Collection of objects added as particle to a Plane not getting projected within the Plane I added a particle property to a plane. I added a collection of 26 objects to particle system and attached it to particle property of a Plane. I was expecting all the objects to be displayed over the plane. But I am seeing that many of the objects are getting displayed out the surface of the plane. The screenshot is added for further clarity. I am a newbie to Blender, kindly excuse my novice writing and please ask for more information if the question is not clear to anyone. thanks

The problem has to do with the way you created your letters. I'm guessing you added a Text object, converted to a mesh and then separated by loose parts. The problem with this is the whole text object is considered to have one origin point that stays the same for all the individual letters after they have been separated.
In the image below, you can see that no matter what letter object I pick, the origin point is still the same. Also notice how the offset of the particles corresponds somewhat to the offset of the each letter from the origin point.

The solution then, is to reset the origins for each letter back to the center of the object. Select a letter and pick Object > Set Origin > Origin To Geometry. Do this for each letter. To make it faster, you can do it for one letter, and repeat for the rest, by selecting them one by one and pressing Shift + R.

If you want to make sure the origin is at the bottom of the letters (so the particles don't appear "halfway through" the plane), you can be a bit more specific and (in edit mode) select a bottom face (or combination of faces) and press Shift+S and select "Cursor to Selected". This will place the 3D cursor in the middle of the face(s) you selected.

From here, go back to Object mode, and select  Object > Set Origin > Origin To 3D Cursor. This is a more involved process though, as you will have to do this manually for each letter.


Everything moves, not just the selected vertex I go into edit mode for an object, select vertex mode, select one of the squares, then pull the arrow it moves just the square like it is suppose to. If I resize it then go into edit mode it no longer does this.

When I select vertex select a square, then go to move that square everything moves now, not just the vertex. Why?

I have already reset everything back to default settings and it is still doing this. It wasn't doing this yesterday, but today it is.

You're probably using Proportional Editing. This mode allows the user to make changes to vertices (or other selectables) within a given region, based on how close those vertices (or other selectables) are to the actual selection.
From the Manual:

Proportional Edit is a way of transforming selected elements (such as vertices) while having that transformation affect other nearby elements. For example, having the movement of a single vertex cause the movement of unselected vertices within a given range. Unselected vertices that are closer to the selected vertex will move more than those farther from it (i.e. they will move proportionally relative to the location of the selected element). Since proportional editing affects the nearby geometry, it is very useful when you need to smoothly deform the surface of a dense mesh.

This can be (accidentally) turned on by pressing O. It can be turned off the same way.
GUI controls in Blender 2.8x (proportional editing enabled):

GUI controls in Blender 2.7x:

(The highlighted button toggles the mode on and off)


(2.8) Where are the performance options for rendering? It's a simple enough question.

In past versions of blender, the render tab had performance options where you could specify various things about how blender rendered things. The feature I'm particularly interested in was the one that allowed you to render with a custom number of cores. I like to browse the web and text friends while my scenes render, so I usually set it to render with every core except for one.

But blender 2.8's moved this menu to some obscure location I can't find. (or removed the feature entirely)

Same place under performance Hasn't changed.


blender renders wrong portions of video strips Here is the situation
I loaded several video files, edited the strips, did some cuttings, and made a sequence that I'd like to get rendered, added some audio files, did same kind of work on them.

But here is the thing, after I render this sequence, in the resulting file I get portions of video fragments that I cutted out while editing, And I don't see them in video view in blender.

What can be the reason for that?

blend file

That's most likely a problem due to a broken Video file. The internally used ffmpeg libraries don't work too well with some video formats and are not able to always provide the frames without artifacts and in the right order one by one. I bet your Screencast software didn't do a good job in encoding your footage.

So try to repair your footage. And then instead of using RecordMyDesktop to capture your screen you should use Open Broadcaster Software recording to file, not LiveStream. It should provide you with non-problematic footage that you can use with Blender without problems.


Washed out textures in Unity I have a problem. After I modelled objects in Blender I textured them and textures are as I need them to be - with saturated colors.

However, as soon as I export it to the .FBX format and put them on the Unity scene, the textures become pale.

I suspect this is related to some Blender options but I can't be sure as I'm novice. I searched answer in the internet and didn't find it, how is possible to fix it.

.fbx files do not transfer textures, so you need to manually apply them in unity. However, the unwrapping should transfer over, so all you need to do is apply the textures manually in Unity.


why won’t the hsv v scale go any higher than 1 When using a color ramp to make something glow, and I had planned to use the the bloom function. But when I turned up the v scale it went back to 1.000 and wouldn’t go any higher. And when I turned on bloom it didn't glow. Pls send help.

Values in HSV nodes in both the Compositor and Shader Editor can go above 1:

1 means 100%. If we are talking about color information in an image 1 represents 100% of some color channel - the most it can be so it cannot go any higher, however color in Blender is 32bit so it can be pretty much any value. The dynamic range of colors can be a lot greater than it can be displayed in an image inside Blender. Colors of a render can be adjusted the way you want them to fit into an image - that's color grading. Anyway, you can definitely go above 100% or 1 in Blender in value of HSV nodes. It is not a good idea in some cases though as it might make your renders unrealistic.


How do I set up a Follow Path constraint and also control its influence? I need to add a Follow Path constraint to an object and also set up key frames to turn off the influence of that constraint after one rotation around the path: https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.types.FollowPathConstraint.html#bpy.types.FollowPathConstraint
I found an influence adjustment here but I can't seem to even get the constraint working in the first place. Some guidance on this issue would help my overall understanding of the Docs.

Following code worked for me:
import bpy

ob = bpy.context.object
curve_ob = bpy.data.objects["Plane"]

con = ob.constraints.new('FOLLOW_PATH')
con.target = curve_ob

curve_ob.data.use_path = True
anim = curve_ob.data.animation_data_create()
anim.action = bpy.data.actions.new("%sAction" % curve_ob.data.name)

fcu = anim.action.fcurves.new("eval_time")
mod = fcu.modifiers.new('GENERATOR')
mod.use_restricted_range = True

mod.frame_start = 1
mod.frame_end = 100


Measure object depth with ray_cast There is a template script:
operator_modal_view3d_raycast.py
That show how use the ray_cast() to find the the coordinates of hit face.
But I want to measure the distance of the opposite face from the hit face.
The depth of the object from the 3d view.

You can use mathutils.geometry.intersect_ray_tri to check any intersections with object triangles.
You can use the raycast method and then again with normals inverted to get the opposite face


Where is bpy.context.material? In the api documentation there is a bpy.context.material.
However, when I type bpy.context.m and press CtrlSpace in the Python console it completes to bpy.context.mode, suggesting that there are no attributes of bpy.context that begin with m besides mode.

Where is bpy.context.material and how can I access it?

Best guess:

You can see that bpy.context.material is listed under the "Buttons Context" section in the API doc link you posted (other sections are "View3D Context", "Screen Context" etc.). Based on what I found during my search, it looks like this is a context from 2.4x that is no longer available in 2.5x+. "Buttons Context" seems to be an old name for what we now know as the properties editor.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Reference/Buttons/Window

It seems that this is old code (or old documentation) that just wasn't removed, but take it with a grain of salt, I could easily be wrong.

Edit (from comment below, which author identified as the sought-after code):
If I get what you're looking for with this attribute, you might want to try bpy.context.object.active_material.


Bending with end objects I am a very new Blender user.  I have made an object that I would like to bend, but I would like the child objects on both ends to be unaffected by the deform.  I have tried using a simple deform and also adding bones, but in either case, the end objects seem to always deformed and I don't want them to be.  I just want them to remain attached to the middle object as it deforms.  Can anyone give me a hint at how I accomplish this?

[

If your are using bones, you need to use constraints
Copy location and copy rotation// Target is the Armature and Bone is the the closest to the end

Hope that helps


Rigid bodies collision of a piston inside a shell I am trying to simulate with the piston constraint by putting the rigid body piston into another rigid body shell such that they can work as a piston mechanism.
However, the piston inside the shell is vibrating and the shell doesn't work as which appear as there is a shell cavity. The piston just merely treat the expected hollow part as a solid and unwanted collision happened. Thus, the simulation doesn't work as expected.
How can I solve this situation?

Unexpected results from Rigid Body simulations are often the result of incorrect geometry (such as wrongly oriented normals) or bad collision parameters. It's difficult to say what your specific problem is without seeing your actual set-up but here's a few things to try.

Firstly, check the normals of your meshes - look out for any meshes where the normal is not pointing 'out' of the surface. Bad normals can be the result of negatively scaled meshes. To check the normals you can enable the Display Face Normals as Lines option in the Mesh Display properties in the properties panel to the right of the 3D View. If you need to then you can tell Blender to recalculate the normals by selecting all while in Edit mode and then hitting Ctrl+N.

The next thing to check is the Rigid Body Collisions Shape in the Physics panel. This is fine set to 'Convex Hull' if the mesh does not have any inward curving faces but your cylinder 'shell' will need to be set to 'Mesh' to ensure the hole through the centre is treated as not solid.

For some simulations you can simply rely on the interactions of the meshes themselves. However, it's often useful to give the simulation a helping hand by adding Rigid Body Constraints. The constraints allow you to dictate how two objects interaction - usually also disabling any collision between those two objects. Typically a constraint consists of an Empty that sits between the two objects, linking them together in some way. For 'directional' constraints (such as Hinge, Motor, Piston) the orientation of the Empty is significant and, confusingly, depends on the type of constraint!

For a Hinge constraint the 'edge' of the hinge is in the local Z-axis of the Empty. It's useful to use a 'Single Arrow' style of empty and the 'arrow' should point in the direction of the hinge (think of the door frame up the side of a hinged door).
For a Motor contraint, the rotational element of the force is applied around the local X-axis of the Empty. This has certainly caused confusion in the past since if you set up a Hinge and a Motor on the same objects (say an axle and a wheel) then the two empties must be oriented differently, otherwise no motion will occur. Similarly, the linear element of the force also works along the local X-axis.
For a Piston constraint, the motion is constrained along the local X-axis of the Empty, similar to the Motor constraint.

