what are these scribble controls called? I was watching this video and i noticed some scribble like things that controls the bones like IK what is it?  video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkJPfGEcrrA

I believe what you are calling 'scribbles' are the 'custom bone shapes'. Instead of animating the actual bones of the armature, which can be fiddly, it can sometimes be easier to add a custom shape which represents the bone.

These might be shaped to represent the feature of the armature that they control; a bone that controls an eyebrow might be replaced with a custom bone shape that is in the shape of an eyebrow, for example.

Custom bones can be set in the display panel of the 'Bone' tab in the 'Properties' area:

When a mesh is selected as the custom bone shape, the bone it represents will be hidden. The custom bone shape can then be moved or rotated in the same way the original bone could have been.


Create a cylinder with all normals pointing to the inside I need a cylinder or sphere, which has all normals directed inwards. Sounds strange, but I want to place my VR-Camera inside of this cylinder and use it kinda like a skybox. I know, that I can let Blender set all my normals to the outside, but is this possible for the inverse, too?

To flip the normals of your cylinder, Tab into Edit Mode and key T to toggle open/close the Toolshelf. Go to the Toolshelf > Shading/UVs tab > Shading dropdown > Normals section and click Recalculate. This will align all the normals. Now, you can click Flip Direction to align the normals on the inside of the cylinder.
Note that as lemon said in the comments, Ctrl + N is the shortcut for Recalculate, and Shift + Ctrl + N is the shortcut for aligning the normals to the inside of (an object), not flipping them, aligning them to the inside of an object.

To check your work, first, make sure the exterior and interior shading has been flipped. Next, key N to toggle open/close the 3D Viewport Properties panel and go to the Mesh Display tab. I like to turn on Face Normals. Now, every normal will appear as a little blue line in the center of each face.


What is the weighted normal modifier for? I always use the autosmooth option every time I make my models shading smooth but then I found this modifier and tried to use it. The only thing it did was make it darker in the edges? I'm not quite sure what it does but why you would use this if the model looks similar without the weighted modifier.

This is the model with only autosmooth on.

With both autosmooth and modifier enabled. The only difference I see is that around the edges it gets a little bit darker, it looks similar with only autosmooth. The seat couch didnt changed at all so I just disabled the modifier.

So when is this modifier useful?
Thanks

Left without - right with Weighted Normal Modifier

Let's first explain what Weighted Normal Modifier is doing:

  Face weighted normals (FWN) is a technique to improve shading for 3d
  models. Shading can be improved by adding bevels and altering the
  vertex normals to be perpendicular on the larger flat polygons. This
  forces the shading to be blended across the smaller bevel faces,
  rather than across the entire model.
  http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Face_weighted_normals

To visualise this let's look at our example:

You can see here how vertex normals were calculated and gave flat surfaces and nice smooth bevels. Most important thing here is that Bevel has only 1 segment.

Where to use this technique?

Most commonly it is used for low/medium poly assets - games.

Read here about how it was used in Star Citizen: https://polycount.com/discussion/155894/decal-technique-from-star-citizen

I'm personally heavy using it for arch design. Where you can have whole building with bevels, not so good topography and still results are nice and smooth.

Using it with high poly assets sometimes also could be beneficial especially when topology is really messed up.

  Weighted vertex normals improve the appearance of virtually all
  geometry, and is generally superior to the traditional non-weighted
  average. It works because the undesired shading artifacts are
  displaced from large (highly visible) polygons to their smaller
  neighbors (less visible), and thereby guarantees improved visuals in
  virtually all common situations.
  https://www.bytehazard.com/articles/vertnorm.html

Check also this question with comments: Is it possible to get automatic smooth edges with flat faces without adding geometry?

Bevel modifier:

You can also utilize this method by using Harden Normals in Bevel modifier - AutoSmooth need to be turned on also.


Create an object in the BGE via python without using an inactive layer I'm using the blender game engine, and I'd like to generate an object each time a key is pressed (i.e. press Space, and a rock will be loaded into a catapult)

My problem is that I am using this object within Morse, which currently doesn't support using hidden layers (everything seems to be put on the visible layer as soon as it is loaded)

Normally I would do something like this:

from bge import logic

scene = logic.getCurrentScene()
rock = scene.addObject("Rock", "Catapult")

Catapult is a mesh on one layer, and rock is a mesh on another. I would then use the logic bricks to make a keyboard actuator that calls this script. This works fine when I run it in Blender (currently using v2.6), but I get an error when running it with Morse:

ValueError: scene.addObject(object, other, time): KX_Scene (first argument): object must be in an inactive layer

Is there any way to generate objects without needing the inactive layer?

Alternatively, is there a way to programmatically move an object from an active layer to an inactive layer?

Thanks

Yes, but only via LibLoad (which likely isn't what your after).

You can use LibLoad/LibNew to dynamically load data, then instance that.

You can load data from another blend file or, you can load an existing mesh (but NOT an object).

See these functions:

http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_69_release/bge.logic.html#bge.logic.LibNew
http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_69_release/bge.logic.html#bge.logic.LibLoad


How to rotate the arms on the x axis on a lot of keyframes I have imported an adobe fuse/mixamo character/armature/fbx file into blender and I realized that the arms pass through the thigh,as you can see here :

I would like to rotate the arms on the x axis a little upper in pose mode,but since the animation has 288 frames,should I do it for each frame ? It will take a lot of time !!!. I changed the first and the last frame only,but the frames on the middle aren't changed. I don't know why. Is there a faster way ? thanks. You can find the fbx file here.

If you go to the Graph Editor with the relevant bone selected in the 3D view, you can select and manipulate the handles controlling the keyframes for the particular value you want.  So for the left forearm, I think the value you may want to control is "W Quaternion Rotation".  Type A once or twice to make sure nothing is selected, then select one of the control point handles for WQuaternionRotation, then type L (select linked).  Then type G to move the values up or down for all of the keyframes.


How to Remove this cross hair? I downloaded a lamp model from Blendswap, but there is this big Cross hair which when I move, the entire object moves. It also get attached whenever I duplicate some part of the Lamp. How can I get rid of this?

That line indicates a parent child relationship.

Read: How do I “parent” objects? or The corresponding Blender Manual page

To clear the relationship use Alt+P


"Cannot Execute Boolean Operation" on a subdivided mesh So, I'm sure alot of people have asked this but I'm not sure if any answer applies to this problem, so I'm just going to go ahead and ask.
I editied a cube and subdivided it, then imported an SVG image and made it into a mesh, now i want to subtract the SVG image from the cube, when i went to apply the boolean it doesn't work. Here's the screenshot, I'm also uploading the .blend file. Any help would be great thank you.

Here's the link for the download of the .blend file, I wasn't sure what was the best way to upload it so I used MediaFire, hope that doesn't raise any issues.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/iyondoyj4swq3jv/BlendProblem.blend/file

After some tries I've found a way to do it:

Select your curve, go in Edit mode, select all and W > Remove Doubles. You must have duplicated some vertices somehow, that's what causes your problem. Now you could apply your Boolean but still, you won't get a good result, so wait a bit.
To simplify your topology you can also do a X > Limited Dissolve.
Now, select your shield and apply the Subsurf and the Solidify modifier.
Then apply the Boolean modifier, it will give a correct result.


BGE: Cube parented to another cube not colliding with objects I have a cube (cube.1) parented to another cube (cube.2), and both cubes are dynamic bodies with the same properties. Both cubes have "box" collision bounds. Also, both cubes are inside a room.

When I move cube.2 while in the game engine, it collides with the walls of the room and stops.

But cube.1, which is parented to it, does not. Why is this happening? Also, what can I do to make cube.1 collide with objects and stop moving (stop going beyond their faces)?

When you parent an object to another you implicitly declare the child to be a static object regardless if you set the physics type to dynamic.

If you look at the behavior you say: "I do not want this object to be controlled by the physics. I want it to follow the parent."

Therefore the physics will ignore this object.

From you question I guess you assume that the parent object considers the child. But why should it? If you want to "extend" the object you need to enable Physics/Collision Bounds/Compound on both the parent and the child.

If you need the parenting in-game see EjayACER's response. It describes how to do that with the parent actuator.


Why we can't apply edge loop on mesh if we applied bevel first Some times I noticed that we can't apply edge loop on mesh if we applied bevel why it is happening? It's bothering me to model as I want to. I guess it's happening because of geometric reasons please help me to understand what rocket science is happening there?

If you bevel it can create ngons (faces with more than 4 vertices that are no longer quads), and you can't automatically create edge loops through ngons because it can't guess what opposite edge it is supposed to cut through. But you can cut with knife and recreate quads from your ngons.


Orbit view with trackpad in Blender 2.8 I have been running the new Blender 2.8 beta version on a Macbook Pro 2015 and figured out that's not possible to orbit and rotate the view with trackpad gestures, even pressing Shift key or similar.

Does anyone know if it's possible to orbit with two fingers like Blender 2.7X? I've been looking for the solution but I didn't find anything, thanks!

It seems that you can enable to orbit with the view with the trackpad by going to Edit>Preferences>Keymap and switching the upper setting to Blender 27X template or Blender template.


Extrude Region (Vertex Normals) stopped working properly in one file i used to be able to create bulky pieces like these

by applying extrusion along normals on the loop of faces like that:

at some point in started working like the regular Extrude Region, giving results like these:

also, as you can see, creating new object in the same scene does not help, only creating new file does.

link to the file: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/43119

i would like to know how to restore the usual functionality and what i might have done to cause this.

Extrude region with vertex normals behaves nearly like extrude region if the pivot point is set to individual origins.

Set the pivot point back to median point to have the expected behavior :


Why is there a depression in my render even though there is none in the wireframe? I made a rough model of a 4-legged animal. I did it using a mirror modifier to mirror the left and right sides of the animal. In object mode, I right clicked on my animal and chose "Shade Smooth". Results:
Wireframe mode:

Solid mode:

Why is there a discoloration in the center of the animal?
Rendered mode:

So there is discoloration in solid mode because there is a ridge and depression in that area... But what is the cause of the ridge and depression? According to my wireframe, there is no depression in that area. The render is wrong. The head is supposed to be smooth.

