Snapping one orientation to another? I want to be able to move a face, edge or vertex along an orientation and snap it to the intersecting point of another orientation. Is this possible in blender currently?

I have two ideas.

first one summarized in this image, using local transformations and face snap. moving using 3d cursor transformation or moving first the center point to edge.

the second is use some script like this:

import bpy

from mathutils import Vector, geometry
from math import sqrt

print("#"*20)

#"object names"
n1 ="Plane"
n2 = "a" #this is the object to move

#data object 1
object = bpy.data.objects[n1]
object.select = True

bpy.context.scene.objects.active = object

v11,v12,v13, v14 = [(object.matrix_world*v.co) for v in object.data.vertices]

ob1_normal = geometry.normal(v11,v12,v13)

print(v11,v12,v13,ob1_normal)

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

#data object 2

object = bpy.data.objects[n2]
object.select = True

bpy.context.scene.objects.active = object

v21,v22,v23, v24 = [(object.matrix_world*v.co) for v in object.data.vertices]

ob2_normal = geometry.normal(v21,v22,v23)

#print(v21,v22,v23,ob2_normal)

##############################intersection point

int = geometry.intersect_plane_plane(v11, ob1_normal, v22, ob2_normal)
#bpy.context.scene.cursor_location = int[0]

#print("new",int)
distance = (v22 - int[0]).length  #distance vertice and intersection point
#print("distance ", distance)

### translate the object

bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=(distance, 0, 0), constraint_axis=(True, False, False), constraint_orientation='LOCAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, release_confirm=True, use_accurate=False)


Fire showing in viewport, not in render I have a great looking fire that shows up well in the viewport; however rendering results in just the smoke being rendered. I have absolutely no idea why.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

EDIT: Screenshots, sorry they are faded, I have already cached the sim. XD

Slightly adjusted nodes to render fire:

You need to add the bottom four nodes. They utilize the Attribute node's flame setting to detect fire. The ColorRamp node determines the color. The top Multiply node determines the smoke's thickness. The bottom Multiply node determines the fire's thickness.

Result produced by these settings (a lightsaber on fire) ( :) ):

This is your .blend file with the above nodes. I would include a screenshot of your final render instead of my stuff, but I do not have the smoke cache.


How to mark sharp by angle? I try to mark sharp, but I found the only way is to select it one by one and mark in edge menu, is there a way to do it by angle just like auto smooth or edge split?
and then I want to turn sharp into seam , how to do it??

You can do this easily using the Select Sharp Edges function.

Use Select > Select Sharp Edges and adjust the angle.
Now you can mark all selected edges as sharp

To turn all sharp eges into UV seams.

Select one sharp edge
Use Select > Similar > Sharpness and mark the edges as seams


Why is my FK-rig behaving weird when animating? My new FK-rig is behaving weird when animated.

It's primarily the arms that behave weirdly. This is the starting pose:

And this is the end pose:

So far so good, but the animation between the poses moves weirdly:

Why is it doing this, and how can I fix it?
I've only keyframed and have a Bézier Interpolation. The desired movement is a straight line, from pose to pose.

It seems to only apply for the left arm. The right arm seems to be working fine.

It is playing the animation that you created. I would guess that you expected it to interpret the movement you recorded a little differently though.

It would appear you want the arm to raise and then rotate a little to wave the hand. the problem is you keyframed the rotation with the arm pointing downwards, then you moved it up and rotated it and keyframed, blender then gradually rotates from the lower position to the upper position, the "waving" rotation is then merged into the lifting the arm movement.

To fix this you need more keyframes. You want a keyframe of the arm pointing down, then a keyframe of the arm pointing up, then add keyframes for the rotations to make the wave.

If you want the arm to start rotating as it is raised then you will need a few more keyframes to define the arm raising so that it is in the right position as it raises.

Below is the f-curves for your animation. The red curve is the x-rotation for the arm going down and raising up. The green curve is for the y-rotation and the blue is the z-rotation intended for the arm rotating to give a wave, you can see that the y and z curve begin rotating as the arm raises upwards. You only want the y and z to start rotating around the time the x rotation is in it's highest position.


How to create a refraction plane in the BGE? I need a refraction plane.
What refraction script should I use to create many planes?

Imagine what every plate is window made with similar to RenderToTexture script. For ex.: I want to create house and add 3 windows made of similar to Render To Texture script. And the main question is: How many planes can I use with this script? Do I need other script for it, bit more advanced? Please, suggest me any possibility solution. :)

The only limit of this script is your Hardware configuration (RAM, GPU, CPU).

You can use the fake reflections too, with a texture and in the Texture pannel, replace the Mapping Coordinates to "Reflection" (Use GLSL for see in real time).

Many games use the fake reflection, but the camera may move for see the correct fake reflections.

Here a blend with reflection texture that i made (Gold texture):

https://mega.nz/#!qlNARDoY!W9FotR5a0zFJ-XXgUHFXLqDSaN6eVw56bzw9vBOxf_I


Is there a way to view edges in weight paint mode? It would make the process a bit easier I am aware of face-select mode but I don't like the way that works. I would like to be able to weight paint across all faces as I normally would without either weight or vertex selection but with my edges more visible. I am aware of wireframe mode but... obviously that does not give you the visual cues you need for weight painting.

You can enable the Wireframe Option (under Geometry) in the Viewport Overlays while in weight paint mode.


How to turn off viewport to orthographic snapping during rotation on alt + middle mouse drag? That was view axis. Can be closed.

Settings: I made factory reset and turned on emulate 3 button mouse.
Completely clean Blender without anything changed still has this
feature...

Issue: I want to turn off Blender behavior: Alt+ Middle mouse
button drag, which is causing the viewport to snap to front/top/left/right
orthographic view. I don't want this snapping feature.

And it seems it can't be turned off (Image 1) 3D View -> Rotate View -> View3D Rotate Modal, changing, disabling or clicking X doesn't change anything so it's maybe not this one setting

Changing Rotate View - and picking Alt key (Image 2) changes normal rotation of viewport to Alt + middle mouse and this snapping feature to Alt + left mouse button (I'm using emulate 3 button mouse).

This is how I managed to solve it. Turn off View Axis.


VSE proxy custom directory Imagine you want to edit a documentary film in Blender and you have hundreds of 4K video files. Generating multiple proxies at once is possible now in Blender but challenging, you cannot import 200 files in the VSE and ask Blender to generate proxies, if you do so it will crash. You can only do it little by little and it is very time consuming. The best solution would be to generate proxy files outside of Blender in a batch way and back in Blender link all the high res files to the low res files. The proxy custom directory is made for this but one needs to click on "rebuild proxy" I understand? When you click on "rebuild proxy", although you've already generated proxies, Blender will take ages to connect the high res files in the VSE to the proxies you've already generated. As if Blender is doing the work again. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks.

you shouldn't need to rebuild the proxies if you have already made them - so long as they are the right files in the right places, just set the paths, and you should be able to switch to proxy viewing modes.


What's the best way to unwrap this? Originally this was 6 different textures, but I combined the textures together and then manually positioned each UV to become seamless to achieve my desired result as seen here:

Here is another one where I haven't manually scaled and positioned each island.

The islands are all overlapped.

I'm trying to achieve the results of the first image. I've tried pinning all of the verts and then unwrapping but it just results in this:

Seams didn't work right either:

I also want to mention that clamp settings and constraining image to boundsd also didn't change anything.

Any ideas on how I can make each unwrap end up like the first? I'd rather not have to keep manually adjusting faces all over my scene.

To get a perfectly straightened unwrap from quad-strips, the Follow Active Quads method exists.

This will take the selected geometry and unwrap it as a rectangular strip, no matter what angle they have on the model. It is particularly helpful on objects with even but somehow spatially warped surfaces, like pipes, floor maps, etc. and truly invaluable if you need 100% straightened unwraps. These often make texturing a lot easier.

It has two options for the Mapping Type:

Even will make all UV-Squares the same size,
Length will take the average length into consideration

To use Follow Active, select desired polygons. Ensure that one of them is the Active Selection. The algorithm will make this one the border piece in the unwrap. Also, as its name suggests, it will not run without an Active Quad.

Follow Active Quads has a couple of quirks, though:

For one, it does not like Triangles or N-Gons. It will split those from the quad strips.

For another, if you have already unwrapped, the Follow Active Quads will sometimes give you skewed results. In that case,

select the strip you want,
choose Unwrap > Reset
with the same selection Unwrap > Follow Active Quads


Playing Scale and Alpha Animations at the same time I animate a sphere changing scale(frame 1 to 60)
And also his Alpha value(frame 1 to 60)

When playing booth through actions acutators(one for each, linked by an always sensos), just scale play. alpha dont change.

testing alpha alone, work well. Any thoughts?

The channels are separate ... I would expect it to be fine.I really can't tell why it does not play.

I suggest to play them at different animation layers.


BlenderGIS import call from python script My goal is to import a .shp file into blender within my python script. I found the add-on BlenderGIS that offers this functionality. I can add the add-on to blender make it work "manually", but I want to call the import function from a python script.

I am new to Blender and I cannot find what the right way is to import a add-on/BlenderGIS into a python script.

Among other things, I tried the following:

import bpy
import sys
import os

dir = os.path.dirname(bpy.data.filepath)
if not dir in sys.path:
    sys.path.append(dir )

import io_shapefile

file = "path/to/file.shp"

bpy.ops.importgis(file)

This gives the error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'BPyOpsSubMod' object is not callable

Can someone point me in the right direction on how to import a .shp from a python script?

Thanks in advance

Have a look at the operator name when you mouse over it, in this case bpy.ops.importgis.shapefile()

Now in the python console type in command and using autocomplete ctrl-space

>> bpy.ops.importgis.shapefile(
shapefile()
bpy.ops.importgis.shapefile(filepath="", filter_glob="*.shp", useFieldElev=False, fieldElevName="", useFieldExtrude=False, fieldExtrudeName="", extrusionAxis='Z', angCoords=False, separateObjects=False, useFieldName=False, fieldObjName="")

You get the operator call and the parameters.  Testing with a local filepath

>>> bpy.ops.importgis.shapefile(filepath="/mnt/.../GDAL/contour.shp")
Read shapefile...
Feature type : PolyLine
DBF fields : ['id', 'elev']
0%
10%
20%
...
90%
100%
Imported mesh had some problem, check the result!
{'FINISHED'}

>>>


When I try to duplicate an object with shift + d it doesn't work cause the controls change inmediately to the timeline So after trying to dupicate an object with shift + d, when you scroll, for example, instead of zoom it changes the timeline.
Has anyone an idea of why is this happening? and how can I fix this to be able to duplicate objects with shift + d?
Thanks.

