What kind of illumination to use to produce these 3D ball-and-stick atomic structure models? (specular reflection but no shadows) I'd like to render a publication quality image something like the image below. I'll script the whole process so we can build many different structures without having to redraw everything, and probably animate it as well.
I'll want to be able to rotate the camera and the light source independently to view from any angle, so I need some kind of illumination/shader combination that keeps the whole sphere well diffusely lit no mater where the "Sun" is placed.
They all seem to have a similar diffuse shader with some specular component; we can see the reflection of a narrow light source or Sun on every atom, but they don't shadow each other, and there is some source of diffuse illumination as well, there's no night/dark line where "the Sun don't shine" i.e. on the very bottom-right edge.
Question: What kind of illumination and/or shader use to produce these 3D ball-and-stick atomic structure models that show specular reflection but don't have shadows, and will be viewable from any direction?
To maintain flexibility/compatibility with future projects I'm assuming I should ask for a solution for the cycles rendering engine, but I supposed I can be talked out of it.

Phys.org' Electrons falling flat: Germanium falls into a 2-D arrangement on zirconium diboride shows a ball-and-stick model of a somewhat complicated 3D arrangement of atoms.
The blue atoms are germanium (light blue ones stick up above the others), green is zirconium and orange are boron.

A few steps that might help Cycles render like this:
Lighting:
I find it's usually best to adjust this first, on neutral-grey surfaces
A single key point-light, with ambient fill provided by a somewhat luminous World. The World has one color to contribute to the lighting, and another to appear in the camera, thus:

The size of the point-light will affect the size and softness of the 'ping' specular dot on the spheres.
Object visibility:
You've got to cripple Cycles on the objects, to prevent shadows being cast, and stop any diffuse bounce of light between them. Switching off everything bar 'Camera' visibility seems to work, in the Object Properties tab > Visibility panel:

Materials:
For convenience, a Principled shader:

.. with 'Roughness' adjusting size and softness of highlight, and maybe a tweak of 'Specular' intensity. A tiny contribution of 'Emission' in the base color, helps the World fill the away-from-light surfaces.
This sort of result:


Can blender be used to re-target animations to other rigs? I do this in Maya where you can re-target say a walk cycle from one humanoid onto another. Can one do this in blender?

An action can be assigned to another object in the action editor. This only works for armatures if the bones have matching names.

For more difficult re-targeting just enable the Motion Capture Tools addon that is included with blender. The addon's wiki page includes links to the manual and video tutorials for using it.

  At the heart of the system, is the retargeting tool, which allows artists to transfer animations from the imported mocap armature to their own rig.


Is there any option to change the contrast on Blender Render? If I'm using Blender Render, and i want to render an Animation, before anything on the settings, can i set the contrast?

There is no option for contrast but you can change it in the node editor under
Add node -> color -> brightness/contrasts connect the scene node to the brightness/contrasts node and then to the render output node NOTE you need to click
The use nodes button first


How do I manipulate/move object with generic rigidbody constraints while in playback to see effect I was watching this older video on how to do a ragdoll effect.

https://youtu.be/GaZAI8RIq0Q?t=589

At about 9:50 into the video, he tests the effect of the rigidbody constraints by moving one of the objects while playing the animation.  I'm using Blender 2.8, so maybe this way easier in the older versions?  Is there a setting I need to change?  Just pressing spacebar to start and G to move the object does not do what this guy does in the video.

I figured it out 10 minutes later.  You have to enable "Animated" under the rigid body settings.  Then you can move around the object during the playback and it will interact with everything in the scene.


Is there implementation of tri-planar mapping in Cycles renderer? Is it possible to have tri-planar mapping in cycles?
Like in corona renderer or fstorm?

Yes, it's called box mapping (or cube projection if you are unwrapping UVs).


Extrude a cylinder from the side of another cylinder I'm trying to extrude a cylinder from the side of another cylinder. Imagine a 3D stick figure. I want to extrude the "arms" of the stick figure, but they need to also be cylinders. When I extrude, the sides of the extrusion are flat, like this:

I'm new to Blender, so there may be a simple solution... I just haven't been able to figure it out. Thanks for any help!

Maybe the easiest way is to use the Knife Project tool:

Duplicate the top of your cylinder, rotate the circle and make it another object.
Go in front view, select the circle, then the cylinder, and go in Edit mode.
Press the Knife Project button on the Tools panel (on your left, activated with T).
Now you have a circle marked on your cylinder. You can get rid of you circle object.
Delete the faces of this circle.
Extrude the edges.
Flatten on the Y axis with a SY0.
Fill the hole with F.
As it's better to only have quads, give an edge loop around the cylinder, use the knife: K to activate, Z to cut through, C to cut perpendicularly.
You have what you need (I guess).


Creating an infinite ocean (looping) i want to create a looping ocean.
im creating a time lapse animation for a ship cursing in the sea for 30 days.
i managed to animate the sky and everything else.

so i need my ocean to loop.
im using texture as ocean waves on a plane and its amazing because ocean modifier is too resource consuming.

(the ocean doesn't need to be animated as the ship will move very fast(time-lapse))

see the material im using below.

any ideas?

thank you very much .

Edit :
Sorry for the confusion, I hope this will clarify things.

(Node setup is for reference only, I do not need to animate the actual texture)
my question is different from the referenced question.
I'm not looking to animate the ocean. I'm looking to make it loop (physically) so my ship will be able to cruse indefinitely   (kinda) without the need to use duplicate planes as new oceans once my ship reach the end of the current plane (ocean)

Thanks.

Add a plane in Top Ortho view (numpad key 7 on Win), in Edit mode scale down Y axis, add some Bevel CTRL B (turn on Vertex only), select all and delete only faces.

Convert this mesh to Curve using ALT C and rotate 90 degrees on X axis in Object mode

Add another plane in Top Ortho view (now it will be an ocean). Create significant amount of loopcuts to get a better transition on curve's angles

Add Array and Curve modifiers to ocean plane. In Array settings select Fit to curve and don't forget to check First-Last and Merge options in Array to have nice loop.
Now you can animate X location to get loop moving

Additionally you can parent both Curve and Ocean plane to the same controlling Empty for easier manipulation in 3D space.


finding the pivot of the camera using python I'm learning how the 3d viewport and the camera objects rotate around the pivot point (I'm not sure this is the correct lingo, but for the sake of the question I will use it).
I have been searching a lot about this specific subject but i can only find answer about how to change the pivot point to the 3D cursor using keyboard shortcuts.
Since it doesn't seem to be possible to show these pivot points in the viewport itself, what I'm trying to understand now is if it is possible to get them using python. I don't think there is any relevant member in the camera object:
>>> dir(cam)
['__doc__', '__module__', '__slots__', 'active_material', 'active_material_index', 'active_shape_key', 'active_shape_key_index', 'animation_data', 'animation_data_clear', 'animation_data_create', 'animation_visualization', 'bl_rna', 'bound_box', 'cache_release', 'calc_matrix_camera', 'camera_fit_coords', 'children', 'closest_point_on_mesh', 'collision', 'color', 'constraints', 'convert_space', 'copy', 'cycles', 'cycles_visibility', 'data', 'delta_location', 'delta_rotation_euler', 'delta_rotation_quaternion', 'delta_scale', 'dimensions', 'display', 'display_bounds_type', 'display_type', 'empty_display_size', 'empty_display_type', 'empty_image_depth', 'empty_image_offset', 'empty_image_side', 'evaluated_get', 'face_maps', 'field', 'find_armature', 'generate_gpencil_strokes', 'grease_pencil_modifiers', 'hide_get', 'hide_render', 'hide_select', 'hide_set', 'hide_viewport', 'holdout_get', 'image_user', 'indirect_only_get', 'instance_collection', 'instance_faces_scale', 'instance_type', 'is_deform_modified', 'is_embedded_data', 'is_evaluated', 'is_from_instancer', 'is_from_set', 'is_instancer', 'is_library_indirect', 'is_modified', 'library', 'local_view_get', 'local_view_set', 'location', 'lock_location', 'lock_rotation', 'lock_rotation_w', 'lock_rotations_4d', 'lock_scale', 'make_local', 'material_slots', 'matrix_basis', 'matrix_local', 'matrix_parent_inverse', 'matrix_world', 'mode', 'modifiers', 'motion_path', 'name', 'name_full', 'original', 'override_create', 'override_library', 'parent', 'parent_bone', 'parent_type', 'parent_vertices', 'particle_systems', 'pass_index', 'pose', 'pose_library', 'preview', 'proxy', 'proxy_collection', 'ray_cast', 'rigid_body', 'rigid_body_constraint', 'rna_type', 'rotation_axis_angle', 'rotation_euler', 'rotation_mode', 'rotation_quaternion', 'scale', 'select_get', 'select_set', 'shader_effects', 'shape_key_add', 'shape_key_clear', 'shape_key_remove', 'show_all_edges', 'show_axis', 'show_bounds', 'show_empty_image_only_axis_aligned', 'show_empty_image_orthographic', 'show_empty_image_perspective', 'show_in_front', 'show_instancer_for_render', 'show_instancer_for_viewport', 'show_name', 'show_only_shape_key', 'show_texture_space', 'show_transparent', 'show_wire', 'soft_body', 'tag', 'to_mesh', 'to_mesh_clear', 'track_axis', 'type', 'up_axis', 'update_from_editmode', 'update_tag', 'use_dynamic_topology_sculpting', 'use_empty_image_alpha', 'use_fake_user', 'use_grease_pencil_lights', 'use_instance_faces_scale', 'use_instance_vertices_rotation', 'use_shape_key_edit_mode', 'user_clear', 'user_of_id', 'user_remap', 'users', 'users_collection', 'users_scene', 'vertex_groups', 'visible_get', 'visible_in_viewport_get']

If this location is not available is there any suggested way to derive it?
EDIT:
to make clear wath I intend for pivot point: when you press Center View to Cursor:

The pivot point of the view will become the Cursor itself. As soon as you Move the current view the pivot will move, is there a way to get the coordinates of this point?

