i need to do is to add gaussian blur filter to glass plane. (I marked this area blue color background - this area objects under plane needs to be blurred.)

Here is .blend to improve: blend file here
Need any suggestions and solutions...
Thanks for helping!!! :)

I never used BGE and you blend file link gives a 403, but here's how I'd implement that effect:

Normally in a game engine:

Render your scene to a texture. That's the first step you normally do for post-processing.

Render the glass pane to another texture. The glass pane should be white, the rest black. Disable material and light for faster rendering. If your glass pane is partially hidden by other objects, these parts should also be black in your rendering.

Blur your original rendering. Use the black/white texture as a mask so only the glass pane gets blurred. Alternatively, blur the whole image in a copy and use the texture to combine both.

In Blender:

Here's my node setup with an exaggerated version of the effect. On the right, the blur map. I used the object ID pass to generate it.


How can I independently pose Group Instances? I would like to add two instances of a model created by makehuman to a scene.

After linking one model (File/Link) and adding a proxy Ctrl-Alt-P. I used Add / Group Instance to add another instance but after that both models change pose when I make changes in pose mode.

How can both models be animated independent from each other?

This a follow-up of an earlier question how-can-a-rigged-model-be-used-multiple-times-in-a-scene

On Linux (have not tested on Mac) I recently used the following method to create layout for a shot that required 3 instances of a procedural rock creation rig. Then i created a proxy of the armature from each of the group instances and posed them accordingly.

Starting with two folders: one containing an asset file and the other where my shot file exists. In the asset file the Rig/Geometry is grouped.

blend:~/demoProceduralRocks>> ls
asset/ shot1/

Since I want to create create a scene that should have 3 identical instances of the asset, I create hard links to the file in the shot's import folder

blend:~/demoProceduralRocks>> cd shot1/import/

blend:~/demoProceduralRocks/shot1/import>> ln -v ../../asset/Rock.blend Rock.instance.1.blend

blend:~/demoProceduralRocks/shot1/import>> ln -v ../../asset/Rock.blend Rock.instance.2.blend

blend:~/demoProceduralRocks/shot1/import>> ln -v ../../asset/Rock.blend Rock.instance.3.blend

This is how it looks after creating hard links

blend:~/demoProceduralRocks> ls -lirt asset/ shot1/import/
asset/:
total 172
22217836 -rw-rw-r-- 4 blend home 169297 2013-05-27 15:22 Rock.blend

shot1/import/:
total 516
22217836 -rw-rw-r-- 4 blend home 169297 2013-05-27 15:22 Rock.instance.3.blend
22217836 -rw-rw-r-- 4 blend home 169297 2013-05-27 15:22 Rock.instance.2.blend
22217836 -rw-rw-r-- 4 blend home 169297 2013-05-27 15:22 Rock.instance.1.blend

Then I layout the shot file by linking the groups from the hard linked files created above. Then I make a proxy of the Armature and Pose each proxy separately. (A demo of this in action)

blend:~/demoProceduralRocks> tree ./
./
|-- asset
|   `-- Rock.blend
`-- shot1
    |-- Layout.shot1.blend
    `-- import
        |-- Rock.instance.1.blend
        |-- Rock.instance.2.blend
        `-- Rock.instance.3.blend


Bezier Curve - Split one large end into multiple wires Would that even be possible?

I have one large, Bezier curve wire, made using a Bezier Circle.
I need to extrude that end into several, smaller wires.

How should I proceed? Is that even possible? Or do I have to create separate curves/circles?
I need it to be as seamless as possible too.

You can only have two segments attached to a point in a curve, but you can have multiple disconnected segments in the same curve object.

While in edit mode, many of the steps you use in mesh editing work in a similar way.

⇧ ShiftA to add a new curve that is part of the existing object
⇧ ShiftD to duplicate the current selection
E to extrude a segment that is connected to the selected point/s
L to select points linked to the point under the cursor
⎈ CtrlL to select points linked to selected points
F to fill in a segment between two selected points

Each point has a radius property so you can give the shielding a larger bevel than the inner wires. You use ⎇ AltS to adjust the radius of a point, this can also be edited in the properties sidebar.

The disconnected pieces can be positioned close together so that the smaller wires appear to continue on inside the larger wire. Different materials can be assigned to different curve segments the same as assigning materials to selected faces in a mesh.

Then after setting the bevel, you get one object that appears to be multiple wires.


Import group from external blend file I have a .blend file that has a house group in it:

I'd like my script to be able to extract the house group from that file, then make duplicates of it in the current scene. I want to be able to position the duplicates etc.

The closest I could find is getting the meshes in the .blend file, here:
http://www.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_72_release/bpy.types.BlendDataLibraries.html

filepath = dir + "/somewhere/myHouseModel.blend";

with bpy.data.libraries.load(filepath) as (data_from, data_to):
    data_to.meshes = data_from.meshes
        for mesh in data_to.meshes:
            if mesh is not None:
                print("Mesh name: %s" % (mesh));
                ...

I suppose I could do something to just extract the meshes and work with that, but it would be nicer to properly link to the group. This is how I had it working manually in a standalone blend scene, so I'd like to mimic it via my python script.

Thank you for any help

This loads group "Head" from file mouth.blend.  The group can be added to the scene as a group instance.

with bpy.data.libraries.load("/home/batfinger/3DModels/mouth.blend") as (df, dt):
    dt.groups = ['Head']

In your case you will load group "house00" from file myHouseModel.blend

How to add a group instance is covered here Add a group instance with python


Convert .3ds to .fbx without losing scale I'm trying to convert a bunch of .3ds files from a game to .fbx, so that I can import then into Unreal Engine. After the import into Unreal Engine all .fbx files have different sizes though.