If you want to manipulate objects in 3D-view, your cursor has to stay inside that area for shortcuts to work .
The only standard explanation I know would be that you are not in the right area. Blender uses a concept called implicit focus. It means that the active area is the one below your mouse cursor. That saves you a lot of clicking but it can also mean that keyboard shortcuts won't work or do different things if your cursor is misplaced by accident.


Blender animation constraint "Track to" not working for soft bodies I have a super simple scene, a block, a plane, a camera with track to block.
The block falls on the floor as rigid body, collides with plane, camera tracks -> works.
if i change the block to soft body, the camera won't track it's location.
What am i missing?
Video here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wjurcce3cz7silv/softbody.mov?dl=0

Assign a vertex group.
Further to @moonboots answer, Since the soft body modifier alters the mesh but not the origin can select all or any vertices of the soft body mesh and assign to a vertex group.
Soft body mesh in  edit mode, select verts, make a new vertex group, assign to group.
In the camera's track to constraint, choose the vertex group as sub-target.

Tracking to "Group" vertex group (All) of the icosphere
The same method can be used to track to any modified mesh.


How do I rotate and scale edges in Edit Mode? This tutorial mentions that it's possible to rotate and scale a selection while in Edge Select mode in the Properties panel. However, I can only find the option to transform the selection's median. There is no rotation or scale option in the panel.

How can I rotate and scale by entering a value in the panel in Edit Mode?

The Transform panel in the Properties tab is only for moving mesh elements.
In Edit mode, you can transform the mesh using the Properties tab. In the top right of the Properties tab, you can see a Transform panel.

With mesh elements selected you can move them by Transform tab. Like you said, they only allow you to move them.

If you want to scale and rotate you use transform menu in the tool tab. Press T to open the tool tab. On the top left you will see the Transform panel.

You can click on this to interactively move mesh elements. After that, you can revise it in the Operator tab at the bottom of the tool tab.

The most popular method of doing these transforms is with the keyboard shortcuts. Using the keyboard shortcuts instead of the GUI is a lot faster and will speed up your workflow. With your cursor in the 3d view you can do:

G: grab, aka. move or translate

R: rotate

S: scale

You can also specify an axis for the transform by pressing X or Y or Z once you are in one of the transform modes. You can exclude an axis from the transform by pressing Shift+axis.
You can specify the exact amount of transform by pressing the numbers once in transform mode.

Some examples:

G, X, 2 move 2 units along x axis

R,Shift+Z,90 rotate 90 degrees along the x and y axis

S, 2 scale by a factor of 2


Correct tracked camera orientation I have been playing around with camera tracking and I'm happy enough with the tracking and alignment of the markers with the footage when viewed through the camera.

The problem is, when I am not looking through the camera I can see that the grid isn't aligned to the camera.

How do you correctly align the grid to this tracked camera? I have set a floor and two points for scale, also clicked setup tracking scene, but this just added cube and plane which were on the grid.

If all your trackers are the floor use the "set X axis" and "set Y axis" and redo "setup tracking scene".

It would be better if you had a few trackers on the wall or fence and you'd set those as "wall" in the orientation tab.

You can manually re-orient your solved scene in the 3D viewport by rotating  the camera. Just select the camera rotate it about 90 degrees on X. The trackers are parented to the camera, so they will follow all movement.

If you have a good camera solve (with errors under 0.3) it shouldn't be difficult to line all of your tracker marks at 0 on the z axis on a side or front view as they should be in one plane.

In this example the camera is solved but nor oriented correctly:

Manually rotating the camera to bring the right orientation (note the tracking points at the side view at the bottom, those are trackers placed on the ground):

Bringing the camera down to make the trackers on the ground be roughly at 0 on the Z axis:


Make fluid move around the edges of an object / mesh I would really like to have a liquid move on top of the surface of an object. How would I do so?

I thought maybe you have sort of a force field on top of the mesh but I have no clue how to do that in blender.

Thanks in advance!

You are looking for fluid obstacles. To set an object as an obstacle give it "Fluid" from the physics panel and then choose "Obstacle" from the drop down menu.


Using EEVEE for interactive VR presentations? Does anyone know if it is possible (or future plans) to use eevee to make interactive architectural VR-presentations? I have customers who want VR and need to change my pipeline.

I understand I can model things in Blender (which I am starting to like very much) and export everything to Unreal Engine 4 for the rest of the workflow. As I need to handle changes in the building models right up to my deadlines, I would prefer staying in just one application.

Can I hope to do this in Blender?

https://godotengine.org/

I think you might be better served using Blender to prepare your assets, but then use Godot Engine for the actual deployment.

Here's a recent video with a bunch of games showcasing Godot's power and versatility:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTAeDoRIHaA

Here's a video of Godot 3 new features:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XptlVErsL-o

Godot is an open-source, modern, PBR-based Game Engine that can export executables for all major desktop and mobile operating systems, and also for HTML5. It also has a nice audio engine so you could add 3D audio with reverb zones etc. to increase the immersion of your presentation.

You could prepare your interactive demonstration, and host it on a website and let the client view it on-line or deliver an elegant Windows/OS X/Linux executable.

Godot has all the great features of a modern rendering engine you'd find in Eevee, but is a bit more robust on that front and it have been used to build quite a lot of games at this point. The PBR engine is a relatively new addition but seems to be working very well.

Godot works very nice with Blender-made assets. You can use COLLADA to export your models from Blender and Godot will automatically reload them once you re-export an updated version from Blender. I've even read somewhere it's possible to export PBR materials with textures in COLLADA from Blender right into Godot - haven't tested that too well myself though.

Godot also provides an improved COLLADA exporter for Blender.


Custom GLSL Filter for Viewport Is it possible to add my custom GLSL filter to 3d viewport? Like my custom SSAO or custom fog based on depth and normal passes.

I want to add my custom SSAO filter to a 3d viewport form here http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?234822-new-and-fast-SSAO
But this is only for BGE. But i would like to use it for ObjectMode.

You would have to modify Blender on the source-code level to inject custom screenspace shaders to the viewport. Something that requires a decent knowledge of C/C++ and Blender's codebase.

But the latest build of Blender (since 2.73) actually has SSAO and DoF built into the viewport. You can try it out by downloading the daily build from http://builder.blender.org


How to random cloud texture brush? I'd like to have a random cloud pattern. As you can see, the "clouds" now have a linear direction. I could simulate randomness by stroking in circles (not the render type), but it still looks directional.

It was made with cloud texture applied to a sculpting brush.

All you need to do is change Mapping to Random and also you can add Random for Rotation. In Brush settings.


Object missing form final render The chocolate icing is missing from the final rendering, in 3D Viewpoint, it is showing. I have tried using W key under Edit mode, but the special menu is not showing up, but switches selection tools. Thanks for your time. :D

In the Properties panel > Particles > Render, make sure that the Show Emitter option is enabled.


Way to print the keyboard shortcut to the screen if I use the manual way to perform an action instead of the keyboard shortcut.? I decided to learn all blender keyboard shortcut and I wondered wether are there a way to print the keyboard shortcut to the screen if I use the manual way to perform an action.

So for example if I switch to edit mode using the header it will print TAB or something like that.

Does anyone knows an addon or an option for this?

I don't think, such an add on can be done in python.

Most menu shortcuts are written on the right side of the menu item.

To ascertain other shortcuts, do the following.

Hover over the menu item. You will see the python command. Make a note of the command after bpy.ops. In this case object.edit_mode.
Open the User Preferences CtrlAltU and go to the Input tab. Type the command in the searchbar and hotkey entries will be shown.


Is it possible to select multiple objects based on mesh and not origin? Every now and then I will stumble across this issue when making instanced objects in a circular rotation pattern. The origins will be at the center of the arc, while the actual meshes will be a large distance away from the origin. I will then add more objects with identically positioned origins in the center of the circle (i.e. watch face). Is there a way to select the outer bolts using an equivalent of the standard Ctrl+LMB free-select for mesh surface instead of mesh origins?

I am aware of the ability to select linked objects, this solution will not always work.

Border select seems to select by mesh surface, whereas circle and lasso select use origin positions.


How to use template_any_ID() into Ui Layout? I found this in the Blender API, and I'm curious to try it out:
template_any_ID(data, property, type_property, text='', text_ctxt='', translate=True)

I am intrigued by this Template, but I don't really understand what it is for and how it works.
Can anyone explain?
I was trying something like this:
mat = C.object.active_material
layout.template_any_ID(mat.preview, 'icon_id', 'id_type', text='', text_ctxt='', translate=True)

But I get error:
uiTemplateAnyID: pointer property not found: ImagePreview.icon_id

I also tried with the 'name' property but not even this function.
Another question I don't really understand, what is required to actually use in type_property?
What's going on here? What is missing? Where am I wrong?
The documentation is partially cofused for me, and I can't find any examples on google.

Look at the code
With any blender layout, try grepping the bl_ui code to see if it has been used
and will see this has been used in the scene properties panel.
 bl_ui/properties_scene.py
class SCENE_PT_keying_set_paths(SceneButtonsPanel, SceneKeyingSetsPanel, Panel):
    bl_label = "Active Keying Set"
    bl_parent_id = "SCENE_PT_keying_sets"
    ...

    scene = context.scene
    ks = scene.keying_sets.active

    ...

    ksp = ks.paths.active
    if ksp:
        col = flow.column(align=True)
        col.alignment = 'RIGHT'

        col.template_any_ID(ksp, "id", "id_type", text="Target ID-Block")

Target ID Block: where I've selected camera
and will see that this is not unlike a driver variable target, in that it lets us set the ID type of object, before selecting an object of that id_type
>>> ks = C.scene.keying_sets.active
>>> ksp = ks.paths.active
>>> ksp.id
bpy.data.objects['Camera']

>>> ksp.id_type
'OBJECT'

or alternatively to the camera data part
>>> ksp.id
bpy.data.cameras['Camera']

>>> ksp.id_type
'CAMERA'

ie we are setting a pointer to object  ksp.id to "any type" based on the id_type.


