How to apply mutiple images to the material of UV Unwraped mesh So, I've successfully modeled a sword in blender. Learned a lot. But still learning.

I followed some tutorials on youtube in order to learn how to texture the model.

However, what I've done is I've marked seams on several different parts of the Sword (Pommel, Hilt, Crossbar, Blade) And I've unwrapped each part separately. After this, I used a different image for each part of the blade.

I love the way it looks now, and I'd like to render it, but every time I try it doesn't show the textures I did with the UV Unwrap.

Upon further research, I found out that I have to make a material, and then apply the texture to the material.

My problem is that in every tutorial I've seen of this, its done differently, and most often the people in the tutorials are NOT working with multiple images.

Usually, they create a PNG. using their unwrapped objects, and the whole object is different colors but they're using a single Image, and I am not.

I'm very confused. I'd appreciate any help?

If possible, I'd like to simply take the way I have it textured with the UV unwrap (Which I can see when I change the viewport shading from "solid" to textured) and turn that directly into a texture that I can apply to a material, that I can assign to my model, and then render, without having to make multiple textures and multiple PNG.s and etc.

I need very clear, precise instructions, because I am very lost.

Any help would be appreciated.

**I'm using Blender Render, Not Cycles

What I'm going to show you one possible way to to join different textured objects into a single object with a single texture.

Here's the roadmap:

Assuming that we are starting with two separate object with assigned textures as in the picture (Texture A for the cube, Texure B for the sphere):

First step is to create a material based on the assigned texture to each object.

Part One - Creating basic textured materials in Blender Internal

Select one object (Cube in this case)
Go to the Material tab
Create new material (rename if wanted)
Go to the Texture tab
Create a new Material texture
"Type" must be "image or movie"
Choose the right texture from the built in browser (it will show you all the textures related to your file, so images you based your UV to must shown in the list)

A basic material where the texture is by default applied to the diffuse color of the shader has been created. Repeat the same processing for the other object.

The process is better explained in this video, or in this related answer

Part Two - Join texture in a texture atlas

First step is about obtain a single object

Merge all objects by selecting all of them and pressing ctrl+j

Now there is only one object with several materials applied. Blender conserves the information about what material was assigned to each face during the join operation.

By going in the "Object data" tab, you can see that there is only a UV map. This is because both of my objects had an UV map called "UVMap", so in the merging process the have been joined under the same name. Tey are now overlayed...but they still act as before in their proper texture space, as you can see in the viewport. If we want a single texture, we must avoid overlaying, so:

Create a new UVMap by clicking the "+" button.

This new UV, called UVMap.001, will contain the uv info about the texture atlas we are going to create. Select this map, but don't set as "Active for rendering".

You can see here what UVMap you are working on:

In the UV/Image editor, clic on the "X" to clear the editor and than create a new image. This will be the image to bake to.
You can rearrange the UVs as you wish or let blender do the job by clicking "Pack island":

Go to the "Render" tab, in the Bake panel, bake mode, select "textures" in order to bake the textures of your object's materials (Texture A and Texture B) to the Image (Untitled.001) which is below your selected UV map (UVMap.001).


Blender object being imported in Unity is invisible I'm trying to make a very simple object in Blender and export it to Unity. The object is a simple square that has a glowing (neon-style-like) rim (or frame).
What I did was adding square, inserting faces to create an inner square. Then I separated the planes (inner square and outer frame) to assing different materials to them. Then I assinged a material with red color and red emission to the frame (all I can think of to make it look neon-style) and just some black color material to the inner squre.
I selected both objects and exported as .fbx, then imported in Unity. But when I add this object to scene, it is invisible. What did I do wrong?
[I'm very new to Unity and really used Blender for the first time]

Since your plane is in $XY$ in blender, it's actually in $XZ$ in unity if you exported by default values, so you can't see it by its side.
Try change to 3d view and see if this is the issue
Also, it could be mesh normals which determines front faces. Blender renders both faces, front and back but in unity its just front by default, but in this case I don't think it's the problem.


UV unwrapping and texture issues I have a mode of a bathroom closet, and there is something wrong with the UV. I marked the seams, pressed "unwrap", but the checker texture look stretched for some reason.

And then I tried separating one of the doors and the checker texture changed, but I didn't touch the UV:

Then I got to the UV editor, and tried to scale and rotate the UV, but it didn't change how the checker texture look on the model:

And for some reason, when I try to look at an image texture, the UV editor is a rectangle and not square:

How can I solve it?

You need to connect your UV map to the Checker Texture.
Use Texture coordinate node for that.


Creating a Liquid Bubble Effect I saw some really cool 3d work here, and I want to know how to recreate this.

What I want in the answer:

How the particle system works (or model)
How to color the layers (the blue, red, and orange)
How to animate it (bubbling up and down)

It looks like the model is made using technique similar to metaballs in blender. To Create metaballs, in object mode Add > Metaball > Ball, and Add > Metaball > Plane for the surface
That kind of material can be achieved usin position from Geometry node, adding Separate XYZ, plugging z output to Math node set to "modulo" with unconnected socket at 1, and then plugging the output to color ramp. The color can then be plugged into whatever kind of shader you want to use (diffuse, glossy, emissive etc.)
In this i added the multiply node; by changing the value of it you can alter the band width. In color ramp, it is important to notice the interpolation set to constant.
If you create the metaballs used to make the scene in Object mode (not edit mode) they can be animated as any normal object (position/rotation/scale)

Here i animated two metaballs on a metaplane only in z position and two keyframes each.


An object is not showing in the rendered result I am very new to Blender and following the Blender Guru Donut tutorial from Youtube.
My particles are showing in the final render but the emitter is missing.

I am positive that I have ticked that camera icon in the Outliner as shown in the above figure.

When I render however, the sprinkles which are hair particles on the icing are shown, but not the icing itself which is the emitter.

How do I fix this?

You need to check Show Emitter through
Particle settings > Render > Show Emitter


how to modify / customize a coloramp? New to blender, coming from engineering discipline and want to learn more about rendering CFD/model results in Blender.

Right now I'm struggling with generating a coloramp for a 3d surface. What I've done is made a random 3d surface to test with, and developed a shading node setup to achieve a coloramp based on the geometry of each vertex. My current shading node setup and render looks like this:

Right now it looks fine and what I think it's doing is scaling the min/max z-values of the geometry to cover the entire coloramp.

What I would like to do is clip the colorramp. For example, to have a min value of -5 and a max value of 5. Anything below -5 will be red, anything above 5 green, anything in between interpolated.

I want to achieve this so I can have a constant coloramp/values between frames if my z-values change.

How can I go about doing this?

I'm not sure I follow your second (sub)question, but as far as the first question is concerned:
Node setup

The important node I think is the Map Range node, which will take the Z-component of the geometry as input (set your desired clamp ranges here) and maps them to [0, 1], which the ColorRamp node requires.
Result

In this animation, I am changing From Max in the Map Range node. As you can see, all values above From Max get clipped to the upper limit of the ColorRamp.
Hope this helps.


Flat quads (or, why is my mesh so funky?) I think my question relates to a fundamental of 3D modeling that I haven't picked up on yet. It's very simple:

Let's say I have a flat quad. A plane on the XY plane inserted into am empty blender file is a great example. Now let's say I start moving each of the 4 vertices around on in any direction, especially the Z axis.

At this point, there would still be one face, but its extremely unlikely that the face would be planar (I just learned this word). So blender does its best to make sense of what this should look like.

The problem I'm having is that it seems like my quads are always like this, but they never look the way I want. There are edges and seams that look like they are dangling in space, and what tends to happen is that my mesh looks great when viewed from most angles, but if you look at it from just the right angle, you notice the dangling edges or sometimes even some kind of impossible geometry. And so I might try to nudge the problematic vertices around, but this often seems to either make it worse, or just hide the bad geometry until you see it from a different angle.

For me, this always seems to happen whenever I'm trying to move vertices to add roundness to something that is originally square.

There is another question on here about how to actually flatten the quads. That's great, and I might use some of the techniques mentioned there. My question is:

Why does this happen? (Can someone explain this better?)
What are some tips and tricks to avoid this situation?
What are some tips and tricks to mitigate this situation?

EDIT Here is an illustration:

The overall mesh as viewed from a distance looks decent (for my skill level)

But if you get closer and look from a certain angle...

Super close up:

The "edge" that is pointed to by the arrow is not actually an edge, but some kind of artifact created when blender tries to show the quad. The way the vertices are positioned, it shouldn't actually be possible to see the sliver of the face that I marked in red, since this face is supposed to be around the corner from the edges. The edges should form the silhouette on the right side of my figure.

Here is the side view. Maybe it is the angled topology that skews the face in a funny way?

But I'm not looking for help with this one particular issue, but rather a better understanding of why this happens, and ideas to prevent this in future models.

As you already suspect, in three-dimensional digital graphics computer basically only know how to draw two things: Lines and Triangles
There are a few other primitives types (point clouds, volumes, voxels etc.) but for the sake of simplicity lets focus on the former two.
Historically speaking, in the first 3D modelling software you could only model with triangle based geometry, because it's the only unequivocally definable 3D structure with three points. Even Blender itself a few years ago as of versions pre 2.63 (when BMesh geometry engine was introduces) was still only able to define faces with 3 or 4 sides, not more.
As technology evolved it started being practical to define faces with more than three sides.
A quad, as you correctly stated is not unequivocally defined by those four points, it is not however mathematically undefined. Since computers only know how to draw triangles, in the background the software is trying to silently triangulate the shapes for you as best as it can, as you can see bellow.

Simple shapes are trivial, but more complex shapes (where supported by the software) are even more difficult to triangulate, and may often generate artifacts from unexpected or uncontrollable tessellation. That is one of the reasons why you will often hear people say you should strive to have a quad dominant topology.
Blender doesn't explicitly allow tessellation control, but other software or mesh engines some times have tools that allow controlling how a shape is triangulated (as is the case of 3DSMax 3D Polys, but not meshes).