The Hinge is the only one of these constraints which has an intuitive style of Empty that matches it's action - it would be useful to have Empty styles that matched the different directions - for example, if the Cone style were oriented along the X-axis rather than the Y-Axis then it woul be a useful style to 'point the way' of the Motor and Piston constraints!

To demonstrate this in action I created the following quick scene.

It consists of a 'block' to anchor the wheel to, a 'wheel', a 'rod', the 'piston' and the 'cylinder', all positioned at their start locations. A Hinge constraint is positioned in the centre of the wheel (oriented with Z pointing in the direction of the presumed axle), along with a Motor constraint (oriented with X pointing along the axle so the action is around the axle). A Point constraint is positioned where the rod connects to the wheel. Another Point constraint is positioned where the rod connections to the piston. The piston lies within the cylinder - and the cylinder is set with it's Rigid Body Collision shape set to 'Mesh' (although you could use a Piston constraint for this instead, if preferred).

Running the animation produces the following results :

Blend file included


How do I know the path to the file in the Blender Game Engine? In BGE, in an initialization script, I have these instructions:

var=bge.logic.expandPath("//")
print("====== path=",var,"=======")

and now the variable "var" is set to the path of the Blender file.

Ok, but when I export the game (Save As Game Engine Runtime) and move the saved file to another path or another PC, the "var" variable does not change, i.e. it remains the one it was before moving the file.

Have you looked at the right console?

You need to start the game with option -c to see the console window of the game.

When you do not see the game's console you might have looked at the console of the still opened Blender.

In my test the path was correctly pointing to the location of the game's folder.


A Scale Map For Texture Nodes? I'm modeling a character and making a procedural skin shader, but I would like to fine control the scale of my bump maps (I'm using Voronois) since pores are different sized on different parts. I know I can't attach an image texture to the Scale of the Voronoi, but I was wondering if there is a way.

You can attach an image to the scale factor. It works pretty fine.

"..or into the scale factor of a mapping node, if the texture doesn't have its own 'scale' input" – Robin Betts


Cutting hole into a face with a line loop? How do I cut a hole in the plane using the hollow line loop in the middle they're part of the same mesh and both 2d.

This can be done using Knife Project, however for the case you show to work, you will have to use a recent Blender build, since improved knife support was added after 2.69 release.

  To use Knife Project, in Object mode select the object you want to project (use and cut the other) first then Shift select the "object to be cut". Now Tab into Edit mode and press Knife project.

Before projecting from a text object and Resulting knife projection.


Shade Smooth not working in the render tab (even after recalculating/merging normals) This weird flat shading is occurring on the curved surface even after shading smooth and merging normals.
It is a model exported from Rhino as an FBX
No modifiers applied.
Viewport shading and edit mode visuals are provided below.

You need more subdivisions on the object to appear curved.
Here's an object only with smooth shading (rendered image on the right), note that the edges and faces are visible.

Here's the same object with smooth shading and a subdivision surface modifier. The curves are smooth.

Just for comparison, here's the same object with flat shading. Compare to smooth shading only.

Click on the images to show enlarged in full screen.


My audio is there but how can I get back my video? This was displaying my video and playing the accompanied audio track.
However somehow I tried moving some windows around, and now I get this, a blank video with perfect audio.

Is there any way to discover where my video is hiding and synchronize it to the audio once again?

Your preview window is displaying a histogram (technical reference image). Click on the checkerboard icon at the bottom of the VSE timeline


Snap individual vertex of the selection to closest vertex I want each individual vertex of my selection to snap to the closest unselected ones, so they superpose each other.

Im aware of the vertex snapping utility along the "closest" mode but it only work on "one" vertex, and thus will move the entire selection.

I could do it by hand but it would become tiresome with hundred of vertices.

Precision: I'd like it to work in UV editor too.

I hope I'm clear, Thank you.

If you don't mind if the extra vertices are removed, you can use remove doubles and in the tool settings (F6), set the merge distance to something higher (probably in the range of .01 and .1). This will merge close vertices that are closer than a the merge distance.


How do you get an object's position and rotation through script? I'm working on a project that requires me to get some of the position and rotation values to give to an Arduino via pyserial, but after sifting through the Blender documentation I can't find how to get them through script.

You can access an object's transformations through the relevant properties (location, rotation_euler -  for Euler XYZ rotations, and scale) this way:

>>> object.location
Vector((-2.609607696533203, -3.618044137954712, 1.8581657409667969))

>>> object.rotation_euler
Euler((-0.6668576598167419, 0.697817325592041, -1.8853096961975098), 'XYZ')

>>> object.scale
Vector((1.2768771648406982, 1.4246054887771606, 0.6418209075927734))

Do note though that these values represent the object origin. If your origin is not at the center of your object, you might get unexpected location values.

Move the origin to the geometry (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C > Origin to Geometry) first on all your objects to avoid this.

Or pythonically:

bpy.ops.object.select_all( action = 'SELECT' )
bpy.ops.object.origin_set( type = 'ORIGIN_GEOMETRY' )

On a more general note though, I'd like to mention some great sources for documentation and examples for Blender python scripting that will help you find answers more quickly next time (since finding object location and other transformations is probably one of the most basic and best documented things you can do in scripting, I'm assuming you're not familiar with these sources):

Blender API official documentation (with useful search bar)

Scripting quickstart document

Blender python scripting Code Snippets and Cookbook


switch objects in the same position I'd like to render a table with different objects on it, one by one. The table with a book, then with a cup of coffee, and so on...
My current solution is to have all objects visible but out of camera view, and I create keyframes for each object positioned in view on the table. Then I render the whole animation as individual images and it works well, but is very inefficient.
Is it possible to have all of those objects in a collection and animate it so each frame automatically shows a different object, through linking to an empty as placeholder on the table, a modifier or another method (except scripting)?
Follow up question: Can something similar be done to apply different textures to the table?
Any help, even just a nudge in the right direction, will be appreciated.
Michael

I recommend you a free addon which I created, specifically for this situation:
Object Sequence (https://github.com/sacrish/Object-Sequence)
After installing the addon, first set up your scene with an hierarchy like this:

Basically put the objects which need to be switched in a separate collection (here I named it "objects"), meanwhile keep all other things like the table, camera, etc. in another collection.
Open Object Sequence panel from the "Misc" tab, select your collection of objects, and hit Sequentialize.

And you will notice in the timeline that the visibilities of the objects have been keyframed, with their object names labeled on corresponding frames.

Now hit Render Sequence in the Object Sequence panel, and the frames will be automatically rendered and saved. Save location is set in your Output panel, so make sure it's correct before hitting render.
I also have a Youtube video which demonstrates the workflow.


Keyframe on text body in Python? I'm trying to animate a paragraph of text where each word is a separate frame. Looping through the full text can come later, right now I'm just trying to figure out switching the text from one frame to another. I don't want or need to animate typing and deleting text, I just want every frame to have a different text body. Here's what I have:

import bpy

text = bpy.data.objects['Text']
text.data.body = 'Here is my text'
text.keyframe_insert(data_path="data.body", frame=1)

text.data.body = 'Now it should change'
text.keyframe_insert(data_path="data.body", frame=2)

The error I get on the first keyframe_insert line is ValueError: bpy_struct.keyframe_insert() path spans ID blocks. Is it even possible to keyframe the body? I don't actually know what data_path I should be aiming for, data.body was just a guess. I haven't found a ton of resources on animating object properties, or even what object properties are legal to animate, so any answers or resources in that direction would be much appreciated.

I don't think you can keyframe the body of a text object, directly, so I think you should do something like this:

import bpy

def update(self):
    text = bpy.data.objects['Text']
    frame = bpy.context.scene.frame_current
    if frame <= 1:
        text.data.body = 'Here is my text'
    elif frame >= 2:
        text.data.body = 'Now it should change'

def register():
    bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.append(update)

def unregister():
    bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.remove(update)

register()

I have formatted this to be ready to be placed in an addon (you can see the register functions there), but you can use it as you want.

The idea is to have a frame_change handler that triggers an update function every time you change the frame (it's ideal for animations). The update function simply changes the text.data.body based on the current frame.

If you want to have more flexibility when animating, you can use custom properties:

import bpy

bpy.data.objects['Text']["Text animator"] = 0       #create custom prop

def update(self):
    text = bpy.data.objects['Text']
    frame = bpy.context.scene.frame_current
    if text ["Text animator"] < 1:
        text.data.body = 'Here is my text'
    elif text ["Text animator"] >= 1:
        text.data.body = 'Now it should change'

def register():
    bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.append(update)

def unregister():
    bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.remove(update)

register()

This way you can easily animate the custom property using keyframes and fcurves, and when the property value is more or less than 1 it changes the text body (of course you can set up more elif statements for values greater than 2, 3, 4, etc)


Button emitting light in Eevee? I’m trying to create a material for a button on a music control panel. It looks like a plastic glossy button with some colourful light coming from behind.

I’m using EEVEE engine, so I tried bumping the transmission to 100% and also checking the refraction in the render settings, but it’s not the best looking button, it seems not transparent.

Q: How to create a realistic looking shader for that plastic knob using eevee?

Two ways that seem to work

Glass Shader with a Mesh light inside

enable Screen Space Refraction (in render tab and material setting)
set refraction depth to a non-zero number (to fake the glass thickness)
I used a musgrave texture to fake uneven light intensity

Translucent BSDF shader, with a Point light inside.

nicely simulates different thickness and light intensity
just keep in mind, that Eevee is limited to 128 lights per scene

Glass button with a Mesh light inside

Translucent button with a  Point light inside


Problem with Boolean-difference modifier – or – How to model a cuboid with two cylindric holes Simplified: I want to generate a cuboid with cylinders as holes in Blender.

When I add with a difference-modifier, I come to pretty common problems/limitations.