I`m having trouble with window reflection showing a world background. How do i remove it? I have created a window in my project, and it's working fine, but in the reflection and when I look from the inside, through the window, a "world" is shown that I only see in the reflection and when I look through the window. I changed the environment texture to see if that would change anything. It did just that, but I don't want any environment to show in the reflection, or through the window. Is there an easy way to fix this?

Thanks ;)

You could turn of the glossy (reflective) rays and the camera (directly visible) rays for the world in the cycles settings panel.


How to difference a cylinder from the car body using Boolean modifier? I have created a basic car body. Now, I'm trying to get the tires in place. What I am trying to do is to use a cylinder of 10 vertices with an Array modifier at Count: 1 and Relative Offset set to mimic the cylinder on the other side. Then, I am using the Boolean modifier to subtract the cylinder from the car body. However, it produces strange results when I drag my cylinder out after applying.

Car Cube Modifiers:
Mirror
Subsurf
Boolean

Cylinder Modifiers:
Array

Car body before applying the Boolean modifier:

.blend file from before applying the Boolean:

My guess is that you are getting a result like this:

When you want a result like this:

For this, you need to use the following modifier stack for the wheels and apply all of the modifiers in order, top to bottom, for the car.


Why there is a layer of transparancy on my uv map? When i take one of my objects and unwrap it onto the uv map area it will unwrap it like it should around the seams i make. but when i look at it the area on the faces is slightly white and when i export it to color behind it, any color behind it is a bit lighter then it should. another problem  i have is when i add an image to a node to add it to an object to color it, the object will turn while and not show any signs of any of the color at all even though the uv colored map was a color.

First question around transparency: When Blender exports a UV map, faces are slightly opaque by default. This is so people can more clearly distinguish the difference between what IS a face, and what isn't. Ordinarily the UV map is taken into a graphic program like GIMP, Photoshop, illustrator, etc as a layer: the actual artwork is drawn on different layers, and that final result is exported as a Blender compatible file format, WITHOUT the original underlying (or overlying) UV map.

So... export your UV map, do your artwork, and remove the UV map layer before saving your finished art.

The amount that Blender will tint faces is configurable! When exporting, look in the left column for this palette:

...And adjust the Fill Opacity to zero.

Your second question needs more detail, such as which render engine you're using (Blender Internal or Cycles [or other]), what node you're adding to color it and how the nodes are connected. A screenshot would be necessary. Good luck :)


glitches in texture in blender texture drowing When I paint a texture in blender I have glitches on it.
It looks like this:

I think, it is because i hadn`t graphics card in my pc. If i think incorect, please, tell me how can i fix this issue.

Painting

If the model is only one color directly you can assign the material.
You can paint the model directly with different colors.  You may need to twist and turn the model so the faces of  little nooks and crannies (small tight spaces) are directly facing you the painter.  You can hide parts of the 3D Mesh so that the tight spaces are more obviously accessible.
You may paint on the texture directly to fill in the holes.  Enter paint mode for the texture and paint directly to fill in holes.


Changing Materials On Multiple Copies Of Same Object (within cycles) Is there a way with the material compositor to make it so that when I have multiple objects (duplicated) within a scene that their materials change just because of the simple fact that they are duplicated?

EG. I have 2000 AirSoft pellets in this scene (some are duplicated for precise positions, others are within a particle system. But all use the same exact material), I don't want them all to be red, I want them to be either of the three colors; red,blue,purple.

I want to also choose that a majority are red (50%) and blue & purple would be 25% each. So 1,000 red and 500 blue and 500 purple.

You can use the Random output of the object info node to get random values between 1 and 0 that are unique to each object with the material. You can use this to change the color of an object using a color ramp node:

However, this only works for objects (you convert your particle system to objects with CtrlA> Make Duplicates Real, but they will no longer be animated).

You can kind of do the same thing for particles with the index output of the Particle info node (dividing it by the number of particles), however the output will not be random; the first particle will have a value of 0 and the last will have a value of 1.

If your particles move around and get mixed up enough, it may not be noticeable, especially if you chop up the color ramp node:


Blender smoke not rendering in 2.75 I saw similar reports by other users, with no real solution.

The issue is smoke is displayed properly in the 3d view but not rendered.
Material and texture settings are exactly the same as with Quick Smoke, which renders fine.

Here's the blend file: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/38010

Tried both OpenCL and CPU rendering, Blender Internal as well as Cycles renderer. On Windows 7, i7 notebook with integrated amd graphics.

You just forgot to check Render in the outliner


I have a box that appeared and I cannot get rid of it I accidently fat fingered my keyboard and a box appeared around my object...I guess it's a bounding box or something but I have no clue how to get it to disappear. When I select all objects in edit mode and move the objects the box doesn't move.  I can't edit, or resize it and if I copy my object to another scene, the stupid box goes along with it. Does anyone know how to turn this thing off?  Help would certainly be much appreciated.

Okay, I stumbled on it by accident.  I guess there is a hotkey for it somewhere.  This is a texture space.  In version 2.7x it was a yellow dotted box, but in 2.8 it looks like a bounds box.  I removed the texture space tick from Viewport Display and the box disappeared.


Non-wireframe edges showing in object mode I created some new edges for my boot mesh, but they show up in object mode when they shouldn't (and none of the other lines do). Why is that? And how do I remove these lines in object mode?

Some context: the lines that show up were lines from a mesh that I joined to the original.

If, after you had just created the new edges, and while they were still selected, you accidentally pressed Shift D, you would have made a copy of those edges, which will show up when in object mode, similar to how they are in your picture.  Try going into Edit mode and select just those edges - go to Edge mode, then right-click on one of the edges with Alt held down, then G (grab) them - if they come away from the rest of the mesh, then they're loose, duplicated edges and you can delete them.


Eevee - How to cast shadow on a background image Using blender 2.80 official release
I want an object to cast its shadow over a plane (to show the right direction) but then i need the plane to disappear, while leaving the shadow as it was and over a background image.

In the picture i already hve the object and the plane + the image exists as a texture on an actual object.

I found a video from blender guru addresing this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjWoglMYXBE), but i'm not sure how to replicate the effect on 2.80.

Any Ideas?

Update. Found this video on "Shadow catchers" for EEVEE.
Solved the problem perfectly. Thank you "Blender Pirate"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WYCZGOCPEY


Cloth effect acting strange when I scale the pinning group I have a problem.
I'm kind of new to blender. I'm trying to simulate a curtain and everything works well except when I scale the pinning points in order to get the "waves". Could someone please help me? I would be really grateful!

When running a cloth simulation, Blender uses the state of the mesh at the start of the simulation to determine the properties of the cloth - in particular, the size and dimensions of the individual faces. It appears that in your example that you have scaled a set of vertices while in Edit mode and this has affected the dimensions of the cloth itself, rather than just moving those vertices as intended.

In order to resolve this you need to know a little about how the cloth simulation operates. Firstly, the 'base' state of the mesh determines the underlying geometry of the cloth - ie, the vertices of the cloth and the length of any edges connecting those vertices. Once the simulation is started, Blender effectively makes a copy of the entire mesh and moves the location of that copy's vertices based on the simulation - but, importantly, Blender will use the 'actual' mesh edges to limit how far neighbouring vertices can move away from each other - ie, the 'structure' of the cloth. In addition to just the 'distance' between the vertices. Settings in the cloth simulation allow the 'stiffness' of this structure to be set, allowing the cloth to retain it's original shape.

When you 'pin' vertices, you are effectively tying those vertices to the corresponding vertices in the original mesh (rather than the 'copy' that follows the simulation). When you manipulate the original mesh, any 'pinned' vertices will follow where the 'actual' vertex moves. This allows the original mesh to be manipulated to effectively 'drag' the simulated mesh to affect the simulation.

So, to achieve the effect you are looking for, first create the mesh in a form that mimics the actual structure of the cloth - in this case, the curtain is a simple subdivided plane - more subdivisions gives more resolution to the cloth :

Select some of the vertices to be 'pinned' - ie, the points where it would be attached to a curtain rail or whatever. Assign those vertices to a vertex group with an appropriate name - eg, 'Pin' :

Setup your cloth properties with Pinning enabled, specifying your new 'Pin' vertex group.

Now, simply add a keyframe at the start of the animation to set the scale of the entire mesh to 1.0 and add a second keyframe to reduce the scale of the mesh (in the appropriate dimension - in my case this was in the Y-axis only). Since only the pinned vertices affect the simulation it is not necessary to limit the scaling to only the pinned vertices.

This produces the following result :

Blend file included


Saving Blender Files Issue I am not sure if it's a bug or something but blender have saving issues, when I press Ctrl+S to save blender file,

the file saves not in blender format,

so every time I have to remove the 1 from the format in the end and add it to the title.

My Question is: Can I somehow fix this and Save without the need to press CtrlShiftS > +

.blend1, .blend2,... are the auto-backup versions of your last saved file (see in user preferences/File "save versions"). .blend is the current version.


How do I give the complete faces a different Material? When I give the faces in the inside a differerent material than the rest, the new color does not fill out the whole face as I would like (Possibly because of the subsurf Modifier?). How can I make the whole faces be blue?

Create additional edge loops and it will stick to the edge


How can I render an animation without any texture A long time ago I remember doing a blocking animation in cycles that didnt had any textures when I toggled on metadata (thats as far as I remember from a tutorial), I've been trying to achieve the same thing in 2.79 but it seems its not working or I'm doing something wrong.

I mainly want to render without textures to save time and see if my animation is looks okay.

In 2.79 and previous versions: On the bottom of your 3d view, on the right of the horizontal menu bar, there's a button called OpenGL Render Active Viewport, if you click on it you have a quick render without any texture. The file will end in the folder you choose in the Properties > Render > Output panel.

Since 2.8: In the 3D view header menu > View > Viewport Render Animation:


How can I model a very porous rock? Consider:

I have tried playing with the displace modifier and various texture, but I cannot seem to find the right combination.