TL;DR
Should you be worried by this? No, not in most cases.
This is normal behavior and non-planar shapes are totally expected (if not the norm) everywhere in your mesh. Modelling with planar faces everywhere would be extremely hard, or certain shapes would be downright impossible to achieve.
Some extreme cases can some times cause issues and should be avoided though, like concave planar faces, or very high distortion quads, but most others occurrences should be fine.
There are builtin tools in Blender to help with these, like the Mesh > Cleanup > Make Planar Faces, to help detect where issues might occur.
What you seem to be missing is the concept of subdivision. Except for hard-edge models most organic shapes are frequently modeled using a Subdivide Modifier, that will take care of automatically smoothing your surfaces. It will soften your geometry angles, while retaining a simple enough base mesh to work with, so that quads appear to have a smoother appearance.


No light in material preview and render My objects just don't get any light in render. And they look like empty png in render. It happened one day, I was working in Blender 2.8. Than I installed 2.9 and the problem was gone for some time. Now it happen again. I`m not very experienced user, maybe I just pressed the wrong button somewhere.

This is what I did: tick "High Quality Normals" in the Render Properties


Reverting an object back to mirrored state (for symmetrical editing) after "APPLY" in Modifier panel was used I created an animal body using planes, extruded it, then mirrored the extrusion. 2. I then clicked "APPLY" in the modifier panel so that I could extrude the legs individually in different positions on either side of the mirrored halves. Everything is fine up to here
Now I need to get back to where I can edit with symmetry (like you can do right after a mirror) and I can't find how to do that.

Delete half of your mesh, add a mirror modifier. Now you can tweak your mesh and all changes will be replicated across the selected axis.


Applying images(textures) to singular faces on top of UV Map? I was wondering how I can apply an image to singular faces on a mesh, but have the whole mesh still be UV mapped at the same time. Could I do this through face masking perhaps? I basically want to have the whole mesh UV mapped, but have different images appear on each face separately. Also, I want to be able to texture paint the mesh below the images. So, basically imagine a whole UV map that has been textured using texture paint, on all sorts of faces, and having a different image on each face on top of that texture paint. I would provide some sort of picture but I am not sure what I should show - seeing as I have never done this and don't even really know how to open an image on top of a UV map.

Thanks,

Best regards,

IdealistDeveloper

You don't provide enough details, maybe you could keep one unique UVmap and mix your pictures with a MixRGB node (as explained further), but it might simplify your work if you create 2 different UVmaps:

Now create 1 picture for each UVmap, for the second one keep a transparent background (when you create your picture, set RGB and Alpha values to 0). You can also export the UVmap and work the pictures in an image editor like Photoshop or Krita:

In the Node (Shader) Editor create 2 Input > UV Map nodes and select the 2 different UVmaps you've created, plug them into a Color > MixRGB node (by default choose the Mix mode), plug the 2nd Image Texture's Alpha output into the MixRGB factor. Then MixRGB > Diffuse > Material Output. If you only need one UVmap, skip the creation of the 2 UV Map nodes.

Now your background and your pictures mix on the surface of your object:


How do I make a Decal look worn? I have what seems like a simple example here.  I wanted to practice texture and lighting by making some simple M&M renders.  I used a NOISE texture for the surface to give it some "eggshell" quality in the render, I am progressing nicely.  Now I'm stuck...

I created the "M" logo as a PNG with alpha channel.  I applied it in the material using the image texture with mapping node and texture coordinates.  All basic stuff so far.

I can't for the life of me figure out how to use procedural nodes like Voronoi or Noise to make the stark white of the M Logo look "worn" so some of the color of the M&M show through, like it's scuffed.  Now the render isn't convincing because every M is too perfect.  I know I could use my image editing software to make some alpha transparencies in the PNG decal, but then they would be the same across all meshes, and I was hoping to use a NOISE node to randomize it a bit.

Can't I use a NOISE tesxture to a COLOR RAMP then make one of the colors ALPHA transparent thus having the M logo "Fade" and let the color show through?  I think I've tried 100 different things and I am not getting it.  (I am not a Blender expert but have an intermediate understanding of texture node setups...)

Here's a link to my .blend file in my dropbox, without ANY treatment on the M logo.  You can see they are too stark white and perfect.  I want to scuff just the logo up.  Any ideas?  Thanks in advance!  (Render is formatted for dual monitors so please ignore the odd render dimensions!)

Blend File in Dropbox

Given that you are using the alpha channel as a mask to control the mix of different elements, you need to make the mask less perfect. Instead of being a perfect white mask, you need to subtract from the white using a texture. Why subtract? Think of white as 1 and Black as 0. You want to affect the mask without adding any more information to the black areas.

Subtract a texture from the alpha channel, and use the result as a Mask to control the mix for the color for the shader.

Combining other textures and subtracting them from the alpha you can further distress a texture to seem more random.


Added meshes will not be aligned with the current transform orientation I have put an object in its own layer to edit it separately.
Changing the transform orientation to local shows the axes of the object itself instead of the global ones.

However, if I add a new mesh, it will get a rotation of that mesh (a plane in this example) that is aligned with the global axes.
Why?

edit
Here is how I expected the plane to be aligned: to the local axes.

After selecting your 'local coordinate' object, go to Edit Mode and select a face the represents your 'floor' rotation. Shift Numpad 7 will let you align your view to the Top view of this face, and in Object mode add your new object - and in the F6 panel/ tool bar operator panel, check 'align to view' and the new object should be aligned to your 'local coordinate' object.


ops.object.mode_set() not working on 2.78 When write ops.object.mode_set("EDIT") in console and press enter, it give me an error:

  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "", line 1, in
    File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py", line 187, in call
      ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), C_dict, kw, C_exec, C_undo)
  TypeError: Calling operator "bpy.ops.object.mode_set" error, expected a string enum in ('INVOKE_DEFAULT', 'INVOKE_REGION_WIN', 'INVOKE_REGION_CHANNELS', 'INVOKE_REGION_PREVIEW', 'INVOKE_AREA', 'INVOKE_SCREEN', 'EXEC_DEFAULT', 'EXEC_REGION_WIN', 'EXEC_REGION_CHANNELS', 'EXEC_REGION_PREVIEW', 'EXEC_AREA', 'EXEC_SCREEN')

You need to write mode= as shown here: bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')


how to rotate the world nodes I have got this beautiful node from free addon. It creates sky and clouds. I want the ground to be move up and down as  my requirement.

So any suggestion how can i rotate the ground up and down. Thanks

I don't think you can move skyline in these. You can only control the movement of the sun/moon and other parameters.

because these are similar to hdri, you can't really control such things, however there is some add on I forgot it's name that can make any hdri into a half dome, so it will close to a mesh.
P.S: I wanted to comment in stead of an answer, but I don't have enough reputation yet. because I may be wrong.


Cycles Material — A kind of glitter Hi guys,

I'm trying to simulate the metal flakes that you can see in this helmet. It looks close to a metallic paint + flakes, but it definitely is something else.

I found a few materials that come close to it, like Mike Pan's Car Paint Material, but if you look at the video it seems to only show up when it's in the specular and there's a bit of iridescence to it. Also, it completely disappears once it's outside the specular glow.

Do you guys have any idea how to approach this? Any idea of a material that's a bit closer to it?

Thanks!

You can achieve a similar result with a Voronoi texture controlling the rotation of an Anisotropic shader:

Which gives the following result:

You can change the color of the material to whatever you want. To make the glitter smaller, increase the Scale of the texture. Make sure to play around with the other settings, too! :)


I have tried to import EXR files to Davinci Resolve with the LUT's Here are some pictures of my settings and result:

On the right side of this image is the EXR file imported normally, and on the left side is a PNG without transparency. That's the look I want to get from the EXR file.

It is a different Image but has the same settings.

I have used the method described in this GitHub(https://github.com/sobotka/filmic-resolve) but my results are looking a bit janky.

And I have exported the multilayer EXR with Float Full. I don't know if that could be the problem.

This is my previous post from where I have the GitHub link:
EXR color difference to PNG

Question:

How to match an EXR (linear scene-referred information) to a PNG (in display referred values with sRGB "gamma" curves) of the same image in resolve?

The issue:

Even though both images are generated from the same render layer in blender, they are going through different pipelines and the values don't match: The PNG is encoded with a gamma curve (sRGB, 2.2) and the information has been scaled to fit within the 0-1 values of display referred, while the EXR is still in Scene-Referred values that exceed what the display is capable of representing on the screen. All values past 1 are displayed as "clipped" or "pure white".

A graphic to illustrate. Both images loaded in blender:

On the vectorscope you can see how the image brightess values for each channel are represented. The bottom of the scale is 0 (black) and the top 1 (or 100%, meaning white).

The image on the left is the EXR. Notice how values over 1 are ignored and "hard clipped". There is a flat line at the very top. All values higher than one or 100% are ignored.

If sampled, some of the values in this EXR exceed a value of 24 on the red channel, way over what the display can deal with.

On the right of the image is the PNG, the vectorscope shows how the highlights are scaled down to a displayable values (thanks to the color transforms called "filmic"). Note how they curve at the top, and some (in the green and blue channel) don't reach 100 percent, giving the flame a "yellowish" tone.

Bringing the files to resolve shows the same difference.

The EXR file:

The PNG one:

One solution:

To match the images, as cleverly pointed out by @Gez, both images would need to undergo the same color transforms.

Open fusion tab, load the EXR file and add a Ocio Color Space node, load the OCIO config file (config.ocio) from your blender folder and set the Source Space to Linear and output to Filmic Log Encoding. Since the Looks don't work in Resolve you have to add them manually using another node.

Add an OCIO File Transform node and look for the necessary LUT in the Looks sub-folder of the color management folder in Blender (in this example the lut is Filmic_to_0-60_1-04.spi1d for Medium Low Contrast). Set the direction to forward and the interpolation to linear.

The resulting image should be what you are looking for (on the left the PNG, on the Right, the EXR processed through OCIO nodes).

