Blender sapling mesh leaves rotation Hey guys,
I was hoping to get some help with the leaf rotation with the sapling plugin. I'm finding that a custom leaf mesh seems to always orientate relative to the scene and not the branch direction.
In the image attached you can see the default dupliface option with the custom leaf mesh. In this example the leaves on the left are pointing correctly away out from the tree, whereas on the right the leaf seems to be incorrectly folded back. If you remove the random rotation all leaves obviously orientate with the exact same rotation in the z axis.
I wasn't sure if it is something I have missed, but any insight would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Daniel

Found the solution/user error, at least I think for now...

The 3d cursor  had rotational transform which was having an influence on the rotation of the pivot of the sapling tree when it was created.
Just make sure next time you come across funky leaf rotations....
1.Under the view tab for the viewport, make sure to zero all rotation to the 3D cursor.


How to put an Armature in a Book I have a very basic book I made, just two covers, the pages are all attached to the covers, and  a basic 3 part armature. I tried weight painting it so the left cover was fully painted on the left bone, the spine is only the rear, and the right was fully painted on the right bone. Went through every face, but it doesn't have the desired effect.
Here's some screenshots for reference,

I thought I removed all weight from the spine for both of the bones, but it still has a very weird effect. I'm very new to rigging, so I'm sure I'm doing something wrong but I don't know how to fix it haha.
Thanks in advance

For this kind of non-organic object, don't parent With Automatic Weight, parent With Empty Groups, it will avoid some bones to influence some vertices they are not supposed to influence. With Empty Groups creates as many vertex groups as bones you have, with the same names, but there are no vertices affected to these groups for the moment.

Once parented, select the vertices you want to assign to a bone, go in the Properties panel > Object Data > Vertex Groups, choose the group the vertices are supposed to be part of (the group that has the name of the bone that is supposed to control that group), and click the Assign button.

You can affect vertices to different bones, and decrease the influence of the group on some vertices with the Weight value under the Assign button. It may be necessary to make the object more flexible.


Get rid of rotation point | Blender I am creaiting objekt and I have trouble with rotating. When it rotates, the object rotates around some point, I need to get rid of this point.  Please help.

I'm only now learning Blender (2.83) but this was covered by the tutorial sequence I viewed yesterday.
This may not be the only answer, but it's one of them.
You cannot "remove" or get rid of the pivot. It appears that your pivot is at the bottom of the black dotted line to the left of the object. Every selected object has one. You can place it to a more convenient or useful location, however.
Place your 3D cursor where you would like the object pivot. (Shift Right Mouse Button)
In the layout viewport (I can't tell which viewport you are using), select Object, Origin, Set Origin to 3D Cursor. You'll see the small circle become coincident with the 3D cursor and rotations will now happen about that center.


Importing into AutoCAD - Does not preserve scale Working on a design going to a CNC router. The CNC router can use dxf so I export to dxf. However, when I import into AutoCAD to test, the scale is way off. The CNC shop confirmed this on their machine too.

How I can preserve the scale when exporting to AutoCAD?

Object in blender (60.4cm)

Same length in AutoCAD is (450.0021 unknown units):

I wish I could just stay within blender but unfortunately I have to interface with proprietary software running on CNC machines.

There are a few things to check and keep in mind when exporting to other software. I don't know if this will help your specific issue.

1) Make sure your objects all have their scale applied (scale should show as 1:1:1 in info panel) before exporting. You may also need to apply rotations in some cases.

2) Changing the units in blender generally wont be preserved when exported. When you need to preserve the size in an external program, prior to 2.8 I would recommend setting Unit System to none. In 2.8 just leaving it in the default metric units also seems to be fine. In either case you are working under the premise that 1 Blender Unit is equal to 1 Meter.

If you want to work with a more convenient unit size, for example if you wanted to use CM or MM instead of Meters. You would have to also change your Unit Scale setting to match. So if you changed Length to CM, you would need to change Unit Scale to 0.1. This works fine when exporting to things like Stl.

3) Finally there are the export settings, which usually the defaults of are fine. But you may need to change things for your specific target, especially when you are exporting to a proprietary format which is then going to be read by something which isn't the editor of that format. The AutoCAD exporter settings are going to be aimed at making a file that AutoCAD will edit, which may not be exactly what the CNC software expects.


Changes to weight painting in 2.81 Any insights on changes to weight painting in 2.81?
I had just gotten 2.8 figured out - how to set it up so that I could pose a bone in pose mode, then click on the mesh to go to weight paint mode, and select a bone in weight paint mode as I adjust weights. Although the overall interface is MUCH better, it was easier to adjust a bone in weight paint mode in 2.79.

And it's changed again in 2.81. So that I have to put the armature in object mode before selecting the mesh, which sure slows the process down. Is there another setting involved?

It sounds like you might have had an issue with migrating a file from 2.80 to 2.81, but hopefully this helps someone else doing weight painting in 2.81.

In 2.81 with left click select, you should be able to select bones in Weight Paint mode with Ctrl-Left Mouse. You shouldn't need to switch to Pose mode to pose any bones.

For completeness, my full set of steps is:

Select the rig
Shift-select the mesh
Switch to Weight Paint mode
Use left click to paint + Ctrl-left click to select bones


How do you remove Mirror and SubSurface seams? I'm fairly new to Blender and am trying to make a human face mesh using the Mirror and Subdivision Surface modifiers. When I attempt to do so, the result shows this seam in the mesh and does not have the mirror align properly, as well as the subsurface creating a rip in the center mouth. How do I resolve this issue?

File:

Thank you for the comments, I've got it to work now! Issue was I needed to tick Clipping then apply Subsurf after the Mirror modifier.


Alt+Left Click doesn't select a loop of faces completely I was following this tutorial: https://youtu.be/WxMwa0njGSM?t=18m50s

His faces have continuous "flows", but mine doesn't for some reason. I've removed doubles.

What could be causing this break of face flow?

Your topology is not clean. It's hard to say without the .blend, but the edge to the left of the right problem area for example looks suspicious, half selected and half black. Which suggests double faces or at least a double edge.

If you were able to select the left faceline in one go, it means the unselected face somehow sits on top of the line, seemingly unconnected to the rest. Remove double by default has a very tiny radius so it doesn't necessarily catch everything. And it only works on selected faces, so the culprits might not have been selected at the time. Could very well be that you accidentally created an ngon somewhere and the verts are basically on top of each other.

Clear your selection, go into Edge or Vertex Select Mode (they provide slightly different clues) and hit CTRLSHIFTALTM (Select Non Manifold).

This shortcut selects every edge that hasn't exactly 2 faces attached to it and is likely to show you part of the trouble.

The amount of selected verts in the upper right corner will help with the diagnosis as well.


How to edit Parameters for an Object after it is created? When you first add a cylinder, you have the option to change the number of vertices, etc, but once you do anything else in blender, it seems you no longer can edit those parameters.

Is there a setting anywhere or an add-on that allows these parameters to be edited later on? If not, how easy would such an addon/feature be to create for anyone reading this?

Blender does not have a construction history. You can only edit the parameters of the last action, nothing earlier than that.
To edit the parameters of the last action you can either use F9, you can go to Edit > Adjust Last Operation or open up the panel on the bottom left of the 3d Viewport.

If you want to modify the last tool you have to do it before using another tool.

In Blender 2.7x you can use F6 or the Operator Tab in the Tool Panel T to edit the parameters of the last action.


View extents (scale to fit render window) I'm trying to build an automatic renderer using Python, loading lots of OBJ files one-by-one and rendering the results.

I can load the files no problem, but because they are different sizes, I need to either:
1. Change the objects to the same size, or
2. Move the camera so the object fits

I can't seem to get either option to work!

Thus far, the best option seems perhaps to use bpy.ops.object.dimensions and then scale, but I can't seem to get the x/y/z dimensions out of object.

dimensions is a property of object so you access it with object.dimensions not as a call to an operator. As a list of 3 values you can get the largest one with max(object.dimensions), or you can look at each value with object.dimensions.x

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.active_object

maxDimension = 5.0

scaleFactor = maxDimension / max(obj.dimensions)

obj.scale = (scaleFactor,scaleFactor,scaleFactor)

This assumes you are starting with a scale of 1.0. If not then you may want to use bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=False, rotation=False, scale=True) before starting.


Array modifier with rotation value? Is it possible to create a turret like mesh like this using the bottom mesh and an array modifier? I want to be able to easily change the height of the shown shingle siding pattern. What I am basically looking for is some way to offset the mesh in a similar way to an array modifier, but with a small rotation value.

This is similar to this question but has some differences. That question wasn't exactly what I wanted.

The answer that you link to is a good solution, you can even use an object offset in two arrays to get the result you are after.

Start with one simple piece.

Add a solidify and array with object offset, rotate the empty to fit.

Add a second array also with object offset, move this empty up and rotate to offset the notches.

You can look at the sample blend here


Is there any significant difference between 2.67 and 2.73 in terms of 3D printing? Brand new to blender, have not even downloaded the program yet. I am considering ordering the DVD DVD Training 12: Blender for 3D Printing, 2.67 after I download to help learn the program.

I'm looking to build models for 3D printing. Does anyone know of significant changes to the latest version of Blender that would make the DVDs obsolete?

If you are just starting with blender, the DVD in question should give you a good idea of how things work, and you should be OK using current versions.

While some things have indeed changed since version 2.67, the main structure of the blender's User Interface has not. Blender has been very good in terms of keeping backwards compatibility, except for versions previous to 2.5, where a major overhaul did take place. But even that overhaul was to the UI, and files created in older versions open and can be edited in current versions. Note though, that if you're using a current version of Blender, you'll want to use the box in the lower left of the files dialog screen that allows one to open the file without changing the UI; otherwise, when you open a file, one sees the UI with which the file was created.

If there are things that are dramatically different on newer versions, like plugins that are not up to date, or you just can't find the tool in today's version, don't worry, you can still download older versions of blender here: http://download.blender.org/release/ .