In this case, some of your normals have become flipped causing problems with your shading. To correct this, go to edit mode, then Select all > mesh > normals > recalculate outside.


How to generate a cylinder with a hole except by knife tool and Boolean methods This is a shape I want to generate. I know it is a very easy to generate by a knife tool and boolean method. But I want to use the extrude method to generate. a unfinished work is shown as following figure. So anyone can help me generate the two faces at the top and bottom.
I have tried many methods. all fails.
Please help me, many thanks

For instance :

Starting from a circle :

Add a circle
In edit mode (Tab) extrude E and stay in place (Esc or RMB)
Scale S
Select all and extrude again E

Or from a cylinder :

Add it
Remove top and bottom the faces
Then same principles as above

Or using curves :

Add a plane
Keep only the edges X the 'only faces'
Back to object mode convert it to a curve Alt+C then curve from mesh
Add a bezier circle curve
Set the previous plane as bevel object
Tuning : move the plane vertices (or scale or other) to make the hole appear (here in edit mode, select all then grab along X)

Another one !! Using spin tool :

Add a plane
Keep only the edges
In edit mode offset it (and eventually scale it)
Go in front view (viewing the plane on its side)
Then spin tool Alt+R, set the rotation, the amount of steps
Remove double (for the last step which overlaps)

Or with 2D curves (but not only quads here):

Add a bezier circle
Set it to 2D
Duplicate, scale
Convert to mesh
Extrude

Modifiers and "non destructive way" :

An eccentric plane
Solidify
Array
Simple deform with 'bend'


Color not showing up and neither is the option I am using Blender 2.69, (I am unable to upgrade at this time) and I am trying to color my model using the Vertex Paint mode, but it won't show up in the final render. I know that you have to enable something in the options pane to the left, but the option that all the guides talk about is not there. Am I in the wrong mode? Can someone help me with this? I also tried texture paint mode, but then I can't actually paint anything it seems. Any suggestions?

Weight Painting, Texture Painting and Vertex Painting are all completely different.

Weight painting directly modifies vertex groups, which can be used to designate areas of an object (such as where you want hair to grow).

Vertex painting allows you to color the individual vertices. This technically could work, however if you have a low-poly model it's going to look pretty bad. Additionally, as far as I'm aware, vertex painting is not compatible with Cycles. PGMath points out that it is possible with Attribute nodes.

Texture painting is what you want.

Exhibit A: Our model

Step 1: UV Unwrap Your Model

If you have already done this, or already know how, go ahead and skip this step.

Basically you want to go into edit mode and select a bunch of vertices so that if you took scissors and cut along the selected lines, you'd end up with a bunch of more or less flat objects. Like so:

Now press CTRL + E and click Mark Seam.

Press A twice so that every vertex is selected, and then press U and click Unwrap.

Great! You're done with this step.

Step 2: Setting up the texture

If you have already done this, or know how, you can skip this step too.

First you need to create a texture for your model. Making sure your model is selected, and that it has a material, go to the texture panel and click + New.

Under Image, click + New and use whatever settings you'd like.

  @cegaton says:

  Beware: blender does not automatically save the texture in the blend
  file. The texture has to be saved first by pressing CTRL F3 or using
  Image Save in the image editor. Otherwise the next time you open the
  file all of your texturing work will be gone.

Step 3: Setting up the texture painting

Almost done! Go into Texture Paint mode. Press T to make the panel on the left visible. Click on the Slots tab, set the Painting Mode to Image, and select the image you just created.

Now you should be good to go!

Step 4: But it still doesn't work!

-- Make sure you don't have a texture set

Though it's not very clear, the Texture setting does not set the texture it draws on. It sets the texture that the brush uses. Unless you have a specific purpose for using it, it should not be set. If your texture panel looks like this:

That is probably your problem. Click the little X to the right of the F and +.

-- Make sure your settings are configured correctly

These settings may cause you problems:

Drawing mode: You want TexDraw. That should be the default.

Foreground color: If it's the same as the background color of the image, it won't have any effect obviously.

Strength: Make sure it's larger than zero.

Blend: Set it to Mix to make sure it's working. You can mess with it later.

The End

Blender has so many features that a problem like this could be any number of things. If you've followed all the steps and it still didn't work, I'm stumped. If you could upload your .blend file though, we would have a much easier time helping you.


Finding the armature owning a bone I'm trying to write a script that constructs a transformation from a bone to an object (for "attaching" objects to animated armatures in a game engine). I can easily find the currently selected bone to construct the transformation from, using bpy.context.selected_pose_bones, but I cannot find any way to find the armature that owns the bone (which I need in order to calculate relative locations).

Does anyone know how to do this?

You can use the id_data property for one of the selected bones (you only need one because it's not currently possible to select multiple bones from different armatures at the same time). It should be as simple as the following:

context.selected_pose_bones[0].id_data

If you want just the armature's name:

context.selected_pose_bones[0].id_data.name


Letter by Letter Animation I'm working in blender, to animate a piece of text for a game I am making. I intend on giving the text multiple animations. For example, one animation has each letter in the text rotate along it's x axis, from first letter, to last. As you can see, this involves rotating each letter individually. I have tried using each letter as a separate object, but this seems to generate an individual action for each letter...which would be cumbersome to implement into a game.

I have also tried rotating each letter, while keeping the word as a single object, but I can't find a way to add key frames, for changes to the mesh of the word.

I am new to blender, so I know i'm probably overlooking something...any help would be great!

You may achieve it adding a Copy Rotation Constraint to every single letter and setting an Empty as a target.

Set the separate origin point to every single letter and add an Empty.

Select a letter, go to the Constraints header, choose Copy Rotation and set an Empty as a target. Repeat the process with every other letter.

Change the pivot center type to Individual Origins. Select an Empty and rotate it. Every letter copies the rotation of an Empty now.

Of course you may add a rotation shapekey to the entire object, but as you can see below it may cause some letters' deformations so I don't recommend it.


How to blur a texture node in cycles material? For a Cycles material I need to blur a texture. If the texture where a Texture Image node, I can blur the image before adding it but in my case I need to blur a Voronoi Texture and so I can't do it.

I have searched but I didn't find a blur node. Can this be achieved?

I have found that b°wide NodePack contains a blur node! It's called ImageBlur.

What it does is play with the vectors to blur it, something like if a ray comes it collide to multiple points (effectively blurring the texture). I don't know exactly how, but here is a screen capture of the node expanded.

Note that in the background I have used it for testing in a ImageTexture node with a camera vector, that is processed by the ImageBlur and then passed to the ImageTexture vector input.

You can see all its nodes for your use (it is in public domain) from b°wide nodepack for blender and you can download it in blendswap. It have many usefull nodes.


Make uv vertices evenly spaced This topic has already been raised but the solution doesn't seem to work for me. I need to find a way to make the lines in a uv map evenly spaced.

There was an addon for blender 2.61 that would distribute the vertices on the horizontal and vertical axis https://developer.blender.org/T29981 but I'm not sure if it would work for 2.74. I read that using the uv sculpt smooth tool should work but nothing happens for me when I use that tool.

Does anyone have advice about how to evenly distribute vertices on the x and y?

I believe this is what you want. Its a great addon, I've been using it for ages now. Basically what it does is it converts the selected uv area into an nicely lined up square, or into an evenly spaced grid.


Eevee transparent glass on transparent background? Ok, in 2.8 eevee I have "Transparent" checked on film tab, my material settings follow all listed here https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiCyLLhprXkAhVHu54KHdtcCoAQwqsBMAB6BAgIEAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DSN9lkS7K04k&usg=AOvVaw18N0g0o2nAe19dBcjvPU0s

Yet my glass is always this white gray -

My volumetrics are off. I don't see a transparent glass checkbox.. what is the problem here?

The Transparent Glass option only exists in Cycles. Eevee doesn't have this feature.


Weird Object Shape in Solid Mode My object behaves weirdly in Viewport's Solid Mode, it's shown like this in the Solid Mode:

But when I render the scene, it's shown well (as it should be):

It only has a Bevel modifier:

The object in the Edit Mode (Solid Mode):

Edit Mode + X-Ray Mode (in Solid Mode):

Edit Mode + X-Ray Mode (in Wireframe Mode):

How can I fix it?

Bevel modifier, when applied to the whole of complex meshes in particular,  can mess things up. To avoid this model the shape from a subdivided, 8×8, plane removing undesired vertices/edges. Bevel it, selected vertices only (it's called a vertex group), to obtain rounded corners as shown below. Extrude it when done and remove doubles.
Use knife project with the cut through enabled for the rounded holes as the rectangular hole is the subdivided faces deleted.


Cannot activate addon "Import Images as Planes" In trying to experiment creating terrain using height maps, I have had difficulty getting the addon "using images as planes" to work. In frustration, I uninstalled my Blender and re-installed 2.79b. The addon does appear in the inport-export list, however when I try to activate it I get this error:

Report Error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.76\scripts\modules\addon_utils.py", line 324, in enable mod=_import_(module_name)
  File C:\Users\user\AppData|Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.76\scripts\addons\io_import_images_as_planes.py", line 1
Python 3.5.1 (v3.5.1:37a07cee5969, Dec 6 2015, 01:54:25)(MSC v.1900 64 bit)] on win32
^
Syntax Error: Invalid Syntax

I can't seem to get around this. How do I activate this addon or what do I have to do to get around this problem.

Thanks, all

Interesting, according to the traceback, your "io_import_images_as_planes.py" add-on file is corrupted. The line in question should be a comment not a procedure. This error alone can be easily fixed with putting one # character at beginning that line, like this.