Note that Resolve is particularly tricky, using confusing (and sometimes wrong) terms, and has many settings that need to be correct for solution to work:
The EXR file should use the correct color space (in this case sRGB) and it has to be interpreted as LINEAR ("Gamma space":None), "Remove Curve" should be checked.

On the media tab, the Alpha channel on the EXR has to be set to "premultipy".

Here's the final image and scope readings:

Other Solution.

Install the filmic LUTs from "Filmic Resolve ( https://github.com/sobotka/filmic-resolve) on your system.

Set the Input and Timeline color spaces for the project to Rec709(Scene) but do not set any lookup tables.

Import the EXR normally and do not assign any LUTs or other pre-processing to it in the media section.

On the color section use two nodes to get the filmic look:

The first node uses a LUT-3D LUT-Filmic-Filmic Resolve-Scene Linear to Base Encoding.

The second node uses a LUT-3D LUT-Filmif-Filmic Resolve-Medium Low Contrast.


How can I render only shadow in Cycles? I've been trying to render only shadows in Cycles, is that possible? If so, how?

For example, when I render a character, I want Cycles to render only the shadow of the character.

A shadow catcher was added in blender 2.79.

There is no reason to use compositor tricks any longer to generate a shadow. You simply add an object (In my case a simple plane) and check the Shadow Catcher box.

Go to the Object tab of the Properties Editor. In 2.79 the Shadow Catcher option is in the Cycles Settings section. In 2.8 the Shadow Catcher option is in the Visibility section.

Here is what my rendered scene looks like so far.

Now to get just the shadow you need to disable the Camera visibility on all the other objects. This setting is in nearly the same place as the shadow catcher. Go to Object tab of the Properties Editor. In 2.79 it's under the Cycles Settings section. In 2.8 it is in the Ray Visibility subsection of the Visibility section.


Make "gaussian laser beam" (object with variable radial emission profile) Laser beams are usually not cylinders of light, but instead they have a smooth beam profile, where they are brighter in the center of the beam and dimmer towards the sides. The cross section typically looks like a Gaussian function, do they are often called "gaussian beams".

Consequently, in illustrations, the lasers are often rendered such that they are most intense in the center and fade out towards the sides. I have achieved this using a blur effect in the compositor, but since Blender can handle most of the other physics in the world, I would like to include realistic laser beams directly.

Here is what I have come up with so far, but I am not quite happy with the results:

The blue beam was created using the node layout described in this post, except that I swapped the order of the colors in the color ramp. This still displays very sharp edges and they do not match the natural background color.

For the green beam, I tried to do the most realistic thing possible: I combined a volume emitter with a volume scatterer object. In reality, it is the scattering of the laser beam by particles in the air that allows us to see the beam, so I thought that this was the most appropriate. I added a set of nodes (yellow) to control the longitudinal intensity of the emitter in order to make the beam brighter near the focus (right side). Then, I included a set of nodes (red) to control the radial intensity of the beam in order to give it a nice soft edge. However, I just scaled the intensity along the radial coordinate, but did not take into account the fact that the beam is getting smaller. So, there is a nice gradient of intensity near the left side of the beam, but it's still very sharp towards the right side.

So, I suppose the question is how do I scale the intensity of the emitter while taking into account the width of the beam?

Here is a node setup that approximates the Gaussian beam.

normalize the coordinates of the object by division on the dimensions
subdivide the radial dimensions "in this case Y and Z" on the beam length "X"
feed  Y Z into a Gaussian function to create the redial gradient
the longitude gradient is simple (beam length-X)

Coordinates node group

Gaussian function node group

The A input in the Gaussian function group controls the amplitude of the Gaussian function.
S_y and S_z control the Y and Z spread.

simple render :

another render :

.blend file
YA render


Why are there hexagonal holes in my donut? I'm currently making a donut using blender gurus tutorial. I have no idea why, but there are holes in my icing. Does anyone know what could be causing it? Thanks for any help.

I ran into the exact same problem when trying to follow the tutorials. It seems like Andrew unhides some vertices in the icing at one point but forgot to show it.

If you press Alt + H before applying the modifiers, it should work.


Controlling armature through python I need to control an armature using Python so that I can animate a biped model using data from a text file.  I've been using this tutorial and some other sources to try and do so, but I can never see any results in the rendered game window.

The code I have thus far is:

import GameLogic

arm = GameLogic.getCurrentController().owner

print(arm.channels['Upperleg.L'].rotation_euler)

arm.channels['Upperleg.L'].rotation_euler = [5, 5, 5]
arm.update()

print(arm.channels['Upperleg.L'].rotation_euler)

In the console, the values for BL_ArmatureChannel.rotation_euler are changing...

<Vector <0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000>>
<Vector <5.0000, 5.0000, 5.0000>>

...but nothing is happening with the model linked to the armature (not visually at least).  If I change BL_ArmatureChannel.rotation_euler to BL_ArmatureChannel.joint_rotation the values being printed in the console don't change at all.

On my armature, I have an "Always" sensor attached to a "Python" controller to execute the script.  There are no IK constraints on the armature and no other sensors/controllers/actuators.

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.  I have a tight deadline on this project and I can't seem to get this very simple (but necessary) part of it working.

I'm afraid dynamically changing the mesh connected to the armature is not possible inside the Blender game engine without implementing it as a new feature in the source code.

All deformations of meshes must either be done vertex by vertex or through actions in the Dope sheet editor.

If you create action logic bricks that correspond to the limb movement you are trying to get to work, you should be able to get limited model deformation movements going. Changing an action actuator's start and end frames is possible when the game engine is running. This gives you some of the control you seek.


How can I get the number of vertices/triangles per object? I'm working on a scene that's getting complex: I have 30 objects for a total of about 5 million triangles. I start to be concerned about performance.
I would like to know which of the objects contribute the most to this high amount of triangles to focus my optimization efforts.

Unfortunately, selecting an object doesn't change the totals (I seem to remember it did in earlier versions of Blender).

Is there a way (built-in or with a plugin) to display the number of vertices/faces/tris per object ?

Are there any tools or techniques that could help to analyse the performance of the scene ?

If you Tab into edit mode with the object selected, the poly count changes to the object.

Before entering edit mode:

After entering edit mode:


How to uv unwrap the handle of my mesh separately? I'm trying to unwrap the handle of the cup separately but the faces/edges are a bit messed up and finding hard to make a clean cut of it.

Your handle isn't entirely cut from the mug.
There are seams on only three edges, one is still connected.

Disable the Subdivision modifier to see the edges better.

This is one of many ways to unwrap a mug handle.
Notice the seams separating it from the rest of the mug


No attribute "rotation_euler" on a KX_GameObject? To begin, here's my code:

import bge
from bge import logic
import random
from math import degrees

cont = logic.getCurrentController()
own = cont.owner
scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
rotation = own.worldOrientation.to_euler()
rotation_x_round = round(degrees(rotation.x), 3)
rotation_y_round = round(degrees(rotation.y), 3)
rotation_z_round = round(degrees(rotation.z), 3)
own["x"] = rotation_x_round
own["y"] = rotation_y_round
own["z"] = rotation_z_round

own.rotation_euler = Euler((10, 10, 10), "XYZ")

I am trying to set the rotation of my object, not add rotation. In the code, own.rotation_euler is what creates the error. It is telling me there is no attribute "rotation_euler," so I tried changing the line to the following: own.worldOrientation = (10, 10, 10). This one works; however, as I've assumed, it didn't rotate it correctly as it rotated the object to a number which seemed independent of my input. I have come up with my code from this question. Why does Blender's rotation_euler not work? Thanks!

Also, the .blend (that you can use as a start) can be found here.

Details
A KX_GameObject has no attribute called "rotation_euler".
What you request for is KX_GameObject.worldOrientation or KX_GameObject.localOrientation as you mentioned in your question description.
Be aware the orientation is a 3x3 matrix. The setter accepts Euler and a 3-tuple with Euler coordinates for your convenience. It will automatically convert it to a 3x3 matrix.
I'm pretty sure your observation of

[...] it rotated the object to a number which seemed independent of my input.

is not correct.
Answer
You answered your question by yourself: own.worldOrientation = (10, 10, 10).
Remarks:

A rotation matrix does not deal with angles, it is a linear equation system. It is a Cartesian coordinate system. You will never be able to directly read any angles from it. But you can convert the coordinates to a different coordinate system e.g. polar coordinates via mathutils' Matrix.to_euler(order, euler_compat).

Euler coordinates are angles given in rad (not degree). It is a Polar coordinate system.

The value 10rad will automatically reduced to the first period of the radian angle measure system's range (-pi ... +pi) which is -2.5664rad or -147°.

To convert degree to radian you can use the python library math e.g. math.radian


Smooth edge loops on sphere I'm trying to model indented circles onto a sphere with clean topology. I think I have accomplished that, but I am struggling to maintain the smoothness of the sphere with the added edge loops. I can't remove these added ridges. I've tried to increase subsurf, subdivide, and manually add in edgeloops to even out the topology density, but this just exaggerated the effect. How can I maintain a smooth spherical look while still having a clean topology for these indents? I created the sphere by subdividing a cube several times, and then applying a subsurf.

You should try to avoid those extra edge loops. If your sphere has not enough vertices to allow you to create your holes then recreate a new sphere with more vertices, but it looks like you have enough. Also, before the hole extrusion, you can use a Shrinkwrap modifier with a second sphere as Object to make sure that the whole shape is still a sphere.


How can I preview all of my video strips? I have pressed something, not sure what... and now I cannot preview all of the strips in my video, eg; I can preview sound, but not image. If I add a new clip, then this previews fine.

The strips I can't preview seem to be faded out in the video sequence editor, how do I get it back? see image!

Thank you in advance for your help :)

Just select the faded strips and press Alt+H and the hidden strips i.e your transparent strips, will be unhidden. You probably pressed H which is used to hide.


3D render - requested side-by-side but got anaglyphic - how to fix I am trying to render a Blender image for Google Cardboard.