Once you get a general idea of how blender works you'll find that newer versions are quite a bit better, with less bugs and much easier to use than previous ones. And if you get stuck... you can always ask questions here or in other forums. Happy blending.


How to separate two meshes in one object I added two torus objects, and when I click one of them, it also selects the other. They both share the same node thing. I want to delete one of them, but it keeps on deleting the other with it. I can't even undo placing the second torus without removing the other.

Go into edit mode and selecting the entire one torus by moving your mouse over the one and pressing L. Then press P which brings up a menu called separate, then just click on selection and it should separate them into two objects.


is there any way to make an add-on password protected? This is for studio use where only a few people are given passwords which will  show the add-on content. Is it possible to password protect an add-on?

Jerryno's answer is technically correct. But there is a potential solution if you really really want to try this.

For what you describe, you could possibly host the addon code on a separate server that requires authentication, and then have a simple addon that loads the rest of the addon from this server each time it is run. This would probably be very tricky to get right though.

I would question whether you actually need this level of protection? Copyright protection should be enough in many countries. Other assets from the studio (e.g. models) can easily be removed, they are only protected by copyright. What damage to the studio's business/bottom line will this actually cause (I suspect most studios do not worry about this at all).


Why is 'Shader to RGB' possible in EEVEE, but not in Cycles? As a result of @Michael Macha 's comments on, and helpful edit of, this answer, it turns out my understanding of the differences between EEVEE and Cycles is a lot fuzzier than I thought it was. I get that BSDFs are closures? I understand closures to be functions carrying some of the external state that pertained at the time of their creation, waiting to be called with 'live' parameters?
But if BSDFs are closures in EEVEE, too, why is 'Shader to RGB' possible in EEVEE, but not in Cycles? Some indication of how data is shovelled around, and when, would be very helpful.

It's technically possible, but not that practical.
You turn Shader to RGB through rendering. Because in Eevee one object doesn't depend on the whole scene and because it does rasterization it's way faster, which makes it practical.
In cycles you want to render your scene into render layers, that way you get the Shader to RGB data, and then you can do postprocessing on it, which is the same like using that RGB output from shader in Eevee. Or you can bake the material (render into texture) if you don't need anything dynamic.


Particles don't render I am having problems with my particle system. It just doesn't appear to render but works in the 3D view. I will try to provide as much detail as I can.
The object that is being duplicated for the particle system does not have it's renderable turned off, neither do any of it's parents. I'm using 2.73. Here is the particle system's settings:

Emission:
Number: 200
Start: 0
End: 360
Lifetime: 15
Random: .3
Emit from: faces
Random: true
Even distribution: false
Enumeration parameter that doesn't have a name: random
Use modifier stack

Cache:
all the default settings

Velocity:
Normal: 1
Tangent: 0
Rot: 0
Emitter object: 0, 0, 0
Object: 0
Random: 0

Rotation:
false

Physics:
Newtonain
Size: 1
Random size: .05
Mass: 1
Multiply mass by particle size: false
Brownian: 0
Integration: Midpoint
Drag: 0
Timestep: .04
Damp: 0
Subframes: 0
Size deflect: false
Die on hit: false

Render:
Emitter: true
Unborn: false
Parents: true
Died: false
Object
Duplicate object: anobject
Global: true
Rotation: true
Scale: true
Size: 1
Random Size: .05

Display:
Rendered
Display: 100%
Size: true
Velocity: true
number: true
Color: material

Children:
none

Field weights:
all on default

Force field settings:
all on default

Vertex groups:
all on default

Screenshot:

Look in the outliner window to make sure the camera icon switch for the particle object is enabled and bright.  This means render the object.

It is quite possible to see the particles in view mode and no particles in render for exactly this reason.  You may place your object particle in a different layer to keep it handy and out of camera view except in its role as a particle.

Look in modifiers panel to see if modifier is enabled in render mode.
The area has the eye , then arrow, then camera for each object.

In Render Layers panel, section Layer, verify the scene and layers include your desired results.

Verify your [global] coordinate selection for the particle system object particle suit your intended purpose and the location is not modified by render only modifiers.  Are your particles moved off viewport?

(I used casual explanation and names as per the user interface)

As always I may say something you may already know or have tested.


How to make a bind to Ctrl Key for toggling snapping on/off I would like to make a bind to Ctrl Key for snapping on/off. When I press Ctrl - snapping should be toggled on/off. Is it possible to make?

Unfortunately, you can't use solely a modifier for a shortcut, plus there already is a shortcut to toggle this: Shift + Tab.

If you still want to, you can change this in the User Preferences.

If you open the user preferences with Ctrl + Alt + U, and switch to the Input tab, you can search by shortcut (Click the dropdown next to the search box and select Key-Binding) to find entries containing "shift tab":

Now, find the entry under 3D view:

And press where it says Shift Tab and press the keys you want to bind.


What are the formulas governing blender's exponential easing for animation fcurves? I was trying to animate something that was scaling exponentially, so I created an fcurve with two keyframes and configured it for exponential easing.  It did not behave as I expected.

Consider two keyframes (frame,value): (1,1) and (11,32).

I would expect that to be interpolated as (3,2) (5,4) (7,8) (9,16) , doubling every two frames.

Instead I see (3,1.121) (5,1.484) (7,2.938) (9,8.75) .

What are the equations governing blender's exponential interpolation mode?

The math used can be found here, the calculations for the parameters used can be found here.

The calculation used for exponential ease in is -

change * powf(2, 10 * (time / duration - 1)) + begin

The curve is calculated between a start keyframe (begin) and an end keyframe, time is the time elapsed since the start key and duration is the total time between start and end, change is the amount the keyed value changes between keyframes.

The commit that adds this and the other nine interpolation types to blender contains links to easings.net and robertpenner.com/easing/ as the source of the calculations.


How do I make a sharp edge to a shape? I've been learning to model for a year now on and off and I'm pretty good at making perfect quad organic shapes without any 6 sided or more poles. But I don't know how to make a proper sharp edge to a shape.

On the left, if I use sculpting tools, including smooth, the verts all want to collapse away from the tear edge.

On the right, the verts are stable but I have the undesired 6 sided pole.

How do I properly make this sharp edge shape?

If this is what you want to obtain :

Starting from a grid like in (1)
Inset I the faces (2)
Remove the top center point and, eventually, align the top (3)

At this step, the smooth makes a non sharp angle and some faces to 'correct' in the bottom part :

Separate V the bottom center vertex and move it down a little (4)
Ctrl+E then edge slide both sides to mark the angle (5)

Here the shading is not good :

This is due to the inner triangles which are badly oriented :

Have a look (6), with Ctrl+T (triangulate)
And correct it (7), Ctrl+E then rotate edge CW (clockwise )

Come back to quads, selecting the faces and Alt+J (8)
Sharpen the angle if you need, like previously with edge slide (9)

The topology is more or less tolerant to subsurf (which seems ok) or to bevel (which is not so ok). So, depending on what you want, you may need to adjust it :


UV Unwrap doesn't work in render view I've been learning how to use Blender, and I've come across a tutorial which talks about UV Unwrapping, but it isn't the same version of Blender that mine is so I have no idea what to do now. My version is 2.79

The editor looks like this:

But when I render it (with F12) it just shows this:

How do I make the render show the texture?

When you use Blender Internal (as your case), the "Texture" viewport mode shows the texture currently opened during UV Unwrap operations, even with no material assigned to the cube. To show the same texture in rendering you must create a material for the mesh and assign the texture to it, as shown in picture.


How do i make a cloth simulation but make parts of it hold it in place like a cape So i know the most basic parts of making a cloth simulation but how do i make parts of the model stay in one place while the rest hangs freely?

Im still new to blender and am learning loads of new things. The tutorials i've seen don't cover what im looking for. I should also add that the model has a pre-made armature as im porting from a game.

You need to create a vertex group where the cloth is supposed to hang, then in the Physics > Cloth > Shape > Pin Group, select this group. If you want some vertices to be half hanging, select them, decrease the weight you want to assign and press Assign.


Book Shelf: Rigid Body Sim- Books thrown out I'm working on a bookshelf animation, nothing fancy just the books falling into place.
I applied rigid body properties to both the book (active) and the shelf (passive). Upon playing the simulation, the book appears to be thrown away from the shelf rather than falling into place.

blender's rigid body simulator isn't perfect. you can change sensitivity (under collissions) to make it more accurate and change shape (also under collissions) to mesh


Seperating an object I am quite new to blender so it's a search for advice rather than an issue.
So, I'm creating a computer mouse, and I want to separate the sides from the main body, however, I do not know how to do it.
After some research I found the Bisect tool, however, that leaves me with triangle faces on top and then one large face (highlighted).
Is there a better way to do this?
Are the triangles that big of a problem? (It will be used for 3d printing not animation or rendering)
Is there an automatic way of separating that large face to match the rest of the body?
Any advice would be much appreciated.

Select the faces of the mesh you want to seperate. Hit P key in the keyboard. That seperates the mesh from the main object and leave you with 2 object. Tab out of edit mode and you will have side as a different object.


How can I smoothly "blend" between 2 STLs? I have 2 STL files, and I'd like to join them (not only as "join them into a single object", but "physically" join them). I'm using blender 2.8.
I'll give an illustration right away to clear what I'm talking about:

The STL in the center is purely flat, while the STL around it is more complex.
Is there any way that I can make these 2 STLs "meet" more or less smoothly so that the gap is filled and I obtain a single STL? Please consider that there might be lots of vertices on both STLs, so manually moving the vertices one by one wouldn't be a viable solution for me ;)
I'm a total blender noob, so maybe I'm simply not looking at the right software?
Thanks a lot!
Arnaud

You should be able to merge them with Booleans, be that the BoolTools addon or modifier. Take a look!


Material does not apply to array Sorry if this is a silly question but I am terribly new to blender. I have created a material and applied it to a sphere. I then added an array modifier. I expected the material to apply to the entire array, but it only applies in material view and in render view to the original sphere. All of the tutorial videos I have watched state that the material automatically transfers to the entire array, so I am at a loss.