Python 3.5.1 (v3.5.1:37a07cee5969, Dec 6 2015, 01:54:25)(MSC v.1900 64 bit)] on win32

to

#Python 3.5.1 (v3.5.1:37a07cee5969, Dec 6 2015, 01:54:25)(MSC v.1900 64 bit)] on win32

However it most likely has other corruptions. My guess you got your add-on from the wrong place, because it should start with the line of

# ##### BEGIN GPL LICENSE BLOCK #####

A possible solution:

Open the

C:\Users\user\AppData|Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.76\scripts\addons\io_import_images_as_planes.py

file with a text editor like notepad, delete everything.

Get the add-on from the github repository.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sambler/myblenderaddons/master/io_import_images_as_planes.py

Ctrl-a Ctrl-c to copy everything, and paste it in your notepad.

Than try to install it again.


How do I use a cached/baked smoke simulation with command line rendering? Under cache in the physics tab on the smoke domain, I have Use Library Path and External checked and a Path set in the path box. It says 26 frames found and works fine from rendering with the GUI.

When rendering from the command line, the smoke is not there. The command is:

./blender -b ../../Blender_Projects/Test33.blend -f 26 -o ../../Blender_Projects/Test_Renders/TestRender33.png

It seems that the command line isn't finding the cached/baked files. Do I need to pass the bake path as an argument? (Even though it's in the file already)?

This worked for cloud rendering via command line, as for a local computer or render-farm, I don't know.

Change the cache baking location with the file path " // ". It should auto-name it if it doesn't accept a custom name.

Save the .blend file, bake the simulation and it will appear where you saved the .blend. Therefore blender will "look" in the same folder, a dedicated location.

How do I re-Load Fluid Sim Cache?


Looping Animations with Curve Modifier I'm using the curve modifier to animate objects along a path. I know that there are other modifiers that do this but I am specifically using the curve modifier because I want the geometry to morph as it moves along.

I'm struggling to find a way to loop these animations along a bezier curve that is looping (cyclic flag enabled in the bezier panel). What I noticed is that the animation speeds up at the beginning and slows down at the end. Also, there is no obvious way to match up the beginning and the end of the loop. Is the distance the object has to move along one axis related to the length of the curve?

I've attached a gif of the behavior I'm seeing.

Thanks in advance for any tips or other paths to take.

This looks like an issue with keyframe registration handles / extrapolation.  By default, Blender uses Bezier handles with constant extrapolation to ease in and out of animations.  This is usually what you want.  But not for simple loops like this.

There are two solutions.  One is to change the handles.  Switch to the graph editor, move to your initial frame, ctrl-k select all this frame, jump to final frame, ctrl-k select all this frame.  'v' change handles -> vector.

Alternatively, change the extrapolation mode.  Switch to the graph editor, select your channel (probably X location here), shift-e extrapolation mode -> linear.

As for finding the exact start of the curve, there are a number of plugins that can give you curve length, including the popular Animation Nodes plugin.  This curve length could then be used as the translation of the object.  But at this speed, it should be safe to eyeball it.  What I would do is plop a cursor on one corner of the object on the initial frame, just as a visual marker, and without changing my view, jump to the final frame.  Then I would advance my object along the proper axis until the appropriate corner was located at my cursor.


'Modeling' a sparkling flare? I want to recreate the above images for an animation. How do I go about it? I tried using particle systems and smoke simulators but to no avail.
Also, I want to model a sparkler, but more akin to a sparkling point or sphere that emits in all directions.

Final (almost) result

I will not go trough all steps in detail as they aren't part of the question (animation, modeling this sparkling stick and such).

Particle system

Create IcoSphere and scale it to be a bit wider then stick and add to it Particle System.

Create another one and move it to another layer - you will use it as particle object.

Most important settings are:

Lifetime, short lifetime does not allow particles to bounce and long one will get all of them messy.
Emitter Geometry > Normal. This will give our particles initial speed.

The rest of them are just some little tweaks.

Do not forget to set Gravity 0 in Field Weights tab.

Collision system

This is the tricky devil.

Create IcoSphere (Subdivisions 2) go to Edit Mode and Wireframe view (Z).
Select all - A and hit CTRL+E then Edge Split.
Select all again and set Pivot Center to Individual Origins then scale it down little bit. You should get something like this:

Now you can duplicate it and make them smaller, bigger, with any rotation - as you like. Remember to set Pivot Center back again to Median Point.
Final step, still in Edit Mode add another IcoSphere and make it the biggest one. This will be boundry for our collision system.

My final setup looks like this:

  Creating collision system is the worst part, everything depends on it,
  so you must try to make it right. If you want sparkles to be bigger,
  make whole thing bigger, if you want them to be more round - scale
  down less after edge split, to have smaller holes between faces.

Go back to Object Mode and in Physics tab add Collision. Set Particles > Permeability to 0.3. This will allow particles to "break" collision system. You can set it to 0, then nothing (yup, almost) go trough.

Hide this object in Outliner and set it to not renderable. Eye and camera Icon.

Materials

We will need only two materials, for sparks (particles) and particle emitter. Select IcoSphere you've moved to another layer and add this node setup:

Select IcoSphere which is emitter for particles and add to it Transparent node with pure white color.

Motion Blur

Go to Render tab, check Motion Blur and set it to 1.10.

And that's it.

Here is .blend file with all animations:


Blender Grid axis colors Does anyone know how to change the X and Y axis color in Blender 2.80?

You can set the axis colors in the following settings tab:

Preferences -> Themes -> User Interface -> Axis and Gizmo colors

Happy Blending! :)


How to change object orders? I was wondering if I can change order of objects because of my animation exporter script only exports their transformation data with their index number -not names. I do it for efficiency in my game, in that way instead of using dictionary classes I use arrays.

I tried copying, deleting then pasting back but it didn't work. I need a simple way of doing this but if someone can show me a script to reorder it's also appropriate.

No, if you rely on a specific order you will have to sort on export.


How to make a ''Follow Curve'' animation more harmonious? i made a camera follow a curve with the option Ctrl + P (Follow Curve) and it works good except for the fact that when the camera reach a vertice (curve) it turns too abrupt, is there any way to fix this? i tried with the graph editor...but i see no keyframes...
Help! :(

Undo the parenting that you did with CTRL + P. It's handy, but it's limited.

Then select the camera and go to constraints. Select constrain "Follow path".

Then choose the curve as target, in the constraints menu.

Now you can select the curve and go to the "data" tab(the one that looks like a curve).
Under "Path animation" you can animate how fast and far the camera will move on the curve.

If you select the camera, you can animate the rotation as a normal animation(You can reset the position of the camera with "alt + g" to snap it to the curve).


Render Result is different from the Composite node preview When I try to open image with transparency in Image Editor window it looks exactly like it should. But when I try to show it in Render Result image using Composite node, transparent part of the image (which has 0 alpha but it's color is white) looks wrong.

You can see that it is a little bit transparent, but much less than it should be, and also there is leakage around the blue blobs:

The aplha in this region of image is zero, but it looks like that when Blender displays it, it somehow changes to about 0.9.
I ran into this problem while trying to use cryptomatte for the first time.
Is there some setting I missing, or is this a bug?

Looks like that converting alpha with Alpha Over node works. As well as saving that image in EXR format instead of PNG.


Pixel perfect in blender game engine I am working on a game in BGE and I am trying to figure out how to give my game a pixelated look while not making it blurry. I have found some scrips online but I am not sure to apply it onto my camera.

go to file, user preferences,

go to the system tab and disable Mipmaps.


how do I animate a geneva drive with animation nodes? I did this geneva drive but I don't know how to animate it

Simply dividing by 6 don't work because the second gear should only moves at a certain time. I already tried some equations but none of them worked.

The file: https://1drv.ms/u/s!ApEztyCWw8odpHHmdlx7qbN6Rf9v

edit: It is going to be part of a big gear system, so the second gear's rotation cannot reset, it needs to increase continuously.

Here my solution:

First, I use modulo to get 360-rotation cycle.
Next I divide degrees to get 0-1 range.
When I use Curve interpolation to mach each cycle with rotation of secondary object. (Curve is drawn by hand)
Finally, get back to degrees with some scale (6 times smaller)

Note, that i'm don't care about real 360-degree rotation of secondary shape. It rotates in 0-60 degree range. If you want to get real rotation, you need to add each cycle to the result.

UPD:

  It works for this example where there is only those two gears, but not
  for what I need because it will control a whole clock gear system, so
  the second gear can't have its rotation being reseted

As I noted, If you want to get real rotation, you need to add each cycle to the result:

To get cycle number you need to divide rotation by 360, and convert result to integer using Floor function. When just multiply it by same number, -60 and add it to rotation


Is it possible to render other materials besides volumes using a procidural texture to define "density"? In other words, is it possible to render an image of a cube like this:

But make the "spheres" refractive as opposed to scattering volumes?

When I attempted with this (I did not expect it to succeed):

I got this:

As you can see, there are no surfaces inside the cube.

Is it possible to render a procedural texture in 3D so that black parts bend or reflect light?

BSDF surface shaders only works on 'real surfaces', i.e. faces that are part of a mesh.  Surfaces inside a volume created by change in density will not be treated or rendered with a BSDF surface shader.

This image might be able to show you what I mean. The geometry has a volume shader and a glossy shader, driven by a checkered texture. Notice the shiny material is correctly applied only to the outside surface of the mesh. Interior surface boundaries remain non-glossy.


Two-sided clothing with different materials? How do I make two-sided clothing using the Cloth modifier, such that the front and back have different materials?

In cycles, you can use the backfacing as a mixing factor between shaders.

In internal, you can use the front/back as a mixing factor between materials.


Corner of the room is a little bit lighter and shinier I am making my first scene in blender and I can’t figure out the render setting of EEVEE.
The main issue I can see in my render is in the corner of the room, where the corner gets little bit lighter and shinier. How can I fix that? Any other tips on improving my render would be very much appreciated.
Picture of my render settings and wall material.