I followed the instructions in rendering 3D video/image for google cardboard with the default scene, but it gave me the image for coloured glasses, which I gather is called anaglyphic. I am using Blender 2.77a.

Does anyone know what I should do to fix my render?

OK, The answer seems to be:

There is another set of options on the 'save as' dialog, and you need to set the 3D option and the side-by-side option there too.

See https://www.blender.org/manual/render/workflows/multiview/usage.html for a lot more detail on this.


Why isn't my node setup working to create a smoke effect in cycles? I looked up how to do smoke in cycles, and ended up here. Following their setup, I ended up with a completely transparent object. I tried to apply the material to a cube, and placed a Suzanne head (with no material applied) behind it to better see the effect. I have attached images of the scene in solid view and rendered view, as well as an image of my material nodes. If other screenshots or info are needed, just ask.

Alright, I'm a fool. Thanks to pycoder for pointing out my error. I forgot to add the Quick Smoke Simulation. It seems to work now. I have lots of smoke! Thanks!


operator draw() method in Node Editor I am creating a script that creates node in the node editor. I need to accept some properties from the user after creating the node. So I wrote a draw method.
But looks like operator.draw is not being called when the context is the node editor. I have put a print statement inside draw(self, context) to verify this. If I change the space type to 'VIEW_3D', the draw method is called.
Is the operator draw method only available in 3d view?
Edited with example:
In example below the message "inside op draw" is called on click of panel in 3d view not in node view:
import bpy

bl_info = {
    'name': 'test node editor op',
    'category': 'Object',
    'blender': (2, 80, 0),
}

class my_op(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = 'object.test_op'
    bl_label = 'test node op'
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    x : bpy.props.FloatProperty(name='X')
    y : bpy.props.FloatProperty(name='Y')

    def execute(self, context):
        if(context.area.type == 'VIEW_3D'):
            bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(enter_editmode=False, align='WORLD', location=(0, 0, 0), scale=(1, 1, 1))
            bpy.context.object.location.x=self.x
            bpy.context.object.location.y=self.y
        else:
            if(bpy.context.active_object!=None):
                if(bpy.context.active_object.active_material == None):
                    m=bpy.data.materials.new('my material')
                    bpy.context.active_object.data.materials.append(m)
                bpy.context.active_object.active_material.use_nodes = True
                n = bpy.context.active_object.active_material.node_tree.nodes.new('ShaderNodeValue')
                n.location = (self.x, self.y)

        return {'FINISHED'}

    def draw(self, context):
        print('inside op draw')
        col = self.layout.column()
        col.prop(self, 'x')
        col.prop(self, 'y')

class simple_3dview_panel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = 'simple 3d'
    bl_idname = 'simple_3d_panel'

    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'

    bl_region_type = 'UI'
    bl_category = 'My View 3D Panel'

    def draw(self, context):
        col = self.layout.column()
        col.operator('object.test_op')

class simple_node_panel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = 'simple node'
    bl_idname = 'simple_node_panel'

    bl_space_type = 'NODE_EDITOR'

    bl_region_type = 'UI'
    bl_category = 'My Node Panel'

    def draw(self, context):
        col = self.layout.column()
        col.operator('object.test_op')

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(my_op)
    bpy.utils.register_class(simple_node_panel)
    bpy.utils.register_class(simple_3dview_panel)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(simple_node_panel)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(simple_3dview_panel)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(my_op)