There are lots of tips or advice like about this theme:
-   Solidify the objects before booleaning them
-   Recalculating normals
-   Close holes
I couldn’t fix the problem with this general advice. I know that these are the limitations of face-based modelling (with Blender) and not volume-based (other software) modelling. But there must be a work around for Blender?
I know a manual fix for this problem:

By manually and step adding the faces (in the Edit Mode by selection one edge and pressing [enter])

Well at least it is nearly a solution…

But anyway, this isn't helpful for a scripted solution...
So what can I do?
Can someone tell me how to code this?

code Example of this Problem for Blender 2.80b (warning, this seems to be not backwards compatible with Blender 2.79):

#code for Blender 2.80
import bpy

def booleanModifierApplyAndDelete(fromObject, removeObject):
        ##Switch to
        bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
        bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = bpy.data.objects[fromObject]
        bpy.data.objects[fromObject].select_set(state=True)

        ##addModifier Working
        bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='BOOLEAN')
        bpy.context.object.modifiers["Boolean"].operation = 'DIFFERENCE'
        bpy.context.object.modifiers["Boolean"].object = bpy.data.objects[removeObject]
        bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(apply_as='DATA', modifier="Boolean")
        bpy.data.objects.remove(bpy.data.objects[removeObject], do_unlink=True)

#initial variables:

thickness = 2
width = 5
height = 2
overlap = 0.1

#delete all objects from previous Build
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')
bpy.ops.object.delete(use_global=False)

##add mainCube
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(view_align=False, enter_editmode=False, location=(0,0,0))
bpy.context.active_object.name = 'mainCube'
bpy.context.object.dimensions = (thickness,width,height)

#top Rounding/hole
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(vertices=64, radius=1-overlap/2*2, depth=width+overlap*2, view_align=False, enter_editmode=False, location=(0, 0, 1), rotation=(1.5708, 0, 0))
bpy.context.active_object.name = 'topRounding'

booleanModifierApplyAndDelete('mainCube', 'topRounding')

#cylindrical hole
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(vertices=64, depth=height+overlap*2, view_align=False, enter_editmode=False, location=(0, 0, 0))
bpy.context.active_object.name = 'hole'

booleanModifierApplyAndDelete('mainCube', 'hole')

Because an intersection between two cylinders at 90 degrees is a 45 degree miter, this isn't too hard to model. Z up, Y along the lenght, X across

K with C to constrain and Z to cut through, make 2 45 degree cuts into  a half-cylinder as shown
E (right-click to cancel transform) followed by SX extrude the long edges outwards
Select all the faces, E extrude them downwards, followed by SZ0 about their median point to flatten them.
Select the central hole-faces on both sides, and CtrlE > Bridge Edge Loops
Header select menu > Select Sharp Edges, and add some by hand to complete the circumference of the top hole. Set the Bevel Weight of all the selected edges to 1.00

Assign a Bevel modifier by Weight, Segments 2, Profile 1.00. I usually switch off the clamps, and reduce the width until everything looks correct. Assign a Subdivision Surface modifier.


Rotate an Ico sphere with 20 sides(Icosahedron) to align with the level grid I'm just starting out with blender and I'm running into an issue. I'm trying to align one of the faces of my Ico sphere with 20 sides(Icosahedron) to be equal with the level grid. It doesn't matter which face. Basically I'm just trying to make a D20 sitting on a table.

Create your Icosphere
Add a new Empty object
Turn on Face Snapping
Turn on the Align Rotation with Snapping Target option
Move the Empty object and press Ctrl while transforming to snap
Make it align to one of the desired faces
Afterwards select the Icosphere, then Shift-Select the Empty (so it stays the active object)
Press Ctrl+P to parent the Icosphere to the Empty
You can now move the empty freely wherever you want, and most importantly clear its rotation from the Toolshelf or with Alt+R
When correclty aligned unparent the Icosphere, and optionally apply its rotation if desired with Ctrl+A > Apply > Rotation


Duplication along curve with Mirror modifier After i created a duplication along a curve with this method I want to mirror the whole thing. If I add a mirror modifier on the curve and the object it doesn't the object is not transformed along the curve.

Instead of using the duplicate method post din your questions you can use an array modifier and a curve modifier.

1. Add Curve

Add -> Curve -> Bezier
move it (in my case I moved it along the positive x-axis)
Place the origin at the start of the curve path

select curve -> edit mode -> Select start point -> Shift S Cursor to selected -> Object Mode -> Ctrl Alt Shift C -> Origin to 3d cursor

2.

Add a plane at the same location
Scale it down

edit mode -> S

Apply Location: Ctrl A Location

3.

Select plane, add array modifier
Fit Type: Fit Curve
Relative Offset modify to move in the direction of the curve

4.

Add Curve modifier to plane

5.

Add mirror modifier

image description http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=67294


Visible objects in edit or object mode are invisible when rendering I'm working on a model that has assigned materials (very simple ones, they are the default material with a color). The problem comes when i try to render it. I don't know why but most of the parts become invisible. The problem happens with cycles render and with blender render. Here is a list of things i've tried:

I've checked the little camera on the Outliner view.
I've tried to recalculate and flip normals.
Clear all restricted render
Save as a new file (i heard i had to append to a new file but im new in blender and don't know how)

This is the object on the object mode, you can see that the objects are visible (all the parts of the group are visible too)

Here you can see the rendered image

I don't see any difference between the objects that are seen and those that aren't but as I said, i have not much experience with Blender and i don't know where i have to look at. Most of the object has been by extruding planes or circles.

Here is the file:

Edit: I've Joined every object of the window's grid and now that part it's visible. Despite of this, the frame is invisible yet.

Thank you

Your problem appears to be related to the "Duplication" setting under the Object panel.

Setting it to "None" for all the objects fixes your issue. I don't know, however, if you were using the "Gruoup" setting for a purpose (unlikely so: no duplication group was selected).


Giants i3d exporter addon When I install the add on it keeps saying upgrade to 2.8x why is this showing when I just want to create a map for Farming Simulator 2019 Giants editor software.

Any ideas what the issue would be?

Because the plugin is version 7.1.0, and you need the plugin version 8.0.0, unfortunately there is no such plugin


Can only Extrude or move vertices/edges in a pre-set distance I just started using blender yesterday to model a character. I got through most of the head but now, every time I want to move vertices/edges or extrude, I cannot do it properly. If I try, it moves at a pre-set length that I can't seem to get away from. Please help!

You can see the file here (http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=61829621657266848046)

You've turned on Transform Snapping in increment mode.
All transformations will be done in increments determined by the size of the grid.

Press ShiftTab to exit snapping

Please read the manual page for more information on the usage of snapping.


How can I add thickness to a polygonal chain? I'm really new to blender and I'm trying to add thickness to a fairly complex polygonal chain. I've seen a lot on how to do it with Bezier curves but nothing on how to do it with polygonal chains. Does anybody know how to?

That orange dot in the middle is what I'm talking about the big mess on the left is my polygonal chain getting sucked towards it:

UPDATE: My problem was fixed thanks to this question and answer - line segments with edges into a curve

In Edit Mode select the whole mesh A, then press Alt+S to "Shrink or Fatten" the mesh by dragging the cursor.


Emissive Material not Rendered at Some Angles This is a night scene I modeled with some windows in the building.
Normally all the windows should be lit. But the light does not pass through the window if the camera is not perpendicular to the it.

What should I do to let the light pass at any angles?

By the way, I am using Blender 2.91

@Allen Simpson' s answer inspired me. Now I found the solution by simply setting the IOR value of the window glass to 1.0 or slightly larger (1.45 is the default setting).
Here is the result.


Undo one line in the Python console I'm learning Blender Python and trying a few one-liners in the console in the scripting layout. You can imagine that it would be really handy to be able to undo one line of command in the console, because obviously I'm going to often end up executing commands I don't mean to. BUT, when I press Cmd + Z (I'm on Mac), it undoes all the commands I've inputed into the console since I opened Blender. That's weird to me. How do I undo only the last command I input in the console?

The suggestion is ... do [not] rely on the concept of undoing any action in the Console window.

Use the Text Editor window for functions you write for long term value

By writing functions and executable statements in Python in the [Text Editor] window you can more easily test your concepts, and save your work with Blender or as an external file.
The written record is invaluable.
Clearly the [add ons] of Blender are written with a text editor and saved as files.
The console is superb for investigating structures with statement completion and dir and type.  1 to 3 lines of Python is useful. (Replace 3 with your personal Python number comfort level).  There are some add ons (probably) that will assist in the exploration as well.
In MS-Windows I use the up-arrow key to type again the last statements.
The Blender [user] interface allows a concept of configurable Undo.
Be careful not to do undo desired typing in the text editor window
If Python in the console deletes a OS file, I would not expect Python to restore it.  Not a simple example and perhaps I have not looked for an api that performs that service.

In the Blender screen capture above a function is written at the top of some file and invoked at the bottom of the same file.  Alt-A invokes the script.  There is a button as well on the menu bar .. not shown.  The above example is just some random sample and only meant to show a function definition and call of the same function.

Console for Simple Ops

When the Python Console was used for simple operations, Undo worked in the (different) 3D View window. Image above.  Console do action.  3D View Undo action.  As a quick preview for further study please note the following.  I looked at the text in the [Info] window as a means to write the text in the [Console] window. The info windows presented the Python of my manual user actions. I may have never used the the translate function before. It is no longer critical that I remember.


Strange shading on faces in Blender 2.8? I'm working on a character head in Blender 2.8 (which I'm new to, so bear with me), and the shading on the faces is very odd around the bridge of the nose, and the bottom of the eye on the left.  It looks like there's overlapping faces or something, but there isn't as far as I can tell, and that shading is showing up in a render as well.  There are no duplicate vertices and all the normals are going in the right direction.

Can anyone help?

Model:

The "odd shading" is shadow from your lamp.

Try moving your lamp lower and forward some.


Get which screen the cursor is in? Is it possible to tell which screen (3D view, Node editor, etc.) the cursor is in with python?