In your shader setup the Image Texture nodes for the Normal Map and the Bump Map should have the Colorspace set to Non-Color, not to Filmic Log.
The Eevee settings look good. Maybe activate Contact Shadow in the settings of the light if you haven't yet.
To make the scene more "real" play with the lights. Where comes the light from? Is there a window? Is it dark outside and there is a table lamp? Try an HDRI for the world background.
Make the car metallic and reduce the Roughness value. If the table and books have no Roughness maps then you can add a Noise Texture node with high scaling to the Roughness. This will make them look less "clean" and "flat" (It's hard to tell from the screenshots if you have already done this)


How can I solve GPU rendering issue? I have a AMD r7 370 GPU, and an Intel i5 4460 CPI. I am using blender 2.78 (openCL enabled, downloaded from GraphicAll). My problem is I can't get the original color and output from GPU rendering, while CPU provides accurate color. GPU render shows the diffuse materials emitting colors, 'blue' in my case. and emitting materials starting to emit yellow. both instead of white which is set as the color.

CPU rendered:

That has appropriate color, no extra color emission from 'diffused material'.

GPU rendered:

Extra colors and materials not behaving the way they should.

I think you've already identified your problem: Your card isn't officially supported. Combine that with a non official build and it's not surprising to run into errors every now and then.

You can check out the blender wiki article on AMD cards for more info: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/OpenCL

The wiki article directly says that GCN 1.0 cards aren't supported in builds after March 2017 and that 2.78c (available form https://blender.org) should be used if you have one of those cards. It also says that the limitations are considered a TODO rather than a bug.

Basically there are known limitations with Blender's interaction with certain cards, and unfortunately you have one of them. You should definitely give the latest builds a try to see if anything has been updated, and there is a GPU+CPU option in the newest builds that might be worth checking out.


Material Opacity in viewport? I'd like to do motion graphics type work in blender and it would be really helpful if I could see the results of keyframing material opacity to cut items in and out of view.

Blender internal is sufficient, using shadeless materials.  I could have swore there used to be something in view options.  Any ideas?

Object panel > Display > Transparency Checkbox.

This works for Blender Internal but not Cycles.


Blender Python: Where do I get an Image with all the indices for the edges and faces of a cube? I just need to know the index numbers of certain edges and faces in a cube in blender.
Is there anywhere a diagram of that? Or can this be shown in blender as e.g. the length of an edge.

Blender doesn't normally display the indices information but it does have a debugging feature that can display them. To enable debugging you type bpy.app.debug = True into blender's python console. Once enabled you will find an indices option in the mesh display panel of the properties region (press N to show the region) while in edit mode. Only the indices of selected items will be shown and your selection mode will define whether vertex, edge or face info will be displayed.


Where is `OperatorList.txt`? I've read from here about Help -> Operator Cheat Sheet, which apparently creates an OperatorList.txt file that I can read. But where is it and how do I see it? Sorry for being such a noob.

This can be found in the Text Editor, selectable from the bottom left of the 3D view.  You have to select OperatorList.txt from the list of open documents.

NB.  If you want the file to persist you have to save it as a .txt file (Shift + Ctrl + Alt + S).


How can I use a single action to trigger animations in multiple objects? I have a problem to do with animations in blender, namely that I need to set up two different object's animations within one Action, and then another object separately in another action, so  that when I import my file into Unity there are two separate animations; one of the two parts moving, and the other of one part (which is the parent of the other two parts) rotating.
The problem is that when I try to do this and set up keyframes for one object, if I then add the other object to that action it will just snap to those same keyframes, instead of being able to have its animation edited separately.
So my question is how can I set up an animation with multiple objects holding their own keyframes (like I would normally do with a regular keyframe animation) but with the ability to make a separate unique animation for a different object as well?
I've seen some things in other similar questions to do with the NLA editor I think and merging two separate actions together into one but I can't find any actual information on whether this is what I need to do and if so how to do it.

Sorry if this isn't very well worded, please tell me if you need any clarification.

EDIT: Ok so I have found out how to use the NLA editor to solve my first problem (I instead created two different actions with both parts moving separately and then added them both into the NLA editor) However now when I try to make a new action to rotate another part of my object it is automatically added to the NLA editor as the same animation, but I need it to be completely separate, how can I accomplish this? It seems there is no way to remove it from the NLA editor once it's there it's rather frustrating...

Ok I solved this myself and in fact for my problem I didn't even need to use the action editor or NLA editor, all I needed to do was make the bits I wanted as separate animations happen at different points on the timeline, and then when I put the object into unity I could select those frames from the animation to be separate animations, so the whole thing was a lot less complicated than I was trying to make it.
If anyone else has information on how to do this in blender though please add an answer because I'm sure not everyone who comes across this question will be intending on putting their animation into unity and so may still need another answer


Particles flowing through openings in objects I have an imported FBX model made in Fusion360, I want to simulate air flowing through openings at the front of the model and being expelled from at the back. how can I do that with particle system?

Regards,

HY

I tried this with my work.

Blender is not good for many types of CFD, especially particle flow traces through volumes.  (Blender's particles don't have vector/pressure fields to behave correctly, but can sort of, see bottom.)

If you need something engineering-level realistic and want a challenge, look into OpenFoam.  You can import the path traces back into blender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-GtdRLfeFI
Not animated though.  There's opportunities for better imports though, perhaps there's something better, or someone can script it for you... or perhaps just other tools like Paraview will do what you want.

Blender particles don't flow with air flow pressure, with each other smoothly around objects, etc, they're more like pellets out of a shotgun and like to bounce off/ stop suddenly on surfaces if you turn collisions on.  Not how light particles in air would behave.

There's the "fluid" type... that will get them to go with each other, but still don't slow/speed up/swirl realistically around meshes like air would.

You can make clever use of force fields and try to emulate how the particles will flow, limit the ranges and tweak a ton, add a bit of turbulence etc...
Play with simple flows first.  For what you're describing without seeing your mesh, that's what I would try.

A harder Blender option: I've got fairly close to a real looking simulation using a smoke sim, smoke flow force field driven by that smoke sim, and a particle system (volume emitter inside the smoke sim) with low mass particles, and the gravity field weight set to 0.  It works ok for very simple shapes and needs a ton of tweaking though.  It works for wide open spaces, but not when the flow opening is constricted, it slows down instead of speeding up... (see Bernoulli's principle.)  but that can be faked somewhat with more forcefields... but then you're guessing/emulating again, not simulating.


Instance of my rocket and original model both displaying in render I have a model of a ship and an instance of the ship i have disabled the original model from the view port

but when i render both models appear like in the image below

how do i only render the instance?

If you mask an object from the viewport, it will relly mask it only from the viewport.

In order to mask it from the render, open the Filter menu in the outliner, then enable the camera icon.

This way in the outliner, you will be able to toggle the visibility of any object from the render:


How do I export my rendered Animation images to disk/save them after rendering? I am using Windows 10 and Blender 2.81 beta.

So here I have set file destinations for both cache AND the output on the disk, as you can see.

And this is the option I am selecting to Render the animation out, which it does without issue for 250 frames.

When I navigate to it on my PC, the folder ends up empty at the end. What step have I missed here?

Render looks something like this

That just sets the default path for new blend files.

You need to set it up in the Output Properties Panel


Blender to Unity animation | Volume Preservation I created a 3D model in Blender and animated it with an armature and bones before exporting it to Unity3D. As some of the rotation animations arbitrarily made the mesh shrink, I had to select the “Preserve Volume” option in the armature modifier.

However, I realized afterwards that Unity3D doesn’t recognize Blender’s “Preserve Volume” feature. While the model’s animations played fine in Blender, the shrinkage problem resurfaced in Unity3D.

Any ideas?

From Cygon4's post (Feb 16, 2016)

  [...] the "Preserve Volume" option (= dual quaternion skinning) does not exist in Unity.

You have to find a weights only method to preserve your volume. A common practice is to use a helper bone at angled areas.

Create the chain of bone1 and bone2.
Create bone1_helper and parent it to bone1.
Constrain the rotation from bone2 to bone1_helper, use local space and an influence of 0.5.

The gif showcases the base model, then Preserve Volume option, then the helper bone option.

Bake the animations with visual transform before exporting.


What is the workflow for compositing Fire/Smoke with Cycles Since fire/smoke is currently only supported in the internal renderer, what are some good workflow ideas for bringing fire and smoke into a cycles scene.

My current idea seems too labor intensive:

Rendering out the Cycles frames, then duplicating the scene, setting the renderer to internal and changing all of the materials to masking alpha. Then compositing the frames together.

Is there a better way until volumetrics are added to cycles?

Expanding on tobkum's answer, an example workflow using the technique in this tutorial might be:

Setup BI scene (simulation, etc.)
Create a new scene for Cycles, with Link object data
Create Cycles materials, linking to Object instead of Data so BI and cycles materials are not synced:

In the BI scene:

Create BI materials, again using Object instead of Data.
Disable shadows for all BI materials except the smoke
Create renderlayers for smoke and smoke shadows using the Shadow pass.
Create renderlayers for reflections and refractions, and remove sky by setting the Horizon color to black.

Setup compositing in Cycles scene:

Create renderlayers for foreground and background objects
Multiply BI shadows with cycles background layer
Alpha over BI smoke over cycles background layer
Alpha over cycles foreground layer over composite
Add or Mix BI reflections and refractions to composite

Render


How do you download or save a texture of a mesh I was changing some textures for some meshes I was wondering if I could somehow either download the texture i made or save it to use it for other projects, is their any way how to do it?

If you're talking about image textures you can save them in a folder: go in the Image Editor or UV Editor > Image > Save As:

If your image is packed, meaning it is part of your file and not in a folder (to pack an image, go into the Image Editor or UV Editor and Image > Pack, to pack all your images go into File > External Data > Pack All Into .blend), and you don't want it to be packed anymore you need to go into the Image Editor or UV Editor > Image > Unpack and either create a new folder or use the file's folder. To unpack all the images, go into File > External Data > Unpack All Into Files.

Now if you want to use this image in a new project, you'll find it in the folder where you've saved or unpacked it.
Another solution, that doesn't need any Save As or Unpack is to open your new project, go into File > Append, open the file that has the image texture you want, open the Image folder, and select the one you want:

Also there will be soon an Asset Browser window that will allow to visualize and import all sorts of datas. To make your image texture an asset, go in the Outliner, switch to Blender File mode, select the image, right click > Mark Asset:

If you open the Asset Browser window and in the left column select Image & Sounds you'll see your image:

Now open your new file, open the Preferences > File Paths > Asset Libraries > choose the folder(s) where you've saved the previous file(s). All the assets that have been saved in the files that are in this folder (or folders) will be available in the Asset Browser > Default mode:


How do I fill in every single face correctly? I wound up with this hole that I need to close, but I can't seem to find a good way to do it and fill in every single face. Bridge edge loops only work in one axis, so it's not that great. Is there another tool for this?

Select the 2 opposite edges and press CtrlF > Grid Fill


Why does object in viewport shading render view suddenly disappear When I switch from viewport shading solid to viewport shading render suddenly every objects disappears. Just a second before everything was perfect in render view. In just a matter of time when I came back to viewport shading render from viewport shading solid the screen got fully greyed out. I also checked several other options such as objects visibility(eye icon in right) and objects that are hidden by pressing     alt + H and / key if anything is isolated. I am using blender version 2.92.100. Could someone help me out with this coz I am stuck with this.

I suppose Gorgious might be correct with his guess. If you have an AMD graphics card you might have a look at this question:
AMD GPU material is entirely gray
Since you have Overlays disabled, there will not even be an outline of selected objects visible etc.
If it's not the graphics card, check if you might have disabled the Object Types Visibility for Mesh by accident (see left side of screenshot). Or maybe you have disabled the Ray Visibility for Camera in the Object Properties (right side of screenshot), but the latter you must have done on each object that's in the scene which I doubt.
If it's none of the above providing a blend file would be better to find out what it might be. Even if there would be no light in the scene, the world background shines a dim light on the objects so there must at least be something visible. Or do all objects have only a Diffuse shader set completely to white maybe?


Books or web resources for blender-python (bpy) I want to create 2D or 3D object that is mathematically created (all vertices and faces are generated by python). I heard blender can create objects via Python. I already know Python and would like to find more information specifically about bpy.

I assumed blender python API is well documented, but I can't find good documentation (For example, look this page about bpy.data. I think there should be more information about bpy.data.*). Are there any books about blender python which complement official documentation? I don't have much time to search the web (like a sea) to find the documentation about blender python, and I don't know which web resource is the best except for official website. So mainly I'm finding a book about blender python now.

I'm currently reading:

The Blender API - Blender 2.49 Scripting

This is the only book I could find. Any other book or web resources are welcome.

Around 2009 / 2010 Blender moved on to the 2.5 series and started using a new and very different python API called bpy. Unfortunately that 2.49 Book doesn't cover bpy and therefore will have little practical usefulness. In the first couple of years after the new 2.5 series bpy changed regularly both in big and in small ways.

Such a fluid environment meant publishing hard-copy documentation wasn't very sensible. This lack of books has not been a barrier for learning bpy, for a few reasons:

Blender has a built in Python console (REPL) it lets you print the docstrings of functions and operators. The REPL auto-completes with Ctrl+Space. See this answer for directions and usage and more.
Blender, and the add-ons it ships with, are open-source. The nature of these add-ons ranges from convenient mesh editing tools and mesh generation tools to importers and exporters. These categories cover almost everything you might want to see examples of -- some are short and simple others are extensive.
The cookbook (for UI and bpy) paved the way for many people, and is still a surprisingly useful reference for figuring out how to declare UI.
Blender's TextEditor has templates for common bpy procedures:
TextEditor > Templates > Python > ...

You mention that you know Python already. My advice to you is to read the source code of a few Mesh creation add-ons available in  ../scripts/addons. For instance

add_mesh_extra_objects
add_mesh_bolt_factory

These two add-ons will give a lot of insight into how to write all the boilerplate needed to convert your mathematical concept and code into an operator using bpy.

add_mesh_extra_objects

This add-on even has a selection of mathematical surface generators which seems to be what you are looking for.

makes this:

and xyz makes this:


Texture paint settings 2.8 I was wondering if someone could tell me where the texture painting settings -the ones that were in the tool bar were moved to?
I'm trying to start texture painting, I don't know where to go to find paint slot settings and such.

I'm not sure if I understand what you are looking for.

What I figured out is, there are not many preinstalled settings but you can create numerous own.

Open the brush setting with the tools button (2)
Create a new (default) brush withe current settigns (1)
Select out of all created brushes (3)

When converting a 2.79 blender file to 2.80, existing brush settings (at least some) are taken over.


Blender GUI error after install I have a strange start screen of Blender 2.8 on a MacOS 10.11.6 as you can see below....
I am not quite sure what is going on.
It is a clean install after a MacOS reinstall. I had an older version of blender that worked fine.

Ideas?

Blender 2.80 requires macOS 10.12 or later, your operating system is not supported. You can still use Blender 2.79 and earlier versions, all new versions will require an operating system upgrade.


I have a problem in my split-screen game I have made my one scene single player and the other split-screen, the are both fps. For the single player scene I set a parent of cube to my character and made it look like the sky . In my split-screen I can't do that as one camera can see the other box when they enter. If I just add a box and not partner it, it looks like the sky is more of a wall with a sky on it and not a sky. i know you can stop objects from being rendered, but is there a way to set one of two cameras from seeing an object while the other can

Try using a background scene for the skydome instead of a parent.


How do I make a translucent/transparent material on eevee? something like this
ive followed multiple tutorials but they all result in my objects looking shiny, any help?

ive followed multiple tutorials but they all result in my objects looking shiny, any help?

So your question is actually how to make a material not shiny.
If you have looked up tutorials, you probably have found already so I will make it simple and pretend you use a principled shader from which you obtain the transparency effect by playing with its transmission and/or alpha settings.
The first obvious sources of any shininess in a material are the specular and metallic settings. They are the ones that make the surface reflect light, so turning them off if the first step.
The second source can be the transmission itself. As transmission is emulating physical light transmission, it refracts light, meaning the light rays going through are deflected at each environment change, which can make you see stuff in a "weird" way, as when looking through a glass or a filled cup of water.
You can tweak that by playing with the Roughness and Transmission Roughness, though if you want no refraction at all you should just turn Transmission off and use the Alpha only; thus making your material not following the laws of physics, but you need what you need anyway.


Blender [2.91] Liquid simulation not filling container I am trying to fill a container from bottom to top. I have a cylinder at the bottom that has -3m/s velocity on the z-axis (shooting towards the bottom of the container to get a sort of a splash effect). The animation takes about 400 Frames. My issue is that the container only seems to fill up to around 40%, and than it stops filling. I can still see the water moving and the animation lasts another 80 frames or so but the liquid does not rise anymore. Changing the velocity and the resolution does not change this.
How do I make it so that it fills the container? Now it just really fills 40% and than tha animation kind off "floats" at that level untill the final frame is reached. I cannot seem to find out how I make it just continue filling to frame 400.
Any help will be greatly appreacated.

I think I figured it out.

Lower The Viscosity of your liquid
Make the source size bigger
Make sure your source has enough room to "spout out" the liquid
Use modular bake so you can finetune settings without having to bake everything all over all the time
Bake the mesh


how can i make a rig follow a shapekey deformation? Something like Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk.
I have a model with lots of shapekeys to make different characters.
I'm usin the pitchipoy rigify (or any) and i wish that when i modify the model to a desire character the rig  follow the size and shape, so i don't have the need to do it manually everytime.

Not sure it's possible. Editing a rig in animation compromises the relation bone - weights. Mesh weights become wrong and the rig influences it's mesh in a wrong way.

What I've seen in such problematic, is to have two models, each with it's individual rig, and when one model morphs to take the shape of the second, they simply switch the visibility.


How to make part of an object solid like a cut? I am working on a plate for a cup and I don't know how to make the bottom of the plate look solid instead of clay-liked. I used the solidify modifier and subdivision modifier and here is the picture of my current work:

I want it to look like this, a solid and clear bottom (look for the second image of the product):
https://www.atelierjapan.co.uk/product/satsuma-small-plate-ware-autumnal-plate-sara/

You can do this with supporting geometry. Make a loop cut Ctrl+R around the middle of the plate and slide it towards the center until it's close but not touching the center ring.

If your center section is flat like in my example, you can add a loop cut to the center of that. Then select it and bevel it using Ctrl+B to make it 2 loops that fit both the inner and outer ring.

Do this as well for the inner and outer "sides" of the bottom rim.

You may also need to select the center bottom face and inset it slightly. The reason this works is that Subdivision Surface and flat shading takes the "average" between two faces and rounds the result accordingly. The smaller the faces are, and the closer they are together (such as those clamped in by edge loops) the less area there is to round, and are therefore the edges look "sharper". There are other ways of achieving this, such as selecting edges, and selecting "mark sharp", however I feel it's probably best to learn how the supporting geometry works first.

Lastly, just finish it off by giving it a shiny material.


How to get the smoke animation to disappear after end frame I have made an animation, which lasts from frame 1 to 3600.
Within this frame range, I have made another animation from frame 2260 to 2600.

The problem is, that this smoke animation from 2260 to 2600, does not disappear after frame 2600. It just freezes and stays as it was at frame 2600 for the rest of the animation. Instead I want it to disappear.

Do someone know how to do that using blender internal render?

Thanks for your help.

