How to remove shadows appearing inside material? I've been following a tutorial on geometry nodes, which uses gumdrops and sugar for context. The geometry node set up for the gum drop is:

For the material of the gum drop I used the following shader set up:

The problem I have is on the render. If you look at the image below, You'll be able to see little shadows appearing inside of the gumdrop material. I want to be able to control these, either removing them completely or reducing the strength of them.

I've tried a few different things to alter them, but I've not been able to work out what is causing them.
I've tried removing Shadows in the Ray Visibility section, from the sugar cube objects, used within a collection in the geometry node setup. Specifically the collection is used in Point Instance Node.

I've tried increasing the Density in the Volume Absorption node in the gumdrop material Shader Node Setup, but it just darkens the colour, so the shadows blend in, and I would like to keep the brightness of the gumdrops if possible.
The last idea I had was to apply 'backface culling', but the option only appears in the Viewport Display settings, so doesn't affect the render. (I figured maybe the shadows are caused by sugar on the back of the gum drop.)
I'm not sure what's causing the shadows, and I've only been using 3D modelling software about 2 months, so I have no idea what else to try.
Any ideas or solutions?

Moments after writing up this question, I found an answer. The way to do it is to alter the Roughness value in the Refraction BSDF node of the shader set up.


Draw line after path I am making a tutorial for billard and i am trying to make an animation showing the path a ball will take. Over my 3D model i have imported a picture of the line i want to animate. My question is, how do i efficiently draw and animate this line? I just want the line to be flat and smooth. Current attempts include making a path or Bezier curve and then use the bevel feature, but here I am not sure how to avoid the line curving because it automatically interpolates between points, and when i find a workaround the corners just looks odd. Also, the bevel feature does not seem to allow me to make a flat line, but instead a cylinder, which i then had to press flat, which might be why the corners look odd.

The lines i want to draw

The corners i think looks odd

How it looks currently

I did something similar in the past, although I was looking for rounded bezier paths and I came up with this, which works - somehow - also when lines are straight, and not rounded. I'm not sure if it helps you but at least it's done differently, as it does not use bevel but an animated array modifier plus a curve modifier...

this is the setup: the bezier segments iirc have been straightened using: V => vector first, and then V => free.

I also exaggerated the line width (editing the small rectangle in edit mode) to better show it in pictures here.

and this is the animation that is produced:

I'm not sure if it solves your corners issues...

Here's the file, anyway.


Adjust number of digits displayed for timer property? I want to make a nice timer in Blender Game. I used a timer property, but it doesn't look right because it has way too much digits. I only want it to show the number of seconds and 2 decimal digits.

I checked the source code of the property but I'm not sure what to change.

There is an option with quite a few Logic Bricks, but

formatting.py:

def propertyToText(controller):
    sensor = controller.sensors[0]
    propertyName = sensor.propName
    owner = controller.owner
    value = owner[propertyName]

    formattedValue = "{:.2f}".format(value)

    owner.text = formattedValue

Usage:
Have a Property (e.g. timer)

Property Sensor [enable True Level Triggering]
Mode:Changed Property: your property

--> Python Controller Module:formatting.propertyToText


How can I force input to be interpreted as millimetres instead of metres? In Sketchup for example you can chose default unit. If you chose cm, you type in 17 and the line will be 17cm. Or you can choose to type in 1.7 and the line will be 1.7cm. Or you can change to metres and type in 3 and the line will be 3 metres. Or you can type in .3 and the line will be .3m.

When you're trying to type in precise measurements in Blender, such as 16.4mm X 12.5mm X 8mm, I have to either type the size in metres, or specify a different unit at the end of the number.

How do I tell Blender to assume that "7" means "7 millimetres," without having to put "0.00" in front of it?

Or is the only way to make everything in metres and treat them like millimetres  and then downscale everything by 1000 to make the measurements true to the plan?

You can do that from the Scene panel, Under Units, Scale 1.0000000 means that it's in meters, change it to 0.01, this will make your units in cm, or 0.001 will make them in mm.
Be careful though if you're planning to export your objects to a different software, like UE4 for instance, you need to change this later to meet the requirements of that software.

Edit:Make sure that you also change the scale in 3D View window, under Display (in the properties shelve to your right hand by default, if you can't see that, press N while hovering over 3D View window).
Check this answer too: Change the scale of the viewport


How to create a circle with the Array Modifier I was trying to create the same as in this tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whjFb0xFoLk

But when I do exact the same my objects keep regrowing. So each next object will be even bigger then the one before.

Can someone please tell me what I did wrong here?

You have probably scaled your empty (the empty is the object that you use as offset object in the tutorial).

For correcting your error you can select your empty and then press alt+s for reseting the scale of your object.


Object is black in 3rd and 4th viewport shading I am a newbie to blender so I am sorry in advance if it's something common or just my mistake.

I have this object and the viewport just shows it black. I tried googling this problem but I just couldn't find any working solution. I figured it has to do something with the two black circles that represent the backround?

Thanks in advance!

This can happen when you turn down the scene lighting.
It's a wild guess, but I couldn't reproduce your issue in any other way.


Changing an objects axis Sorry this is a noob question but I'm just stuck. So I am trying to reorient the local axis of an object after I change it's global position. So say there is a cube and I rotate it on it's z axis 45° now it's x and y are pointing off all crazy. I want to change the local axis to line up with the global axis again. How can I do this?

Select your cube in Object Mode and apply the rotation with Ctrl+A > Rotation


Unwanted transforms in animation I used animations from Mixamo for a game project, a humanoid character (ybot). I used an add-on called Godot Game Tools to combine different animations and duplicate them. I duplicated the animations and modified the rotations of spine bone and replaced the key frames. When I opened the project later the animation had some unwanted transforms in it. The character is shifted slightly to up.

Screenshots:

When I was modifying this animation there was no such problems, when I changed the animation to something else and back the problem occurred. Every animation I made this way has problems like this. I did it yesterday and I noticed this today when I opened my Blender project.

As a workaround for now I opened each animation and changed the transform of the hip bone individually. I have to again modify many animations to correct this.

Is this a bug ? What causes this problem and why ? How can I fix it ?

Please help!

Edit: Here's the blend file

You use Replace blending mode for these strips, but I would say you probably used Add when you edited action. Changing back to "Add" blend type - seems solved the issue here.

There of course matter what blend mode you used while editing, also there matters what action is used bellow.

BTW

To do changes on imported animations I would use NLA editor to adjust animation. If you use GGT add-on its automatically imported as NLA action strips (animations).

I cleaned up all unused tracks and left only one to keep it more clear.
("Riffle_Crouch_Walk")

Action editor
- create a new action
(or delete existing and add keyframe for selected bones in Pose mode)
- here you can do all edits that are Replaced, Added or what ever (is set in NLA strip properties) on top of imported track (action)

NLA editor
- top action is always used (if not disabled)
- top row (with dope sheet icon) is always editable one
- all bellow (with star icon) are "Push Down" for strip mixing
(like now "Riffle_Crouch_Walk" imported action)

When you finish edits, you can search "Bake Action" (with cursor inside NLA editor) into one animation.

See blend file


CPU and GPU - does CPU work with or alongside the GPU? I'm new to Blender and am trying to understand how Blender uses the CPU and GPU? I have a budget CPU with 4 cores/8 threads (AMD Ryzen 5 3400G). When I started looking into making some 3D animation I decided to purchase the NVidia 2060 KO. In a benchmark I noticed the time improved greatly (before 12 minutes now 2 minutes). The thing I'm confused on is that even though it's using the GPU it's still rendering the frames in tiles. Is it that each CPU thread is working and managing a task with the GPU? Or is the GPU generating one tile at a time much faster alongside the 7 or 8 tiles that CPU is working on at the same time?

The reason I ask is that I'm considering purchasing a 2700x CPU for about $150 which has 8 cores/16 threads. It's the previous generation CPU that is half the cost of the current 3700x that also as 8 cores and roughly the same clock/boost speed. It is also the same architecture as the CPU I have now (Zen+).

So I'm wondering if doubling the cores with the 2700x will roughly half the time the frames take now from 2 minutes to 1 minute (assuming CPU is working with or managing GPU)? Or will it mean 8 additional tiles at a time that the CPU only works on and would half only the CPU dedicated work (meaning perhaps instead of 2 minutes it may be something like 1:40)? i.e. Is it a cheap way to virtually half the overall processing time?

If it depends on the type of animation I'm working through a tutorial by Black Plasma Studios to create Minecraft based videos. These are no heavy in physics (like hair flowing, smoke, etc.). Which leads me to another question: Would complex animations that include animated hair strands, grass, smoke, lots of physics benefit more from CPU cores vs the GPU?

Thanks.

If you've selected to use both the GPU and CPU for rendering, the GPU will work on a single tile while each CPU thread will also work on a tile. In this case, you will see the GPU rendering single tiles much quicker than the CPU threads can render their respective tiles. However, if your GPU does not have enough video memory to render a scene, Blender will use your CPU to render. Unless you're working with massive scenes, I don't think that's the case here.

To find specific render times, go to Blender OpenData to view the benchmarked times for various devices. Note that this is for that specific device(s) being used to render. Since the hardware you're interested in isn't in the top 50, go to the Raw Data section and find the relevant benchmark times in the JSON file (which you can do by importing the file to Excel). It's not the most user-friendly, but you can also search for benchmarks 3rd parties have done and posted online.

I do not believe that your render times will be halved. To my understanding, if you're only using your GPU to render, the CPU will be doing physics calculations (hair, collisions, object transformations etc.) while the GPU deals with rendering actual scene once the CPU has calculated the aforementioned things.

When it comes to multicore processing, things get a bit tricky. Many calculations cannot be done in multiple threads and must be sequentially calculated. For example, consider an object parented to another during an animation. Blender must first calculate the parent's position, and only then can it calculate the position of the child relative to the parent's position.