You're looking in the wrong place basically. What you need to do is get the RegionView3D of whatever 3d window you want to get the pivot point (view_location) of.
API docs
Something like this should work:
import bpy

def get_rv3d():
    for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
        if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
            rv3d = area.spaces[0].region_3d
            if rv3d is not None:
                return rv3d
    return None

rv3d = get_rv3d()
if rv3d:
    print(rv3d.view_location)


Locate the nodes in the shader editor I move around in shader editor panel and become too far away from the nodes. I tried to go back to the nodes but can not find them. Any method or hot key to locate nodes in the shader editor “Black Sea”?


Slow Performance When Changing Object Data [2.8] I'm not sure if it's the object data actually, but I couldn't think of a better way to phrase it. Whenever I ctrl+z, change materials, open/close the file, make or change collections, etc, it takes way too long. It says the program has stopped responding for about ten seconds, then starts responding again. It doesn't do this when moving objects in the 3D viewport or tabbing in/out of edit mode, etc. Furthermore, it's only with this file. My other files, despite being more complex and taking up more space, don't do this.
Any help/suggestions are much appreciated.

Apologies for my last post btw

Download

Okay, I think I found the solution! The collision objects for the legs had wayyy too many vertex groups. After deleting the armature modifier, everything went back to normal speed. I cleared the vertex groups, except the ones I needed, and gave it the armature modifier again. Now everything works as it should.


Why texture heavily 'stretched' even though UV is well positioned? As shown in the screenshots, the UV map of my model fits perfectly on the texture maps I created from Substance Painter, however, there are heavy stretching of texture around the borders of my mesh (for example the highlighted faces in the first screenshot should be in black color but the end result showed heavily stretched red texture of other UV islands).

I have checked the position of the UV map and the texture but they are correctly positioned. The texture is clean, the UV is clean, but the result is messed up for some reason. Any help is appreciated.

Update:
Thanks for the suggestions but it seemed all of them are not the root cause of my problem here (btw I changed the normal texture to non-color data).

The main reason that leads to the stretched texture is probably the subdivision surface modifier that misplaced my seams when it is applied during the render. For example the seams that should be placed at the boundaries of the UV islands are placed elsewhere as shown in the screenshot after subdivision. Which messed up my render.

Is there any method to ensure my seams are not moved by subdivision surface modifiers? (The highlighted edge loop is my seam before and after subdivision)

The vertices, extra smoothness and all data generated by Subsurf can't really be modified further from their source mesh they are interpolated from. It's how the modifier is intended to work. But there is a checkbox for Subdivide UVs that you can disable. This should make the model linearly interpolate the UVs instead of smoothing them according to Catmull-Clark.

The image isn't really the best when it comes to illustrating the difference in UVs, the differences are only there where the unwrap isn't perfect and I'm bad at making distorted UV unwraps. But regardless, disabling subdivide UVs should fix whatever difference in UVs is caused by Subsurf modifier.

However in the future, thinking about your workflow it's important to model first, then texture especially with hand-painted ones because they are entirely dependent on geometry. If you look at your texture you can actually see the level of detail you had during painting. You should adapt your workflow to this fact and paint the textures only after you've reached high enough definition with your model.


Is there a particle/array combination? So basically what im asking, is if it is possible to create an array with multiple objects (like a particle system). Because I think it would be useful for say... a boardwalk, where you would want some of the planks to have hole in them or cracks, but dont want to manually place/edit the planks of wood.

I'm going to answer by assuming what you are trying to achieve because it isn't really clear.

Add a collection and model your planks inside it.

Outside the collection, add a plane object, then add an array modifier to it. In edit mode scale it along the y axis so that is is about the width of your planks.
Add a particle system to this plane. Set it to "Hair", check "Advanced". Set the number to the number of planks you want to have.
Right click the "Number" field and choose "Copy as new driver". Go back to the array modifier and right click in the "Count" field and choose "Paste Driver". Now you don't need to touch the array modifier again, it will be modified every time you want to add or retrieve planks in the particle settings.

 - Go back to the particle settings. Set the instancer to collection and choose the planks. Uncheck "Show emitter" (twice). Don't forget to check "Pick Random" to add variety. :

Modify it to look like this. You can tweak the "Randomize" fields to add a bit of variety in size and rotation. :

If you add a curve modifier between the array and the particle system, you can even go 3D !


Normal Bake Artifacts As the title states I get weird artifacts. The artifacts are on the low poly model after the high poly bake onto the low poly model. The object (horns) have holes in them that will be covered up by a second set of horns (as you can see in the both horns picture). The UV map appears to be fine (blue with little to no green areas, when you zoom in on the map) to my knowledge, but is very dense in some areas, don't think that's the issue but maybe it is? The normal bake map doesn't look the prettiest but I don't understand that to be the issue? I also used a cage for the bake which I believe to be good? Please help me :( and I appreciate all the help :D
BAKED MODEL WITH ARTIFACTS

UV MAP

NORMAL BAKE MAP

CAGE

BOTH HORNS

I was able to fix the issue by changing the bake to non-color :)


What is the proper workflow when adding an image texture to a material When adding an “Image Texture” to a UV Mapped material does it make a difference if you add it first in the “Node Editor” or in the “UV Editor”?

I don't believe that this matters, as long as you keep in mind that there is both an Image texture and a UV Map involved.

The UV/Image editor knows that there is a link to an image, and so does the node editor, as you can select them both from the image texture dropdown in either place. Blender knows the image is there.

On the flip side, I know that certain things like texture baking requires there to be a present reference to an image texture in node form on the material you are going to bake to (Although it does not need to be linked to anything for it to work).

For UV purposes however, you have to realize that the UV map is just texture coordinates of the verts that make up the faces of your geometry. So for Blender there is no real technical need to even display an image to get some sort of UV map via the Unwrap functions because they automatically get placed somewhere, however for the user this is visually crucial, so you can modify them to fit your needs.

In other words, It's the end result that truly matters.

For some, they like to attempt to get a good feel for the mapping upfront and let it influence their topology, while for others, they like to ignore it until they are done getting their geometry tuned and then making the map fit the geometry. For others they do both. This is just a matter of preference, as there is nothing in the software (from what I can tell) constraining the freedom to choose how you want to go about this. There are also times to not worry about it, because you just want to brush paint your texture directly onto your mesh (then this would require that you save your painted image and reference in the node editor, but UV is pretty much automatic in this case.

A texture is still a texture, and a UV Map is the channel/conduit by which the geometry displays (stretches/ignores/skews/etc...) that texture per face.

If at anytime, you decide to straiten out how your geometry is mapping to this image texture, you can start or redo your UV Unwrapping, tweak the verts in the UV editor etc...

Hope this was thorough enough.


Mathematically precise bisect cuts? https://youtu.be/raWx4MYjq-4
^^^^^^ Example ^^^^^^^
Hi. Is it possible to make precise bisect cuts in Blender? I can only make them manually, by hand, and imprecisely.
For example, like in the video, say I wanted to bisect the object exactly on one of the 3 lines that you see there. I did it by hand in the example.
I know there are numbers in the Bisect window, but I'm not sure how to operate them. There's no "angle" or anything (which would be helpful, because in this case I could set the bisect to 72 degrees for example (but unfortunately it's not angle based)).
Is this possible?

Well, that's not an easy interface to interpret, is it? First, in the top part of the window is "Plane Point" this is a point on the cutting plane. In your case, I think you should set it to the origin (0,0,0). This is also the pivot point for angle adjustments.
The second part of the window is "Plane Normal." For the Y-Z plane, set it to (1,0,0).   For the X-Z plane, set it to (0, 1, 0) and for the X-Y plane, set it to (0,0,1). In the attached screenshot, it is set to (cos(72°), sin(72°), 0) and the poorly drawn white arcs show 72° for the normal referenced from the x-axis and 72° for the cutter plane referenced from the y-axis.
To further expand, lets cut out Suzanne's face at +/1 36°. I put sin(36°) and cos(36°) into a calculator and got 0.588 and 0.809 so lets see how to put those in:


Get Hex triplet for color and real 256 RGB from diffuse Color using python as you know the RGB structure each parameter (red, green, and blue) defines the intensity of the color as an integer between 0 and 255., Actually, in Blender, you have that  in sRGB, then any  traditional convertion to HEX work BECAUSE the Hex in blender is GAMMA CORRECTED.
also in Documentation I can NOT get any reference about how get the HEX TRIPLE FOR COLOR CODE ...

how to get both with python?
UPDATE:
I want the hex value or how convert the hex to RGB
AS @dr.Sybren  I thougth That was just a straight conversion of the bytes in RGB order converted to hexadecimal notation, and then tried some simple code as @tet_ii
context = bpy.context
obj = context.object

color_inferior= obj.material_slots['inferior'].material.diffuse_color

a = '#%02x%02x%02x' % (int(255.999 * pow(color_inferior.r, 1/2.2)),int(255.999 * pow(color_inferior.g, 1/2.2)),int(255.999 * pow(color_inferior.b, 1/2.2)))

print(a)

testing the code I got:

also, I test other codes with the same or worst result:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3380726/converting-a-rgb-color-tuple-to-a-six-digit-code-in-python
then. Can I capture the value directly from blender without any convertion? or do a 100% accurate conversion?

This code adapted from devtalk.blender.org, convert color from blender standard active material to hex.

import bpy

#code by : brecht - devtalk.blender.org
def to_hex(c):
    if c < 0.0031308:
        srgb = 0.0 if c < 0.0 else c * 12.92
    else:
        srgb = 1.055 * math.pow(c, 1.0 / 2.4) - 0.055

    return hex(max(min(int(srgb * 255 + 0.5), 255), 0))

def toHex(r,g,b):
    rgb = [r,g,b]
    result = ""
    i=0
    while i < 3:
        val = str(to_hex(rgb[i]))
        val = val[2:]
        if len(val) == 1:
            val += val
        result+=val
        i+=1
    return result

ob = bpy.context.object
color_inferior = ob.active_material.diffuse_color

a = toHex(color_inferior[0],color_inferior[1],color_inferior[2])

print (a)


Change Vertex Position During Rig Animation I couldn't find a solution to this problem.