Note: this answer was posted before the OP specified the BI render engine, I am leaving it in case future viewers are using Cycles.

If you are using Cycles you can make the smoke disappear at a certain frame my simply animating its material.  To do this add a mix shader node and plug your smoke nodes into the bottom socket, leave the top socket empty.  You can then animate the mix factor on the mix shader to make the smoke disappear.

A value of 0.00 will give no smoke while a value of 1.00 will give full smoke.


Blender 2.8 - Pro Lighting Sky and Studio - how do I install Pro Lighting Sky and Studio in Blender 2.8?

You have to check on the blendermarket website for version 1.2.4 and download it then just go into user preferences in blender install from file and locate the .zip file. restart pc and it should be there .If you have migrated your settings from 2.79 to 2.8. if you haven't yet then you need to download and install the hdri's to.


Gizmo (manipulator) is missing for some reason I have a problem with gizmo
(I am not sure what it called but it is the three arrows of axes when you scale, rotate, move).

it disappears sometimes and I can't get it back unless I open a new project. Can please some one help me with that?

I am using Blender 2.8.
When I press Ctrl+Space the show gizmo box is checked.

I was clicking Space bar by accident and i didn't realize it is going frame by frame until i saw the info datum that shows top left ... Fixed by clicking the space key


How to directly render Compositing ONLY - without 3D scene? Does anybody have a solution in form of script, some addon or some 'hack' how to render only composited image sequences and passes that you have loaded in Compositing Nodes?

Blender doesn't do that directly because blender firstly render 3D scene (even 3d scene is empty) and then shortly produce render image for current frame from Compositing Nodes...

As you know blender Compositing can be awesome, I want use it like Nuke, but this is barrier for fast using in sense of speed-up post-processing.

Are you sure it does really render the empty scene (maybe add some meshes and lights to test this)?

If you only have file output nodes and no composite output blender will show an empty render image when finished with the compositing since it got nothing to show from your node pipeline. So just add a composite node as output to your node setup like John Roper said ...


Generated rig controls dont control the bones Iam not sure if something has changed, but when I create human (meta-rig) and use Generate Rig the controls does not move the bones. I think in previous version it was just as simple as that to create working rig. Do I missing something? [

Those bones are the bones of the Meta Rig. Once you generate they are not used anymore. There are other bones that are hidden in the control rig. Unhide layer 29,30,31 and you'll see them.


Thin Black lines on start up? Okay, so I have this triangle looking thing, made of a thin black line on every startup file. I have made a few different startup files to try to fix it, but it shows up on every one. Any info?

You can restore the factory defaults by clicking: File > Load Factory Settings.

Then press ctrl+U for the default


Black areas after rendering in Cycles - Material Issue my renderings are showing up like this:
When i move the Camera up ore down, the black area changes also. I play around with Clipping and that did not help.

I also checked all the faces orientated in the right way.

But when i apply another material to the Floor, the Black Areas are gone.
I used the same "beton-material" i used on the Floor, on a wall and there it shown up right.
(Beton-Image for Color channel + Beton-Image for Normal Map)

I am not sure, if this a Camera ore a material problem...
You can also download this project file here an have a look on it: https://we.tl/t-EAdl5p9Slk
So i really hope someone have an idea ore a tip, what else I can try!
Thanks a lot! :)

It's your "Normal Map" "Tangent Space". Try a different value and the blackness will in- or decrease. Or, maybe, if you like this: put the alpha-plaster17 as strength (Normal Map) and color to color.


Can I delete geometry by rendering? I know it could be weird, but can I for example take all the objects in the scene (static objects) and then render them with low polygons? like transforming them or something like that?

You can use the Decimate modifier.

Select your object, and in the Properties panel, click the Modifiers tab; there, click Add Modifier and select Decimate. There are a few modes to select from, which give you a slightly different result, but you'll probably want to use Collapse. This mode as a Ratio slide, which you can use to control how much to decimate your object.


Proper (professional) way to texture paint? This is not Blender specific, I apologize I don't think this should be posted here (maybe meta) but BA wasn't much help, I thought adding a bounty will get me an answer (will add 50 when it lets me).

Any mods pls feel free to delete or do what you wish with this post.

I have researched and looked at many tutorials but I feel like EVERYONE is doing it "wrong".

When texture painting, every tutorial has you painting in the highlights and shadows (folds in clothing, cracks etc), wouldn't painting an "albedo" map be the "correct" way? If the camera is rotating around the character, wouldn't things look off if the highlights and shadows were already painted in? Shouldn't those be dynamic and let the normal and bump handle all that?

Am I wrong in my thinking or am I missing something obvious?

I am trying to make this a Blender specific question so it doesn't get flagged but I can't so :P

I am hoping one of the veterans could drop me a comment or something since I cant find answers anywhere else.

Thanks

Texture Painting is as varied in style as the actual mesh modeling and sculpting that you do as well - not everything is made with PBR in mind, so that is why you see tutorials that cover what would be considered to be 'handpainted' style texturing for low poly games.

When painting with realism in mind, I utilize an AO texture bake to start with for multiple uses as in masks for wear,dirt, grime, scratches, etc. I use a color map for the main colors of the material, and then I paint roughness and metalness maps for plugging into the shader. I use custom brush images for patterns, and I play around a lot with setting up bump from the different stencils so that I get a decent amount of realism - but even through all this, I have focused mainly on texture paint with faking realism and less on baking down the output to get it ready for games, as I usually only go so far as to get a still image ready for a packaging demo or a product shot for a job at work - otherwise, I just create what I want for my own taste.

If you haven't already done so, check out BPainter add-on for 2.79 as it gives you a lot of really good advantages when painting in Blender - lots that help with organizing nodes in the background and such.


Leaf images rotated wrong way on Sapling tree Gen I made plant using curve > Sapling tree Gen. But the leaves are placed in wrong directions. How to fix it and make it right?

Well depending on what option you picked when you made the leaves for the tree you will have to fix this differently.

For both Rectangular and Hexagonal you will need to edit the UV map for the leaf object.

For the cube leaf the key is to get the stem of the leaf to line up on the bottom of the UVs in the center.
In the case of the Hexagonal leaf you want the bottom point of the hexagon to be right on the stem.

When you have the UVs set up that way the stem of the leaf will be right on the branch. If the leaf is not in the correct orientation from the branch you need to rotate the UVs. Start by rotating the UVs by 90° then see which way you need to go. (A UV Image Editor and 3D view open helps immensely here.)

For the DupliVert or DupliFaces options it is easier, you only need to align the origin of the leaf object onto the stem. A picture does a better job of explaining it:

Remember here you are moving the object in edit mode.


Copy RENDER OUTPUT (image result) to Windows clipboard? How possible would it be to include a function in the Compositor, UV Editor and Image Editor that can "COPY TO CLIPBOARD" whatever image they have active?
The image editor "Copy to Clipboard" function is the one I'm most interested in, since I composite and do animated storyboards all the time.
It's too long of a hustle to do:
F12, Image>save as>target directory>type the name of the file> Switch application >file>open>target directory>image>ctrl+a> ctrl+c, switch application document tab, and finally ctrl+V just to layer the concept I am working in.
Image>copy Render Output to clipboard, switch application, CTRL+V seems speedier.
The "Edit externally" command already has this in mind, but the general idea with this new command is to assign a shortcut, use it in blender, switch applications, CTRL+V (even email windows would work best in this approach).
Please help me develop this as a simple addon for the Image Editor first. Thanks!

This is what I found in doing the system clipboard with python: https://pypi.org/project/pyperclip/
As for pasting images, I think the clipboard actually stores them as a URL like image://C:/Users/Jaywright/AppData/Local/.temp/save_here.png so you might try that in just the regular python IDE to start with.


Cannot continue my model because of unexplained angles in the X Y and Z orientations Hey everyone (something happened to my account so had to ask this question again),

I'm very new to Blender and i'm learning a lot through tutorials. I have come to a part where I cannot continue because the orientation of my X Y and Z is completely off for some reason. In every orientation (Normal, Local, Global), it doesnt seem to align to the right path my vertices and edges have. This way I cannot move my edges and vertices around without them crooking to the left, or down. I have tried looking at other posts and problems on Google too, but I cannot find it and I also don't know how to describe this problem to be honest because I am so new to Blender. Now it seems like I cannot even individually pick a vertice or edge without moving the entire thumb.

How can I make the X Y and Z orientation back to the default settings so i can move my vertices and edges in the right direction?
How can I tell Blender I want to move around vertices and edges without moving the entire thumb or object around?

I have attached an image here.

Thank you in advance, if I could fix this problem, and understand this for the next time, it would help me incredibly.

Try to change the transform orientation type to Global (in your case it is set to Normal).

You may also add a custom transformation for precise axes set up. Press Ctrl+Alt+Space and name it in the Transform Orientations panel of the Properties Shelf (N). In my case I filled the edge loop with a face (F) to set up the axes along its normal. Then added a custom transformation, deleted the face (X-->Faces) and extruded the edge loop along local Z axis (pressed E, then Z twice).

If the entire thumb moves while transforming it means, that you've enabled the proportional editing. Disable it.


Half ellipsis extrusion Hi, i'm new with blender, i was already making some things and reading many questions & answers here to learn. But now i would like to star with some personal projects, and here is where the problems begin...

One solution is to bend a flat font/mesh with a Curve modifier. After the modifier has been applied, the outer edges can be extruded down and scaled to a zero depth - in my case that is the Z direction.


Hair particles will not appear on specific faces? I wonder why when I try to add hair particles to a specific face, it wouldn't add. Is there a way to make it work?

You need to click Use modifier stack in particles settings:


How to achieve a realistic display with bright colours? I would like to model an iPhone wich shows a display with bright colors. When I am using dark color palette, there is no problem but when I use the light color palette, then it appears too brigh.