Is there a Blender Certification? Could you please tell me if Blender offers a certification like Java Language, HTML, CSS or other software?

There is a certification program for Blender Trainers. You can become a certified instructor BFCT if you ingress in that certification program.

Maintaing a certifications cost an additional 50€ a year, the same as a Freelance subscription to Blender Network


No CUDA and GPU option I have Blender 2.73a with AMD Radeon 3100 Graphics. I saw this page on how to make cycles render faster. It says when I go to User Preferences> System> Compute Device, It has no CUDA option, which means there is no GPU option. How can I fix this?

CUDA is only available for nvidia GPUs. AMD cards can use openCL (Disabled in official builds).

Here is the wiki page on it http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/GPU_Rendering


How to reduce repetition of textures Im currently trying to add a texture to this model that should look something like this.

How would I go about reducing the number of repeating textures. I know that each texture is bound to a face right now, but I can't reduce the number of faces or else it will no longer be sphere like.

Thanks

From your screenshot you have your Vector input of the texture set to Default - this will be using a UV Map to orient the textures on your faces. In order to maps your texture over the whole mesh you either need to change the UV map (search for online tutorials for UV Unwrapping - it can be quite a simple or complicated process, depending on your needs and situation) or switch to a Vector setting that does not use your UV map - such as Generated.

I your case, Generated would seem to be the best option since you want the texture projected over the whole mesh from above - so change Vector to Generated. However, I also note from your screenshot that you have your Mapping set to 'Normal' - this can produce unexpected results (I presume this was the result of you trying to adjust your mapping) - so change it to Texture. You should then adjust the Scale and Rotation to orient the image on the mesh how you desire.


River simulation - different approaches than fluid simulation? I am in the middle of a project which needs to have a river flowing in it. (You may be familiar with my recent questions; they are all related.)
Just for reference and imagination, here's a preview of the setting where the river should go.

As you can see, what I need to accomplish is:

1) something like an "ever-flowing river". It shouldn't start flowing from some point and expand from there. The final render (it is for a video) should be continuous and seamless.

2) a "caged" river. You should see it flowing as if we took a slice of it, (just like with the rest of the terrain)

I've been looking for tutorials, but the ones I've found tend to cover typical fluid simulations, which I'm not so sure can help me. I think I may need something more simple. Something like a cloth waving (for now it doesn't need to be realistic).

I ran into this video, and I was hoping for some hints on how the creator did that, because I don't understand... I can tell he used code... Maybe some of you can give me a kind introduction to code in Blender aiming to generate this kind of river.

I'm not interested by now in making something as realistic or detailed as the video, but it happens to fits my 2 initial requirements.

Make a Procedural River using the Ocean Modifier

This technique for creating a river allows the flow of the water to follow the path of the river easily. To do it, simply create an long, narrow Ocean object, then add a Curve Modifier to it.

Create a plane:  SHIFTA -> Mesh -> Plane
(NOTE: For this technique to be easy, DO NOT move the plane away from where it is created -- the 3D Cursor is where it is created)
Add an Ocean Modifier to the plane. You may want to scale down the resulting mesh.

Lengthen the Ocean object along the X axis by increasing the Repeat X value. This will be the river object:

Add a Path Curve:  SHIFTA -> Curve -> Path
(NOTE: Again, for this technique to be easy, DO NOT move the path away from where it is created -- the 3D Cursor is where it is created, so it will appear right on top of the river)
Scale the path so it is a little bit bigger than the river, then position it so it is in the middle of the river:

Scale: Select path -> S -> drag mouse
Move on X Axis: Select path -> G -> X -> drag mouse
(NOTE: This is the one time you can move the path until you reach Step #10 below)

With the path selected, go into Edit mode and subdivide the path as many times as you have bends in the river. In your river, you have one bend, so just subdivide it one time:
Select path -> TAB W -> Subdivide -> Exit Edit Mode (TAB)

Select the river and add a Curve Deform Modifier to it and set the Object to the path:

This makes the river mesh conform to the shape of the path.
Now move the river so it is fully on the path:
Select river -> G -> X -> drag mouse

Edit the path so it is the shape you want your river to be:

Position the river on your landscape. To do this, you MUST move both the path and river together, so select them both, then move them:
Select path -> hold SHIFT while selecting the river -> G -> Position them
If you want to make the river narrower or wider in certain places, you can do that by select one of the vertices of the path and altering it with ALTS:
Select path -> TAB -> select vertex -> ALTS -> drag mouse

Animating the River

To make the river flow, you now need to animate it's properties by setting keyframes for the Ocean Modifier's properties.


Is there a way to make a five sided bolt out of a 32 sided disk opening? I am somewhat new to blender and I am trying to hone my modeling skills with a focus on good topology.
I am modeling a fire hydrant currently and the end of the pipe openings or valve attachments has a five sided bolt, and everything from the rest of my model is 32 sided and circular as it was extruded from an edge loop from a modified cross joint.
I figure I can either manually try and move the vertices in the shape of a pentagon or take an extruded pentagon and just place it in a closed face and have the faces intersecting each other, but I feel there's a better way or more 'right' way to do this. Any ideas?
(Its just a practice exercise I'm doing for myself, I'm really just trying to focus on best practices and not learning any bad habits. thanks!)

You must already have thought about this way but I'm not sure there's any other way around (by the way you could have used less than 32 vertices):

Create a 5 vertex circle (pentagone).
Subdivide it until it gets 30 vertices.
Select 1 of these vertices, ShiftCtrlB to bevel it. Do the same thing with another one. You now have a 32 vertex pentagone.
Bridge the cylinder with the pentagone.


How to seperate multiple object in Array modifier I want help about seperating those multiple pins made in array so they can be edited on their own.

I watched one tutorial and it says to go in edit mode, then press P to get to separation menu, and then separate by loose parts and that is all.

But as you can see on second picture, I have problem because when I do it deselect other pins, and show geometry of primary pin.

you can do that after applying the modifier.

but the best solution so far is to just copy the object along an axis then repeat with shift + R


Packing all linked Files for Render Farm submission So I want to submit a project to a renderfarm. I have multiple links to other .blend files in the project since this saves memory and speeds up the render a lot. The blend files are roughly 5 GB combined. it is a large scene.
Is there a way to easily package all associated files for submission to the renderfarm?
The pack all into blend function only works for textures for as far as I know.
Thanks in advance.

You should try this option:
Object=>Relations=>Make Local=>All

Unfortunately, it does not work for proxies. At least it didn't some time ago.
As for the render farm, you can try GarageFarm.NET. Their plugin uses this option automatically.


Why render differs from 3D viewport camera view in depth I know there is a question same of my problem.
How do I increase the render distance?
I did it but it didn't work so I'm writing here

You can see in first photo when I'm editing there is no problem. but when I render it, it looks like this:

I just want to render it like the first photo.

@vkildu nope it didnt work

you can see all of this icons are open
Here's the blend file

Since 3D viewport camera view use the same clipping parametr as final render (so there is not a reason to think clipping is issue).
I think your problem layes in disabled Plane object in Outliner editor that is not disabled from rendering.

Click on Filter icon and click on Camera icon to see what objects are set to be rendered. Ensure if this object is OFF from rendering as well.


How can I halt and start again without mesh moving while it is stopped? Can anyone tell me how I can move in a walking pose and then halt for some other gestures around the characters body and then take a few more steps afterwards without the mesh moving towards the location key frame for the next set of steps while it is supposed to be halted conducting other gestures?

I got it figured out. I just had to go and reset some of my previous location keys. That's all.


Workflow for batch rendering in the same scene with different cameras I have a scene with 500 frames of a person walking. I want to render out several different viewpoints of this scene.

In the past, what I used to do is to create a new scene with everything linked except the camera, then I would use Blender command line to render all scenes. (Each scene has different start-end frame to match the length of the camera movement)

However, this cause me huge problem when I want to change some render settings as it could not be changed together to all scenes. (I set the size wrong once, then I set the noise handling wrong, then I set the FPS wrong, etc.)

Instead I have thought of a workflow with multiple cameras on only one scene. Currently I found this way of setting the render camera via command line.

What's missing is I have to manually remember the frame range of each camera and use it in the command line.

My idea is to embed custom properties to the camera that specify start and end frame, then the command line maybe can gather all cameras in the scene and render them all regarding to this custom property. But I don't know how to do this. Or perhaps are there any better ways?

Oh, never mind. I would rather use the old approach with Python script to change all the render settings like this

import bpy

def RenderAllScenes():
    for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
        bpy.ops.render.render(scene = scene.name, animation=True)

def CommonSetup():
    for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
        scene.render.resolution_x = 1920
        scene.render.resolution_y = 1080
        scene.render.tile_x = 256
        scene.render.tile_y = 256
    return

def Setup(resolutionPercentage):
    for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
        CommonSetup()
        scene.render.resolution_percentage = resolutionPercentage

In Blender's interactive console I can then import renderSettings.py then renderSettings.Setup(50), etc.


Multiple objects to particles Is there any way to add multiple objects to a particle simulation (emitter) without having to join the objects before adding them to the sim?

You can put all objects you want to emit in one collection. In the Render settings of the Particle System you can choose Collection which will use all the objects in this collection.
By default, it's picking single objects to be emitted as particle. But you can check Whole Collection which means, each emitted particle will then consist off all objects in this collection in their relative positions like they are placed to each other.
For emitting single objects of the collection you can also check Pick Random, although it already looks random to me without this enabled.
Another setting you might want to use is Use Count, there you can specify if some of those picked should appear more often than others from the collection.


What is causing this weird shading effect in rendered view? Whenever i look at some textures like the one in the pic i get a weird pixelated effect but looking through the camera it looks fine. Does anyone know what causes this

It seems to be an issue with backface culling. I turned that on and subdiv+ smooth shading and it seems to have solved the problem.


Locking size of individual mesh part I have an object with a lot of holes with the same size.

I want to make the object smaller, but also I want to save sizes of the holes that are part of the object.

After scaling the object, determine the amount of scaling of the holes required to "undo" that scaling. For example, if the object was scaled down by a factor of 0.9, use 1 / 0.9 = 1.111 as the scale factor to adjust the holes by.

To quickly scale all of the holes switch to use the pivot center "Individual Origins" and it should scale each hole separately.

You can get the add-on presented in this answer to verify that the dimensions of the holes are indeed the same: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/68678/28015.


Trouble Importing Paint Bumps from Sculptris into Blender So I made a model in Sculptris, I gave him a solid color and then imported textures using the paint bump option. No problem, works well in that program.

The problem I'm having is when I go and import the model into Blender, I can't seem to figure out how to properly import the paint bumps with the texture in order to make it look good. It either comes out in a solid color with a few of the textures I put on the model itself, or it comes out with paint bumps alone and being black and white. I even tried seeing if a PSD image would do anything but it didn't.

Here is a link that will include the Sculptris and Blender file, and maybe some pictures and other stuff since I can only post 1 link with my current rep points on this website.

https://www.mediafire.com/?4nik8kecskoplok

In Blender Internal, you must select every texture in use and assign a "target" to their values. In Example I selected the bump map (BW), I unchecked the "color" destination and assigned it to "normal".

Anyway this model has severe modelling issues, resulting in black artifacts, expecially on the right wing.


Game Engine: Cube won't move on negative x In the Blender Game Engine, I used servo control to move a cube along the x axis when "W" was pressed. That worked fine, but when I used the exact same settings (except for direction, of course) to make it move on the negative x axis when "S" was pressed, it wouldn't move. I even tried changing the direction to the positive x, and that worked fine. But when I switched it back, it didn't work again. And I don't think that it is because of directional friction, because this same thing happens when it is on a different platform, or even in midair. Also, it works fine when I don't give it an x limit, but even if I give it a limit of 10000 it wont budge. And I really need that limit on it. Does anybody know why this is happening? Thanks!

Since you are moving the Object in the negative direction ( -X ) you need to set the minimum limit instead of the maximum and it should be negative as the force applied on the object will be negative :


I'm embarrassed to ask this about scaling faces I'm not a smart guy. I haven't been able to google the answer or figure this out on my own.

I placed a cylinder down and scaled it by millimeters to 12.9 mm on x and y, but I also need to change the top end face size to 12.7 mm. I can't figure out how. Unlike the object properties, in edit mode the only property that seems to be available is something called Median. According to google, median just displaces the location of the centerpoint of selected stuff.

All I wanna do is scale a single face of this cylinder by exact millimeters, but so far this software doesn't seem to be capable of that. pressing S and typing anything in just gives wild results.

UPDATE - I gave up on it. I realized that blender isn't as powerful as I had hoped and just did a bunch of extremely time consuming boolean stuff to make 2 cylinder faces into 1 object to get the desired result.
Apparently the folks on the development team have been neglecting the smaller, more important features in favor of professional features that I'll probably never use in my life. No judgement here. It's their software, they can do whatever they want with it.

First make sure to start with a 1 base: scale the base cylinder to one in all dimensions.

If you've added a standard cylinder, it should be 2x2x2 meters.

So scale it 0.5 in object mode, then apply scale CtrlA to have the same in edit mode.

Once done enter edit mode, take the faces you need (maybe the bottom of the cylinder) and scale 12.9: S12.9

Now select the top part and scale 12.7: S12.7.

The proportions should be good. Now scale all 0.001 to have it in millimeters.

In the blend file above, top part is 12.7 and bottom part is 12.9.


No keyframes visible in action editor I had finished animating an action and was previewing it. I accidentally hit R while the animation was playing and not wanting the rotation, I hit escape (and probably a couple of other characters because fat fingers).
Now I don't have anything at all listed in the dope sheet summary. Also there are no keyframe nodes in the action editor. I can still see the animations being done if I scrub the timeline, there's just nothing in the graph editor.
I've tried to figure out how to fix it, but I cannot seem to find it.

Chebhou's response was correct. Make sure "Show Errors Only" was accidentally clicked.


Subtitles or how can a text object be edited before a frame is rendered? A text object's text is supposed to show information like a subtitle. How could the text be changed on a frame # based trigger?

An application handler could be used to read subtitle data and display it by editing the text object.

import bpy
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent

@persistent
def frame_change(arg):
    print("Load Handler:", bpy.data.filepath)
    t = bpy.data.objects["Text"]
    label = ("Frame # %d" % bpy.context.scene.frame_current)
    t.data.body = label

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(frame_change)


Confusion over animations in the Dope Sheet and NLA Editor I'm currently confused as to what's going on with my animations. If I click the star icon to lock a certain animation and mute the others, each animation works correctly. If I have none starred, the default animation is always my walking animation, and the animations don't play correctly if I select them from the Action list; parts of the mesh deform. The character's right foot for the walk animation looks as though he's hobbling or trying to walk on tip-toes.
I can have nothing selected in the NLA Editor or nothing from my Action list under the Dope Sheet, but it will always play my walking animation by default. I'm not sure why or how to change this.
It almost seems like one or two of my animations have inherited keyframes from other animations with the way they deform. I even tried deleting every key frame from every animation so nothing shows for each action, and yet I've noticed the hands still move slightly. o_O

Why animations are the 'right' ones according to Blender? The ones I can star under the NLA Editor or the ones that are broken via the Action list of the Dope Editor. I'll upload my save file.

The action that will be played will be the priority one on the NLA, i.e. the one on top track, except:

1: If you've selected a strip in the NLA and pressed tab to edit its action in the Dopesheet/Action Editor. To come back to the normal NLA running, press tab again on the NLA (or press the X button on the right of the action name in the Dopesheet/Action Editor).
2: If you've loaded an animation in the Dopesheet/Action Editor mode from the dropdown menu. To come back to the normal NLA running, press the X button on the right of the action name.

But be careful: If the animation you've selected misses keyframes for some of its bones, these bones may be playing some inexplicable keyframes, actually coming from other NLA strips below your one or from previous animation. To prevent this to happen you can press the star icon of your track or mute the others. But the best thing to do is to keyframe your whole armature in Pose mode, at the beginning of each action, to make sure that no bone will inherit pose from another action, unless you have a good reason not to.

Also, about NLA strips: If you want the keyframes of an animation strip to continue to influence the armature even after the end of the strip length, choose the Hold option in the Extrapolation dropdown menu of the Properties panel of the NLA (activate with N > Animations > Active Strip.

About actions: Don't forget to press the F button on the right of the action name, in the Dopesheet/Action Editor mode. This way you're sure this action won't be deleted when you'll reopen your file, even if it's not used anywhere.

About your foot hobbling, it happens in the middle of your action, frame 20 when the left foot is forward. To fix it, go in Pose mode, select all the bones at frame 0 (or at least the leg bones), ctrlC, come to frame 20, where the pose is supposed to be inverted, select all your bones and press shiftctrlV, then i to keyframe the pose. It works.


Rendering vertex colours from imported WRL object Every time I have installed Blender over the many years I get so frustrated... Inexperienced, and now using ver 2.91.0
Here's what I'm trying to do:
Import from ZBrush a polypainted (vertex painted) object and render it using either Eevee or Cycles.
Here's what I CAN do:
Import a WRL file with all colour info. I know the info is there because when I switch to Vertex Paint Mode I see the painted object just fine.
What I cannot do:
Enable options to allow me to see vertex paint while in Edit Mode.
Cannot render the colours at all.
From what I've been reading I need to assign a material. I believe I have done that. I cannot find the top row of icons that I am used to from past versions as seen in this image:

I used to be able to add materials very easily. Now, I'm not sure I have done it correctly or checked off the right boxes to allow me to see the vertex paint. I can see the object change colour when I do so, but not the vertex paint.
As for rendering. Useless. Not even a hint of my painted areas, simply the object coloured to that set in the material panel.
Any hints for pointing me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Don’t panic. This will be easy.
First off, that “row of icons” is the tabs of the Properties Editor, and is now on the side of that same editor. Things work generally the same way, except Blender Internal Render has been scrapped, so things in the Textures tab generally do not affect things in the Materials tab: You use shader texture nodes instead. The textures made in the Texture tab of the Properties Editor are for other purposes like compositing.
Secondly, you can input color into your material with the Vertex Color Node. If you do not know how to use material shader nodes, it’s time to learn. They are very intuitive, and both Cycles render and the new EEVEE render use them.
Refer to the blender manual at docs.blender.org under:

Editors -> Properties
Rendering -> Shader Nodes
...for more information.


Can't find 'blender' module? I'm using Blender V2.7, and I want to run a Python script which imports the blender module, but the console window outputs error: can't find Blender module.

This error does not occur in V2.49.

It's a bit hard to find good links about this unfortunately, partially as it happened so long ago and there doesn't seem to have been a lot of documentation about it :/. The best guide I could find was this blog post about porting BGE scripts.

Suffice it to say that the python API underwent a major change as part of the 2.4x to 2.5x transition, and the blender module no longer exists (the modern equivalent is bpy).

Here is the latest blender python api documentation.


Stange material/mesh glitch in LookDev mode Whenever I go into LookDev mode with this Cynder model I ported from SFM (which was originally an .mesh.ascii file) a strange graphical glitch occurs where I can see faces glitching through each other.

This was more obvious in edit mode.

In rendered mode it is completely fine, so I don't know what's going on. Because the faces show through each other in edit mode I'm thinking there's something wrong with the mesh but I'm not sure what.

I have many other models that I've imported from SFM into Blender the same way and they've never had this problem before.

Help would be gladly appreciated, please respond asap.

[EDIT]
Blender file below:

Your material blend mode is set to alpha blend, changing it to opaque fixes the issue.


Pink everything in Blender, even with all solutions i tried (searched Web for hours) I worked on a character in blender 2.8 and wanted to add eyes, just like Danny Mac 3D showed in his tutorial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPK6JlWESM8&t=397s

(sadly there isnt an eye tutorial for blender 2.8, and i want them to look good)

But when i add a material, and set the material output to cycles render, it gets pink. But i tried with an Uv Map and with unwrapping, but the pinkish color was still there. I did click on assign, but that didnt helped either.

Also finding (or reporting) missing files didnt work, since the blender console dont show where the files are. It doesnt react when i click on the 2 options.

I know blender 2.8 is beta ... but i wanted ... to try it out XD
(But maybe i just miss something and its my fault)

Here are some pictures of the eyeball and the settings:

When i remove the material, the eyeball is white in LookDev, when the material is there, the eyeball is pink in render and look dev. Also the whole scene is pink xO

im thankful for any advice ... im really desperate since i try to fix this problem now since 1 day, and i couldnt find a solution xO

The issue comes from your shader:

Basically, you're trying to mix a transparent shader with "nothing". It's kind of trying to multiply by zero: it doesn't work well. If you set the material output to be Cycles specific while in LookDev display, it renders pink. If you go to rendered display, it will be black no matter the render engine.

So, try to add a shader into the second input of the mix shader. Or remove the mix shader completely.

If you intended to control the amount of transparency, just play with the color value:


Knife Tool Making Extra Faces The knife tool is one of the things I use most in blender. I use it to add vertices with out adding a Loop/cut/slide. I recently got a new laptop and installed blender on it, and it creates a random face when using the cut tool.
Usually this is what I do to adda vertex, as you can see in the picture.

But as you can see instead of only adding a vertex it connects to the corner of the object.

The type of topology you are trying to create isn't supported by Blender.  BMesh stores faces as a continuous loop of edges - branches and multiple loops aren't supported (yet).

If you try and create it by merging vertices you will find Blender ejects the edge from the face, creating a wire edge.


Colors in rendered image are too dark? I was halfway through modeling a character when I decided to open a second viewport and see how it would look rendered. I really like how the texture and colors look when I have the model set as a solid, but when I try to render it, the colors are too dark and some objects seem faded, and a lot less solid.

Is there any way that I can make the rendered image look more like the view I normally see? I am using Blender version 2.77. Does anybody know what I could try to fix this? I can post screenshots of my settings too if that helps, but I wasn't sure if the problem was my lighting or the materials, so here are both:

This is my first time modeling so I'm sorry if there is a really obvious solution! I would really appreciate some help. (also I can show more of my settings if needed)

You need more lights.  Currently, you have one dim light.  Try creating a sun lamp, and putting it near your character.  This will make it a lot brighter.


Can Blender run headless on an ARM processor? Was wondering if anyone knows of a way to run Blender in a non graphical mode to use as a render node?

I'm thinking of setting up a small farm using raspberry pi's or another of the mini, efficient, low cost computers to use as a node to process everything.

Does Blender run on ARM and can it be used as a render node?

I have run Blender on an ARMv7 CPU somewhat similar to the one the Raspberry Pi 2 model B uses, so I think Blender has no problems running on this architecture.

In practice, the problem would be processing power. On my Google Nexus 4, which has a quad-core 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Krait CPU, it took well over an hour to render Mike Pan's BMW scene:

This table on Wikipedia seems to show that the Krait in my phone would perform about the same as, or perhaps a bit better than, the Cortex A7 in the Raspberry Pi 2. Additionally, the Pi runs at 0.9 rather than 1.5 GHz. Would a setup with CPUs like these be able to render images? Almost certainly. Would you want to wait for them to do it? Personally, I think you wouldn't.


how can i add emission (glow light) on logo I am a new in blender and I have made this mobile device that have blue texture. And logo above it.But i cannot figure out that how to add light glow (emission) on logo.. Please guyz help me, this is my first project that i am working on it..

Cycles
Just plug image node ("Logo") color socket into Emission socket of Principled BSDF node. I added node Convertor > Math type Multiply to increase strenght of light.
If your logo image is not black&white use ColorRamp node, RGB Curve node or what ever that make it BW.

Eevee
does not support mesh lights. But you can try distribute the light of emission texture by adding Irradiance Volume object. See How to make mesh lights work in Blender Eevee?


My Blender sculpt brush subtract mode color is set to blue but shows white instead. Why is that? In the Tool Shelf>Options Tab>Appearance>Show Brush(checked)>Subtract, I have set the color to blue because it is what I am used to in ZBrush. For some reason though, when I hold down Shift to smooth I get a white circle instead of the blue color that I set. Am I seeing a bug or doing something wrong?

This is a really old question but the answer is that there are actually three colors for the brushes. One for add, one for subtract, and white for smooth. If you choose the 'Smooth' brush you'll see it is white. Holding 'Shift' with another brush is basically changing whatever you're using to a 'Smooth' brush.


Add repeating pattern to surface Am making a storm trooper helmet from Ep7 to be 3D printed, and need to add texture (physical not graphical) to part of the model as shown to black section of the reference image below.

And below is model in progress of the same section

My question is, is there a simple way to add the honeycomb type pattern over the outer surface of the model?

Thanks

Edit: @MrZak Shrinkwrap fail:

Edit: Second shringkwrap attempt more successful. Is there a quick way to trim off the excess?

Edit: Think I got it sorted. Thanks @MrZak

You can try the Tissue addon (https://github.com/alessandro-zomparelli/tissue)

Download and install the Addon.

Create a the base mesh (in this case the part of the helmet).

Then create the mesh you will be using as to create the mesh (for purposes of the tissue addon this will be your "COMPONENT" mesh.

Select the Component mesh, then Shift-Select the Base mesh.

Then on the Tissue Addon select "Tessellate"

A new mesh will be created (you can name it whatever you want).


My Objects, Planes, Meshes aren't rendering correctly I started using blender this year in another computer and all worked nicely until I migrated to a new PC.
I started making a room for a new scene, then I noticed it doesn't render

Then I started looking on old work that used to render correctly, for example this sword:

As you can see, the object indeed does have an appearance in my render but does not show it's body and properties.
Things/tutorials I've tried:
1-Reset blender to it's factory default
2- https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/964/object-not-visible-in-render#:~:text=In%20object%20mode%20press%20W,objects%20visible%20in%20the%20render.&text=If%20there%20are%20objects%20that,This%20toggles%20camera%20visibility
3-https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/53632/render-result-is-completely-blank
Lastly
4-https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/67490/why-does-my-object-not-show-up
Nothing seems to solve my problem.

I've found my problem and solved it, at least for my specific graphics card (AMD radeon hd 7950) I had updated my drivers for the latest version (Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.11.2, which is optional) for some reason Blender has some problems with that version, so I decided to downgrade my version to Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.9.1 which solved every problem.
Now I can render in every Render Engine.


What are the differences between renderman and cycles? How can I learn renderman? I'm quite a newbie with Blender, learned little about a modeling and shading. I was wondering on the Internet the other day and I saw that Pixar's Renderman is available for Blender.

What are the differences between Renderman's rendering engine and Cycles?
(I'm talking about Renderman 21).

My next question is, what resources are available to learn shading and lighting for Renderman INSIDE blender?

I'm also looking for tutorials explaining Renderman 21's shaders.

I saw this thing about Pixar's new Surface Shader that was used for Finding Dory and other PIXAR movies.

If you have any extra information about Pixar's Renderman 21, please do not hesitate. I'm trying to learn the most recent and advanced workflow for shading and lighting and it seems to be like Renderman 21 is what I am looking far.

Whether they are free or paid courses, I don't mind. Just direct to the right path.

Is Renderman better than Cycles?

YES and NO, it handles caustics better, has more options for your lights (light linking), Has had options for years that Cycles is just starting to get. Now the reason I rarely use RM21 is a couple things. 1. Only can use CPU, and they dont have any plans of making it work with GPU (Major Downside). You need another pop up window called "IT" to see your renders. I actually like this because it is so easy to do many render passes with just a click of the button, however it is not the ideal set up to see your quick renders within Blender. Sometimes I just want to switch into render view in Blender to quickly check something. This is not so easy to do with "IT".

Are renderman's nodes easier and faster than cycles'?

NO, roughly the same. There are some exceptions though.

I saw this thing about Pixar's new Surface Shader that was used for Finding Dory and other PIXAR movies.

Blender practically has this now  with 2.79 called the Princepled Shader.

My question is, what is the best way to learn shading and lighting for Renderman INSIDE blender?

https://renderman.pixar.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=166

Also, these questions are better to ask here:

https://blenderartists.org/forum/


Change stroke drawing order (Arrange stroke)-Grease pencil Just curious, the default stroke draw order in greasepencil is bottom to top(i.e first stroke at the bottom,next stroke on top of it and so on ...).Can this order ebe reversed (i.e top to bottom)?
I know there is an "Arrange stroke" option which lets one change the draw order after drawing the stroke but an option to provide the above functionality would make drawing a whole lot faster.

Checked - Draw on Back option (underneath Continuous drawing)


Can't resize armature without it disappearing or worse I downloaded a 3d model of a character, but it's armature is way bigger then the mesh and it's even far above and behind the mesh. I've tried to move and resize the armature in editor mode, but anytime I try to do ir, the armature just dissapears or stops working. I'm really new with the program and I just can't figure out what to do, nor have I seen anyone else with the same problem... I will leave the link to download the model if anyone wants to help...

https://www.mediafire.com/file/49llyc9laijcl2y/Jesmon_X.zip/file

Import DAE with Import Units option enabled.

Thant's what I get when imported ... (not so far or behinde as you wrote). Scale of armature is 5, but objects are 1, that make a difference. All is rotated in Y axis, but better fix that after meshes are not parented to armature. Also I would recommend to Apply Rotation (Ctrl+A) > Rotation before parenting meshes back to an armature to avoid other issues.

To fix Scale:

Select Mesh objects and Clear Parent (Alt+P)
Select Armature and Clear Scale (Alt+S)

Then you can parent objects back to armature (select meshes, armature as last to be an active object and press Ctrl+P).

BTW: hand seems to be in a wrong position and meshes are not assigned to the armature


How can I change the size of the square of the camera which I see things through? I have changed the size of the the rectangular box of the camera - the box you can select on the 3D view - some time ago and I can't turn it back to the old size. Can you look at the pictures and help me, please?
Thank you so much!

The render resolution in the render panel defines the upper limits in the dimensions of all renders through the camera, final or viewport.

You can also set a Render Border, using CtrlB in Object Mode, to restrict the rendered area in all views, (further restricted by the render resolution, when looking through the camera). In the 3D view, it's delineated with a red dashed frame.

In Object Mode, hitting  CtrlB again allows you to resize the border, and AltCtrlB dismisses it.


Add modifier to selected and another to active object I am trying to set up an operator to use the BoolTool after I set a position and modifier on Selected object and a different one on the Active object. I basically need to move the selected object up in Z and add a solidify modifier at .3 thickness, and to the Active I need to add a solidify at .1 thickness and remain in original position.

I thought I understood how to get this to work, but all I get is both modifiers on the Active object. Any hint as to where to go from here?

class SolidfyDifference(bpy.types.Operator):
"""Solidify and Difference Mask"""
bl_idname = "object.solidfy_difference"
bl_label = "Add Solidy and Difference Bool"
bl_options = { 'REGISTER','UNDO' }

def execute(self, context):
    scene = context.scene

    sel = bpy.context.selected_objects
    act = bpy.context.active_object

    for obj in sel:
        if obj != act:
            bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='SOLIDIFY')
            bpy.context.object.modifiers["Solidify"].thickness = 0.1

    return {'FINISHED'}

I'd suggest not using modifier add operator and use modifiers.new(name, type) instead.  Avoids hassle of changing the active object and also if using the op to add a second modifier of the same type, would need to access it via obj.modifiers[-1] as it will be named "Solidify.001" or somesuch.

Result of Running Script on 2 default planes

import bpy
context = bpy.context

obj = context.active_object
# add a solidify modifier on active object
mod = obj.modifiers.new("Solidify", 'SOLIDIFY')
# set modifier properties
mod.thickness = 0.3
obj.location.z += 0.15
for o in context.selected_objects:
    if o == obj:
        continue
    # see if there is already a modifier named "SelectedSolidify" and use it
    mod = o.modifiers.get("SelectedSolidify")
    if mod is None:
        # otherwise add a modifier to selected object
        mod = o.modifiers.new("SelectedSolidify", 'SOLIDIFY')
    mod.thickness = 0.1
    o.location.z = 0.05
    # add a boolean mod
    boolmod = obj.modifiers.new("Bool", 'BOOLEAN')
    boolmod.object = o
    boolmod.solver = 'CARVE'
    boolmod.operation = 'DIFFERENCE'


resizing reference after giving specific dimensions I'm trying to model a room from reference images. I know it's exact sizes,
and can change it to that in the properties. The reference picture will not change with that of course, how do i resize and place the reference in the correct way?

How about

create a plane
assign it a texture with your ref image (some UV mapping/unwrapping required to match the entire image)
Size it and use it in the background in Ortho view
repeat for front/side views with different pictures!


How to create "masking effect" with which parts of object gradually show until it's fully visible? In After Effects I can use an alpha matte to make the parts of an object appear gradually until it's fully visible. How can I do that in Blender? Basically, I'd like to make some sort of intro like this.

https://youtu.be/Z4a89kUVDpc?t=11

Path Reveal - (See addendum below)

At first an array of planes was tried and used with the build modifier, but that just plain didn't work.

What did give us a similar result to the video and which would be modifiable to pretty much match the video, was this...

The path (so-called) is simply a large plane subdivided 31 times to give us 32 x 32 faces.
To avoid confusion the faces will be referred to as 'Slabs'.

The 'C' circle select was used to select the pathway on the plane by simply 'painting' over those faces in order to highlight a path. (albeit very chunky)

Down at the bottom left of the window the 'Select' menu was opened to choose "Inverse'.  This switched the selected faces off and the non-selected on.  Those faces once highlighted were then deleted to leave just the slab-path.

This is duplicated and moved to layer 10 (0) to give us an original to come back to should things get fouled up.

Another duplicate is sent to layer 2.  This will be converted to a wireframe.

Back in layer 1 and the solid slab, add a "Curve-->Nurbs Path" and keep it set to 2D so it doesn't get hilly.

In Edit mode, shape the path to approximately follow the center-line of the solid slab's shape.  This is going to be used as a 'dolly' track for our camera.

Set up the Nurb's path's parameters.  I've chosen 150 frames for this one.

Add an empty at the same Origin Point as the Nurb's path and give it a "Follow Path" constraint.
Select the Nurb's Path as it's "Target".  If not already there, position the Empty at the path's starting point.

Position the camera at an approximate location so it's looking from ahead and at the top end of the path.  Parent it to the Empty.  (child=camera)

The camera (not the empty) can be freely adjusted and keyframed to suit whatever viewpoint you need as it travels down.

What's required now it to separate those faces/slabs that are to be switched visible as the camera moves down the Nurb's path. i.e. have separate meshes which will each be different sized slabs.
They can range from one to several faces in size, the more random their appearance the better.

The idea is to have varying sized 'slabs' appearing at varying intervals as the camera moves down, but they must start at the top and follow the cam's travel south.

-===========-

Had we set up an array of planes and then rows of those, used the "Build" modifier, there would have been a random choice but they'd be appearing all over the place, not constrained to the camera's travel and viewpoint.  Had we not chosen 'random', their appearance would still not have achieved the desired result.

-==========-

Once separated, each slab is made to appear by keyframing their respective EYE icons in the Outliner.

NOTE -  All will need to be keyframed OFF at frame 1.

There were 180+  faces in all but only 32 slabs to switch on so the job didn't take long.

Once the appearance switching is done, we turn our attention to the wireframe.

This is setup in Layer 2.  The duplicated solid slab inherits the subdivisions.  A "Wireframe" modifier is used on this to turn the edges of it's faces into solid mesh and at the same time get rid of the solid face surfaces.

Adjust the modifier's "Thickness" as required and "APPLY" the modifier.

All that's left to do is to reveal the wireframe ahead of the slabs as they come into view.  A mask was used for that in this example.  It was shapekeyed to shrink and deform (morph) as the camera moves down.

Over the final frames the wireframe's "opacity" in the Material slot was keyframed to fade away.

-================-

The wireframe's Mask -

Cycles is not used here and OpenGL rendering was used for the output video.

This allowed OpenGL masking.  The mask is just a large 2D plane located a little above  the slabs and wireframe. (z axis)
It's set up with a material slot Opacity set to 0.008, no Specular whatever to avoid ghosting and it's diffuse slider set down to about half brightness for the same reason.
NOTE - To view the masking effect, deselect everything (press A) and be in the "Material" viewing mode.

For details on this form of masking see here -

How to put a mask into 3d space

Blend file is attached -

-=================-

Addendum 22nd March 2019 - & 23/3/2019 (added 2nd Blend file)

This is an alternate method.  Simply shapekey or slide layer 1's mask down to progressively reveal the solid tiles. (no need to switch them on individually)

 (Replaced faulty gif here

Layer 2's mask shapekeys would simply have to see to it that it's own mask reveals the wireframe ahead of Layer 1's.

Each layer would be rendered separately.  Layer 2 as an AVI.  Layer 1 as an Alpha layered set of PNG files in another folder.

The VSE would be used to mix both sequences to get the final result.

A sparkly effect using particles could be added to the trailing edge of layer 1's mask such as here - How To Animate A Superhero Zap Into His Super Suit In Blender


Making a procedural mask for a specific parts of a mesh My question is similar to this: How to make a procedural hair strand texture?!
I textured some body parts of my model using images (.jpgs) as masks. Now I want all of them to be exchanged to procedural ones.
For example I succeed to make a procedural mask for an eye (as pictured below).

Now I wonder how to do the same trick on my jaw mesh. I want a mask to appear only on the teeth tips (the dark parts of the teeth pictured below), where transparent material would be applied. Is it possible, assuming that this is one solid mesh without any loose parts?

The Pointiness feature may be able to do what you are looking for.  You can bring the results into visual range by using a Color Ramp node.


How to create stacked rotation with bones? (similar to array mod with object offset) I'm trying to achieve this kind of stacked rotation that you would get when using an array modifier on an object and having the offset controlled by another object.
This is for a spine of a character. I want to be able to rotate the hip (torso) bone and have every children bone rotate increasingly more compared to hip bone.
Another way to look at it would be that every children bone would have the same rotation value in relation to children's respective parent. But because every parent (except the first one) is also a child, the rotations would stack.
Here is a video demostrationg the effect achieved using array mod and obj offset
https://youtu.be/1Dm_htzlVrM

Using "child of" constraint:

Add the constraint to each of the bones, using "set inverse", relatively to its parent:

Tune the influence to be progressively decreased: 100% for the first then 75, 50 and 25 (as 4 bones in my example).
Notes:
-will work under some limits, because if too much rotation the last bones will turn over the constraint limits.
-scales are progressive too (like array modifier)


Why is some code being skipped in the BGE? This is my code:

def textanim():
    print("GOGO")
    print("end")
    scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
    print("end")
    scoreAnim = scene.objectsInactive["scoreAnim"]
    print("endNach anim")
    scoreSpawn = scene.objects["TextSpawn"]
    print(scoreAnim)
    print("end")
    c = scene.objects["Cube"]
    newText = scene.addObject(scoreAnim,scoreSpawn)
    newText["anim"] = True
    print("all lines were ececutet (hopefully)")

This is my result:

As you can see, not all the lines are executed, but there aren't errors either.
As Chebhou said the problem is the line where i try to load the FontObject:
scoreAnim = scene.objectsInactive["scoreAnim"]
I copied this at the beginning of another function and than this function isn't executed anymore.
So there is any problem with loading Font objects. Although I have it on an Inactive layer

This function should duplicate a score text object. The duplicated object than should then play an animation and slide to a corner. The score is saved.

Here you can download the .blend
2D car Game

After some time i now found the solution.
The problem was that this code was executed in a Try execept function. thats why i got no error (my bad). But the actual problem was that the object i was looking for wasn't in the list. this is caused beacause the object was parented to an object on an active layer but the object itself was on an inactive layer. I searched in both lists (scene.objectsInactive and scene.objects) but the object wasn't in any of them.

fazit: you shouldn't parent objects on different layer when one of those layer is Inactive.


Skeleton changes size in different modes I made a skeleton from scratch, and when I switched from edit mode to object mode I noticed that the skeleton appeared much smaller. Does anyone know what might be causing this, and how I can have the skeleton stay the same in all modes?

All you have to do is go into pose mode and select each bone individually(you might be able to select all but I didn't try) and press "Ctrl+A" and apply location, rotation, and scale.


How to model those stylized trunks (See image) Currently trying to do some stylized trees; i am struggling to do those trunks.
Tried some subdivision surface but I can't make the corners nice at 90°
I bet there's a nicer way to do it; maybe with curves or so ? But i would like to keep the subdivision surface (and maybe make the loop smaller and smaller toward the ends of branch)
Any Drupal Guru out there to help me out ?
Thanks !

I think the best way to achieve trees with branches is to make use of the Skin Modifier.
Begin by enabling a couple of add-ons ("Extra Objects"), if they're not already enabled.

This will give you the ability to add a single vert from the mesh menu.

Add a vertex, and give it a Skin Modifier.

You can extrude points by selecting them and then Ctrl + Right Click somewhere else (where you want to extrude it to). You can then scale the individual points using Ctrl + A.

You can also reselect individual points and extrude them elsewhere to make multiple "branches"

Once you have the tree shape you like, you can add a Subdivision Surface Modifier to make it smooth and round.

The best thing about this method, I find, is that it makes proper "knuckles" where the different branches connect to each other.


IK bone does not perfectly follows the target I have no idea why it behaves like that. even when i'm doing animation render, the IK is still miscalculated a lot.

Here's the render result

notice that the hand is slightly moving down from the grip, even though i parent the IK target bone to the front grip.
the target bone follows the grip perfectly, but the IK bone is just keep glicthed up and down make it seems disconnected from the target.

Open the Blender debug console and make sure Blender is not detecting a cyclical dependency chain in your armature.  IK constraints are the first to freak out when these are present in your model.


How to place annotation stroke on the surface of the object in Blender 2.8? From what I can tell, the annotation stroke is always placed at the cursor position. I'd like to place it on the faces of the object. Is there a way to do it?

I know I could easily achieve this with Grease Pencil in Draw mode using Stroke Placement option, but I need annotation because the plugin I'm using specifically requires it (Tesselator 1.2, option "Annotation Influence"). I tried it and it works with annotation and does not work with Grease Pencil. But I'm not able to place precise annotation strokes on the surface of the object.

https://blendermarket.com/products/tesselator

Or maybe there is a way to convert grease pencil into annotation stroke?

I emailed the author of the addon and he sent me a screenshot where this option is located in the newest 2.80 beta build:


Delete meshes - context error I try to delete all meshes I made by putting together about all I could find from this question , using this code:

def delete_things(spec_type):
        oldMode = bpy.context.mode
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
        bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
        for o in bpy.data.objects:
            if o.type == spec_type:
                o.select = True
            else:
                o.select = False
        bpy.ops.object.delete()
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode=oldMode)
        bpy.ops.wm.save_as_mainfile(filepath=bpy.data.filepath)
        bpy.ops.wm.open_mainfile(filepath=bpy.data.filepath)

def delete_all_mesh():
    delete_things('MESH')

delete_all_mesh()

I thought I made sure to set the right mode, still I get the error " bpy.ops.object.mode_set.poll() failed, context is incorrect"...

The error you are receiving is due to the fact your trying to change the object mode when no objects exist, because you've deleted them all.


python -- apply/run script for every array instance individually I have the following blender scene setup:

(notice the python script, will be mentioned soon in question)

As you can see, there are many boards being duplicated to form a wall.

The thing is: in real life, the middle support board is usually different for each board, like this:

So basically, I want to randomly set the Z position within the range of the top beam and bottom beam (of the boards in my scene) so that the middle support-beam is randomly positioned, reapplied for each array instance. So I went ahead and made a python script that randomly sets the beam'ss Z position from the top beam to bottom beam, and currently whenever I hit "Run Script", it re-randomly sets the position of the beam, exactly how I wanted.

The problem:
As you can see, all of the array instances are the same, but I want it to randomly move the beam (a.k.a., somehow re-apply the script) for every array instance, but I have absolutely no idea how to do this.

Anyone?

Distribute copies.
Further to @moonboots answer can copy and distribute the object. Each copy shares the one mesh.
import bpy
from mathutils import Vector
from random import uniform

def array(context, count, rel_offset=Vector(), rnd_var_range=(0, 0), rnd_var_dir=Vector()):
    scene = context.scene
    for ob in context.selected_objects:
        mw = ob.matrix_world
        R = mw.to_quaternion().to_matrix()
        offset =  R * rel_offset.dot(ob.dimensions) * rel_offset.normalized()
        copies = count - 1

        for i in range(copies):
            copy = ob.copy()
            t = copy.matrix_world.translation
            t  += (i + 1) * offset
            copy.delta_location = uniform(*rnd_var_range) * rnd_var_dir
            copy.select = True
            scene.objects.link(copy)

# test call

context = bpy.context

array(context,
    count = 5,
    rel_offset = Vector((1.1 , 0, 0)),
    rnd_var_dir = Vector((0, 1, 0)),
    rnd_var_range = (-1, 1))

array(context,
    count = 5,
    rel_offset = Vector((0, 0, 1.1)),
    rnd_var_dir = Vector((0, 1, 0)),
    rnd_var_range = (-1, 1))

Result of running script with Suzanne selected. The variation of both arrays in test call are in local Y direction.
The same script updated to Blender 2.8 API
import bpy
from mathutils import Vector
from random import uniform

def array(context, count, rel_offset=Vector(), rnd_var_range=(0, 0), rnd_var_dir=Vector()):
    scene = context.scene
    for ob in context.selected_objects:
        mw = ob.matrix_world
        R = mw.to_quaternion().to_matrix()
        offset =  R @ (rel_offset.dot(ob.dimensions) * rel_offset.normalized())
        copies = count - 1

        for i in range(copies):
            copy = ob.copy()
            t = copy.matrix_world.translation
            t  += (i + 1) * offset
            copy.delta_location = uniform(*rnd_var_range) * rnd_var_dir
            context.collection.objects.link(copy)
            copy.select_set(state=True)
            context.view_layer.objects.active = copy

# test call

context = bpy.context

array(context,
    count = 5,
    rel_offset = Vector((1.1 , 0, 0)),
    rnd_var_dir = Vector((0, 1, 0)),
    rnd_var_range = (-1, 1))

array(context,
    count = 5,
    rel_offset = Vector((0, 0, 1.1)),
    rnd_var_dir = Vector((0, 1, 0)),
    rnd_var_range = (-1, 1))

Main changes are:

@ operator is now used for matrix/vector component-wise multiplication
selection of an object in context is now done with copy.select_set(state=True)
The link must now be done via collections and not view_layer


Armature not bending with connected bones In pose mode, I try to rotate a bone, but instead it rotates all the bones that are connected to it.

How can I fix this?

Unfortunately, the bones were upside down, so they were not moving correctly. When bones are upside down, the only thing that will rotate correctly are the ones on the top because if done correctly, the ones on top move all the bones that are connected to it.


Are render passes always rendered? It would seem that the answer at least partially no, as rendering a simple cube scene with no passes enabled takes 3 seconds, while with all passes enabled takes 9 seconds.

I always imagined that blender rendered the image and while doing so gathered all the information needed for the various passes, then only saved the passes enabled in Renderlayers > Passes.

Is this the case? If not, what does blender actually do?

The contents of some render passes is always computed as part of rendering the combined pass. It takes little extra time to allocate the pass and store that value, however for a simple render and many passes this overhead will add up too.

For others (e.g. the Motion Vector pass) it would not normally be computed, so it will take up more time.


How to replace mesh data in linked object by another object's linked data? I have two sets of linked objects in the scene and want to "move" some objects from one set to the other without losing the object's potition, orientation and scale.

I other words, I want to replace just the linked mesh data in an object of the second set of linked objects, by the mesh data in one object from the first set of linked objects.

The image below depicts what I'm trying to do.

Select the object whose mesh you want to replace, then go to the "Object Data" tab in the properties panel (the one with the triangle standing on one of its vertices). The topmost dropdown menu lets you select the mesh linked to your object. Just select MeshData1 here.

The little number on the right also tells you how many users your mesh has (to how many objects it is linked).


Can a volume be set to let through index pass values? I am working on a scene with a tube, inside the tube is a smoke animation. The tube is cut open on one side so that you can see what is happening inside. The smoke is of course set to collide with an (invisible) closed tube.
The lower part of the tube is animated. Some objects that are part of the bottom of the tube are emitting light and the compositor is used to make them glow. This is done using the material pass index.

Unfortunately, the smoke domain does overlap sometimes with the glowing objects which blocks the material pass index. The objects themselves can be seen in the final render, but the compositor ignores them. Since the bottom is animated and is a smoke collider, the domain itself has to be big enough to include the lowest possible position of the bottom.
The scene actually works in most cases, since the adaptive domain is above the glowing parts most of the time. Only a few frames the domain hides the glow - without any visible smoke being there.

Is there a way to set the domain to not emit its own material pass index, so that the material pass index of the glowing objects is recognized and used by the compositor?

The most not intrusive method (that will allow You achieve the effect without many changes) would be to duplicate the object, that material pass You're using, put it to another layer, create Render layer for it (only that layer would be rendered, (if it's in Cycles also with other layers selected as Excluded) Check only Material Pass for this layer and uncheck all others, and Use the material index rendered this way in the compositor.


Kitchen sink modelling I am planning of a renovation, specifically my kitchen and I thought in doing it in Blender and UE4 since that would be a great opportunity to learn the programs as well.

I have managed to model the house (walls, windows, cabinets etc) and now I am in the process of modelling the appliances and stuff. I managed to do a fridge and now I am trying to model the kitchen sink in the photo:

I began with a simple plane and I managed to do the two bowls of the sink, but soon I ran into a problem because I noticed that this sink has three layers/planes or at least that's what I think.

So my question is this: Should I try and create more loop cuts in the specific plane and try to extrude/move/delete etc the edges or vertices? Or should I create the three layers separately in planes and join them together afterwards?

If I create those three planes, how could I "bend" the edges of my plane so I could get the shape of e.g. the second plane?

Is there perhaps an easier approach in this? Or a resource (e.g. article or tutorial) explaining something similar?

Please don't get me wrong I merely ask for a suggestion, not for someone to write a tutorial! :)

Thank you in advance and please excuse my English, it's not my native language!

First use the picture as a background, draw all the lines, use shift ctrl B on vertices to create round corners, then join the vertices to fill the whole shape, then you can begin to extrude down. Afterwards, create some bevel to sharp the edges before you put a Subsurf.


Is there any software that I can do real time motion capture in Blender with? I just finished an animation, and it took me a really long time. I was thinking of ways to reduce the time, and motion capture crossed my mind. I was wondering if anyone knows of any real-time motion capture software that works with Blender.

There are trials you can play with here https://ni-mate.com/ and here http://ipisoft.com/. Extra functionality, you might have to pay for...


How do I freeze a frame of a Mantaflow Smoke sim? I have a 75 frame smoke sim (Mantaflow- made in 2.82 release version) , with noise baked on it- all good so far.
Now- how do I freeze, say frame 75 and have the same smoke, static, for as long as I want?
Basically I want to use the resulting smoke trail, as simulated on frame 75, but without any animation and I want it to stay/last as long as I want/need.
I’ve tried deleting all the cache files from whatever.0001 to whatever.0074 and renaming all the left over frame 75 files to whatever.0001 (like you could do to fool the ‘old’ smoke sim) and I don’t get terribly much of anything happening smoke wise… any ideas?

I've managed to do it 'work around' style, but my god it's an UGLY way to do it!
Basically I copied all the different cache files for the last frame (75 in my case), created another set of cache folders, then pasted 400 copies of the same file and 'bulk renamed' them (fantastic free Windows app!!!) so Iended up with 400 copies of each 'frame 75' file numbered sequentially from 0001-0400.
So that's 400 copies of config_0075 renamed to; config_0001 - config_0400 files in the 'config' folder.
4800 density_0001 to density_0400, densityIn_0001-densityIn_0400 etc.etc. in the 'data' folder.
and 1200 files similarly in the 'noise' folder.
And it works!!! But it's a huge ball ache to do (and 30Gb of disk for a relatively simple sim), so if anyone knows a more elegant way to do it, I really am all-ears!

Cheers!
Mark


Render is all gray, tried multiple things I'm trying to render an animation I made using blender models and textures, but all I get is a grey screen on the Rendered viewport and output.

On the left there's a Rendered Camera view, and on the right my objects in the Solid Viewport

I tried doing some researching to see what I was doing wrong, but unfortunately I couldn't find anything. Here's what I've tried:

See if something is up with lighting and camera, and apparently it's not;
Disabling "Sequencer" from Render > Post Processing;
Switch from Blender Render to Cycles Render, but it didn't worked either and the output it's the same;
Copy one of the objects from the original scene and place it on a new Blender file, containing just the starting cube. When I rendered through Blender Render, I could only see the cube. However, when rendering through Cycles, it rendered both objects with their following materials.

Here's the experiment on a new Blender file, and the Rendered view shows both objects

Do you guys have any suggestions of what my problem might be?

EDIT: addded .blend file below.

You're getting a grey screen, because all your objects are set to be visible but not render.

If you check the outliner, you'll see that your "Skybox" object, "Bola" object as well as the spheres parented to the armatures are all set to not render (the camera icon is greyed out).

For each item that should be rendering, click the camera icon beside each one in the outliner.


How to update root translation using python script in bge? I am trying to change root translation of armature (loaded by using bvh) using python script in bge but not able to update values.
I tried following

bpy.context.scene.frame_set(3)
bpy.data.objects['walk_turn_180'].pose.bones[0].location = [0, -10, 0]

Its not working for me. When I change frame the values are reset to original values.

Another try..

scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
source = scene.objects
main_arm = source.get('walk_turn_180')
bpy.context.scene.frame_set(3)
main_arm.channels[0].location = [0, -10, 0 ]
main_arm.update()

but still no luck.

Is there any best way to do it or am I doing something wrong?
Also, instead of bpy.context.scene.frame_set(3) is there any method to change keframe using bge?

bpy is the Blender API. This means you change the object within the Blender scene not the running BGE scene. Do not use it!

The API for the BGE is bge. The armature gives you access to the (bge-) channels too.


Using header window to explore python I'm trying to (re)learn python scripting with Blender for a project I'm working on. It's made leaps and bounds in progress since I used it last, especially with the display of API commands in the pull down window.

Unfortunately, the best documentation I can find on it is here. From playing around with the text, it seems to have the ability to select lines (right click), and to copy them (CtrlC), and nothing else.

Now, I understand it isn't meant to do much, but are there any other shortcuts or tricks for using it? Particularly copying text, selecting lines one at a time gets old pretty quick.

As you said you have the right click mouse to select a line, you can select a block of line with B then click and drag for select or middle mouse click and drag for un-select. And you can select and un-select all the line with A.

You can delete all selected lines by pressing X.

As far as I know, the only way to copy a line is CtrlC.

My tip for selecting only one line is, if you have other lines selected, do A for un-select all and then copy your line.

Last thing, for navigating you can use the middle mouse wheel but you can also use the middle mouse wheel click then click and drag.


How to delete faces with only one edge connected to mesh? I think this question must have been asked a thousand times before, but after several attempts to find a solution i am sorry to ask it again:
I would like to "delete faces with only one edge connected to another face".
Remaining edges and vertices not connected to another face should also be removed.
I can probably rephrase the task to "delete vertices with only two edges connected". I guess that is more or less the same.
Example:

I assume there is a simple sequence of commands to achieve that, but I am simply too blind to find it.
I am aware that after a first iteration in the example above, deleting the face on the right side will result in another face that has only one connected edge. This can be covered in a next iteration, no worries.

Bmesh script.

There may be a way via one of the selection items in the UI, however will propose a script solution
Selecting
Run over all faces in the edit mesh, and if all face edges, or all but one face edge are boundary select the face.
import bpy
import bmesh
from bpy import context

ob = context.edit_object
me = ob.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
for f in bm.faces:
    f.select_set(len([e for e in f.edges if e.is_boundary]) >= len(f.edges) - 1)
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)

Deleting
Similarly, while there are faces, find the "tabs", and if any remove their boundary edges, repeat until can find no more, or all faces removed.
import bpy
import bmesh
from bpy import context

ob = context.edit_object
me = ob.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
while bm.faces:
    faces = [f for f in bm.faces if (len([e for e in f.edges if e.is_boundary]) >= len(f.edges) - 1)]
    if not faces:
        break

    edges = list(set(e for f in faces for e in f.edges if e.is_boundary))
    bmesh.ops.delete(
            bm,
            geom=edges,
            context='EDGES',
            )
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)


Animation Nodes : How to add/replace "Get list element" output into a new collection? Trying to build a basic procedural Cube shaped rooms where

One collection will have many pre-made wall presets (wall with window,wall with door etc)

AN will take each wall ,make 4 copies with 90 degree offset  and store them in a new collection
AN nodes will now pick random elements from each collection
and build a room with 4 walls picked randomly

What i have accomplished:

I have a basic square wall with object origin at world center

Then i instance this wall 4 times with offset of 90 degrees to get 4 walls

Now the problem starts

I use "Get list element" with random int input to get random walls
Random int seed is controlled by frames
when i plug this random output into another collection it appends the new wall instead of overwriting

What i want

As i hit play i want to see random walls flickering in and out

What i get

I see the collection getting filled in random order in the first 4 frames

My end goal is to export the rooms as FBX to use in other applications

You need to use a loop.

What you are doing is calling the same method x number of times, x being the number of frames. But in your method, although you do instantiate 4 objects you are only affecting your geometry to one of them. As far as I know the objects created in the object instancer node are put in a pool to be reused when needed, they are not destroyed and recreated every time. That would make sense in order to increase performance.

To the point.

Create a "Loop" with Add > Subprograms > Loop
Add a "Parameter" of type "Object List"
Create an invoke node on this loop with Add > Subprograms > "My Loop" (you can rename it)
Set the iterations to 4
Add a "Collection info" node, set it to your wall blueprints collections and plug the "objects" into your loop invoke input "Object List" input (you can rename it).
Use a "Get Random List Element" Node and set it to "Single", plug the frame info added to the index into the seed, that way every wall will be randomised, and every frame the setup will change. Add a big number to the frame so that the two seeds are independant.
Add an object instancer and set it to mesh, instances to 4.
Add a new parameter of type "Object List", rename it "Mesh objects". Plug the instancer into the input of the invoke node.
In the loop, Plug the wall blueprints into the "Get Random List Element" node.
Add a "Get List Element" node and plug the mesh objects into it, and the index of the loop into its index.
Add a "Mesh Object Output" node, plug both "Element" outputs into it (the random one into the mesh input). Ths swill automatically create a "Mesh object output" node, you can check "Use modifiers" if your walls have some. Click the button on the right of the "Mesh" line
Now to translate the meshes to the origin : Get the opposite of the blueprint position, and translate the mesh using a compose matrix.
Finally plug the index into a math node to multiply by 90, into a combine euler set to degrees and into an "Object Transforms Output" set to rotate around Z.

The final node tree:

Bonus :

If you want to get ALL possible combinations. We have to use a little script and mathematics.

Go to the scripting workspace, add a script, name it as you wish. Write this :

import bpy
import itertools
combinations = [range(len(blueprints.objects))]*4
linear_combinations = []
for combination in itertools.product(*combinations):
    linear_combinations.extend(combination)

The result will be a very long list of integers, corresponding to each different possible combination. For 4 wall and 4 differents walls, I got 4*4*4*4*4 = 1024 different combinations. The integer being the index of the child object in the collection. for example the first few are :

We need to rework slightly our node tree.
I won't go into detail in the loop so you can just follow the screenshot :

Add a "Script" node. Select your newly created script and set the input and output names exactly like in the code else it won't work. Place an invoke node to your script, and plug it like so :

Result :

Beware, it kind of crashed when I tried to add another wall blueprint element.


Painting in 3D window shows up on the other side of my model from where I paint I've been having trouble getting the texture painting to work right.

My problem is when I paint directly on my model in the 3D view the paint stroke goes to the back of where I painted, like if I paint of his chest it shows up on his back, if I paint on his face it shows up on the back of his head.

All my painting down within the UV window shows up in the correct places, though.

I haven't been able to figure out what is causing this problem.  I'm wondering if I have a setting that is off that I don't know about or if something is off with my model. I've tried exporting my model and making new scenes with the export and each one has had a problem with painting.

It's a Normals issue, in 2.8, in Edit mode, select all and shiftN to recalculate the normals


Grainy rendering in Cycles even with Render Samples at a high number Why do I have a Grainy rendering in Cycles even with Render Samples at 2000?

To sum up what everyone said, you are only looking in the viewport. The viewport has the 32 samples, but the render has 20000.

To see the render, hit the render button, but be warned that 20000 is a TON of samples (if you need that many samples, you're doing something wrong). A few hundred will do just fine.


translate like sketchup move In sketchup you can move an object based on two points. This makes it very easy to align a vertex in one object to vertex in another object. Here is an example:

I want to know how to do this in Blender. It seems that Translate can't align vertexs

Snap to active

While in Edit mode, change the snap to Vertices and select Active option. As stated by the Blender referece manual's page the snap target options:

  determine what part of the selection snaps to the target objects.

In particular the Active option:

  move the active element (vertex in Edit mode, object in Object mode) to the target.

Select the geometry to move and set the wanted vertex as active (should become white instead of orange).

Now you can use the active selection as pivot point to snap the selected geometry around.

Another method could be to move the origin of the object to a specific 3D cursor location and use it as your pivot point. In object mode, Active option is infact referring to the origin of the active (bright orange) object of the selection (dark orange)

Both methods above are quite fast, but they both have the disadvantage of messing up your initial object origin's location.

If you are interested in keeping the orign in it's relative coordinates from the geometry, I would suggest to use a third "dummy" object that would be your temporary pivot and delete it when the trasformation is over. You can use for example the Hook to new object command to quickly create an empty upon the selected geometry.


"Use self" doesn't work? I'm currently working with drivers in Blender 2.81 and want to use self but it doesn't work.

For example drive the rotation by the location, I'm adding a driver to the rotation, check the Use Self box and write self.location.x

Blender return the message: ERROR Invalid Python expression.

Have I missed something, is it a bug?

edit:

I'm working on 2.9. Problem is still here.
Allowing auto run python scripts fixed it.


UV painting within Blender? I basically want to create this in Blender

But I have some trouble creating the textures for it. I have created an UV map for it which looks like this.

Now I just want to paint on the UV map. But I am not sure how I would paint those textures. I need some some masking tools, for example I only want to paint on a specific face and not on the whole texture.

I also need some tools like the fill tool and the ability to draw lines because as you can see it is not hand drawn.

Can I do this in Blender itself or do I need to use an 3rd party tools like Photoshop/GIMP?

I would suggest a 2 step process.

In edit mode select all the faces you want of one color. Then in texture pain mode. click the button in between the layers and the shading mode buttons. Its tool tip says Face selection masking for painting That will limit the area allowed to be painted, to only what is selected.

Then after you have the base colors down. Open the newly painted image in gimp/photoshop and paint in all your shading and details.


how can I fix this generated coordinated texture wrap? I just want to use a simple brick texture as generated and wrapped a mesh object seamlessly, however it looks like below, I don't want to use UV map as I will be working with all different types of meshes, how can I fix this please? thanks

blend file is http://www.pasteall.org/blend/42548

ok... this is not simple or there is something I really ignore about brick texture.

So here is some nodes which aim to determine which direction (X, Y, Z) has the most influence on a face.

After that, the idea is to fake the brick texture giving it a false Z direction depending on the axis which has the most influence on the face.

Here are the full nodes:

The top part is a comparison based on the dot product of the face normals respectively with (1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0) and (0, 0, 1) vectors.
Then it tests which is the bigger value (X, Y or Z).

The bottom part, recombine X, Y, and Z into "fake Z direction" and this fake Z direction is driven by the mix RGB (applied as vectors) with a factor determined by the calculation above.

Here is the blend file :

(probably, I will be ridiculous when someone will answer "hey ! there is this simple option here ! ...)

edit : for the smooth shading meshes, replace the "normal" from texture coordinate, with "true normal" from geometry, like this :

The result is better :


Smooth out sharp edges in GE? I have some texts, objects, and other items that give a bad effect when you look at them from a long-ranged distance. They look sharp all over the edges. I notice other games and projects have something in the options menu where you can "smooth out sharp edges." This makes the sharp edges more smooth and appealing to the eye rather than sharp and 'ugly.' How can I smooth out sharp edges in the GE; also, if you can, would it work with a property (boolean) where, when set to true, the edges are smooth, but edges are sharp when false (like usual)? Thanks!

Yes.

Turn up the number of AA samples in Properties > Render settings:

Note that this may affect performance. Also note that this setting only seems to take effect in the standalone player. Otherwise the multisample setting in the user preferences is used.


Point density doesn't render I am trying to make a shockwave effect in blender, but when I add a cube surrounding the particle system, and set up the material nodes as shown in the image, the particles still don't show.

Here is the .blend file:

Firstly, you've set the point density to use the defining object's vertices rather than a particle system. Click Particle System and select the particle system you want to use.

Secondly, make sure the emitter itself isn't rendered, by unchecking Emitter in the Render panel in the particle system.


Part of Blender UI Windows disappears l have been creating a scene for sometime now. All of a sudden, the part of blender that has the File, Render, Window ,Help  you know, the part of the blender interface that allows you to switch between blender render and cycles and stuff..
It just vanished and was replaced by a programming window. Now, all I see are codes instead....
Any help?

On the far right of the part of the screen you circled you will see a little plus sign. Click that and you will restore your view.

Somehow you pulled down the menu to hide it. The plus sign in the interface lets you know you have some of the interface in that view hidden.


Convert Materials from Cycles to Blender Internal Render I want to use Freestyle for a scene with lots of different Cycles Materials, is there an easy way to change them all at once to Blender Internal?

It would be nice if the materials are somehow related, but thats not that important. More important is, that if one material is used for two objects, afterwards the relation stays the same, having the material assigned to the objects as before and not to others (therefor just assigning one new bi material to all objects wouldnt work).

I know that switching the renderer to bi and unchecking "Use Nodes" in the material tab makes roughly what I want, but doing that manualy for every material one by one takes lots of time.

Is there a command or script that I can use?

Try running this in the text editor:

import bpy

for mat in bpy.data.materials:
    mat.use_nodes = False

It will disable use nodes for every material.


How can I make a radial noise gradient? I'm trying to create a bump map for an anisotropic metal cylinder. An answer on this post shows exactly what I'm trying to accomplish:

However, when I try recreate it, this is my result (I'm using a vector math node--which looks different, but I don't know of any other nodes that have "normalize"):

Can anyone help me figure this out? Cheers!
UPDATE: Thanks for the help! I combined the two answers, added a little flair, and got this:

P.S. For anyone trying to recreate this later: The bump distance is set to 0.0003

If you just need to create this random circular output, you can actually just plug the gradient node's color output into a noise texture.
Note: Geometry -> Position is based on actual position in the scene, so that may not be what you want to use.  I'm using object coordinates here.

You can control where the effect terminates by using a mapping node.  By default gradient texture generates a 1m radius sphere.  The scale relationship is inversely proportional, so to extend it over an entire axis, you can set that axis to 0.

Increase the scale of the noise texture for finer rings.


Reset text field to default when starting Blender Is there a way of reseting a text field every time Blender is initiated, saved or before closing? I want to create a password field for an Addon and I don't want it's value to be saved alongside the blend file.
I have looked for a while but I haven't seen anyone asking this particular subject.
A little bit of code:
row.prop(scene.testing, "password")

Password being a String Property created like this:
password: StringProperty(
        name="Password",
        description="Password",
        default="",
        subtype="PASSWORD")

If it could be possible to reset to the default value which is "", that would be perfect, but I don't seem to find anything.
Thanks!

Use the window manager.
Related How to declare global variables for use in an addon that aren't stored in the blend file
For a session variable suggest using the window manager. Will always be default when new blender is openened. No window manager property is saved directly.
bpy.types.WindowMangager.password =  StringProperty(
        name="Password",
        description="Password",
        default="",
        subtype="PASSWORD")

SKIP_SAVE
Also look at using the skip save option of a property.
Force a Blender operator to always start with default values
Onload handler.
How to set blender default properties in addons?