if(__name__ == '__main__'):
    register()
```

Yes, you are right. The operator draw method is only available in 3d view and not in node editor.


How to create amazing looking low poly stone wall? I am trying to create a dungeon in Blender and I want to add some low poly stone walls to it.

Something like this:

There's a quick way to create this kind of low-poly stones: The Bisect tool:

On the tool panel, keep pressing on the Knife tool button to have access to the Bisect.
Select your object, go in Edit mode, select the edges you want to cut (probably select all), use the bisect.
Change the options in the Operator box (Inner or Outer to choose what part you want to cut off, Fill to keep the object closed).
Select all to redo. There might be some shortcuts to redo easily (and not loose the last Operator settings) but I don't know them.
Add some details with the knife if necessary (last picture).
Link-duplicate (AltD) the stone to only use several ones in your scene.


why does baked procedural texture look pixelated basically I have a procedural texture that is supposed to look like rust and I want to convert the procedural texture into an image based texture but my problem is the baked texture looks very blurry and not nearly as sharp here is a comparison

I also have normal maps that I want to bake but I'm not sure how to do it. I'm not sure why the texture comes out blurry because I did bake the texture to 4096X4096. for baking I used the emission shader and I baked the image coming off the mix shader which goes into principled.
here is the blend file

There will always be a loss in quality when baking a shader to an image. The higher resolution the blank image you are baking to is, the better the resolution the texture appears. Try making the blank target image higher resolution.


Rounded caps on a Bezier Curve pipe This may be a simple question.

Essentially I am procedurally generating random 3D figures using a bezier curve and bezier circle bevel object, however, one of the only things I can't figure out how to do is how to round the end caps of the object.

I have tried using a taper object like suggested here but have had only limited success.

This is about as close as I've gotten:

I should note that all of this is done through Python and I'm not modeling any of this by hand. So any suggestions for how I can make the rounded caps programmatically would be greatly appreciated.

Increase curve resolution

As stated in the Blender Artist thread you linked, you'll need to guarantee enough resolution to your curve in order to see the effect of the taper object in the starting and ending tip. In your image you are using something like 12, while the following image has a value of 512.

If you need to keep the polycount low, you could also vary the resolution of the curve only locally. A possible workaround could be yo interpose a "strategic" handle very near the tip without altering the overall curve aspect. See the difference between the had and the tail in the image below despite the curve object resolution is left untouched. The following curve has 3, not two handlers:


Problem with particles, converted into mesh objects I have an object with a particle system.
The particle system emits another object as a hair.
I use "Convert" button in modifers tab in order to turn the "particles" into simple mesh objects.

But then I face the problem:
It seems like those converted particles-objects, are still connected to each other somehow. So If I select one object and go to edit mode - all of them goes to edit mode. And if I change one of them in edit mode, all of them will be changed. I also can't join them into one object.

Why id it happening, and how I can disconnect them and get simple mesh objects?
Thank you very much in advance!

In Object Mode select all your objects. Press U and unlink the object and the data to make single user objects.


Why is this object completely black while in edit mode? My object in Edit mode has gone completely black in edit mode, and I cannot seem to correct it.  I was following a tutorial at the Lyndia site working through a UV example, and I never went much further than unwrapping the object, and it did not appear to be the same object the tutorial was illustrating and eventually got to this state trying to remove extra vertices that were showing up.  I also tried to remove the seams, but cannot even add them nom

I am going to start the project again, but I would like to know what happened, so I do not do it a gain unless I need to.  Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

In this case mesh is built with too many vertices and faces serving no purpose for this not complex mesh. Initially it has slightly more than ~2000 polygons which is too much for that.

Select all with A, press W > Remove doubles. It will tell you that around 2000 double vertices was removed.
Select all if not selected and press Ctrl+N to recalculate normals. The model will look as usual from now on.

Read about normals: Why are some of faces in my mesh darker


Any idea how to fit text width to screen What I need is a way to dynamically fit text to a certain size. So more characters, smaller the text size, less characters, bigger the letter. I tried lattice, drivers, various constranints bit didn't find a way to do it.

Simple Driver

A possible solution could be adding a Scripted Expression Driver to the Font Size Property:

fact / len(bpy.data.objects['Text'].data.body)

where:

fact is the multiplier that determines the Font Size (in this case fact = 1)

Text is the object name

Reference

This solution is "text agnostic" (since it is based on dimensions, it works with every characters)

Make a linked copy (Alt + D) of the text object and use the copy as reference to calculate the scale.

Add drivers to the Scale Property
Use this formula in the X Scale
Driver (see picture below):

0.7 * container/reference

where:

container is a new variable from container dimension.x (the blu rectangle)

reference is a new variable from reference dimension.x (the linked copy of the text object)

0.7 is the factor to fit the text into the container
Copy the X Scale Value to the Y Scale Value:

This is the final result:

Changing the reference and container size, the text size will change accordingly.

Move the reference object on a hidden layer...


What does 'Autorun disabled' statement mean? Could someone explain me what does this statement mean and what option should I click when it pops up?

Blender comes bundled with python. Malicious scripts written in python could potentially damage your computer. As a security measure the automatic running of python scripts has been disabled since version 2.6.
What this most likely means is that there is a piece of python code that is controlling the driver.
You can allow blender to auto run scripts by changing your user preferences. To do this press Ctrl + Alt + U, then head over to File and enable Auto Run Python Scripts. Although it is unlikely that someone will distribute a malicious blend file you should still make sure where you download .blend file from

More information on Scripting & Security at the official documentation.


How to make emission object transparent in EEVEE? I would like to make this emission material I made transparent in order to make it look like an energy field and be able to see the door behind it:

Tried the alpha blend option in EEVEE but it did not work

And idea how I can do that?

Use something like this. make sure to change your blend mode.

For an energy shield effect, you can try adding a wave texture (vertical lines) with a bit of distortion to make it look "energized", and mixing it with a gradient texture to make the field "weaker" in the middle.


How can I create a Mobius ring? I may be going about this the wrong way.

I want to create a Mobius ring. I managed to do it by twisting (rotating using proportional editing) then using a curve modifier. But the faces were full of creases no matter how I smoothed them.

I then tried to extrude a plane converted to a curve which was getting there. But I cannot see a way to join two edges of the Mobius ring with a surface.
I would appreciate any pointers.

Stephen

The easiest way (I think) to create a Mobius ring is to use a bezier curve with an extrude value.

Add a bezier curve

Extrude and move the curve points into a rough circle.

Increase the 'Extrude' value on the curve properties to give the curve thickness:

The trick is to pick one of the middle curve points and press Ctrl+T to start the 'Tilt' tool. This will allow you to rotate the curve point. Type 180 while using this tool to completely flip the curve point.

You should end up with something like this:

There are actually 4 points in this curve but the last 2 are exactly on top of each other (lower left) to complete the circle.
Convert the curve to a mesh, enter edit mode and merge the start and end vertices using the Alt+M 'Merge' menu.
However, this may cause shading issues as the normals wont know which part of the mesh is 'inside' and which is 'outside'.


Why can't I set a rotation keyframe on this object without it setting the same keyframe on the parent armature? Deleting one KF deletes the other too Here's a partial hierarchy of my current Blender scene:
Armature
\--Mesh 1 (parented to a bone)
   \--Bezier 1
      \--Bezier 2
      \--Bezier 3

Bezier 2 and 3 were "Duplicate Linked" from Bezier 1, so they all share the same curve data, but I'm not sure whether that has anything to do with the issue.
Anyway, what happens is, I rotate Bezier 1, and then set a keyframe on that rotation. It appears to work fine at first. But then when I change frames, suddenly I see the entire armature rotate to some weird angle. Then, when I click on the armature, I see a keyframe on its (object-level) rotation as well, which I never set. I can remove the armature keyframe and put the rotation back to zero, but then it removes the keyframe from Bezier 1 as well.
I don't want to share the .blend file just yet, but I do have a copy saved at this point for when I do in the future. In the meantime though, is anyone aware of anything that could potentially cause this behavior? Or can it only be a bug in Blender?

Turns out this was a case of user error. Bezier 1 was using the same action as the armature, and this is the normal behavior in that situation.
I was (incorrectly) thinking that an action just stores the entire timeline, including keyframes for each individual object that uses that action, because I hadn't had any problems using it that way with armatures. But in actuality, an action just stores the individual properties that are animated, and applies them to every object that performs the action, unless the object doesn't have that property. Which does make more sense in hindsight. I haven't had any problems using a single action for multiple armatures, but that's only because they don't have any bone names in common.


Is there a way to hide freestyle outlines on Mask objects Is there a way to hide freestyle outlines on Mask objects. No matter what I have tried it the outline is always there.

Blender's FreeStyle functionality is a rendering engine, which means that it is not object-based. You can only turn it off for the whole scene.

Take a look at this picture from the Blender Manual

The first box is your 3D scene with all its objects. Everything else in the process happens after the objects, their positions and materials are processed.


extrude works like ctrl + extrude When I hit e without holding ctrl it extrudes by units. When I hit e holding ctrl it extrudes normally. How to swap that?

Sorry for my english and thank you for your help.

Try to disable the Snap option (magnet icon button on the bottom horizontal menu bar of the 3D View)


Is there a way to paint text onto a texture in Blender? Recently I have been painting textures in Blender, and I am very satisfied with the results as far as standard painting goes, however I have not been able to find any way to easily add text to a texture.

Is this possible, and if not, what other workarounds are there?

Blender's painting tools are limited to simple brushes and textures. The easiest way would be to open the image in an image editor and add text to it.

You could open an image with text on it and use it as a stencil texture to paint it onto your mesh.

For a hacky workaround you could add a text object, convert to mesh, use a boolean modifier to cut it out of a plane, then position it in front of your object and join it to your mesh and paint through the hole. Then you can select the disconnected mesh and delete it.


How can I make an animation interpolate linearly between two keyframes? I need to make a simple animation of a cylinder that rotates along the X axis. It should have 8 frames, and rotate a total of 216 degrees, i.e. 30.857 degrees per frame; the problem is that, although it does rotate the desired amount, it doesn't do so at a constant rate.

How can I make it always rotate the same amount every frame?

The rotation will use a bezier interpolation by default (ease in and ease out). This can be viewed and changed in the Graph Editor.

Open up the graph editor, (make sure you have you're object selected), then select both keyframes for the X axis and press T while having your mouse in the graph editor window. This will bring up a menu with different keyframe interpolation modes to chose from, Select Linear and the rotation will have a constant rotation.


Can I make video game clips from any game like Minecraft ones? I'm new to Blender, but I've noticed people have Minecraft templates where you can change skins. Can you do this with any video game clip?

Can I record a clip from Call of Duty then take 10 seconds of it, or a pic (not sure which), then put it in Blender and make my own skins and whatever in it, just like the Minecraft ones?

Or do I have to actually make my own and not be able to take the models in my clip?

People can make Minecraft videos in Blender by importing characters+rigging and worlds and then animate and render them. For example this question has images that shows some of the process:
Cubic character armature deform
It's not like people are making screen captures of a game they played, then importing that video and applying a different skin/texture to the characters, that's not how it works. It would be the same as if you recorded a bit of Starwars and expected there to be an easy way to redress all the storm troopers to look like indiana jones.