The problem you have here is that the output from the Image Texture is connected to both the Base Color and the Emission inputs of the Principled shader node. The Emission will produce the effect of the glowing screen while the Base Color will also produce an image of the glowing screen - in addition to the Emission but based on any incident light. This means you are effectively including your 'screen' image twice - once for emission and again in response to any light hitting the surface - so it appears "too bright".
The solution here is to either just use an Emission shader node in place of the Principled shader (Principled is arguably overkill for this situation) or simply disconnect the Base Color and set it to black (or a suitably dark color) to represent the screen when it is 'off'.


Instantiating different number of objects per spline I have a spline object that is made up of 3 splines and I want to instantiate an object using the "Evaluate Spline" node along each spline in the list, but I need to feed in the number of instances per spline in the splines list via an integer list. I'm kinda stumped cuz if I had the same number for the splines and the instances per spline, I would have been able to solve this within a single loop, but here I need n number of instances for the first spline, and n number of instances for the second spline and so on. Naturally, I want this system to be adaptive, like if I have 6 splines in a spline object, I will feed in 6 integers to specify the number of instances per spline in the splines list. Hope the explanation was clear enough :-)
Here's a snapshot illustrating what I'm after:
Thank you :)
AJ

These should work. The one uses the splines points and a multiplier as an input integer for the amount of points to evaluate per spline.
The other uses a integer list you can edit, each input corresponding to a spine in your spine list.
Both of these output a list of locations which can be fed into a Instancer node.
A 3d viewer node can also be handy to see which integer list input corresponds to which spline.


Display an armature with one root bone I have a .bvh file which has only one root bone, and when I import it through blender it doesn't appear. I don't know how I can make it appear so that I can see the animation.

The problem is, that the animation uses so much space, that it doesn't appear anywhere near the center. You could scale the armature and its animation while importing

or use the Graph Editor, which is more flexible.

You can use the Graph Editor to move G and  scale S the F-Curves accordingly. Select the Armature ("bag") in the Outliner, switch to Pose Mode, press A to select the bone and switch a window to Graph Editor.


How to create this type of gradient background lighting? How to create this kind of lighting in blender?

This image itself was create from blender!
But whenever I try to make this kind of lighting I always get all white results like this,

Can anyone help me with it? :)
Just the light setup.

To do this you can use a textured emission plane (you could simulate it with an out of focus mesh lamp too, but a plane will be less noisy).

Add a big plane behind your scene:

Give it a procedural gradient material:

The Object coordinates are centered around the object's Origin, so by default that's where the gradient will be centered.

To adjust the size and scale of the gradient, you can tweak the settings on the Mapping node

I've also made the plane brighter than it appears to the camera by using different emission shaders based on the Camera Ray output of the Light Path node, to avoid over exposing the background a lot.
Render

This way glossy floor plane will reflect the light from the plane, creating a neat effect.


Only render Frames with Markers (one camera only) I've been looking for some addon or something to render only the marked frames on timeline, i found this answer here on the stackexchange Render Videos From Marker Ranges?

The thing is this script only works with multiple cameras, i have only one camera that goes all aorund the scene but i only want to render the frames that i've marked on timeline.

Is there someone who can help me modify this script? Or find a better solution?

Sort of compilation from various answers (only tested in 2.79):

import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene

# get existing output path
fp = scene.render.filepath

# set output format to .png
scene.render.image_settings.file_format = 'PNG'

marker_frames = [m.frame for m in scene.timeline_markers]
#print(marker_frames)

for m_f in marker_frames:

    # set marker as current frame
    scene.frame_set(m_f)

    # set output path so render won't get overwritten
    scene.render.filepath = fp + str(m_f)
    bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True) # render still

# restore the filepath
scene.render.filepath = fp


Cannot end extrusion along the z axis? I was extruding on the z axis, then attempted to extrude along the x axis. I tried to right click to cancel the z axis extrusion (unsuccessfully). Then right clicked again, to newly select the faces on the x axis to extrude (unsuccessfully). The two arrows, (x,y front view) remained were they were.  I can change the axis constraint, but I can't extrude from a new location and would like to.
Thank you for any help you can offer!

To cancel an axis constraint, such as the Z axis, hit the same axis key two more times and that will remove the constraint. You can then hit another axis key for another constraint.


Falloff node setup similar to 3DS Max falloff node? Need perpendicular / parallel falloff for correct fabric rendering Notice: After all of the awesome advice given here, I ended up creating a node group that clones 3DS Max's falloff map (for the most part). Feel free to download in my latest answer to this question.
In 3DS Max and VRay, I can create a "Falloff" map. Here is a description from the docs:

The direction used to specify the angular falloff varies, depending on the methods you choose. However, with the default settings, the map generates white on faces whose normals point outward from the current view, and black on faces whose normals are parallel to the current view.

I'm not sure at all how to implement this in Blender - I am not a node wizard. but it's extremely valuable when creating materials for fabrics and textiles. Intuition tells me someone has managed to implement this already.
Here's a screenshot:

Edit: I just created a couple of images that show this map in action when rendering clothing / textiles. I would recommend opening both images in to tabs and then quickly cycling between them to see the change.
With Falloff:

Without Falloff:

Going to add an edit here. Here are the things I have tried so-far without much luck:

Layer Weight Node (Facing into MixRGB factor)
Fresnel Node
Velvet Shader BSDF (This has given me the best results so-far)

Velvet Shader attempt:

Can someone point me to a working/better implementation or substitute for this behavior?
Really appreciate any help at all.

"With the default settings, the map generates white on faces whose normals point outward from the current view, and black on faces whose normals are parallel to the current view."
What you're describing sounds like the dot product of the incoming vector and the normal vector.  Probably, clamped:

If I've misunderstood what "point outward" means, you may want to multiply the dot product by -1.0 instead of 1.0.
Use of the incoming vector might not be appropriate for Cycles-- some variation of the view vector (from camera data) might be appropriate instead, although I can't figure out what space that vector is in; or, you might just do it for camera rays only.  Remember, incoming vector can be incoming from camera, or incoming from reflection or refraction or anything else, given Cycles bounces.
The dot product does not give a value that varies linearly with angle.  It varies linearly with projection of incoming onto normal, which isn't the same thing.  It is common to prefer arccosine(dot(v1,v2)) to dot(v1,v2), which varies linearly with the angle instead.

Which requires a bit of remapping to pi-based stuff.  Both of these examples are black where the normal is perpendicular to incoming and white where it is parallel with incoming; the difference is how they interpolate between those two colors.


Issue with posing after resizing I'm working on animating a person climbing a building for a school project.  I have the rigged character and the model for the building, but the model for the character is far too large.  I used the scale tool to scale it down to the proper size, then began to model.  After I moved the first bone, what looks like a large blob appears under one of the character's feet.  This disappears if I go into edit mode, but is visible in object or pose mode in both solid and rendered view.  Any help would be appreciated.

Apply Object Transformations When Rigging

The problem with the figure's foot is that the scale of the figure and the scale of the rig are not both equal. This can cause unusual behavior like what you experienced.

To prevent this from happening, whenever you are joining a rig to a mesh, you must first always apply their scales so the scales are both set to 1.

The reason for this is simple: when you import a figure, it will default to have a scale of 1. Also, when you add a rig, it too will default to a scale of 1.

However, almost always the figure and the rig will be different sizes, so you naturally will change the scale and maybe even the rotation of one or the other so they match up and the rig fits right inside the model.

This results in a difference of scale (and maybe rotation) of the rig and the model. In your file, the figure's scale is 1, but your metarig's scale has been reduced down to 0.195:

(You can see the scale of objects in the Properties panel, which can be opened with N)

This difference of scales becomes problematic when the rig is joined to the figure.

Therefore, whenever you finish scaling and/or rotating both your figure and your rig, you need to Apply Object Transformations to both the figure and the rig. When you are Applying Transformations, you can apply the location, rotation, and/or scale.

Here is how you do that, first for either the rig or the figure, then for the other:

In Object mode, select either the rig or the figure
Then use one of these methods to apply transformations:

3D View Header -> Object -> Apply -> Rotation & Scale
CTRLA -> Apply Rotation & Scale

The main goal is to have the Rotation for both rig & figure set to 0 for X, Y & Z, and also to have the Scale for both be set to 1 on X, Y & Z.

Then your rig will work properly.


how to add transparent text and shapes to a movie? I have read this post on how to add text to a movie.

Folowing the tuto I succeded to also add some rectangular plane below the text, all on my movie in the VSE.

But, my question is : how to alow the text or the shape to be transparent over the movie ? I would like my plane shape to be something like 30% alpha. Alghough I did the setting in the 3D vue, the shape appears no transparent in the VSE.

The tuto gave some settings that seem to avoir transparency.

Thanks for help.

Blender VSE strips have a parameter called Opacity.  It is the 4th line in the N-panel for me.  If you set that on your overlays (and make sure the Blend mode is set to something sane like Alpha Over instead of Replace) it probably will accomplish what you want.


Transparent shadow not appearing in viewer node I am trying to create a transparent shadow using the compositor in blender 2.8, i used a image invert and viewer node to get rid of the white portion of the image, but the changed image wont show up in my viewer node in image editor, is there anything that i'm doing wrong here?

Not sure what you're trying to accomplish here.
Right now your compositing nodes will display nothing because there's nothing fed in the input color. So basically you ask Blender to display "nothing" according to an alpha map.

Besides, I'm pretty sure you want to display this shadow on the floor beneath your model. In which case, what you want to do is either use a material on that flood to display shadows where you want and not use compositing at all.

Something like that:

Compositing is meant to make changes on the rendered picture. May it be color corrections, deformations, ... But it's really on the rendered picture level, not on what will be rendered. Think of it like editing pictures with Photoshop, but using nodes.


how to view selected keyframes in clip graph editor I'm doing motion tracking in blender and having problem to view selected keyframes. Is there any way i can do 'view selected' the selected keyframes in clip graph editor ? Am i missing something here ? or this basic feature just doesn't exist in clip graph editor ?