It looks like a noisy volume to mesh transformation might work for you.
Perhaps a modified "Swiss Cheese" geo_node setup (below) would work with a noisy displacement shader added. Best of luck :)

On second thought...
Here is a material nodes only answer:

It will take a pretty dense mesh:

But, It renders pretty quickly.


Add armor to the body without long weight paint After character export from Unreal Engine, I have one merged mesh with vertex groups (terrible export, had to add 110 to Z coord of every static mesh). The body has the weights I need, but armor doesn't.

Do I really have to paint all these 100500 vertex groups manually? If I don't use "limit selection to visible", I will paint something I wouldn't like to.

If I do, I won't paint the inner part of the armor and there will be ugly tentacles. And if the body has "green" weight, I won't be able to paint armor correctly.

It would be great if it understood what's armor and assigned correct weights to it. Or at least can't I select the area and assign weight to it?

Blend file: https://files.fm/u/zaefgsjz

Enter edit mode, select one vertex of the armor, shift select a vertex of the other piece of the armor, Ctrl L to select all linked vertices, in the vertex group tab click assign with a weight of 1.0.

Another workflow: select a vertex from the body, Ctrl L to select all linked, H to hide the body, switch to weight paint mode and do all the paints you need (Face selection mode must be on, with all the vertices selected), Alt H to make the body reappear.


Scene description language Does Blender have a scene description language (SDL) that I can view and edit in real-time? Something like JSON or XML? Often, I can work faster with text than a GUI.

The bpy module and the API provided by Blender is pretty close to a scene description language.

Switch to Console Editor.

Now you can interactively make modifications to the scene.

The bpy module is already imported into the console.

>>> list(bpy.context.scene.objects)

[bpy.data.objects['Point.002'], bpy.data.objects['Point.001'], bpy.data.objects['Point'], bpy.data.objects['Cylinder.006'], bpy.data.objects['Cylinder.005'], bpy.data.objects['Cylinder.004'], bpy.data.objects['Cylinder.003'], bpy.data.objects['Cylinder.002'], bpy.data.objects['Cylinder.001'], bpy.data.objects['Cylinder'], bpy.data.objects['Suzanne'], bpy.data.objects['Plane']]

>>> bpy.context.scene.objects['Suzanne'].location.x = 1
>>> bpy.context.scene.objects['Suzanne'].location.x = 0

C is an alias for bpy.context, so you can also do

>>> C.object.location.x = 0

You can keyframe object properties (In the example below we are adding a keyframe on x location attribute)

The data related to the scene can be accessed from the context directly.

>>> C.scene.frame_current = 1

>>> C.object.keyframe_insert('location', index=0)

>>> C.scene.frame_current = 25
>>> C.object.location.x = 5
>>> C.object.keyframe_insert('location', index=0)

Links to some important blender python API modules

https://docs.blender.org/api/current/info_quickstart.html
https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.context.html


Best practices for masking image layers for compositing? I'm looking for a efficient way to do image masking within Blender (using the masking tool) à la After Effects.  Basically, I want to cut out my images from within Blender instead of doing it destructively in an image editor.

Typically, in AE, I would precomp an image then do the masking in that precomp.  I'd like to mimic this workflow in Blender; however, it always seems overly complicated.

I have considered creating a separate scene with the same dimensions as the image and masking there, then bringing it into a master scene to assemble in 3D space, but I'm not sure I can map this to a plane.

Sorry that I may not be explaining this very well. If anyone is familiar with AE, then you'll be familiar with what I'm trying to achieve.

go to node editor and enable use nodes
add mask node and mix node
in uv editor change from paint to mask (if you want a mask image, upload that image to uv editor, the mask will be placed over your image)

LMB+Ctrl  to add point on the curve, close curve by enabling toggle cyclic
use this mask as input for mask node and plug mask node to factor of the mix node

for rotoscoping you could use this add on, see this for more info.


How do I create this arch in the middle of a cube? Also, are there any techniques to do these kind of shapes in Blender?

Edit: Second part of this Q was removed. It has a new thread here

You should use the Array modifier with an Object Offset:

Create a 8 vertex circle.

Only keep 1/8, create an empty at the same point as its origin.

Give your circle an Array modifier, Count > 8, deactivate Relative Offset, activate Object Offset, choose the empty as object, rotate the empty 45° on the Z axis.

Model the object.

Extrude it down, flatten the bottom with SZ0.


Shadows of small objects in Eevee When I try to render close-ups of objects as small as a few cm in Eevee, I cannot get the shadows to work properly. With Cycles, everything is fine, and I can accept the difference in look between both render engines, with the exception of the missing shadows.
Here is a comparison between both engines with the same scene:
Cycles:

Eevee:

The disk-like object is about 1.5cm in diameter. The scene is illuminated by a spot light and low level world background with a solid color.
How do I set up the shadows ideally for small scenes? Which parameters are most important when it comes to scaling, and what is their influence? Is it possible to even have shadows in Eevee in that scale?
I have read the Blender Manual - Light Settings-page but did not find a suitable set of settings with it.

I use a combination of factors if I'm looking for "clean" shadows in eevee.
The first step is to ensure "Contact Shadows" are enabled for all lights that are casting shadows.

The next thing is to Enable "Ambient Occlusion" in the Render Properties settings, and as well, disable, "Soft Shadows", and enable "High Bitdepth". The removal of soft shadows may cause some jagged edges on your shadows - to mitigate this, you can increase the shadow cube size.


Joined objects causes program to slow down in blender So I was just using blender 3D modelling and I decided to take 6 objects and join them together using CTRL + J and suddenly the program just slowed down real hard.

What is the cause of this please and is there a way to fix this? Do I have to delete my object again?

If you look at the info shown at the top of your window, your scene has 40 million vertices, that is why things are slow.

You probably had a subsurf on one object but when you joined them together the subsurf then became active on the new denser mesh.

As you have a subsurf division setting of 4, that means you have about 150,000 real vertices or 25,000 vertices in each original object. With the subsurf at 4 divisions on only one of them, you would have had 6.8 million vertices before joining. That jump from 6.8 million to 40 million will be the reason for the performance difference.

Solutions:

A subdivision setting of 4 is high, dropping it to 2 will give a similar visual result with only 2.5 million vertices.

From what I can see of your object, 157,000 vertices for each item is extremely high. I would expect to use less than 200 vertices for a shape like that. Adding a subsurf with a division of 4 on 6 of the lower poly objects would leave you at about 300,000 vertices which will be very fast to work with.


Fluid object going through obstale, changing size and shape I was trying to simulate an melting ice cube by letting a fluid object (cube) slowly spread in its container. Doing this i ran into some weird glitches.

The glitch that bothers me the most is that the fluid stretches along the x axis until it hits the domains edge. It even goes through obstacles.

In this case the fluid domain is close to the size of the pot my ice cube is melting in. If i stretch the domain any further the liquid also extends (only on the x axis tho) until it hits the border of the domain.

This is what i tried so far to solve the problem (nothing really helped):

Change the fluids volume initialization to shell: This fixed the deformation and stretching of the fluid but made the animation look very unrealistic. Looked more like the ice cube is collapsing instead of melting
Change the size and shape of the fluid object: This did not show any effect
Increase the fluids resolution: This did not show any effect

Here is my fluid object

Here is my .blend file

The container looks like it's doubled-walled, and is probably too thin for the fluid collision detection to work with. I would suggest making a thicker pot just for the simulation and swap in the current model for rendering.

You can make the pot thicker by adding a displacement modifier on top of the fluid sim modifier, which will push out the geometry along the normals.


How to zoom in and out the user presp I am on Mac with Blender 2.71. I got an mhx file imported. But the problem is that it looks huge. I could see only the bottom part in user presp.

In File -> User Pref -> Input, Presets set to Maya.

How could I Zoom in and Out so that I could see the whole object (Exported Human Object)

To see all objects in the scene:

in the 3D Viewport footer: : View -> View all
or press Home

If you have a mouse with a mouse wheel:

Scroll with the wheel.
Or press Ctrl MMB  then as long as you keep the the key and the MMB  pressed, you can zoom in/out by dragging the mouse.

If you have a 2 button mouse:

Open user preferences
Open the Input Tab
enable Emulate 3 Button Mouse
then you can press Ctrl Alt then click LMB  and drag the mouse to zoom in/out


Why are my seams becoming separate pieces in my UV editor? Pretty much what the title says. My seams are definately all closed and connected. Why are they separate in the UV editor? Also, is there a way for me to select faces on an area where seams are marked, and save that as some kind of section, so that I can just click and apply the texture without having to select each individual face later on?

Please use the terminology correctly. There are no separate seams in your UV editor. These are called UV islands. Also you do not apply a texture to faces, you can assign a material to faces and that material may use various textures for various properties of it. You can hover your mouse over some face, edge or vertex and press l to select linked elements limited by seams(ctrl+l to select linked with something already selected), you will need to make sure that Seam is selected under Delimt in the F6 panel or at the bottom of the t panel just after you press l same way as you can set properties for any other operation in Blender just after it is performed.

You did not describe what steps you take before the problem appears so it is hard to tell where you are making the mistake, but the process of UV mapping in Blender is quite simple, so if you follow it right, you should avoid any issues like this.

In edit mode select edges that you want as seams for the UV islands make sure they will be possible to unwrap to 2D islands and mark them as seams(ctrl+e -> a), there is also a clear seam option in the ctrl+e menu.
Select all the geometry you wish to unwrap in edit mode(could be only some faces but in your case it is all the geometry so hit a to deselect whatever you have selected and then a again to select all) and unwrap the UVs(u -> u in 3d viewport). I think here is where you made the mistake - I am guessing you only selected some faces when unwrapping instead of all you wanted.

That's it. Now if you are happy with the UVs you would assign a material to your mesh and then paint the textures for it. You can also pin UVs(p to pin alt+p to unpin) in the UV editor and then re-unwrap so Blender will keep the pinned UVs in place and will recalculate other UVs so they spread uniformly keeping the pinned UV in the same place. You will have to play around with it to see where this is useful.


Truncated depth problem in depth images Using a Python rendering script, I rendered albedo, normal, and depth images.

Below are example an albedo and corresponding depth image. I am not getting why depth is truncated at some moment. Could anyone please advise how I can get the depth of the entire object?

For the rendering script, I referred: https://github.com/panmari/stanford-shapenet-renderer.

This may be an issue with the render distance. Can you try extending the camera distance and see if this helps?

With the camera object selected, increase its End clipping distance in Properties > Camera settings > Lens:


Can I Select Through A Face When Using Subsurface Modifier? I am using cubes with a Catmull-Clark subsurface modifier for blocking out a model. I am having difficulty with areas where different cubs intersect. I need to be able to select edges and vertices that are within another cube, but are visible due to the subsurface modifier.

An example is shown below...

The green edge is what I want to select, but it is inside the shape marked in red.

Sometimes I am able to select edges and vertices that are inside another shape, but still visible due to the modifier. I can't figure out what allows me to do so in those circumstances.

I could move the shapes out of the way, make the adjustment, then move it back into place, but this seems cumbersome.

I suggest to hide (H) the vertex, edged or faces you don't want to select.


How are quads converted to tris for games? I know you can export 3d models to other software such as Unreal Engine, but i thought that games use tris instead of quads. When I export will it auto convert, or is there somewhere in blender I have to set an option from the jump to use tris?

All 3d applications renders geometry as a bunch of Tris in the end. The Quads and N-gons are only a convenience for editing and gets converted by the render engine.

When you export models for a game engine you can export them without triangulate them. Most game engines will have the ability to triangulate by them self. The exported file such as FBX or OBJ does not get triangulated automatically.

The way different software chooses to split polygons differs so you really don't have that much control.

There are benefits of doing the triangulation explicitly in Blender: You know how your polygons are split so the normals will look as you intend them to. If you bake normal maps, High to Low, this matters. If you have an animated mesh you usually want to make sure that the meshes and textures deforms in a known way.

I usually add a Triangulate Modifier to my mesh and split the ones I care about manually. In this way I can get a preview of how the triangulation will look at when exported and I get to work with a (mostly) quad mesh that are way easier to work with.


How can i slow down particles after baking I have a baked particle simulation that is perfectly fine but way to fast, so I want to slow it down as you would do it in dopesheet in case of a keyframe animation.
I found solutions to bake particles to keyframes with one instancing object, but i got 5 in this case and planing to have even more.
And maybe there is a non python way, i'm not that good at it yet.
I would really like this custom-ability feature because its hard to see the speed of the simulation before baking and baking is slow with many particles and object instances.

Other applications like houdini and maya, softimage (ICE) have a re-time cache function. Such thing doesn´t exist in Blender.
The closest thing that could emulate your effect is if your simulation is CACHED in open VDB and you export the sequence. Then create a second particle emmiter (on a new scene) and retime the flow of the particles first, then from the previously exported open VDB, using LOAD CACHE options your new (retimed) emmitter should work with the previous VDB cached simulation.


How to preview texture without lighting A lot of the time when I'm UV Unwrapping and Texturing, the shadows get in the way of seeing the texture properly.

How can I display my textures on my model without lighting.

If you are using the Blender Internal rendering engine, you can turn off shading on a material using the shadeless checkbox.

Please note that I have GLSL shading enabled. You can find it in the N panel int the 3D view. It's default value is Multitexture.


Animation-Copy And Paste Pose I've been trying to copy and paste a pose from the character's right arm (Suffix: .R) and left arm (Suffix: .L) I copy the pose from the right arm (This is a walking animation) and paste it reversed (Shift Command V) But then this happens: https://i.stack.imgur.com/9rPlj.png
 I don't know what to do, and if you guys want the .blend file, go to
http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=52230

It's a problem of bones orientation, in Edit mode select your left upper and lower arms and rotate them (ctrlR) 180° and it should work.


Move group instances together after rotation I am trying to model a tripod. The idea was to model just one leg, making it a group, and then create two group instances of the leg, rotate them +-120 degrees (to face each other) and voila.
The problem I have though is that once rotated the grouped instances no longer move in the same global direction as the original leg. Instead, after the rotation, if I move the leg along the x axis, the instances will move along THEIR x axis thereby breaking the tripod apart.

Without rotation:

With rotation:

Is there a way to move these rotated instances in the same global coordinate as the original leg?
Thanks.

Set Transform orientation to Global, not Local. It seems that 3d manipulator widget confuses you and you drag with it.

You can move them along global axis also via keyabord -  G >
 X and Rightclick Drag + X.


Cycles render speed: how to optimise GPU rendering? I am making my way (sometimes painfully) through an online "intro to Blender" course and have got to the Lighting section, in which the end-of-class exercise is to light a scene using Cycles.  I am running Blender (Steam version) under El Cap, GTX970, latest WebDriver and CUDA driver from NVIDIA.  Based on Heaven and other benchmarks (3d sims), this a fairly capable graphics platform.

However, I'm finding Cycles incredibly slow to render just one frame of a (not too complex) scene.  So slow, in fact, that I don't think I can afford the time to do the exercise!  Blender Render will render the scene in about 25 seconds, whereas Cycles was getting only a small fraction rendered in 25 seconds, less than .10 of the total image area.  I did enable CUDA and I did select GPU for the Cycles render hardware, and nothing seemed to help.

I have read a lot of conflicting info online, much of it obsolete (old posts), and am confused.  Was wondering if anyone here has a pointer to a really definitive reference on speeding up Cycles on NVIDIA hardware.  I did find and install "blenchmark" but when I tried to run it w/o GPU, to compare my CPU vs GPU render times, it crashed :-(

In the meantime I "de-noded" the meshes in the scene and tried to light it with BI, but the results were not nearly as impressive as other people achieved with Cycles.  I would like to try again with Cycles if I can find out how to speed it up a bit!  If I reduce "samples" from 2000 to about 100 I can get Cycles to render the scene in 30 sec or so, only a little slower than BI, but the quality is awful (grainy);  I won't get an acceptable image to submit for grading that way!

Samples:
2000 is far to many samples for a "(not to complex)" render. I would use 100 for previews, and 200-400 for final renders (depending on the complexity of your scene). Images involving lots of glass, complex shadows, indoor scenes, or depth of field may need more samples.
Tile Size:
Do some tests with your specific hardware, but, generally smaller tile size is faster for CPU, bigger tile size is faster for GPU.
An alternative to increasing samples for less noisy renders is to try some of the techniques mentioned here: How to reduce fireflies in Cycles?


How to restore original window? So today I wanted to separate the workspace between two monitors and I shift-clicked the view I wanted to put in a new window and it worked.

The problem is that when I wanted to close it (since in any editing program I know closing the main window closes all the others and then at the startup restores them) I accidentally closed the main one and the secondary window stayed open (I was surprised a lot :D) and I don't know how to restore the main one with the top bar (you know, the one which has File, Edit...) and the original layout because in the secondary window there is only the view.

So how do I restore it?

Do not open the file double-clicking it, instead open blender and go into File > Open.

Then deselect the checkbox "Load UI".

Open the project and you are done!


Particles don't collide with collision object? I have an object with a Mirror, Subsurface, and Solidify modifier.

I gave it Collision in the Physics panel, but the particle system just goes through the object. I have not baked the particles before.

I tried adding a new object without any modifiers and the collision works. Does collision of the particle can be done in original object, or any something wrong with my scene?

I just wanna to make this:

This is what is happening

And my particle setting

You could add small slices to a plane as emitter vertex group.

Add a wind force field to blow the particles up

Compare the results of the Kill Particles checkbox from the settings of your collision object. When you don't kill them they will be deflected. Make sure the particles cannot escape through holes in your model.

.blend


Grease Pencil with Pressure makes lines disappear https://imgur.com/gEHfyn8
Hi
I wanna draw with Grease pencil, but when I turn on the Radius Pressure, the lines disappear immediately.
and if I turn on the Strength Pressure, it draws nothing.
Not only the Wacom pen but also Mouse does too.
But in a new project file, it works correctly.
(I have already tried to Append the objects to new project, then it has the same issue.)

I set Tablet API - Wintab.
Blender version is 2.83

Anybody know about this issue?
Thank you in advance for your help.

You have pressure disabled for Strength pressure (the pen icon), and a very small radius for the line stroke.
Use larger values.


Can't apply Material to Part of Model I'm pretty new to Blender, and I've been following a tutorial to model a character.

I'm currently trying to color it, and I've set up UV mapping and joined all of the objects together, switched to blender render, set shading to GLSL, changed the viewport shading to texture, created a new material and set the link for the material from data to object, but when I try to apply a material to the whole object, part of the model remains unchanged.

Was there something that I forgot to do? Any help would be appreciated.

You need to switch to Cycles Render. If you don't you may not be able to see some stuff you have done.
Switch the viewport shading not to Texture but to Material that way you can see the stuff you have done.
In Edit Mode select what/where you want to color using different kinds of selecting (either use the looping methods (⎈ Ctrl LMBand hold and drag, or hold B LMB hold and drag) or select manually by  RMB clicking and holding ⇧ Shift or ⎈ Ctrl), then create a Material and click assign.

Make sure you name the Materials so you can tell them apart later.


Modeling from reference; how to not get messed up? So I've started trying to model stuff from reference. I've gotten fairly OK results, but I keep running into some issues. The main one being, I could get the model perfectly lined up with one side of the reference photo, but then when I try lining it up in another reference photo, things don't go so well because there is a MESS of vertices everywhere! How can I stop from getting confused?

Example:

"Oh this is fairly clean, no issue."

"Geez Louise what is this mess!"

You can select only the geometry you want to edit and press ShiftH to Hide everything else but the selection.

From the Top View this looks unmanageable:

So we go to Side View, select only the vertices we need, and hide everything else. (ShiftH)

Of course the top view also shows just the vertices that we have left visible. Much easier to manage:

You can then reveal the hidden geometry again when you're done editing by pressing AltH

Extra tips

Although pressing ShiftH will hide everything but your selection, pressing just H will hide the selection and leave everything else as-is. Un-hiding is the same (AltH) no matter which Hide method you have used.

This also works in Object Mode. You can hide and reveal objects in the same way.


Python Function to Discover Triangle Slope I need to write a Python function that computes the direction a triangle slopes. More specifically, I need to be able to compute which way a marble would roll if placed on a triangle defined by three points and at what point the marble would fall off the edge of that triangle.

Unfortunately, the math is beyond me. Any help would be much appreciated.

Here's a diagram that helps illustrate the situation:

Thanks.

Okay, here's a start:

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector

a = Vector((..., ..., ...))
b = Vector((..., ..., ...))
c = Vector((..., ..., ...))

ab = b - a
ac = c - a

normal = ab.cross(ac)
normal.normalize()

# assuming Z is up
slope_dir = normal.xy

# Heres 3 methods you could use to measure slope amount...

# measure xy length (0-1) where 1 is flat.
slope_amount = slope_dir.length
# so you can tell if the slope points up or down...
slope_amount = slope_dir.length * (1.0 if normal.z > 0.0 else -1.0)

# use normal z axis, 1.0 will be up, -1.0 down.
slope_amount = normal.z

# measure slope angle (0 - pi) where 0 is flat.
slope_amount = Vector((0.0, 0.0, 1.0)).angle(normal)


Having troubles finding Regular Solids with blender 2.78 I am new to Blender and I have been watching a video tutorial on how to create a soccer ball. So this guy went to Addons then Add Mesh and he enabled Regular Solids. I am using blender v2.78 and I don't have this option. I am trying to create a Truncated Icosahedron shape.

1- Go to File -> User Preferences -> Add-ons and under Categories click on Add Mesh and enable Extra Objects.

2- Click on Add -> Mesh -> Math Function -> Regular Solid.

3- Press "T" to bring up the tools (if it is not opened already) and under (Regular) solids scroll down till you see Presets and select "Truncated Icosahedron".

Good luck!


Select overlaping vertices from vertex groups Does anyone know how could I select and view vertices which overlap from two vertex groups ?

Deselect all the vertices, with A.
Select the first vertex group with the Select button under the vertex group list in the properties window.

Invert the selecting by pressing CtrlI.
Hide those vertices, with H.
Select the second vertex group (same way as in step 2).

Any vertices that are now selected are in both vertex groups.
After doing what you want with the double grouped vertices, you can show the whole mesh again by pressing AltH.

Animated gif showing first the two vertex groups, then how to find double grouped vertices, using the procedure listed above.


How do I reveal the "Diffuse and Transparency" option in Cycles Render for Import as plane (png)? Currently I can only see the diffuse and emission options. However, on tutorials such as the screenshotted one, it requires that I have other options available. I added the same addons as in the tutorial, and yes, I am in the cycles render engine.

Here is my screen, currently.

Thank you for all the helps.

Those options are gone.

The way to do transparency is to enable Use Alpha

And then choose between diffuse and emission as the shader.


Can't see any image preview in Video Sequence Editor I've added two strips of images after the video strip and converted their blend mode to Alpha Over. But there is still no preview image in VSE when pressing "Play". What should I do?
Filetype of images is PNG, version of Blender is 2.73, graphic card is gtx860, after rendering the part of video with images I see black screen.

This was not a Blender issue.

My PNG files were created by pressing Win+PrtSc and they were not processed correctly by Blender for unknown reasons. Recreating the PNG file in another application solved my strange problem.


Movement not working on Macbook When I try to zoom in/out or move the view, nothing happens. All I can do is spin in one stationary spot. I've tried using a mouse, I've tried restarting my computer, and updating Blender to the newest version. I don't even know why it happened in the first place. It was working fine all day then it just wouldn't let me move all of a sudden.

Did you try preferences?
Preferences>navigation>Zoom method>Continue
Enable "Zoom to Mouse Position"


Rip tool not considering the mouse direction I'm new to blender and im trying to use rip tool but it's not working properly. No matter where the mouse cursor is, it's always ripping in the same side.
This is the vertices i want to rip

And the result i get every time i rip is this, but i want the rip to happen on the other direction.

Rip depends on your mouse position. So if you want to rip off other side, you should place your cursor on the right side of your edge.
Example:


How to set skin_root_mark on selected vertices of a skinned mesh generated in Python? I'm writing a procedural tree generator that creates a mesh consisting of a network of nodes joined by edges, then adds a Skin Modifier. Here is a simple example with just one trunk and one branch:

The Skin Modifier does this:

I get the desired effect if afterwards, via the UI, I select all nodes that represent "joints" between branches and click "Mark Root" on the Skin Modifier.

It also works if I just select the whole mesh and hit "Mark Root", but obviously this is not really correct. But at this point I'll take that.

The Info panel suggests bpy.ops.object.skin_root_mark() and trial and error suggests this works on the selected vertices in Edit Mode. My effort at scripting this produces this error:

    ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw)
RuntimeError: Operator bpy.ops.object.skin_root_mark.poll() failed, context is incorrect
Error: Python script failed, check the message in the system console

This error is raised by the attempt to switch to Edit mode or, if that is commented out, by the call to skin_root_mark (the latter is the version pasted above). I can't tell from this error message what the underlying issue is, especially as the same error occurs on either of the lines, which seem

The following is a MWE that exemplifies the crash without all the tree-building logic:

import bpy

# Clean up
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action="SELECT")
bpy.ops.object.delete()

verts = [(0, 0, 0), (1, 0, 0)]
edges = [(0, 1)]

# Create the mesh
mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new("TreeMesh")
mesh.from_pydata(verts, edges, [])
mesh.update()
mesh.validate()

# Create Object to hold the mesh and add it to the scene
obj = bpy.data.objects.new('Tree', mesh)
scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.collection.objects.link(obj)

# Add the skin modifier
obj.modifiers.new(name="SK", type="SKIN")

# Make sure to deselect everything in the mesh
# (I guess this is overkill but just in case it makes a difference...)
for g in mesh.vertices[:] + mesh.edges[:] + mesh.polygons[:]:
    g.select = False

# Select all vertices
for v in mesh.vertices:
    v.select=True

# Either of these lines raises the "context is incorrect" exception:
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="EDIT", toggle=False)
bpy.ops.object.skin_root_mark()

As an aside, it's not at all clear to me how skin_root_mark works. What's the intended behaviour if you have nodes selected that belong to multiple objects and / or are affected by multiple Skin Modifiers? It seems like an odd choice to make it a global function rather than, say, a list of vertices attached to each modifier. If anyone can point me to info on the rationale behind this, that would also be very helpful.

As said in comment, the object is not active and that's why the ops failed.

You may use:

bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj

before the ops.

Though you can also without ops:

# Add the skin modifier
obj.modifiers.new(name="SK", type="SKIN")

#Get the skin vertices layers
skin_vertices = obj.data.skin_vertices
#Get the layer
skin_layer = skin_vertices[0]

#Assigns radius to some vertices
skin_layer.data[0].radius = (0.20,0.20) #Indices 0 and 1 are the vertex indices
skin_layer.data[1].radius = (0.10,0.10)

#Assigns root
skin_layer.data[1].use_root = True
#Assigns loose
skin_layer.data[1].use_loose = True

Also note that, this way you can assign multiple roots which is not allowed from the UI. I don't know if this can lead to issues or not.


Create Surface from Selection I have imported a .stl model into Blender with the goal of isolating and shading various parts of the model (painting it). I'm stuck with this format as a starting point.
In the Modeling pane I've selected the first part of the model that I want to isolate and I believe I want to create a Surface so that it can then be shaded.
Assuming that creating a Surface is correct, I can't figure out how to.  Right-clicking the selected vertices brings up the Vertex Context menu but I see nothing about Surfaces.
Is there a step I'm missing or a menu?
Here are some images to demonstrate what I'm seeing.
This is what it looks like when I select using the circle and box tools.

After some playing I realized I didn't have everything and after selecting 'more', I get this

Now it looks like I have the whole blade selected (although I'm really not sure).
So time to make some faces, and when I hit F, this is what happens.

I would expect to see something new in my Scene Collection, nope. When I pop over to the Shading pane, nothing new to see, in fact, the disappearance of the geometry is the only indication that something (who knows what) happened.

what @ZargulTheWizard is trying politely saying to you is that your Blender knowledge could be a little bit more advanced. You are assuming too much with too less knowledge.
"A common object type used in a 3D scene is a mesh." (from Blender docs). A mesh consists of vertices (points), edges (connections between points) and faces.
"face
A closed set of edges, in which a triangle face has three edges, and a quad face has four edges. A polygon is a coplanar set of faces. In systems that support multi-sided faces, polygons and faces are equivalent. However, most rendering hardware supports only 3- or 4-sided faces, so polygons are represented as multiple faces. Mathematically a polygonal mesh may be considered an unstructured grid, or undirected graph, with additional properties of geometry, shape and topology." (from wikipedia)
With "F"

you can create an edge between two selected vertices
you can create a single(!) face between more than two selected vertices

Answer to your assumption: "I would expect to see something new in my Scene Collection, nope. When I pop over to the Shading pane, nothing new to see, in fact, the disappearance of the geometry is the only indication that something (who knows what) happened.":
But if you created edges or faces, you just change the mesh of an object, you do not create new objects at all which you could see in the outliner (scene collection).
If you just see points as in your last posted picture you just have vertices. Nobody ever would then press "F" to create one single face because that are way too many vertices and it would look like shit.
Next to your sentence:
"In the Modeling pane I've selected the first part of the model that I want to isolate and I believe I want to create a Surface so that it can then be shaded."
-> in the picture you posted to that you already have a surface (which is called faces in Blender -> try to use the right terms, else there will be lots of misunderstandings). You can "see" the faces by the gray color. The dots are the vertices and the "lines" are the edges.
Hopefully this helps you a bit. Maybe you should watch some beginner tutorials like here...
they are free:
https://www.blender.org/support/tutorials/


Cant cut using Boxcutter I just bought Boxscatter + HardOps, and immediately there was a problem: I can't create a red box inside the cube. I run along the edge with the LMB clamped down, and all that happens is the "Drawing" and "Canceled" messages in the corner. At the same time, the addon itself works: if you do not select the cube, then Boxcutter perfectly creates parallelepipeds and cylinders around the scene. What am I doing wrong? Of course, Blender version is the newest. Boxcutter is 717_1 Claymore

thanks to recent API changes raycasted was affected. This can be rectified by having a version of Blender 2.83.7, 2.90.1 or 2.91.0 via Buildbot.
https://youtu.be/BIlAj-y-BXk
When it comes up updating HardOps / Boxcutter
When it comes to Blender itself
As time goes on with multiple versions they receive updates even though they are of different branches.
2.83 is an LTS which recently received a .7 update.
2.90 was previously experiencing stability issues which received a hotfix of .1
2.91.0 is a future version not yet release but we support it as well since all three have the same api recent changes.
In short update blender to the latest.
While 2.90 is correct the month may not be.
Get a current 2.90.


My Model's Right Hand is Broken, Can Anyone Help? Sadly, my friend here has been in an accident and I do not have the knowledge to fix 'em...

But in all seriousness, what did I do wrong?
I made this model, tried to use a premade rig, and ran into some problems. I think I fixed most of them, and now I found this. For some reason, when I'm in any mode besides edit mode, the right hand goes weird. I have tried looking at weight paint and vertex groups and have found nothing. Can someone please help?
Here is the blend file:
https://filebin.net/4ci3da5fv360m6db

To solve your main problem, in pose mode select the UpperHand.R bone, go to the properties panel, bones tab, Relations tab and uncheck the "Inherit rotation" button.

First you should have your hands locations match the hand bones locations moving in edit mode the bones (or the hands) accordingly.


Can I make tubular hole at the edge of the face without bool operations? I wonder if this process could be done some other way.

Lets say I want to get this result, but without boolean.

I could think of only one way and it is beveling. I make loopcut, then push one edge inside the cube and bevel it, also I used 2 more loopcuts to  limit the beveling, but it does not look circular. Do you have any trick for that?

Front row:

Subdivided Plane
Central faces selected: Loop Tools > Circle ( or Space Bar > Circle )
Delete appropriate faces

Back row:

Extrude
Bevel Modifier,  angle-based, (not catching curve), Segments:2 Profile:1
Subdivision Modifier

(Close-up of bevel result)


What's the Benefit of Using Layer Weight? I just don't see the difference using Facing and Fresnel, or Layer Weight as a whole in my node editor.

Is it a big difference using it, is it useful for distant objects?

There are many big differences, among which are that:

Fresnel depends on the face normals of your mesh - it will not work with inconsistent or incorrect normals;
The Layer Weight node allows for a smooth blend between the two;

Depending on what you wish to achieve, it may be better to use a specific one, but generally, you'll want to use the Fresnel node, as it's more physically accurate.


Blender Internal glossy BSDF equivalent? O.k. I'm back and now i need to know how to make a metallic material in Blender Internal.
The last question was for cycles and that fixed my problem, but Blender Internal doesn't have a Glossy BSDF. How do I get a glossy/metallic material in BI?

I'd like to add some information about the settings on top of micgdev's answer:

Reflectivity: There you define how strong the reflection is. 1 is fully reflective, 0 means no reflection at all. A fully reflective surface is non-existant, even a mirror is around 0.9..

Fresnel: Do you know the effect when you're looking at car windows from different angles? One time (when you face them) it's almost transparent, the other time it's almost a mirror (looking at them from the side). This effect is the fresnel effect and you enable it with this slider.

Glossy: With a glossy "amount" value below 1 you're setting the glossiness. 1 means very glossy, all below 1 means that the reflection will be blurred out.

Anisotropic: With this slider you can alter the reflection kind. If you're turning it up, the reflection will behave more and more like under a pot (become more and more circular).

I think that should set you up for the first steps...but read the documentation and experiment - there is so much to test and find out :)


Materials information on a file Blender Internal Render I'm trying to get information from a Blend File, but I've just hit a wall.

We are referring to Blender Internal Render. Not Cycles Render.

I'm new to Blender basically, so I really don't have a clue of neither scripting or Python whatsoever, so I really don't have a clue of what do I have access or what can or can't do via Python scripts on Blender, so I was thinking: Is it possible to take the material information from a Blend file or from within Blender, specifically, what files they are using?

In this example, thanks to Blender, I know the files the Metal material is using are these, but is there a way to output, let's say:

Metal:
- nomad_a1_diff.tga
- nomad_a1_norm.tga
- enviroment.png

And this, with all materials? Thank you in advance!

EDIT

What I'm basically trying to get is this

Name of any materials of a mesh.
Listing the textures of that single material.

Example

Material: Metal Textures of the Material Metal: nomad_a1_diff.tga, nomad_a1_norm.tga, enviroment.png

These three are the materials for that Metal material on the image.

I want to do this with every material on the model. Thanks to this script, I've got the name of all the materials, however, instead of listing all the textures per material, it lists all the textures of the model, I don't need that.

UPDATE

Thanks to atomicbezierslinger for the script, he helped me to get a step on the right direction!

I've run your script, but it gives me just the name of the textures. I've done some research and found a function called bpy.data.materials so I decided to add it to the script and now it looks like this

import bpy
import datetime

def inspect_textures():
    for t in bpy.data.materials:
        print(t.name)
        for t in bpy.data.textures:
            if isinstance(t, bpy.types.ImageTexture) and hasattr(t,'image'):
                x = t.image
                if hasattr(x,'filepath'):
                    print(t.name, type(t),t.image.filepath)
        else:
             print(t.name, type(t), "?")

inspect_textures()

This is the output from the code above. Now it gives the name of the material and the name of all the textures of the model, when all what I need is the texture names of the specific materials,  is there something else it can be done or does it need another import? Thanks so far for the help!

A Text Editor window containing a Python Script.  Filename indicated has the suffix [.py].  Line numbers and Syntax Coloring enabled. Yellow arrows from left to right show, Window Type, Name of file, Buttons for line numbers and syntax coloring, Button to Run Script.  Image Above.

Only copy the newest software code sample.  The images above have older software.  But they address questions that may apply to you which are not letter by letter code specific.

NEWER

import bpy
import datetime

print("-" * 88)
print(datetime.datetime.now())
print("-" * 88)

def inspect_m_textures(simple_sleek):
    print(bpy.types.ImageTexture, " Preferred")
    for m in bpy.data.materials:
        #print("M ", m.name)
        b = False;
        for ts in m.texture_slots:
            if hasattr(ts, 'name'):
                b = True
                continue
        if b:
            print("M ", m.name)
            inspect_t_textures(simple_sleek, m.texture_slots)

def inspect_t_textures(simple_sleek, slots):
    #print(bpy.types.ImageTexture, " Preferred")
    n = 0
    fs = "%03d" # format string
    #for t in bpy.data.textures:
    for ts in slots:
        #print(t.name)
        #print(type(t))
        #n += 1
        if not hasattr(ts, 'name'):
            continue
        t = ts.texture
        if isinstance(t, bpy.types.ImageTexture) and hasattr(t,'image'):
            n += 1
            ns = fs % (n,)
            if hasattr(t,'image'):
                x = t.image
                if hasattr(x,'filepath'):
                    print(ns, t.name, t.image.name,t.image.filepath)
                else:
                    print(ns, t.name, "Incomplete", "Incomplete")
            else:
                print(ns, t.name, "No Image")
        elif not simple_sleek:
            n += 1
            ns = fs % (n,)
            print(ns, t.name, type(t), "Other No Match")

inspect_m_textures(True)

OLDER

import bpy
import datetime

print("-" * 88)
    print(datetime.datetime.now())
print("-" * 88)

def inspect_textures():
    for t in bpy.data.textures:
        print(t.name)
        #print(type(t))
        if isinstance(t, bpy.types.ImageTexture) and hasattr(t,'image'):
            x = t.image
            if hasattr(x,'filepath'):
                print(t.name, type(t),t.image.filepath)
        else:
             print(t.name, type(t), "?")

inspect_textures()

Python for Cut and Paste.  Code Block Above.  Inspect, Verify and Improve. You can delete comments and extra print statements and extra print arguments.

Open or use text editor window. New Text. Name Textures.py  . Copy and paste the text above.  Make sure the formatting is retained.  Execute from Button or Keystroke indicated on Tooltip of Button. The console window has the textual results. Toggle the visibility of the Console Window from the menu.  In the [Info] window Menu/Window/Toggle System Console

Console Window on Windows 10.  Console allows Copy and Paste.  Python allows Standard Out Redirection.  Image Above.

Toggle the System Console. Image above.


How to set individual shadow catcher objects per render layer I am using blender version 2.79.

Is there a way to set an object to be a shadow catcher in cycles settings per render layer?

Example for a scene setup:

Render layer 1:

qube = red material
sphere = blue material

Render layer 2:

qube = shadow catcher
sphere = blue material

Render layer 3:

qube = red material
sphere = shadow catcher

Are the examples possible? If you have a material setup for a shadow catcher or a way to do it in postpro this would help too.

I know there will be a new render layer organisation in upcoming v2.8 but I need a workaround now...

Thank you for all tips.

Best wishes from germany

Chris

This is my workaround about it:

I Used 3 frames and set the Shadow Catcher for every object in its frame.

Let the mouse pointer over the Shadow Catcher checkbox and press  I , this will make a keyframe to that single frame.

Move to the next frame, check the Shadow Catcher and with mouse pointer over the Shadow Catcher checkbox and press  I  again.

To the next frame, unckeck the Shadow Catcher and with mouse pointer over the Shadow Catcher checkbox and press  I  again.

Repest it to the other object. But using: frame 1 - unckeked, frame 2 - unchecked and frame 3 - checked.

Render the 3 frames an Animation.

See the image below:


Rendering Diffuse Color pass in Cycles Can I render just the Diffuse Color Pass in Cycles? I tried to check just Diffuse Color Pass, but it rendered the whole image anyway.

To the best of my knowledge, it is not possible to directly render only a single color pass in Cycles. However, after rendering your image, you can access the different color passes by using the compositor.

Before rendering, make sure to go to the Render>Layers menu and select "Direct", "Indirect", and "Color" for the material type you want to single out. This makes sure that you have all the necessary color passes when you get to the compositor.

In the compositor, instead of using "Image" as input to the Composite node, you want to combine in some way the three color passes "Direct", "Indirect", and "Color" for your material type. In the example below, I used two Color Overlay nodes as shown in my compositor setup.

My original image:

Diffuse Color Passes only:

Glossy Color Passes only:

My Compositor Setup:


Unable to apply materials to the entire mesh object correctly After loading a mesh into Blender, I want to apply a material on them and color it. I am doing this using the code below:

for ob in bpy.context.selectable_objects:
    #if ob.name.startswith('simplified_model'):
    if ob.type == 'MESH':
        obj = ob            # this is for scoping reasons
        obj.select = True
        self.scene.objects.active = obj
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')

self.model = obj

mat = bpy.data.materials.new('colored')
color = [0., 191./255, 255./255]
mat.diffuse_color = color
mat.specular_intensity = 0.3
self.model.active_material = mat

Using the code above, some of the meshes are colored the way I expect, but as you can see below most of them are painted incompletely and the material has not been applied the way it was expected to:

The meshes are expected to be colored as follow:

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Thank you

Programming languages are very literal and do exactly as they are written in the order that they are written, with python the formatting (line indentation) also makes a difference.

Assuming the code you show was pasted with the same formatting as the script you are running, you start by looping over every object and selecting it and making it active. bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT') will get the same result.

When the loop is finished you deselect all objects, select one object, set self.model to the last object in the loop then create and assign a material to the one object.

You could indent the lines that make the material so that it becomes part of the loop so that you get a new material created for each object. Another approach is to create the material first and then assign the same material to each object in a loop.

mat = bpy.data.materials.new('colored')
mat.diffuse_color = [0., 191./255, 255./255]
mat.specular_intensity = 0.3

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')
for ob in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    if ob.type == 'MESH':
        ob.active_material = mat


How do I bend pipes with Blender modelling tools? Here's a screenshot of my model so far. I can select vector points in edit mode but can't move them. I'm working on a MacBook Pro laptop.Is there any way of uploading and sharing Blender model files on this forum?

there is different ways to do what you want in blender, one of them is this one:

Add a new bezier circle:

Add a new bezier curve:

With the bezier curve selected, go to Properties menu > Object data > Bevel > Object

Select the bezier circle you previously create.

Now the bezier curve looks like a thick pipe.

You can adjust the pipe thickness by reducing or increasing the bezier circle radius
Now you can manipulate the bezier curve as you want to simulate the pipe bend effect.

For more information about bezier curves visit:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/modeling/curves/structure.html#bezier-curves


I can't get my rig to attach to my model I have cleaned up the model using the clean up tools, but every time I try to parent - armature deform with automatic weights my model grows a thousand times its size and they aren't connected.
this is a copy of the file.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NiiyVZrLf8ldHE7WCG9vIuKdr6NhaAf1/view?usp=sharing

You need to apply the scale to the armature (metarig) and the mesh before you parent them. Select them, then press Ctrl+A, apply scale.


Why are my keyframes not visible in the timeline? I'm practicing on camera movements based on a tutorial by polyjord and I noticed that my keyframes are missing in the timeline at some point:

Q: How do I get my keyframes back?

EDIT: I guess the comment by @Gorgious is what you're experiencing. If not, try this solution:
If you've enabled the option Only Show Errors in the View menu of the Timeline window, than your keyframes will not show up unless there is an error.


Blender 2.8 curve guide forcefield and torus knot I was just playing with blender 2.8 particle systems and I wanted to make my particles follow a curve.
I created a torus knot path using the Torus Knots+ plugin but it doesn't seems to work.
I managed to get it working with more classical curves (hand drawn bezier and nurbs) but not this one.

Is there any trick I'm not aware to get it working ?

Thanks,

I eventually found why it wasn't working as expected. In the object data panel, the Path animation must be ticked for the curve guide to work. It is ticked by default for Bézier curve but not for torus knots.


How to edit or hide modifiers in 2.8? Can I edit the modifiers applied to an object? https://ibb.co/9stPR5L There is a subsurface modifier applied to the orange part and I'd like to hide it to work on the shape better. After applying a modifier in 2.8, it "goes away" and I can't see it anymore. When I apply a new subsurface modifier to the object, it doesn't overwrite it, it adds it to the first one.

If you apply a modifier to an object it becomes a part of the object and therefore vanishes from the modifier menu. The vertices of your object are changed permanently and you cannot reverse this step.

Because of that you will usually not apply modifiers, unless you really have to.


How can i stretch part of a geometry with a modifier? is there any option to stretch just part of a geometry?
Like my image? i only need to stretch a little part of the model, i could do it on edit mode but it could be difficult since i got already a lot of polygons, is there any other way?

Thank you in regard :)

Edit: i already tried with the edit mode, but it doesn't work properly since it doesnt fit the figure like i want.

Already found a way to do this, i just entered in edit mode and then used the proportional editing option, and also the snap option, it worked! but i just selected the faces i wanted to stretch :)


Multiple root bones found error I have a question about rigging.
I try to make a player character in blender to export to FBX (to use in the Unreal Engine).
However every time I try to import it in Unreal Engine I get an error that my skeleton contains multiple root bones.
I really don't get why it's saying that, I can only find one root bone.
So my question is: Is there a command or something where it will tell me how many root bones my skeleton has and witch bones are root bones?
(normally I would try to delete my skeleton and start all over but this model cotains 306 bones, so yeah.... I rather try somethings else first ;p)

Thx in advance for reading and thinking! :)

You can check it in the Outliner. After you open the armature's hierarchy you can see how many bones are directly below of the armature. The "left" has two root bones, the "right" has only one. So if you click on the triangle near the armature data and you see more than one bone immediatelly, then you have multiple root bones.


Transparent Image different in viewport than render Bit of an issue here, trying to render this glass scene

Looks fine in the viewport, but when I hit render

Does anyone know the cause of different view port and final render, and how to fix it?

Here's my Blend File

If you need to produce a PNG file you have to know that the format uses "unassociated" alpha.

That means that the program that will do the compositing will "pre-multiply" foreground's RGB*alpha prior to adding it to the background plate.

This is important to know because it means that every pixel with alpha=0 will lose its RGB data (because multiplying anything by 0 gives 0).

Associated alpha, as explained here, allows you to have pixels that are both emissive and fully transparent, but that kind of information can't be expressed in a PNG file.

In order to transfer the the result of your render to a usable PNG output you'll have to cheat and pull an alpha from the RGB data, taking care of the light parts and the dark parts in two different steps.

Instructions:

1) First, do an alpha over on white, the result will show only the dark parts.

2) Then do another alpha over from the original render, this time on black. That will reveal only the light parts.

3) Now, invert the result of the first alpha over.

4) Using a mix node set to SCREEN, mix the result of the second alpha over with the inverted result of the first alpha over. That will be your alpha channel.

5) Take the output of your second alpha over (the composite on white) and using a mix node set to divide, divide it by the alpha created in the step 4.

6) Plug the pre-divided plate from step 5 into the "image" socket of the composite output, and plug the alpha channel produced in step 4 into the alpha socket.

That will give you a reasonable unassociated PNG output.
It won't be perfect as the unassociated alpha format is very limited for advanced compositing, but it will do the trick.

Anyway, ALWAYS REMEMBER that associated alpha is the one true alpha, and allows compositing effects that are impossible with unassociated. This means that PNG isn't an adequate format for vfx compositing and a format that allows associated alpha should be chosen instead.
If the program where you're going to composite these plates allows associated alpha always prefer it over unassociated.


Normal size clothed human I am making some animation of clothed human.
Clothes simulation is strange when I am using normal size of human model. Even though the distance of cloth collision is the minimum value, there is a gap between cloth and human, as shown in the first picture. If the size of the models are large, they are OK, like the second picture. I don't want to scale it. Is there any way to solve this problem?

When you add Collision in the physics properties this includes settings for interaction with Cloth and Soft Body - the Inner and Outer values.

These are typically in Blender Units (or whatever units you have your scene set to) so 0.02 Outer would relate to 2cm if 1BU = 1m. You therefore may need to review your collision settings for the scale. Also, always ensure you Apply Scale on your model and cloth objects.


How to correctly bend an object Very beginner question, I'm attempting to have barbed wire twisting while moving in multiple directions behind a subject.

I purchased this barbed wire 3d model and I've figured out how to animate it how I'd like to to look but I just can't manage to bend it.
https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/architectural/other/barb-wire-chrome

Not sure if im better off using simple deform or curve modifier. I'm pretty lost on where to start but I don't think what I'm attempting is very difficult just having trouble with it.

https://youtu.be/DnOELJXghOQ

Finally, what would be the best workflow to achieve my final image?
Multiple barbs exported as indvidual ones and layer them in premiere or could this be done in Blender

Let say you've made your barbed wire with an Array modifier + Curve modifier. If you just want them to bend, you just need to subdivide your curve and move its handles, it will bend the barbed wire. If you want to bend + animate, here is a solution:

Select your curve, enter in Edit mode and W > Subdivide it enough.
Select each handle and ctrlH > Hook to New Object.
This has created empties that you can use to move the handle, thus bend your barbed wire as you want.
To make it more convenient and be able to reset the empties to their 0 position you can create an armature, and inside this armature create as many bones as you have empties.
Now switch your armature in Pose mode and select the first bone.
Select the corresponding empty, re-click on the bone, and ctrlP > Bone. Do the same for each empty.
Now the bones control the empties that control the handles, and you can come back to the basic curve position going in the armature Pose mode and altG to reset.

This solution will allow you to have a very flexible barbed wire, but if you don't need complicated movements you can use the Mesh Deform modifier or Bendy Bones, as Mathmaniage said.


How do I enter Pose Mode in Blender 2.81? I have a figure and added rigging.

I'm supposed to select both objects, go to auto weights and then switch over to Pose Mode.

I don't see that option. How do I pose my character?

What most likely happened is that you have the deforming object controlled by the bones selected as active. Select only the bones, and switch to pose mode. You don't need both selected.


Color differently after rendering I would like to ask for a help. I have different color after rendered by Eevee. Please see my attached file , the viewpoint color differently without any change .

Thank you,
Mandy

This is a common problem. Technical explanations are here and here.

To keep consistent colors:

Set View Transform to Standard.
uncheck Save As Render in the saving window
Enjoy consistent colors :).