Currently I convert my .3ds files as follows (images of the taken steps: https://imgur.com/a/4N86Xzl):

I start a new file, delete default box and import the .3ds
I hit ⎇ Altg and ⎇ Altr such that the thing looks normal.
I press ⎈ Ctrl⇧ Shift⎇ Altc and select geometry => origin. I actually would like to move the mesh up the y-axis, such that the the bottom is on top of the origin. But, I don't know how to do this. How do I do this?
I remove all boxes I compressed in step 2.
I go to export to .fbx, set smoothing to 'face' and select 'mesh'.
I import the created .fbx into Unreal v4.22, and some objects have similar size, while others are way bigger when imported.

How do I ensure that these objects have equal size? In the game's official map editor there's no problem whatsoever with sizes. So I don't really understand why a conversion to .fbx is messing with the scales.

Blender 3ds importer is weak or format is dead.

Try native FBX Converter. It's free, can explore, view and convert in batch 3ds, dae, dxf, fbx (old version for example) and obj to fbx up to 2013.


Accuracy of bone influence (rigging/weighting) I'd like to find a process or a tool so that I can :

Place bones to define their influence precisely so that an automatic weighting will be ok
Report their influences to another bone, as i dont have the choice of the final armature

For instance, is it possible to define children (and deform) bones and report their weights to their parent after the weighting is done ?

What you're describing is convoluted and without purpose.

With that in mind the closest thing we have is 'Envelope' bones.

Where in its bubble defines influence.

The only bones that have weight are deform bones.


Simple parquetry tiling Is it possible to create this parquetry pattern by modelling only a single tile and using some system of array modifiers, and then applying a single material, that gives each tile a similar, but individual, pattern? And for clarity: each rectangle is one tile, and each square is made of four tiles. I've intentionally exaggerated the edges of the tiles, for visibility.

This is the setup I have at the moment.

I'm quite happy with the overall looks of it, but it gives a seamless pattern over the entire floor, and I want each tile to have an individual variation, like this.

With one material shared between all the rectangles, you can add randomized attributes, as long as each rectangle is a separate mesh object.

The trick is using the Object Info Node with the Random output as a factor in texture position as well as in a colour overlay.

Here's the modified Material node tree. All collapsed nodes are unchanged from the original material from the original question.

Here's a sample screenshot of the single material across the 48 rectangular meshes (16 groups of 3). It demonstrates the randomization of the colour overlay as well as the shift in Texture coordinates.

Randomizing Colour

The colour overlay is easier to explain. You take the Random value into the Factor of a Colour Ramp and then mix that over top of your base colour. The Random value will apply a different position value from the colour ramp to each of the mesh objects, giving you the colour variation you need. Adjust the colour ramp to make it as subtle as you want.

Randomizing Texture Position

This part is a little trickier. Essentially we want to modify the X and Y values of the Texture Coordinate. It's important to know that Adding to these values moves the textures, and Multiplying a number by these values Scales the Texture Coordinates. We don't want to scale here, we just want to randomly change the X and Y values of the coordinates.

The problem is that we can't do this with the Mapping node, so we need some math nodes.

First we take the output of the Mapping Node and split the XYZ values with a Separate XYZ node.
Then we add the Random value to the X and the Y values
Then we use the Combine XYZ node to combine the altered XY values with the unchanged Z value.
At this point we pipe the vector output into the rest of the node tree as was originally set up.

This way we are adding a random integer to the X and Y value and shifting the texture coordinates for each mesh that uses our single material.

Note: In this example I did not randomize the Glossy material, although you could certainly do that as well.

Tip: If you want to learn more about modifying texture coordinates, I would highly recommend Bartek Skorupa's video: "Manipulating Texture Coordinates Like A Boss"


How do I measure half the length of a specific part of an object in Blender (3D modeling software)? As you can see in my images, all of my cubes are inaccurately placed on this object and the four corned cubes (labeled as blue) are not placed accurately on the on the corners of this object. Is there a way to accurately space out the difference between each cube, for example I might want each cube to be placed 2 cm apart from each other, and I want all the four corned cubes to be placed precisely on the corners of this object?

How would I do this for this particular situation?

Use snap vertex and an array modifier. By snapping a cubes vertex to the outside edge of the castle turret the cube will be lined up. Then add a array modifier to that cube and set the count to 4. If your math is right number 4 cube will line up with the opposed edge.


Halo particles don't render in Cycles I have a problem with particles. I can see them in the viewport, but no matter what I do I can't see them in my render. Could anyone of you please help me? I really want to create a snowy scene.

Here's my scene:

For Cycles to render something, it has to have some kind of geometry for the light to interact with.  But particles are really just 0-dimensional points in space, by default they have no geometry.  So for Cycles to render them you need to give them some geometry.
You have several options under the Particle Settings panel > Render rollout as to how to render the particles:

None: the particles themselves are not rendered at all.  Use this option if you are using the particles just to control something else; such as a point density cloud, smoke simulation, explode modifier, etc.
Halo: the particles are rendered as small volumetric-like glowing points.  Note: this button only works in Blender Internal, to render halos in Cycles you must use point density clouds (see below).
Line: the particles are rendered as line segments pointing in the direction of their velocity.
Path: used for hair or keyed particles.
Object: the particles are rendered as instances of a specified object.
Group: the particles are rendered as instances randomly picked from a specified group.
Billboard: the particles are rendered as square planes whose normals always face the camera.

Point Clouds

Rendering halos in Cycles is a little more complicated (but way more flexible and useful) than in BI.  As stated above, you must use volumetric Point Clouds.
To set this up create a domain object (usually, but not necessarily, a cube) around the particles, make sure all particles you want to render halos are within the box (or use multiple domains).
Then give the domain object a volumetric emission material by plugging an Emission shader into the Volume Material Output socket.  By default this will simply emit light from the entire volume, so to tell it to only emit light from where there are particles add a Point Density texture node controlling the emission strength.