Currently there are no easy ways to replace garments on recorded footage, but that doesn't mean there aren't complicated ways.
The literature
Ways are emerging to help automate the process of match making and garment replacement, but they are early proof of concept, and are not likely to be included in Blender any time soon (or indeed possibly never)


Why are some faces not getting texture? I'm going through some online tutorials and am having trouble understanding how to fix my issue. From the screenshot, you can see that when I select a face on my model, the corresponding section of my texture is highlighted. However, the color isn't applied. If I select the face immediately above it, the expected section on the texture shows as well and I'm not able to determine how these are different.

If it helps, I'm sharing my files (in particular, 'Dave.8.blend') in the hopes someone can point me in the right direction.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s6uk9cbm7l75x0a/AAArWNxiA4itkHO3uCYKg9Vpa?dl=0

Here's what I've tried so far:
 - There is discussion of the 'normals' being wrong, but using [ctrl]-[n] didn't seem to make any difference.
 - I've tried changing my light source (as a noob, that seemed to be a possibility)
 - lots of online searching, but nothing clicked for me.

EDITS
Added Normals screenshot, Added flipped normal screenshot

In the dave.8.blend file you definitely have a number of faces that have the normals backwards. You need to select all the faces that look black, then flip the normal direction on them.

For reference:
Limit Selection to Visible button


How to apply stripe texture along a curved mesh? So I've created a bezier curve, added some thickness and converted it to a mesh. Now I would like to add a gradient texture to that mesh but following the shape of the body like the reference image on the left.
I've tried to play with a Texture Cordinate node and Mapping, but I don't really now what I'm looking for.
What I am missing ?

Try using a wave generator set to use the Z axis of the object to power your color ramp.
I was able to get the following result by creating a curve, converting it to a mesh, and using the following node setup:

I've also used a Vector Math node to offset the pattern start, else the pink takes up more than it's fair share. Try adjusting the OFFSET input, as well as the Wave texture scale attribute.


making two colors in one object? I am trying to model a grass stalk and I want the bottom part to be brownish-yellow and the top part to be fresh-green. All I know is that we have to select regions from the mesh and assign different colors to them, but this method will not make it realistic. It will look odd. I want those two colors to merge in the middle. I think you know what I mean.

I want it like this: you can see the different colors and they are merging in the middle:

you can use vertex colors, or a blend texture or just use a bitmap gradient you should be able to look all of those up on youtube..sorry this is not a very specific answer, but if you look those up on youtube you will see how many options you have and which one suits your needs and skill set the best to cover each one would take far to much typing here.


How to Create a Half-Turn Staircase? I would like to create a half-turn staircase without a landing. Is there an easy way to accomplish this without having to manually calculate and create each step individually?

Here’s an image similar to what I would like to achive:

I have found the Archimesh add-on including this tutorial for creating curved stairs. While I can bend the created stairs, I haven’t found any way to get anywhere close to the image above. My stairs just always look out of shape and I don’t know how to get the outline of the staircase into a square.

I should mention that I only have very little experience with Blender modeling, so it’s well possible that I’m just missing some curve modification basics. Perhaps Archimesh is also the wrong approach for this in the first place?

As mentioned in the comments this a complex enough that it might warrant modeling it by hand. If, however, you don't need an extremely clean topology you can easily do it with a combination of an Array + Boolean modifier. At least the radial part that is, the other one seems simple enough to do separately by hand.

Create your step as a mesh object, but make sure it is a closed, manifold solid object (you'll need it later for a Boolean modifier).

Add an array modifier to it, set the $Z$ offset to the desired height of the step and set it to Object Offset

Now add an Empty object to the scene, and give it the exact rotation you want between each step. Say you want $12$ steps in the curve part, that will go around $180º$, then you have $180 º / 12 = 15º$, so rotate the empty $15º$ about the $Z$ axis and point the Array modifier Object Offset to it.

When you have the array set up, just add a new mesh object with the exact shape of the staircase boundary, a simple box will do. Making sure the steps are large enough to cover the whole volume.

Now add a Boolean modifier and you are all set. If you get any artifacts with the Boolean operation be sure to leave a small gap between each step.


Smoke along a motion Path I'm interested in recreating Reaper's smoke transformations from the Overwatch Shorts. In the video below, they showcase how they achieved this. I'd like to know if it is achievable in Blender:

BlizzCon 2016 Overwatch Animated Short | Reaper's Smoke Animation

Particles can be used to emit smoke, and I've seen something quite similar to what you posted.

The current version of Blender allows a lot of particle tricks, like particles fighting flocking etc..

It might take Blender a bit more time to render, but smoke is pretty good from blender. Here is Death-Eater (Harry Potter effect) that's quite close to what you seem to be looking for.


Head mesh jumps into the eye mesh after joining armatures I joined the armature for eye animation with the armature for the head animation by Ctrl+J. Right after that the head becomes very small rotates 90 degrees and jumps into one of the eyes.
If I hide the head mesh, then the eyes become very big, move above head and overlap.
I managed to partially solve the problem by unparenting meshes from the armatures, then joining the armatures by ctrl+j and then parenting back the eyes. It all worked OK, but I cant parent back the head, as it get deformed in a very strange way.

I had a look at the file. This is caused by your shapekeys that uses vertex groups. Weighting is also assigning vertex groups. And that's what is conflicting here when you skin your headmesh. When i remove the vertex groups for the shapekeys before skinning then all works well.

So, first skin the head mesh, then create the shape keys for it.


How does Blender Autodetect Texture Culture? I just asked(and found a solution) to a question here, which talks about how I encountered a texturing problem with my own Wavefront Model Parser. The problem was that some models that I was loading would be textured just fine, like models from Legend of Zelda. While other models would not be textured correctly, like Claptrap from borderlands. As it turns out, the issue was not with my parser, but due to the fact that those two models were crafted for two different API's. Nintendo uses OpenGL for Zelda/All Nintendo DS games. While DirectX is used for Borderlands. Why was this a problem? Well, OpenGL and DirectX have different texture-origins. OpenGL has its texture origin at the bottom left hand corner, while DirectX is top-left hand corner. In order to get my texture for Claptrap to render correctly I had to open the diffuse texture up in gimp and flip it vertically, thus inverting it for use with OpenGL.

This led me to an interesting question. I had opened both models in Blender before sending them into my own program. And Blender correctly textured them both. So how does Blender know which culture(OpenGL or DirectX) to use when attempting to texture a model?

I should also mention that both Models were in .obj format. The only difference is that one was created for OpenGL UV's in mind, while the other was DirectX UV's. I want to know how Blender decides which UV format/culture the .obj uses.

Blender's probably reading the instructions in the mtl (material library) file that accompanies the obj file.

According to the mtl specifications mtl files can include a parameter (-o) that instructs the program reading the file to reverse the texture's origin in the horizontal (u) or vertical (v) directions:

Quoting from the specification document:

  The -o option offsets the position of the texture map on the surface
  by shifting the position of the map origin. The default is 0, 0, 0.

  "u" is the value for the horizontal direction of the texture

  "v" is an optional argument.  "v" is the value for the vertical
  direction of the texture.

  "w" is an optional argument.  "w" is the value used for the depth of a
  3D texture.

-o v   # This should reverse the texture's origin in the vertical direction

Open your OBJ's MTL files in a text editor and see if you can find anything that resembles this.


Create (Unwrap) a UV Map after Adding Texture to the Image Editor I was following this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNC2lNYtxFY

When the narrator hits u/Unwrap, his UV map shows up as rectangles, elongated to cover his entire image (at video marker 3:39). When I follow along, I get perfect squares over half my image and the rest of the image is falling out. What is he not showing, or what am I doing wrong?

YouTube is currently having issues (Oct 16th crash) so your video is unavailable.

A wild guess... if you've rescaled your object at any point you need to apply this change. Select the object you're unwrapping, Tab to Object mode, tap Ctrl  + A and choose Scale. Then try the unwrap again and see if this fixes your issue.

Edit: This appears to be a difference in the way UVs are unwrapped between the Internal renderer and the Cycles renderer. Switching to cycles and unwrapping gives the desired result.


Is there a way to add motion blur to a text object animated via the animation-nodes addon? I've made a "timer" with animation nodes:convert frame rate + current frame to seconds, trim number and display it in a text object. The goal is to have flexible timer for high-speed video footage and scientific simulation.

This works nicely, but for smaller digits 1/100 or 1/1000 I miss some motion blur. The result looks too crisp. The faster "moving" digits should carry a certain amount of blur to give a more realistic effect. Can this be achieved with animation nodes? Is there a different way to do a timer like this?

Just to clarify: the text object is not moving it just sits there and displays a new number every frame. I can provide a test render video (~85kB) and a test blend file (~600kB) if that helps.

What you are asking for seams more like ghosts of previous frames/numbers or slower fading of those, rather than motion blur.

It can be done several ways, depending on the outcome and render, without resorting to actual motion blur and sampling. Considering that the motion blur would slow renders and the rest of the scene may not need it.

Steps for the Animation Nodes part are pretty much the same:

search for time generator (a node that formats as 00:00:00..)
have several instances of the text object (that "display" numbers)
It has to have deep copy to have different data/texts
have a delay for the frame for each instance. In a loop, using instance
assign a convenient property to respective instances to further use for transparency, variation in color or other means of "fading them"

after this you can set and use respective property depending on the convenient render or situation:

use pass_index (object index) to read in cycles or compositor
(it's only integers, so may wanna use 100 or 100/instances or so to get a 0-1 factor in the end)
use object color, directly, if you use blender internal. That is just color
set a different layer and use compositor render layers

If it's just a screen timer, I would choose a compositor version with all the text and ghosts in separate render layers, that you can further tweak and glow etc. For that I would use alpha and not a serious shading and just adjust in compositor as color etc, see below.

Let's see the animation nodes setup for this:

The basis, create instances and assigns delayed times to them.

Setting the convenient parameter to vary:

Set object index (pass index) as 20, 40 etc instead of 0.2, 0.4 ..
(needed if cycles, or compositor)
Setting the layer, just use object/layers node
(The compositor can use layers or object index)
Maybe a transform object out to mave the ghosts under the main text a bit
Setting the object color for blender internal if the case

Example of using the index in cycles

Cycles only allows vertex color (mesh only :( ) or object index

For compositor the way I would use it:

(same works very well without compositor, you just don't get blur)

I would use layers/render layers and a flat emission for all, then compositor mixing, like this:

note that:

If you use this compositor/cycles/An many windows all along, may wanna uncheck AN panel left auto exec and check only the 3 under. Otherwise it may update the compositor continuously.
+
I add 1 to the index
I use Z transform qith a small 002 (works great for simple cycles too)
I use 2 layers / 2 renderlayers and render is set to transparent
I use the alpha in compositor, + bit of blur for ghosts
(may do extra styling for compositor..)


How to switch the object's parent from one bone to another? (grab, hold and drop object) I have a character wearing a mask, so at this point the mask is parented to the face bone. The hand will grab it from the face so essentially the parenting will transfer to the hand bone. How do I do this?

You can do it with the Child Of constraint. If you don't need to drop the object at the end, here is a quick way to do it:

Give your object 2 Child Of constraints, one with the first bone as Target, the second with the second bone. Don't forget to click on the Set Inverse button so that the object stays at its place. At frame 0 create a keyframe on the second constraint's Influence at 0. Keyframe your bones.

At frame 10, move your second bone (hand) from its current position to its position next to the object, and keyframe it. At frame 9 create a keyframe on the first Influence > 1, and on the second Influence > 0.