Use generated coords, drive the scale.

Nodes aren't particularly my strong point.  Looking at the question setup can make minor alterations to get the effect of gradient across array

change the texture to generated (modified)

and drive the scale with the array count of object.

The driver


Is Blender appropriate for learning Stereometry (a subject in mathematics)? In some countries, senior high school students are still taught about Sterometry in which we are asked to draw a cross section between a solid and a plane, for example, as follows.

Shortly speaking, is Blender appropriate to use here? I am relatively new to Blender and I have not found the tools to

attach mathematics symbols such as omega, theta, etc.
create points that are geometrically constrained such as AB:AC= 2:3, etc.
find intersecting points, etc

Looking at the image you attached I'd say it's, but to an extent. I mean you can model in B3D the solid shown and make it transparent. Use Shear for the cross-section, render it. Still, for all those lines an external image editor is the fastest way.


Texture painting looks pixelated no matter the size of image. I have a large path system intended for game engine. The pathway is broken up into 4 separate models.

Iv'e unwrapped one piece onto a 2048x1024 image and tried painting various 2048x2048 concrete textures onto it but they always come out really pixelated.
I try painting tiled texture but its very bad looking.

My goal is to have one layer of the tiled concrete texture, and one layer of details like cracks and blemishes and such, all on one texture.

Zooming in and out of painting seems to change the size of the image as I paint and its very frustrating. I havent gotten it to look like its correct resolution once.

is there a better way to do this? thanks.

Your mapping could be improved, as you really should take advantage of a tileable texture for something like a path. Part of your question:

  Iv'e unwrapped one piece onto a 2048x1024 image and tried painting various 2048x2048 concrete textures onto it but they always come out really pixelated. I try painting tiled texture but its very bad looking.

You are using a single image at 2048 x 1024 to try to pump way too many pixels into it - but you only have that one image worth of pixels to do this. If you try to paint them into that, you will get pixelation because your destination image (2048x1024) doesn't have more pixels than the sum of the number of times you are looking to repeat the brush image pixels at full resolution. Better to look at using UV Unwrap - Follow Active and then try to get the main tileable texture to sit appropriately for one face, then the rest will fall in line. You could use a second uv mapping for the second texture to determine dirt, etc.


How can I smooth this surface? I would like to render this surface smooth like a natural curve but don't know how I can geometriccaly transform the mesh. Thanks for your help. Maybe I could add one edge between each segment but I don't know how to do that geometrically.

You could add a loop cut in-between each of that triangular faces.

You can do that by selecting these 3 edges and subdividing them.

Select the new vertices on the corner edge and the vertices on the triangle at the bottom. Press J.

Afterwards, remove the original edges

The subsurf modifier will work much better now!


How to model a mesh of curved axe? I am trying to model this axe and I don't know how to do it properly. I've highlighted the part I'm trying to make here:

I tried two different main approaches so far:

Start off from a plane and extrude its edges so I could cover the entire body, then extrude/solidify the surface to add some thickness to the mesh. What I don't like about this method is the mesh shape. That part of the weapon has clear, smooth curves and it is something I can't seem to achieve by just modeling a plane. This is a quick example of what I'm trying to do here:

 .
Bézier curves. I can recreate a cool shape with this method, but once the curve is converted to a mesh and then extruded or solidified, I don't have vertex but a huge face on the front part. This leads to a very weird mesh, also some curves still have a way too high vertex density which makes bevel and subsurf impossible.

What would be the correct approach here?

The shape is very organic. Sculpting will let you explore the shape the fastest. You can quickly establish creases and surface curvatures and change them without much effort to your liking.

Once you are happy with the form, retopologize it into your final mesh. You have 3 options:

low poly mesh with baked normal/displacement map
low poly with subsurface modifier with creasing
low poly with subsurface modifier with control loops

If you would be experienced sub-d modeler, I believe you could model the shapes on the fly. But sculpting is easy and fast and it will help you, because the surface will be well defined and you will know better where the edge-loops go and how the topology needs to be.


What are the Hotkeys to adjust Grease Pencil Brush Radius? In Photoshop and many other programs, the bracket keys [] are used to increase and decrease the brush Radius respectively
Does Blender's Grease Pencil have this functionaltiy?
I can't seem to find anything of the sort in the User Preferences.
If nothing exists, how would I go about creating it?

As for version 2.8 radius can be changed by using the keyboard shortcut F


head is not moving correctly when I move/rotate the head bone I'm trying to understand what does not work correctly on the rigging of my model,because the head is not moving correctly when I move/rotate the head bone. I attached a short video to show you. Very thanks for every tip that you want to give me.

my situation

You can see the result that I want to reach at minute 37.15 of the JorgeBernier5D tutorial :

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

he moves the head bone and all the head moves homogeneously. It does not happen to my bird.

As I already suspected your head bone is not connected to the neck. Besides that your whole armature is quite messy. There are many other occasions where bones aren't connected to anything (legs, feet) and many of them are redundant (in the image below I tried sorting the bones and moved them away for that purpose. I stopped at the neck ;-) ).

Go check your arm bones, there are layers upon layers of bones that don't serve any purpose.

I would start from scratch and slowly by creating the body armature first and then adding the facial bones to that. A good starting point to learn how to rig a character from scratch is Darrin Lile's tutorial. He knows exactly what he's doing and he also has another rigging tutorial in which he uses rigify.

It's also highly advisable to switch to octahedral and x-ray mode when working with armatures (at least until you know exactly what you are doing). It's way better to keep track of your bones and their connections.


See vertex count of subdivided object before applying modifier There are answers about the info bar (by default at the bottom right of Blender 2.8) but it seems it only shows current stats on the selected object (when in edit mode) and not what the stats will be after a modifier like Subdivision is applied.

You just have to be in object mode to have the vertex count of the object including its modifiers.

To have the polycount of a selected object, for now, there is no dedicated statistics for that. A workaround would be to temporary isolate your object in a layer (or collection in 2.80) and hide the others. Then you will have the right stats.


Applying gradient texture to deformed volume based on Z coordinate I'm trying to apply a fog to my grass plane, which is deformed in multiple ways (plane is subdivied + waved by hand + 2x modifier: displace.
The fog is supposed to be dense at the bottom and disappear with height, based on the gradient.
But the gradient is applied to the whole object, not the local Z coordinates of the volume.
Fog is generated with Volume Shatter.

I know the description is complicated, so, IMAGES!
What I have is rendered, what I want is with those arrows.

[1]What I 'want' presented with a surface shader:

[2]What I have:

[3]This is how it looks in volume shatter:

So:
I want the effect from [1] to apply to volume.
Please help. I'm Struggling with this for days...

I hope I didn't use wrong tags.

A guy from blender IRC support channel (#blender on freenode) found the answer, so, as follows!

There are TWO methods. First one is raytracing:

It's really slow, and OSL depending. And casuses crashes, apperently ;)

Second method, much faster (bueno!) uses height maps instead of gradient texture.

Also, @JA12 simplified it even more, look at the nodes:

You can study it with the attached .blend file.
It's amazingly simple.
.blend file my mirror: mirror


2.81 Dyntopo destroying geometry? This is my first time using blender sculpting, and whenever I sculpt with dyntopo on it removes geometry instead of adding it. The bottom two lines in the picture are with dyntopo on and the top ones are with it disabled. I went in to edit mode and it was actually deleting geometry/faces, which is the opposite of what it's supposed to do.

When enabling dynamic topology you have to understand few options for the begginig. (As seen on image)

First option "Detail size" controls how much poligons are created when sculpting for example when "Relative detail" is selected the less the detail size is set the more polygons it will create (more detail), but if "Constant detail" is selected then the higher the detail size is it will have more polygons created (more detail).

"Refine Method" controls how geometry is handled "Subdivide Collapse" will at the same time create and destroy polygons while other options there such as "Collapse Edges" are only going to destroy geometry (destroy as reduce number of it) and "Subdivide Egdes" is going to only keep adding new geometry and that can make your PC freeze.

And finally "Detailing" this is what made your model look like it is only destroying default option "Relative detail" works like this the closer you are to your model the more detail you will have - more polygons created, but the more you are away of the model the less detail you have - and since you are using either subdivided sphere or cube it already has some polygons it looks like it is only destroying them. You can change this option to "Constant detail" and it will work the same no matter how far away or how close are you to the object.


Poll method for custom panel How do I setup the poll method for a panel causing it to only display when 2 objects are selected ?

@classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return len(context.selected_objects) == 2


How to restore menus after unregistering a menu-altering-add-on? If you create an add-on which replaces existing menus in order to ex. add elements in between the existing elements, installing it works fine, but uninstalling it removes the entire menu. So the question is how to uninstall such an add-on and restore the previous menus?
In this folder: Blender Foundation\Blender 2.91\2.91\scripts\startup\bl_ui\ the default ui scripts are located, but how do I execute the UI script during the unregistering of the menu-altering-add-on?

You add this to the unregister function, pointing the the UI script of the affected editor:
    bpy.ops.script.python_file_run(filepath= bpy.utils.resource_path(type="LOCAL")+"\\scripts\\startup\\bl_ui\\space_sequencer.py")
    bpy.ops.script.reload()


Mix two materials in the Blender Internal Materials Nodes I studying the node in the Blender internal (not Cycles render). In an exercice, I want to mix two materials. I create a sphere, I apply the first material with a texture and it is going. In the second task, I create an other materials without texture and I need to mix the two materials using the Mix node. The problem is Mix does not exist in the shaders node and exist in the compositing nodes or texture nodes. In addition, I can't show at the same time the nodes corresponding to the two materials in the
shaders node? How can I Mix the two materials. I am using this tutorial tuto blender

since the material nodes output is Color type you can mix them using the RGB_Mix node :


How can I align a new object to the camera view with Python? I am trying to work out a script that adds a plane aligned to the camera view, but I cannot figure out how to do anything past it being aligned to the current view. This works fine mostly, as long as I am in the camera view, but it would be much more convenient to not have to be in camera view.