Here's an overview of the Point Density node's settings:

Particle System:  Use a particle system to control the point cloud.  Points will be rendered at the particles' locations.  (This is what you want.)
Object Vertices:  Use the vertices of an object  to control the point cloud.  Points will be rendered at each vertex of the selected object.
Object:  The object to get the particle system or vertices from.
Particle System:  The particle system from the specified obejct to use for the point cloud.
Space:  If you want the halos to be rendered exactly where the particles are in the scene use World Space.  If you want the particles' locations to be scaled down and moved to fit in the domain object use Object Space.  Most of the time you want World Space.
Radius:  The radius of each individual halo.
Interpolation:  The interpolation method between voxels.  Cubic or Linear usually works best, Closest gives no interpolation.
Resolution:  The number of subdivisions (voxels) in the volume.
Color Source:  The property value to send to the Color output socket.


Image bleed when using Import Image as Plane I'm working on an project where I need to import some graphics that I created. I'm able to import them fine using the Import Images as Planes plugin.

They look totally fine when in the Material viewport shading type:

However, as soon as I go to render it out, I get these strange speckles along the sides and top:

I'm using Blender 2.76, hash 477078b and from what I can tell it's the image bleeding over the edge of the plane to the other side, but I have no idea how to fix that.

Does anyone know what's causing this and how I could fix it?

I believe you to be right as for the cause of the problem. I can see two easy ways to solve it:

Scale the geometry down in the UV Image Editor and live a happy life ever after.
If you actually need to presicely fit the plane to the image, add a blank (as in zero-alpha) border around your image in your favourite image editor (1px should do it.)


Side view is not in orthographic view? Before when I went into side view it would automatically put it in orthographic view but now it isn't. How do I fix this?

You can press Numpad 5 shortcut for toggling Between Orthographic and Perspective.

You can click on the circled icon to toggle the view type as well.
You are looking for the icon to look like below:

If it still isn't automatic try the user preferences under Edit > Preferences

Make sure that this is set up as so.
You can then save your pref using the sandwich menu (the three lines in the bottom left corner)


How are cycles lamp types different? I have noticed that some lamp types result in less noise than others.
For example, a point lamp gives less noise than a mesh lamp (rendered at 10 samples):

Here is the blendfile used for this test.

Which lamp types give the least amount of noise and why?
What is the technical explanation of how these lamps are calculated?

Generally, a high view factor between your scene and the lamp you use makes sampling smoother and less noisy, but also reduces the contrast in your scene.

Therefore, point lamps and sun lamps are relatively inefficient, meshlights and other lamps with a significant and homogenous surface area are more efficient and ambient light from an environment map (that has a low contrast or at least not only small points of light on it) is the most efficient lighting source.

While the lamp choice has relatively significant effects on the noise produced in combination with glossy and glass surfaces (especially with caustics enabled), the influence is smaller with matte surfaces.

The "Multiple Importance Sample" option in materials and lamps optimizes the sampling for small view factors and thereby (partially) compensates for the inefficiencies created by them.


black patterns on the sphere I'm new to both Blender and Sculptris. I was working on another model and it has similar problem. I first thought there was some problem with mapping the texture file but it seems like the import process went wrong.
I decided to see what it would do if I just export the default sphere into Blender from Sculptris.
Importing default sphere to Blender from Sculptris:
How the sphere looks in rendering:
Thanks a lot!

Edits:
I tried as suggested below to enter edit mode and hit ctrl+N. Something changed but it didn't solve the problem. Please see screenshots below.

Did I not get the ctrl+N right?

2nd edit:
Here's the file.

Sculptris seems to mess a bit with custom split normals data (or the export routines at least). When Custom Normals are present, some functions of Blender won't give you the expected result (and recalculating the normals is one of them, as well as setting an Edge Split ange). Delete this data to free the normals again. You can do this in the Mesh Data tab using the Clear Custom Split Normals Data button:

After this, all normals are pointing in the same direction again:
before

after

finally, recalculate the normals using Ctrl + N:


How to round sharp edges on curve? I converted a mesh to a curve, to create a path in 3D space, and now I want to round the sharp edges. (Please see the top-right quadrant in the image below).  What's the best way to round the sharp edges? Tks!

I've experienced this sort of problem before, and while it doesn't work in all cases, one of the easiest / fastest methods I've found is this:

Convert the curve to a mesh.
Vertex bevel the corners - this gives you a nice control over the number of segments and width of the bevel
Convert back into a curve.

Your eventual curve will have a lot more control points near the corners (typically one per vertex after the bevel) and be a little more difficult to handle via the curve controls as a result, so I'd do this step last.  It's also reasonably destructive, but it works.


How do you import a Compositing Node Set-up? I have a Compositing node set-up for a lomography effect that I want to export or append to other blend files. Is there a way to do this?

I tried grouping the nodes, but the group wasn't appearing anywhere when I tried to append them in. (Node setup attached for whatever it's worth.)

You can do this by making these nodes into a custom Node Group and then appending it to the file. To do this select all the nodes, and press Ctrl+G. (I would recommend not including the Render Layer and Composite nodes, as they will be present in the new file)

Now you can go to your new file and select File > Append and then navigate to the proper .blend file and then into the NodeGroup folder. Select the desired node group, and click Append.

Now you can go into your node editor and use Shift+A > Group to select your node group. You can edit it using Tab.


Texture stretched, polka dots do you know why my texture is stretched? It's a polka dot motif in a png generated on Photoshop, they are perfect circles but in the model appears as ellipses.
This is Blender 2.90

I agree with the commenters, but I will go ahead and further explain what goes on here.
A UV map is instructions for how to take an image, and wrap it onto a mesh like wrapping paper. The problem you are having is probably because one of these: UV maps (quite justifiably) do not care about

Different aspect ratios of the image than that expected.
Changes in the scale of the mesh (this is a very good thing, but is likely the trouble you are having).