At frame 10 create a keyframe on the first Influence > 0, and on the second Influence > 1.

At frame 20 move the bone to its new location.


Blender VSE 40 minutes for a 3 min proxy rebuild? Is there no way to make a proxy for only a single strip? Is there no way to make a proxy only for a Xamount min strip?
I imported a 3hr video, cut a portion so that it's 20mins
Went to build proxy (strip proxy tab> 25%> rebuild)
And it said it would take around 40-50mins
That didn't feel right since I've made proxies for a 1hr video with less ETA time
So I decided to test it with only 3 minutes, sure enough, it said over 40min again
I then further tested it by making a whole new project (new .blend file)
Added  20 min video, started the proxy build process
And the ETA said 1min 27seconds, the completion bar was also flying
Sooo.. Really??
I guess I gotta wait till all 3 hrs of the video are proxied
I just wanted to be able to work on the first half-hour by only making a proxy for it
Then make another proxy for the rest of the video
I guess the checkbox option is just there for show
Since it still goes through the whole video instead of just the selected strip
I've tried letting it run while I edited but it would cancel everytime I did the undo/redo command
So then I started it again n did not use undo/redo commands
I don't recall what I did but it ended up canceling the build again
I must of rendered a frame or something, mayb even moving a strip cancels it

According to the documenation:1 "Storage: Defines whether the proxies are for individual strips or the entire sequence. Per Strip: Proxies are stored in the directory of the input." So, the "Per Strip" option really does only specify where the proxy is located.
AFAIK, I think your problem is with the "cut". You imported a 1-hour video and cut it to 20 min. This does not implicate that the strip is only 20 min. It only shows 20 min in the timeline. Dragging the handles will easily extend the strip until its original length.
So, you have to cut your video in a separate application like handbrake or ffmpeg and save the result as a new video. This is essentially what you did in your second attempt (adding a 20 min video).


Making edges render with Cycles I'm using the Laplacian Lightning Generator, and have figured out how to make the generated lightning renderable in Blender Internal. While I (probably?) could use this, there's a few issues with me using BI, such as the quality of Cycles (e.g., really detailed shadows) not being available with BI.

I read in the Lightning addon comments that you can convert it to a curve, or use wire material. Is wire material available in Cycles?
I tried converting it to a curve, but I can't figure out how to make it visible in render from there. I could extrude it, but then it'd be a 2D plane of lightning, as the lightning itself is just edges (wouldn't it?)

I'm wanting it to be similar to the video showcase it has; glowing, bright, etc. I also need to be able to animate this rather easily, I'm still new around here. :P

I apologize if these are really dumb questions. Thank you in advance! :D

The laplacian Lightning generator produces a set of Mesh objects. At its most basic setting, using two empties (origin and ground).

You can use the Single Mesh tickbox to make sure it's all one mesh, you lose flexibility, but the sake of example that method is probably handiest.

You can add a skin modifier to the mesh. By default the skinned edges is probably not the right size, you enter edit mode on the mesh, and go to vertex selection mode, select all vertices, then ctrl+a to scale down the radius of the skin.
Alternatively convert it to a Curve object (it will convert each edge to a straight section Curve type)  (alt+C > Curve From Mesh)

Both solutions will render fine in Cycles.

For the animation, perhaps you might use a Build Modifier and tick reverse. Remember Light is a really fast phenomenum, often all we see is the trail of air burning and extinguishing rather fast.

Ultra Slowmotion:

I think it might have been better to subdivide the generated mesh a few times..now it exhibits jumps..

Credits to gandalf3 for this one:

Alternatively

(unless you need to generate a tonne of different strikes) Why not trace a photograph and use artistic discretion to 3d spatialize it, and animate that strike:)


How to join multiple objects? I have created a bunny rabbit using a path beveled into a circle shape which I have resized accordingly for each different part of the rabbit. A picture below will show you what I mean.

My question is: How can I join all of these shapes into a single entity so that the object moves as an entire unit when I select any single part of its body?

I have tried to select all the items and use Ctrl+J, but it collapses my rabbit, effectively ruining it. The second picture depicts what happens to my rabbit after I attempt to use Ctrl+J on all its pieces. Mind you, each piece of the rabbit is just a copied sphere of the original, resized and recolored. After Ctrl+J'ing, it seems to revert to the original object shape.

How can I properly join all my rabbit's pieces intact?

The best way to do this is to add a fixed constraint to the object.  Simply click 2 objects then add a constraint.


Move selected vertices to grid with by a specific distance I am making a mesh in which all vertices need to be in specific locations. My minimum unit of distance is 0.125m, so that all vertices will be at distances from each other or the point 0 of the map with a value of 0.125 times X (ie:2.125, 0.5, 1.75 etc.).
However I discovered that after using the bevel tool (I may have done something wrong), there are vertices that are not perfectly aligned. Some are 0.0000002 further than another ones on a certain axis for example.
I could realign them by hand but it takes me a long time.
My questions are:
A. Are my doing something wrong?
B. Can I correct this by selecting all the vertices and then using Shift+S and then "Selection to Grid" but with a specific distance, so that they all move to the closest point on the 0.125 units from 0 point on map?
I am sorry I am having trouble explaining the concept, I hope it is understood.

You can change the grid unit settings and snap to the grid:

Though, 0.0000002 could be a floating point accuracy issue.


UVs won't 'stick' -- newbie help I'm very new to 3d modeling in general. I tried to make a simple 'magical girl' staff to start. When I unwrap it, the uvs are pretty close together and small, so I rearranged them all to my liking. I'm not sure how to like...get the new uv layout to 'stick'. If I deselect everything and then unwrap it again, it just goes back to the old, default, cluttered UV.

I feel like there's something I should be clicking or something so this won't happen! It's probably right in front of me and I don't even see it, haha.

Here is the UV layout I would like (the one I manually arranged):

Here is the default it keeps reverting to:

Any help would be really great! thank you so much, guys. I'm hoping I'll get good at this one day :)

You can pin UV vertices with P and unpin with AltP. This will prevent them from being effected by unwrapping.

Pinned UV vertices will turn red.


problem with array modifier while trying to create a plant i am trying to create a plant, but when i am adding array modifier to a leaf and seting the properties that you can see on the screenshot below, it is having this strange distortion, so i want to know how to clean it up and where is my actual mistake

Your object have a non-uniform size, specifically along the z axis and thus the slight displacement of the leaf is amplified along the z axis. So just apply the scale of the object using Ctrl+A >> Scale.

The same problem may appear when the offset object have a non uniform size as well.


Rigify mesh skinning problem I imported a character (with append), and I joined the hair, body, and feet together using Ctrl+J. I applied the scale, rotation, and location using Ctrl+A, and everything was fine, and when I generated the rig, it worked perfectly. However, now that I've skinned the mesh, half of the character has disappeared. Here are some screenshots:

Before skinning:

After skinning:

I've fixed the problem. After some research on the 'net, the solution that worked for me was to enable Auto Run Python Scripts in File > User Preferences.


Honey shader in Cycles Trying to make honey material. I think there is some manipulation with nodes I need to do to get results but I have not enough experienced in that.
Can you please help me simulate honey consistency and color?

To(kind of):

Hopefully this will get you started... As others have said lighting is very important. This example uses Cycles to render and incorporates an HDRi for the overall lighting. An emission plane for an additional reflection (Camera Left) and a point light to brighten up the "Honey".


Have it so animation has transparent background to overlay stuff in video editor (transparency) I was wondering if anyone knows how to make it so the animation renders with a transparent background so in the video editor, I can overlay "Scene" and it will have a transparent background, thanks.

By default, if you add a scene to the VSE, it comes in with alpha already, so you shouldn't need to do anything else. If you are rendering the scene, you'll need to enable transparency under the render settings. Go to your render tab, find the "film" section, and enable transparency. Next time you render, the VSE will update with the transparent image. Likewise, if you turn off transparency, the VSE will update with an image without any alpha. The viewport defaults to transparent, no matter the settings in the viewport or in openGL render settings.

Once you have the scene in the VSE, you need to change the strip's color blending mode to "alpha over" - then you can put that strip over your other media and the scene will be overlaid.

First is Cycles, then BI. (Thanks Sambler)


Using knife tool to cut all around a an object Please see the following https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK36W234WV0 specifically @ 12:40 where the knife tool us used to cut not only the top face but all around the cube.
When I try and do this I only seem to get a cut on the top face. What am I missing?
Thanks in advance.

Apologies for my premature question. I should have paid attention to the various options available with the knife tool!
Turns out that pressing Z activates the cut through option which in effect creates a loop cut around the object.


Im struggling to work the camera in a small space This is a tutorial im following i want to make it so my camera shows the same amount of area as his does but i dont know how, i'm quite new to blender and any help would be much appreciated

Basically im trying to increase how much u can see, i want to be abe to see more of the room but if i go any further back i wll go through the wall.

This is a tutorial im following i want to make it so my camera shows the same amount of area as his does but i dont know how, i'm quite new to blender and any help would be much appreciated

You need to adjust your camera's Focal Length.
The tutorial uses 18mm.

Go to Camera > Lens > Focal Length (it's 50mm by default)


How to create individual Objects out of Object with applied Array Modifier? When I watched some tutorial videos, they often use outdated commands.

Most of the time I can find the ones for the current version on the internet but I have not been able to find the command for turning an array into individual objects.

Just click on the Apply button in the Array Modifier panel. If that gives you all the meshes as a single object, which it seems to, then go into edit mode, Select All, then press P to separate all loose parts into separate objects.


set special mouse button to toggle between selection modes I have a mouse with two additional buttons and I wanted to create shrtcuts for them. I succecfully managed to make one toggle between solid/wireframe view and the other to toggle between edit/object mode, but I wanted to set the second one to toggle between selection modes (so that if I pressed it while in vertex selection mode, I would get edge selection mode, if in edge, get faces, if in faces, get vertex). All I managed was to make it set one of them on and off, regardless of the other.

To cycle through the possible selection options, you will need an operator that looks at the current selection to choose which selection option should be enabled.

That can be done in a simple operator, which you can then assign to your mouse button.

class SelectCycle(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = 'mesh.select_cycle'
    bl_label = 'Cycles through selection modes.'

    def execute(self, context):
        ts = context.tool_settings
        if ts.mesh_select_mode[0]:
            ts.mesh_select_mode = [False,True,False]
        elif ts.mesh_select_mode[1]:
            ts.mesh_select_mode = [False,False,True]
        else:
            ts.mesh_select_mode = [True,False,False]
        return {'FINISHED'}

You can find a copy of this as an addon here, so you can enable it in your startup.blend.

In your input settings, you just need to enter mesh.select_cycle for the idname and choose the mouse button.


Auto Normals by default Is it possible to turn on Auto Normals by default when creating new objects in Blender? Now you need to apply it manually for each new object in the scene when switching to Smooth Shading and it's not very convenient. Maybe there are some ways to do this by default?

Subscribe to msgbus

Very similarly to answer to Origins to the down of the object by default can check when a new object becomes active when it is the result of being freshly added by an add primitive operator.
Run this code, and any newly added primitive will have auto smooth on with 18 degrees.

as shown in origins to default, can change up all sorts of things.
import bpy
from math import radians

handle = object()

# make some default value
auto_smooth_default = (True, radians(18))

# Triggers when an object is made active
subscribe_to = bpy.types.LayerObjects, "active" #

def notify_test(context):
    if (context.object.type == 'MESH'
            and getattr(context.active_operator, "bl_idname", "").startswith("MESH_OT_primitive_")
            and context.mode == 'OBJECT'):
        print("Setting auto smooth")