This is what I have so far:

import bpy

# Add a plane and align it to view
for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        for region in area.regions:
            if region.type == 'WINDOW':
                ctx = bpy.context.copy()
                ctx['area'] = area
                ctx['region'] = region
                bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add(ctx, view_align=True)
                bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle() # Avoid a missing face

# Add diffuse shader to object
activeObject = bpy.context.active_object
mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="grey card")
activeObject.data.materials.append(mat)
bpy.context.object.active_material.diffuse_color = (.18, .18, .18)

I have seen this question, and the accepted answer says to assign the camera object's rotation_euler to the object to be aligned with C.object.rotation_euler = C.scene.camera.rotation_euler, but I am not sure what to do with this advice (as it may be evident, Python is not a strength, but I'm trying to learn).

What do I need to change in this script in order for it to work as I am wanting it to?

Since you want to align the object with the current view (and not the camera), you need to extract that view through the view 3D's region_3d (rv3d in the example below), then assign its rotation to the object you want to align the view with:

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

r3d, rv3d, v3d = view3d_find()

# Add new plane which will become the context object
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add()

bpy.context.object.rotation_euler = rv3d.view_rotation.to_euler()


Volumetric lighting scene Hello everyoane.
What settings should to apply to the light point to create in blender a scene light this?
I come with a past in Cinema 4D, there was very easy, just set the visible light to Volumetric and set the intensity, but how does this work in blender?
I have searching for an answer here, but nothing matches with what I need...
Kind Regards!

Thank you for stating your question clearly.
You need to setup a world environment mist.
The rendered light volume in Cycles doesn´t work with (noise/volumes)on the light. It works with noise /volumes on the space (Enviroment) like in the real world.
Make a cube. Assign a shader to it. Edit the shader. Delete diffuse node, CTRL+Shift A, search for principled volume. Attach it to the Material output on the VOLUME input connector.
Shift+A, select NOISE. Plug that NOISE into the DENSITY connector of the principled volume shader.
Delete all lights in the scene.
Make the world from the world property tab: black color.
Drive your camera inside the box you previously created and that you´ve assigned the principled volume shader.
Inside that box and with the camera looking through, create a ppoint light. Give it energy of 100. And continue to drop it down by half on each render test: (50, 25, 12, 7, 3.5...etc)
Until your light energy is appropiate for the effect you´re looking for.

Thank you for your consideration to vote me as the answer by clicking to the left :the icon with a check mark and upvote this answer.

BFCT_Schiller


Editing Blender normals I'm currently creating a character for the Unity game engine inside of Blender. The characters meshes are seperated into several objects to allow switching of equipment pieces (upperbody, lowebody, feet, hands, ...) inside of Unity lateron. However this is where my problem pops up. The screenshot below displays the intersection between the characters arm and its hand.

Currently I recon that the seam is related the direction of the vertex normals. In this screenshot I've joined the 2 objects to display the different directions the vertex normals are facing.

I've been attempting to fix this issue using several different techniques, including edgesplits, adding loops, ... before noticing Blenders Edit Normals modifier. But I still wasn't able to get the right result. I fear the modifier doesn't offer the fidelity that is required to fix the direction of the normals on my particular mesh.

Am I using wrong settings or is there any workaround that helps me to fix this issue?

Nevermind.
Just found an easy workaround using the Data Transfer modifier. Below are the steps I took to fix it:

Created copies of all my objects (body, head, hands, feet, ...)
Joined them together into 1 single object
Used the Data Transfer on each of the remaining original objects
Settings: Face Corner Data -> Custom Normals and Source object the newly created full character object


No FFmpeg Video In Panel (ver 2.79) in Fedora Linux I am a beginner and have managed to create "Star Wars Crawl" in version 2.79 on Fedora 27,  but cannot see any FFmpeg output option.

I have gstreamer and VLC installed and can properly play MP4 sample files in it.

As a last resort I reinstalled Blender.

What do I need to do to render my animation in MPEG format?

Here's my approach (right or wrong, its what I do):

*A I try to find a setting in the output dropdown that gives me the following encoding options:

*B Pick MPEG-4 (if you need to revert back to MPEG-2 That should still work, just make sure that you go the extra step in the Audio Codec section below this section and set it to mp3 - hint if I am also rendering out sound I set this anyway).

*C I personally try to use the H.264 codec, that does NOT imply that you should, its just what I do. To get a better sense of the codecs, and their respective containers, I recommend looking at to place in the manual.

Place #1

Place #2

*OUTPUT Whatever combination I pick (If I'm still unsure about it), I can see if it is going to work or not, by hard-coding the file extension of my desire, cross my fingers, and render. Sometimes I will get a default extension like *.dvd; sometimes my first extension may not work (such as *.mp4), so I try *.mpg, *.mpeg, etc...

The process seems pretty effective for me.

I will recommend this:

Try to stay away from getting lost in codec availability for your OS for now, as that is a huge topic, and you may even get lost in it. Your Blender implementation of it can probably be solved a lot quicker.


How to make a FPS-like camera in BGE I would like to make a camera like in most First Person Shooters - similar to GTA. This would mean that the view angle depends on the position of the mouse and the character walks forward, along the view vector.

How can this be achieved in BGE?

Yes. As of 2.72, there is a new mouse actuator which you can use to rotate objects based on mouse movement.

Try adding these logic bricks to your camera object:


How can I fix this jagged Shadows? I already subdividied the surface, but still getting this raw shadows in between of the spheres.

What can I do?

You can increase the size of the Cube texture for the light and check Soft Shadows.

Shadows in EEVEE are created by rendering a depth texture from the light source that are then matched up with the cameras depth texture. It's then possible to see where the depth from the light fails to reach the current pixel. The downside with this technique is it requires fairly high resolution and can still cause a set of unwanted behaviours and artefacts. But that is the price we pay to get crazy fast rendering compared to raytracing.

By using soft shadows EEVEE does a set of these light depth passes at a slight offset that are then used to soften the shadow out a bit. You can adjust the Radius on the light to adjust the smoothing.


Noise texture shading I'm trying to add a noise texture to one of my objects, to give it some realism.

In IMG 01 there's a green shape with some noise texture which has been added within  Photoshop.

In IMG 02 I added the noise texture, but my colour goes missing. I tried adding different nodes but to no avail.

What node do I need to add in order for the noise texture and colour to be visible?

Use the ColorRamp node which maps greyscale values to colored values.


Any way to keep the kind of ilumination on preview for rendering? i'm doing a animation with two objects on Cycles, and when i look at the object alone (on its own layer) looks good, but when i mix it with the other object it looks bad, i should change the lighting, but it looks perfect for me with that kind of light on the preview, is it possible to render the object like that? The material obviously is affected by lighting, that's why i need to know if there's a possible way to keep the material like appears on the preview.

Thanks in regard.

What you want are Render Layers. A render layer is basically what layers are rendered to separate images, composited later in the compositor after the actual render takes place. It is possible to do this fairly easily actually.

First, make sure they are on different layers (I think you said they already are). Then go to Properties > Render Layers and set up the default Render Layer to only show your background object layer:

The Layer section is to show what layers to render, and the Exclude section is for what sections to exclude from the render (shadows, reflections, lamps, etc.). It is important you get these right.

Once you have that set up, you can add a Render Layer for the foreground object. Press the + beside the Render Layers display window, and name as desired:

Now set up the new layer using the same principles as the first, isolating the foreground element. You should get two images when you press F12 now:

Now we need to go into the Compositor to put the two images together.

Start by adding another Render Layer input:

Now set up your nodes like this:

You can see that now it is combining the two different rendered images based on the Alpha value of the second. One more iportant thing you need to do: Make sure that there is an Alpha value to use. Go to Properties > Render > Film and tick the Transparent checkbox:


Unmetaing strip cancels cuts Assume I insert one movie strip inside the sequencer, I have one video track and one audio track. Since I want to keep only a subsequence of this strip, I meta the audio and video track and then cut this meta strip to keep only the part that I want. Once this is performed, I would like to retrieve both the audio and video track independently, so I unmeta the meta strip, but this gave me back the total audio and video tracks, as if the cut that I performed on the meta strip was not taken into account.

Is there any solution for what I want to do? Obviously, I don't want to perform the cut on both the audio and video tracks separately.

Many thanks,

Blender 2.77 on Ubuntu 14.04

That's normal, meta strips always keep the content as it is.

If you want to cut both audio and video at the same time, you can use the select linked time mode to select them both. It only works if the audio and the video strips are the same length. If they aren't, just cut the extra footage on the longer strip, and it'll work. By default, it's done by pressing Ctrl + Select Mouse (Ctrl Right Click).

Then you just have to cut like usual.

This keymap item can be found under Sequencer / Sequencer (Global)


Can you add a spine bone to an existing (deformed and animated) character rig without repainting weights and having to redo old animations I understand you can go into 'Edit Mode', Shift+a to add an armature bone but does this work for adding bones along the chain such as adding a new spine bone or can you only add to the end of the chain such as adding fingers at the end of an arm? And once done do you have to repaint the skinning and redo all old animations? If this is not possible be default is there e plugin that makes it possible?

Does this work for adding bones along the chain such as adding a new
spine bone or can you only add to the end of the chain such as adding
fingers at the end of an arm?

What makes bones into a chain is parenting.  So you can make a bone and then change the parenting of other bones so that, now, that new bone is sandwiched in.
An alternative is to use the subdivide operation on a bone, which splits an existing bone in two, and leaves any children parented to the new bone created (which is parented to the original bone that was subdivided.)
There are a lot of different ways to make bones, and a lot of different ways to edit them.  Anything you can make in an armature, you can edit in-- after all, editing a single bone armature is how you make complicated ones!

And once done do you have to repaint the skinning and redo all old
animations?

In general, yes.  Any new bones you make won't deform any mesh until they have weights.  Any new bones you make won't be animated until you animate them.
There are plenty of exceptions.  A bone that changes parenting can affect the mesh indirectly, even without weights.  A bone that is part of an IK chain will be animated by the IK target, even if it doesn't have any animation data itself.