I have my character all rigged and made a walk cycle. I parented another mesh with the rig which are the character's clothes. When he starts walking though the clothes are not always perfectly covering his body parts, so that his leg glitches through the cloth, which is awful of course!

I thought I go through every frame and correct the glitches by changing the vertex positions of my cloth mesh. However I seem not to be able to change the vertices within the "Pose Mode/Armature Animation Sequence", when I go into edit mode the clothes revert to the rest pose and no animation can be played.

How can I solve this problem? Thanks for any help!

In the modifier panel for your object, activate "Display modifier in edit mode" and "Adjust edit cage to modifier result" for the Armature modifier:


Blender Fluid Sim, Realistic Vomit? I'm trying to use the fluid sim to create a vomit VFX shot for some live action footage I've got. But I'm struggling with getting it look the way I want. So far this is what I've got:

I'm relatively happy with the way it lands on the floor (except for the jittering), but I'm wanting to improve the way it falls. Currently it just flows too smoothly, where as I'd like it to be more like this:

So it has more of a 'spraying' and forceful quality to it, where the diameter starts narrow at the source (The mouth) and then it spreads out the further from the mouth it gets.

Any suggestions?

You will need to use particles in Fluid mode, perhaps metaballs if you have the ram for it. This will give you the blobby appearance then render with motion Blur. You'll need to duplicate the particle settings and emitter for blur.

Use vector blur but you can only use Blender internal for that. Make a normal object particle duplicate of the metaball cascade, on a separate layer. Apply this vector blur to the metaball layer.

In the compositor use the 2nd render layer to drive the vector blur.

Results with and with out blur, change vector object  scale to suit blur.

You may have to adjust the particle life of the vector object so that you don't get blurring of the floor.


How To Stop a Texture from Tiling in the BI I was texturing an eye for an Animatronic I'm modeling from Five Nights at Freddy's. His name a Balloon Boy, and when I put the eye texture on, it becomes smaller, and begins to tile all over the eye. I want to know how to stop this.

You can change the texture 'Extension' type from 'Repeat' to 'Clip'. This option is in the 'Image Mapping' panel in the texture settings:


Blender doesn't follow the coordination of objects. What am I missing? On the left-hand side, you can see that x = 0 and y = 0 but the object is shifted and It's not related to the grid (x-axis and y-axis). It's not in the center. The same issue happens with the z-axis. The object is way above the grid although z = 0 or even a negative value. I think I'm missing something but I don't know what it is.

As @DuarteFarrajotaRamos mentioned in the comments, those values are delta values for translating object. You can access the co-ordinates of the object by selecting the object, pressing the N key and under transform tab, you could see the co-ordinates of your object. You can change them as per your need.


How to remove a preset? I have created several presets for Sapling Tree Gen add-on.
But now I want to delete some of the presets.
How can I do that?
 Here's a video about presets

On Mac you can access and manage presets from
Finder
Go (upper menu) hold Alt key to bring Library on the list
Library > Application Support > Blender > 2.93 > scripts > presets
or
Go to Folder shift+cmd+G
and paste this path directory
~/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.93/scripts/presets/

Terminal
cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/Blender/2.93/scripts/presets/

Notes: In all cases change the number 2.93 to your current Blender version you use. Specifically Sapling's presets are stored in sub folder operator > add_curve_sapling. Difference in path for Finder and Terminal is just in representation of space character in name of Application Support - Terminal use back slash and space.


Why is my texture applying itself to unwanted objects? I am currently working on the hair for a female character. Two other people worked on the body, and sent me the file from which to make the hair. The body is textured, but the texture file was not packed along with the .blend. (I assumed that wasn't an issue, and went ahead with the hair anyway.)

When I try to unwrap the hair, however, many of the faces get sent to a different UV map for some reason, even though I want the hair to be a cohesive unit. Additionally, the hair is somehow connected to the body (which is a separate object). When I add texture paint to the hair, the body gets painted as well, even though the UV map does not show the body anywhere on it.

There are also some unwanted faces showing up on the hair UV map:

It seems to be attached to the model's stomach for some reason. I need all of the faces of the hair to share the same UV map, and I need the body and hair to be completely separate objects. (The body is actually irrelevant to this project--I'm only working off of it to get the size and shape of the hair correct. The hair itself, so the programmers tell me, will be applied like a wig, so that the character can adopt different hairstyles while keeping the same body model.)

Here's a link to the .blend: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/30038 Thank you in advance for any help!

Both the body and the hair mesh are using the same image (Untitled).

In BI the image displayed on the mesh in textured view is determined by what image is displayed in the UV image editor while that geometry is selected.

Create a new separate image for the hair (AltN in the UV/image editor), then "assign" the hair geometry to that image by selecting it in the image editor with all of the hair geometry selected in edit mode.

Note that this doesn't affect the final render unless you have Face textures enabled.

See How is this blendfile hiding textures? and Texture mapped incorrectly in render?


Modelling a Klein bottle How can you model a Klein bottle, such as this one?

There are most likely several methods, and they probably all have both drawbacks and advantages. I will show how to use the XYZ Math surface for this.

First of all, unless you have already done this, enable the Add Mesh: Extra Objects addon. Go to user preferences (CtrlAltU), click the Addons tab, then Add Mesh. Make sure the check box for Add Mesh: Extra Objects is ticked, then click Save user settings.

Then Add > Mesh > Extra Objects > Math Function > XYZ Math Surface.
This is what you will see

The default object created by this is a snail shell. To get the Klein bottle, enter these equations. Just copy and paste from here.

X equation:

$$-\frac{2}{15}\cos(u)\left(3\cos(v)-30\sin(u)+90\left(\cos(u)\right)^4\sin(u)\\
-60\left(\cos(u)\right)^6\sin(u)+5\cos(u)\cos(v)\sin (u)\right)$$

-2/15*cos(u)*(3*cos(v)-30*sin(u)+90*cos(u)**4*sin(u)-60*cos(u)**6*sin(u)+5*cos(u)*cos(v)*sin(u))

Y equation:

$$-\frac{1}{15}\sin(u)\left(3\cos(v)-3\left(\cos(u)\right)^2\cos(v)-48\left(\cos(u)\right)^4\cos(v)+48\left(\cos(u)\right)^6\cos(v)\\
-60\sin(u)+5\cos(u)\cos(v)\sin(u)-5\left(\cos(u)\right)^3\cos(v)\sin(u)\\
-80\left(\cos(u)\right)^5\cos(v)\sin(u)+80\left(\cos(u)\right)^7\cos(v)\sin(u)\right)$$

-1/15*sin(u)*(3*cos(v)-3*cos(u)**2*cos(v)-48*cos(u)**4*cos(v)+48*cos(u)**6*cos(v)-60*sin(u)+5*cos(u)*cos(v)*sin(u)-5*cos(u)**3*cos(v)*sin(u)-80*cos(u)**5*cos(v)*sin(u)+80*cos(u)**7*cos(v)*sin(u))

Z equation:

$$\frac{2}{15}\left(3+5\cos(u)\sin(u)\right)\sin(v)$$

2/15*(3+5*cos(u)*sin(u))*sin(v)

U min: 0
U max: pi or (3.141592653589793)

V min: 0
V max: 2*pi or (6.28318530718)

U steps and V steps control the number of vertices in each direction, the same as the number of segments and rings on a UV sphere.

If you enable U wrap, the opening of the bottle will be closed. You decide which you prefer. If you enable V wrap, some vertices will be lost, but I haven't been able to find where. I don't know at all what Close V does. It doesn't change either the appearance or the number of vertices and faces.

As you can see, these equations are very complex, and this has the drawback of making them difficult to modify. I will try to show you how to overcome that, using proportional editing and a scaling technique I learned from the answer to my own question in this thread: Making a curved tube thinner or thicker without scaling its overall size

Go into Edit mode, and select all. Remove doubles (W R). Deselect all and make sure Limit selection to visible is disabled.

Make sure proportional editing (O) is set to Connected and proportional editing falloff (ShiftO) is set to smooth.
Select the vertices you want to modify.

If you want to make any part of the mesh bigger or smaller, Shrink Fatten (AltS) is the tool. Scroll the mouse wheel to change the size of the sphere of influence of the proportional editing.

If you want to move any part of the bottle, keep proportional to its aforementioned settings, select the parts you want to move and drag them to where you want them. Like so:

Repeat steps 2 through 4 until the bottle is to your liking.

You're done.

N.B. A Klein bottle is self intersecting, and therefore won't work as a fluid container with the current fluid simulation of Blender.


How do I make a realistic shiny gloss lips texture? How do I make this texture of lips? I checked out how to make leather but they don't address the wrinkles. I know I could just take this image and align it to my character's lips but that won't work if the light source is to the side.

You can paint a bump map to affect the normal of the material here, drawing/painting the wrinkles in varying values of white on a black map. Once you have the map, you can use it to determine the bump as I mention but also use it as a factor to the amount of gloss, so that the glossy only shows on the highest parts.


Animation doesn’t work in DAE when collada file is exported Can anyone tell why am I getting a still image of an animation when I export dae file from blender. Although the animation works fine when I play it in blender.

I know that this question has been asked before but it hasn’t been answered satisfactorily.

In the export menu change the Transformation Type from Matrix to TransRotLoc.


Is it possible to import a Maya file into blender? I have Maya files from Maya 2012 (or 2013) and I was wondering if there was a way to import the Maya file into blender?

Not directly (since the ma .. mb formats are closed or licensed I think? don't quote me), but you can export your model from Maya to a universal format that Blender supports such as .abc, .fbx, .dae or .obj and then import into Blender using the File > Import menu. Use either of the first two if you have an armature and .fbx preferably if you have animation data.


Video codec/video file format confusion in Blender Having used other Video Editors it seems like the options Blender offers for selecting what container format and what codec format you want to use for your video is confusing.