Can I also get properties specific to that view, (even when there is more than one open) e.g. determine which (if any) 3D view is in camera view?

It's all accessible through bpy.context. The active area is accessible through context.area (of type Area), while data specific to the active area's current display type through context.space_data (of type Space).

Once the active space is ascertained as a 3D View, we can access its view properties through context.region_data or context.space_data.region_3d (of type RegionView3D) e.g. to check its view perspective.


Absolute path of files in Blender (with Python) Functions such as os.path.exists(image.filepath) fail when Blender uses relative paths, This seems to be because Blender uses // prefix for relative paths, unlike the more conventional ./.

How can standard Python filesystem functions be used correctly on Blender paths?

The // prefix is Blender specific to denote relative paths used within Blender,

To use Python's filesystem functions you'll have to first expand this using:

bpy.path.abspath, to replace os.path.abspath
bpy.path.relpath, to replace os.path.relpath

eg:

filepath_full = bpy.path.abspath(image.filepath, library=image.library)

Unlike ./, which simply expands the current-working-directory (os.getcwd()), Blender supports library-linked files. This means the directory of the current data-block could be a different path then the currently open Blend file.

If you are operating data which the script created, You can skip passing the library argument.

filepath_full = bpy.path.abspath(image.filepath)

Note that this isn't specific to images, it works for movie-clip, sounds, sequencer and text blocks too.


How to select (command A) an object in the scene I am writing a python script to export a 3D model as .stl from blender.
here is my code

import bpy
import time
start_time=time.time
from mathutils import *
from math import *
import random
D = bpy.data
C = bpy.context
#Clean the scene
bpy.ops.object.select_by_type(type='MESH')
bpy.ops.object.delete()
bpy.ops.object.select_by_type(type='CAMERA')
bpy.ops.object.delete()
bpy.ops.object.select_by_type(type='LAMP')
bpy.ops.object.delete()
#Import the model .mhx in the scene
bpy.ops.import_scene.makehuman_mhx(filepath="model.mhx")
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='POSE');
# modify this model and export it as .stl
#----under construction------
#select the layer 1 and after that select all object in the layer 1.
bpy.context.scene.layers[0] = True
bpy.context.scene.layers[1] = False
#I used this command to select the object in the layer but it did not work.
bpy.ops.outliner.object_operation('SELECT')
bpy.ops.export_mesh.stl("/model.stl")

To select objects that are currently visible in the 3dview, which means they are on any visible layers, you can set the select property of visible objects.

for obj in bpy.context.visible_objects:
    obj.select = True

If you want to check every object on layer[0] and still catch ones that may be hidden you can test the layer value of each object.

for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    if obj.layers[0]:
        obj.select = True

After deleting and deselecting objects you may also want to ensure that the active object is valid.

bpy.context.scene.objects.active = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]


Blender new versions don't work well on AMD Radeon HD 7570M Blender new versions don't work well on my device
Is  video card AMD Radeon HD 7570M working for new blender version anymore ?

The AMD Radeon HD 7570M is from the AMD Radeon 7000M series and has the old TeraScale 2 micro-architecture. The minimum requirements for Blender 2.8x and 2.9x state that GCN first generation or later is required for running Blender.

Supported Graphics Cards

NVIDIA: GeForce 400 and newer, Quadro Tesla GPU architecture and newer, including RTX-based cards, with NVIDIA drivers (list of all GeForce and Quadro GPUs)
AMD: GCN 1st gen and newer (list of all AMD GPUs)
Intel: Haswell and newer (list of all Intel GPUs)
macOS: version 10.13 or newer with supported hardware

Unfortunately, this means that your GPU is below the minimum requirements and Blender developers don't provide support for it. Graphics glitches and even crashes due to unpatched bugs in the graphics driver can occur on unsupported hardware. You may have to use a previous release of Blender with lower requirements.


Why colors of a Blender exported .obj mesh differ in Meshlab and Sculpteo? On the following picture you see an object painted in Christmas colors.

When I export it as an .obj file and open the latter in Meshlab the colors look this way:

The same colors appear on Sculpteo 3D player. They are much darker, and green has become even black.
So the question is : Why? What's wrong with the export?

Peter

Well, I think I found the answer by myself:

It's well known that the colors we see on a Blender rendered image are not the colors we have given to the material. Generally speaking this is due to World's impact. Blender exports in .obj format without taking in view this factor. It does not export the colors you have set in advance, but the colors they change to, when the impact of environment is not there. So even if you open your exported .obj file with Blender you will see your mesh with changed colors (darkened). So in order your .obj file to open the mesh with desired colors lighten them in Blender before exporting.

:)


Rig perpendicular armature movement along vertical axis A multi-part object (see video) has joints that are shown marked in the following image:

Here's what I tried to achieve perpendicular rotation for alternating joints:

This was a disaster. Using parenting and constraints, I can achieve the desired position:

The problem is that all the rig joints are along the Z-axis and every other mesh must rotate along a different axis.

How would you rig an armature to these independent pieces that provides motion and constraint capabilities as shown in the video?

Overview

This rig is quite simple, actually. It is a single chain of bones for deformation with a few miscellaneous bones for animation control. This answer is a walkthrough of my process in creating the rig. For a point of reference, a rig is a series of bones built to deform a mesh for animation.

Rig the mesh using Inverse Kinematics (IK). IK allows the bone at the end of the chain to be manipulated directly. Positioning the end bone causes each bone between it and the top of the chain to be repositioned automatically. This contrasts with FK (Forward Kinematics) where you position each bone in sequence from the top of the chain to the bottom.

Solution

In the proposed solution there are a few items to note: (1) the head of the robotic arm is named sphere; (2) the topmost bone is named tip; (3) the target bone is named ik-target; and (4) the armature is called ik. Then:

Create and align bones with the mesh so that rotation is restricted to one axis.
Add an IK constraint to tip.
Create (duplicate??) the ik-target bone from tip.
Parent
Give sphere a target of ik-target.
Ensure ik-target is parented under ik.

Then I started locking the bone axes I can't use. These are the axes that rotate in a direction that would break the mesh joints. These were either the X or Y axis, depending on the bone. Take note of the axis I locked and notice which direction it is supposed to rotate in. I did this in the bone properties, under the IK section:

This keeps the IK solver from using these axes when it calculates the position of the middle bones. For easier axis management, I changed the rotation method of all the bones to XYZ Euler instead of Quaternions. Eulers are suitable in this scenario because of the single-axis nature of a robot.

Lastly, add a copy rotation constraint on tip with a target of ik in World Space. This enables intuitive rotation of sphere while maintaining the translation.

This rig is simple and must be expanded to get every function available in the robot. Animating the head will need another bone hierarchy. There is a special case where the robot rotates the head around the tip of the probe. This will require another rig layer.

Feel free to use my rig if you wish.

Notes

There are two rigs, one on each layer. The first layer is an FK chain, which is fairly simple and only uses a parent hierarchy to move the mesh. The second is the IK rig, which I described above. I was going to recommend using the FK rig because of its simplicity, but the functions you want are fairly complex to animate in an FK chain.

Example Blend File

Pick apart the sample file to get started:


Baking normal map for mutiple objects and merge them I have baked a normal map for car model but the normal map became weird because of ray distance.
My model is consistent of two objects, car body and car tire, I have to bake them separate because they need to use two different ray distance to bake normal map.

Uncheck Clear option in the Bake panel. By doing this, you can bake the body and the wheels separately and with different options, but the normal map will be dinamically updated when you bake the second object. So your output will be a single normal map for the two objects, which stores normal data of both objects. Just make sure the two objects are using the same normal map as target bake texture.

This option is available both for Blender Internal and Cycles.

Blender Internal:

Cycles:


Background environment texture not rendered in viewport or final render How do i make this visible?.

Every tutorial I see, it is automatic. But my scene is not mine, aparently they made it invisible, but I want to see how it is positioned and I need it to be displayed in the viewport with rendered option on.

Your environment is disabled.

Check your scene settings, "use environment".


How to divide a mesh in 20 I have a rectangle that i want to divide in 20 faces verticaly

like this:

How can i do it? i need it to be exactly 20 faces

Plane ..(single quad face, CtrlXdissolve internal edges if not)
Edge Mode, select long edges, right-click menu > 'Subdivide'
In the adjust last operator panel, (bottom left of 3D view) set the number of cuts to 19.


How to make a circular cut? I'm trying to add basic materials to a low-poly model, and was curious if there was any way to cut in edges in a circle from a single point, so I could apply materials to faces like seen in my reference image to the right. I could go through with the knife and make cuts by hand, but that seems tricky and time consuming for likely sloppy results. Any tips on how to achieve the texture pictured would be greatly appreciated.

The OP wrote in a comment:

I'm looking for a way to add edges without changing the mesh, just so I can apply materials to faces to color.

Mesh LoopTools Click Circle

Mesh Loop Tools or Loops Tools is an Addon which must be installed in User Preferences.  That takes 88 seconds or less.

Know that the faces of a mesh can be UV unwrapped and assigned a texture and painted.

Simplified form mesh. Clearly the more low poly your mesh,  the more the hole will look like a polygon or octagon .. rather than a smooth circle with high vertex density.

Stages of editing left to right top to bottom.  Edit Mode.

Yellow vertex dense cylinder
Blue Partial quad strip extrusion
Yellow Loop Cuts for local vertex density
Blue Two Patches cut out in square on both sides.  Bridge Edge Loops

Yellow Mesh Loop Tool click Circle changes rectangle hole to circular hole. Select the vertices in edit more beforehand. See Side Panel. This is the step most relevant to the OP

Blue Proportional Editing for edge protrusion
Please improve this to suit you needs
Technique only. No artistry focus.


Instancing - make real and join - duplicates itself I made object A where the instances will go, parented object B to it, and activated Instancing on Verts (under Properties > Object Properties).

The instances appear as desired. Then I did 'make instances real' (I get to that by searching). Then I chose all the created instances, and joined them (Ctrl + J). Call that object C.