If this is not possible by default is there a plugin that makes it
possible?

What you're asking about is extraordinarily general.  Are there plugins that weight bones?  Sure-- so does out-of-the-box autoweights!  Are there plugins that generate animation?  Sure-- so does out-of-the-box rigid body physics!  But you probably have some particular kind of animation and weighting in mind.  There is no single way to animate or weight new bones, so there is no single, press-one-button plugin to animate and weight new bones.


How can I triangulate a mesh without changing the object? I have to triangulate the object's mesh because the format I export to only understands triangles. Now I not only want to export geometry but also the uv-mappings for the mesh. Let's call the uv_texture uvTex. The context object is obj What I have done so far:

import bmesh
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(obj.data)
bmesh.ops.triangulate(bm, faces=bm.faces)
# everything is fine so far

Now the problem is that you access the uv-data by iterating through the faces and then through their vertices. So for example uvTex.data[0] belongs to obj.data.faces[0]."vertices[0]" (quotes because it's not really a vertex in this context, it's just an index but you get what I mean).

Triangulating the mesh has changed the order of the vertices so my question is now:

How does one export a triangulated version of an object's mesh, including uv-mappings, without changing the objects geometry, etc.?

You can access the UV and Texture / Image information with bmesh using the custom data layers:

import bpy
import bmesh

ob = bpy.context.object
ob.update_from_editmode()
me = ob.data
vgroups = dict(enumerate(ob.vertex_groups.keys()))
vgroups_weights = [["%s: %.3f" % (vgroups[vg.group], vg.weight) for vg in v.groups] for v in me.vertices]

bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(me)
bmesh.ops.triangulate(bm, faces=bm.faces)

uv_layer = bm.loops.layers.uv.active
if uv_layer is None:
    raise Exception("No active UV map (uv)")

uv_tex = bm.faces.layers.tex.active
if uv_tex is None:
    raise Exception("No active UV map (tex)")

for face in bm.faces:
    print("Face %i, Image = %s" % (face.index, getattr(face[uv_tex].image, "name", "")))

    for loop, vert in zip(face.loops, face.verts):
        print(" - Loop for Vertex %i, UV = %r" % (vert.index, loop[uv_layer].uv))
    for vert in face.verts:
        print(" - %s" % ", ".join(vgroups_weights[vert.index]))

bm.free()
del bm

Verts and loops of a face should match (first vertex - first loop etc.)


Strange sharp lines/noticeable seams I was making a model for a game, and I finished and had a look at the model. With shading turned to smooth, I noticed there were some strange lines along certain edges. I can't find anything close to this happening with anyone else. If i try to delete the vertices and remodel that same place they still appear. All of the vertices are connected to each other, and there's no duplicates or unused ones.

I wonder if the normals are inverted on them.
viewport overlays can help identify this (top right of the viewport, looks like 2 circles intersecting) select face orientation. should all be blue


Making a necklace with the curve modifier I'm trying to repeat a mesh around a path to make a necklace. It fails when I apply the curve modifier, because the mesh doesn't repeat around the curve.
Here's what I did:

I created a bezier circle and added a shrinkwrap modifier. I set the shrinkwrap to "Project" and the direction to "Negative". This works fine:

I added a torus shape and created an array modifier. I set the fit type to "fit curve" and select the curve.

Then I added curve modifier to the torus shape and selected the curve. But instead of the mesh following the curve, it follows a different path:

It should be following the curve.
I tried applying the shrinkwrap modifier, but this just gets an error message ("Applied modifier only changed CV points") and it corrupts the shape of the curve.
How do I fix this? Or is there a better way to repeat a mesh (the ring) around another mesh (the body)?
EDIT: As requested, here's an image of the mesh with the origin visible:

Shrinkwrap modifier generates from curve tmp mesh. What you can see on your second image is original shape of your curve (shape without shrink-wrap modifier) I guess. It means your Curve modifier used by Torus still follows the original curve shape. What you see on your first image with shrinkwrap is actually a mesh :)
You have to convert curve to mesh (to get desired shape) than convert mesh back to curve.
Ensure if origins of Curve and Torus are at the same location.
Error message is probably referring to my first note - circle is still constructed from four points therefor applying modifier can't result in a shape presented by modifier that operates on mesh level. ... just my theory :)


How to expand my camera view? I'm asking how to make my camera see a lot more without having to zoom out. Because if I zoom out everything is smaller, I want it just close enough but I want it to see everything. I don't want it to look further away, but I want it to see more.

Wrapping up comments section with additional gifs.

Moving camera:

You can move Camera in many ways.

Grab it with G.
Fly with it Shift+F.
Or just Lock Camera to View and move around like in Viewport.

In example above I've locked camera and expanded its view along viewport.

Change Focal Length:

Second option is Focal Length under Camera tab. This one seems to be solution for you as basically it will show you more without zooming in or out. Note that it will distort objects appearance. Lower values = more distortion.

After lowering value you will need to move camera towards objects.


I can't use the add menu, how can I fix it? I'm starting now to modelling in blender, I was trying to create an hexagon, as everyone do, I searched on YouTube and here I understood that you need to do 3 simple steps:

Add a cylinder
Click on the menu in the left bottom part of the screen
Reduce the number of vertices

And the magic is done, but for some reason my add menu doesn't work properly, as you can see in the photo it seems impossible to change the properties and the first time i click on it, it disapears!

As moonboots told me the problem is that the Global Undo was disabled, to fix the problem you need to go here: Edit->Preferences->System and add the check on the Global undo


How do i start making this character? I need some help, tried making this character...started off by using meta ball, then tried subdividing a cuboid and what not....i want help with how to get the base mesh ready

it depends what style do you wanna use? cartoon or real? high poly vs low poly?
here some references you should check (see the wireframe view to check how they model a similar mesh):

https://www.turbosquid.com/it/3d-models/3d-shake-nigiri-1401254
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/handpainted-nigiri-sushi-combo-f3cd020bdad449b89afe9d21ed6fccc6
https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/food/miscellaneous/sushi-toro (metaballs for rice)


How can I prevent the body object slipping through the clothing object? When I model cloth separately and rig them to the same rig as character I have a lot of sliding - the cloth uses solidify to thicken them, but the "body" mesh still slips out of the clothing (through them, not using cloth simulation).

Just to clarify - In the picture it's not rigged yet.
Any ideas?

For this to work nicely you have to either:

have the clothes as one mesh with the skin for good results with automatic weighting
create the weights in Maya with Geodesic Voxel Binding
weight just the skin, then copy (project) the weights with Data Transfer modifier to the clothes. This way they won't slide (hopefully)

create a shell around the clothes and skin, rig the shell with armature, drive both the skin and clothes inside the shell through Mesh Deform modifier


can't find the Blender ID add-on sign in I have been trying to download the textured brushes add-on from the Blender Cloud. I understand that the download should consist of 2 files, one being a one-time sign in utility for the cloud, the other being the add-on itself. But all I can download is blender_cloud-1.16.addon and this extracts to a single file. Can't find the ID add-on sign in file anywhere.
Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

The addon is shipped with Blender :). It's called Blender ID authentication

Enable Blender ID authentication addon in Preferences > Addons
Log In
Download and Install BlenderCloud add-on directly from the .zip file (don't unpack anything)

Here's a screenshot of both Blender Cloud and Blender ID addon in my Blender.


Remapped keyboard keys don not work properly in Blender only (Windows 10) I have bought a laptop that was German (I’m not, I use an English keyboard), and I have a clean installation in English as Win 10 OS language and Greek loaded as an additional language pack. Both use a QWERTY layout, whereas German uses QWERTZ.
To maintain my keyboard habits I physically flipped the Z/Y keys to have the alphabet keys in place (and re-tagged the 4 keys with the basic punctuation marks in the familiar QWERTY positions - I am putting this in parentheses because if I solve the first issue, read more, this will follow).
Apart from the alphabet keys there are more than a dozen keys that differ (such as the shift numbers and others at the keyboard extremities). Those I don’t normally type “blind”, I look for them and press the key, as tagged. In order not to re-tag physically all the keys and make a mess of my laptop, I used Microsoft’s Keyboard Layout Creator to match the key codes with the key tags.
To save myself retyping all the keyboard codes in basic, shift and AltGr shift combinations, I originated my custom keyboard with the German layout and changed only a couple of keys that I physically replaced, the Z/Y and the punctuation marks above. I saved the layout as English Language Layout and everything has been working fine: it is available as an English language alternative keyboard, I type what I see on the keys (wysiwyg) and spellchecks properly identify the language.

Not in Blender, not in parts of Blender anyway:
In the viewport pressing Z which normally restrains along the Z-axis, restrains the Y and vice versa. But when I type text in a text file in blender Z is again Z…
Somehow on occasions gets the blender key input at a lower level than the keysetup from Layout Creator, ignoring the setting that this keyboard is an English variant.

Any ideas?

Solved, I needed to remap the virtual keys, to the proper scancode.
Did that manually editing the .klc file, because I found no way to do it in MS Layout Creator.
Then I just used the Creator to generate the setup files, from the edited .klc .

Detail by example:

I have physically switched the z/y keys on the keyboard
I have used MS Keyboard Layout Creator to alter the German keyboard
so as to type "z" in scancode location 2C (View this webpage
for scancode / virtual key settings by locale)
I have named the custom keyboard that matches my physical layout
"Deunglish" However because Deunglish started of as a German
keyboard the Virtual Key VK_Y is still mapped to scancode location
2C, despite setting this as an English keyboard with Creator.
Open the Deunglish.klc file with Notepad++ (or other editor) and
replace "y" (virtual key name) with "z" for scancode 2C.
Now you will have two definitions for VK z, assigned to two
different scan codes, in this case scancode 15.  Change that to y as
you did for z.
Load the klc file in the MS, verify and Build DLL and setup (If you
had been using the keyboard you have just edited, you need to unload
and uninstall the previous version first.  You will likely need to
restart)

You have successfully swapped virtual keys and assigned them to positions on the keyboard!
Do this for all keys that may need proper virtual key name to actual output matching, and/or to set to virtual keys to new scan codes.