What is the scale of your object?
How did you make your UV map?
Did you scale the mesh within edit mode after you had UV unwrapped it?

... Find out next time on The Happy Family!


Cycles render engine is not rendering anything I've looked everywhere in SE for a solution, nothing seems to be working. For no obvious reason cycles rendering is not working, as you can see in the screenshot, here's what I've tried to do:

check/uncheck sequencer in post processing tab.
changing between global and local view.
switching between layers.

is there anything else I can try?

here's the blend file:

your camera is pointing to nothing... if you press numpad 0, you see why you get that "empty" render...

select the camera and press CTRL + numpad 0, you now see the selected camera points to the scene objects, then hit F12, you get what you expected:

update

here's the result after appending all object and actions from your file into a blank new file


Render of Smoke/Fire shows nothing I am doing the Blenderguru tutorial on Making Fire. After the initial setup he does a render and so did I ....

Probably I did something silly but I cannot find it. I already did delete the circle  and domain and recreated these but nothing. What is my mistake
?

Before you can render a smoke simulation you need to run the simulation once.

To do that go to the first frame and press AltA (or the play animation button on the timeline)

Pay attention to the gray bar being created at the bottom of the time line, it will show you the frames that have been cached.

So the key thing to learn is that the information for most simulations (smoke, physics, particles, etc) has to be created and cached first. Otherwise blender has no information to be rendered.

Also, any changes made in the simulation will require that you re-cache the whole thing.


Action editor doesn't quite work well I’m trying to make separate animations for my character, which will be used for an experimental game in Unity. I’m having trouble with the action editor, it seems to be not working the way it should.

Here’s my first created action, it works fine, just the way it should:

First gif

Now when I add a second action just for the apple’s stem, which should be a separate animation, the peel object not only moves but its animation is also wrong:

Second gif

The peel now opens like a door, which it shouldn’t do that, only peel off like in the first “.gif”. Can it be that I did bad links to the bones? I also tried unticking the animations in the NLA editor, but the peel still distorts if I don’t remove the second action completely. Whenever I create more than one action, it always interferes with the other actions, especially if I create an action on the peel’s bones and then create a new action for the same peel, it gets distorted like if the armatures have 2 different animations playing at the same time.

My project's download link

I did a few things to this file before sending it back to you.

As moonboots said, it wouldn't be a good practice to have so many armatures. So I consolidated them all into one. This required renaming all of the bones, to avoid naming conflicts, so all bone names are now unique. This also means I needed to rename the vertex groups accordingly so that existing skin deformations would be preserved. This will make things easier by allowing you to access all bones directly whenever you're in Pose Mode.
The bone rolls for your peel joints were very much not aligned, which creates a problem for anyone trying to select them all and rotate along one common axis. They are now aligned: rotating along the local Z will unwrap the peels in an appropriate (away from the apple) direction. This was achieved by going into Edit Mode, selecting the base bone for a given peel chain, adjusting the Bone Roll value for it until it lines up as being tangentially aligned with the curved surface of the apple, then select all the bones in the same chain, while adding this newly tweaked bone to the selection last. Then press Shift + n to bring up the Recalculate Roll menu, and choose the option called Active Bone. All the other bones will snap to have the same orientation as the base bone.
After realigning the axes, I needed to recreate your Peel open action, since the keyframe data had originally been set on channels which were now not correct for the new bone orientations. It still takes up the same number of frames. The only difference is that now it makes use of all of the bones in each peel chain (all of them rotate now, as part of the action), instead of only the base one.
The Stem rot action was also recreated, but I didn't really know what it was supposed to do. It's action only contains a single rotation, 90 degrees in the Global Z, because that's what it looked like your video showed. I used the Axis Angle rotation method so that it can be rotated and keyframed on one channel only, even though the bone is at an angle relative to worldspace.
All of your Peel bone joints were changed from Quaternion rotation method to Euler ZXY. My understanding is that Quaternions are not necessary unless you have 3-axis rotations, and I'm assuming your peel animations won't use more than two. I chose Z first in the Euler rotation order because it's my understanding that the first axis should correspond to the local axis you want to ensure is always consistently available. But my understanding on this is limited.
The NLA Editor has two clips in it--one for each of your actions--that are exactly fifteen frames long and, given what I know of your project, work as intended. There was never anything wrong with the actions as far as they themselves went. But there were things wrong elsewhere, as moonboots explained. Finally, various unnecessary nodes here and there were deleted or renamed to help clean things up.

Note: I don't know what the role of the seed-looking eye things is supposed to be, but they were originally parented directly to the armature object. When merging the armatures, they broke, and so I had to decide how they were to be parented, but didn't know what would be best for them. I parented them to specific bones in the peel chains nearest to them. They seem to work as they did before. I just wanted to make you aware of this change, as well as why it was made.

By the way, this file was surprisingly large at almost 16 meg. This is due to you having packed your textures into the Blend file, which isn't strictly necessary for showcasing a problem with a rig. What you could have done was unpack the textures before sending this file. File > External Data > Unpack All into Files. Simply realize that not everyone who might like to help has fast computers/internet connections.

You helped me see that I made a mistake in the file I sent back. It appears that you still have two armatures, one called "Controller", which I had intended to be the only one, and one underneath it called "Armature", which contains all of your peel bones. To fix this, first make sure your 3D cursor is at the worldspace origin. Then, In Object Mode, select the armature named "Armature", go into Edit Mode, and press Shift + a to add a new bone at the 3D cursor location. Give it a name, like "Base Bone."  While still in Edit Mode, select each of the base bones for your peels one at a time (do not select the children peel bones), select also the stem bone, and finally select the Base Bone (make sure it is selected last), and press Ctrl + p to bring up the Parenting menu, and choose Keep Offset. Do this also for the Stem bone and the two smaller upper peel bones, so that they all are parented to the Base Bone. Now  all bones will move with the base bone. Next, go into Object Mode and select the "Armature" armature first, then the "Controller" Armature, and press Alt + p to bring up the Unparent menu, then choose Clear Parent and Keep Transformation. This unparents the "Armature" armature from the "Controller" armature, but by using the "Keep Transformation" option, you ensure that it stays in its new location afterwards. Now, in Object Mode, delete the armature called "Controller." You now have one armature called "Armature" that has a base bone that moves everything. More importantly, none of your actions are broken.

But there is still one more issue. In Pose Mode, the peel mesh objects follow the controller bone, but neither the apple base mesh, nor the smaller seed part objects, follows it. This is because they are not parented or bound to anything. Parenting is probably simpler than binding. But because your mesh parts are only directly accessible in Object mode, and your bones in Pose Mode, multi-selecting these two sorts of things can be a bit tricky to understand at first. Start by selecting your Apple base mesh in Object Mode, then, while still in Object Mode, select the armature. Now, go into Pose Mode, and select your Base Bone. Now, Ctrl + p, and choose the Parenting option Bone. In the Make Parent options panel that pops up in the bottom left of the viewport, expand it to make sure the Keep Transform checkbox is checked. Your apple base mesh is now parented to your Base Bone. But you will notice that your peel meshes now have double transformations. This is because your peel meshes were already parented to your apple base mesh before we started. Unparent them from the apple base mesh. You only want them parented to the Base Bone. Now follow these parenting steps for the apple core and central seeds. You can leave the two topmost seeds alone, because they're only parented to the top two small peel bone chains.


How to focus a property field in an Operator dialog by default (v2.91) This existing question has some answers that attempt to make a property field focused when it appears, but none of them seem to work in 2.91.
If you run the code below, you will see that the field is not selected, even though the "bl_property" value is set, per this documentation.
Here is my sample code (it is not currently useful, of course, just demonstrating the issue); the idea is to show a small window with a single property, and have that property focused:
import bpy
from bpy.props import *
theFloat = 0.0

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

    my_float: FloatProperty(name="Some Floating Point")

    def execute(self, context):
        global theFloat
        theFloat = self.my_float
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        global theFloat
        self.my_float = theFloat
        return context.window_manager.invoke_props_dialog(self)

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

bpy.ops.object.dialog_operator('INVOKE_DEFAULT')

bl_property does work for StringProperty, but not for FloatProperty. I have reported a bug, but I'm not sure it will qualify as such (might be more of a feature request, I'm not sure): https://developer.blender.org/T84563


Headband not following rest of head Sorry for the poor title as well as any issues with terminology as I am new to blender. Basically I have a character with a headband (which is separate from the rest of the body mesh but same object) and a head bone:

However when I rotate the bone, the headband is displaced on the character's head:

I have tried selecting the headband part of the mesh with L in edit mode, then using the vertex groups window to assign this to the head bone. Any help would be awesome!

Here is the file:

The problem is that although the head and head bands are assigned to the same vertexgroup they are not connected together, which results in giving them different "visual" effect when rotating the parent bone even though they have the same weight.

To fix this you will connect them. To do so, go to the Head Vertex Group, then select it. Then switch to Vertex Selection instead of Face selection. Then go to Mesh menu -> Vertices -> Connect Vertices. And voila it's done.

Steps:

Result:

Updated Blend file:


blender filter nodes not visible I am new to blender. And want know how to get the filter nodes in 2.71. I'm tired of trying. In my copy of blender filter nodes are not visible. Thanks for the help.

You probably just need to switch the tree type to compositing nodes


How to reduce fireflies in Cycles? I often use Cycles' built in Glass BSDF shader to achieve realistic refraction effects, but in many cases, it seems that Cycles' glass caustics creates an unfortunately large number of fireflies (pixels that are abnormally bright relative to their surroundings). In some models of mine, even when I render for 3000 or more samples/pixel, my final image is still covered in fireflies. While I can improve this in many cases by increasing the total amount of light available in the scene, this loses a lot of the potency of the refractive effects I'm looking for, especially in scenes with low light levels.

So my question is, how can I reduce the amount of fireflies while using Cycles' caustics without sacrificing the quality of the refractive effects?

Note: I am aware that Cycles' caustics will perform much better once Cycles has full support for bidirectional path-tracing, but it looks unlikely that that will become a reality any time soon, unfortunately.

I recall a few techniques for this. As mentioned by futurehack you can render twice with low samples using different seed values which puts the fireflies in different locations, when mixed together the fireflies get cancelled out.

An example of two renders with 10 samples and different seed values -

Turning up the filter glossy value (in light paths panel) can help.

Over at CGCookie you may find help with Sebastian's tutorial on reducing caustic noise. To summarize, for the glossy material you can use the 'Is Diffuse Ray' from a Light path node to choose between a glossy or diffuse material. This allows you to still get indirect lighting with 'No Caustics' turned on in the light paths while reducing noise.

I think the most helpful will probably be using the bilateral blur by Bartek. This tutorial gets a bit more in depth with compositing but essentially discusses different ways to define a mask that can be input into a bilateral blur node and which render passes can be blurred and combined for the best result. The determinator input of the bilateral blur node is used to define the edges of the area that gets blurred. This lets you limit the blur to specific areas that for example have fireflies.


Noise in a particular region of the Rendered image I made a cup with some texture but when i render it i have noise in a particular region. No matter what render settings i keep the problem still persists. I am attaching the blender file and the rendered image here. Please let me know to solve this issue.

Blender file and the texture image link:-
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HICa-N4n3OdHY62WamhdYOW9JVvQ76rl?usp=sharing

I made a mistake by connecting the noise texture Fac to the shader in mix shader instead of connecting it to the fac.
Thank you.


How to adjust light's strength in LuxRender? I have just installed LuxRender. I know how to do change the strength of lamps with Cycles but it seems that settings change for each render engine. Could someone please help me to adjust the light's strength in LuxRender?

Firstly, I'm not sure that LuxRender is within the scope of this forum. You might have better luck over at http://www.luxrender.net/forum

That being said, I might still be able to help. LuxRender is very much based on the way light works in the real world. Consequently, adjusting the intensity of the lights is not terribly straightforward.

Under emission settings, "Power" is the wattage of your light source: 40 = ~40 watt light bulb. For that reason, size matters. 40 watts spread over a large area won't be as bright.

Under emission settings, "Efficacy" is lumens per watt. Not sure exactly how this changes the light besides making it lighter or darker, but I have to believe it does something else, too.

Under emission settings, "Gain" is a multiplier for the "Power" setting. Setting gain to 2.0 will double the power of a light source. I have to believe that this isn't the same as just setting the power twice as high, but I don't know what it is.

In short, lowering any of these numbers will make your lightsource dimmer.

HOWEVER, LuxRender is VERY much based on the way light works in the real world. Consequently, your camera isn't just a viewport. It also has an exposure setting, tonemapping, white balance, and other things that will affect how bright the lights appear. If you watch animations done in LuxRender (like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVK7W0SXre4), many of them look like the exposure is being adjusted... because it is, automatically. LuxRender automatically chooses a sensible exposure level based on a number of factors, so you might have to tweak that to get the look you want.

Check these out:

http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7135

http://blenderdiplom.com/en/tutorials/385-tutorial-introduction-to-lighting-in-luxrender.html

Hope that helps!


Getting to POSE mode in 2.77a How, pray tell, are you able to get to POSE MODE in Blender version 2.77a? I've imported a free, rigged model I downloaded to practice animating, but cannot get to this mode. CTRL + TAB does not work. Help please!

Ctrl+Tab will toggle pose mode if an object of type 'ARMATURE' is selected, or it will toggle weight paint if an object of type 'MESH' is selected.

Otherwise, you can select the armature in your 3D View (or outliner), then select pose mode from the menu in the header.


Is it possible to rotate and move a face in one simultaneous motion? I'm somewhat new to blender, and I've asked Google in every possible way to find an answer to this, but I'm stuck.  My intention is to design a simple cable clip to 3D print.  The cylinders represent the cables and are only there as reference.  I'm trying to "wrap" the flat piece around them, using proportional editing to get a nice curve.  I want to be able to both move and rotate that plane around and over, but I can only seem to do either one or the other, never both simultaneously.
It's extra frustrating because I also do sculpting in VR, and it's so simple to just grab the one end, and move it where I want while simply rotating my hand, all in one motion.  I'm about ready to just go do it in VR, because it would take a few short minutes, while I've been here for almost an hour in Blender trying to figure this out.  But it just seems like something that I should be able to do, and I'd like to know how for future reference as I plan on doing a lot more design in Blender for 3D printing in the future.
I'm guessing there's some kind of modifier I can use, but I was hoping to just be able to hit a key on the keyboard or roll my mouse wheel so I can perform both different actions at once.  I've attached an image that will hopefully give you an idea of what I'm struggling with.  Any help is greatly appreciated!

I strongly recommend user253751 suggestion. You should build this with a curve instead. You can do this in many different ways, but probably the best for you is using the curve's own extrusion properties. here is a little info on how to make curves 3D, but there's more in the curve editing chapter as a whole, which I recommend reading from beginning to end. Hope this helps!


Why does a box appear when I try to make a window hole in a wall using Archimesh? I get this weird thing when I set auto holes on the wall. It should boolean a hole for the window.

Look at the settings for the "CTRL_Hole" object: if that object is renderable ("camera" icon in the last column not grayed out), you'l see it in the render. The hole for the window will be present, just hidden by the Ctrl_Hole object.

You could also try the other 'solver' option in the boolean modifier.


Why does Blender output noise even when rendering only flat colors? Here's an image of a red plane I rendered using Eevee, along with its material nodes.

The color-management sequencer is set to Non-Color, the sample count is set to 1024, and no other special settings are modified. Despite this, the image still contains noise. Here, I have edited the image and mapped #FF0000 to black and #FF0101 to white:

The image contains #FF0000, #FF0101, and #FE0000 despite the material only outputting #FF0000. This still occurs when the sample count is set to 1, when the rendering engine is set to Cycles, when the color is pure black (#000000) or pure white (#FFFFFF), when an emission shader is used instead of a direct RGB input, and when the color output values are specifically floored to be multiples of 1/256.
In the Blender image editor, I can click and drag on an image to view the raw color data, which reveals that the image is a uniform, expected (1.0, 0.0, 0.0) color, indicating that there exists some problem in converting to 8-bit color.
To circumvent the noise, I can save the image as an OpenEXR file and use external software (e.g. Photoshop) to convert it to a PNG or BMP file, but this is suboptimal. Is there any way to bypass this step and get precise 8-bit color output from Blender alone?