The above screenshot shows there are 3 Buttons to choose your container and codec, which are two things, which begs the question, what is the difference between 1 and 2? Is 2 the encoder to use? Then why is Blender saying "file format" for the hint boxes of each?

This causes some confusion in practice as well. As an example, Youtube needs a video using the H264 codec and MP4 container for best quality results after it will convert it.

If you choose "H.264" for 1, ...

... "MPEG-4" for 2 and "H.264" for 3 you get a file with the .mp4 extension.
... "H.264" for 2, then the codec selection box 3 is completely hidden and the extension is then .avi. How does that make sense? And why is 3 hidden?
... "Quicktime" for 2 and "H.264" for 3 you get a file with the .mov extension.

Number 1 is a selector to guide you in your next step for movie encoding selection. It can make the encoding section disappear or take other options. It's more a selector for whether you want an encoded movie or a selection of images, and blender gives you the right section. It's ignored for your output movie file.

Number 2 is your container, and 3 is your codec.

That said, let's examine your output:

1) Correct. "MPEG-4" and "H.264" must give MP4, being MPEG-4 the container. I think its your best option for your YouTube uploads.

2) Correct. If you choose MPEG or H264 for number 1, you will continue getting the same (AVI). Like I said , number 1 has no impact on your results. Here you will always get an AVI if you choose a container like H264. This is more a Blender behavior. (I expected an MP4, too.) Blender uses H264 like a container and doesn't let you choose a codec, exchanging it for a lossless option. I remember having read that Blender is very oriented towards H264 as a final output file, so I think that explains the special behavior for this option.

3) Correct. Like 1), you will get a .mov container and codec of your choosing.


Add mirror modifier to linked object I have linked an object and I want to add a mirror modifier, but there are no options in the properties tab to add modifier. How can I add mirror modifier to a linked object. Is there any addon or how? Any suggestion or Help. Thanks

You cannot add modifiers to linked objects in Blender.

Although there is a solution to your problem.

First Step

Select the object and press CTRL+G to add it to a Group.

You can give the group a name by pressing the F6 key and enter a new name.

Save the file and then open a new file to go on with step 2.

Second Step

Link the group into the new file.

Linking the group is similar to linking an object, but you go inside the Group folder and select the group name instead.

Third Step

Select the group instance that was added from previous step and press the space key. Then type Make Proxy and select the name of the object that you want to be mirrored.

Fourth Step

Now select the object whose name ends in _proxy and add a mirror modifier.

Summary

Your mesh is still linked and any updates you make in the original file will get updated in the current file where you linked.


trying to make a "glow" effect on a scene to be composited over VSE I am stumbling my with through a project using blender. What I'm trying to do right now is have my Scene (which I've added to the Video Sequence Editor, along with a video clip) to be displayed above the video.

So far, so good. But now I want to get fancy. My Scene basically consists of silhouettes. Because sometimes the video is black or very dark, I want to put a glow around the whole rendered scene (i.e. all the non-transparent parts).

I tried using the Glow effect strip on my scene, but that seemed to wipe out the transparency of the scene -- the video stopped showing through. I might be missing some easy way to make this approach work.

But now I'm trying to put together some Nodes to accomplish this effect. And it's really almost working, it seems like...

But when I render a frame, I get...

(Glow exaggerated for clarity.)

I'm a newbie. I've been feeling around in the dark to try to make this work. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

The only way I could do it was to produce two separate movies/images.  One for the black obects, the other for the white objects which are blurred when mixed in the compositor.

Here are the nodes...

One thing to check is your Render output;  Open the "Post Processing" tab, make sure PNG format is selected, and also set it's RGBA box to on. (highlited) to ensure the Alpha Layer is included in the render.

Note that a separate folder for the output png files, (one for each frame) is a good idea.

The rendered pic I got was as we see in the backdrop above, complete with an alpha layer and ready to overlay another pic or movie as required.

If you're stuck I can attach the Blend file...

ADDENDUM:
Here's how my output looks when overlaying an image or movie -

The mixing/scaling can also be done in Blender's 3D window.  I tried that and the result was the same.

The Blend file follows and will open up in the 3D window which holds instructions on how to recover the two images needed for the compositor.


Map one armature to another I have an armature ArmatureA which has an animation, and I have another armature ArmatureB which has a mesh parented to it. I want to map ArmatureB to have the same location and bone rotations as ArmatureA. I've tried doing it using bone constraints but I can't figure out the correct parameters and constraints to use so that ArmatureB is doing the same action as ArmatureA and in the same location.

Check that the bone rolls and root bones roughly correspond, otherwise it may be quite difficult. If the bone rolls don't match, consider experimenting with using a combination of damped track (will ignore twist, so effectively copy rotation for just x and z) and copy rotation (just for y, in local space).

In the images posted you seem to not have constraints on many of the bones which may be causing issues due to mismatched rotations inherited from parents.

I would suggest start from the root bone of mesh's armature and get that to match the movements of the animated armature. Then slowly work your way down the bone hierarchy.

The process of transferring animation data from one rig to another, which looks like what you are trying to do is generally called retargetting, and searching for that may yield helpful results.


Scale and change certain measurements of 3D image that was imported as .svg file I have converted a 2D image of an animal into a 3D image in Blender (as an .svg file). I was wondering if I can give the image proper measurements based on a dataset I have (I've attached an image showing the measurements that I have). I essentially want to create a realistic 3D image and then manipulate that image based on the measurements of different individuals. Also if there was a better way to upload and convert that image feel free to let me know.

Frustrated at the way you ask your question ... I created a question back to you.

You will need to describe your application. As in how you intend to use this. I am starting to think that you are a marine bio-scientist who wants to keep a record of all the whales you come across visually? So you need to manipulate the image according to the sizes of the fish? Will the eventual image be just a flat image? Or will your eventual result you need be like Exhibit B. Which is a 3d model of the actual whale? In your previous posting you said you may want to know the surface area of the creature? All very confusing.

First and foremost please let us know your real intended application.

Secondly, Look at the image below. And tell us.

A. You want to import an image accurately into blender?
B. You want to create a 3d model of the whale?
C. You want to do both?
D. We don't understand and misinterpreted your question?

Some Ligo reference, a 3d artist may misunderstand what you really need to do ...
Realistic 3d image - A flat 2D image orthographic or perspective rendered/output from a 3d software.
2D image into a 3D image - Essentially placing a 2D image on a 3D polygonal plane. Like Exhibit A.
Image Proper Measurement - Image Aspect ratio, so that the image doesn't look out of portion or stretched.


IK show bones Degrees of Freedom I rigged a human and now want to set the limits. I have a blue / red ring that visualizes the limits on the x and z axis but not on the y axis ( I just found out that I can deactivate them by unchecking "relationship lines")

I only found this visualization of limits:
https://de.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_Dokumentation:_Constraint:_IK_Solver#/media/File:Blender3D_IK_chain_limit.jpg
But I cant find the option to activate this in 2.78.

Thanks in advance.

To show this you need to go under the Bone properties tab and then Under the Inverse Kinematics you can set the rotation limits of the bones as shown below:

Note: Only X and Z limits will be represented in the 3d view as rotation around Y is rolling the bone around it's axis so it can't be visualised


Weird vertices on subsurf modifier I used edge loops, and then while cleaning up, I had to delete some vertices (dissolved) and then joined them again using faces. Now when i use subsurf modifier, when mesh looks weird. Fairly new and going through a tutorial to create a face model. If someone can point me in the right direction, will appreciate it.

Subsurf Off

Subsurf On

The problem is due to faces with more than 4 vertices as the subsurf can only work with triangles (3 vertices) and quads (4 vertices).

Faces with more than 4 vertices are known as 'ngons' (basically 'polygon' with with the 'poly' replaced with 'n' to represent any number (greater than 4) - I can see two towards the top-centre of your image and it is those that are causing the issue.

The solution is to adjust the geometry to replace those faces with tri and quad faces. The easiest way to achieve this would be to simply cut one of the corners off to a tri, leaving a quad.


Changing duplicated object's texture effects the first object's I tried to copy a mesh, and when I changed its texture so did the source mesh.
How come when I create a mesh duplicate and change the texture, the original mesh's texture changes as well?

The meshes share the same texture. You have to duplicate the texture as well by clicking on that number next to the name in that field where you select the texture. I think it says "make single user copy" on mouseover (don't have Blender open right now)


How can mesh have different material than particles? I'd like to make the earth brown and the grass (particles) green. I've tried to follow tutorials and I don't find anything wrong about my settings.
Here's the file:

For some reason, I can't open your belnd file but not to worry, I'll show you anyway.

Create two materials (Ground and Grass for example), then go into edit mode and assign your ground material to your ground plane.

Next go into particle settings and scroll into render settings and apply the grass material. this will apply the other material to your particles. In this order it should work fine.

See image below:

Hope that helps!


How do I get more accurate particle collisions with 'size deflect'? I'm trying to get more accurate particle collisions while emitting an object as a particle. Trying to make confetti.

I turned on size deflect and now all of my particles collide 1-2 meters before they even touch the object. Any ideas?

I tried applying the scale of my particle object.

I hope you have already found a solution for this, but since I struggled with this very issue about 2 days ago (Blender 2.81) and lost many hours trying to understand what was going wrong, then I'm going to share what I did to bypass this issue in case someone is also having a hard time with it.
It seems to happen even if using the Molecular Script, the problem seems to be the scale of the particles in the render tab (see image below), even if you're not using another object for it, like "render as: Halo".

So changing that scale to "0.05", which seems to be the default value, solved the problem for me, but if you're using another object for the particles, that means it will be 20 times smaller, so you could simply scale that object 20x bigger to give the particles the same size it would have with scale at 1.0 (and if you check the "Object Scale" box, you don't need to apply scale beforehand, which could be quite helpful).

I'm not sure if that is a normal behavior and if should be reported as a bug.


How do I change the location of the "Temp" folder to be a relative path? Here are my current User Preferences under the File tab:

I'd like to make the "Temp" folder a relative path, sitting somewhere under the application's directory. So in this case, rather than it being "D:\Applications\Blender 2.79\Temp\", it would be something like "\Temp\".

Surely this should be very simple, but I've tried many combinations like //Temp, //\Temp\, \Temp\, etc, and every time it just resets to the default location.

Is it not possible to use relative paths for the Temp folder (I'm using Windows 10 if it makes any difference)? Thanks for any support you can give!

that field seems to accept only EXISTING folders, while "//" stands for "current folder", but it is referred to the "current SAVED file".

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/data_system/files/relative_paths.html says "You cannot enter relative paths into a new untitled blend-file. Save it before linking to external files."

the "temp" path in user preferences probably is needed absolute (and existing) because blender needs it even for itself to, eg, save the quit.blend file, useful to recover the last session (even if not saved), and that file is saved in the "temp" folder. So, blender MUST know well where exactly it is...

I mean this recover function could not work, probably, without being sure of the "temp" folder


Animation Nodes - Pressure Arrows / Scaling, Rotating and Changing color along surface Original Question (Edit below):

I want to make a "fluid pressure" representation. That image was my "first" try, but I can't rotate or move the matrix. Why do I want to move it?

I want a "room" made of "pressure representation" walls. So, If I can copy the matrix, I could rotate it. I could, even, animate as a child of an object.

But the real effect I want is in this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxc4P0YI2rI&t=493s

Because in this way, I could have "pressure arrows" for all the volume, no matter the shape/surface form.

But instead the instanced/matrix/particles objects rotating...

Scaling (with a minium visible size to something larger but no huge)
Rotating (45º because the effector or direction effector).
Changing color (Blue neutral, Red affected by effector.
Along surface (as the tutorial shows for the "scales").

Here are my nodes and blendfile:

PS:
I made that one blendfile, but I took the next blendfile from here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByYo18t3qZRLajNDejF6eFVnYmM/view

and tried to split and understand what is happening in order to achieve the effect I want.

EDIT because it's not solved yet

Thanks to Omar Ahmad, now I have a clean node way to scale the "pressure arrows" from a empty with a "sphereic falloff" and I mix that idea with a "vertical falloff".

The color works only in "vertical falloff" but the rotation is child of normals... would be to difficult affect the local rotation of the arrows to the same "world side"? I have upper arrows rotating correctly, but below arrows rotating in the opposite direction and middle arrows nothing at all. With the inner faces of a sphere is samething.

To put arrows pointing along the normals of the vertices of a room, you can sample the vertices normals, convert them to Eulers through the Direction To Rotation Node and use that euler along with the vertices locations ro compose a list of matrices representing the transformations of arrows. Then we you can offset those matrices just as you did implementing the variable scale and rotation, and the color can be set as a vertex color just as you did (Making sure Deep Copy is enabled in the instancer node):


Colour ramp in 2.8 only picks the last colour stop. Im not sure whether somethings changed or I'm just doing something wrong (since im a newbie), but my colour ramp in blender 2.8 when using eevee engine only picks the colour at the last stop. My nodes were working just fine in blender 2.79, this has happened on 2 different instances when using the colour ramp. For example in the project im currently working on, I'm in rendered mode:

Now lets slide blue infront

Is this all happening since Blender 2.8 is in BETA? Could someone chime in? Thanks.

It's probably because Blender 2.80 is in beta.
However, there is nothing wrong with the color ramp node; it is actually the sky texture node returning solid white. Until sky texture is implemented, you can render out a full spherical HDRi (512x256 res 16bit .exr recommended) with 2.79 and use that in place of the sky texture.


How do I make an object only visible when it is in front of another specific object? I'm modeling a mouth for a cartoon character, and I want teeth & tongue to be involved. I'm currently working on teeth, but a problem has come up and I'm not sure what to do. I'm trying to make it so the teeth will only be shown when that specific part of the teeth is over the mouth part. Here's a picture:

The light orange is the teeth object, and the dark orange is the mouth object. I don't want the light orange ABOVE the dark orange to be shown, so there isn't teeth above the mouth. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with masks or something. Another note, I am using Cycles to render.

The first pic here shows the teeth object on top of the mouth object. The second picture shows the teeth object UNDER the mouth object. In the second picture, that little white sliver, just above the mouth, is what I do not want to be shown when the teeth object is on top, if that makes any sense. I only want the teeth object to be shown if the part I want to be shown is on top of the mouth.

Thanks in advance.

I believe this is impossible to do with materials.  But I was able to get this effect with some render layers and compositing.

First put the front object in a separate layer than the rest of your scene.  Then set up two render layers, one which renders all the layers, and one which excludes the layer with the front object.  (Check out my explanation of excluding layers here).

Next give the back object a different pass index under the Object properties panel > Relations rollout.  And make sure that you have the Object Index, and Z passes enabled on your render layers (see above).

Then use the following node setup to composite the two layers together.

The Less Than node compares the z-depths of the two render layers to find where the animated Suzanne is in front of the other one, the Add and Greater Than nodes work as a logical AND operator between this and the ID mask of the back Suzanne.  So the mix node will grab the "main" render layer iff the animated Suzanne is closer to the camera and overlaps the other one in the rendered image.  Which, I believe, is the effect you desire.


My eye won't track to my bone on a certain axis? When I added an object constraint to my eye mesh, I selected my armature as my target and my bone as the one that I want my eye to track to, but it's not working.

Here's what it looks like:

And every time I move my bone, the eye doesn't track to it. That's mainly because that if you look right below the Head/Tail bar, you'll see an axis selection where the eye wants to focus the bone on a certain axis. For whatever reason, it'll track the bone when I select the X and X-, Y and Y-, but not Z and Z-, and that's where I want it to be because it'll place it on the original position it was in. Is there a way to fix this?

Actually your case is very simple, keep everything as is, use world space in the Track To constraint for both, the only thing you need to change is the (To: -Y) in the Track constraint. Which is the Y axis for the Bone.
Aside from that, you have some issues in the file, you have 4 armatures, each has bones, and all of them have default names, my advise is that you rename your bones, delete unused armature, this will make your work much easier, I also had to move the origin of the eye to it's bottom rather than the center so it doesn't detach from it's joint when rotates.Here's the .blend file:


Adjust color balance/brightness/contrast on scanned mesh I am currently learning how to use blender as a tool to clean up and edit 3D scans. I am currently working on really large scans which were split in multiple chunks. Some of the chunks differs slightly in vertex color balance and brightness from each other.
To be able to make a complete mesh from the chunks I would like to know if there is a way to adjust parameters such as color tone and brightness and contrast on the separate chunks?

I know that in the "Paint Vertex" menu toolbars there are tools like this (brightness/contrast), but I haven't been able to figure out if and how they can be applied to a complete chunk.
I don't even know if the Vertex paint are the right tool for this since it only colors the areas visible in the viewport when I need to make changes that will apply to the whole chunk at once?

Thanks for any helps and have a great day!

The file used in this question is of Stanford PLY format, vertex colors, no textures.

When the mesh is selected, changes in brightness etc. that applies to the whole mesh is found under:

"Vertex Paint" - "Paint" - "brightness/contrast"-"Hue Saturation level", "Levels" "and "Invert"

The screenshot below demonstrates the solution using the "brightness/contrast" parameters


Reducing noise in interior Scenes caused by many lights using Cycles As mentioned in the title of this post I am just struggling with the noise in my render result. I am not talking about fireflies, I am talking about actual noise.

I read a lot about how to improve the result by increasing the amount of samples and stuff, but for the following result I already sampled the image 2500 times.

As you can see, the scene is quite simple. I modelled a room with multiple spotlights in the ceiling.

In full resolution I have a lot of noise in the darker areas, even after 2500 samples.

The target of the project is to make 3-5 sec camera animations, that lead from one hot spot in one room to another (the showroom isn't finished yet btw).

This image took me about 12 minutes to render on renderstreet. And regarding the finished project, it would take me about 74 hours to render only one animation with this noisy result.

So my question is, how can I get a cleaner result with less samples, so it will render faster?

I added my .blend file for you to download. I deleted the glass stuff in the middle of the room because I want my client to be anonymous).

http://www.file-upload.net/download-9405390/main.blend.html

Thanks in advance!
-Marten

I guess, that you know most of the common tricks. But here are some tricks that I often use:

Make a hole into the building outside of the cameras view of field
Increase the resolution, decrease the sample rate and resize the image afterwards. This will make the image softer, but if you double the image size, and render with a low sample rate and resize the image afterwards, the noise is evened out (I was able to render an interior architectural scene with only 5 samples)
Enable a small amount of global illumination and increase the shadows afterwards with the Compositor


How do I change the units to meters or create an object that is X mm wide? So I want to make a model for 3D-printing and searched for a guide on how to change the units to metric units first of course, but the guides I found were totally outdated, because there seems to have been massive changes to the UI.
I don't even know where to start in the Manual and got kinda lost in the pages there without finding an answer.

What I want to do:

1) Change the "blender" units to metric units.

2) Display the volume of objects in Blender.

Thank you guys so much in advance for any help!

Just to make it easier for other 2.8x users.

Change your units to metric.
Properties panel > Scene Tab > Units

To check the volume of objects, enable the 3D-Print Toolbox addon.
Preferences > Addons and click the checkmark.

After it's enabled, you can see the volume here.
Sidebar > 3D Print tab


How to select vertices contained in object How can vertices be selected if they are contained in another?
Is there a way to do this using manual editing, Animation Nodes, or Sverchok?
Example:

How can the vertices contained within the cylinder be selected?
This is a similar question - Selecting all objects inside a mesh , in this case the question applies to vertices.

In this case, you can:
Select the cylinder, shift select the grid then enter edit mode.
Go to wireframe view and uncheck X Ray. Then from the top view, box select.


How to do custom Freestyle brush shape in Blender 2.74? Instead of a solid "pen" line, I would like Freestyle to use a custom brush, that is an image file (e.g. PNG) that I create. I found this post:

Blender Freestyle Brushes

And read his link:

Help doc

But it does not work. I added a LineStyle Texture layer and selected my PNG image as the Single Image Source (Mapping = Along stroke). But when I render it is the same default "pen" line and not my custom brush image.

How do you do a custom brush?

---- updates below (after trying T.K.'s suggestions):

First, I try to copy all of the settings from the teapot and then use my own brush. But that did not work at all. Here is what that looked like:

Here is what I am trying to do:

So, next I try to just use the teapot file and change the brush image to by brush image and this is what I get:

It seem to be repeating the texture instead of sliding it along like a brush?? And it is also opposite (invert?) color? The round flat part is see-through instead of the black part. So I try the “invert” under image sampling and that did not work.

It seem to be filling the line with a texture instead of using the image as a brush. How do I use an image as a brush, like in the example picture I give?

Have you looked into example .blend files for using textured strokes?  If not, try a couple of example .blend files available within the Blender 2.71 release log you cited, i.e.:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/File:Teapot_pencil.blend

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/File:Mouse.Blend

Start from one of these existing line styles for textured strokes, and customize it with your texture PNG image.

EDIT: In reply to the updated question (22 May 2015)

Freestyle textured strokes always use a texture image as non-overlapping tiles repeated along stroke.  Internally, textured strokes in Freestyle are rendered using UV texture mapping (that is a general functionality of Blender).  Freestyle strokes have its own UV coordinates along stroke to map a 2D point in a texture image on to another point in the 2D stroke space.  This means that the texture image cannot be mapped in such a way that one tile overlaps on top of another.  (I guess this is a general limitation of UV texture mapping.)

I believe you need to rely on other Freestyle options to achieve what you are intended to do.  How about using the Calligraphy thickness modifier instead?


A decent IDE / code-editor addon for blender Can anyone recommend some editor or IDE addon for making python scripting a little less cumbersome than using the built in text editor?

I really miss stuff like suggestion of function names etc. that pretty much any IDE or code editor has these days.

Is there any specific addon or editor that you find ideal when it comes to blender scripting?

I am a newbie when it comes to Blender and also when it comes to the Python language so excuse my ignorance.

There is a paid add-on on Blender Market: Link, but the add-on is also available for free from GitHub here: https://github.com/JacquesLucke/code_autocomplete. You would just need to use the green "Clone or Download" button and choose to download it as a .zip. Note that Jacques Lucke says here:

  You can buy it in the BlenderMarket but it is also freely available on github.
  Buying the addon entitles you to better support when you have questions and helps to ensure that I can continue working on my addons!

And another free one: Link

Eclipse related: Link


why does my models disapper when im in edit mode? Whenever I am in edit mode and I use the middle mouse button to navigate, all my meshes disappear and I cant get them back? I tried scrolling in and out but nothing would work. Help]1

there are at least a couple of ways

select the item in the Outliner and then in the View option, under the Align View tab select View selected
in the same menu select Center Cursor and View all or press Shift + C (it will fit all of your object on the screen)


Create curve from Numpy Array using Python I have looked through previous questions on this and many other boards and I cannot seem to find a previous answer.

I have a largish Numpy generated ndarray that represents a harmonograph output (40000,3) using coords_list=np.column_stack((x,y,z)) of the individual axis outputs. Its all in one plane at the moment but this may change. Snippet shown below.

[[ 9.66087215e-01  1.78218213e-01  0.00000000e+00]
 [ 9.81957877e-01  2.04711827e-01  0.00000000e+00]
 [ 9.97284974e-01  2.31680099e-01  0.00000000e+00]
 ...
 [-5.26862572e-07 -5.59294782e-05  0.00000000e+00]
 [ 4.18313552e-07 -3.48825009e-05  0.00000000e+00]
 [ 5.71013430e-07 -1.62274906e-05  0.00000000e+00]]

Is blender to be able to read this array to create a curve. I've seen a number of questions that are similar but when I replace the list with an array I get errors as a list was expected rather than an array.

For example - ( How to make a curve path from scratch given a list of (x, y, z) points?). Many others seem to casually say that the lists can be replaced by an array but with no examples, I am a bit flummoxed.

I have also looked at using the foreach_set method to extract vertices from the NumPy array. But it's way over my head at the moment.

Do I need to convert my array to another format so they can define a curve?

Create POLY type curve from numpy array
Script below creates a POLY type curve from 4d SplinePoint.co numpy array.

Script result in edit mode
import bpy
import numpy as np

def flatten(*args):
    c = np.empty(sum(arg.size for arg in args))
    l = len(args)
    for i, arg in enumerate(args):
        c[i::l] = arg
    return c

context = bpy.context

# emulate numpy data
x = np.arange(0, 10, 0.1)
y = 2 * np.sin(x)
z = np.cos(4 * x)
w = np.ones(len(x))

cu = bpy.data.curves.new(name="poly", type='CURVE')
cu.dimensions = '3D'

spline = cu.splines.new('POLY') # poly type
# spline is created with one point add more to match data
spline.points.add(x.size - 1)
spline.points.foreach_set("co", flatten(x, y, z, w))

ob = bpy.data.objects.new("Poly", cu)
context.collection.objects.link(ob)

For a simple two point NURBS curve from local coordinates  (0, 0, 0) to (1, 1, 1) the coordinates can be defined
NURBS
For NURBS required to define the end_path_u
How to specify Nurbs path vertices in python?
Have introduced for each point having radius of r and setting this as well.
# emulate numpy data
x, y, z, w, r = np.array(
    (
        (0, 0, 0, 1, 0.5),
        (1, 1, 1, 1, 3.0),
    )
).T
cu = bpy.data.curves.new(name="poly", type='CURVE')
cu.dimensions = '3D'

spline = cu.splines.new('NURBS') # poly type
# spline is created with one point add more to match data
spline.points.add(x.size - 1)
spline.points.foreach_set("co", flatten(x, y, z, w))

spline.points.foreach_set("radius", r.ravel())
spline.use_endpoint_u = True
ob = bpy.data.objects.new("Poly", cu)
context.collection.objects.link(ob)
context.view_layer.objects.active = ob
ob.select_set(True)

Notice in the foreach_ methods require us to ravel (or flatten)  the array.  Flattening data as shown in  https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/172973/15543 the stackoverflow link suggests slicing is quickest.


Emitter not rendering, but particles are. Not restricted, and emitter option ticked in particle system Working in 2.79, I'm attempting to work on a grassy field, may extend to a larger background piece later, but currently I hit a wall in production. After many troubles texturing my particle system, I gave everything a material and rendered, but no matter what I do, my plane doesn't render, just the particles.

I've even attempted duplicating the plane and removing the particle system from the duplicate to just have it sitting beneath it, but that doesn't work.

I've changed materials to one I know isn't transparent, so it isn't a problem with the material, and I can't, for the life of me, find anything in object, material, or render options that can fix it.

Edit: I started with a simple plane and subdivided, fractal'd, etc. to get the shape I wanted. I went through making four different sets of grass clumps for my particle system and set it to pick randomly from that set, and gave it a cloud texture for good dispersal of the particles.

My settings, limited to relevance, are attached in images, if all works correctly...

Despite this, below is an attached image depicting what I get in render. Notice my brown material for the plane doesn't show up. I made the background transparent in order to make it clear that my plane just... isn't there.

I just found that it was not related to particles but a completely different setting. The Shadow Catcher option that was turned on on the plane, and that was what caused it.


Set grease pencil drawings on one level? I am working on a project where I rely heavily on grease pencil drawings (for sculpting), always looking straight on top with 7 on keypad. I just noticed that my drawings are on different levels on the Z axis.

Is it possible to align them together to a certain level and decide on what level new drawings should be? I don't think a screenshot is necessary.

It's not really bothering my workflow, but it would be nice to know.

As of Blender 2.79 you can reproject strokes to existing surface or just to make them planar.

When drawn over some objects from some projection (top one in your case) they look as expected from that projection:

If moving viewport projection problems will become apparent:

To fix that first hide or delete any other objects except for the one you're going to use as a new level for projection. Also make sure that mesh for the projection (probably plane) is larger when seen from the top view than all the strokes.
Then enter Edit Strokes mode, A to select all. Open Toolshelf, choose Grease Pencil tab. Open Edit Strokes rollout and on its bottom find Reproject Strokes dropdown. Choose Surface there to use surface of the mesh you want instead of planar projection depending on the current viewport camera position. Your drawing will be brought to the surface of the mesh you used as a new level.


Whats the difference between entering units and scaling the model at the end Lets say I'm trying to model a vehicle, given that I have the length of it. If I enter the length using units, for example I input 4.5 meters into the y axis and start modelling with the blueprints of the car, what is the difference as compared to modelling it according to the blueprints and then scaling it up to size?

Thanks

The result should be the same if you scale your mesh in edit mode. However if you scale the whole object in object mode your object will behave differently when used with particles or in physics simulations. The particles and the forces on the object will be scaled as well. To avoid that problem you can apply the object-mode scale to the mesh by pressing [Ctrl+A] and selecting "Scale".


How do I host my Blender-Made game so others can play online? My question is: When we are finished creating the game in Blender, how do we let others play it? Is there a game host service through Blender? or do we need to purchase a server from a 3rd party provider?

Creation and Build

Blender is a "creation tool". You can create Blender games (and the assets) as application with it.

Blender supports you in a way that it builds the application and data files that form your game. It is not designed to act as application server outside of the development pipeline (running the game embedded inside Blender, or starting it from within Blender).

Running

The user runs the game on his own starting the game as standalone application.

The usual way is to start the blenderplayer and feed it with a blend file which contains the game's data.

blenderplayer.exe myFancyGame.blend

For your service Blender can bundle the blenderplayer with such a blend file forming a application file (still needs the libraries).

myFancyGame.exe

Be aware: in this case all content of the application file (what is inside the blend file) has to be published under GPL as the blenderplayer is GPL (see Blender licence).

Publishing

Typically you somehow provide the user a way to get all the necessary files (blenderplayer/game file/blend file/linked assets). This can be a download/CD/stick or whatever. This is outside of Blender. There are other applications that help you on distribution (e.g. creating an installation file, hosting a download page, offering update service)

Distribution

If you want to create a multi-instance multiplayer game you need to split the game into different parts anyway. Each user gets a client that runs on the user's environment. These clients can connect to each other (peer-to-peer).

You can run one or more servers that help to connect (lobby) and synchronize (game server) the different game instances (client-server).

Each part (server, client) needs to be published separately as they are installed at separate environments.

When you want to run the central servers I suggest to look for some third-party-services to help you on that. Blender can provide the application, but not the application server - not even a website. That is outside of the scope of Blender and outside of the scope of this answer.

Remark: this is an architecture decision. You create the client with Blender (or other tools) you can create the server with Blender (or other tools) as long as they can communicate with each other.

Running embedded

This is a followup from the comments.

You can run your game embedded inside Blender. This is typically part of the development process.

The average user does not want to start Blender, load a blend file and run the game from there, specially as it is possible to break something while having the blend file open.

Nevertheless it is possible to run your game embedded. You might even support the user with auto start script (starting the game when opening Blender).

This means Blender is part of your game (you need to deliver Blender and the game assets).

The advantage would be that the Blender API (bpy) is available. Be aware this still does manipulate Blender data rather than data of a running BGE game.

You could use this option to run your server. This way the end-user does not see Blender just the individual client. The clients can be the usual BGE applications.


Joining mirrored object causes half of it to disappear Trying to join my meshes to create a single mesh so it is easier for exporting/ However when I click Ctrl+J to join them all of the mirrored meshes disappear and I am left with half a shape.
Any Suggestions?

If you are using the mirror-modifier, make sure to 'Apply' the modifier in the 'Modifiers' tab under 'Properties' in 'Object Mode'.

If you have multiple Meshes that are mirrored via the mirror-modifier, first 'Apply' the mirror-modifiers on each, then continue joining the meshes via Ctrl+J.


How do I change the color of particles with lamps? I want my particles to change colors with lamps, but when I shine a lamp on the particles, they are still white. I made the lamp color purple and increased the energy of the lamp, but it didn't work. Any ideas?

To make your particles "physical objects" make a mesh off scene that you want your particles to duplicate. Then, in the particle menu, scroll down to the "Render" panel and check the "Object" box. In the text entry box select you duplicate object and you're done!


Jagged Edges and Antialiasing In Viewport With Background Images I am on the latest LTR build (2.83.1) and have noticed that any geometry that's drawn above a background image doesn't anti-alias properly. See image for example:

Does anyone know a fix for this? Is this happening to other people as well?

Change the Depth of the reference images under Object Data Properties to Back


Trying to render multiple hair particle systems shows only the first one I'm kinda new on blender so sorry if this is an obvious question, I have this basic terrain, which has a patch of grass as a particle system, in order to add more randomness to it, I decided to create a few different variations for the grass (grass 1, grass 2, grass 3) objects.

So basically only the first particle system is showing up, the other 2 are there, but I had no luck making them appear on the viewport or render unless I change the object emitter from the first system.

Also, it looks kinda blurry in the final render not sure why.
Thank you in advance for all your help!

I'll be adding the .blend file.

Your 2nd and 3rd hair particles are controlled by vertex groups "Group.001" and "Group.002" which don't have any weight applied. Just weight paint them where you want the grass to spread.

Also you should invert the normals of the plane (now they are facing downwards, select all then Shift N in edit mode, choose "inside" option), and put the origin of the grass objects at the bottom of the meshes, so that the leaves grow from their base and not from the middle.


Will Nvidia Geforce GT 1030 work? I have a GT 1030 so I am wondering will it work with Blender CUDA? If yes, what should I do to make it work?

The Nvidia GeForce GT 1030 supports CUDA 6.1 rendering, therefore it is compatible with the most recent version of Blender Cycles rendering. (Currently 2.92). To make it work, simply select and enable it as a Cycles CUDA rendering device in the Blender Preferences, then select GPU rendering in the Cycles rendering properties panel.


Moving objects create wind I'm looking for a way to make moving objects generate some sort of wind that affects particle systems and/or rigid body simulations.
What I mean is that the moving object should not only interact with objects and particles it collides with, but also surrounding objects due to 'wind' being generated.

You can use Drivers to automatically apply a Wind force around the object and to vary its intensity as the object moves. This can be achieved as follows.

Firstly, enable 'Autorun Python Scripts' in the File preferences window. This will allow you to run scripts in Driver expressions.

Create an empty to follow behind the moving object. This will be the 'source' of the wind and its distance from the moving object will dictate the magnitude of the forces. In the Empty's properties panel, right-click on one of its location properties and select 'Add drivers' - you should see the X, Y, Z properties turn purple to indicate  a driver is present.

To get the Empty to follow the moving object you can set its location to a running average of itself and the target object's location. This will result in it closing in on the target on each successive frame. To do this, select the Empty in the 3D window, open a Graph Editor window and change the context from F-Curve to Drivers and you should see the newly created drivers.

Select 'X Location' and set up 2 variables - both as 'Transform Channel' - one for the Empty's X Location and the other for the target object's X Location (named 'emptyX' and 'targetX'. Set the Driver value to be a Scripted Expression as '(emptyX + targetX) / 2'. This will result in the Empty moving halfway towards the target on each frame. Adjust this expression for a more gentle motion towards the target - eg, '(emptyX * 4 + targetX)/5' will cause the distance to close by 1/5th each frame.

Repeat the above for the Y and Z channels and you should have an Empty that follows behind the target object as it moves.

Create a Wind force at the same point as the Empty (select the Empty, Shift-S for 'Snap'menu , Cursor to Selected, Add/Force/Wind) and parent it to the Empty. Add a constraint to the Empty to 'Track To' the target object. Move the target away from the Empty and check that the direction of the Wind is correct - rotate it to point it towards the target object if it is incorrect.

Select the target object and go to its Object properties and create a Custom Property named 'WindMultiplier' and set its value to '35.0' (or similar). This will be used to control the strength of the wind.

Select the Wind force object and go to its Physics properties. Right-click the Strength property and Add Driver. Configure the rest of the force as required -- probably change the shape to 'Point', set the Falloff to Sphere and power to around 2 or slightly higher.

Go back to the Graph Editor window and select the new driver on the Wind force. Create a variable named 'distance' of type 'Distance' and set one object to the target object (in World space) and the other to the Empty. Create another variable named 'multiplier' as a Single Property, set the object to the target object and the path to '["WindMultiplier"]'. Set the Scripted Expression to 'distance * multiplier'.

You should now find that as the target object animates that the empty follows closely behind with the wind force varying based on its speed. You can repeat the above 'Wind' steps to create multiple forces - for example, a Turbulance force, vortex forces, etc., parenting each to the Empty and rotating it as required, affecting your particle system dynamically based on the motion. Tweak the force properties and multipliers as required.

You'll get strange results if you run the frame sequence in reverse or jump to points in the animation so it's best to play it forwards all the way through to make sure it's working as expected and then to Bake the animation and then disable the drivers until you need them again if you change the motion of the target object.

Here's an example using a Wind force and Turbulence force - there is no object collision involved. You could get more effective results by adding Vortex fields (as above) to simulate eddy currents in the air flow.

Note : You may find that Blender doesn't detect changes to your scene when adjusting the Driver properties (such as 'WindMultiplier' mentioned above) and will not refresh the particle system automatically. If this occurs you can simply go into the Particle System properties and re-bake the particle system. The other potential issue with the set up described above is that the initial state at frame zero will not be consistent - the Empty used to direct the forces may not necessarily be in the same place at the start of the animation. The driver Scripted Expressions could be adjusted to allow for this if required but I excluded this for clarity (eg,  something like 'emptyX * 4 + targetX)/5 if frame = 0 else targetX' should give the desired effect.


Issue with a texture I'm trying to texture a capacitor and my top part has a separate material slot. When I assign a new material, the old one is still somehow showing in form of triangles.
Why is that?
There's nothing in the UV map that would do it.

This is a result of a Subdivision Modifier on an n-gon.
Just add another loop, and assign the white color to it as well.


How to set buffering frames? In User Preferences > Editing > Allow Negative Frames > checked and saved.

I want to let physics items to settle before rendering an animation both in cycles and with OpenGL. But How do I tell Blender to start playing at frame -10 yet start rendering after 1?

It depends of what type of physics you want.

For example, cloth simulation. In cache settings you can set start value negative:

You can noted, that this value limited by 1, but this not right. Click in center of value "Start" and enter negative value from keyboard. It's not a bug, many values in blender can be redefined in this way, for example 200% render resolution.

In other types of physics there is another option "offset". Like in water simulation. Offset shift all frames in time back and forward.

And of course, Allow Negative Frames in this case is useless.


How can I make different textures on the same object? I want to make a circle in which there will be a smaller circle at same origin point. I will use circle mesh for both these circles. I will put the image texture for the bigger circle. I just want to make the edge of the inner circle in a different color. How can I achieve that?

I want my model to look like this. A small circle inside a big circle with only the edge of the inner circle showing.

You can do this all using only one mesh and procedural materials, even using the blender internal render.

Add a material, then go to the texture tab of the properties window.
Add a new "Blend" texture.
Down in the "Blend" section, set the "Progression" to "Spherical".
Set the texture coordinates to "Generated".
(Now the fun part) Go back up to the "Color" section and check the checkbox for "Ramp". Set the interpolation to "Constant"
First make sure that you set the alpha of the first color stop to 1 (By default it is zero).

Now we are ready to add new color stops in the color ramp.
As shown in the image below you will need one stop placed at 0 (the far left) then two more color stops. These next two color stops make the ring.

Using two meshes
If you want to use two separate meshes (can be in the same object or separate objects), then you need nothing more then a simple material on each part.

Here I applied a purple material to a basic circle. In the same spot (just slightly higher)  I have a smaller circle. This circle I extruded E, then scaled S so that it is just a thin rim (green in the picture). I then applied a green material to this mesh.
If you have both of these pieces in the same object, then you will have to apply the material in edit mode as explained in this answer.


Is it possible to take a mask clip and 'connect' it to a specific point on a moving object? I have a video clip of a car driving by from left to right. My goal is to add a decal (mask) to the car door.  Right now I am painstakingly moving the mask via X and Y.

A mostly automatic way to do what you want is to use a Plane Track

The workflow is like this:

Load your video clip in the Movie Clip Editor

Create a tracker on your image by clicking while pressing Ctrl and pressing  the tracking forward button (or CtrlT)

Track at least four points within your video corresponding with the area you want to paste your "decal" to.

Select all your trackers, go to the Solve tab and open the Plane Track control and click on Create Plane Track

A new shape will be created. (you might need to adjust the shape to match your needs) The deformation of that plane is controlled by the trackers.

On the compositor use a Plane Track Deform Node (found in the Distort section). Connect it to your decal image, select your video source, camera, plane track, and mix it with the movie clip.

The decal follows the movement and deformation on the video!


Animation Nodes: cube root function I need to use the cube root function in animation nodes but there is no cube root in the math node.
Is there anyone who know how to do ?
Thank you

Use Power function with 1/3 as exponent.


Particles Emit from Collection instead of particle emitter Here's a short video describing the problem: https://youtu.be/qrjjohJGhfg
I have set up a particle system where a face emits a couple of particles (this is actually a laser gun.)
As long as I have it set to render as an object, things work fine.  Particle shoots out from the face, and is rendered as my laser object.
But, because I'm rendering in Eevee, I also parented some area lights to the laser so that it would actually eminate light onto surrounding geometry (emission node currently doesn't do this in Eevee.)
So I created a new collection with the laser and its lamps, and place it into the particle system just as I did with the laser object, except now I choose "whole collection."
The odd thing is that now the particles are being emitted directly from the collection location instead of the particle emitter.  Bug, or feature?  Thanks!

As commented by atomicbezierslinger, this was a problem with the origin of the collection, when it is created, being the center of the scene.  This is as opposed to the object being used with its local origin when being emitted as a particle.
Moving the collection to the world origin emits it correctly.  This does, however, lead to the problem of having your original object right in the middle of the scene and causing you to move everything else away from that point in order to not see the original object.


UV Unwrapping makes a mess and misses faces I have a relatively simple mesh, that looks like this (a couple of tight faces and loop cuts due to subdivision smoothing):

However when I try to UV unwrap it, it's a whole mess and even misses most of the faces:

When I select a face I can see where it is located on the texture map:

But other faces aren't located on it at all:

What could have went wrong here?
I made sure to select all vertices of the mesh before unwrapping, so I don't think that's the problem.

You simply need to mark all the seems correctly and it will umwrap nicely. Make sure you mark all the small edges that could interfere with the unwrapping and try again.
Use ctrl+e while in edit mode to call the Edge menu where you can find Mark Seam.

It is also a good idea to apply scale of the object to get expected results when unwrapping. You can do that with ctrl+a with the object selected in object mode:


Blender 2.8 eevee rendering noise I am seeing a lot of noise when using eevee to render. Attached is a mesh where you will see the noise is very heavy at the bottom of the iconosphere. This noise is only seen with metallic materials. Is there anyway to get rid of it?

I figured it out. I needed to increase both sampling and resolution. Depending on the complexity of your mesh, you may not need as high a resolution. Attached are the screenshots for the settings I used. Note - these settings apply to EEVEE render.


change wireframe background in blender 2.8 I am totally new to blender. Check out the following picture:

My coach changed cylinder to wireframe, so then I change my cylinder to wireframe, however the view is different:

My question: How do I change to wireframe view? My wireframe background is transparent but first in image is not transparent.
Can any one help? I'm using Blender 2.8

There are several different viewing options which involve wireframe displays.

Clicking on the Viewport Shading buttons in the top-right corner of the 3D view. Of the four, the one on the far left, the first of the four, is Wireframe. This shows wireframe displays while turning off all solid shading, making all solid faces invisible.
As an alternative approach to achieving the above, pressing z in the 3D View to bring up the Viewport Shading pie menu, and choosing Wireframe.
Simply going into Edit Mode for any selected, solid-shaded object will automatically show a wireframe display. The above-mentioned Viewport Shading options work in Edit Mode as well as Object Mode.
If you go to the Overlays dropdown at the top-right of the 3D View (immediately to the left of the Viewport Shading buttons), you can turn on a Wireframe display for all objects in your 3D View. This has no effect on how anything else appears. It only adds a wireframe outline on top of otherwise solid-shaded forms. This function is technically accessible in both Object and Edit Mode, however it seems to have no visual effect in Edit Mode. Furthermore, the checkbox only exists in Edit Mode if you are also in Solid shading mode. If you are in Wireframe shading mode while in Edit Mode, and go to the Overlays dropdown, the Wireframe checkbox does not even exist! This could certainly lead to confusion. It might have been clearer to new users if this checkbox were merely grayed out in this case, instead of completely missing.
Wireframe displays can be invoked on an object-by-object basis by going to the Object tab in the Properties Panel (not the Object Data tab), for any selected object, expanding the Viewport Display section, and changing the Display As dropdown to Wire. This can be helpful when you don't want everything to be displayed the same way at the same time.

In addition to the above, you can create an x-ray view of a selected object with Alt + z to make the object display as translucent even without it having a wireframe overlay currently. Wireframe overlays can be used in addition to this x-ray feature. The x-ray feature works both in Object and Edit Mode. I mention this feature because, your first picture above has some graininess to it that I don't visually understand, but I wonder if the x-ray feature may be involved. Your picture below, which I gather is your version, doesn't have this graininess, so I wonder if when you activate the x-ray feature, you may have a display that matches the coach's version.
Hope this helps.


speed variation in BGE I'm making a project in BGE where I need to implement speed variations in an object with single press and long press of a key? (speed increase with long press)
please help its urgent

add a keyboard sensor and connect it to a python controller

    own = cont.owner
    key_w = own.sensors['w']# can assign any key make sure the sensor is the same

        max_speed = 2
        if key_w.positive:
            if speed_var < max_speed:
              speed_var += 0.25#how quickly to accelerate
        else:
        speed_var = 0#you can also do the same here by subtracting 0.25
# until 0 is reached...make sure you do a check that it stays above 0


Texture paint colour not showing Hi, I'm trying to texture paint the lips on this mesh but want to keep this original colour shown in the screenshot. However when I go into the texture paint column this colour does not show. I have attached a picture of the texture painting screen

Here is a picture of the texture painting screen

Like moonboots assumed correctly you have no image for the texture node. You need to create one.

Press the "+ new" button to create an image. Give it a name
Select the image in the image panel on the left side so you can see the image
Save the image either with Save as... or with Pack

Save and Save as... will save your image in a separate file. Alternatively, you can use the Pack. This will pack your image into the .blend file.
Caution! Whatever you choose your image will not be saved when you save your blend file! You need to use the 'save image' (ALT + S) command individually. If you close Blender it will remind you when you have unsaved images. But if Blender crashes or freezes your unsaved changes of the image are lost.


How to fix floating objects during weight paint deformation? So far I've been able to find the answers to all my blender questions without having to ask but this one I just dont know what to search for so I wanted to inquire.
The spines on my dragon's tail are separate meshes 'joined' together but when I do weight painting there's always one or two fins per bone that wont follow the contour of the tail even at a weight of 1 but some will at less or even 0 weight. I tried removing the spines from all the vertex groups but then they just detach and float in the air for all deformations.
So my inquiry is; is it possible to have the spines follow stapled to the tail's surface somehow? It confuses me a little how the one outlined in red dose not follow while the one outlined in green does.

Blender file of tail section

Alrighty, I figured a way to make it work. I adjusted the geometry to place edge loops around joints and under the spines so deformation could happen more naturally without such drastic vertex movement. Also increased the length of the spines further into the mesh a little so it takes much more (unrealistic) deformation to help hide the motion. Its not as ideal as having it not move relatively but it'll work for my use case.

The teeth were pretty easy to fix, just painting the weight to the hierarchy correctly made it work. It just confused me when in conjunction with the tail spine issue.


Can I fix broken shape keys after editing basis? I edited my mesh changing the number of vertices after adding shapekeys, and it get totally messed up when the shapekeys are on.
Is there a way to solve this problem without remake the shapekeys all again!?

You don't need to delete and recreate the entire shape keys, just fix the points that have changed.

In edit mode, Mesh -> Vertices -> Blend From Shape is useful here.  It copies the positions of selected vertices from one shape key to another, so you can select just the vertices you've changed and copy them to keys where they're broken.  You generally want to turn off the "Add" checkbox when using the Blend, so it copies the positions directly rather than offsetting them.


Applying normal map increases shadow contrast Applying a normal map to my mesh makes the render use almost only 2 shades of grey and creates very contrasting shadows
Here is a render with normal map:

And here is one without:

First, you need to set the Image Texture node to Non-color Data type, and secondly you need to run it through Normal Map node as seen below:


How to display backfaces in black or other color in Blender 2.8? Backfaces always appear transparent. Is it possible to display them in black or another color? Different from the color of the front faces, of course.

Turn on Face orientation is not an option, as it fills up front faces too.

You can use Geometry node's Backfacing output to mix different shaders. If it's only for preview you can set up different outputs for Cycles and EEVEE. You can set it up so it only works with EEVEE(that is what you get while in LookDev mode), but will not be rendered with Cycles.


Why isn't my sea texture appearing transparent/translucent? I have the alpha on my sea texture set to 0.375, blend mode to Alpha Blend, and backface culling and show backface are both checked. I need the sea to be transparent to the point where you can kind of see through it, but dark enough to the point where it looks like, well, the sea. Kind of like most common low-poly sea models out there.

Also, the points where you see the sea floor through the sea are the point where the sea floor plane ends. I don't know if that helps or not, but there ya go

EDIT: turns out I was in eevee. it worked as soon as I just changed the render engine to cycles

It's likely just the blend mode that needs to be changed on the material tab.

On Opaque, it's telling the renderer that this is a solid object, but when changing the visual properties to something like Additive, you should be able to get the expected results.