When I do that, object B becomes the same as object C. It duplicates itself the same way. In fact, if I then go in and edit object C, object B changes in the same way. And vice versa.

For me, this is the best way to do this. It allows me to export the combined object as a glTF and also keep the template object for later reuse or modification.

It's because all objects use the same Object Data.
You need to make it unique before joining.

Select "realed instances" go to Properties Editor > Data Properties and click on a number on the first row. The "active" one (bright orange) become unique, now join them Ctrl+J.

(The number means how many objects in a scene use this data block.)


Particle system with combined meshes and lights I am trying to do something in Cycles with a particle system. I have made a city using 37 different cubes with unique textures on a particle system emitting from a pane.

On some of the buildings I would like to add exterior lights which you can observe on real sky scrapers.

I tried to just join the lights to one of the cubes using ctrl+J but to no avail am I able to produce the building with lights on the exterior.

Unfortunately ctrl+J will work only with meshes so your solution cannot work, and also unfortunately Blender doesn't allow group hierarchies (like group of groups).

So, if you don't want to create mesh light emitters, that can be easily ctrl+J'd (but from your screenshot I see that you want to use spot lights, so mesh emitters won't help), I'd suggest to

Create a different particle system for each one of the "complex" buildings

Remove all the buildings with "lamp" lights from your original particle  system's dupligroup ("Object" menu > "Groups" > uncheck the existing group)
For each building that has lamps, hoping they are just a little fraction of your 37:

create a new particle system on the emitter plane (by duplicating the original one, making it "single user", and reducing the number of particles on both by ~ 1/37 and 36/37 respectively)
use Render>Group and check the "Whole Group" option
create a group containing only the building and its lamps
assign this group to the "Dupli Group" of the new particle system
change the Seed of the emitter until you remove overlaps with already existing buildings

Edit:

an illustrated version of the above

Say you have a situation like this, where a Group of buildings is being used by a Particle System to create the city by duplication:

Select the building on which you would like to add the lights, go to its "Object" properties, and remove it from the group:

Go back to the particle system and reduce the number of buildings for the "main" group, that now has only the buildings with no lights:

Now create the spotlights, select the lights and then the building, and do ctrl+G to create a new group:

Then go back to the emitter plane, and {1} create a new particle system, {2} apply the settings of the already existing particle system, then {3} click on the "2" to make it single-user (i.e. an independent particle system created from a copy of the original)

Finally, on the new particle system, reduce the number to a small value (as many buildings with light you want); select the newly created group (probably Group.001) as your DupliGroup; set "Whole Group" as dupli option:

If you have created the group in the correct way, the building should be correctly placed in the vertical direction. They will be, however, a little bit displaced horizontally from the emitter plane (especially if the spot lights are not exactly vertical). To fix this, play around with the "Offset" settings of the light's "Object">"Group">Group.001 properties until all the buildings lay on the city's floor.


Trying to make a spine-like structure in blender So, I have the structure of a single vertebra (roughly) and an armature bone to dictate it's motion. What I want to know is, is there any way to generate a series of vertebrae, one on top of the other, with their armature bones already linked together? I REALLY don't want to place and link every single bone together, when there might be more than 50 of them. Also, I'd like the general scaling of each vertebra to be decreasing as each structure is generated. I know the array modifier can do the first part of that, but it doesn't copy the bones, and I don't know how to add scaling to it.

I would do it like this:
- Create the first vertebra
- Shift D Z to duplicate and move upward
- Shift R to repeat the last operation
- S for scaling the needed
- at the end select all the vertebrae and ctrl J Join them
- add a curve modifier to adjust the shape of the whole object

Then create a single bone
in edit mode extrude the bone moving the tip toward the top of the next vertebra
extrude again ...
at the end parent the object to the armature using automatic wheight

I think it can take half an hour for 50-60 pieces

Maybe for 5000 you would need an automated way

Remember also that a long bone can be subdivided n times,  with the W key menu.


Mesh does not stay flat against same degree mesh when rotating on x-axis I have a lego arm, and the body, but the arm does not rotate correctly.

I re-set the object's origin to be the center of the shoulder:

But when the object is rotated on the X-axis only, it appears to rotate on the Z ans Y axis as well a little.

How do I keep the mesh to stay flat against with the other when rotating?

Blend file:

New Blend file:

The arm is rotating as expected, the apparent problem lie in the fact that the plane of arm joint is not perpendicular to X axis, it is slightly inclined toward it.

The behavior you are expecting can be achieved by rotating around an axis that is perpendicular to the arm joint, it happened that the local space of arm is aligned with the plane of the arm joint, so rotating around the local Z axis of the arm will achieved what you want. Simply change to Local Transform Orientation and rotate by using R >> Z + Z.

Let us, however, assume that the local space of the arm is not aligned with the joint. We can then create a local space manually and rotate around it. A possible way to do it is by adding an empty that is perpendicular to the joint's plane, this can be done by aligning the view to the faces of the plane of the joint and adding an empty using the Align to view option. Parent the object to the empty and rotate around it's local Z axis as explained above.


Not able to pull off simple combination of volume scatter and volume absorbtion: cycles I was following ben u's tutorial on Basic Volume Shading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ybk0qNFhqw

I was doing OK with "Volume Scatter", but as soon as I put in the "Add Node"
(3 min 46 seconds in tutorial) and then tried to add "Volume Absorption" shader, the cube turned black.

I tried this https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=402469&d=1443634665 but, got the same result.

There must be something very basic that I'm missing but, I don't have a clue what it is.

Would greatly appreciate your help.
Thanks.

Wrong Add node

The Math (Add) node you are using works with grayscale values (on the left in the image below).

You would like instead to Add a shading to another shading: you must use the Add Shader node you can find in the Shader nodes group (on the right in the following image).

The color of the input/output socket is always a guide for the correct connection.


grow selected edged limited to a loop and/or ring blender noob here(a month), was wondering if there is any way(or if there's an addon) to grow a selected edge along a loop or a ring.  this is a feature in 3ds max that i always use.  i know you can create a selection between two selected edges by holding ctrl.  what i'm looking for is a way to grow/shrink the selection along an edge loop or a ring.  Thanks!
EDIT: here's a gif of what i'm talking about:  https://imgur.com/a/ADG6aR5

I'm not sure, if I understood you right. Is this, what you are looking for:
You may select an edge-loop by holding down Alt while selecting an edge.
You may select an edge-ring by holding down Ctrl-Alt while selecting an edge.
The same works for face-loops in face selection mode.


Cell Fracture, How can I use it properly? I Have 2 models, and when i cell fracture them they always act weird, few of them are missing, and others are just plain weird, here are 2 GIFs describing the Problem:

First one GIF.

Second one GIF (The reason why i deleted some models, is because for some reason the un-cell-fractured model appear like 5 times).

Also here are the models:

First one :

Second One:
Here are Screenshots:

First one Transparent :

Second one Transparent :

Inspect and Repair your Model

Avoid Overlapping Faces. Avoid Intersecting Faces. All submeshes closed.
Both Meshes have the same number of vertices.

Yellow CubeFit mesh is free from defects.
Blue CubeNotFit has overlapping connected submeshes seen in edit mode. Intersecting Faces. This is a defect which can be corrected.

Cell Fractures in next layer.

CubeFit Succeeds.
CubeNotfit Fails to retain shape.

Three crude letter (O)s in 3D , first two same mesh, different colors.  Mesh on left has imperfections. Overlapping faces that are difficult to see by casual inspection. Middle Blue Mesh has imperfect overlapping faces, made easy to see by display feature.  Cell Fracture objects on right are the result of an imperfect Cell Fracture on the Middle object.  This flawed result  should not surprise us since we know the source mesh had flaws.  There is no guarantee you will see a flawed result.

Inspect and  correct your mesh to be more like the CubeFit mesh.

If your model is in one piece, archive your file. Break one model into many convenient, not difficult pieces, to see which sub mesh fails.
As stated in the first comment ...  Menu/Select by All Trait/Non Manifold .. Loose Geometry may reveal defects.


New objects "attached" to each other just started using bleder two weeks ago, I did a few tutorials and it went OK.

today I started a new one, but when I tried to add a primitive it kind of related to my first object. it doesn't have an independent name (all of them named 'plan' in the panel) and I can't select\edit only one of them. How can I fix this?

Add them in Object Mode not in Edit Mode. You can also select the vertices of one of the objects in Edit Mode and press P, to make a new object from the selection.


Ideas for how to make a cube explode into smaller cubes in game engine I have a python script that is supposed to run whenever one of the bad guys (cubes) in my game gets shot.  I'm using a cubelike style of art work, and I want the bad cubes to explode into smaller cubes when it gets shot.  I've tried using a python script to create multiple instances of a smaller cube in the same spot where the original cube was, so that the physics engine will shoot them apart as soon as the next physics step takes place.  Unfortunately, this method of doing things is not working.  It either shoots the cube off in a direction making a trail of cubes behind it, or it deletes itself and makes one small cube, (depending on whether I tell the bad cube to delete itself before or after it runs the script that creates the small cubes).  I don't really care how it's done, but if I could get some suggestions on how to achieve this effect, that would be great!

I did this in a way that is not computationally expensive for physics with the "Bake to keyframe" option.

I make my basic set up in Blender Render. The eight cubes that will compose the fractured cube are all set to rigid body "active" objects. A plane is added below them, and set to rigid body "passive".

Next, I add the object that will force the cubes apart, it can be anything, a monkey, a cube, ect... ect... Place it at the junction between the cubes and make it passive like the ground plane.

Now, play the animation through to make sure you like it. Scaling the "exploder" object has great effect on how the cubes break apart.

Select all the cubes and SpacebarSearch + "bake to keyframes". Click it, then click "Okay" on the popup window.

Now all you need to do is make each cube play the animation(s) always in game, parent them all to another no-collision object, move to another layer, and have the original cube add the parent when it dies.

If you create more than one such animation and use a Random sensor you can have great looking, variable, computationally inexpensive exploding cubes for your game.