As in comments, go to Output Properties tab, Post Processing section, decrease Dither to 0.0:

Searching for dither on SE should yield multiple questions where dithering was the solution (instead of the problem). The problem dithering solves is banding. In short, there's only 255 steps from #000000 black to #FF0000 red, so a horizontal gradient with more than 256 pixel width will assign some colors to multiple columns, making those steps possibly perceivable as the bands.
Ideally*, dithering would be implemented as a 16 bit value scaled down to 8 bits by rounding down or up, depending on the pixel's position. This way an integer red component like in your color #FF0000 (255 red) wouldn't be affected by dithering.
However, this is not how Blender does it, it doesn't round up or down, it just adds noise and then rounds:
source/blender/imbuf/intern/divers.c
MINLINE void ushort_to_byte_dither_v4(
    uchar b[4], const unsigned short us[4], DitherContext *di, float s, float t)
{
#define USHORTTOFLOAT(val) ((float)val / 65535.0f)
  float dither_value = dither_random_value(s, t) * 0.0033f * di->dither;

  b[0] = ftochar(dither_value + USHORTTOFLOAT(us[0]));
  b[1] = ftochar(dither_value + USHORTTOFLOAT(us[1]));
  b[2] = ftochar(dither_value + USHORTTOFLOAT(us[2]));
  b[3] = unit_ushort_to_uchar(us[3]);

#undef USHORTTOFLOAT
}

di->dither is the setting in the interface. It's multiplied by 0.0033 (1/303.(03)) and then by the result of a function dither_random_value(s, t). s and t are x and y coordinates. The result of the function is in range [0..1) - it's implemented slightly differently throughout the code, but always based on "A faster triangle noise"
So it will add noise to every color, even if that color perfectly fits the target color space without rounding.
Custom dithering
First setup the color management as in the question:

Now make a plane with a gradient that has two "flat" areas on either side:

The color ramp is set to two colors: #FF0000 (255 red) and #F50000 (245 red). Keep in mind you can't just input #F50000 as hex, because Blender will assume it's sRGB and convert it to linear space that it uses. So what you have to do is to divide 245/255 in a calculator and copy-paste the result to the red value of the color.
Now the compositor:

I'm only dealing with red here, so that the node setup is as simple as possible. The noise texture I used is Blender Original Distorted Noise with size:0.0 and brightness:1.5:

I didn't calculate those settings in some clever way, I just tinkered with them until the preview of "Less Than" node was giving me a result with almost completely white one side of a band and almost completely black other side (and smooth transition between them):

So if we blacked every 2nd shade of red, it would look like this:

Comparison
Standard dither 1.0, compositing turned off

Half dither 0.5, compositing still off

Zero dither (compositing still off)

Custom dither (dither setting 0.00 but compositing enabled)

The top red bar of each pair is the original output for testing with a color-picker. The other bars have increased contrast in Photoshop by setting the midtone level to 0.03 in RGB Histogram. The idea behind 0.5 dithering is that 0.5*0.0033 < 1/255/2 (0.00165 < 0.00196) so I thought maybe a value will never be increased by half of the step to the next 8bit value, but I must be missing something, as there's still some noise.
--
*- according to my tiny brain, but I might be missing something; for example, the reasoning of Blender developers could be that you should avoid getting pure black and pure white colors, as those are problems with overexposure or details completely lost in darkness (low/high end clipping). Once you avoid that, the likelihood for any color to be an integer in the chosen color space (that is, before being cast to a lower precision in that format) is very small, and it also doesn't make much sense to treat  a set of arbitrary colors differently than the rest. In the case of NPR, you can just disable dithering, export to a format with 16 bits per channel and do some custom dithering if needed.


Instance list of object in animation nodes I want to know if there is anyway I can make instances of a list of objects.And get a list of the new objects.I just want a single instance no more.

I tried using object instancer inside a loop but it give me an error.

It is possible with some trickery.

At first you have to create multiple instances using the same source object in one Object Instancer node. Then you can use the Copy Object Data node to copy the object data (e.g. the mesh) from one object to another.

I activated "Use 'Instance' as Output" so that the 'Instance List' also becomes an output of the Invoke Subprogram node.


One side of my mesh is completely dark and isn't being affected by lighting I'm following the Blender Guru Tutorial for the anvil and I'm currently stuck on why this issue is occurring.  I had added the HDR lighting to my render when I noticed that one side of my anvil was completely dark compared to his: https://imgur.com/a/JKenUtG

I have no idea why this is occurring.   I have tried auto smoothing the normals, recalculating the normals, and making sure that I didn't accidentally mask any render layers.  Any help would be appreciated

(Also, if anyone could tell me why the horn is creasing, that would be amazing.  The actual model I made is very smooth on the horn, so i'm unsure why its so boxy).

(Assuming Blender 2.80)
To get sharp edges and rounded edges right:
Subdivision (modifier) the whole anvil and set it to "shade smooth". Then go edit mode and for each edge, which should be displayed as edge, select it end and hit Shift-E. Move away the cursor from the object to get a more sharper edge, else otherwise. You need to add more edges sometimes if this process does not sharpen enough.

"Black anvil phenomenon" :)
It looks like a normal shadow. To check for that: Disable HDRI lighting for a moment, add normal spot lamps and a camera and shine light to all parts of the anvil. If it is a problem with the mesh, the shadowed parts remain black. Then the geometry of the anvil get messed up (see below). If everything lits up nicely than you have a real shadow there. In this case add an spot lamp, set the enery to 0 and the angle of the spot to 180°. Position the spot in front of the shadowed parts and carefully increase the energy in way that it looks like the HDRI is spending the light.

Defective geometry:
Enter edit mode and switch all normals to point outside (just to get shure). Then "Merge vertice->From distance" (CTRL-V). Check for manifold edges (SHIFT CTRL ALT M). There will some (which is quite normal) but pay attention to those, which seem to be odd or adding geometry, where none should be. Go into face select mode and check for faces, which span directly before or behind other faces and are the result of connecting vertices accidentically. See screenshot for an example.


How do I make my mesh have a matte black finish in cycles? How do I turn a mesh into a black mesh with a matte finish? I tried all the texture types.
I am in cycles render.

Matte simply means diffuse.  So for a pure matte, black shader I would simply use a diffuse shader with the color set to almost black (HSV about [0,0,0.98]).  If it is pure black, it will not reflect any light and thus not look good.

Photorealism note:  Almost nothing in the real world is purely diffuse.  To make your material look much better and more believable you might want to mix in (with a factor of about 0.05) of a glossy shader with a roughness of around 0.12.


How to access shapekey driver via Python? I can access the shapekeys of an object like:

bpy.data.objects['mesh'].data.shape_keys.key_blocks

And I can get the "shapekeys package" of the object with:

bpy.data.objects['mesh'].data.shape_keys.name

I can access the drivers from that "shapekeys package":

bpy.data.shape_keys['Key.002'].animation_data.drivers.items()

I need to check scripted expressions and variables from drivers. The access could be this way:

bpy.data.shape_keys[bpy.data.objects['mesh'].data.shape_keys.name].animation_data.drivers.items()

Would be this the best way (more short) to access this info?

All shape keys are stored in bpy.data.shape_keys and can be applied to multiple objects. Each object possesses an attribute pointing to the shape key if it is using any. Thus

shape_key = bpy.data.objects['yourObject'].data.shape_keys

will give you access to it directly.

bpy.data.shape_keys is a bpy_prop_collection which allows access to its elements by name or index.

So if you know the index or the name of a shape key you will probably want to access it from bpy.data.shape_keys.

If you don't know which shape key is used by an object you will retrieve it from obj.data.shape_keys.

Expression & Variables:

# Access by index only
driver = bpy.data.shape_keys['Key.002'].animation_data.drivers[index]
driver.driver.expression
driver.driver.variables


The Perspective view is weird. I am in solid mode and I still only have outlines of the objects Well it might be a bug, it might be an odd function of Blender too. I am not really sure. The weird view only appears when in 'free view' in perspective mode. (The view where you gan orbit around your scene with the middle mouse button) The problem does not appear in orthografic view, in camera view, in rendered; shading and wireframe view and in the views from top, the side, bottom etc. (Also orthografic)
Second weird thing is, I cant select any of the objects with a single mouse click. I now have to use the circle selector or draw the selection box.
The grid in the viewport disappeared too.
I do not know if I clicked something wrom or used a 'bad' keyboard shortcut or if it really is a bug. I just want to get this dumb piece of garbage out of my viewport.
This picture shows the bugged view. Just as I said. In all the other view modes and in the camera etc. it is just fine.

Download .blend file

The reason why your viewport goes haywire is because of the viewport's Clip Start/End values which you set to crazy amounts.
To give you an idea, your largest object is 2 000 meters (2 kilometers) wide, yet your viewport is set to render stuff up to 100 000 meters (100 kilometers) away.
And you also stuff close up to 1 nanometer from your viewpoint, that's 0,001 millimeters!
A sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick, a strand of human DNA  is 2.5 nanometers in diameter. You really don't need those clipping values.
In most cases you shouldn't set the Clip Start below 0.001 (1 millimeter). Even that value is rarely needed, and it's only when you need to be really close to something, like when you modelize something of a few millimeters. On a large scene like that, you probably do not even need to set it under its default value: 0.1 m (10 centimeters)
As for the End Clip, it is way too large and will lead to rendering & performances issues. Unless you need to set your camera on one end of your map and be able to see everything up to the opposite end, you don't need more than 1000 m (1 kilometer).
Just a before/after comparison:
crazy clipping values

normal clipping values


How to unlock the subdivision settings I can't figure out how to get it back to being normal, with it set like this, I'm unable to change any of the green-highlighted settings.
How do I fix this?

The green color (and the yellow on Optimal Display) indicates you've set keyframes for those values. Right-click on them and choose "Clear Keyframes".
Green color means, there are keyframes for this value but not on the frame you're currently on. The yellow color means, there is a keyframe right on this frame.
When you are on a yellow-colored value, right-clicking also gives the option to "Delete Keyframes". If you do this, only the keyframe on this frame will be deleted and others (if there are any) will stay, so the color will switch to green.
If you want to completely get rid of them (because it seems you've set them accidentally), then "Clear Keyframes" is what you want to  do.


Inset faces individually with thickness falloff I want create from this Voronoi cells

Structure like this(i made it by hand by Inseting Individually rows of faces with different thickness each time):

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I cant make it with scale tool with pivot set to "Individual origins" and proprotional falloff. This gives this result

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So, appreciate any advise. Thanks!

You could do this by converting to a curve, extruding and scaling with proportional editing, then converting back to mesh.

1) Convert to curve

2) In edit mode, select everything and set the tilt to 90°

3) Extrude the curve

4) With linear proportional editing, select a row of vertices and scale the Radius property (Alt+S)

5) Convert back to a mesh


What do these orange lines in Object mode mean? What do those lines mean? And why they are inconsistent?
I think my vertices need to be merged?

These are probably edges that are not part of any faces, for example if I extrude this vertex in Edit mode it creates an edge, here is what it gives in Object mode:


Is there a way to set an absolute value when weight painting for an armature in 2.81a I am trying to add weight paints to many precise points of a mesh. There is the obvious add or subtract value but I'm trying to find one that paints an absolute value. Like if I want a vertices to be a 0.5 weight regardless of if it's already a 0 or a 1 before painting that point. Or if I want to make a strip of a value of .75 then I can set it and paint the strip rather than add and subtract until I am close enough.

Set the Weight to the desired value, the Blend Mode to Mix and the Strength to 1. That will erase everything above your brush and set it to the desired weight.

Alternatively, you can go in Edit mode and select the vertices you want to "flatten" to a value. Then go to the Object Data Properties panel ; under Vertex group, select the desired group, set the desired weight, then hit Assign.


Texture rendering in Eevee but not in Cycles I'm facing some issues to render texture in Cycles. It works very well on Eevee engine.

Here is the Eeeve rendering with textures (lines on hills)

When I go to Cycles, nothing is rendered.

I'm an early beginner so I probably miss something...
Thanks

Have you UV-unwrapped the model?
And I would try to take that colour ramp out and see if it fixes the problem.