        me = context.object.data
        me.use_auto_smooth, me.auto_smooth_angle = auto_smooth_default
        # set all faces smooth
        me.polygons.foreach_set(
                "use_smooth",
                [me.use_auto_smooth] * len(me.polygons),
                )
bpy.msgbus.subscribe_rna(
    key=subscribe_to,
    owner=handle,
    args=(bpy.context,),
    notify=notify_test,
)

bpy.msgbus.publish_rna(key=subscribe_to)


Cycles materials in BGE How would I set the game engine to use cycles materials rather than standard materials. I don't even know where to start!

and the answer is No, you can not use cycles in bge, what you can do is create textures rendered in cycles and use them in bge with their respective uv map.


Building corners: How to connect 2 walls with a straight corner Hello I'm strugling with this task that I suppose should be quite easy :P

I've two walls with the same shapes and profiles, those two should be placed at the corner of a building, I'm looking for a way to close the gap between the walls. I could probably do it manually, but I'm pretty sure it should be done in an automatic way using some techniques or tools that I'm not aware of.

Attached you find an image with top and perspective views, in green the result I'd like to obtain (sorry... it has badly hands-drawn) probably it is not very clear from the image, but I'd like to close the corner continuing the wall shape having the two walls "merged" at 90 degs.

Any idea?

3 methods (or surely more):

1/Bridge edge loops (1):

Select the corresponding vertices
CtrlE then bridge edge loops
Select edges from bottom to top CtrlAltRMB
Scale 0 using individual origins as pivot
Remove doubles
Select the corner
Scale by 2 for X and Y from the cursor placed at the inner corner

2/Bridge edge loops (2):

Select the corresponding vertices
CtrlE then bridge edge loops
Set number of cuts to 1
Set interpolation to blend surface
Set smoothness to sqrt(2)

3/Rotation

Select the wanted vertices on one side
Place the cursor at the inner corner
Set the pivot to 3D cursor
Rotate 45 degrees
Scale sqrt(2) for X and Y
Do the same for the other side


what is and how can i stop the constant "canceling..." in the compositer? At the moment I'm working on a project and I was using the compositor. I don't know what started it, but at the top of my screen, there is a bar that constantly says "canceling"

also, my render layer node outputs are flickering

I'm making a graphics design thing with animation nodes, that's what you can see in the compositor. I 'm trying to put a vintage noise over it that's what you can see playing in the top.

and next to that my compositor is very very slow.

I have tried a lot of stuff to make it go away. I have restarted blender, I have reinstalled blender and I have tried to remake my whole node setup. but nothing works. the only way to make the "canceling" go away is closing the composetor window. but the moment I open it again it comes back.

I really hope someone can help me with this problem

I was able to get it to stop by deleting the viewer node from my node group in the animation nodes add-on. I was using a viewer node to confirm my output was correct when sending some text data. From now on I know just to use it to check and then delete it. Probably has something to do with the viewer node also being used in the compositing tab?


How to transform a strip in the vse in a non-uniform way? I'd like to transform a clip in the VSE. I want it to look smaller on the right side, like the example, and of course, to be keyframeable.

Example:

I tested the Transform Tools Add-on without success and haven't found any useful info so far.

Unfortunately there is no way to do this within the VSE.

The way you can deform an image (or video) is by tracking four points and making a plane track. Then in the compositor use the Plane Track Deform Node and add the image over your background.

Now step by step.

Open up the Movie Clip Editor either by changing one if the windows, or switching the layout to Motion Tracking.
After importing your background (I'll assume from now on that it is an image) set the start and end frame to 1. That will make it so that when you put out the trackers, it doesn't have to track anything.

CtrlLMB  to add the markers you will need four of them to make a plane track. (because we aren't really tracking it does not matter where they are.)

Select all the trackers with AA then go to the Solve tab and under the Plane Track heading press the Create Plane Track button. Then just drag the corners in to place.

With the plane track in place head over to the compositor, and set up your nodes like this.
Three important things to note:

The Plane Track Deform Node, that is where all the data from the tracker gets in to the compositor. Make sure you fill out the Camera and  Plane Track fields, there should only be one of each, unless you made more then one plane track.
The image to be overlayed through the plane track goes in the bottom socket of the Alpha Over node.
You should not have a Render Layers node, if you do blender will try to render your 3D scene, and not just work with two images.

Make sure your render resolution, over in the render tab of the properties window, matches the dimensions of your background image. Now just press render, or push F 12 you will get something like this.

I do know about the corner pin node, and what I described above is pretty much exactly what that node is used for. Except it is a pain to use, this method is much easier to position.


How to replicate a Laowa 24mm Probe lens in Blender cameras? I've replicated plenty of lenses, MM, f/stop, etc. Its all pretty straight forward but this one has me baffled. I've adjusted the camera scale but that doesn't work either. Anyone ever tried to mimic this lens?  If so your advice would be greatly appreciated.

Camera settings don't scale in Blender. If you scale the camera object in the 3d Viewport, all you're doing is changing how big it displays and not the lens or any of the settings int he camera properties.
What you're trying to achieve is a perspective trick. If you shoot anything in real life from a low angle and with a wide enough lens, the subject tends to feel bigger and more imposing.
So to take this into blender, you can do it a couple of ways. Set up a wider lens or scale up your models. The latter I wouldn't recommend. it messes with the realism too much because of lighting and textures etc.
So shoot low, and wide.


How to manually achieve a motion blur effect on a object in the compositor? Is it possible to achieve this look I made with motion blur in the render panel similarly in the compositor without having to move the object?

Use the directional blur node.

Form the blender manual:

Iterations
Controls how may times the image is duplicated to create the blur effect. Higher values give smoother results.
Wrap
Wraps the image on the X and Y axis to fill in areas, that become transparent from the blur effect.
Center X, Y
Sets the position where the blur center is. This makes a difference if the angle, spin, and/or zoom are used.
Distance
How large the blur effect is.
Angle
Image is blurred at this angle from the center.
Spin
Rotates the image each iteration to create a spin effect, from the center point.
Zoom
Scales the image each iteration, creating the effect of a zoom.


multiple cameras for simple RPG game I am developing a simple rpg steampunk game. Can anyone tell me how do I make, with logic bricks, a simple key (for example C) switch to a second camera view? I have 2 cameras placed in different angles in the scene. I can not program python. If it is of course possible only using logic bricks.


How to make boolean value inverse? How to make the Material.fsxm_nobasespec boolean has inverse result.

In default the value for True is 1 and False is 0. I want it to be the inverse.

Example True = 0 and False = 1

import bpy
from bpy.types import Material
from bpy.props import IntProperty, BoolProperty, StringProperty, FloatProperty, EnumProperty, FloatVectorProperty

class FSXMaterial(bpy.types.Panel):
    """FSX Material properties Panel"""
    bl_label = "FSX/P3D Material Params"
    bl_idname = "FSXMATERIAL_PT_fsx_props"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "material"
    bl_options = {'DEFAULT_CLOSED'}

def draw_header(self,context):
    mat = context.active_object.active_material
    layout = self.layout
    if mat:
        layout.prop(mat, "fsxm_isFSXmaterial", text = "")

def draw(self, context):
    mat = context.active_object.active_material
    layout = self.layout
    if mat:
        layout.label(text = "Enhanced Parameters")
        box = layout.box()
        box.prop(mat, 'fsxm_nobasespec')

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)

    Material.fsxm_nobasespec = BoolProperty(name = "Do Not Use Specular Map", default = False)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)

    del Material.fsxm_nobasespec

if __name__ == "__main__":
register()

There are several ways how to convert a Boolean value to its 'reverse'

option 1: using not

not will reverse False into True and True into False.

spec = not mat.fsxm_nobasespec

option 2: using a translation dict

REVERSE_BOOLEAN_DICT = {
    True: 0,
    False: 1,
}
spec = RESERVER_BOOLEAN_DICT.get(mat.fsxm_nobasespec)

These options can be wrapped in a property for convenience.

@property
def reverse_basespec(self):
    return not self.fsxm_nobasespec
Material.fsxm_basespec = reverse_basespec

Looking at the code that is posted as comment below the best option is to:

Exporter.File.Write("BaseMaterialSpecular {\n")
Exporter.File.Write(" %i; // Not Using Specular Map\n" %(not Material.fsxm_nobasespec))
Exporter.File.Write("}\n").

Please note that this is using python2 formatting conventions. Using python3 conventions it is best to use.

Exporter.File.Write("""BaseMaterialSpecular {{
 {fsxm_nobasespec:d}; // Not Using Specular Map
}}
""".format(fsxm_nobasespec=not Material.fsxm_nobasespec))


How to put a button on the N panel for URL? I am looking to place a button in it's own category inside the N panel on the UI. I read this as a reference:
How to create a button in Custom panel to take you to the specified url

This operator is needed:
row.operator('wm.url_open', text='open url').url='http://www.blender.org'

I am following PANEL3 from this page example: (the panel in UI, VIEW): https://b3d.interplanety.org/en/creating-panels-for-placing-blender-add-ons-user-interface-ui/

My code looks like (taken from ui_panel_simple.py template).

import bpy

class HelloWorldPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
    bl_label = "Hello World Panel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_hello"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_context = "object"

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

        obj = context.object

        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text="Hello world!", icon='WORLD_DATA')

        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text="Active object is: " + obj.name)
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(obj, "name")

        row = layout.row()
        row.operator("mesh.primitive_cube_add")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(HelloWorldPanel)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(HelloWorldPanel)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

But I get an error on:
def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(HelloWorldPanel)

I would like a button that I can click to a URL from the N panel in Blender 2.81.

Not sure what the issue is re registering... remove  bl_context since it is not required outside 'PROPERTIES' area.  Please in future paste the error message from the system console into your question.

Anyway here is a suggested edit.  Please take note of the class names. and registration code. If another class that needs registering, eg panel of operator, simply pop in the class and add to classes tuple.

Adds a Quick Links panel to 3d view UI "N" panel under the category "Links".

import bpy

links = {"Blender" : 'http://www.blender.org',
         "BSE" : "https://blender.stackexchange.com",
         }

class VIEW3D_PT_links(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Quick Links"""
    bl_label = "Quick Links"
    bl_idname = "VIEW3D_PT_links"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_category = 'Links'

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        col = layout.column()
        for name, url in links.items():
            op = col.operator('wm.url_open', text=name)
            op.url = url

classes = (
        VIEW3D_PT_links,
        )

def register():
    for cls in classes:
        bpy.utils.register_class(cls)

def unregister():
    for cls in reversed(classes):
        bpy.utils.unregister_class(cls)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

edit: added links dictionary to add more links simply.


Cycle Render - Black and White Render I can't figure out why Cycle Render is rendering only in Black and White even if I add more lights.

Blender Render is rendering okay.

Thanks,
Manolo

You cannot make materials in blender internal and expect them to work on Cycles. Each render engine works differently and the materials created for each one are not interchangeable. If you are going to render using cycles you need to create new materials.

Read:

How is Cycles different from Blender Internal?

Cycles vs internal vs game engine


How could I create a 3 Dimensional scribble or doodle? I am trying to create a scribble drawing but make it spherical as if the pencil or pen lines are twisted within. I have tried to extrude planes and uv map a texture to those planes and unfortunately I lose dimension when planes are parallel to the camera view.

Any thoughts to approach this would be appreciated.

There are a couple ways you could go about this.
Curve object

Add a curve object (I used a path, ⇧ ShiftA> Curve > Path)

In edit mode (↹ Tab), extrude a vertex around randomly (⎈ Ctrl LMB is a fast way to extrude a vertex many times)

Use the Randomize operator in edit mode to further increase randomness (Space> Randomize)

Grease Pencil

Enable Continuous Draw in 3D view > Tool Shelf > Grease Pencil and press Draw to start drawing

Draw scribbles while rotating the view at intervals

Once you are satisfied with your scribble, convert it to a curve object with the Convert button in the tool shelf: