Normal/Bump/Color created in Substance Painter doesn't appear correct in rendered model material I created this

material in substance designer and generated the normal map, bump map, and color map and imported it into blender with a node setup like such

(note that I've tried both "Color" and "non-color data" with no difference between the two).

However, I end up with this in the render (zoomed in for detail):

Note that the handle part on the bottom left is lacking a material, and the entirety of the rest of the cup has the material applied. I've noticed that the noise shown is just an artefact of the default render I've set up.

As well, this is further strange because the material shown in the material viewer looks quite alright

Before you ask, yes I have quadruple checked that the material is applied.

Thank you very much for any help.

Turns out I hadn't created a UV unwrap of my model, and thus the texture/heightmap/normal map wasn't being applied.


OBJ File is missing, all mtl files still there After I emptied my temp folder all my obj files are missing, only the mtl files remained  in my blender folder.  Does anyone have an idea what happened?

now added a screen shot showing that my obj files are exporting as 3D objects

thanks a lot!
Tom

It could be that you had some hard link to the files you deleted from the "temporary" folder... who knows why.

I just tried an export with standard parameters (below): I see an .obj and a .mtl file in a folder I created on my desktop...


Unwrapping sphere in order to fit this image I would like to make a sphere and unwrap it in order to apply a texture and a normal map so that it looks like this:

I've already created the 2d elements that will compose the ball:

But I really don't know how to morph them in order to create the final result.

Can someone please give me a hand?
Thank you!

We can unwrap the sphere same as a cube, if the geometry of sphere is just subdivided and displaced cube:

Create a cube and give it these modifiers:

Proceed same as with unwrapping a cube. The texture can look like this:

Notice the bleeding over the unwrapped mesh. That is to not pollute the surface with green (or black in my example). You can also pack those faces much more efficiently if you like, to not waste any texture space:


SLERP (Spherical Linear-Interpolate) between two vectors from Python How to do this?

Below is my particular use case and attempt to solve the problem:

Consider Z_axis = (0,0,1) and an arbitrary point also on the unit sphere v.

You can imagine the arc on the surface of the sphere from Z_axis to v.

I wish to create v' by extending the arc by 10%.

How can I do this from Python?

Here is as far as I have got:

unit_v = v.normalized()
rot_axis = Z_axis.cross(unit_v)

...will give a vector perpendicular to rotation plane, and

theta = arcsin( abs(rot_axis) ) # <-- some potential problem with positive and negative angles here I think

...will return the angle.

So I was just need to rotate unit_v by theta' = 0.1*theta around rot_axis

How do I do this?

I can construct a Quaternion Q representing the rotation:

w = cos( theta'/2 )
x,y,z = sin( theta'/2 ) * rot_axis.normalized()

Q = Quaternion(( w,x,y,z ))

and then:

unit_v' = unit_v.rotate(Q)
v' = abs(v) * unit_v'

Is this correct, and is there a cleaner way?

(ref: http://www.essentialmath.com/GDC2013/GDC13_quaternions_final.pdf)

Blender 2.71 (or any recent build) has Vector.slerp (spherical linear interpolation) which accepts values outside 0-1

So you can do:

a = Vector((1, 0, 0))
b = Vector((0, 1, 0))
c = a.slerp(b, 0.5)  # half way

To over rotate 10% do:

c = a.slerp(b, 1.1)

Note, this feature is not included in a stable release yet (but 2.71 will include it).


Why are all right bones not connected with the mesh? I'm new to blender and I recently made a model by my self and today I‘m finally going to connect it with bones! It looks all right:

But look what happens to the arms and legs:

Why are all right bones not connected with the mesh?

Thanks guys,i found out that i DIDN'T apply the mirror modifier!stupid me,now it works perfectly!


Boid Particles - How To Use Fighting/Battle Information In Animation (Fighting Ants) I am experimenting with boid particles and I have set up an ant fight simulation, where there are two enemy boid systems emitted from different areas (vertex groups) of a plane.  "Allow Land" is enabled, "Allow Flight" is disabled (i.e., they crawl but do not fly).

Their "boid brain" rules include "Fight" and indeed they do go after one another.  Unfortunately I've had difficulty finding information about how the system uses the combat data.  It sort of looks like some of the particles slow down and perhaps stop after combat (maybe if their health is low?) and occasionally some seem to just disappear (maybe if their health goes to zero?  does a critically wounded boid just keep losing health even if it is not attacked, or does a dead boid just stick around for a while before disappearing?).

So part of my question is just trying to determine what the default programmed behavior is, if this is documented somewhere it would be handy.  But I'm also interested in finding out whether I can change or supplement this behavior.  Could I access the particle health status in a driver (perhaps to drive a shape key) or via the Attribute node?  Is there an attribute that tells me whether a particle is engaged in combat?

If that's too vague: ideally I would like my ants to go into a fighting pose when they are fighting (maybe rearing up on their back legs?) and when dead maybe turn upside down or change color or something.  This is both to simply understand what's happening (how savage the battle is) and ultimately to depict the combat animation with a bit of realism.  Thanks in advance!

I think you are expecting too much from the boids fight option. The boids documentation describes fight as Move toward nearby boids. It won't animate two ants in combat for you.

For more advanced simulation options have a look at Crowd Master or the commercial Crowd Sim 3D.


Local translation with pivot point established on the active object Whenever i try to translate objects, with pivot point established on the active object, every object translates in their own local coordinates.
Video will explain it better: youtube.com/watch?v=vArDq7cqRdA

UPD: Okay, i recorded another video to make it less confusing:
youtube.com/watch?v=qFCMPoBb8Ac

firstly i show you what the trouble is, next i select 'individual origins' and there is no difference. And in the end i apply rotation and only then i get what i wanted(and what i expected)
I just wanna make sure that such a behavior is what developers wanted and this is not a bug

Moving a multiple selection with the keystrokes

gz global axis

is different than

gzz local axis

where the letter z refers to the z axis and can be replaced by any of the set {x, y, z, X, Y, Z}.  Feel free to experiment.

So having a selection of multiple objects move on their locally rotated axis is a feature.

You can [apply] a rotation.  And thus all objects would have the same rotational axis and different origins.

I do not know your long term goals for your model.  Tutorials may lead you to understand how to

[join] objects
[parent] objects

Blender always has various ways to achieve your goal.

So what is written here is not a tutorial, and you may need to search further here at BSE.  Also pay attention to the additional information which appears in Blender 3D View at the bottom, when using either of the keystrokes above.

You may appear to be changing transformation axis although the video may be clipping the lower portion of the screen capture.  You can also change the pivot center.

I believe Blender is performing as intended.  As the user you should see this behavior as a good option and not something unintended.

In the image below the Blender User first grabbed an object.  Then pressed

F6

to see the other options of the grab/translate operator.

The famous website that rhymes with noonoob has tutorials on selection transformation in Blender.  Although I have not taken the time to find one that deeply addresses this topic you may find one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaYhhaKDh5E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wklRKGC7ai8


Graph in Graph editor too small - Animation tab I'm currently learning blender with the donut tutorial from blender guru. In Part 4, Level 4, he's switching from the "Layout" tab to the "Animation" tab at 5:27. Here's a link to the video. Now, my problem is: the graph editor is tiny. I can see the different vertices, but the graphs are very close to each other. I've looked in the settings tab, looked after a solution on the internet (especially here), but I can't find anything that solves the problem.
Thanks for your help! I am looking forward to your answer.

just press CTRL-SPACE when hovering over the editor -> full screen


BGE: Import Error No Module Named "Tkinter" I want to add some GUI without simulating 2D Controls in 3D, and I think Tkinter module is easy enough to use. I set up a simple scene to try my idea, but it seems not work.

Neither import tkinter nor import Tkinter, as I tried out, works probably. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Tkinter will freeze your game and create a popup window, which is probably not what you want. You could install it, but I wouldn't suggest it.

I've found that making simple interfaces is harder in code (eg tkinter) than it is in BGE with objects. Of course, by the time you want combo boxes, you probably want a GUI library. And these libraries do exist.
There is a nice one called BGUI you should look into. This writes into openGL ontop of BGE, so it won't freeze your game or create external windows.


Blender closes when I right click I was working on this project, and out of the blue, when I right click, Blender crashes. It only happens in this project, and I'll attach the project.I'm fairly new to Blender. This started occurring after a test render

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w6lmq3k2ywhylg5/blender%20project.blend?dl=0

Use Outliner to select the object that causes this problem.

And avoid subdividing objects more than 4 times as this may be too much for your hardware.

Almost three million faces for such simple objects is a bit of an exaggeration, most likely it's beyond the limit of what your computer can handle.


Can bones influence textures? I have a character with non-spherical eyes. Is there another way to move the pupils without resorting to re-positioning the UV map permanently? Like say... assigning the texture to a bone?

you can assign a texture to a mesh, them assign that mesh to a bone.


How to create a shadows pass in cycles? Everytime I am doing one thing another problem comes up, and I have a deadline to follow unless there is a way to create shadows using another software (after effects)? I want to composite this thing in after effects but I cannot do something simple like a shadows pass. I followed the shadows pass tutorials but of course nothing works. Here is my node setup:

here are other settings

Is there anything I am doing wrong?

an update to my node setup:

Here is a simple example for using Shadow pass in your case:

I personally prefer combining shadow with other passes like AO, for better result.


VSE: Fade to white via a bloom transition I have a video that I'd like to fade out to white by increasing in glow intensity until it is pure white.

Here's an example of a "before" photo (courtesy of Pixabay):

The problem is that I can't get the Glow effect in the Video Sequence Editor to get any more intense than this:

The above photo is using these settings:

Boost Factor can't be raised above 10, and Blur Distance can't be raised above 20, so I can't reach pure white. Is there a better way to go about achieving this technique?

Thanks

You can multiply the glow effect by using the Multiply value in the property panel.
You can animate the value from 1 to 20

You can change the multiply value both on the glow strip and the video clip to combine the effects and to get a complete white image


How to add round rim around object? I found a 12 sided object that I really like, but I have no idea how to make the rim that is on there, and I am wondering if anyone could show how to achieve that same result of the rounded rim in the screenshot (doesn't need to have 6 even segments around it), so that I could add additional rims around the object (for example, if I wanted to add another rim above or below the original?)
Thank you in advance for your help and your time.

Start with a loop cut around your object:

Give the loop some thickness by beveling it with Ctrl+B. Select the new faces around the edge (but not on the existing extrusion), and "extrude faces along normals".

Select the top and bottom edges of the new extrusion:

Then use Ctrl+B to bevel again, this time scrolling the mouse wheel to add more segments. Move the mouse to adjust the bevel until it looks right.

If you're concerned about clean topology, you may need to add some new cuts into the extrusion that was there before the loop, and remove the new overlapping face created by the extrusion, but otherwise it should be fine.


Move vertices towards/away from camera? I have a flat plane and I want to move some of its vertices (the green ones on the image below) so that visually the plane would stay the same in my camera view.

I thought I'll simply switch to View Orientation and use Z-axis to move them. However View Z-axis is perpendicular to camera plane, not directed to camera:

So when I move vertices, their position in the camera view is shifted (green dots are the original vertices positions):

Can I somehow move them using a camera direction as a Z-axis so that visually my object will stay the same in the camera view? Here I manually moved the vertices to desired positions:

Snap 3D cursor to camera
Set pivot point to be the 3D cursor
Select vertices
Scale them

You don't want to just move them, scaling take into account how far you are from the camera so that your cube will look exactly the same from the camera perspective.


How do you connect two edge loops with a face between? If you notice there is a empty spot with no edge loop in between a line of edge loops. I am wondering if you can just add one edge loop in between that gap?

There are several way of doing this.

The easiest is to use the vertex connect path tool J which will make a new edge between the two vertices, splitting the face into two.
The next best thing would be to use the knife tool K and just cut in new edge between the two vertices. Again that will take care of the faces.
To use the fill tool F you will first have to delete the N-gon in the middle. Then create two faces.

In this gif I go through the three methods listed above. First using the vertex connect tool, then the knife tool, and last creating the two faces manually with the fill tool.


Particles of a particle system react not as an own object I have an ATM and would like the money to fly out from it.
I have made the cash box into a particle system.

The money flies out of the cash box, but it flies downwards, because the bill also flies downwards.

Is it possible to make the money (particle) independent from the banknote ?

[
[
[

Remove gravity from the emission simulation:


Animation - Using a Different Axis to Rotate the Entire Object Than the Normal Object Axis I have created a model of a WWI biplane which properly rotates around the assumed center of gravity.
However, since it a tail-dragger, I would like to create an animation where the tail lifts up as the speed increases.  This requires me to rotate the entire aircraft vertically around the wheel axle.
I assume that I could do so by making the all of the parts children of the wheel axle and then rotating the wheel axle.  But I don't want that to cause the center of rotation for the aircraft to change.
Is there a way to do that?
EDIT (Jun 26 at 2:12AM CDT)
The solutions below are very helpful.
I may have made this overly complicated by incorrectly assuming how Blender saves models.  I tried a very simple approach.  To keep things separate, I first created an empty cube at 0,0,0 and made everything a child of that, except the axle.  I then linked the cube to the axle, moved the axle axis to the center of the axle and then created an animation where the plane rotated back around the axle.  When blender exports the file, it seems that the center of rotation for the model remains at 0,0,0 (where I wanted it) and is not moved to the location of the parent part.  Is that correct?
I tried it out in a three.js program and it seems to work okay.  The tires are firmly planted on the ground throughout the rotation.

One simple way to take care of this is to rotate by the 3D cursor. If you know the exact global space coordinates where you would like this point of rotation to be, you can enter them in the View tab from the Properties Shelf, to the right of the 3D View (press n to bring up the Shelf if not exposed currently), and under the 3D Cursor section, there are a set of transform fields. By entering the desired transform values in these fields, the 3D cursor will move to the appropriate worldspace coordinates. Alternatively, you can snap the 3D cursor to another object, provided you have a selected object whose origin is currently where you want the 3D cursor to be. You would do this by accessing the Snap menu (Shift + s) and choosing Snap Cursor to Selected. Once you have the 3D Cursor where you want the new point of rotation to happen from, press the Transform Pivot Point button at the top of the 3D View, and from the pulldown, choose 3D Cursor. Now, when you rotate the selected object (or indeed any other thing), it will use the 3D Cursor's current position as the point of rotation.


Can anybody explain to me what collection instance is? I have tried understanding this operator, but I cannot seem to wrap my mind around it.

A collection instance is simply a linked copy of another collection. If you change the original collection, all instances will also update to reflect your change. Here's a simple video that demonstrates how it works:
https://youtu.be/Id9IzLV7IDg


Conveyor belt object fall through problem I watched a tutorial video and tried to learn how to make a conveyor belt. Everything went well until I put a cube on the belt. Somehow, the cube just fell through the belt. I googled a lot even watched other tutorial videos but still got the same result.
Here are the images of my object rigid body settings:

the cube setting

the conveyor belt setting

Any advise as to what I'm missing or doing wrong? Thanks in advance for your help.
blend file

It's probably your margin settings that are causing this problem. Increase it until you get it right.


How to link separate parts of a single bone to different objects? I am trying to create an animation of a table folding up. As you can see in the picture
It is splitting the meshes when I try to pivot the table. Can I link the second part of the bone just to the legs and the first part of the bone to just the table top? So that they can fold like in the picture? I thought if I do that maybe the meshes would stop exploding and rotating at different angles? Or is this another problem? If so, please do tell me. Thank you very much!!!!

In fact, you do not link the bone to an object.
You link the object (or vertices of that object) to the bone(s).

The title of your question should not be "How to link separate parts of a single bone to different objects?" but "How to link separate parts of my object to different bones ?"

Because a bone does not really have several parts. An armature has several bones (there are in fact bendy bones, with several parts, but you don't need them for your table).

For your need (folding a table), you could use different approaches.

Solution 1 : Animate separate objects directly

You could directly have your different parts of the table modelled in several objects, and animate those objects directly.
It would be sufficient for some simple animation.

Soltution 2 : Use an armature and parent each object to a bone

You would model each moving part of your table in a different object. Then you parent each object to a bone. For doing it for an object, you would do as follows :

Select the object (Right-Click)
Select the armature object (Shift+Right-Click in order to keep the object of step 1 selected)
If not already, switch to pose mode.
Select the bone you want to parent to
Hit Ctrl+P for parenting
Select option "Bone"

Your object is now parented to the bone. Repeat for other Objects/Bones couples. For a mechanical system like your table, I would go for this solution.

Solution 3 : Use an armature and a single object for the table

In this technique, you only have one mesh for your entire table. For joining different objects together, use Ctr+J after having selected all those objects.

You would have several vertex groups defined for your mesh, whose name corresponds to the bone's names in your armature. The weights in this groups will determine how vertices follow bones.

For instance, if for a given vertex, you have a weight of 1 for vertex group 'A' and 0 for vertex group 'B' : this vertex will follow bone 'A' and not bone 'B'.
If 1 for 'A' and 1 for 'B': this vertex will follow bones 'A' and 'B' with the same influence.

For doing it :

Select your table (one single mesh object)
Select your armature
Hit Ctrl+P for parenting
Select 'With empty groups'

Now your mesh object is ready to follow the armature. But since you don't have weights in your vertex groups (that were created t step 4), you will see nothing.

Enter in edit mode for your object. Select the vertices that will follow your first bone (you can use Ctrl+L shortcut for selecting all 'linked' vertices and work faster). Assign these vertices in the vertex group that has the same name as the bone it should follow, with a weight > 0 (1 for instance).

Repeat for all the moving parts!
That's it, you have the same result as solution 2, but with one single object !

This method is very good for organic objects, but I think it's easier to go with the second method for your table.


Looking for a platform/site where I can render my scene at no cost I am creating my first Animated Short. I'm right on the path :). But there is a problem it took too long to Render.
I want any site where I can render my scene with no cost.
Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks...

First - there is no free rendering.

With that out of the way here is one option - https://www.sheepit-renderfarm.com/

If you ask me, your best bet would be to optimize your own setup or if you are planning on seriously getting into Blender invest into a rendering setup.
What are you trying to render and what is your setup(both hardware and settings in Blender).


Is this a correct way to do procedural bumps in Cycles? in the following pic, I've marked in yellow how I'm thinking the procedural bump map is done in Cycles, but I'm not sure. Is there a better way to do it?

Let's say the material is applied to the default cube.

While i am not an expert in the way blender nodes work, I think that it would be more precise to use the Fac (Factor) connector instead of color.

The color connector in the noise node creates a color output thats not black and white, thats then converted into height data in the bump node.

The Fac connector will generate non-color data that then is used to generate height information.

There is a significant difference in how your bump map will look depending on which connector you use. The Fac connector should be more accurate for height data.

You can see the difference here on how it works.
The top squares use the Fac and Color connectors respectively directly as the diffuse input and below are those values plugged into the bump node to generate height.


How to apply a force via python to a rigid body wheel I have set up a simple car like model in blender 2.8

I have now set up a rigid body so I can simulate simple physics

Main Block - Active Rigid Body
Wheel - Active Rigid Body
Empty - Rigid Body Constrained

This exactly works as expected. When I set the constraint to Hinge, also the wheels are turning when the vehicle rolls down a test plane)

But I need to control the vehicle via a python script (Apply a rotation/force to the 4 wheels)

Therefore I've set up the following script

import bpy, time

# get the 4 wheels
wheels = [bpy.data.objects['WheelFrontLeft'],
    bpy.data.objects['WheelBackLeft'],
    bpy.data.objects['WheelBackRight'],
    bpy.data.objects['WheelFrontRight']]

for wheel in wheels:
    wheel.animation_data_clear() # clear keyframes
    wheel.rotation_euler[1] = 0 # reset rotation

for i in range(1,50): # step through 50 frames
    bpy.context.scene.frame_set(i)
    for wheel in wheels: # iterate wheels
        wheel.rotation_euler[1] += 15 # rotate +15
        wheel.keyframe_insert(data_path="rotation_euler", frame=i) # insert keyframe

Unfortunately this does not change anything...

After running the script I got a totally messed up scene (everything is wrong positioned/rotated) and if I restart the animation, the vehicle just keeps falling (Only the Rigid body simulation applies without the rotation)

So I don't see any rotation at all. Only when I'm checking the animation checkbox (for the active rigid body wheels), the wheels are moving. In that case the car is not falling anymore (physics won't be applied).
Obviously that is an either or switch for physics/animation

I also tried setting the empty constraint type to Motor instead of Fixed but then it just falls apart....

Also rotating the constraints does not help at all....

What am I doing wrong? How can I fix this?

I just got it working myself.

The solution is the motor constraint. Using the motor constraint alone, the vehicle will fall apart. Thus you have to add another constraint between each vehicle and the body - a hinge constraint to only allow rotation.

Thus the complete setup looks like this

Create the vehicle (body and 4 wheels as seperate objects)
Create a Hinge Constraint between each wheel and the body (I used an empty for it - take care of the right rotation)
Create a Motor Constraint between each wheel and the body (Angular movement - I used an empty for it - take care of the right rotation))

Now you can check out the context menu of the angular velocity. There you can find the option "Copy Data Path". This will copy the relative property path of the object to use it withing your scripts

Then you can use it for example like this

constraints = [bpy.data.objects['fl'], bpy.data.objects['bl'],
    bpy.data.objects['br'], bpy.data.objects['fr']]

for c in constraints:
    c.rigid_body_constraint.motor_ang_target_velocity=5
    c.rigid_body_constraint.motor_ang_max_impulse=100


How to bake with Blender 2.82 and keep shading information? I am having issues baking in blender. I'm new to blender so I don't know what I am doing wrong. I have the UV mesh unwrapped and a blank image-texture selected for it to bake to. But whenever I bake it, it always bake as a flat color with no shading. Also, I am only trying to bake the skin. I have tried the bake types, diffuse, normal, and combined and still have the same issue. I've also tried different setups with the nodes. I was able to get a white highlight around the islands of baked UV mesh by playing around with the nodes, however when I imported it into Unity, it showed up completely flat colored just like the ones I did before.


Boolean Modifier Issues (Engraving text on to a face) So, what I am trying to do is engrave some numbers in to the side of a dice.

I have been following the tutorials that I can find which includes;

1) Converting my text objects in to a mesh
2) Applying the boolean to the dice and selecting the object.

Either 1 of 2 things happen, either the dice disappears, or nothing 'seamlessly' happens.

Can anyone shed some light on what basic step I may be missing?

Thank you again for your time!

You actually did what you wanted in the second picture, the old Text mesh is only still visible... you could delete it or hide it to see the results. Further notes on general good practice: After following Hikariztw's suggestion to join the text objects together first, which makes life way easier, you could try changing the solver to "Carve"... (in the modifier) takes a bit longer but is more accurate and less buggy most of the time. Also you could try to recalculate normals in edit mode for both objects (ctrl+N) –


How to plot Pasta Shapes with Volumetrics? For NodeVember this year, I’d like to try and plot some of the pasta shapes in the book Pasta By Design. The book contains equations that describe the shapes of pasta.

I’d like to use these equations to generate volumetrics.

I’m just beginning with Blender and Maths isn’t my strongest subject. I’ve been racking my brains how to do this, but I’m completely stuck.

I had the idea that I could solve the equations for i and j and then test to see if x, y or z was within the range, but this does not produce the result I want.

I tried using x and y as the i and j components but I could not get this to work either. As I’m doing this with nodes it’s difficult to do things iteratively I thought I could hack it by using x and y from the 3D array.
Is it possible to use equations like this to plot shapes with volumetrics?
pi(i,j)   := 15•cos( i/60 • PI )
phi(i,j)  := 15•sin( i/60 • PI )
kappa(i,j):= j

I'm open to correction, but unfortunately, the formulae in your (I'm jealous,) book are expressed in the wrong domain for a renderer like Cycles. They're parametric surfaces.
That is to say, in the book, a surface is expressed as a function of parameters i,j in certain ranges. Given i and j, a point on the surface (X,Y,Z) is generated.
Cycles starts from the other end. It says: "Hey, I've been given this point P in XYZ space, and told it's interesting. What are its properties? Where should I fire a few more rays?" It will have been told to look at that point because it's an intersection of a ray  with a triangle, a set step through a volume, or suchlike. Cycles can't iterate through i and j, and generate points in 3D space. You get what you're given.
That's not to say you can't make volumetric pasta. Most pasta is pressed through a die - in those cases, all you have to do is work out how to make a 2D mask in XY that's the shape of the pasta's profile, saying 'Yes' if the point you're given is inside the mask, and 'No' if it's outside.
In the case of your cylindrical Penne, that's just asking if the shading-point is close enough to a given radius in XY with a Compare node, and also that the absolute value of Z is less than where you want to chop it off top and bottom:

All these masks are used to drive the density of Volume shaders thus:

So here's your Penne:

.. but that wouldn't hold much sauce, so you can play with the profile:

.. and cut the ends off with a slant:

.. for Penne Rigate:

Or you can make, say, a cross-shaped mask around the X and Y axes, before rotating the whole space around the Z axis, by the Z height, to get Fusilli:

etc. etc. A great idea for Nodevember.


Problems engraving text beginner here.

I am creating a part to be 3D printed. I am trying to engrave text on it so that it will appear in low relief, but the boolean operation does not seem to be working. The surface on which I am engraving is like a very flat cone, so I am first applying shrinkwrap to make the text follow its curvature.

The model I am working on has had the text engraved before, but there is a problem, and I have to do it again. So I removed the old text and filled-in the missing areas.

These are the steps I am following:

I made the text in Adobe Illustrator
I converted it to outlines and exported it as SVG
I import the SVG into Blender
I join the curves (ctrl-j)
I make a mesh from the curves
I select the option "subdivide" from the W menu
I apply shrinkwrap modifier, using the cone-like shape as the object
I extrude the text.
I remove doubles (through W menu)

Now, when I make a boolean operation on the cone, using the text mesh as the object it only carves the surface partially, some letters are totally missing and some are partly carved.

I've been going around this website looking for ideas but none I found works for me. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated

Thanks!

Axel

I used the boolean difference method as described on the boards as well, but it can do funky stuff to your geometry if, for example, you were engraving the inside of a cylinder (like a ring). Instead, I prefer to go into UV editing mode, select the faces where I want the text to be, then unwrap the UVs to a new map. From there you can export the UVMap or import the image you exported from Illustrator and apply it to the UVMap. Now, apply the image as a texture to the object, add a displacement modifier and apply the texture to the UVMap.
More on displacement modifier here there are tons of tutorials to be searched for.


Why the belt not fitting on body with shrinkwrap? I have made the body and i want to fix the belt on the body. Im having 2 problem. 1st is the belt is on the body but its not having that rectangular shape. 2nd I have given the solidify to the belt but i cant see. How to fix the problem. Any suggestion or help Thanks

You should use the 'project' option of the shrinkwrap modifier:

'Nearest surface point' may stretch the mesh to find the closer correspondence to the target.

'Project' projects along the object (belt here) surface's normal until it reaches the target.

Link to the documentation: https://docs.blender.org/manual/fr/dev/modeling/modifiers/deform/shrinkwrap.html#mode

Complement

From there, if you add a solidify, you'll see that the two extremities of the belt overlap.

To avoid that, you'll need to use a vertex group to drive the shrinkwrap. But in this case, you have to apply the mirror modifier first, so that left and right parts can be different:

Apply the mirror
Enter edit mode
Select all the vertices
Create a group and assign the vertices to it
Use this group in the shrinkwrap modifier (the modifier will now use these weights to moderate the influence of the shrinkwrap)

Now, switch to weight paint mode in order to change the vertex group's weights values:

Enter in weight paint mode
Enable vertex selection
Choose/select the vertices on the right (or left)
Choose a substract brush
And tune until the wanted result is obtained


How to make these holes the same size? I'm trying to replicate a speaker mesh from a timelapse video. How can I make these holes equal in size? The images below are from the video.Is there an alternative way to do it?

You can start with a simple plane.

First set modifiers to it:

Mirror on X and Y
Array on X (merge option checked)
Array on Y (merge option checked)

In edit mode grab the plane to set the origin point to bottom left.

Poke face CtrlF then choose 'poke'.

Select the outer edges.

Subdivide them W then choose 'subdivide'.

Select the bottom left and upper right corner.

Scale them down using S.

The modifiers:


Can I change the display color of names of grouped objects in the viewport? After adding object names to the viewport (using Object.show_name = True), it looks something like this:

Ball 2 and Ball 3 are identical to Ball 1 except for the fact that they have been added to an arbitrary group. As a result, their names appear in a green color instead of the default black. Is there any way to prevent this behaviour? I wish to keep all names black independent of their grouping.

Yes, you can change the theme so that grouped objects are black:

In ⎈ Ctrl⎇ AltU> User Preferences > Themes > 3D view > Object Grouped.


How to not slide off the stairs in game mode? How I can stop in the middle of the stairs without sliding off ?
With the current setup the collision mesh which my camera is parent to slides
down the created stair ramp object whenever I stop halfway up the stairs.

sorry, I find it difficult to explain in English because I use g.translate, I hope there who understand the intent of the question in my image.
thank you

May I suggest you switch it around. Instead of adding a mesh along the stair's geometry you could just make your character's collision mesh with a chamfer. In that way you don't have to create extra meshes for your stairway.

Without the ramp object the mesh will not slide down a gradient but rest on the surface of perfectly flat geometry in your scene when you stop.


UV Mapping (Unwrapping for Image Textures) I've done the UV Mapping (Unwrapping for Image Textures) tutorial and I've managed to successfully fill my cube with a layout.

However, my solid is a prism and I'm struggling to do the same with it.

What I did was to fill the dimensions in the transform menu x=1, y=2,4, z=3,51 and then do same steps, but my layout still keeps as cube.

Can someone help please?

Go to Object mode and ctrl A > Apply Scale, then unwrap again


How to Cache Frames Faster in Movie Clip Editor? I'm trying to track a fairly short (~30 second) video, however while playing through the video it takes FOREVER to cache in all the frames. So far, I have only got to about half way through the clip before the caching pretty much stops, and Blender begins "Not Responding". From here the screen freezes and I am forced to manually turn off the computer.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Don't worry, I'll just split the video into two parts.

Thanks anyway.


Object List from Selection I would like to create an object list from my selected objects but I can't find a way of doing this on 2.80 and AN 2.1.

If this isn't possible, what are the alternatives for animating multiple different objects?

Thank you in advance!

Create a collection and set the wanted objects in it (upper right part of the image above).

Then use a "Collection Info" node in the node setting and use the collection as input.


Why does it appear like it is snowing in my animation? I created a simple animation where I am circling around a chair in a room. For some reason, as I was key framing the camera, I noticed that at around 60 frames, this weird snow-like particle stuff started falling and it happens for about 40 frames. I have no idea what is happening or how to make it go away. I didn't hit anything accidentally to my knowledge. Anyone have any ideas what could be causing this?

that "snow" is caused by a particle system. Like you can see at the image you need to turn of HALO in that particle system that created the particles.

So find that particle system and turn of HALO


How to cut extrude inwards like in sketchup? In sketchup the extruding is similar to blender, but when I pull down it is different. I have a cube in sketchup and added 2 edges, and with the center face I pull down and it cuts to make the u shape.
Sketchup

I tried something similar in Blender, but it did not work.
After adding loop cut when pull down it created extra faces that I have delete and it adds more work to do.
Is there any method or how can i make a simple way cut or extrude downwards?
With the boolean can cut in sketchup, it's a simple way just to extrude downward and get what I want. Any suggestion or help which and make my work faster with this simple methods?
Blender

Starting with blender version 2.9 there is a way to Extrude Manifold
(Alt+E)

This tool is very similar to Extrude Faces but enables Dissolve Orthogonal Edges by default. This causes the tool to automatically split and remove adjacent faces when extruding inwards.


how do delete individual (dust) emitter particle that passes in front of the camera? I've made a video that is one long (5 minute) shot and created an emitter particle system to make dust floating around. it all looked good in tests and i sent it to a render farm and now im fixing any problem frames that came up. turns out, on 1 single frame one of the particles passed in front of the camera right at an important part. i cannot change the particle system and re-render the entire project as it took 31 days on a paid renderfarm to render. however i can easily re-render individual frames (which im doing for little fixes here and there that popped up post-render anyway)and just delete that one particle. anything i look up with the words 'particle sysytem' keep giving me solutions for hair paricles, so its getting pretty frustrating.
   So, how can i delete one particle from an emitter particle system when i cannot have any other particles change? I am using blender 2.79b still. (I'll move up to 2.8 on the next project... maybe)

Solution- @3DSinghVFX Genius! it worked. Here's what I did. I went four frames before the particle passed in front of the camera and placed a simple plane in the path of the particle. I turned off all ray visibility in the cycles settings under the object tab for the plane and added collision physics to it and enabled 'kill particles'. I then went to the particle system and freed the bake (from the 4 frames ahead to add a small buffer but not so far as to risk the other particles i want to keep from changing) and stepped one frame at a time up to the problem frame and.... PERFECT! particle gone.


Is it true that there's no escaping a little bit messy geometry in the part you connect last? Thanks to some helpful guides from BSE's members, I'm capable of modeling the top of the mouse Logitech G600 after redoing it countless times. Although the model has (almost) even quads and allows (fairly) good deformation, I still find it messy in the parts that I connect last (surrounded by blue lines). I noticed that everytime I connected the last parts in the last attempts, those parts always looked messy, which prompts me to think that there's no escaping this issue. Is that true? Or is there a method of doing that ensure the last parts are connected cleanly? If you dont mind, I would love to see your models' geomomery without subsurf to give that question an answer! Thank you!

I've tried your mouse, it's not exactly the G600 shape but I think the method is good. Unfortunately I lost all the screenshots I made, but here are the basic steps. For this kind of object you should begin by modeling the whole shape, then duplicate it and use a Shrinkwrap modifier to continue to stick to this shape:

Use the pictures you find as backgrounds for Front (or Back), Top and Left (or Right) views.
Use all these views to model the general shape of the object.
Keep the model simple (picture 1), give it a Subdivision Surface modifier to smooth it. Let's call this object A.
Duplicate this object to create a copy called object B. Don't move this copy so that it keeps the same position as object A, but put it on another layer to make invisible.
Give the object A a Shrinkwrap modifier that you put above the Subdivision Surface modifier, choose object B as the Target of the Shrinkwrap.
Select all the vertex of your object A, assign them to a
vertex group, select this group in the Shrinkwrap modifier, so that they will be the ones that will be affected by the Shrinkwrap.
Add some edge loops on your object A, begin to draw all the additional shapes with a knife. Make sure that the new vertices are part of the vertex group. As the object has a Shrinkwrap modifier, the new topology you create stick to the right shape.
Begin to extrude where you need to dig some holes. This time, make sure that the extruded vertices are not part of the vertex group, otherwise they would stick to the surface.
The tricky part is all around the square cuts, you can use the kind of topology I've used (picture 3), fortunately the Shrinkwrap make it easier to keep a correct shape.
Note that you can choose sometimes to apply the Shrinkwrap so that the vertices of object A always stick as much as possible to the shape of object B. Then recreate the exact same Shrinkwrap as before.


How to make a shader with different emission strengths, depending on the object it is associated to? I'm working on a lyrics video

In this scene there are 41 curved neons going from the floor to the wall in front of the camera.

I'd like to make their shader bright at the center (where the "Bishop Delgado" text is), then lesser and lesser on the sides, until it doesn't emit light anymore. How can I do that?
Here is the shader I applied to the neon tubes so far :

You can get any object's local space with the Texture Coordinate node and use the distance from its center to create a falloff.


Move hands from two seperate rig from a single controller I'd like to know if it's possible to move a pair of hands from two seperate characters without workings on their individual animation.

The best case would be an empty that moves the hands by adding animation on top of the two characters without replacing it. I hope I am clear enough in my explanation.

Thank you for your time!

Yes, you can.

The two arms should have an IK Chain, you can set a copy location constraint to both the IK targets (Man and child), to follow the empty. You can animate the "influence" parameter of the copy location constraint, so - in the section of the animation in which you want the arms to be controlled by the empty - delete all animation data ot the arms, set two keyframes to get full constraint influence (1.0), and animate the empty as desired (and the pole bones, if present, to set the elbows angles).


How to apply a texture only to certain parts of mesh? I am trying to apply a texture to everything EXCEPT the selected parts below (I separated them as a different object to see if this would resolve, but it doesn't...)

As you can see below, it still adds the texture to the parts I don't want. Any ideas how to fix?

Sounds like you need an object with two or more materials.

Under the 'Materials' tab on the right of your interface, click that "+" icon next to your single material, "Material.000".
When that happens you get a second material slot to which you may assign faces of your model. Either select a pre-existing material from your drop-down menu, or create a new material to use.
Select the faces you want to assign this new material, and with the
new material highlighted, click "Assign", under the materials list.

You'll see some other useful tools under the materials list that come in handy for assignment and selection.


Can you export compositor nodes? Not sure if this is a dumb question or not, but can you export compositor nodes to another project? I'd rather not recreate them on different projects for similar effects.

Yes.

By creating a node group (⎈ CtrlG) you can append (⇧ ShiftF1) those node groups from other projects.

See my answer here for more detail.


Eevee glass rendering grey So I'm using a Principled BSDF shader with transmission to 1 in Eevee. I've enabled screen space refraction in the shader and enabled screen space reflections and refractions in the render tab. I've covered so many solutions on stackexchange yet I'm still getting this gray in the glass.
I thought it was reflecting the background. I have changed the background to white (also tried blue) but it make no difference. I've played with the refraction depth and IOR, but nothing helps.
What is going on here?

I find this setup best to mimic proper glass in eevee. Pay attention to the Blend Modes I have highlighted (I didn't use a transparent shadow but you can if you want). You can leave the IOR at default, but I find 1.05 gives a better look for a lot of things.


Baked normals Look a Strange For a few months I'm researching and making little tests to better understing and optimize a LowRes Workflow, And this "error" continue to occurs on this particulary model that I'm working on, It was baked using tangent space, I tested in Substance Painter and Unity to see if It was a Blender Related Shader issue, and It was less predominant on the others aplication that a tested on.

But that was enough chit chat, here's a screen grab.

And thank you for reading! Have a nice day.

A likely scenario would be if the normals were inverted. That happens for example if the geometry is inverted(scaled by negative values) at some point during modeling to mirror it. You should go to edit mode (tab), select everything (a) and recalculate normals before baking them. The hotkey is ctrl+n in 2.79 and shift+n in 2.80. You can access functions related to normals in the ctrl+f or Mesh > Faces and Mesh>Normals menus in 2.79, while in 2.80 there is a dedicated Normals menu alt+n.

However in this particual case the issue is the normal map made with overlaping UVs for symetrical geometry. If you have a look at a normal map of a symetrical object, the normals are not mirrored - they differ on each side so if you mirror them you get an incorrect result.


Blender only shows blank image when rendered Can anyone help me. I tried rendering my animation in blender 2.9 but apparently, it only shows a black image. Even in the render option, it only shows an empty image. I think I messed up something in its settings. Hope anyone can help me, I'm just new to blender so please bear with me. I'll upload the .blend file, hope anyone can look at it. Thank you.
https://ibb.co/JRV0zz6

If you tap the right most button here:

you can check how the rendered image would look like.
There you can also see the black screen.
Then tap on the two button right to your cube001: (eye + camera)

Then add a sun : strength : 50
and you will get:

hint: without any light in the scene (whatever "form" of light) you won't see anything (which results in black screen)
instead of adding a sun you could also change the world shader to a background shader as @Gorgious said.


How do I Remove a Constraint in the BGE I saw a game demo where a wooden crate broke into planks when it was hit by an object. I want to do something similar. I assume it's done with constraints, and I found a reference to a python function for removing constraints (called removeConstraint()) but I'm unfamiliar with python scripts so I don't know how to call it and I can't find any examples. The reference is this function is here:

http://www.tutorialsforblender3d.com/GameModule/ClassKX_PyConstraintBinding_4.html

Can anyone help me to understand how to use this function, or how else I might create breakable crates?

Most often, objects breaking up is done by, when hit by something, ending the original object and replacing it with one or more rigid bodies. (ie using add object/end object actuators or the python equivalent)

Now, on to constraints. I know no way to get the constraint if it was made in the user interface. There simply doesn't seem to be a method to get constraints. But if you create the constraint from python and store it's ID's, then you can manipulate it/destroy it.

To create a constraint (this is for a wheel, free to rotate in one axis):

def joinWheel(wheel, axle):
    obj1 = wheel
    obj2 = axle

    id1 = obj1.getPhysicsId()
    id2 = obj2.getPhysicsId()

    '''bge.constraints.createConstraint(physics_id_1, physics_id_2,
                             constraint_type,
                             edge_position_x, edge_position_y, edge_position_z,
                             edge_angle_x, edge_angle_y, edge_angle_z)'''

    obj1['joint'] = bge.constraints.createConstraint(id1, id2,
                             bge.constraints.GENERIC_6DOF_CONSTRAINT,
                             0,0,0,0,0,0)

    obj1['joint'].setParam(0, 0.0, 0.0) #No X translation
    obj1['joint'].setParam(1, 0.0, 0.0) #No Y translation
    obj1['joint'].setParam(2, 0.0, 0.0) #No Z translation
    obj1['joint'].setParam(3, 0, 0) #No X Rotation
    obj1['joint'].setParam(4, 0, 0) #No Y Rotation
    #obj1['joint'].setParam(5, 0, 0) #Commented out so there is z rotation

And now we have a reference to the constraint stored in objs['joint'] which can be removed with:

def removeWheel(wheel):
    bge.constraints.removeConstraint(wheel['joint'].getConstraintId())


Compare 2 images directly I would like to compare 2 images with little color changes to another. (To be specific, the raw render result and the output of my compositing viewer-node).

For now, i use two UV/Image Editor windows, displaying my two images. The problem now is that i need to resize/move both images so that the edge is fitting correctly (wich is unpleasent work). Also, when moving the border around, both images also move a bit...

Is there a better method to display two images on top of each other with a movable border between them?

In the compositor you can use the split viewer node.

From the manual:

  The SplitViewer node takes two images and displays one-half of each on each side (top socket on the right half, bottom socket input on the left). Use this node for making side-by-side comparisons of two renderings/images, perhaps from different render layers or from different scenes. When transitioning between scenes, you want to be sure the stop action is seamless; use this node to compare the end of one scene with the beginning of another to ensure they align.


How can I change my node group interface to more easily edit the Group Input/Output nodes? I was watching a tutorial and the Node Editor interface is totally different than mine at factory settings, when inside of a node group.

My default interface when entering a node group is that the background is translucent green and there is a Group Input/Output node that must be managed in the Interface roll out of the Properties Shelf (N). The tutor doesn't account for this discrepancy, but carries on as if his setup is just how Blender works/looks by default.

How do I get my interface to look like this, where everything is easily managed right in the Node Editor? Is this an add-on? If so, which one?

That's just the way node groups display in the current version of Blender. The other screen shot is from an older version of Blender.

In your node group, you can edit all the input/output settings by hitting the N key which will open the property panel on the right. Clicking on each input/output in the list will allow you to change the properties for each one there.


What's the distance between the camera eye and the canvas and how it's related to focal length I would like to understand what the distance between the origin of camera and its canvas is in blender.

I thought it was the focal length but it's not (focal length is 100 mm and this distance is bigger); so, I would like to understand the algebraic relation with focal length (if exist).
The camera is set to be "perspective"

It depends on the Sensor Size of the camera
Short answer:
If you didn't scale your gizmo (object's scale = 1,1,1) you can se the formula:
Canvas distance = Focal Lenght / Sensor Size

Explanation
Like all the objects you add to your scene, cameras have a default size of 1, measured on the X axis. You can clearly see that changing the focal lenght doesn't affect the X size of the gizmo.

The Y size depend on the proportion bewtween the X and Y resolution, so if the screen is 16:9, the Y size would be 9/16 of X

The projection plane is distanced from the POV in Z exactly by the measure of the focal lenght, but you have to take into account the Sensor Size. If you match the size of the gizmo on X (1 meter=1000m) to the Sensor Size, the distance of the plane will be the same as the focal lenght:

If you use a custom Sensor Size, the plane distance from POV is the ratio between the Focal lenght and the Sensor Size:
Zdepth = Scale*Focal Lenght/Sensor Size

Blender's default camera has a Focal Lenght of 50mm and a Sensor Size of 36mm, so the default distance is:
1*50/36=1.3888888888...9

You can scale the gizmo to match the sensor size, this way you'll have the Focal Lenght = Canvas distance:


Object Location Changes when rendering I made a scene where a grenade bounces in and rolls across the floor, except the issue is when I render it the location changes slightly. I am running blender 2.78 with supported features only. I have turned all modifiers off and restarted blender. The problem still persists. Can anyone help me out?
Note: I made the animation by baking a physics simulation to key frames. The room was also made by archimesh. (I have tried disabling archimesh in the user preferences but it didn't change anything)
In the viewport it looks like this:

In the render it looks like this:

Notice in the bottom right that the grenade has not changed locations. To my eye it looks like the grenade is in the same place, but the floor has changed locations. But either way, I do not know why this is happening. Thanks!

There is a hidden object in your scene.

Since it only has restrict viewport visibility turned "on" you can only see it in the render.

To unhide all press ⎇ AltH in the 3D viewport.

Or locate the hidden object in the outliner and delete it or restrict rendering for it as well.


Convert Cycles depth/z to distance to image plane I want to simulate a depth sensor with Blender Cycles, but the z-pass returns the length of the sight ray and not the distance to the image plane.  Here is a formula to convert the depth map, but I am not sure how to derive the terms from Blender, or a Python script using the Blender API.

I guess the focal length (f) can be derived with

bpy.context.object.data.lens_unit = 'MILLIMETERS'
f = 1000 * bpy.context.object.data.lens

The y-coord of the principal point by using the resolution

cy = bpy.context.scene.render.resolution_y / 2

The y-coord of a pixel (ys) and the length of the sight ray (zs) are also clear, but how can I derive the density (d)?

I got it with a slightly different formula. Given the field of view (fov) as

bpy.context.object.data.lens_unit = 'FOV'
fov = bpy.context.object.data.angle

and the intrinsic components of the camera as

f = (im_width / 2) / tan(fov / 2)
px = im_width / 2
py = im_height / 2

I can transform the depth as follows

zc[v,u] = zs[v,u] * f / sqrt(f**2 + (px - u - 0.5)**2 + (py - v - 0.5)**2)


how to colorize the water? I made a water simulation.
I also use an HDRI to light the scene because it is easy to use and looks great.
Unfortunately the water "mirrors" the HDRI background which isn't blue which looks kind of "bad". I want to have blueish color.
So i thought, i could add a blue plane around/under the water so it reflects the blue from there.
Unfortunately it does not (in Eevee).
Anybody an idea how to get what i want?
@Moonboots: Thank you very much for your answer. At least now i can change the color. ;) But... now my "water" looks like this (see image)
I hoped the water would somehow reflect that color that it still looks like water...

UPDATE2: @moonboots: i am sorry, but the file is too big because of HDRI i think, so blender stackexchange didn't work, your proposal does just accecpt until 24MB ...it is 105 MB ...so to be quick i used dropbox, hope you don't beat me
https://www.dropbox.com/s/03591rpn34wwgth/blue_water_test.blend?dl=0

The water reflects the environment: The ocean looks blue on clear days and gray on cloudy ones.
Look for an HDRi that has clear sky in the area that is reflected by the water.
Or use a second HDRi that is used for reflections only.
Read:
How to use multiple HDRIs


How to create fire materials using the new Principled Volume node that visually look the same as the "old method" of fire materials? There is a new volumetric shader node called "Principled Volume" in Blender 2.79 as of this commit. It appears to support a new temperature attribute, using blackbody temperature.
Using the more or less familiar setup as pictured below, I can get a good enough material, but I would like to know how to achieve the same result with this new shader node.
"Old method" and result:

Setup with Principled Volume node:

Here is the current file to play with.
It does require a current (as of 3/5/18) buildbot build to use the shader.

The question:
How do I set up a material with the Principled Volume node that renders visually the same as the old setup?

Here is my final result.

The result using the first node setup:

And the result using final principled setup:

Let me start of by saying that smoke simulation and rendering is not something I am very familiar with, so despite being able to replicate the material fairly well, I don't necessarily understand everything behind why it works the way it does. But I'll explain what I can.

A quick summary of what I did:

Left the default color as white, and used the colorramp as the input for the Emission Color.
Increased Emission Strength to the value you had, but then dialed it back some as it was too strong. I noticed that the two images aren't exaclty the same, and further reducing the Emission Strength could probably fix that.
Increased the Density to half of the value you used in the first setup, as this looked closest.
Left everything else as the default. I tried changing the color and temperature attributes, as well as the Blackbody settings, but they seemed to have no effect with this setup.

So, from what I understand at the end of this, the Principled Volume Shader is basically setup to replicate the original node setup you have, and it does it well. There does appear to be some differences in how the shader works compared to the old method, namely in how the density works. I noticed that (before emission was added, which made the details hard to see) the Principled smoke looked more dense than the manual smoke, but if I decreased the density it would get to the point of areas being nearly transparent before the main density looked similar. More details were visible in the principled smoke, and since in this setup the smoke was colliding with the domain, the principled setup had more defined boundaries, whereas the manual setup was much less defined. Perhaps with some experimentation, or a better understanding of how the shader works, as my knowledge is limited, a more similar result could be achieved.

The good news in all of this is that smoke is now much easier to setup, as the final setup I arrived at was just this:

Hope that helps!


After Merging Duplicate Vertices, Sculpt Mode Model Drastically Effected Ultimately, I am trying to subdivide my current model, but I can't until I clean it up. Subdividing without cleaning causes crazy protruding vertices everywhere.
Using Blender 2.8, I've begun the journey of cleaning my model by first removing duplicate vertices within the model. As soon as I do however, the model has crazy protruding lines as show above when in sculpt mode.
Solutions I've tried:

grabbing and smoothing the crazy protrusions for hours. it never seems to end up properly, not to mention, some of the lines seem to go into infinite space.
removing the faces in edit mode and then readding them. This is a terrible idea, it garbles up the model significantly.
Seeing if I can add vertices in edit mode to get rid of any triangles while maintaining other quads

I'm at the point where I wonder if I should just start from scratch again because I have no idea where I went wrong.
Note: I've added a link to my .blend file
EDIT: Re-uploaded my .blend file to the point before I merged my duplicate vertices

Welcome to Blender Stack Exchange!

See the edits below for an answer to this specific problem. Note that the eventual solution may not apply to all cases of this issue.

I have some bad news. This is a known issue with the Multiresolution modifier, and one that I have encountered many times. I think the next version of Blender is going to have a fix, but the test build I tried still has the problem.

The Multires modifier works (I think) by storing information about how the vertices it adds should be positioned relative to the ones that exist. When you change the ones that exist, it gets confused, and doesn't know where to put the vertices it generates, thus sending them off into infinity like you see. For this reason, it's best to not change the mesh once you've added a Multires Modifier. Specifically, merging and adding vertices that changes the flow of the mesh causes the most problems.

For your file, I tried deleting some sections and rebuilding them so that the modifier recalculates where the generated vertices should be placed, but couldn't get it perfect. In your case, it looks like restarting may be the best option. However, Blender has various backup files that may get you to a point before you changed the mesh. You can recover your last session, try an autosave, or check out the .blend1 or .blend2 backup files. There's questions about those on this site.

Going forward, it's best to not change the mesh when using the Multires modifier. If you have to, use the Apply Base button on the modifier before changing anything. This makes the mesh match the sculpt better, and reduces the chances of things going crazy. In your file, it was too late to try this, and that button made it go much worse. However, at least for right now, the Multires modifier limits your ability to change the mesh. Merging vertices or removing edges like you have will almost always mess it up.

For this specific instance:

For this specific case, there is a possible solution that avoids restarting. You can easily retopologize this model and clean everything up. It's a bit of work, but not bad at all.

Let's start by looking at the model in the file provided. I've circled areas where I immediately see problems.

Entering edit mode and removing doubles finds a bunch of duplicates, but causes the problems you're seeing. The top of the right leg also has a face inside the mesh that is causing issues.

So the original mesh is probably not salvageable while keeping the Multires, at least not easily.

What we can do is copy the mesh, get rid of the Multires, fix it up, and then Shrinkwrap it onto the sculpted one. This will give us proper geometry and fix all the issues.

To start, I copied the object, hid the original with H, deleted the Multires on the copy, and headed to edit mode. The first thing I did was delete half of the mesh, and add a mirror modifier with clipping enabled. I prefer this way over using the edit mode X-mirror option. This also allowed me to get rid of the face inside his right leg, as I removed the right side of the object. Then I removed doubles, and fixed any faces that weren't four sided faces (quads).

Which looks like this now:

Good geometry is important when modelling and sculpting, but takes some practice. It's always best to avoid triangles and ngons (faces with more than 4 vertices) as they do not subdivide well.

Next step is to show the original with Alt+H and delete the face inside the top of his right leg. This doesn't affect the Multires at all, but causes problems later on otherwise.

Back on the copied mesh, I added a Shrinkwrap modifier and set the original as the target. Make sure it's below the mirror modifier.

This will now stick the copied mesh onto the original. However, since the original is sculpted, the copied mesh doesn't follow the original very closely. This causes some issues with the Shrinkwrap, as it tries to find the closest point on mesh to snap to.

It's especially obvious on the feet, as it sticks to the top of the feet instead of the sides.

So back to edit mode on the copied mesh. Using proportional editing, enabled with O and using the scroll wheel to adjust the size, I moved the mesh around to follow the sculpt better. It doesn't have to be perfect.

Now the copied mesh looks like this:

At this point I also checked the mesh to look for any other issues. I did this by adding a Subdivision Surface modifier with the view set to 2. Any points with issues will show up as pinching or sharp points. I found an issue at the wrist, where there were some extra edges inside, so I deleted those. Then I got rid of the SubSurf modifier.

At this point, the mesh is clean. If the goal is only to fix the basemesh, you're done. Apply the modifiers, and make sure that the object is truly symmetrical, as the shrinkwrap often makes things asymmetric. I did this by just deleting half the mesh, setting the cursor at the center of the world and, setting it as the pivot point. Then I selected everything that should be in the exact center of the character and scaled it on the x axis to 0. Then I added and applied a mirror modifier to get the whole character again.

The modified .blend file with the fixed basemesh:

EDIT 2: Saving more detail:

Continuing with the edited basemesh created above, even more detail can be saved based on what you're next steps will be.

In order to keep this symmetrical, I'm going to start by deleting half the character again. This way I only have one half to worry about, and I can just mirror it again later.

I'll start by adding a SubSurf modifier again, and setting the view level to 3 like what you had before. Then I can add a Shrinkwrap again, with the original sculpt as the target.

Looking good.

It's not quite perfect, as the target for the shrinkwrap wasn't quite perfect, but it's nothing we can't handle.

From here, we can apply both the Subsurf and the Shrinkwrap, in that order. This will make all the vertices that the Subsurf generates real, and thus will make the mesh a lot denser in edit mode. This isn't ideal, but it could be worse. I would highly recommend making sure that your geometry is exactly like you want it to be before applying this modifier. Maybe even watch ahead in the video you're following to make sure you won't have to make any changes later on.

Once you're happy with the geometry and have applied the modifiers, we can get the whole character back. In edit mode, with the cursor at the world origin and set as the pivot point, Alt click the edge loop on the edge of the character and scale it to 0 on the x axis to snap everything in line with the exact center of the character.

Then we can add one final mirror modifier, and enable clipping again. There's a few issues in the mesh where it didn't snap properly, or where the original mesh was messed up to begin with. A few strokes with the smooth brush and a bit of repositioning with the Grab brush and it's looking good again.

You can apply the mirror modifier now, or keep it. If you're eventually going to use a Multires again you should apply it.

And that's it! Here's the final result:

The final file is included at the bottom of this answer as well. Feel free to use it, inspect it, or do with it as you please. From everything I've seen you should be good to go with the course!


Deselect Objects by Type with Python I have a mesh, and it has children. One of it's children is an Empty. I know there is a way to select an object by type using Python (and there's a button for it too) and it's this:

bpy.ops.object.select_by_type(type='EMPTY')

I was wondering if there was a way to deselect an object by type. Basically, I want to select the children of the mesh, then deselect the empty.

Thanks!

I would suggest not to use bpy.ops and instead access the selection directly.

# assume you the active object is the parent
for obj in bpy.context.object.children:
    if obj.type != 'EMPTY':
        obj.select = True

This is a little more clever, you can do it recursively (to select children's children).

def select_children_recursive(obj_parent):
    for obj in obj_parent.children:
        select_children_recursive(obj)
        if obj.type != 'EMPTY':
            obj.select = True
# call the function
select_children_recursive(bpy.context.object)

Similar to above but caller can define types not to select

def select_children_recursive(obj_parent, type_mask):
    for obj in obj_parent.children:
        select_children_recursive(obj)
        if obj.type not in type_mask:
            obj.select = True
# call the function
select_children_recursive(bpy.context.object, {'EMPTY', 'LAMP'})


How do I force a parent-child object hierarchy to follow armature *without* using armature modifier? I'm working on importing a model and an animation for it from blender into Spring RTS. There are the following tools at my disposal:

Capability of the engine to import Collada via Assimp library. This function does not understand riggings and skeletons, so the only way to get an import of a structured animatable model is by constructing an object hierarchy with parent-child relations.
Capability of a third-party tool to convert BVH animations into animation scripts understood by the engine. Blender BVH export refuses to work on object hierarchies, so I need an armature (and I'd want one anyway).

This causes me to try inventing some hybrid approach. So far I've tried creating a separate, yet perfectly matching armature (for animation export and own convenience) and an object hierarchy (for model export), with intent to then constrain the individual objects in the hierarchy to follow their corresponding bones in the armature.

This way I could visualize the animations on a wysiwyg model, and export both the model and the animation to work in the engine.

However, I seem to failing at the constrain step, since the very first object I try to constrain to follow a bone via Transform, Copy Transform and Copy Rotation constraints, seems to be somehow strangely rotated from its start position.

What am I doing wrong? How would I do this right? Are there any different, better approaches?

I'm assuming that you've already copied the object's starting rotation to match the rotation and roll of the bone. You might need to apply this rotation (Ctrl+A) in order for the constraints to start working properly.

Another possibility is that you might be experiencing Gimbal lock on your objects. Armatures don't exhibit this problem because their default rotation type uses quaternions, whereas objects default to Euler rotations. Fortunately, you can change the rotation type for objects (3D View > Properties region (N) > Transform panel > Rotation) from XYZ Euler to Quaternion (WXYZ).

Try that and see if you're still running into rotation issues.


How to render animation using different text each time? I'm beginner in Blender and I don't even know if it is possible:
I have an animation which I need to render multiple times with only difference in name of person used. (Like Hello, Mark next renderHello, Dan and so on)...
I tried to use (to change the text): bpy.data.objects["jmeno"].data.body = "Ahoj Dane"
 in console ,- there was no error, but nothing happened in 3d viewport. (btw. Jméno is in Czech name, ahoj is hello).
Thank You

import bpy

for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    obj.select = False

bpy.context.scene.objects.active = bpy.data.objects['Text']

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT', toggle=False)

bpy.ops.font.delete(type='ALL')

bpy.ops.font.text_insert(text="Scripted text")


Dragging center point of cube won't drag all edges to corners with it I'm so sorry if this is a horribly asked question but I am very new so I do not know all the terminology yet. I however do have pictures so that I can show the problem.

What I have now:

What I want is instead to have the left and right corners to form edges like:

But right now that only happens to only 2 of the corners. How do I get it to drag all 4 of the corners when I translate the center vertex?

EDIT: It appears the corners that this happens will change depending on my shading
Rendered:
The corners that do not follow are next to each other now.

All others: Above, opposite corners

The problem is that your faces are non-planar (read this) and therefore need to be converted to triangles to be displayed (Blender will do this without telling us).

Showing us the render wires, make the triangulation apparent.

It is possible to trick Blender into triangulating the nonplanar quads in a different order.

Remove the faces in question and recreate them with triangles.

Select the adjacent faces in the correct order and join them with ⎇ AltJ.

Note, that the correct order is dependant on the vertex index which can be shown only with debug options enabled.

But this is not useful. If you want the area to have an edge explicitly define it with the correct topology.

In the reference video, the same behaviour occurs.


a line between the mirror looks strange, how can i fix this? when I scaled the figure down i noticed that there is a ugly line that divides the character(like between the mirror). When I click on the eye symbol so that it shows just half, it looks good but I when its merged it looks odd. I tried to put the merge limit to zero but that didn't help.

is there any way of correcting this??  I have spent so much time on it that I'm paniking

ps im realy new to blender

As mentioned, you don't want to CC subsurf prior to a mirror with merge.  Once you get that sorted out...

It looks like your model's midline is not at the same location as its origin, meaning that once you mirror it, the margin doesn't get merged (which is probably what you would want.)

Try changing the origin of the model.  First, in edit mode, select your "midline" verts (the margin, not really midline in your unmodified mesh) and snap your cursor to this.  Then, using the 'n' properties shelf, manually place the Y and Z location of the cursor at 0.  Leave edit mode, select your model, shift-ctrl-alt-c origin to 3D cursor, (then alt-g reset position, not strictly necessary but a good idea.)  Now your model's origin is properly set at the same X location as the actual verts making up its midline.

In situations like this, it's not uncommon to have a midline that isn't totally vertical like it ought to be.  After fixing the origin, consider scaling all of your midline verts to 0 about the center in X axis only.  (Snap cursor to center, pivot point cursor, loop select your verts, s x 0.)


How can I apply some material included in a node-pack library? I am new to Blender. How can I apply some material included in a node-pack library?

Those are Node groups. Node groups are node setups can take input to give an output with which you can use in other nodes. (Think of it like making a new node of many nodes put together, similar to a function in computer programming.) This also allows you to create a node setup then use it in many places.
The collection of node groups you linked to is made up of Shader nodes and Compositing nodes. The author of the collection you linked to also explains the function of each node group here.
Adding a node group to your blendfile:
You can use them in your own file Appending them. You can do this by pressing ShiftF1> append, then navigating to the blendfile with the nodegroups which you want to use:

Pick the type of data to append, in this case we want Node groups so pick NodeTree:

Select the node group you want to import into your file:

See this question for more information on appending and linking.
You can now add this node group to your own node tree.
In the Node editor, press ShiftA> Add node > Group and select the appended node group:

You now have a new "node" which you can use in your node tree the same way you would use any normal node:

In the case of this node group, it supplies a Shader output, however some node groups return a value or an image (or a vector, or even multiple different outputs).
Editing node groups:

You can edit the nodes in a node group by selecting it and pressing Tab.

You can edit, add and remove inputs and outputs of the node group in the Properties region (N):

You can have node groups inside node groups, so to go to the parent group (the node tree in which the currently active group is located) press the  button on the header. (you can think of this behavior as a file tree with the base node editor as root)

You can ungroup nodes by selecting the group node and pressing AltG. This will place all the nodes in that node group in the current node tree. (I.e. the currently open group or the base node editor)

Other things to note:
The way node groups look and function changed a lot in 2.67. See the wiki for a full description of the changes


Changing ChildOf constraint influence to 0, but keeping the position it had as a child I had a sword object rigged with a single bone, with a ChildOf constraint making it a child of a sheath (with an influence of 1). Throughout an animation i move the sheath, and the sword bone follows as expected.

However, i cant seem to lower the influence of the sheath to zero and still have the sword retain the position it was just at, and I am wondering how i should go about making this happen.

Thanks for your time.

The trick to unparenting is to animate the constraint and the objects location. On one frame you keyframe the objects location using Insert visual locrotscale, the visual keying options will keyframe values after modifiers and constraints are applied. You also key the constraint influence as 1.0 on this frame. Then move one frame and keyframe the childof influence as 0.0.

After you keyframe the visual location and change the constraint to 0.0 the object will snap back to it's original position. Once you keyframe the influence go back a frame and it will go back to where the keyframes put it.

You may also have two constraints, one parenting to the sheath and another parenting to the hand. You just have one at 0.0 influence and the other at 1.0 influence on one frame and swap them around the next frame.

Sample blend


I can not get an object to rotate around its local axis whit animation-nodes I need some help.
I can not get an object to rotate around its local axis whit animation-nodes..
It uses the global.
Here's how my node setup looks.

Record the initials transforms of the object using an ID key, then multiply that transformations by a rotation matrix that hold the rotation data you want.


Connect ear and head I need to connect the mush denser mesh of the ar with the mesh of the head :/

You will have notice, that connecting a more dense edge loop to an edge loop with less vertices will fail.

The solution is to use intermediate faces inbetween, translating the vertex count to a higher one and vice versa.

The resulting quads will subdivide well and work with deformations.

If the area won't deform or is planar (not the case with rounded/concave/convex surfaces), there is no reason not to use triangles.

The topology guides page has many useful tutorials including Optimal Edge Flow Loop Reduction featuring this visualization.


convert OpenEXR float to color value I am exporting a scene to OpenEXR multichannel (with no compression and FULL format) and read it back using Python. Here is the code

exrFile = OpenEXR.InputFile('fallroad_0001.exr')
header = exrFile.header()
dw = header['dataWindow']
pt = Imath.PixelType(Imath.PixelType.FLOAT)
size = (dw.max.x - dw.min.x + 1, dw.max.y - dw.min.y + 1)

cc_r = np.fromstring(exrFile.channel('RenderLayer.Combined.R', pt), dtype=np.float32)
cc_g = np.fromstring(exrFile.channel('RenderLayer.Combined.G', pt), dtype=np.float32)
cc_b = np.fromstring(exrFile.channel('RenderLayer.Combined.B', pt), dtype=np.float32)
cc_r.shape = cc_g.shape = cc_b.shape = (size[1], size[0])
cc = np.dstack((cc_r, cc_g, cc_b))

I understand that an OpenEXR file contain a 'raw' value of the pixel (in high dynamic range), so the pixel values are not in the image standard range [0, 1]. Indeed, here is the range of each channel

[(0.0, 270.6739501953125), (0.0, 221.4493865966797), (0.0, 106.66129302978516)]

Now I am having problems to convert it to the image that Render shows (and export as png), which ranges in [0, 255] or [0, 1]. Scaling [min, max] to [0, 1] or cut off at 1 (values that are greater than 1 become 1) does not work.

I include here the images that I have hand-on. From left to right:  image with raw exported float values, image with value cut-off at 1 (all > 1 become 1) and image rendered by Blender

The values are scene referred.

You require a view transform to map to the display referred range.

If you choose to use the sub-optimal sRGB EOTF, you are losing a heck of a lot of dynamic range. You can use a much wider dynamic range for the scene referred to display referred transform if you wish. Ultimately it is always a creative decision.

See Render with a wider dynamic range in cycles to produce photorealistic looking images for more information.


Can control particle emission from material’s texture? question is if I can emit particle from texture which assigned as material.

Ok so wrong answer, but I keep it for those who may be interested:

If you want, for a particle, to get the right color from an object that has an image texture on, you need to:

Create your emitter material.

Duplicate this material, assign it to your particle, enable the Texture Coordinate's From Instancer option.

It should work:


Can't find in my viewport but it shows in the outliner Can anyone help, I was sculpting a human full figure. So decided bring in my eyes, I went into object mode to add a sphere and hide the figure I was sculpting pushing the H button so I could work on the eye well. Finished  with the eye, now to put in the right place on the figure I sculpted but I can't unhide it even with the alt H but the object shows in the outliner .Did everything to make it unhide but it keeps hiding from me. Please anyone at my aid as soon as possible?

Trying pressing the Tilde key (~) to show all layers and then pressing Alt + H to unhide all objects. It looks like there are objects in other layers which could be where the missing object is.


How to remove inner faces generated by union boolean modifier? I know it is possible to select by trait interior faces and remove them, but when I am using modifiers, without applying I would not be able to do so, is there any way to clean the mess union modifier generate?

Sample: puzzle.blend

there is new boolean algorithm in blender, so use the exact option in the boolean modifier if you are in b3d 2.91 to remove that overlapping geometry, but in 2.83-2.9 or older you have to remove those faces manually after applying the modifier...


Cycles Glass BSDF on a Diamond viewport problem I've got an issue with my glass viewport render.
It creates some kind of a hole in that object, which looks bad. In comparison to the tutorial, with simplest nodes and everything super basic, with the same render and light paths settings, it's just totally unlike.
Of course the shape is a little bit different, but I guess it shouldn't look like that anyways..
Do you please have any ideas how to fix that?

From my experience in Blender, a more complex diamond mesh gives the light more directions to scatter, which will increase the number of refraction effects you can detect on the surface.
In jeweler's terms, the cut of the diamond influences the clarity, sparkle, and brilliance.  Sometimes these are at odds with each other.

Also, increasing the number of Glossy and Total bounces under Light Paths will get rid of these dark areas.


How can I speed up assigning materials to specific faces (for low poly style)? I am playing with a low-poly/color-ramp style that is somewhat similar to pixel art in the sense that I want to paint individual quad faces sharply with different materials picked from a list (quite like painting square pixels with colors from a palette). The end result would be an object with 3 to 5 different shader materials assigned for certain faces.

The standard way to do that is to select the wanted faces, go to the materials list, select the desired material (different from the one applied to the object) and click assign. Then I have to deselect the painted faces, select the new faces to paint again, select desired material (again, since it resets to default material assigned to the whole mesh), press assign again and so on. This flow is way to cumbersome to feel like "painting" the faces in a quick way by single clicking or dragging over faces.

The flow I would try to achieve is: select a material on the list, then, in face edit mode, simply assign the currently selected material to any face I click on, with a single click. Paint multiple faces by click and dragging over them like in MS paint with pixels would be great but I think is too complex to pull off.

Do you guys think there is any way I could achieve that workflow with a script? If possible, where should I begin with this? Thanks in advance for any pointers.

Here is a solution similar to what you are asking, but not exactly. For this solution, you will be selecting the faces you wish to color, then assigning the color from a palette.
Create a 5x5 pixel image (or other tiny resolution image), and fill each pixel with a color you want to use.
Then open the shader editor.
Then, ⇧ Shift +  A, S for search, then type image texture.
Connect the image texture Color output to the Base Color input of the Principled BSDF node.
Then, open the UV Editor, and in the dropdown select your palette image.
Scroll up to zoom in to your image.
Then, tab into edit mode on your object, hover over the UV editor, then press  A,  S, $0.01$.
Now, your faces should be tiny in the UV editor.
When you want to change the color of a face or multiple faces, you can select any faces in the 3D View, hover over the UV Editor, and press  G to grab the faces and move them onto any of the colors in your palette.
Source


Modeling with Knife, Loop Cut and Inset The result of using Bevel and then Inset I should be as seen outlined in red.
However when I click I it will does not do anything of the sort.

Suggestions?

After pressing I (I like independence) to inset faces hold the Ctrl button (and move the cursor upwards) to add some depth to the faces and achieve the result you want.


Logic bricks for scene objects I am trying to make the sensors and actuators work in the script with scene objects but they only work with the main object, how can i make them work with scene objects on the script?

Logic bricks are attached to a single object. You can use message actuators and sensors to get an object to respond to another objects sensor.

Using a python controller it is possible to access other objects in the scene.

# Loop through all other objects in the scene
sce = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
print("Scene Objects:", sce.name)
for ob in sce.objects:
    print("   ", ob.name, ob.worldPosition)


What is the proper way to update a portable Blender installation while keeping user settings? The Windows portable installation has (or can have) the user settings folder (named '2.77' for instance, containing all the user preferences) next to all of it's files - which is perfect for me, since I can sync the whole installation via cloud drive.

But what is the proper update procedure in such a setup? A freshly downloaded portable installation already has a user settings folder, containing for instance the add-ons folder. So to keep my add-ons, I was simply renaming my user setting folder to match the downloaded one ('2.76' to '2.77' for instance), and then copied all downloaded files over existing ones, overwriting them. That works, but I'm not sure if that can introduce problems in the long run? And if there is a better way of doing the same thing (updating a portable install while keeping settings and add-ons)?

You should not replace the whole 2.## folder version with a previous one.
In a best case scenario that will not only roll back any updated versions of the addons the new version may bring, but also override any new presets, builtin Python scripts, UI scripts and bundled Python versions along with your personal config, essentially rolling Blender back to the previous installed version.
Worst case it will likely completely break your Blender installation, especially between major versions, as old scripts and presets may be incompatible with new APIs and binary file changes.
You should only copy the Config folder inside the 2.## which should contain your bookmarks file, startup.blend and userpref.blend.
Alternatively you can use Blender command line launch parameters to achieve a fully functioning portable installation with a proper dedicated folder for user data and addons.
Blender supports several launch variables, a few of them are BLENDER_USER_CONFIG and BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTSwhich allow overriding the default folders for user configuration (where startup files are saved) and the folder for users scripts and addons, where third party installed addons, presets, keyconfigs and scripts are installed.
The trick is to launch Blender from a batch file that sets this to your custom desired location.
Here is an example, in a plain text editor like Notepad paste the below lines of code and save them to the same folder as Blender.exe, give it a any name like "Blender_Portable" but make sure you specify the file extension as .bat not .txt.
SET BLENDER_USER_CONFIG=%~dp0Portable_Data\Config
SET BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS=%~dp0Portable_Data\Scripts

if not exist %BLENDER_USER_CONFIG% mkdir %BLENDER_USER_CONFIG%
if not exist %BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS% mkdir %BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS%

start Blender.exe

It should be setup in such manner that the file system would look like.
Blender Portable
 └Portable_Data
 │ └Config
 │ └Scripts
 └Blender.exe
 └BlenderPortable.bat

Adapt to your own needs, you may want Blender installation contained in an independent subfolder separate from the rest of the setup.


Is there a python binding for Undo/Redo? I'm on a mac, and i can press CMD+Z to undo, SHIFT+CMD+Z to redo.

Is there a way to trigger these in the python console?

Yes, absolutely.

bpy.ops.ed.undo()
bpy.ops.ed.redo()

More operators of that kind here: https://docs.blender.org/api/2.79/bpy.ops.ed.html?highlight=undo#bpy.ops.ed.undo_redo


Use filemanager to select directory instead of file? I want my export operator to open the normal file selector but instead of asking for a specific file I want it to ask for a directory. The reason for this is that both my model and the textures should be stored in a directory tree and I want to user to select the root. For example the model file "somemodel.ext" links to the textures "tex1.png" and "tex2.png" the resulting file structure should look like this:

RootFolder
+--textures
   +--somemodel
      + tex1.png
      + tex2.png
+--models
   + somemodel.ext

and I want to user to select the RootFolder in the export fileselect.

I presume the main question here is selecting a root directory with the FileSelector.
bpy_extras.io_utils.ExportHelper includes FileSelectParams, which when set give the desired functionality.
The first attribute to be set is:
use_filter_folder = True
This will filter anything that is not a folder to the user. This also has the added advantage that the path your script gets back is folder.
You also need to set a file extension type, even though it is not used. It will cause an error on execution. Possible bug?
filename_ext = "."
This is based on an for general file import - How do I get the filepath when I import a file?
Full sample
import bpy
from bpy_extras.io_utils import ExportHelper

import os.path

class ExportOperator(bpy.types.Operator, ExportHelper):
    """Operator for setting a directory path."""

    #: Name of function for calling the nif export operator.
    bl_idname = "export_scene.folder"

    #: How the nif import operator is labelled in the user interface.
    bl_label = "Export to folder"

    filename_ext = "."
    use_filter_folder = True

    def execute(self, context):
        userpath = self.properties.filepath
        if(!os.path.isdir(userpath)):
            msg = "Please select a directory not a file\n" + userpath
            self.report({'WARNING'}, msg)

        #Insert the desired logic here to write to the directory.

        return{'FINISHED'}

def menu_func_import(self, context):
    self.layout.operator(
        ExportOperator.bl_idname, text="Export Scene to folder")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)
    bpy.types.INFO_MT_file_import.append(menu_func_import)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)
    bpy.types.INFO_MT_file_import.remove(menu_func_import)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Does mesa driver works with EEVEE on Linux? I know that Cycles uses GPU for rendering and you need to have amdgpu-pro proprietary drivers installed and I can see my GPU (RX580) in options for OpenCL settings. However, AMD driver has some nasty issues with other software I use, so I wonder is default Mesa driver enough for EEVEE to be able to use my GPU (RX580)?

I use the default AMDGPU drivers because I tried thrice and have still not been able to install AMDGPU Pro. Eevee works absolutely fine on Mesa with my RX 560. Even for Cycles, it's not essential to have OpenCL, you just have to use CPU render. I'm happily blendering on after I switched to Linux Mint.


How to re-scale bone keyframes and objects at the same time? I'm making an animation, where a character takes an object - it's working fine - but now I want to re-scale a part of the animation to make it faster (for example, I have 500 frames and need to scale down the frames 300 to 400); however, when I choose they keyframes, (not with the Dope-Sheet) Blender will only allow me to select either the animated bones, or object, that are keyframed. How can I select both so I don't have to re-do anything?

Both Dopesheet and Graph Editor show keyframes of all selected objects, you can box select B the keyframes and scale them, S X .


Is there a Solidify Extrude function? The normal Extrude works like this: take selected geometry and move to another place. But I need something that leaves the selected geometry where it is and duplicates it.

I noticed that when you extrude a simple plane it generates a cube. How do I achieve that but just with a larger pool of polygons?

Try ⎈ CtrlF> Solidify:

Note that in many cases (including the example in the gif), this will probably result in non-manifold geometry.


Adding texture to one side of a mesh only ( based on axis) I want to add snow to a mesh, so I need to add the second texture based on the global z of the scene, i .e . it should only cover the top of the object. How can this be done? Is it possible to say "if this normal is along the z axis add this texture?"

The Normal link in a Geometry node is dedicated for this purpose:
In the Node Editor, add the Geometry node, link the Normal to a Separate XYZ node, then use the Z link for a factor in a mix node. In my example I added a Color Ramp node to control This factor, check the image below for the nodes setup, and the Gif to see how you can use the Color Ramp node to control the effect.


Why can't I use a vertex group to control a particle system's density? Even with Use Modifier Stack turned on, and the Particle System being above the Subdivision Surface Modifier my Particle Systems Vertex Group Density isn't working.

I'm trying to apply a Vertex Group to the Particle Systems Density, but it seems that every time I do so, the particles seems to group up in one place and completely ignore the Vertex Group.

Example CloseUp (click to see full image):

So if anyone knows how to fix this, please let me know.

Never mind, I guess I was supposed to assign the vertex group in the particle system, while not in Edit Mode. So make sure you create a vertex group and then apply that vertex group in the density panel in the particle systems under Vertex Groups. And make also sure you aren't in Edit Mode.