Blender Freestyle - how to make line crossings glow more than lines themselves? I'm trying to recreate the classic, vintage 1980s look of computer graphics - bright, glowing lines on dark background. However, after analyzing old computer graphics I found out that the intersections of lines glow more than the lines themselves - they turn into little glowing points.

Is there a way to simulate this using Freestyle settings or compositor?

For example:

You can use a blur node to get this effect.
The blurred lines will overlap a bit at the intersections, making them brighter.

For example:

Create a renderlayer which only renders freestyle lines by disabling everything else in Render layers > Layer > Include:

Set the freestyle line color to white in Render layers > Freestyle Line Style:

Composite (click for larger image):

Result (click for html5 version):


How Should I refocus camera on an object while editing? I am just a beginner in Blender, When I am editing an object on the plane, the 3D Viewport is not showing the accurate direction and path, due to which I am unable to do editing easily on that object. I tried to focus the camera on the viewport, but it wasn't helpful.How should I correct the angle of the camera?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but you can always center your view to a specific object, face, vertex, ... by selecting it and pressing , on your NumPad.

The view now orbits around that point.

If you want to aim your active camera to the same view, press ctrl+alt+NumPad 0

To look around you, hit shift+f


How to set color_mode to RGBA using script? I am trying to set my render to be alpha. i have the following code

scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.render.alpha_mode = 'TRANSPARENT'
bpy.context.scene.color_mode = 'RGBA'

where of the two first lines works fine, but im getting an error in the last one.
so how do i set the color_mode to RGBA, instead of RGB, using python script?

To set the color mode to RGBA for the current scene, use:

 bpy.context.scene.render.image_settings.color_mode ='RGBA'

color_mode is a member ImageFormatSettings, which is in turn a member of RenderSettings. The render settings of a scene are accessible via Scene.render.

See here for an explanation how to find out the access path:Blender/Python API Reference Usage: examples of how to use the API reference docs


Jagged/Weird Shadows on mesh Hi all,

I imported a .stl file into blender and at first the mesh was perfect, shadows were as expected but on the second time of importing the .stl file the shadows are as seen below. How can I fix this?

I found that because I had the Clip Start set to 0.001 it was producing this unusual effect. However, when I bumped this up to 0.1 the shading went back to normal.


Is it possible to add a new window type using the Python API? It seems that it is possible to add new panels and regions but not new window types (editors) using the Python API.
Is this true? And if so, is it possible that this could be added in the future?

Currently it's not possible, though it's been discussed a few times. Having custom PySpaces would be convenient, but I don't think it's officially on any roadmap.


What's going on with my boolean difference Modifier? Instructable

Hey All I am trying to recreate something I saw in an instructable a while back I can't figure out how to do it. They used Maya.

So I create the basic shape( the left one) and used the Boolean Modifier difference and the result is on the right. There is a sphere on the inside the design and the design is extruded inward.

How can I get this fixed? Thanks.

From an UV sphere, this can be done with 3 magic shortcuts:

AltP to poke the faces
AltJ to make quads from tris
AltE then individual faces to extrude faces

Additionally, it can be useful to keep these new vertices in a vertex group:

because it will allow to retrieve them easily for an eventual future modification. For instance:


Cannot solve uneven beveling due to vertices (?) Hello!
I'm kinda new to Blender so I apologize if the answer to my problem is obvious but I cannot figure out how to solve it by searching it on the internet.
So, I made a curvy surface that is made of many faces.

I extruded it, applied Rotation & Scale, Recalculated Normals Outside, and then tried to Bevel the corner edges.

The Bevel effect came out pretty uneven because of the vertices getting in its way. I tried dissolving the top edges and making a surface again by pressing F and then I tried to dissolve some of the top vertices as well. The the beveling was actually even, but I was losing my curvy geometry as a result and messing up the faces a lot.

Do you know if I can get rid of the vertices without losing the curvy geometry or get the Bevel tool to work without stopping at the vertices it finds along the way, like skipping them or beveling precisely using a different method? (besides Bevel Node and the Bevel Modifier)
I would appreciate very much every sort of help anyone can provide me with, because I'm struggling with this issue and always let it slide but it's bothering me a lot as I always use the Bevel tool in order to make smoother corners and edges.
Thank you very much in advance!

Assuming you want to bevel at a 45° angle:
First (with the Ctrl + B hotkey) you need to press C to enable clamp overlay which will make the bevel stop when a bound has been reached.

Then you want to select the mesh and merge by distance (F3 and search it) because the 2 edges will be slid up against each other so that the vertices are very close.
Afterwards you can select the 2 edges forming the bevel and have as many segments as needed.

If you want to make the bevel even bigger, then you can repeat this process again (minus making all the segments) by bevelling the 2 outer edges with 1 segment and with Clamp Overlay turned on. Every time the outer edge meets with another edge, use merge by distance to prevent 2 edges in one place.
You should also join vertices to make sure you don't have an Ngon like so

You can do it like this but the cleaner and more efficient option is just to use less edge loops like what CtrlAltF2 mentioned earlier.
Edit: Additional picture showing the maximum bevels I could do, not pretty though.


get string from Text Object using Animation Nodes Is it possible to pull in the actual string of text from a Text Object? It's easy to create a string of text in the nodes and send it out to a Text Object, or even to pull in text from an external file...I just can't figure out how to get it from a Text Object that I created manually. I thought I might be able to using the Object Attribute Input node, but I don't know if that's possible. When I copy the data path to "Body Text", it just gives me "body", which doesn't work...

Thanks!

The .body attribute is not an attribute of the object, but of the text object data. So you need to get the attribute like this:

An object is like a container for multiple things that gives them properties like location, scale, render visibility, etc. These things range from meshes, lights, curves, .. and texts. And what is inside the object is referred to as data.


How to create rust procedurally? I've been trying to come up with an idea of creating rust procedurally and tried searching up for tutorials on various sites which only made use of image textures.
Procedural being a hard practise as it is, I wanted to create a rust texture for various meshes in blender but the one I did come up with, not so very realistic:

does anyone have some ideas on how to create rust using only procedurals inside of blender?

Hope the image is self explanatory enough. Hope it gives you a good starting point.

Some Explaination

Click on the image to view it in full resolution. You can copy the nodes and will get the same results. The Musgrave Texture are used as the mask to create the rust patch. A Second Musgrave Texture is given variation in the values, acts as the mask for the silver non rusty parts of the material. The noise material just provide a little color variation for the silver material, so it is not flat and boring.

The node pretty much tells you how it's constructed. The bottom image shows the closeup of the material, just for a visual reference that in closeup the material is still pretty convincing.

Additional Side Notes

  Regarding the UV image, I use it for visual testing uv unwrap to
  prevent tile stretching on none procedure map, for this case I did not
  use it at all as it is indeed a procedural material, so no uv work is
  required on the model at all. It's just the default setup for my
  workflow when I start a new file.


How to find out what particular vector component is animated? I can iterate over animation f-curves of an object and identify animated properties through data_path attribute:

o = bpy.data.objects['myObj']
fcurves = o.animation_data.action.fcurves
for fc in fcurves:
    print(fc.data_path)

I also need to distinguish between different vector components for properties like 'rotation_euler'. When all 3 of them are animated they can be identified by their relative order, but I can't find a way to identify individual components when only 1 or 2 of them are animated. How can it be done?

The vector components are accessible through the fc.array_index value. If you only animate the X and Z components, you'll see that they are still indices 0 and 2, not 0 and 1.


When can you no longer switch from Evee to Cycles render It is a lot easier to work in Evee, but I'm trying to learn layers and collections.

Some actions are not compatible in both Evee and Cycles.
I see in some online tutorials the author will say we now have to switch to cycles because of this next action is not compatible

I would like to know what actions prevent you from changing rendering engines?  Specifically when can you no longer switch to Cycles from Evee.

This question is far too broad to be reasonably answered in it's current state, but rather than flagging it closed, perhaps the following information is useful.  Please take the time to edit your question accordingly.

You will likely have more problems going from Cycles to Eevee rather than the other way round.  If you are having a more specific problem switching to Cycles then you need to specify this in your question.

Please note that both renderers have additional settings in the material properties panel, sometimes these need to be enabled under the render settings panel before taking effect.

There's a great article about Eevee limitations on CG Cookie.

I defer to the vast knowledge-base that is the blender documentation on Eevee limitations:

  Eevee Limitations

  Eevee’s goal is to be an interactive render engine. Some features may
  not be there yet or may be impossible to implement into Eevee’s
  architecture without compromising performance.

  Here is a rather exhaustive list of all the limitations you can expect
  while working with Eevee. Cameras

  Only perspective and orthographic projections are currently supported.

  Lights

  Shadows are not supported on light instances (instance objects, group instancing).
  Only 128 active lights can be supported by Eevee in a scene.
  Only 8 Shadowed sun lights can be supported at the same time.
  As of now, lights can only have one color and do not support light node trees.

  Light Probes

  Eevee only supports up to 128 active Reflection Cubemaps.
  Eevee only supports up to 64 active Irradiance Volumes.
  Eevee only supports up to 16 active Reflection Planes inside the view frustum.

  Indirect Lighting

  Volumetrics don’t receive light from Irradiance Volumes but do receive world’s diffuse lighting.
  Eevee does not support “specular to diffuse” light bounces nor “specular to specular” light bounces.
  All specular lighting is turned off during baking.

  Shadows

  Shadows are not supported on light instances (instance objects, group instancing).
  Only 128 active lights can be supported by Eevee in a scene.
  Only 8 Shadowed sun lights can be supported at the same time.

  Volumetrics

  Only single scattering is supported.
  Volumetrics are rendered only for the camera “rays”. They don’t appear in reflections/refractions and probes.
  Volumetrics don’t receive light from Irradiance Volumes but does receive world’s diffuse lighting.
  Volumetric shadowing does only work on other volumetrics. They won’t cast shadows on solid objects in the scene.
  Volumetric shadowing does only work for volumes inside the view frustum.
  Volumetric lighting does not respect the lights shapes. They are treated as point lights.