Thanks

I'm not sure of what you are refering to "view selected".

Do you mean to only display the curves of selected components ?
If so, push down the little arrov button in the graph editor's header :

Do you mean to focus the view on your selection ? Simply hit the numpad . (dot) key.


Rendering a Transparent Object (with Outline added by Nodes) on a Transparent Background Hey there Blender Community,

I am attempting to render just the outline of a fully transparent object on a transparent background (in Cycles). Using a material index pass and an inverse Sobel filter, I am able to produce the outline effect successfully on a white background. See below:

However, when I make the film (the background) transparent, the outline disappears. Is there a way to keep the black outline of the fully transparent object on an a transparent background?

The same node setup, but with film set to transparent:

My thanks in advance for any assistance or pointers in the right direction.

Not the most elegant solution, and probably there is a better one, but if I understand correctly maybe this will help:

click to enlarge

Using a Color Key node to replace the white with transparent pixels, and adding the key to the image  seems to work well in this case.


Import and render raw volumetric data Is it possible in Blender to import and render raw volumetric data (outcome of fluid simulator)?

I have a set of 3d arrays of floats in C/C++ and I used to render it frame by frame with OpenGL using splatting. Now I would like to use Blender ray traycer to get much more realistic results. I would like it to look like a dense smoke. It would be nice to have realistic looking shadows and lighting too.

I appreciate any help.

EDIT:

I suppose Voxel Data with 8 bit raw files is the way to go.

I found this article. Following Leopold's comment gives me empty results. My files.
I feel I am close to the final solution, what am I doing wrong?

Now, in the Blender 2.9x series, it is actually possible to import/export openVDB volume files in and out of the scene.
See this in the Blender manual for 2.91
In fact, there is even a mesh to volume modifier for meshes in the scene, which is extremely helpful for rendering complex volumes in EEVEE without having to do serious procedural node working.


Flipping rectangle grid (or flipping tiles) with animation nodes Dear Blender and Animation Nodes Users

I'd like to create a flipping rectangle grid animation with a controller object. I need a tutorial on this, but I am not able to find any, which I deem good or up to date.

A similar effect, and tutorial can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qYNoXmbHZo

but this one uses python code inside AN, I think Animation Nodes knows the necessary things without writing any code.

Thank you in advance, Michael

You can start by inspecting "Transform Individual Polygons" template. THEN, if you are using AN version 1.6, you have this handy pivot thing:

http://animation-nodes-manual.readthedocs.io/en/latest/release_notes/v1_6.html

There is actually an example over there that allows you to flip polygon face.

A little bit of observation and experimentation and you will have the flip setup.


Can't make circular array around an empty I'm trying to make a circular array of objects around an empty, as most tutorials suggest however whenever I do this I get a load of weird random sized objects appearing.

It looks like the dimensions of the initial object changes to random large numbers and when I try to change them manually they just increase to even bigger numbers.

I thought this might be a bug in v2.78 so I uninstalled and got v2.79b but it still does the same thing. Here is a before and after selecting the empty as the object offset.

I may have missed the point of your question, or not understood what exactly you wanted to do, but ...

Ignore the empty and don't activate offset. Put the 3D cursor in the centre of the world (0,0,0)

Create a Bezier Circle

In the cylinder's modifier, change Fixed Count to Fit Curve.  Choose the Bezier Circle as the curve.

You'll get a vertical array of however many cylinders you need to fit the circumference of that circle.

With the Array selected, assign a new modifier - Curve - and choose the Bezier Circle as the curve.  I had to set the axis to Z to get what you see in the picture below.


Which is the path to particle drivers data? (Blender Python API) I have created a particle system in a plane which renders an object (UV Sphere) for each particle.
The instanciated UV Sphere has a driver in its scale properties, so the Spheres created with the particle system have this driver working on each particle. This means that I can add drivers to my particles and they work.

Also in the Blender Python API there are these functions in particle objects:

driver_add()
driver_remove()

(you can see them in bpy.data.objects['Plane.002'].particle_systems[0].particles[0])

Has anybody known where the drivers of particles are stored? Which is the property and its data path?

I have been looking for it in these paths:

bpy.data.objects['Foo'].animation_data.drivers -> all object drivers but not the particle ones
bpy.data.objects['Plane.002'].particle_systems["ParticleSystem"].settings.animation_data -> None

Here is the test file.

I appreciate any help you can provide.

An emitter object emits particles. It does not have any drivers associated with it that it passes onto particles. When it emits objects, the objects it emits as particles can have drivers.

You need to be looking in the original objects for the drivers, each object gets duplicated as a particle - the drivers the particles use are duplicated from the original object.

>>> bpy.data.objects['Sphere.048'].animation_data.drivers[0].driver.expression
'randf(0.25,0.9)'

As far as the existence of particle_systems[0].particles[0].driver_add() goes, I expect it only exists as an inherited function from the base class, same as keyframe_insert, items, keys... To add a driver to an individual particle would mean it only exists during the particles lifetime, meaning you would need to add the driver as each particle is created. The properties you can access from each particle object is only relevant to a particles existence, so I also expect that most of these values are 'driven' by the particle system and will not actually work with drivers.


There is weird artifact inside my model its not letting me sculpt properly! I made a rat head model from a quad mesh. Then I downloaded an fbx model and deleted its rig armature, resized it and put the rat head on the models head, and booled them together. I sculped the whole body without any problem but ehen i tried to smoothen the joining part of the head to the body. It didnt go well! I just cant smoothen the junction. What do i do? + later i checked that the quad mesh caused some artifacts when i booled them togather  [![i cant smoothen and join this area][1]][1]
[1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B9IsW.png![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T921Q.png)

using the simplify brush and smooth you should be able to smoothen the transition.

Another possibility would be some uneven normals or just a corrupted boolean operation. Therefore check out your normal direction and check your topology in wireframe view.

if none of those are helping, pease upload some further details by editing your question. Uploading a file is often also helpfull.


What are these handles? I have downloaded an fbx file.
When I import it into Blender, it shows some handles.

Can somebody tell me what these handles are and what they're used for?

Thank you!

These are so called "bones" they make up the "armature"
They are commonly used to control the mesh when animating.
Example: the bending of the fingers when doing a first is controlled by bones in real life, so is it in blender, but simpler.

In your case they control the animation of the pistol. Be it the magazine snapping out. The recoil. Or just the whole model when moving.

It's a large subject and you can watch many tutorials on youtube.


how can i separate dupliverts object on the circle after dupliverts of plank how can i separate duplicated object to independent object

Select circle.
SHIFTCTRLA Make Duplicates Real


How to add a ground for a model that is used as a displacement modifier? How would anybody go if you have a model and you use it as a displacement texture, but the ground to be separated from the model (not literaly separated, but to distinguish the ground from the model)? Maybe the boolean can solve the problem, but of big curiosity, what are some of the ways and approaches of doing that?

I'm aiming for this kind of result -

use an image to control the displacement:

Generate an image that controls an alpha channel for texturing

Use that image to combine different materials:


Howto "glue" input fields? Is there a way to "glue" input fields together in Python, like in the Properties > Render > Resolution?

It's not a layout box, it's not a IntVector...

I was surprised to see in how many ways a FloatVector can be displayed (e.g. numbers, RGB, RGBA, ...). Perhaps I missed an option somewhere?

This is an excerpt from properties_render.py. You can right click the property and choose Edit Source.

The properties are drawn using UILayout.column(). Specifically, it is the align=True, a property of the column, which causes the properties to appear to be 'glued' together.

def draw(self, context):
    layout = self.layout

    scene = context.scene
    rd = scene.render

    row = layout.row(align=True)
    row.menu("RENDER_MT_presets", text=bpy.types.RENDER_MT_presets.bl_label)
    row.operator("render.preset_add", text="", icon='ZOOMIN')
    row.operator("render.preset_add", text="", icon='ZOOMOUT').remove_active = True

    split = layout.split()

    col = split.column()
    sub = col.column(align=True)
    sub.label(text="Resolution:")
    sub.prop(rd, "resolution_x", text="X")
    sub.prop(rd, "resolution_y", text="Y")
    sub.prop(rd, "resolution_percentage", text="")


Create a compositing node 2D Vector from individual x & y components A node I want to use requires it's inputs to be Vectors. However, video tracking nodes output separate x & y components, not a Vector. I can't seem to find any node that allows me to create a Vector from these components within the node editor.

Am I missing something?
What would you recommend as a method of generating the vector input?

You can use a Combine RGBA node. This is because in practice color and vector inputs are more or less the same.


How to animate a chain unwrapping and sliding along a chest Please forgive me in advance if this is too basic a question. (I'm a beginner to Blender and animation).

From a high level perspective, what's the best way to animate a chain unwrapping and sliding out from around/under a treasure chest. Think of the chain wrapping the chest several loops, fastened by a padlock. The padlock is unlocked, and then the chain unwraps itself WHILE sliding out from under the chest (so there's some rotation and translation of individual links at the same time there is translation along the faces of the chest for the entire chain).

I know a bit about armatures and key shapes, having done some basic tutorials.

Many thanks in advance for some advice as to how I should think about setting up the animation!

I would create a curve; animate it along the wanted path, using hooks or the "AnimAll" addon; model two elements of the chain and repeat them with an array modifier; add a curve modifier to the mesh, pointing to the animated curve, then move along the X axis the mesh to have it follow the animated path.


Weird glitching after using solidify I was following some basic tutorial on youtube to make basic levels and after I used the solidify modifier to make the walls thicker, this weird glitching happened in the corners. Can you explain to my why and what should I do to avoid it? Thanks.

You need to remove Doubles from your mesh for the solidify modifier to work correctly.
Open the Specials menu and choose Remove Doubles.

Then enable Backface Culling and you will see that your mesh is "inside out ".
Correct this by selecting all then open the Specials menu again and this time choose Flip Normals.