How can I use outliner dots(?? I don't know it's name)? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z11Sv_kkoUs
In this video, I saw dots which can make me switch object to other not in object mode.
But I don't know how can I activate the dots.
Please let me know that.
I use 2.90.1 ver.

Mode toggling is a 2.91 feature. You need to update your Blender version.

Move mode toggling to the left column. When in non-object modes, icon buttons are shown in the left column for toggling modes. Clicking a dot icon will switch that object to become the new active object, Ctrl+click adds the object into the current mode. (2110af20f5)


Is there a way to keep the frame range but skip first n frames Is there a way to have a frame range from i.e. Frame Start 1 to End 1000 but skip the first 400 Frames and start rendering the animation at frame 401 without changing the Frame Start value?
Why would I ever need this?
Unfortunately I started rendering a procedural animation, where some values depend on the values of Frame Start and Frame End. Blender crashed half way through rendering the frames and I want to resume at a specific frame. If I change the Frame Start now, I would get a totally different animation.

I believe this Add-on does what you need: Loom
In your case you'd simply press Ctrl + Shift + F12 to bring up the render dialog. And then enter 401-1000.


How to stack multiple objects into a shape of another one? is there possibly a addon or a modifier that allows you to stack multiple objects into a shape of another?, if you do not understand what i am saying here is a example of what i want :

Then you apply the modifier/addon, and this would be the result.
Please help,
Thank you :D

Final result:

Overview:

You can use Particle System for such task. In my example you can see Suzanne and Cube filled with Spheres and Cube filled with Suzannes.

Particle System setup:

First add Particle System to your object - the one that is volume/shape/emitter.

Setup it as in the picture below:

Start/End should be set to 0, so particles will be generated at one time,
Emit from Faces > Grid will assure that particles will be distributed evenly,
Resulotion - how many particles should be in the emitter,
Render > Object is an object you want to distribute,
Size is a size of this object.

Set this settings in Wireframe mode to see changes. After everything is as it should be, you can go to Modifiers tab and Convert Particle System to mesh. Then delete/hide your emitter object.

Edit:

Difference with high resolution between Emit from Faces and Volume:

Blend file:


Is there a way to "smart" auto-reduce the amount of vertices? I made a height map based on a displacement, with a very high vertex count.
However, some parts of the map are flat because the terrain actually... is flat.
I have now 1 million vertices, of which at least 80% are quite useless.

So:
I would like to mass-dissolve vertices that are:
- adjacent to each other
- same height
...so that the flat parts of the terrain would become simplified, to reduce unnecessary vertices (and thus file size and CPU effort etc)

I do want to keep the steep hills and canyons with a lot of detail of course, as you can see on the lower half of the image. It's just the flat parts I want simplified.

Is there a way to do this without doing it manually? Because that would take ages.

PS: I tried "limited dissolve" but that kills the app.

Thanks in advance.

You can select one top face, then shiftG > Select Similar > Normal, then ctrlE > Un-Subivide.

Also, you have the Decimate modifier / Planar mode that will unsubdivide all the faces on the same normal orientation, or according to a certain angle threshold, it will allow you to preserve all the details:


Issues rigging and skinning a characters helmet I'm having issues trying to rig and skin a characters helmet. I'm using Blender 2.78c.

I've tried the following:
1) Joining the head and helmet meshes together.
2) Parenting the helmet to the head bone.
3) Parenting the helmet mesh to the head mesh.

I've ensured that the weights are painted on the helmet so that the head bone 100% influences all of the helmet.

But whatever I try it does this when I move the head bone...

ie the helmet crashes through the characters head mesh and looks all wrong! I'm simply after the helmet moving realistically when the characters head moves and it staying in line with the top of the characters head.

I could really do with some points in the right direction as to the correct process or techniques to use to get it to work please.

All thoughts very gratefully appreciated. Many thanks in advance for your help.

I'm assuming that helmet and head are the same mesh, I would go this way: create a new bone which will be the "helmet" bone, and parent it (keep offset) to the head bone.

During weight assignement, the main error is to think that if vertices are 1.0 to the head bone they will follow the bone movements exactly: this is not true, unless those vertices have weight assignement relative to the head bone ONLY.

So probably in your actual rig vertices form helmet and top head vertices have the same weight relative to the head bone (probably 1.0) but have different weights relative to others bones (neck or others), so they don't move together.

If you want to check all assignement of a vertex, select it in edit mode and search the "vertex weights" tab in the "N" properties panel.

A precisation: as Blender does a normalization of weight values, if a vertex is assigned to a bone only, it will move exactly with that bone, even if the weight is very low (0.01 is infinitely greater than zero).

P.S.

Looking better at your picture it seems that the head is moving ok, while the helmet is overshooting: this is probably due to a double parenting: if the helmet origin is parented to the head bone and the helmet vertices are "armature locked" to the same head bone, a movement of that bone will result in a double movement of the helmet.


Constant interpolation with Noise Modifier I am trying to create a curve in the graph editor with my interpolation set to constant and a noise modifier added.

The noise modifier seems to only generate curved lines. I need them to be constant. I want 0 interpolation between the points, is this possible?

I am trying to generate a random transform over a period of time for an object. But i need it to be constant, no interpolation between the transforms. Maybe there is an easier way to do this.

I believe you can achieve what you desire by using an additional modifier after the noise - a Stepped modifier.

The Noise modifier generates the 'smooth' noise while the Stepped modifier breaks the curve into distinct bands (Step Size) and keeps the value at the same value for the duration of that band.


Booltool addon not punch a hole With the inbuilt booltool addon. Why i can't punch a hole. The face facing correct. Removed double verts, scale rotation are 1 and 0,. Mesh has subsurf, solidify, mirror modifier. Im using 2.9 version after boolean with brush cant find the properties canvas to remove the brush. What missing or where im  going wrong. Any suggestion.

Gif.

Bool Toll fail
In provided file the Bool Tool, brush type Difference, works for me.
But your screen of "helmet" object looks differently. On screen Mirror modifier has unchecked Merge, so if you used it in this condition - Bool Tool failed.

Missing Canvas menu
This menu appears only when a brush is used. Than you can see properties menu when "Canvas" object is selected. BTW you have selected "Brush" object. So when boolean operation is used also here "Brush" properties appears when selected.


Blender 2.8 Grease Pencil displays [Report ERROR: Nothing to erase or all layers locked] when trying to draw I got a graphic tablet and started trying out Grease Pencil, it was working fine, I was enjoying a lot, i switched from DRAW mode to Edit Mode, several times, suddenly while on Draw Mode there was a red dotted circle, I checked online and some people had that problem (they had Guides ON) this is not my problem, it displays REPORT ERROR: Nothing to erase or all layers locked - I have searched everywhere, can't seem to fix it, already downloaded version 2.81, same problem, the layers are not locked, the strange thing is that if I add a Grease Pencil Stroke, then the Red Dotted Circle is able to erase it, also the LINE, Arc and these other tools do work, but not the Draw Tool, which is what I actually need, please any help appreciated, thanks!

I had the same problem on my XPen Deco03.There is a button on my pen Pen/Eraser.
I accidentally pressed it and turned on the Eraser. Just toggle it back to Pen by one more click


How to rotate object around a global point using Blender's Python API? I have a script that creates a bunch of object and I would like to rotate them around a global point ( (0, 0, 0) at the moment but I'll need to do this with different points). I was unable to find anything about rotating around a point.

Things to look at. 1) simple script

import bpy
import math

R = 10
start_pos = (R,0,0)

ob = bpy.data.objects["Cube"]

for frame_num in range(1,101):
    angle = 2*math.pi*frame_num/100.0
    x = R*math.cos( angle)
    y = R*math.sin( angle)
    z = 0
    bpy.context.scene.frame_set(frame_num)
    ob.location=(x,y,z)
    ob.keyframe_insert(data_path="location", index = -1)

2) place an empty at the point around which you wish to rotate, and make that parent --- see Olav3D's  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmLjYSmaW48

3) understand Euler rotations and their limitations

4) For 'Rolls Royce' rotation --- study quaternions.


Make bezier cuves follow/face/parallel to the mesh to make hair Why am I doing this: I'm looking for an easy way of creating polygonal hair.

What I'm doing: As I understand, the quickest way is to convert the particle 'guide'-hairs to bezier curves and add a bevel object.

The problem: the curves won't rotate along Y-axis to follow the mesh - they're just lying flat (parallel to the grid). So when I add a bevel object, it looks fine on top, but weird on the sides.

Is there a way to fix that?

P.S: I'm very new to Blender, please excuse my noobishness

You can do this by controlling the Tilt property on a per vertex basis.

It may be tedious will require some manual work if it is a lot of hair.

In edit mode just select a single vertex or a whole spline at once (you can do this easily from a single selected vertex by pressing Ctrl+L) and then controlling tilt with Ctrl+T.

You may optionally turn on Proportional Edit mode and set an adequate radius to control a bunch of hair at once.


need help to model turbo compressor housing tried torus but I'm unable to achieve these fused results and just how to make it small as it goes down?

Enable the add extra curves addon.

Then add a curve->Spirals->Archemedian

Give the spiral some height

In the geometry section. give it some bevel depth

Then you can edit the radius of one of the end segments to make is smaller

For further editing convert from curve to mesh


Images as planes (Video texture) not working with cycles I am coming from Maya, and this is my first project in Blender (Maya  is too expensive).
I was using images as texture to use an mp4 file. So I got my node setup, it would refresh the texture when I am previewing it in the viewport(by dragging the timeline) but while rendering it out, It won't update the texture. Perhaps it works fine with eevee, its just cycles, but then again, eevee renders bad and cycles doesn't update .
If anyone knows how to make these work with cycles, Please let me know.
Evee renderer

Here is my node setup (I don't think rest of the node setup is related to this problem, so I didn't include it as there is no space to include that).

It is a bug (any version newer than 2.83.4), This is fixed in 2.90 beta and 2.91 alpha.
Thanks @vklidu for helping me out.
developer.blender.org/T79952


How do I get rid of the tear in the middle of my object after using the mirror modifier? I'm sorry if this question has already been asked, but I was following a tutorial and after sculpting, I reapplied the mirror modifier but my mesh looks like this:

Is there is any way to fix this without applying or deleting the mirror modifier.
Thank you, a blender novice

Put the mirror modifier before the multires. Keep clipping on, but make sure all the vertices at the middle are snapped over to center line.


Replace background while using HDRI for lighting? How can I replace the background of my scene, but keep the reflections and lighting generated from my HDRI?

Enable Transparent in Render settings > Film:

Now the sky will render as alpha transparency when seen directly, but still illuminate and reflect off other objects.

Once you have a transparent background, it can easily be filled in with another image via an Alpha Over node:

The Translate node is used for some tweaks to the positioning of the background image.


Is there any way to link together 2 time frame nodes in with animation nodes? For anyone who sees this and has managed to get their hands on Animation Nodes, is there any way to combine 2 time frame nodes?
To elaborate, I want to record the transformed movement and rotation of a cube. Every time I use 1 time frame node, all sockets connected, it keeps recording the same frame, even with "always" turned off. Instead, I have tried to connect 2 time frame nodes to any combine vector. it failed, only 1 at a time. I have tried to node search a "combine time frame" or something, no dice. Is there any way to record 2 separate locations and rotations in 2 separate frames

In the Time submenu you also have some Animate ... nodes for vector, euler etc.
You should use them for animating between a frame and another.

Note that:

they also have a Time output so that you can use several in a series
they have an interpolation method. There is a whole interpolation submenu for having a lot of control over that, if the default set of options is not enough.

ps:
For complex situations or for many objects or instances of an object, if more than several animate nodes would be used, use subprograms, loops especially for lists of objects, having animate nodes triggered by various rules.


How do I texture paint into a UV-unwrapped model? I was learning about UV-unwrapping the other day, and I have successfully unwrapped and applied a UV texture to my model. Now the problem is that, for some strange reason a certain part of my model remains un-textured.

To fix that, I was thinking about texture painting (with stencil) over that UV map on the untextured region, but I have to create a new image for that, and consequently lose my previous texture. Is there any other way, to paint that region?

A detailed view of the model:

I want to apply a texture paint in the white region

It was just silly of me to not think of this earlier. I just created a new material and assigned the un-textured area into it and then used the same texture map.


How to create a workable leaf spring in Blender? I want to create a leaf spring which can be used in a physical simulation to spring away the objects when it is being deformed. Should I use a soft body to do this? However, it doesn't seem like soft bodies could accomplish this.

This is the closest simulation I could think of (also made video version available):

Create a Cube Shift+amc and scale down it sz.1Returnsx.5Return.
Create and instance with Alt+dy2Return. Repeat several times with Shift+r, making sure to end with an uneven amount.
Select all newly created cubes and and make active rigid bodies Control+r.
In the the Tool Shelf under Rigid Body Tools, click Calculate Mass and select Steel.
One by one go along selecting each of the neighbouring cubes and click the Connect button (also in the Rigid Body Tools).
Finally select the centre cube and set it to passive Control+Shift+r.


Set Multiple Cameras as Active (Game Engine)? I pretty much just want multiple camera views at the same time (like side by side), so I can get different views of the game.

Also, I can see things in one camera view that I can't in another. Imagine monitors in a security room and each monitor shows a different camera in the building... Anything like that?

(FYI: I'm on Linux, v2.76 64bit)

I didn't write this script but it seems to work, and I think I understand how it works. Script credit
from bge import logic, render
camList = logic.getCurrentScene().cameras

cont = logic.getCurrentController()
own = cont.owner
cam1 = camList[own['cam1']]
cam2 = camList[own['cam2']]

width = render.getWindowWidth()
height = render.getWindowHeight()

cam1.setViewport(0, 0, int(width/2), height)
cam2.setViewport(int(width/2), 0, width, height)

cam1.useViewport = True
cam2.useViewport = True

Now the object that's running this is a cube, and it's logic looks like this:

Notice the two string properties! These define the cameras that will be used. you can see them called in lines 6 & 7. Basically, the script designates the Viewport area of each camera to half the width of the screen, which is perfect for split screen while playing a game with a  friend... Like, a really close friend, cause you'll probably have to share a chair. :)
DISCLAIMER!!!: I did not write the script included in this answer


Bug? Material Preview mode shows only black objects (Eevee and Cycles) Per se, I'm not new to Blender, but after 2.8, and after not using it in a while, it sort of feels like I am again. I'm starting to dip my toes back into it by following the "Blender Fundamentals 2.8" playlist on YouTube.

Along the way, I noticed a little hiccup.

Firstly,

OS: Windows 10 Pro
CPU: Intel Core i7 920
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTS 250
(Other info available on request)

Reproducing the issue:

Click "File / New / General".
Change the active workspace mode to "Shading".
Make sure Viewport Shading is set to Material Preview and the Render Engine is set to either Eevee or Cycles.
See the black cube.

I must be an idiot or something. I've looked all over for some solution or explanation, but absolutely nothing has proved fruitful. Anything that seemed promising applied to Blender 2.79 or earlier.

Notes:

I had no Add-ons installed.
Unless I utterly forgot something, I haven't modified the Startup File.
The Render Preview mode doesn't have any problems.
I just updated my GPU drivers today. It is a fairly old GPU, so maybe  that could have something to do with it. I dunno.

Actually, here's a screenie of what I see after all the aforementioned steps have been taken. Perhaps someone keener than I can spot something amiss.

Thanks for any help and/or directions!

So, I recently switched over to a new computer with a much-improved card: I'm guessing there was something wrong with my old card.


What is the warp modifier for? What is the warp modifier for, and how is it used?
Even when I fill in the From and To fields, so that the modifier is not red, I still can not figure out what it is so post to do.

When I set up the modifier just like is shown in the manual, it does nothing.

The warp modifier can also be used to wrap an object: the to object  controlles the direction to where the from object is wrapping the object (holding the modifier).


Leather like texture using nodes I don't know much of the intricacies of nodes and was wondering how I might go about creating a procedural dark red leathery textured skin for a model I am working on. I don't want to use a UV texture for it.

This is the look I'm going for the skin, I'm currently looking at some tutorials but most haven't had a great result

The problem I am having is that textures I've tried aren't showing up it just looks red even with increased factors, here is what I have from following a video.

Alright, this has been all sorted, thanks for the suggestions, I finally got the result I wanted. I'll do some modifications but I used a blend swap file and here is the result I've come up with so far.

Thanks for the help!!!


Material preview background color - Blender Cycles i can't figure out how to change Material preview background  color in Blender Cycles.

I need to switch from 1 to 2.

Thanks

The Material Preview window uses the view transforms set in the color management section.


How to hide Stencil in Texture Paint Mode Is there any way to hide the stencil overlay in the texture paint mode of blender?
It kind of gets irritating when trying to view whats been painted on the view?
Of course I can do it from the tool panel, but are there any shortcuts?

As far as I know, you can't make the stencil disappear using any shortcuts. What you can do is grab it (hold RMB and drag the mouse from left to right), then place it on a right/left side of a screen. You may see only a small fragment of it. Then you can grab it again and place back on the previous position.


Video editing transform strip offset and crop in Preview window Is there a gizmo that lets me transform a strip position and crop directly in the Preview window?

This would be much easier than using the side pane menus.

If you use the 2.83 alpha, grab this add-on and use the transform tools in the toolbar:
https://github.com/tin2tin/VSE_Transform_Tools


How to connect 8 vertices to 3 with all quads? These are the vertices I'm trying to connect

)
And this is my best attempt at doing so without distorting the mesh too much

I still ended up with a triangle, and some awful geometry that made smoothing out the mesh a lot harder. Am I doing anything wrong? Is there a better way to do this?
I considered adding more edge loops on the left side, but I have subdivision surface modifier on, and adding more edge loops there sharpens the mesh too much.

Question
How do I fill in the hole while avoiding n-gons?

Your situation has an even amount of vertices.
They cannot be connected with only quads.
Each inserted quad will always add/subtract exactly 2 vertices to/from a hole and you will always end up with 3 vertices in the end.
After adding one more vert you can easily achieve quads for example like this:


"Domain Type" and other options not showing (new to blender) I'm trying to change my domain type from smoke to gas, however my smoke domain settings are completely different from the tutorial I'm watching and I'm not sure how to change them.

Fluid/Smoke settings have changed depending on the version of the Blender.
If your smoke/fluid settings are different than a tutorial, get the exact version, the tutorial is using.
You can download any (even the oldest) version of Blender on their download page.


Smart UV project unmapping outside of UV space I am unwrapping a mesh using the Smart UV Project unwrapper. When I unwrap my mesh some of the UVs are outside of the UV grid. This is undesirable for the following reasons:

tileable textures will look wrong
I cannot texture paint the areas outside of the region

I really like how the Smart UV Project method works other than that. __How can I have the Smart UV Project method only unwrap inside of the UV grid?

blend file

The only way to do this with smart unwrap it to pack the islands after the are created. CTRL P


part of my model are see through Every now and then when I am working on a model this happens

Why has it become a different color and then when I import it into UE4 they are see through can i fix this or is this some sort of bug?

This usally happens when normals are facing the wrong side of the mesh

Using the backface culling  in the N panel will make the concerned faces transparent (see-through as in your UE4 game engine)

You can check your faces normals with this option in the N panel. This will show you the normals in the viewport.

To make the normals consistent go in Edit Mode with Tab, select all with A (only the bad faces could be enough), and use Ctrl+N (recalculate), or  Shift+Ctrl+N (recalculate the other direction), or select the faces and click Flip directions


2D Face Animation on 3D Model: Transparent Texture? I'm following this tutorial on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlvgMYZgaY&list=PLJtehCu4iIj4T0dqawwRolg8B6DPzmu01&index=46&t=0s

The problem is that the character he is using is a single colour so when he applies the new UV map and texture there is no issue, however my character's texture is not one colour. I want to be able to add the 2D eyes for animation while being transparent and showing the original texture underneath. The picture below shows the texture and the eyes are 3D before I decided to animate them in 2D.

Does anyone know how I can animate the texture as a transparent texture so I can maintain the texture beneath?

Your problem is that the UVs for the face got moved away from the skin material. Further, the skin material is separate from the eye material, which is ok if you are following the tutorial, but note that he superimposes the eye material onto the skin material with the Mix Shader node. You only have 1 UV map--this makes it so the eyes will never be in the right place; they will always be floating out in space, away from the skin texture. We can fix that.I will record a gif or something, hang on...

...do you have a version of the file with the eye region still attached to the mesh? We should start from there. Please upload that file. Use https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

Oh! I can just attach the animation :j

...animating the new UV map "_EyesUV" will not have any effect on the body texture now. Here is the .blend file:

NOTE: if you are no longer satisfied with your textures, there are a couple of solutions:

Export your UV layout for the eyes in the UV editor (I suspect you already know how to do this) and warp the eye textures you already have into proper orientation in Photoshop.
paint directly onto the model in Blender (see any quick-and-dirty Youtube tutorial for that). I find this technique expecially useful for high-contrast texture features I know will look warped if I try to eyeball it in Photoshop.

ALSO, IMPORTANT: Texture will be warped until you de-parent armature. I do not know yet why the armature was an issue.

I deparented the armature, recalculated the bone rolls, reset the pose, and re-parented, and it works now:

Baking the Eyes object silhouette onto an image using the Body's Ambient Occlusion.

The "Collections" panel replaces the "Outliner" panel in Blender 2.8. You can find these same options there:

If the bake takes longer than you (I) thought, it's because the second UV map also has coordinates for the rest of the body (not sure how to remove those for the bake, maybe just drag them outside the UV canvas?). Save this image:

File:


creating two groups of joined objects using python I am trying to create multiple joined groups using this answer to an already existing question.

I am reading some coordinates from a file, creating spheres at those coordinates, and assigning a material of a certain color depending on the index. I would like to join together the spheres that have the same color.

Below is a minimal reproducible code:

import bpy
import numpy as np

coords = np.loadtxt('coordinates.dat')

# 0 (A)
matBlue = bpy.data.materials.new(name="blue")
matBlue.diffuse_color = (0,0,1)
# 1 (B)
matRed = bpy.data.materials.new(name="red")
matRed.diffuse_color = (1,0,0)

materialColors = {0:matBlue, 1:matRed}

spheres = [[],[]]
count = 0
for coord in coordinates:
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(location=(coord[0],coord[1],coord[2]), size=0.5)
    name = 'sphere' + str(count)
    bpy.context.active_object.name = name
    currentSphere = bpy.data.objects[name]
    currentSphere.data.materials.append(materialColors[count%2])
    spheres[count%2].append(currentSphere)
    count += 1

# join spheres
scene = bpy.context.scene

for i in range(2):
    ctx = bpy.context.copy()
    ctx['selected_objects'] = spheres[i]
    ctx['active_object'] = spheres[i][0]
    ctx['selected_editable_bases'] = [scene.object_bases[ob.name] for ob in spheres[i]]
    bpy.ops.object.join(ctx)

However, when I do this, I end up with red spheres joined, and the blue spheres are not joined. What am I doing wrong?

Note: In reality, I have 8 groups instead of 2. Hence the for loop at the end.

Beware the naming system

There is an issue with this part of your code, I've added a print statement boolean  if the object you have chosen as currentSphere is also the newly created sphere.  bpy.data.objects["sphere0"] will always be the first object created with this name. Running again with any objects with the same name existing, will give somewhat unpredictable results.

for coord in coords:
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(location=(coord[0],coord[1],coord[2]), size=0.5)
    name = 'sphere' + str(count)
    bpy.context.active_object.name = name

    currentSphere = bpy.data.objects[name]
    print(currentSphere is bpy.context.active_object)

could use something like below, where the currentSphere will be the newly created object, but may not end up with the name you choose. (To make sure it has unique name would need to check and rename/remove others)

for coord in coords:
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(location=(coord[0],coord[1],coord[2]), size=0.5)
    name = 'sphere' + str(count)
    currentSphere = bpy.context.active_object
    currentSphere.name = name
    currentSphere.data.materials.append(materialColors[count%2])
    spheres[count%2].append(currentSphere)
    count += 1

I also contend in this case can set context, rather than overriding.

for i in range(2):
    for o in scene.objects:
        o.select = o in spheres[i]
    scene.objects.active = spheres[i][0]
    bpy.ops.object.join()

Bmesh approach

Another suggestion would be scrapping the primitive add and join operators altogether and use bmesh to create spheres at coordinates.  Test script, creates two bmeshes for odd and even coordinates, and writes the first to active object's mesh.

import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Matrix

coords = [(0, 0, 1), (1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (1, 1, 0)]
bmeshes = [bmesh.new(), bmesh.new()]
for i, coord in enumerate(coords):
    bmesh.ops.create_uvsphere(bmeshes[i % 2],
        u_segments = 16,
        v_segments = 8,
        matrix=Matrix.Translation(coord),
        diameter=0.5)

# for example sake to mesh onto active_ob
me = bpy.context.object.data
bmeshes[0].to_mesh(me)
me.update()
for bm in bmeshes:
    bm.free()


Bones moving incorrect things on mesh I've added bones to this mesh that I downloaded online and for some reason when I move some specific bones it moves other stuff, like eyebrows. I'm not that experienced yet I know a few things here & there, so it would be nice to explain it in simple terms.

There are 4 images showing whats happening https://imgur.com/a/3WPfBXB

(I've seen others mention vertex groups in other threads but I don't know what a vertex group is...)

Cheers!

Its because of wrong weight paint.

Solution: In pose mode select a bone and Shift select the model and switch from object mode to weight paint mode you will see the model with blue and red color.

The red color represents the area which is under the effect of the bone in the Tool panel select subtract and paint on the parts you don't want the bone to move which are the (eye brows I guess) wallah and watch the tutorial by blender on weight paint basics on youtube ..


Error when installing Blender 2.78 over the past few days, I have been trying to install "Blender 2.78" on Windows OS on 64-bit. The error is, I have insufficient permissions to download the software. Here is a picture:

Other information: I am logged in to the OWNER of the computer, or "ADMIN" of the computer. This is the only used account on my desktop computer.

You don't have to install Blender. Just download and extract the ZIP file and you can run it directly. There is no need for administrator privileges.


Fluid sticking to surface (2.8) I am trying to make a beach. When I tried simulating the fluid (2.82 mantaflow), it went mostly well. However, I noticed that the water would stick to the entire floor when all I wanted is that around 2/3 of the ocean floor is covered.

As you can see there is a sloped down part, and I want some section of it to not be covered by water. However, it seems that if the water touches something, it will never recede from it leading to this unrealistic simulation.

I baked it at 100 resolution and then baked it as a mesh to make it easier to see. If you need more information please request it.

After playing around with the settings I tried enabling Fractional Obstacles inside the Liquid settings in the physics tab. This solved the issue for me. I think that the reason things like this were happening was that the obstacle was represented as a bunch of voxels, so in the fluid's perspective, it looked like a bunch of stairs. Checking Fractional Obstacles will probably smooth out the surface depending on the ratio.


Repeting texture rather than scaling texture? How to fix it Trying to add an image texture on my mesh, and i UV unwrap it like this.

but it turns out to be

Not sure what is wrong with this. Have no clue.
Here is my Node setup(i am using backfacing to make a plane have two material on both side)

In order to prevent the image repeating, set the Image Texture node from ‘Repeat’ to ‘Clip’. This tells the node to only output a single image within the 0.0 -> 1.0 range.


Widening Hole in Cloth Sim I am in the early stages of modelling a robe which has an existing neck hole at the top of it that is supposed to be a fixed size. I have set up a basic test to see how it will react when resting on an object and it seems to do a weird thing on collision where the neck hole widens until the whole robe eventually falls through the sphere I created.

Here are some images of what I'm talking about. These are the cloth and the collision settings:

And here's the problem once it's animated:

To be clear I just want the robe to rest on the sphere object and not fall through it. This also happens when I make the object it's colliding with different shapes such as cubes. Let me know if I can add anything to make it easier to help. It's driving me crazy!

my guess is: bad topology of the cloth object...

here's your mesh topology:

And topology is all about good deformations...

I did a quick test of a "square" cloth object (not particularly good topology, but way better than your object...), just to check and, with default cloth / collision settings... is subdived and then also subssurfed...

animation starts like this:

and after 136 frames:

here is my test .blend

update:

here is a simpler test with higher "structural" setting...


Attach rigid bodies to rigged mesh So I am modelling something for a friend. Its a cat from a game and it has some little bells on a collar.

I modelled and textured everything, and I was able to use Rigid Bodies for the bells so they move with the cat. But once I rigged the cat the rigid bodies don't follow the cat anymore

I attatched them using a Generic rigid body constraint with empties connecting the cat mesh to the bells. I also have strings connecting the cat to the bells using the Hook modifier, but I have been able to figure that out.

I just can't seem to find a way to make the rigid bodies follow the deformations of the rig.

Here is how I attached everything. The best that I have been able to get is the empties to follow the rig, but the rigid body simulations don't follow with the empties that are constraining them.

I've done.

Youtube:

First of all - seems that rigid bodies aren't working with armature-deformed meshes directly. But with some intermediate objects it is possible to make them. I made the chain: rigid proxy object ("fake tip") and ball constrainted by empty ("joint"), this empty is child of "fake tip", "fake tip" is child of last bone in armature. Also armature constrainted with IK and deforms mesh ("tentacle").

Looks like you have to place additional rigid proxy objects for every bone where could be collision with other rigid bodies.

I made some different attempts with different combinations and only this one works for me. But hope somebody could make it simplier.

Added some screenshot: