How can i make a sort of cloth/leather object? I am trying to make Pathfinder from Apex legends and I am at the neck part, he has some sort of leather scarf for his neck, like the bottom part of the gear stick in a car. I have no idea how to tackle this problem so any suggestions would be appreciated

Here is the object I am trying to make:
And here is the object i compare it to:

Example with Cloth Simulation ...

add Cylinder, add horizontal Loop Cuts Ctrl+R 10, to get square net
Invert Selection I
Assign these top/bottom loops (vertices) to a Vertex Group under Properties Editor > Dara > Vertex Group
Add Cloth Simulation and under Cloth Sim Properties > Shape > Pin > choose vertex group
I animated top part with a Hook modifier assigned to Empty, but you can parent Cylinder's top (or bottom) vertices to any specific part of your character
For a final touch I added Subdivision Surface modifier


Cooky cutter from svg file for 3D printing I have the idea to create a cooky cutter from a svg file. What I basically do is importing the svg and extruding it into z direction. But now I have to make the material anyhow solid, ideally some kind of V shape to have a sharp edge and a more solid part.

At the moment I don't know how I have to modify only one side of my curve to expand it. I found a link to a thingiverse file which actually shows what I am trying to do: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:35719
Here you have a solid part at the bottom, perfect for printing and a sharp edge for cutting.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT:
Maybe this is another example which would help but I am not able to add this to my curve/mesh: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:33096
Here they just added a border to the shape.

Solidify Modifier

Image above. The blue flower shape has the solidify modifier.  You can press apply to make it permanent.  You may need to look closely to see the thickness on top, and clicking on the image will show a larger image.

You can scale a ring smaller.  You can also scale the extrusion as a modelling technique.

Loop Cut and Slide
In the image below extra rings of vertices were added along the edge.


I want to rotate a parent object and see how far a certain vertex of the child object has moved I have a parent / child relation between two objects. I want to rotate the parent object and get numerical values for translation of a certain vertex of the child object. Is that possible?

Example: Cube is parent of the Sphere. I want to rotate the sphere and get the numerical distance (in mm) that the selected vertex of the cube (right, lower corner) has moved. I want to get the numerical values.

You can get this information with a vertex parent, and a driver.

Start by adding two empties at the corner of your cube, the point you want to measure, (I named my empties "corner" and "original location").
Vertex parent one of the empties to the corner vertex of the cube. (Select the empty, select cube Tab into edit mode, select the vertex then press CtrlP)

Now you know the original location of that vertex and the vertex parented empty will tell you the new location.

Add another object, any object (does not matter at all). Put a single driver on one of its transform channels.

Now open up the Graph Editor switch to the Drivers mode and click on the transform channel on the left. When you open up the proprieties region N, you will see something similar to the image above.

You first want you make sure the variable name is in the expression field. Now set the variable to Distance, and put in the two empties you added earlier as the objects in that variable.
The output of that driver is the distance the corner of your cube has moved. If you have your scene units set to Meters, then it will be in millimeters.


shader: weird stripe Why this is happening!?

osl script:

shader TestNoise(
    vector vec = (0,0,0),

    output vector outV = (0,0,0)
){
    outV = (vec[0],vec[1],vec[2]);

}

In this case, it should not modify anything. It just passing the same value. Why is this happening?

I mean, if the public input vec is receiving the texture coordinate object vec = (x,y,z) and the outV = (vec[0],vec[ 1 ],vec[ 2 ]) is should vec = outV = (x,y,z) = (vec[ 0 ],vec[ 1 ],vec[ 2 ]), right?
In this image, instead of a black and white stripe is should not be a default checker?
I don't know, can someone explain to me?

You seem to have a mismatch in types in the assignment of the output variable - you need to include the 'vector' type in the assignment.

ie, instead of :

outV = (vec[0],vec[1],vec[2]);

Change it to :

outV = vector(vec[0],vec[1],vec[2]);

So the final script should be :

shader TestNoise(
    vector vec = (0,0,0),

    output vector outV = (0,0,0)
){
    outV = vector(vec[0],vec[1],vec[2]);

}


Adjust random seed of displacement textures How can I adjust the random seed used for the textures in the Displacement modifier?

For example, I have a Displacement modifier using a Voronoi-Minkowski 4 texture that creates a nice look for a rock. However, I want to have multiple "random" variants of this rock. When I duplicate the rock and the texture, the pattern is identical:

I can adjust the pattern by setting the texture space to Global in the Displacement modifier settings. However, this seems like a clumsy/hackish solution. What really makes sense is just a Seed property in the texture.

I have tried translating and scaling the texture space with ShiftT, but this does nothing (surprisingly).

What is the best way to accomplish this?

To get the equivalent of translating and scaling the texture space, you will need to use Object coordinates for the displace modifier.

This allows for displacement independent of the location of the object being displaced.

For example, using Global coordinates, let's say you want a rock to be in a certain location, but it is not being displaced in the way you want.
using global coordinates the rock can only be displaced in one way per location.

Using Object coordinates, you can adjust the displacement by moving the object being used as Texture coordinates without moving the actual rock.

If you then decide to move the rock but want to keep the way it is displaced, all you have to do is move both the rock and the Texture coordinate object.


Blender crashes whole PC Blender crashes my whole PC, usually when i switch out of it and come back into it.

Blender usually crashes when I switch out of it and come back into, and when it does crash, it begins with the whole system becoming barely responsive and blender completely unresponsive, and even if i do manage to close blender, my PC remains unresponsive and crashed afterwards.

Sometimes my PC just freezes and other times it blue screens, in which case I get the

error

dcp_watchdog_violation or driver_power_state_failure.

I already tried re-installing blender (2.8) and re-installing windows
   10 (while keeping files and apps). My PC, as far as I know, only
   crashes when using blender.

your driver is not compatible.

You need the dump file to determine the error, but maybe if you update your driver you can solve the problem. It is worth saying that if you use Windows, this brings a generic driver, so it is recommended to use the driver provided by the manufacturer of the peripheral you are using, otherwise you would have to see your dump file as I have already mentioned.

Do a Google search with this line and you will get a sea of information about your problem:

"dcp_watchdog_violation o driver_power_state_failure."


Coordinate XYZ limitation of 10,000 - Workaround questions Blender has a limit of 10,000 for the coordinates of the X, Y, Z component of the location’s value of the vertices in edit mode.

This causes a problem for editing large objects like mountains or large meshes for a game scenery. I understood the Blender’s developers limited the range to 10,000 because there is a precision loss. Seriously, I don’t care that much about the precision for mountains seen in the distance in a game.

I see two workarounds at the moment.

Moving the vertices manually.

Although we cannot set the location’s value beyond 10,000 when typing in the location X, Y, Z fields, we can always move the vertices with the vertex arrows in the 3D viewport. However, that is painful. There is not way to be precise.

Scaling down the object.

For example, a mountain mesh could be created with 1 / 10 the target size. Then set the scale to 10. The object in the scene appears the same size. When editing the vertices, all the coordinates of the vertices’ location are 1 / 10 of the target values. A value of 2,500 will be equivalent to 25,000.

Does anyone here have other ways to work with this limitation?

The limitation is on size of objects, not actual vertex location.
And according to this answer, there's no way around it.
The limit is actually ±10 000, so the maximum size of objects is 20 000 BU.

Workaround

Move your origin point.
Since the zero point for this limitation is object's origin point, you can make a mountain 20 000 m high, by moving the origin point higher.

Funny sidenote:
It's actually 10 000 Blender units (which correspond to meters), so for Imperial units, the limit is 32808.4 ft.


Creating models (levels) for a Unity game. Do I create 1 model or several? I hope there is an actual answer to this question.

What I'm trying to accomplish over all is to keep the amount of RAM used to a minimum. I'm not too sure about how Unity handles this, and that's question for another forum anyway. I'm wondering is it generally better to create small .blend files and assemble them in the game engine of choice or have one large level and let the game engine handle the level loading.

At the same time I'm also wondering about UV mapping large levels. For example I'm working on a building. Its rather simple single level school. I've build the model no problem. I'm just wondering should I break it down into individual rooms, then reassemble them into the "building" in the game engine of choice? Or even build each room separately and assemble them into another .blend file, as the whole building?

I guess what I'm really asking is: How do large/successful game developers handle large level creation?

I'm sure the answer varies depending on the device your product is aiming for. Lets assume a tablet for now.

Creating smaller parts (i.e. separate rooms, halls, corners) is referred to as "Modular structuring".

Modularity is faster, easier to get great results from, and is easier to change up and reuse, but it comes at the cost of adaptability, so this really depends on your game. If you're doing a level where everything is uniform anyway, like a subway tunnel or the interior of a military base or vehicle, modularity can be your best friend. Other cases, like a ranch house or an art center (cause they usually involve weird architecture) can create serious problems for the modular output due to the fact that you would be creating so many different components you might as well just do the whole thing by hand. It's really a case by case study, but I generally use a mix, modular where it works, and conventional where it doesn't.

If you do chose to use some modular structuring, you should follow a few rules:

Always use standardized sizes (this will help with assembly, avoiding trying to find the happy-medium between a 2.5 foot door and a 3 foot door.)
make everything the same theme
Place the origin of the modular sections at one edge or corner. (so you can use snapping to position them.)

someone has a great set of tutorials on modular structuring, but I can't find it right now, so I'll post a link when I do.


How do I assign to a vertex group with geometry nodes? I'm working in Blender 2.93 Alpha (more details if needed), and I'm looking for a way to apply a solidify modifier to only a specific vertex group. However, I can't figure out how to assign pieces of my geometry node group to the vertex group.

I may have misunderstood the question, but as I understand it you could use an attribute mix node with the factor being the vertex group, and the inputs being the different "branches" of the node network you want applying. In this example I mix two sets of points, one from a scaled up sphere and one from the original vertex position. For the solidify modifier you can just use the vertex group input, with a group. Sorry if I misunderstood the question.


Manipulate Vertex Indices Good Day!

Situation:
I have multiple objects with the same amount of vertices and a similar though deformed topology (all objects originate from the same one). I need to do two things to all my objects: Use them as shape key for each other and copy their weights by topology.
Unfortunately, the vertex indices differ, thus the result of both actions is messed up.

Question:
Is there a way to manipulate the vertex indices so they match in all objects?

Failed Attempts:
I tried an addon called "copy vert IDs". The IDs did undergo some changes but weren't matching.
I also used the Data Transfer modifier, copied vertex Data but it didn't seem to have any effect on the indices.

Thank you!

Lets say you have a reference object (Red) and a deformed object (Blue), while both have the same mesh structure, the vertices indices are different, we want to align the vertices indices so that we can create proper shape keys and smooth morphs.

The solution rely on computing a look up table for vertices based on their closest vertex in the reference object using a KD Tree. In order for this to work, an instance with the same indices structure of the deformed object has to roughly align with the reference object, if the deformation is too extreme, you will have to try to align the deformed object manually someway. This can be done by snapping the vertices manually, roughly aligning them using sculpting or proportional editing, for instance, I am going to duplicate the deformed object and try to align it using proportional editing:

It doesn't have to be precise, it just have to good enough for the algorithm to work.

Then we are going to send that to Animation Nodes where we sample both the vertices locations of the reference object and the duplicated object we just edited. Then I am going to create a KD Tree from the reference object's vertices locations and use the Find Nearest Point Node to find the indices of the nearest vertices in the reference object. If we view the indices of the vertices of both objects and cross reference them with the output indices in the node tree, we will find that they indeed match:

Notice that the output list tells us that the vertex at index zero should be at index 32, the vertex at index 1 should be at index 15, the vertex and index 2 should be at index 22, and so on. If we now get the vertices from the deformed mesh at the output indices, we will get the vertices in the same order as the reference object but in the locations of the deformed object:

The edges and polygon indices of the new mesh are that of the reference mesh. All you have to do now is output the mesh and use it to create your shapekeys.


problem with creating textures I'm learning how to use Blender through numerous tutorials. Today, I came to a point where I'm not sure if there is something wrong with the version (2.77) of the program, or if I'm doing something incorrect. I will attach a screenshot (on the left is shot of the documentation I'm reading and on the right is the Blender window). I'm asking about the missing Properties panel > Textures tab options.

Could someone help me find them?

Your first issue is the use of Cycles Render in the top options bar. Change to Blender Render.

Once you do, change where it says Environment Textures to the materials button, as seen in the documentation.


Is there a keyboard shortcut to open and close these areas? I accidentally closed the panel that has a red circle (I dont know the name of it lol). I had to close everything and load the project again and untick the 'load UI' to restore that panel again. Is there a shortcut to open/close it similar to properties and toolbar panel?

I tried the answers from the duplicate but I'm talking about specifically the panel on the right side with the red circle on it. I'm just wondering if it has a shortcut button like the toolbar T and properties N panel.

Just keep the cursor in the 3D View and press Shift+spacebar.


Annoying Bone Rotation Glitch? My english is bad. I apologize for my bad english.

I've been watching tutorials and learning on my own too, but I cannot seem to be able to find a solution to this problem in particular, or maybe I simply don't know how to describe it. :(

Context

I am rigging a large dragon model for a game. When it comes to the tail bones, I have 3 bones making his tail and they have the limit rotation constraint, but the bones seem to ignore the constraint.

When I'm testing the Y-axis rotation limit, instead of going up and down, it makes a kind of an "S" shape slide. Funny and weird, because the bone seems to be entirely ignoring the restriction to not rotate over the X-axis.

This animation will clarify what I mean:

Summary: when I test Rotation on Y-Axis on the tail, first up/down, then it goes to right/left. The tail moves in an "S" shape even though the X-axis is limited to 0:0. I honestly don't know much about rotation engines or measures like Euler or quaternion, I haven't messed with that yet.

I attached a .blend file for further comprehension of my issue.

EDIT

Thanks for the elegant edit of this post, forgot to link the .blend file

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14nmny0wEqOcibfAlXmsPhZO7ZNUYfxFa/view

The rig is working OK. If you bring up the transform manipulator and set it to rotate on local access:

You can visually see the orientation of your bones:

The red circle is x-axis etc. Clicking on these sequentially gives the range of movement you stipulate in the constraint. Notice x-axis is on an orientation I assume you would want the tail to move but you've set it to zero. The "s" shape movement you describe happens when you try to force movement in a direction that is choked by the constraint.

I also noticed that the bone roll doesn't quite agree with the orientation of the tail (all the bones are diagonal to the axis). I hit ctrl-n and chose global +z in edit mode to recalculate the tail bones. This ensured up/down, side-to-side but not twist movement - again assuming this is what you wanted.

ps. Nice model

Edit: I notice TeeTrinker has already answered in the comments as I was typing this LOL.


Why is Network Render creating .exr's instead of .png's? So i have been fighting this 2 days now. As i send job to slave computer on Network render and have told it to use cycles engine, where i have set the default output type to png, it still returns rendered images as .exr files... Would not be problem on still images, but at VSE i'd like to use png as .exr doesn't seem to work on it too well (need to use composite to even see the frames)

So what py. file i need to modify to change deafault network render output to .png and do i have to modify it on master + client computer or in a slave computer?

Edit: Some screenies. Like you can see; master, client and slave settings are not tweaked. Only changed Client engine setting to cycles

According to this bug report:

  "the problem is that even if you have PNG selected in the blend to be
  rendered, if you use the 'Download render results from Network', they
  will always come back as layered .exr files. You only get them as PNGs
  when you press 'get animation' button."

Have you tried the Get Animation button instead?

Or, according to this page:

  If you just need PNG then in the network render properties, under
  client tab you should choose 'animation on network' rather than 'send
  job to network'. Both will render in EXR file but with 'animation on
  network' option, it'll deliver the png (or whatever format you choose)
  to specified folder.

I would say, if you set your Render output folder path to "//something", which means relative to the blend file, with the output type as PNG, and then initiated the job by choosing Animation on Network, and then when complete, retrieve the frames with the Get Animation button, it should bring back PNG files.


Render Speed Very Slow I have what I think is a decent computer but when rendering a 1000 frame animation it take around 2-3 hours to do 4-5 frames. (Yes I have it set to GPU compute)

Details:
Computer - Intel i7 6th gen, 12gb RAM, Nividia GeForce 940m
250 Samples
1080p graphics

Are my specs too low or could it be a rendering issue with optimization? I have a complex character but it doesn’t utilize complex geometry or many different textures. I’m using the latest Blender build, and the animation includes a moving camera and rotating meshes. Any ideas about how I could make the render go faster (or if anyone has technical knowledge in that case)? Can someone tell me what render settings they usually use for larger animations?

Slow render times are perfectly normal. This stuff is complicated.

Still frames can take a while, and an animation is hundreds of still frames put together. Movies can take very long times to render, even on big supercomputers.


How to make a permanent spot of light in a characters eyes? At the moment, my character's eyes look lifeless and for the way, I made them, a spot of light in the eye usually fixes it. I'm wondering if there is a way to permanently make a spot of light in the eye so it looks better and something more like this:

(This isn't mine obviously) If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear it, thanks.

To find the right materials and light setup so you can replicate this look I recommend the following tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPK6JlWESM8

For Anime-Style Chractere it looks better to take a .png/.jpg file, split it into white/transparent and attach it to the armature of the iris. VRoid has some complete models ready for download free of charge.


Create a single object with a single texture from blend file including several materials I have a house with textures in a blend file. The house consists of a bunch of different objects also including different materials/textures and i want to create a single textured object to import into a game. The textures doesnt show up in blender render i dont know why but maybe this is my problem.

I think baking is the way i have to go and followed a tutorial on how to bake a texture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7bjdWu9OGs but without the result. Cant i do that with cycles rendering or havent i followed the tutorial correct?

Blender internal and cycles do not use the same materials. You can bake a cycles material to an image texture and then create a blender internal material that uses that image.

Also look at the texture atlas addon to merge all objects onto one image texture.


Blender 2.8 (Python) - resetting camera rotation to (0,0,0) I am trying to set the camera rotation to 0,0,0.  It is not known in advance what the X,Y,Z rotation angles are before doing so.

My thought is to get the current rotation parameters using obj.rotation_euler and then doing a reverse rotation on each of the axes.

For some reason, the transform.rotate code below doesn't actually do anything.

Thanks in advance for your help!

obj=bpy.data.objects['Camera']
objrot=obj.rotation_euler
bpy.ops.transform.rotate(value=-objrot[0], orient_axis='X', orient_type='GLOBAL', orient_matrix=((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), orient_matrix_type='GLOBAL', constraint_axis=(False, True, False), mirror=True, use_proportional_edit=True, proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, use_proportional_connected=False, use_proportional_projected=False)
bpy.ops.transform.rotate(value=-objrot[1], orient_axis='Y', orient_type='GLOBAL', orient_matrix=((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), orient_matrix_type='GLOBAL', constraint_axis=(False, True, False), mirror=True, use_proportional_edit=True, proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, use_proportional_connected=False, use_proportional_projected=False)
bpy.ops.transform.rotate(value=-objrot[2], orient_axis='Z', orient_type='GLOBAL', orient_matrix=((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), orient_matrix_type='GLOBAL', constraint_axis=(False, True, False), mirror=True, use_proportional_edit=True, proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, use_proportional_connected=False, use_proportional_projected=False)


Im doing a 2d animation and need timeline help I was doing a 2d animation and all was fine till i maybe hit a hotkey or pressed a wrong button. I used to be able to see my layers on the bottom left in my timeline (the default 2d-animation settings) but now theyre gone. I have a lot of progress sunk into this file so I'd be a shame if I had to start over. Please let me know how to fix this, My guess is that its probably a hotkey I pressed but your guess is probably better than mine. Thank you in advance!

Simply click on the left top icon in your timeline area (currently that is graph editor) and select dope sheet


Texturing mesh used smart uv project makes weird lines It's not always happening, but it happens often. Look at below image, it's used smart uv project:

And when I try to painting this, I can see some weird white line:

I don't like using smart uv project, but sometimes my uv map looks crap, it's useful.

This is not a first time happens, I see this many times so I tried to not using smart uv project as possible.

How do I get clean result on texturing with using smart uv project?

Any advice will very appreciate it.

P.S.
This is link for model:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2NonO-YN8ayZVQ0VHhYSlY2UU0

Possible duplicate of:
Texture painting margin size
Texture Painting - Black Artifacts

Note that you can add margin with Pack Islands with pressing F6 after do Pack Islands. I always try 0.03 and works 100% fine.


Odd rendering issue -- Extra lines When I render one of my models in my app, black lines (which I did not draw) are getting rendered which run from various points on my model all to a single point.  Please see image.  As I move my camera around in the app, the single point moves around (and in turn the destination of the lines).  What are these black lines, what are they pointing to, and how do I fix?

Note: Blender newbie here

Thanks

Edit new photo showing mesh issues in blender too.  Removed reference to libgdx to remove confusion.

Welp, I didn't determine the exact issue for all situations, but it seemed some meshes had doubles issues, faces issues, normals issues, etc.  You could do things like select a vertex around a bad area and hit Ctrl+ to select similar ones, but the bad one wouldn't get selected.

To fix, I ended up selecting whole areas that were at issue and deleting them.  I then either rebuilt them or duplicated other similar areas and placing them there.

I hate not knowing the exact issue, but at least I'm up and running.

Thanks to those who took the time!


What does `filter` parameter of Template_id do? and How to use it? In blender docs
template_ID(data, property, new='', open='', unlink='', filter='ALL', live_icon=False, text='', text_ctxt='', translate=True)

filter (enum in ['ALL', 'AVAILABLE'], (optional)) – Optionally limit the items which can be selected
From the available docs it looks like filter is used to filter out particular ids based on some sort of parameter.
I tried to add filter in blender ui's code where template_id is used. But didn't get any result.
So how can I use filter parameter.

Linked to current scene, or any.

Have used this for setting the active object, or pointer properties to bpy.types.Object instances.

'AVAILABLE' for objects linked to context scene
'ALL' for all objects in the blend file.

Setting an object not linked to a scene to the active object of that scene is going to cause issues.
GIF shows following  draw method used in  (Used in gif above with Templates > Python > UI Panel Simple)
    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout

        obj = context.object

        col = layout.column()
        col.template_ID(context.view_layer.objects, "active", filter='AVAILABLE')
        col.template_ID(context.view_layer.objects, "active", filter='ALL')

See Limit "prop_search" to Specific Types of Objects  re using poll to narrow down selection options for pointers.


Get rid of /reduce Noise in Cycles Render Im new to 3D object creation(2 weeks at most) and I was wondering if there is a way to reduce if not get rid of the noise when rendering using the cycles render.

thank you for the answers.

There are some general tips and guidelines, I am sure you can find something in Google as well, this article made a while ago is still today relevant and can help you to understand more about it:

https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/7-ways-get-rid-fireflies

Edit:

The guidelines are:

Use Bigger Light Sources (Bigger lamps or blurred HDRI)
Use Bigger Shadow Sizes
Use "Multiple Importance Sampling" for HDRs
Use 'Filter Glossy'
Check "No Caustics" (Trade-off losing some of the light information)
Use "Clamping" (Trade-off dampening highlights)
More Samples (Trade-off more render time)

For simple projects, I recommend you to enable Simplify:

Essentially it simplifies your shaders, mostly glossy shaders, to render faster, this will give you the advantage to increase render samples, thus, decreasing noise areas.


Cloth physics for poly hair and armature I have an armature for the body and then modelled the hair. By following this tutorial (https://youtu.be/c11l2o5uCQs) on how to add cloth physics by using verts and ik modifier, the hair bangs are perfectly reacting to physic. However, when I try to connect the hair to the "head" bone of the body armature, it acts weirdly and the whole body is moving following the hair bangs.
Do I have to merge the hair armature and the body armature (if so, how to connect them) or I'm doing the wrong way :/

All I needed to do is to select my mesh plus the bone in pose mode and press CTRL+P and set it as parent as Bone


Increase the speed of the bevel tool mouse-drag After activating the bevel tool on edges, the "Amount Type: Offset" scales the bevel amount at the speed I would expect when I move my mouse.

Offset is rarely the type of bevel I want to use. Amount Type: Percent much more closely reflects the behavior of bevel tools in other software. When I change the tool to this mode, I have to drag the mouse across the viewport 10-20 times in order to move the amount value.

How can I change the speed that this works at? I do not want to have to adjust the bevel using the tool panel window every time, it's incredibly inefficient for a tool that gets used so much.

You can go into user preferences under input and change the settings used.

Searching for bevel will quickly find what you want.
Change the amount type to Percent.
You could also change the amount setting so that it starts at say 5
Save user settings so that it remains the default option when you restart blender.

After using the bevel tool, you can adjust the settings that were used, these settings are available at the bottom of the toolbar region or by pressing F6.

If you look at the header of the 3D Viewport while using the bevel tool (and other tools), you will see a list of available options that can be used while interactively using the tool.

For the bevel tool, press M to change the mode, use the  mouse wheel to change the number of segments. You can also type in the amount you want, so if you have mode set to percent you can type 25 to get a 25% bevel, you can also use backspace before accepting the bevel to adjust the setting you type in.


Strange shading fragments on mesh can anyone help me?

I've just finished texturing a model I made. After I import the mesh and the textures in UE4, I've encountered this shading fragments.

This are screenshots on UE4:

This is how it looks like in substance painter:

And this is the model on blender:

EDIT:
I'm not too sure with the all quads solution.
I've tried ripping a part of the model that is all quads but it's still giving me weird shading.

New blender screen capture:

A possible solution to your question could be that you need to try and make geometry that defines the shape of your  all quads and then, around corners, add edge loops to surround those defining points (namely sharp corners, etc.). Then, after that, mark those edges (not the esge loops) as creases. It should work after that. Using a subsurf modifier should help on top of this.


Solidify modifier causes black artifacts on mesh I'm new to Blender and I've got a problem while using the solidify modifier.
I'm creating a Minecraft character using a rig and I want do a 3D-Head with the solidify modifier but it looks like this:

The sides of the solidified faces are glitching; they should have the same color as the top part

[EDIT]
I solved the problem; If I select every face seperatly and use Remove Doubles UV it works.

Solution
I switched into Edit-Mode and selected one face that was wrong. Then I pressed Spacebar and used Remvoe Doubles UV. Now the incorrect face was correct and I continued with the other faces.


Palm rejection issue with Blender on HP zbook x2 I'm having issues with the palm rejection in Blender on the HP zbook x2. It uses HP's custom wacom driver. When the pen is close to the screen it should ignore any touch, but it seems to be picking up touch too. So the cursor doesn't know where to go and starts flickering. Attach is a video I put on youtube about the issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPu4HqwrRjU&t=188s

I've been in contact with HP support and since Blender is a 3rd party app, they won't do anything unless I get a case number from Blender developers and then submit the case number to HP. I'm at a lost as to who to contact on Blender.org. I'm hoping someone on here has a fix for this issue or can direct me to someone on Blender.org who can help. Thank you very much everyone!

I found the answer and it was in plain sight...

Open your HP Create Control Panel
Edit the Function buttons and select the dropdown for any of them
Choose "Touch On/Off"

Pressing your newly configured button will disable touch, so you can draw with the pen and not be disturbed by resting your palm on the screen.


UV map is not in the plate I want to bake AO for this map but can't do it because the map is not on the plate. Is there a way to fix this?

UV maps are editable in blender. In the UV editor select all (A) (all UV points will become yellow) and drug them with RMB to the desired location, then finish it with LMB. Or use G shortcut to start your "grab and nove".


How would you cut a shape out of an object using another object? Coming from SketchUp one of the tools I miss most is the circle draw tool which lets you draw a circle on any face and then you could extrude it in/out. The only tool that I know of that comes close to this is the knife tool but this would be very impractical to cut out with the knife

Example:

Is there any tool in blender that can match this function? also how could you do this with squares?

Knife Project Tool

The tool you are looking for is the Knife Project tool. Here's how to use it:

Create your cube that you want to put the circle on
Add a circle curve: SHIFTA -> Curve -> Circle
Position the circle in front of the face you want to put the circle on, as shown here (highlighted in green):

Now go to the viewport where the circle visually appears where you want your circle to be on your cube, like this:

Now select the circle, then hold down SHIFT and select the cube.
Switch into Edit mode
Tools panel (T) -> Mesh Tools section -> Add section -> click Knife Project
(Note: In 2.70, the Mesh Tools section is located in the Tools tab)

This will result in the cube now having a circular hole in the front face:

If you now want to fill the hole with a face, select all the vertices of the hole and press F.

NOTE: In this example, the circle is considered the Knife, which is kind of like a cookie cutter, or perhaps even a bullet, and so when you click on the Knife Project button, what Blender does is it projects/shoots the knife (here the circle) from the visual angle in your active viewport. So, make sure you have the knife visually lined up so that when it projects/shoots onto your destination object, it will make the circle right where you want it. Here are two examples of projecting from different angles:

An interesting note is that in the example above where the knife is visually at an angle, the resulting face on the destination object is NOT automatically deleted (see the highlighted face on the lower example.)

Also, you can indeed use any shape as a knife:


How do I make an Npr shader that responds to lighting I am trying to make an anime shader kind of like the one in the video below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m52k-WP5HHQ&t=128s
However I want it to react to external lighting unlike what is shown in the video
I want it to be able to show the shadows of whats over it like how shadows of the hair will appear on the face when the strands are hanging down in front of the face.

This is the setup I have tried but when I use it I only get this

How do I make the shading to the spotlight I have on the left here?

In your tree, the 'True Normal', (which is the unsmoothed, geometric normal in World space), is being used as the color of a Diffuse BSDF, before the light-response of the BSDF is extracted as a color, put through a B/W ramp, and used as a mask.
The True Normal is the direction of the geometric normal at the shading-point, encoded as a color in this case, and will not change with the light. It's in World space, so it will change when you rotate a non-spherical object shaded with it.
The BSDF will respond to the light, but by that time it's been colored, and the response will be affected by the color (which will be black, over a lot of the surface).
For NPR shading, you often do want to manipulate the the normals of a surface, but you would typically use the 'Normal' (which is smoothed) rather than the 'True Normal', and manipulate it on the way into the Normal, not the Color, input of the BSDF.
If you plug a color straight into a Material Output, it will be treated as if it went through an Emission shader, strength 1.
TL;DR
Unplug the Geometry node, color the BSDF white, and then you will find the light response of the surface acts as a mask between your two textures. The contrast of the mask will be controlled by the color-ramp. The textures will use the active UV map of the shaded object, unless you specify another.
I'd recommend installing the shipped add-on Node Wrangler, so you can ctrl-shift-click nodes on the way down the tree, and see what they're doing.


Flip animation along an axis (Mirror animation) Good day!
I created an animation of hitting a punching bag with my right hand (skeleton - humanoid), the question arose: how to reflect the animation (along the X axis) so that now there is a blow with the left hand?
I tried:

Created an EMPTI element in the center (0,0,0), made it the parent of the rig and applied a scale of -1 on the X-axis.
This option will not work because the animation and SKELETON will be reflected (bones will also be mirrored)!
I've tried copying frames (Ctrl+C) and pasting them by pressing "Ctrl+Shift + V".
In this case, the animation goes in reverse order.
The trolls wrote that in the liner you can click on the object and choose to mirror along the X-axis ... it's not funny ...

Please, help!

Select all the bones involved in the animation of the right hand with your mouse over the graph editor press A to select all keyframes (make sure none are hidden), press W or right click and choose copy.
Select all bones from the left hand, make sure they have an f-curve for the selected channels (i.e. insert one keyframe for each channel, loc, rot etc.), select a frame  where you can easily delete the new keyframes.
Go to frame 1 in your animation.
Pres RMB or W and choose paste flipped.


Joining seperate meshes that are parented to bones to single mesh I have a bunch of seperate meshes that are all part of a character, and are each parented (bone relative parented) to their respective bone (the character is a robot, the meshes are simple shapes that make up the body).  My armature is working well and all, but I'm wanting to add a modifier to the whole character, every mesh.

I figured now that they were all parented I could just Ctrl+J to join them, but when I do, they lose their parenting. I don't want to have to do an armature deform and then have to paint each part hard red/hard blue, unless there is some non-manual way to do it (?).

What's my best option to allow me to add a modifier to the whole character but keep my bones working?  Thank you in advance!

"I don't want to have to do an armature deform and then have to paint each part hard red/hard blue, unless there is some non-manual way to do it (?)."

Yeah so I ended up doing that but found some tricks that made it take barely 5 minutes (for ~20 bones).

Here's a guide for anyone who is in the same situation I was in.

Select all of your meshes and Alt+P to unparent without transform
With all your meshes still selected, join them with Ctrl+J
If you've posed your mesh, select all the bones and Alt+G and Alt+R to reset pose
In object mode, select your conglomerate mesh and the armature and Ctrl+P to parent them, selecting Armature Deform with Automatic Weights
To optimise the repainting process:

a. In Weight Paint mode, set your brush to Draw, and set the Weight and Strength of the brush to 1

b. Next to the brush's Strength slider, there is a dropdown called Brush, in it, disable Front Faces Only

c. Next to the Mode dropdown (where it should currently say Weight Paint), there is an icon of a cube with a highlighted face, hovering over it should say Paint Mask; enable it
Flipping back to Edit Mode, select a face of the loose part of the mesh you wish to paint, and hold down Ctrl+[+] to Select More until the full part is selected
Back in Weight Paint mode, select the corresponding vertex group of the part you selected.  Everything but the corresponding mesh should be wireframe (this means the Paint Mask is working)
Paint all over the part until it is entirely hard red
Hit Ctrl+I to invert selection, turn the weight of your brush down to 0, and paint over everywhere else until it is all hard blue
Rinse and repeat from step 5 with each part, remebering to flip back your brush's Weight to 1 each time

As we say in the industry, bada bing bada boom.

Once you get into a flow of things, you can do your whole model super quick because unless you have a very intricate mesh, there is no precision involved, you can stay in one view the whole time.

Hope that helps anyone else!


Why is my Wacom Cintiq Companion eraser not erasing in sculpt mode? When I switch to sculpt mode and use my eraser with my wacom cintiqu companion, blender version 2.77a will display a red dashed circle inside the drawing brush icon and will not allow erasing. When the 'subtract' brush is activated, it will erase like normal, but not with the eraser. I have not been able to find a solution on the internet yet. If someone could help me, I would much appreciate it!

Welcome to BSE Nikolai. As far as I know there is no erase in sculpt mode - Add pulls the vertex along the normal outward, and Subtract pushes them in. You can either do this by the menu buttons or holding down  CTRL  to reverse the operation. The eraser still works but has no function on the meshes. If you had for example grease pencil strokes, you could erase those even though you are in Sculpt mode. The same is also true of Edit mode.


Cell fracture not working with physics So I have a cube that has been cell fractured. And I selected all of them and used the fracture physics tool to have the cube react to a ball hitting it. but when I changed the setting for Enable Deactivation and Start Deactivation so that it won't start until the ball hits it, and press "copy from active" in the toolbar, the fractured cube won't move at all.

Well I goofed. It turned out to be the rigid body world settings in the scene tab.
Turns out the speed was at zero, so there wasn't any chance that the fractured cube could move.


How to make a material transparent but not its texture (Blender Render) The title pretty much sums it up.

I am modelling a rubber ball. For the texture there is a png file with transparent spots without color and some wavy shapes.

Now when giving the material transparency and setting it down, it will make the texture transparent too.

The texture is too complex or I would just make another material and assign it only to the faces where the color is. Is there a way to work around this?

In the texture tab, scroll down to Influence section and enable Alpha.


How do I get the knee to bend the other direction? I've set the pole target as child bone to the IK bone attached to the yellow bone which solved some problems. The knee now constantly bends in the exact opposite direction.

It rotates the foot. It something with rotation. In a video, I heard something about redirecting all axes, but couldn't find where because the given shortcut didn't work.

EDIT: After inspecting the file you provided, the issue is that the leg bones actually bend backwards at the knee very slightly. In this case, Blender will never make the point point the direction you want. If you pull the knee joint forward a bit, or even just make the leg bones perfectly in line the IK will work as expected.

In the IK constraint options, right by where you selected the pole target, there is a Pole Angle option that will change the angle of the bend in relation to the target. Since yours is simply backwards, setting it to 180 degrees should do the trick.


How to make a Copper/Rose Gold smudge material? Help! How to make such material procedurally in cycles

I would just use a simple principled shade.

Slide the metallic and specular (forgot to change specular) close to 1.

Choose a rose gold color and use a texture in your roughness. I put two options, a procedural way (noise texture stretched with mapping node) but I think an actual texture image looks better.

Use an HDRI so you get more realistic reflections.


Weird deformation after exporting Rigify from Blender 2.8 to Unity Trying to export an animated character from Blender 2.8 to Unity 2019.02! I have a few animation done and almost all of them look exactly as they look in blender, except for the Head bone in the action “Attack”, It seems like it gets overly sized when exported to FBX or even when I bake the animation to the deformation bones inside blender, what could be affecting this bone besides the “Head” control to make it this way?

•   Scale in blender file was changed to .01 in metric system as recommended for FBX export

•   Location, rotation and scale in the Rigify Armature is applied

•   I already tried baking animation on the “head” “neck” and “chest” rig controls

First image is how it looks in blender, 2nd is how it shows in Unity.

Now, baking the animation to only the deformation bones messed up the setup for the rest of the animations BUT when I do that I get the same deformation than when exporting to FBX so I know it's something with the Rig setup more than any export setting:

Something extra to say It's that i have to keyframe  the "head_Follow" and "neck_follow" setting on rigify at the beggining and end of every action, So I'm assuming that this problem is not there.

What else can I try to have it exported with no weird deformations?
Is this a common issue?

I had a similiar Problem with a Quadruped, where Parts of the Animation were completely broken: the Head had a wrong position while the ears were in the right position.
Apparently the Parent Child structure of the Deformation Bones is not suited for baking and does not always work correctly outside of Blender.

I solved this with the ORG Bones (Bottom Last Layer) as Deformation Bones instead of the actual Deformation Bones (Bottom Third Last Layer).
Step by Step:
In Edit mode:
- Select all Deformation bones in the Bottom Third Last Layer, go to Armature->Bone Settings->Deform (Hold Alt while clicking the checkbox, so it will untick the deform option for all of these bones)
-Select all Deformation bones in the Bottom Last Layer, go to Armature->Bone Settings->Deform (Hold Alt while clicking the checkbox, so it will tick the deform option for all of these bones)
-Rename the vertex groups so they have the Prefix ORG instead of DEF.


Particle hair does not follow rigged mesh I have got a rigged character (and I can't share therefore) to which I have to add particle hair to its head. I did this by creating two vertex groups (left/right) on the head and added two particle systems accordingly. Everything worked fine so far.
Then I moved the head via the rig - parts of the hair strands got tear off the scalp and remain like a "trace of motion blur" hanging in the air between the point, where the movement start and
where it ends.
This happens with Blender 2.91 / 2.92 and the newest 2.93.
The hair is not "disconnected".
How can I avoid this crazy effect???

Problem solved: This effect vanishes, when the particle system is located after/below the subsurface modifier.


I cant get my textures in final rendered image Hi i am a noob to blender. I was trying this tutorial on youtube on creating a sword and i cant seem to get my textures appear in final render. Everything shows up fine in rendered view and material view as well.I tried both cycles and evee rendering engine. I am attaching link to my file below.Please help me..

edit:
i reattached the file with textures and all. Sorry for the huge filesize its probably because of huge soundtrack..
link

I got it to work. I just simply added a hdri background image and it worked. For anyone else having the same problem, try googling how to add hdri background in blender and you will get the answer. Thanks  to everyone who answered..


Removing objects from collection with script works but gives an error I'm sorry in advance if my script looks really messy and not optimised, it's my first time using python or a dev language for that matters.
I've tried to setup a script that, among other things, create and assign objects to a LP collection by checking their names.
When I'm trying to unlink the object from the HP collection they were taken from, the script successfully does the task, but still return an error, here's the script :
#List all object in scene that ends with remeshed and select them
for obj in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    if obj.name.endswith("remeshed"):
        obj.select_set(True)

#Create collection with selected objects
bpy.ops.collection.create(name='LP')

#Link collection to Scene Collection
bpy.context.scene.collection.children.link(bpy.data.collections["LP"])

#Remove low poly objects from HP Collection
for obj in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    if obj.name.endswith("remeshed"):
        bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj
        bpy.ops.collection.objects_remove(collection = 'HP')

I've also tried to use
bpy.context.scene.collection.objects.unlink(obj) withtout success even with the HP collection selected and active.
Here's the error message :
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 4, in <module>
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.91\2.91\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py", line 132, in __call__
    ret = _op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw)
TypeError: Converting py args to operator properties:  enum "HP" not found in ('LP')

And as I was saying the script does what I want and unlink the object from the HP collection, but since it returns an error, it stop when running it.
Thanks in advance for all the help and advise you could give me.

I have enhanced and modified your code and, it works perfectly :

bl_info = {
    "name" : "Clear Collection",
    "author" : "CédricF",
    "description" : "",
    "blender" : (2, 80, 0),
    "version" : (0, 0, 1),
    "location" : "Sidebar(N)>Clean Up",
    "category" : "Clean Up"
}

import bpy

from bpy.props import PointerProperty

#----------------------------------------
#MAIN PANEL
#----------------------------------------

class CLEARCOLLECTION_Property(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):

    ClrByNameEnd : bpy.props.StringProperty(name= "All Objects Ending By", default="")
    ClrByCOLNameEnd : bpy.props.StringProperty(name= "Collection", default="")

class CLEARCOLLECTION_PT_MAINPANEL(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_idname = "CLEARCOLLECTION_PT_CLEARBYNAMEEND"
    bl_label = "Clear By Name End"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_category = "Clean Up"

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

        scene = context.scene

        CLRCTool = scene.CLRTool

        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(CLRCTool, "ClrByNameEnd", icon= "TRASH")

        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(CLRCTool, "ClrByCOLNameEnd", icon= "TRASH")

        layout.operator("clearcollection.clearbyend", icon= "TRASH")
        layout.operator("clearcollection.slecbyend", icon= "RESTRICT_SELECT_OFF")

#----------------------------------------
#CLEAR OBJECTS
#----------------------------------------

class CLEARCOLLECTION_OT_CLEAR(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "clearcollection.clearbyend"
    bl_label = "Clear Objects"
    bl_description = "Clears objects which end with the given input"
    bl_options = {"REGISTER"}

    def execute(self, context):

        scene = context.scene

        CLRCTool = scene.CLRTool

        for obj in bpy.context.scene.objects:
            if CLRCTool.ClrByNameEnd != "":
                if obj.name.endswith(CLRCTool.ClrByNameEnd):
                    bpy.data.objects.remove(obj)

        for obj in bpy.context.scene.objects:
            if CLRCTool.ClrByCOLNameEnd != "":
                for objc in bpy.data.collections[CLRCTool.ClrByCOLNameEnd].all_objects:
                    if CLRCTool.ClrByNameEnd != "":
                        if obj.name.endswith(CLRCTool.ClrByNameEnd):
                            bpy.data.objects.remove(obj)

        return {"FINISHED"}

#----------------------------------------
#SELECT OBJECTS
#----------------------------------------

class CLEARCOLLECTION_OT_SELEC(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "clearcollection.slecbyend"
    bl_label = "Select"
    bl_description = "Selects objects which end with the given input"
    bl_options = {"REGISTER"}

    def execute(self, context):

        scene = context.scene

        CLRCTool = scene.CLRTool

        for obj in bpy.context.scene.objects:
            if CLRCTool.ClrByNameEnd != "":
                if obj.name.endswith(CLRCTool.ClrByNameEnd):
                    obj.select_set(True)

        for obj in bpy.context.scene.objects:
            if CLRCTool.ClrByCOLNameEnd != "":
                for objc in bpy.data.collections[CLRCTool.ClrByCOLNameEnd].all_objects:
                    if CLRCTool.ClrByNameEnd != "":
                        if obj.name.endswith(CLRCTool.ClrByNameEnd):
                            obj.select_set(True)

        return {"FINISHED"}

classes = [CLEARCOLLECTION_Property, CLEARCOLLECTION_OT_CLEAR, CLEARCOLLECTION_OT_SELEC, CLEARCOLLECTION_PT_MAINPANEL]

def register():

    for cls in classes :
        bpy.utils.register_class(cls)
        bpy.types.Scene.CLRTool = PointerProperty(type= CLEARCOLLECTION_Property)

def unregister():

    for cls in classes :
        bpy.utils.unregister_class(cls)
        #del bpy.types.Scene.CLRTool

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


How to distribute animated meshes with a particle system I'm pretty new with particles and everything, so I'm going to guess that there's got to be some easy way to do this, but I just can't seem to find it.

I have a forest scene that I've made by distributing trees, bushes, grass, etc. across a landscape randomly with a hair particle system. It worked great and I got a good render out of it. But now I've re-built each source mesh so that it has an armature and a "swaying in the wind" animation (with the sapling generator). and I want to sub in the animated ones for the static meshes. Previously, I had grouped the source meshes and then under the render tab in my particles panel I just hit "group" and selected the group and voila. But if I group the animated meshes and do the same, the armatures don't get distributed with them and they don't animate. If I include the armatures in the group it distributes them as separate objects, and again i get no animation (plus a lot of loose armatures all over the scene). How can I get it to distribute copies of the source objects with their armatures attached?

I got it to duplicate the animated mesh. I did not have to instance the armatures with the mesh. At first, it wasn't working for me either. It only duplicates the animated mesh if the original animated meshes are visible in the scene. I presume you have them in a separate layer. Try making that layer visible.

This seems like a workaround though. It would be nice to have the original objects invisible. Maybe you should file a bug report for this?


My vertices disconnect I posted this a while back but no one has replied in months so I am reposting.
When I click on a vertex it moves one "triangle" (I'm new ok idk what the proper word is) and the rest stay in the same place. I'm trying to lips sync and it's proving to be impossible at the moment, due to the vertices being unconnected.
Here is my blend file: http://www.mediafire.com/download/8nt27wz1lc414g0/newtester.blend
Any help would be largely appreciated ^^
I have tried:
right clicking and then pressing G
Pressing H
Pressing C

That's because each triangle in that model is 'disjointed' , it is not joined to any other triangle. You can join them using Remove Doubles.

In Edit mode, hit A until Blender selects every polygon (Triangle). Then look for the tools menu, and press Remove Doubles.


How can I create an object that changes from low poly to high poly as I zoom in? Basically I want to create a video game like effect where when you zoom in with the viewport the low poly mesh is replaced with a high poly one. I now you can do this in Unity but I have no idea how in Blender.
Why I want to do this? I'm creating a landscape scene where I need close up shots + hovering bird view shots. I don't want to add high poly trees each time I want a close up and then delete them as this is very time consuming. Also mc Pc cannot handle a full landscape full of high poly trees.
I already figured out that in the node editor you can create a texture coordinate and plug the camera output into a vector math set to length and then plug this into a math node set to snap. This will create a mask that follows the viewport camera around and you can then use this mask to for example change textures from low quality to high quality when zooming in.
Is there a way I can use this mask to tell certain meshes to hide and others to show? I was thinking about making them invisible with a shader but this is no solution as my computer gets extremely slow with all the invisible high poly trees.

You can create a driver for the visibility of low poly and high poly versions, such that the high poly version of the model is shown when the camera is close, while the low poly version is shown when the camera is not close.
With both a high poly and a low poly made, select the high poly and look on properties/object/visibility.  Right click on the checkbox for "Show in renders" and select "Add Driver".
Now open a driver editor view, and edit the driver you just created.  Change it to a scripted expression.  Set the input variable to be a distance, then specify your high poly object as one object for the distance, and your camera as the other object for the distance.  Finally, set the scripted expression.  If you use a scripted expression of "var > 10" then the high poly will disappear whenever the camera is more than 10 units away.  (Yes, this seems backwards; Blender's drivers don't always match the text, and in this case evaluating as True means that the object isn't shown in renders.)
Because you're concerned about performance, you'll want to duplicate this driver to "Show in viewports" property as well.

For the low poly, you'll want inverted drivers, so you'll want to set the expression to var <= 10 (in this example.)
Whenever you duplicate one of these objects, the driver will update the distance to measure the distance for the new object, at least in 2.92.
There are a few concerns regarding this plan however.  The first is pop.  If you zoom in on a low poly tree, it will suddenly be replaced all at once with a high poly tree.  This is a common problem in level-of-detail systems, and you've probably seen it in action in video games.
Another issue is that distance isn't always a good measure of how much screen space something is taking up.  Trees behind the camera may not be visible at all (or may be, via Cycles ray bounces.)  When you look at trees through a refraction mesh that simulates a telescope, they may be distant, but take up lots of screen space.  If you decrease the field of view, things take more screen space, even though the distance hasn't changed.  With more math, it's possible to work around FoV, but with something like refraction, you just don't know until you raytrace it, at which point it's too late to do anything.
Also, there's not all that much performance to be gained.  Even though they're not displayed, all of those high poly trees need to remain in memory for Blender.  The main performance increase you're going to see here is going to be for rendering-- which, yes, includes viewport rendering.  But if you're having laggy solid view rendering, it's hard to imagine that making LoD drivers for everything is going to provide any noticeable improvement.


How to create white volumetric clouds in a dark scene? I am trying to create a scene which has a black background and the only ways to create volumetric clouds that i've seen results in ones which look believeable in light scenes but in dark ones they completely disappear. Anyone have any ideas?

First of all clouds can't be seen in total black night. We can see them only when moon shine a bit. So it's pretty accurate result.

But if you need you could just mix your material with emission shader.


How to obtain/enable Blender 2.8 "shortcut properties"? I'm trying to add a custom shortcut that enables selecting vertex/edge/face mode inside mesh edit mode. I'm trying to do this inside a custom keymap preset.

The image shows two instances of the same shortcut:
The upper part of the image is the custom keymap preset.
The lower part of the image is from the preset known as 'industry standard'.

Industry standard preset has the additional option that allows you to select vertex mode (encircled) while the same 'sub-option' is missing inside the custom preset (question mark) despite using the same operator.

How do I enable these 'sub-options'?
Why is the name of the shortcut the same as the operator and is there a way to change it?

In 2.81 ic_keymap removed, and this function you can use now from object.mode_set_with_submode.

If you open 2.81 with industry compatible keymap, you will see, that now it useobject.mode_set_with_submode for this shortcut


An alternative to time.sleep()? I am trying to create a game in wich there are 2 threads running constantly, one for the car controls and another one for determining the speed. The speed is calculated by comparing the car's current position to the position 0.1 seconds after (for wich I use time.sleep(0.1))

The thing is, I want the thread that determines the speed to start again only when is has finished, for this I use threadSpeed.isAlive().
But i think that when i use time.sleep, the thread shows up as not alive and so it starts generating many times, messing the program and throwing errors, so the question is: Is there a way to generate a delay without time.sleep? or is the problem totally unrelated? Thanks.

Why do you want to calculate the velocity by yourself? It's already provided by the API with getLinearVelocity

Alternatively - in case you really want to do it yourself - you could use the "Skip" Setting in the Always Actuator to tell Blender it shall execute your own velocity calculation only every n-th game loop.

Hope this helps!


Automatic weight rigging problem I've been here for 6 hours now trying to find out what's wrong, this hand doesnt rig properly, all other objects I try work, so I have no idea whats wrong. I have redone the rig 6 times, and I'm new to blender so I don't have much knowledge.

Your bone axis may be misaligned that would throw off rotations and cause other problems.


Blender painting brushes shortcut selection polygons 2.82. Coloring a character with vertex-group in draw mode How do I select through the shortcuts the polygons that I am going to color or modify? In the video-tutorials I often see using the selection of polygons in the edit mode but I don't know how to use it and how to use it then in drawing mode

Your viewport has a button there that I highlighted that turns on Face Selection Masking, and then you can select the polygons you want to limit your paint to.

I see your project is very high poly, seemingly in dyntopo sculpt so you are using Vertex Paint. If you were to first make a copy of the mesh, you might try remeshing to get a quad version at low enough resolution that you could use multiresolution modifier to resculpt lost detail but then afford to uv unwrap and use actual texture paint mode and make use of layers of images.
Edit: Here is a shot of where you can convert a copy of the dyntopo sculpt into remeshed quads in sculpt mode, but this is only when dyntopo is turned off.

This one shows what kind of result I went with prior to adding a multiresolution modifier and resculpting close details.


Extreme CPU usage while GPU rendering? For GPU rendering I use a GT 650 Ti Boost. Strangely, rendering jobs consume all my CPU time so anything else I do on the computer is just as choppy as when I do a CPU render.

I have Blender configured to use 6 of 8 cores when it does use the CPU but that doesn't help either. It's an FX8350 CPU, with 8 gig of RAM, so that should be lots of horsepower too.

Since there are guides for setting up multiple instances of Blender to handle GPU/CPU renders on alternate frames I would expect the CPU to remain largely free during a GPU-only render.

Does anyone have insight/tips as to why it's sucking up more resources than it probably should?

I'm certainly no expert, but I had a 95% CPU usage whilst rendering, even though I had chosen GPU Compute from the Render section.  What I didn't realise, was that I also need to select CUDA in User Preferences/System too.  After that I re-did the same Render and the CPU then hovered around 15% as expected.  V 2.79 if that makes any difference.  Will be interesting in the forthcoming version of Windows which supposedly will show the GPU usage in the Task Manager.


Shade Smooth gives weird results As soon as I do my model "Shade Smooth" I get all kinds of weird distortions.
How is this possible and how can I solve this?
What I've already done is the following, Delete loose, Merge by distance and Tris to Quads.

It is very easy. Go to the object data properties panel (The one that has an upside down triangle with three verticies) and under normals, click auto smooth. to get the desired result you can change the angle of the auto smooth.


Turn two planes into a volume I would like to turn two regular spaced grids (so same amount of vertices, spaced at regular intervals) into a volume in which the top plane becomes the top of the volume and the bottom plane the bottom of the volume.

I've succesfully done this duplicating the two planes (save for later), then join the original two planes and then in edit-mode -> "Bridge faces". This would remove both planes and leave me with he outer band of the volume (see image)

I then placed the outer band between the previously duplicated planes. Job done.

But this is a bit of a pain in the neck because i would like to do this for a lot of sets of planes. And also do this with irregular spaced planes and regular spaced planes with a different extend.

Is there a method or workaround to do this more easily?

Bridge Edge Loops should work here.

Join both planes into one object through Object > Join, Ctrl+J
Use edge selection and go Select > All by Trait > Non Manifold (to select the loops)
Then Edge > Bridge Edge Loops

Edit:
In your case, the mesh has two forgotten edges in one of it's corners (one on each plane). Just delete them an it will work no problem.
After all that you can recalculate normals so they're all pointing the right way


What is indirect lighting and why do I have to bake it in EEVEE? I have been using blender for a while .So I was wondering what indirect lighting in EEVEE was .Also I noticed that I can see the light produced by a lamp in rendered view without  even baking it.What does baking indirect lighting do?.It is better to understand things and use it .I guess it has something to do with how eevee works.How is it different from cycles?

It doesn't have anything to do with how eevee works, indirect lightning is referred to be as a lighting which doesn't directly fall on the camera and is reflected from some other surface. Eevee only approximates it and you get much more realistic and better results if you bake it, you can even limit the area for which it is calculated by using a light probe and then selecting bake all probes under eevee render settings.
Here is blender's official documentation about the topic:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/eevee/render_settings/indirect_lighting.html


Mesh deformation with Curve Modifer Can anyone tell me why the mesh I am trying to Array & Deform along this curve changes scale so dramatically when I apply the curve modifier?

Origins are matching and scale/rotation are applied to all objects so why does the "cross section" shrink?

Many thanks
Pootle

The first thing you should do is apply the array modifier and delete the curve modifier from the mesh, in that order. Next, add a new bezier curve and rotate it 90 degrees on the y axis. Then switch to the object data panel for the bezier curve. Under shape, change Preview U: resolution to 64 (its max).

Then, drag the bottom of the curve over to the bottom of your mesh. This doesn't have to be exact, only pretty close. After that, key Shift+Ctrl+Alt+C and chose Origin to 3D cursor. Then scale down the curve to the height of the original curve. Tab into edit mode, and key A to select all and W to show a pop-up menu. Select subdivide. Now using vertex snap and your own adjustments, match the new curve to the shape of the old curve. After you are satisfied, delete the old curve.

Lastly, add a curve modifier to your mesh and select the bezier curve. Set the deformation axis to x. Moving your mesh along the z axis will make it follow the curve.

Hope this helps and happy Blending!


How to symmetrize the armature? I want to copy the bones on one side symmetrically.

I selected the bone to be symmetrized and armature-> symmetrize, but nothing happened.

How can I symmetrize the bones?

Select the bones and change pivot point as 3DCursor which on the origin point
Scale bones on X-Axis and type "-1" as value

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGvalWG8HBU&t=428s
Also this tutoriol will helps you for more information about armature and bones.


Blender 2.8: Camera Lens Shift and Background Images Offset Blender 2.8 offers the possibility to add camera background images (Camera > Object Data > Background Images). I have multiple cameras in my project with different background images. The background images feature is super helpful for that and works like a charm.

However, I am also using the shift X and Y properties for the camera lens (different values for the cameras). The shift moves the camera as expected. According  to this post, the shift is in percentage or fraction of the render size >>> What are the units for camera shift ). Unfortunately the camera lens shift also shifts the background image out of the visible render area.

My first thought was to use just the negative value of the camera shift, but apparently that’s not correct. For some reason I can not find the solution how to calculate the correct background images offset values.

Is there a chance to stick the background always to the render view? Again, I have different cameras with different background images and shift values. Preferred is a solution without adding additional geometry or objects to the scene if possible. Any ideas?

Blender: 2.81

I just installed the newly released blender 2.81 and my problem seems to be gone. Now, the background image always sticks centered to the camera (as expected), but you are still able to give a background image offset (x/y).

Blender: 2.8

However, I also figured out a solution for my problem in Blender 2.8. The offset depends on the camera resolution ratio. Assuming the render resolution X is larger than the render resolution y (e.g. 1920x1080), the math to solve my issue is:

For Background Image Offset X:

There is no magic
A background image offset X of 1 is a shift by the resolution width to the right.
A background image offset X of -1 is a negative shift to the left.
The values between 0 and 1 are a fraction of the render resolution width, e.g. 0.1 = 10%, 0.5 = 50%, 0.75 = 75%, ...

For Background Image Offset Y:

This is a bit more complex, because the shift is related to the
render resolution
First, you need to divide the render resolution height by render resolution width to get a ratio (rr = rh / rw)
Second, you have to divide your camera lens shift y value by the calculated ratio (rr)
Third, you need to double this new value (for some reason?!)
Finally, you can set the newly calculated value to your background image offset y property

  Note: If the resolution height is larger than the resolution width, the solution from above is just flipped. Steps from Background Image OffsetX need to be done for Background Image OffsetY and vice versa.


Water Material Not Working the Same in Eevee as it Does in Cycles I am working on a scene where the water needs to be somewhat transparent and reflective (like water generally is). It looks great in Cycles, but when I switch to Eevee, it does not look the same or even close to what I'm going for. Screen Space Reflections is on (with refraction). The closest I could get was switching the Blend Mode to Alpha Hashed in Eevee, but it still isn't right. Is this a limitation of Eevee or am I missing something?
I've attached screenshots of Cycles vs. Eevee.

Eevee works differently than cycles and does not have all the same capabilities. You can try compositing cycles and eevee renders for different parts of your scene using the Holdout shader, but because the water has those reflections, you might just have to do the whole thing in Cycles.


Loop imported video in Blender Model I think this is a bit of a unconventional question, but!
I have a few videos (.mp4) imported into my blender model - I've done this through [Import -> Images as Planes].
I am trying to create an animation, walking through the model - however, my videos start playing as soon as the animation starts, and once they play through, they just stop. So, when the camera reaches them (say at frame 300) in the animation they are just stopped stills showing only the last frame of the video.
Is there a way to loop the videos in Blender? Or make them start at a later point? So that they are either constantly playing, or atleast playing at the right time the camera reaches them?
I am new to blender, so I'm trying to find a simple way to do this, or atleast a method that I can follow - I still don't know most of Blenders nooks and crannies and sadly I'm still trying to get my head around it!! :(
If it's possible to actually do this without having to edit the videos themselves, this would be so so helpful!!
Thank you!
[I am using Blender 2.82a on Mac]

You can expand the base colour tab in the properties panel and check on cyclic. That seems to work and the video plays on loop. Hope that helps.


Changing object origin to arbitrary point without origin_set()? Is there a way to change the origin of an object to an arbitrary point (via scripting) without using the operator origin_set()?  I.e., isn't there a method or property on the object to do this?

I know I can do it like this:

bpy.context.scene.cursor_location = pt
bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CURSOR')

but this can get tedious, e.g., if I have other objects selected.

you could do something like this in Edit mode.

obj.data.transform(mathutils.Matrix.Translation(-new_origin))
obj.location += new_origin

I use it in this addon which sets the origin to the selected vertex, or median.

or as CoDEmanX points out

obj.data.transform(mathutils.Matrix.Translation(-new_origin))
obj.matrix_world.translation += new_origin


is it possible to make a reflection sit at infinity, like a reflex sight or a HUD? i want to simulate an effect such as a heads up display and tried to recreate it simply, through the use of light projecting through a reticle, through a convex lens, and onto a pane of glass seen here. the light definitely reflects onto the glass, but doesn't stay in the same position when i move my view port.

this is the full scene

these are two angles, compared to each other the light definitely does not stay in the same place

i realize this could totally just be a limitation in blender, or a simple mistake in my scene, but clarification or tips would be helpful!

As the wiki page said, you need your lens to refract parallel light.

Key Points

the lens need to be perfect refraction lens or it will cause distortion
the iron sight laser thing need to on the exatly same position of the lens focus point
the reflective plane should be 45 degree above the lens

Workflow

You can create a nearly perfect refraction lens by intersect two ball.

After the lens is setup, you need to know its focus length. It can be done several ways. I use a sun light with orthogonal view to tune the point on a plane:

You need to change parameter in render panel, for those thing will clamp indirect light, turn it off to get accurate result.

And last thing, your 45 degree reflective glass need to be fully transparent without distortion, recommend to use transparent shader + Glossy shader, and place above the lens correctly:

Then the result can be stable in sight with slightly distortion:

The full scene is extremely complicated in rendering, consider something else.

And for the file I test for it in Blender 2.80:


Non-planar quads: how to connect two curves with faces? I am trying to create a specific shape consisting of two curves connected together by faces (in the context of modelling a plane).

Here is what I came up with by converting the first curve to a mesh, extruding to get the second curve and applying some transforms (rotating and scaling).

The problem I have is that because the scaling is not uniform on all the axes I get non-planar quads which get triangulated by Cycles:

I thought of different ways of fixing this:

Creating and converting the two curves separately gives a similar result
Dividing the quads by adding intermediate curves makes the quads flatter but it is not perfect

I know that it is mathematically possible, for instance if the algorithm converting a curve to a mesh divided the curve into segments according only to the angle and not the distance between vertices, so that's why I'm asking: does anyone know how to do this "the right way"? Thanks!

I tried to re-create your model to mimic the issue and as others stated in comments, adding some loop cuts should solve it.

After that I would just try to make the cuts more even using vertex slide.


How do you add an object to a specific collection only in python? I made this short script. Why is the new object being added to the default collection? Can I get around unlinking the object, not linking it in the first place? How do you add an object only to a specific collection in python?

if (bpy.data.collections.find('Tiles') == True):
    tiles_collection = bpy.data.collections['Tiles']
else:
    tiles_collection = bpy.data.collections.new('Tiles')
    bpy.context.scene.collection.children.link(tiles_collection)

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add(location=(1, -5, 0), size=1)

basemesh = bpy.context.object

tiles_collection.objects.link(basemesh)

bpy.data.collections['Collection'].objects.unlink(basemesh)

This is what the outliner looks like without the last line in the script:

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add ...

... is doing stuff behind your back, based on the current context. It's creating the mesh, then an object from it, and linking it to the context's active collection. So when you call link, it's linking for the second time.

You could make the 'Tiles' collection active, and let bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add  do its own thing in there...

import bpy

C = bpy.context
D = bpy.data

if D.collections.get('Tiles'):
    tiles_collection = D.collections['Tiles']
else:
    tiles_collection = D.collections.new('Tiles')
    C.scene.collection.children.link(tiles_collection)

C.view_layer.active_layer_collection = \
C.view_layer.layer_collection.children['Tiles']

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add(location=(1, -5, 0), size=1)

... I'm not saying it's a great thing to do, that would take someone with more experience than me. It may be better not to call bpy.ops.xxx at all, to avoid context connected activity, or the way you're doing it now may be just fine.


How to make the camera follow the plane in my blender game? I made a basic plane model and parented the camera to it, but when i fly the plane, the camera follows its location but rotates by itself...

Here is a link to download the game: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sic9fc3ne5wkqza/AIRSPACE.blend?dl=0
EDIT: blend exchange wasn't working so I have to use Dropbox

Use camera actuator instead of parenting it.

Change height, axis, damping, etc to meet your requeriments.


recreate electron microscope material i realize a similar question has been asked before, but nothing specifically discussing the topic of recreating the materials seen in electron microscopy. the tutorials i have seen use fresnel as a factor to mix emission and diffuse, while this works i find the result is not entirely realistic, and shadows don't look good on this material as it has emission in it, therefore i'd like to ask, if you were to try to recreate a realistic electron microscopy material, how would you do it? the way i have tried is  simply adding the layer weight nodes fresnel output as a factor in a colorramp, and adding said color ramp to a diffuse node, but i feel like there must be a better. more realistic way. image is an example of what i want to achieve. tardigrade in 100 micrometer magnification.

I think the Layer Weight gives rather good results, you use it as a factor between a black Diffuse and a white Emission. Put a bit of Bump into the Layer Weight if you need to give the surface some little details.


Python Script FBX export blender problem I am writing a simple script that will export a file in blender

CODE

import bpy

bpy.ops.object.select_by_type(type='MESH')
bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_GEOMETRY')
bpy.ops.export_scene.fbx(filepath="~/Desktop/updatedhouse.fbx", path_mode='RELATIVE')

I am running into the following error and I am not sure how to decipher it.

 line 291, in write
    with open(fn, 'wb') as f:
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '~/Desktop/updatedhouse.fbx'

location: /private/var/folders/48/ptx7wqz138x4_shgs5nk6szm0000gn/T/AppTranslocation/DEB386B3-C3FC-4FAB-B7A2-0954C07B91CF/d/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/../Resources/2.78/scripts/modules/bpy/ops.py:189

I needed to specify my entire file path in the filepath parameter of the bpy.ops.export_scene.fbx method.


Blender rendering quality pixelated I've slowly been getting better at blender but one thing that annoys me a lot is that when i press F12 to render my scene, well, it's all pixelated.
Examles:

So this here is something i was testing out, and this is when i press Shift+Z

So that's fine and all but then i go to F12 and i get this:

Now, i have read other peoples posts, and they call say "duplicate" and they all have answers, now honestly it annoys me that none of them have a good answer that actually would aid this. I've read all the things i could find, and some of the "Similar questions" and some people have the same problem as me, but i doubt there is nothing i can do?

TL;DR Want to make my renders not pixelated so i can make the low-poly scenes i've been making better. So i can actually zoom in without seeing pixels.

looks like a low res zoomed image. check your render resolution, X, Y and %. a 1000x1000 render at 25% gives a 250x250 image. Aspect ratio has to be 1.


Animation Nodes Rubik's Cube I am trying to create a Rubik's Cube using the Animation Nodes addon. The aim is to be able to make a specific sequence based on a custum group node system.

They could be a node for each individual action, like turn the top. (you are going to have the option to turn it left or right with a boolean option).

The main problem to solve is how do you know which cubes to move when you make an action? I solved this problem with no errors by making a custom group recognizing the layers depending on the positions of each cube.

This does work really well but the problem I currently have is I am not really used to use the an matrices. I tried to make a prototype in order to make the layer rotate around the center, but the problem is the animation seems to cumulate on each frame and you can't go back by returning to the first frame.

[

If you could help me to find a solution for my non knowledge of the matrix system this would be really helpful.

Maybe the approach I am using to create this is not the most efficient one...

Edit

I tried my best to fix the matrix problem and found an other approach which is parenting every cube of a face / layer to the center cube of the layer (unlike the real Rubik's, there is still a center cube in order to control mid layers).

I created this custom node group, and when I animate the rotation of a center cube after linking the correct cubes to it, it works well!

But if I try to make it a group and then put two one after the other, the animations get cumulated, and you have both of the rotation occuring at once. Also this make the rotation of the linked cubes happen a strange way, and I didn't figure out why.

I provided some text help in the blend file to help you understand the project without going through each individual node because the project is a little bit complex now.

Here is my solution:

 (updated to v3.5)

How to Use:

-First, download and install Animation Nodes v1.6 from here.

-Open the file, DIY your own sramble and solution notation list in Text Editor.

-Tweak parameters on Settings node if needed, then play animation.

Advantages:

Use standard move notations to control moves.
Allow playback.
Solvable (any move is pre-calculated).
The whole cube is parented to a root object for additional transformation control.
With a few more additional features for convenience.

Basic Idea:

First, generate a sequenced euler list by the notations read from textblock(s) for each move.

Second, generate bool list for each unit to decide whether it should be rotated according to the notation during each move (e.g. when notation is U, it means only the top layer will be moved, while the mid layer and bottom layer will keep still).

For the unit objects, a custom property called Position ID is implemented, which indicates the exact position of each unit right before next move starts. After moving(rotating), the Position ID will be overwritten by a new one according to the new position.

[TBC..]


How to merge separated object no loose If I do cloth simulation using 3D model below, it break up because the model is separated with blue line.

I want to merge each parts of model, what is the best way to solve this problem??

Try selecting all, and then use merge by distance. Vertices that are in the same location will be connected. If this does not solve your problem, you could use bridge edge loops possibly and then degenerate dissolve.


Nothing showing up in rendered view (2.79) To preface, I'm fairly new to Blender.
I normally work in 2.8, but my current project requires me to work in 2.79.

That being said, I'm having an issue with the rendered view in Cycles. Earlier in my project, I was able to switch in & out of rendered to view my models. I'm not sure what I messed up, but now nothing is showing up when I enter rendered view. In material view, everything is visible and I can see my models just fine. But when I switch into rendered view, everything disappears including the grid.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

You have inadvertently 'paused' the render:

Click the button in the 3D View header toolbar again to un-pause.


Motion tracking: I have a solve. Now how to get the camera position for each video frame? TLDR: I've solved camera motion for a video clip. How can I export each camera's position and rotation to "real", unconstrained camera objects?

I'm using Blender's motiong tracking tools to reconstruct 3D spaces from still images (from an old game I love). I added in two image "frames", set up a bunch of tracking points, solved it (with 0.20px error, good enough for my purposes) and clicked "Setup tracking scene" to export the whole thing to my 3D workspace. Now I can press the arrow keys to jump between frames so I can see my 3D space from each solved camera position.

But I want to export each frame's camera position to a "real" camera object so that it stays in my scene even if I delete the empties etc. How can I do this? When I look at the properties for the 3D camera object, the position and rotation values don't change as I switch between camera positions, even though the camera clearly did move several meters.
I tried selecting the camera then clicking Object -> Constraints -> Clear object constraints, but this resets to the first frame in the video clip, so I don't see how to get camera coords for subsequent frames.

When you solve a camera using tracking, blender creates a Camera Solver Constraint.
To clear such constraint, convert the camera motion to keyframes.
Select the camera and use Constraint to F-Curve in the Object Constraint Properties.

More info:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/constraints/motion_tracking/camera_solver.html


Alternating Square Pattern I realize this is a silly picture, but I'm interested in making the pattern in the background. With my current knowledge of the shader editor, I just come up short. I'm less interested in the color, though that is a plus, but I'm more interested in the shape. That slightly alternating square texture. Does anyone know how to achieve this?

You can do it with a voronoi node with a randomness of 0 and a mapping node to stretch along one axis:

Result:


Lens settings missing from camera settings The lens settings such as these, specifically the Clip start and end buttons,:

Are completely missing from my panel. This is what I see:

Does anyone know why this is happening?
EDIT
I have found where they are located but upon changing them nothing happens to the preview.
https://imgur.com/a/e3CNy92

This was a bug in an early pre-release version of Blender 2.80 which was fixed in February 2019.

https://developer.blender.org/T61499
https://developer.blender.org/rB5e3838faa2e6dae0ac52860085f5dc4b7a000ea5

You should at least update to the proper release of Blender 2.80 or, if your hardware supports it, the current long-term support (LTS) version Blender 2.83.6 or the most recent release Blender 2.90.
The LTS is a version of Blender that will continue to receive bug fixes for a span of 2 years after its initial release, while the 2.90 release will be superseded by 2.91 in November 2020.

The Blender LTS program is aimed at ensuring that long-lasting
projects can be executed using a stable Blender version, which will
provide critical fixes throughout a 2-year time span. The LTS version
will not have any new features, API changes or improvements. Any
critical fix that is applied to the 2.9 series will be regularly
ported over to Blender 2.83 LTS.


How to remove/apply all modifiers of one object in python Lets assume you have 1 object with 4 modifiers added to it.
I am curious how one would approach the task to apply all or to delete all modifiers of a just selected object that has many modifiers already added.

The console reads out the modifier delete as

bpy.ops.object.modifier_remove(modifier="Box Right ")

So "Box Right " I might have to replace with something like active.object.modifier.name and then work each modifier off?

This would be very helpful when you want to generate a static mesh for animation or 3D printing.

Modifier removal

To remove a modifier from an object.

obj below is a reference to an object either obtained via

obj = bpy.context.active_object
obj = bpy.context.object
# or
obj = bpy.data.objects[name]

If you want to remove a modifier it is done by name, not by type. You could have multiple array modifiers, but only want to remove
a specific one.

modifier_to_remove = obj.modifiers.get("Bevel")
obj.modifiers.remove(modifier_to_remove)

# or as a one-liner
obj.modifiers.remove(obj.modifiers.get("Bevel"))

# or remove all modifiers from an object
obj.modifiers.clear()

Modifier Apply

Using an operator

As sambler pointed out

# operates on all selected objects (not just the scene's _active_object_)
bpy.ops.object.convert(target='MESH')

lower level

If you want to apply all modifiers it's covered here: How to get a new mesh with modifiers applied using Blender Python API? - This involves using obj.to_mesh and there are a few things to consider, it:

generates a new mesh from your current obj (leaves current obj.data intact)
does not remove the modifiers automatically from the object. (unlike the Apply button on the Modifiers panel, or Convert to Mesh).

This snippet will:

"""
- make a reference to the current obj.data ( i call it old_mesh)
- make a new Mesh ( new_mesh) using the effect of the combined modifiers on `obj`
- remove all modifiers from `obj`
- assign the new Mesh to obj.data
- remove old_mesh from the blend
"""

in code:

import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
obj = context.object

# get a reference to the current obj.data
old_mesh = obj.data

# settings for to_mesh
apply_modifiers = True
settings = 'PREVIEW'
new_mesh = obj.to_mesh(scene, apply_modifiers, settings)

# object will still have modifiers, remove them
obj.modifiers.clear()

# assign the new mesh to obj.data
obj.data = new_mesh

# remove the old mesh from the .blend
bpy.data.meshes.remove(old_mesh)


Edge Mask Issue - Render nodes I'm getting this weird edge when trying to use a mask in my composite, is there any way to get rid of this?

Here is the issue:

Here is my render node setup:

Here is my render layer setup:

The shadow pass and combined pass:

Any help or support would be greatly appreciated, thank you in advance!

Solution:

Put your shadow element over white background and then multiply the colored layer with it. You get dark edge because you have punched a hole into shadow element with your character and thus the pixel values on transparent edges are darker than they should be. But if you merge over white first, edge color gradient is towards white which in multiply op does not change the brightness.

But overall I think your node setup is a bit confusing, you are using alpha as mix factor while to get shadows balanced you should simply multiply shadow element with color and drive the mix with single value. And if you want more control, use gamma etc color correction operation on shadow element, not blending factor.


Set active control point in script How do set the control point of a bezier curve to "active" in script in 2.8? Like so:

I want to hook it to a new object like so:

bpy.data.objects['Bezier'].data.splines[0].bezier_points[i].select_control_point = True
bpy.ops.object.hook_add_newob()

but the first line doesn't make it active, and I get this error:

RuntimeError: Error: Requires selected vertices or active vertex group

Thanks!

You need to be in edit mode for this to work.

import bpy

i = 0  # this is the index of the bezier point you want

points = bpy.data.objects['BezierCurve']data.splines[0].bezier_points

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT')

points[i].select_control_point = True

bpy.ops.object.hook_add_newob()

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'OBJECT')

After setting the value, you may need to call:

points.update()

I can't find any docs on this, but others have had similar issues with this on mesh vertices and calling an update seems to re-synch blender.


Camera set up problem I am trying to create a scene where I have a text set up and it is covered by a cube.

I will eventually have the cube break away looking like the wood is chipping away and creating the text (I've done it many times in version 2.79B  and now am trying to learn blender 2.8.

I have done two quick scenes with something and did Ctrl/Alt/numpad 0  to put the camera into position I want for the render..

When I am trying to do it with this scene,  when I hit the Ctrl/Alt/numpad 0 to put camera into position..  the cube goes up above the text and i can't control the camera at all    I have tried to position the camera 6 times now and it continually moves my cube off the text and moves it above the text and I can't get the camera in position.

I can't see a problem, but not knowing how 2.8 works, I don't know what am missing with this particular scene.

I looked at one of the other scenes I did in 2.8.. if I click the arrow next to Camera, it shows 'Camera"   but if I click the arrow next to Camera in this scene that is giving me problems,  it says Camera.001   as if there are two cameras in the scene, but I only have one camera.

I am going to try and delete the camera again, not sure at this point what to do with it.

Okay..  I just saw this in the forum....

"What happened is, I somehow put another object as my camera.

I solved it by going on Scene Settings (third tab on the Properties window), one of the first fields asks for the camera (and there I had a plane)."

So I went and checked to see what mine showed..  it was showing the cube.. I have NO idea how it got there, but I changed it to show the camera and now is working...

thanks...