  Screen Space Effects

  Eevee is not a ray tracing engine and cannot do ray-triangle
  intersection. Instead of this, Eevee uses the depth buffer as an
  approximated scene representation. This reduces the complexity of
  scene scale effects and enables a higher performance. However, only
  what is in inside the view can be considered when computing these
  effects. Also, since it only uses one layer of depth, only the
  front-most pixel distance is known.

  These limitations creates a few problems:

  The screen space effects disappear when reaching the screen border. This can be partially fixed by using the overscan feature.
  Screen space effects lack deep information (or the thickness of objects). This is why most effects have a thickness parameter to
  control how to consider potential intersected pixels.
  Blended surfaces are not considered by these effects. They are not part of the depth prepass and do not appear in the depth buffer.

  Ambient Occlusion

  Objects are treated as infinitely thick, producing overshadowing if the Distance is really large.

  Screen Space Reflections

  Only one glossy BSDF can emit screen space reflections.
  The evaluated BSDF is currently arbitrarily chosen.
  Screen Space Reflections will reflect transparent objects and objects using Screen Space Refraction but without accurate positioning
  due to the one layer depth buffer.

  Screen Space Refraction

  Only one refraction event is correctly modeled.
  Only opaque and alpha hashed materials can be refracted.

  Subsurface Scattering

  Only one BSSRDF can produce screen space subsurface scattering.
  The evaluated BSSRDF is currently arbitrarily chosen.
  A maximum of 254 different surfaces can use subsurface scattering.
  Only scaling is adjustable per pixel. Individual RGB radii are adjustable in the socket default value.
  Input radiance from each surfaces are not isolated during the blurring, leading to light leaking from surface to surface.

  Materials

  Refractions

  Refraction is faked by sampling the same reflection probe used by the Glossy BSDFs, but using the refracted view direction instead of
  the reflected view direction. Only the first refraction event is
  modeled correctly. An approximation of the second refraction event can
  be used for relatively thin objects using Refraction Depth. Using
  Screen Space refraction will refract what is visible inside the view,
  and use the nearest probe if there is no hit.

  Screen Space Reflections and Ambient Occlusion are not compatible with Screen Space Refraction; they will be disabled on the surfaces
  that use it. Surfaces that use Screen Space Refraction will not appear
  in Screen Space Reflections at the right place. Surfaces that use
  Screen Space Refraction will not cast Ambient Occlusion onto other
  surfaces. Bump Mapping

  As of now, bump mapping is supported using OpenGL derivatives which are the same for each block of 2x2 pixels. This means the bump
  output value will appear pixelated. It is recommended to use normal
  mapping instead.

  Tip

  If you absolutely need to render using Bump nodes, render at twice the target resolution and downscale the final output. Volume Objects
  Object volume shaders will affect the whole bounding box of the object. The shape of the volume must be adjusted using procedural
  texturing inside the shader.

  Shader Nodes

  All BSDF’s are using approximations to achieve realtime performance so there will always be small differences between Cycles and Eevee.
  Some utility nodes are not yet compatible with Eevee (e.g. Sky Texture node).

  See also

  For a full list of unsupported nodes see Nodes Support. Memory
  Management

  In Eevee, GPU Memory management is done by the GPU driver. In theory,
  only the needed textures and meshes (now referred as “the resources”)
  for a single draw call (i.e. one object) needs to fit into the GPU
  memory.

  So if the scene is really heavy, the driver will swap things in and
  out to make sure all objects are rendered correctly.

  In practice, using too much GPU memory can make the GPU driver crash,
  freeze, or kill the application. So be careful of what you ask.

  There is no standard way of estimating if the resources will fit into
  the GPU memory and/or if the GPU will render them successfully. CPU
  Rendering

  Being a rasterization engine, Eevee only uses the power of the GPU to
  render. There is no plan to support CPU (software) rendering as it
  would be very inefficient. CPU power is still needed to handle high
  scene complexity as the geometry must be prepared by the CPU before
  rendering each frame. Multiple GPU Support

  There is currently no support for multiple GPU systems. Headless
  Rendering

  There is currently no support for using Eevee on headless systems
  (i.e. without a Display Manager).

Ad endum

There are a couple of other Eevee gotchas that you should be aware of that aren't listed here, perhaps beyond the scope here, but relate to shader nodes.

Eevee doesn't truly support displacement.
Particle Info node is Cycles only.
Other nodes may be specific (always read the docs for the node)


Displacement settings affecting the mesh luminance I've added a displacement node following along a tutorial. When I use the same settings as the instructor, my object becomes darker in the render settings viewport using cycles render. When I increase the Scale, then it's more visible. What's causing this to happen?

Thank you.

You are connecting a displacement map with the normal input of a shader. That's not a good idea, since they are designed to do two very different things. Remove that connection, or use a regular Vector -> Bump node.


I'm using v2.71 and I can't find any blend sky option under the world tab I'm using v2.71 and I can't find any blend sky option under the world tab. I'm following a tutorial that used an older version of Blender.Where is it in the newest version, or how do I set the Horizon and Zenith colors?

Make sure your using blender internal.

It's under the world panel as per screenshot.


2 = 1 Why are values I enter in Blender getting halved? After I enter a value of '1', it gets divided by '2'. Why does this happen, and how do I get rid of it? This happens everywhere where I enter a value. Enter '4' it becomes '2', enter '16', it becomes '8'. Are one of my settings wrong or something?

You must have accidentally set the Unit Scale property to 0.5. It can be found in the Scene tab, in the Properties Editor under Units. You should set it to 1.


Pointiness not working in 2.8 I faced a weird issue: geometry->pointiness node on my subdivided cube shows up a constant value all over the mesh. Is it a bug or me doing something wrong?

Here's the topology of the cube:

Also tried with Suzanne, however effect remains the same. Blender version: 2.80.45

You are using Eevee, the pointiness output only works in cycles atm.

Workaround for Edge Highlighting:
There is a way to get the same or similar result "pointiness" gives you. The function is called "dirty vertex colors" and its avaiable in the vertex paint mode.

You can play around with the settings here, depending on the mesh of yours some work better, others do not, but you can probably find a tutorial for that.

Note: Booth Pointiness and Dirty Vertex Colors are dependent on the Geometry-Resolution, i've just added a Bevel modifier with 3 Segments and applied it.
Another method of doing this, would be, to bake your pointiness colors as a texture and use them in your eevee shader.


Can't select Pose under Scene Collection to Enter Pose Mode So I downloaded the recent version of blender on my new PC. I've used 2.8 forever but figured I'd get the most recent version on my new build. On the previous version I could select the Pose line (with the green guy next to it) to instantly switch to Pose mode with that armature's bones made available. However, clicking on it in this version does absolutely nothing and I'm not sure why. Someone, please help me feel dumb and tell me why I can't select Pose. I reviewed my preferences, but couldn't find anything inhibiting.

This behavior was intentionally removed in September 2020. At least one person filed a bug, see T80757. Quoting from there:

This was a conscious decision. The outliner only allowed entering edit and pose mode. The new mode column does not allow entering modes, but allows switching the active within all modes. [...] Entering the mode must be done from the viewport.


How to inset odd shape Disclaimer: Fairly new to 3D modeling; done some simple things, trying to model stuff around me.

I am trying to model a space where I live (Gibraltar in case you care) that is essentially a repetition of the sections pictured below. It looks like the arch could be done as an inset into a larger face, but how to I set up to inset an odd shape like that? Is this even the best approach or would I be better off building it up from smaller chunks?

You should begin with the circle arc, then extrude up, down and inwards. When you'll have finished, use a texture to create the stones.


Blender VFX Leaves Shadow Question Hello I am currently working on a VFX series and in the scene I am working on I have a CGI Croagunk (a Pokemon) and he is in a forest I guess you could say so for the leaves casting shadows I rendered a musgrave texture rotating (I am also open to suggestions on another way I could do the leaves) I then imported the images into my scene to cast shadows onto croagunk as well as the shadow catcher. I am wondering how do I composite it so that croagunk remains in the scene and the leaves are not but their shadows are because when I render it the shadows that the leaves cast are there but the shadows on the plane appear in the scene. How do I get rid of those? Unfortunately I cant upload a picture on this but if you need one I can link you to my twitter.

So I feel very stupid but unchecking camera in the object info tab did it.


Can I snap to face during transformation in animation? I have this character with eyes on a body that I want to be able to squash and stretch. I am using "snap to face" when moving the eyes, but when use proportional editing on the body (later on I will be using shape keys for this) the eyes won't automatically snap. Of course I could "resnap" them, but in a 24 fps animation, this would be tidious.
Is there any way to automatically snap objects to a face when that object changes?
Here are som pictures to illsutrate the problem:

As the last picture illustrates, the eyes are on longer snapped to the surface.
Thanks for any answers!

Maybe "Parent" Helps.

First select the eyes, then the head with your Shift down to make a multi-select, hit Ctrl+P (Parent) and select "Object (Keep Transform)", then the head will be the parent of the eyes, the eyes will be the children of the head. The eyes will follow the head's transformation.

But I'd recommend you to apply rotation & scales before you do it. Check if the scale properties of the objects are set to "1.0" by poping up properties with hotkey "N". If not "1.0", then press Ctrl+A and hit "Rotation & Scales" to apply the both to the objects. That's because the rotation & scale you've made haven't been consequently applied to the object before you confirm your application.

For more info, check this out: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/3dview/object/properties/relations/parents.html


material preview displays objects in black although it has texture I'm following Lynda's tutorial and I've encountered something that I don't know how to fix.
some of my objects appear in black while I'm in material preview on the layout panel but has no problem on texture painting layout or render view.
im sure its something simple but i have no clow what to do

Try recalculating the normals, or inverting them! Or create a new picture, in the UV Editing window, and change the color from black to another!


Remove intersections between many objects I have a bunch of objects in my scene that are intersecting each other. Is there any way, without creating a million boolean modifiers on each, to remove all mesh intersections in my scene?

Maybe there's a script to apply a bunch of booleans to every object?

You may use a Direct Union of a BoolTool add on.

Activate the add on in User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U).

Select all the spheres with Shift+RMB, then press Spacebar and type direct union.

If you want to separate each object use Linked Flat Faces option.

Select one face of the sphere, go to Select-->Linked Flat Faces (or use a Shift+Ctrl+Alt+F shortcut). Increase the Sharpness value in a Tool Shelf. Then press P-->Selection to separete the selection.


Scaling to a specific object I have this larger face with the exact same 2 smaller copies above it. I have no idea how to make a smooth transition between them. Imagine one big mountain with 2 peaks. The tool I am searching for would extrude the bigger "parent" then move
upper vertices to their closest neighbors in the smaller copies by the same percentage. That would be repeated as many times as it takes to reach the shape of 2 copies. The higher the extruded level would be the closer vertices would be to both of these upper parts.
That would be of course linear but I would love to adjust that by a custom function.
This is my MODIFIED (for the sake of clarifying) proposition. Maybe there are other ways around it to get same result.
Okay, I can make this simpler.
I want to connect two small shapes to the big one.

Here is when I try the classic bridge edge loops.

The very origin of the problem is that I want to use a part of mandelbrot fractals as height map.

Which is impossible with orginal output and extremely hard (at least for me) to convert. So I tried by hand and this is the problem. Now as u can see, if this was somehow a height map it wouldn't have straight lines like in Aoradon solution. I might make edge loops in between though and scale them down. Subdivision surface mod would make it appear like a curve.

Your question is rather difficult to understand so this may be incorrect, but are you looking for bridge edge loops? Using bridge edge loops you can take two of your faces and bridge the gap between them (It finds the nearest vertex). It works by taking two selected edge loops as input. In the example below there are two identical planes with one rotated.

Before bridge edge loop:

After bridge edge loop:


Clipboard Not Working on Ubuntu 18.04 in Blender 2.79b Would anyone have any thoughts why my clipboard isn't working? It works in all other programs. I can copy text from other programs into Blender's Text Editor but I can't copy from within Blender? I have tried Copy / Paste and Ctrl C , Ctrl V but nothing works. Even tried reinstalling Blender. This is on Ubuntu 18.04 .

Make sure blender is in focus and your mouse is over the specific, blender internal text editor window.

Unlike any other text processing application blender not only needs to be in focus but also requires you to have your mouse over the specific (text editor) subwindow while copying text.

Just tested with ubuntu 18.04 and blender 2.79 from builder.blender.org


How to implement an automated render farm with remote access? I'm in a bit of a fun spot where I have full access to a VR arcade and a couple dozen GPU's inside it. Each of the computers is running Windows 10 and is on their own high speed internal LAN with a NAS.
In my spare time, I've been dabbling with small Blender animations as a hobby and wanted to utilize the processing power of the arcade at night to speed up render times. So my question is, how would I best go about doing that from outside of the network, without installing anything that would disrupt the regular operation of the arcade?
It's worth noting I can turn on/off the computers remotely, but not dual-boot into Linux remotely. I can also VNC into the individual computers, but I'd rather things be automated than have to start blender or some other other software on each computer each time I want to render something.
I've tried several solutions, including a Flamenco server, using third party plugins like CrowdRender, Prism pipeline's Pandora, etc. But they're all way over-complicated or only work on local networks. I ended up finding myself sinking more time into setting up the distributed rendering than I did actually animating, and gave up for a while.
Instead of trial and error or reinventing the wheel, I figured someone here would have experience with something similar or be able to suggest software that'd help out, or suggest I retry certain software I've already tried before.

If they are connected to the internet, try Sheepit. If you run their client on each computer they will render for the farm and if you upload a project it will first be rendered on your own hardware so easy to setup, everybody wins. Unless 500MB file size limit is too little for your scenes and you want to use exr output with passes and render layers instead of only png that Sheepit supports. But it has the advantage of being very easy to set up.
If I am not mistaken, some of their software used for the farm is open source as well, so it's worth exploring if it may be possible to use it to setup your own farm as well.


Best way to "sculpt" sphere-shaped holes on a sphere surface? Sorry for the confusing title, the best way to explain it is to look at my image (don't pay attention to the lines connecting the holes and sorry for the poor quality)

I have been thinking about this for a while and I can't think about a good way to do it. Booleans would result in a very glitchy topology and very bad results when subdivided, sculpting it wouldn't be precise enough (for me) and modeling it poly-by-poly would probably take forever, not to mention quite challenging.

There is surely a good and simple way to do it, but I just cannot think of one.

If you use booleans and want smooth spheres as results, increase your original sphere segment counts, later on you can always retopologize if the resulting face count is too high. Starting from a highpoly mesh and working to a lower one can give acceptable results.

The implementation of Blender Booleans is from the Carve Library, this is what the blender dev has to say about how to use booleans (in another very similar question) -- link

The carve library has made it possible to do really nice booleans in blender, but you need sufficient geometry for the polygon based approach to retain smooth shapes.

Cleaner topology results come from being precise about matching up the level of sudivision where the objects interface each other. Taking a highly divided sphere like above and doing a difference with a scaled down sphere with identical vert count will produce more geometry than needed.

Ideally you will have similar face sizes like here:

Use the EdgeSplit Modifier, on smooth shaded faces, in combination with matching face sizes it looks acceptable.


How to duplicate an Archimesh generated object in blender 2.8 I am creating a kitchen scene, and in order to create cabinets I am using door objects made in archimesh. The problem is when I try to duplicate the doors, the only way to do this is to select all of the separate objects (or shift-g from the empty that is created). I found this post: How to duplicate the empty which says to use dupligroup, but I cannot find it in blender 2.8.

You could select the empty in the outliner and right click on it and choose select hierarchy. In this example the separate objects are parented to the empty. This is done by dragging the object into the empty in the outliner and holding the shift key.

In the object window (not the outliner) press shift + d and a copy will be made


Is it possible to deselect freestyle edges? Is it possible to deselect freestyle edges?

For example, I enabled Material Boundary in Render layers → Freestyle Line Set → Edge Types to draw lines on all edges between faces with different materials:

Is it possible to explicitly exclude an edge from freestyle drawing so I can have all material boundary edges drawn except for ones I specify?

e.g:

In Edit Mode select the edge and Mark Freestyle Edge Ctrl+E,F
In the Properties window > Render Layers > Freestyle Line Set:

Enable Logical AND.
Enable Edge Mark and the (Exclude Edge marks) X button next to it.

Result:


Why do some bones in an animation lose their position when applying scale to their armature? After starting with a stock armature with a run cycle I added a few of my own bones for various armor pieces on my model. As the stock model is too large for my game and the engine requires me to apply the correct scale before export I scaled the armature down (my mesh is a child of it). After applying the new scale and viewing my run cycle the bones from the stock armature I built on top of are fine, where my new bones explode out to new positions in all directions. It feels to me like the individual origins of my new bones are offset somehow, obviously I have missed a crucial step when adding them, what was this step, and how can this problem be fixed?

Before:

After applying scale:

Generally if an armature already has animation data, it's not safe to scale it and apply the transformation. It has something to do with changing the armature object's transformation matrix, because each keyframes in an action for a bone is recorded and evaluated against it.

To illustrate, here I have a keyframed armature, and I just add a free-floating bone parented to torso:

If I halve the armature's size in object mode, each bone's matrix stays the same:

But after I apply the scale transformation, it's a different matrix for each bones:

Whatever matrix operation is applied against the keyframe data, no longer turns out the correct transformation. In my experience, only free-floating bones are prone to this problem (the feet doesn't stray like this when animated in FK).


How to split a certain area using python? My screen has different areas: one 3D View and two Image Editors.
I would like to split one of the Image Editors but when I call the bpy.ops.screen.area_split() operator, it's always going to split the 3D View for whatever reason.
Does anyone know how I can split a certain area?

Iterate through all visible areas and override the context when calling area_split() operator:
import bpy

for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'IMAGE_EDITOR': # 'VIEW_3D', 'CONSOLE', 'INFO' etc.
        override = bpy.context.copy()
        override['area'] = area
        bpy.ops.screen.area_split(override, direction='VERTICAL', factor=0.3)
        break


Can Blender use the open-source Nouveau Nvidia driver for rendering? Can Blender use the open-source Nouveau Nvidia driver for rendering, or must I use Nvidia's proprietary driver?

CUDA only works with the Proprietary NVidia Driver. If you want to render using GPU you need to install it.

Nouveau doesn't support CUDA. Blender will run, and render, without CUDA, but it will not use the GPU.

Read: Can CUDA operate with open source Nvidia driver or only with Nvidia proprietary driver?

and the Nouveau article on wikipedia


My object doesn't show in camera mode [

Hi, i'm having to make a scene for a project at uni and i'm building a castle with the intention of having the camera float around it for an animation like a guided tour. I can edit it fine and all, and i'm currently trying to add a texture to it, when i try and check to see if it has worked and use camera view nothing shows and just shows me a grey screen as if there is no object. I'm using a plugin to build the walls but that shouldn't make them seem "transparent" if i've added a texture to them? I have a lamp set up and have turned it up really high because it's a large object so it's not like it's hiding in pitch black.

Maybe it's outside of the cameras clipping plane. Select the camera, then go to the camera settings in Properties > Object data. There you can see Clipping start and End. You want to increase the End value so the distance to your object falls within it.


Blendshapes wont create! I'm trying to create i blend shape but after i finish making one, the vertices never reset and don't even move after i edited them. Please help! https://gyazo.com/2328df14475881eb5ed40e57ad29846e
I tried creating it at 0 that still didn't make any difference, it's not the first time i create blend shapes on this same mesh and it worked fine before, now i'm completely confused as to what happened.
P.S. the vertices screw up the mesh as well when moving the blendshape value or deleting the blendshape, mesh looks deformed.

"Automatically merge vertices at the same location" is on...

So, turn it off to solve the issue.