Slow performance in viewport even in wireframe mode This is my first question here. I have been looking but haven't found a proper answer. Hope someone can put me on the right track.
I have painfully built a scene, with a lot of problems because I cannot seem to be able to move it smoothly even in wireframe mode.
When I look at the memory usage, at most it gets to 8gb. I have 16 installed (Mac 27" High Sierra iCore5 AMD Radeon R9 M380 2048 MB)
I'm not concerned with render times, but with being able to work smoothly a comfortably not having to see the spinning wheel every time I move around the scene.

My questions are:
Is it normal to have such a poor performance in the viewport even in wireframe (details of scene attached)??
If not, how do I fix this?
Having more memory would solve this issue?
Having a eGPU solve this? Again, not concerned with time renders but with viewport performance.

If none of the possible solutions I have thought of will do, ahoud I consider getting a new mac (don't say windows is better, I know but this is not my point, since I need mac for work and I cannot shift to windows)

Thanx in advance and sorry for the long question. A bit desperate and lost here :-(

I sympathise with you @Arqueo Artis

I use a MacBook Air 16", My school computer.
Its a pile of ****.

There is one simple fact:

You cannot have complex meshes. As you said it restricts production.

Though, if you have multiple meshes, use blenders layers. Use one to construct on, the others hold the rest. Just note, when you render you have to select all the scenes your objects are on.

If it is a sculpt, you are just going to have to reduce polygons.

I recommend using the modifier decimate.
Though it is slow to tweak with high polygons, you can normally reduce polygons in massive amounts without losing much detail.

If you are using any particle effects, just hide them until you need them.

BTW: I find object mode and sculpt mode the fastest. Wireframe mode is usually quite slow. I am fairly sure blender doesn't worry about vertexes behind faces, but don't quote me on that :-).

That's what I do anyway.

Good luck and I hope I helped,

BFB


Can't change world color. Cycles and blender render Im trying to brighten the world, but it does not change. What is the problem?

Video here: video

Check the World Background checkbox in a Display panel of a properties shelf (N).

You may also switch the shading mode from Solid to Rendered to see the result.


Delete all materials that aren't assigned to a face? Ok, I have several models that because various joining and un joining, have material slots that are there, but not assigned to any faces. Im exporting and would like these gone but there are too many to delete by hand:

Is there a script/way to get materials not assigned to a face to be eliminated?

For future landers. This works on selected objects and its using new APIs so 2.80+ only.
import bpy

objs = [obj for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects if obj.type == 'MESH']
for obj in objs:
        bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj
        bpy.ops.object.material_slot_remove_unused()


Looking for software to make an Interior 3d Rendering all!  I'm looking for a software program that can create a 3d rendering of an interior space.  I have the floor plan (if it can make it from a floor plan, all the better, but not necessary), I just need a rendering of the space to make it look kick ass for a presentation!  Is this the right software for me?  I have some graphic design background, but not a ton and I'm worried this product might have too much of a learning curve for what I want to do.  Thank you! :)

Just to add a real world testimony in addition to what is already sated in the comments.

Blender is perfectly capable (and quite good at it too) of doing realistic architectural renderings; I am an architect and happily use Blender for what you describe on a daily basis.

You can import plans in DXF format directly from a CAD drawing using the default shipped in DXF imported addon.

As already mentioned before there is a well known steep learning curve compared to other software. It will requite effort and time from your part to learn it, and will also require additional time to get proficient with it.

If this is a one-off thing I am sad to say that Blender is probably not the software for you. The initial investment might just be too big for a single use and the difficulty too much to get you anywhere in a short time.

In that case Sketchup or other "lighter" software might be a better option.

If you plan on doing this in the long run and want to invest some time into it, then it might be very rewarding further down the road to endeavor in the Blender road.


Object not visible in uv editor I modelled a character but in the uv editor only the gun in the holster seems not the other objects.I dont know whats the problem.

The problem is that you are working in Local viewport.

You can swith from Local viewport to standard viewport and viceversa by pressing "/" key (on the numpad, or Shift+7). This will affect also the UV/Image editor (you can see the UVs only for the objects you see in local viewport).

The local viewport mode is useful because you can see only the selected objects, but you don't have to hide the other objects in the scene. Just select your object(s), press "/" and you see only them. Press "/" again and you will see all objects in the scene.


Whenever I tried to add a material slot to a tracking scene plane, it shades out black. The File is in **EEVE Mode** In blender version 2.82, in EEVE Mode in rendered shader-view when I tried to add a material slot to a plane, which I generated by tracking a scene, the plane shaded out black with no texture.

I tried it several times but I failed to find a solution to it. Without a material slot it was looking fine but adding a material would turn it black again.

I thought It's so because I have not added a texture to it. But when I added, It also didn't solve the issue.

I also even cleared and reassigned UV maps to the plane. It did not help me.
hope who may be reading this would be knowing the solution to this or may be facing the same problem.
I'll be grateful to the persons who'll be able to find a solution to this.
Hope this information is enough to describe my problem.
I'm also giving a link to the file below--

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bf_9HzR12mw66E9cNw_Tgk2w2oPZX4EM/view?usp=sharing

It will redirect you to my file.

Also I am Giving the link to Image sequence folder below:--

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aaoDAXLmkwhHGHiGpkHfpaX8LX8LNvY5

Also the FPS Rate is 29.97 .

Thanks for trying to understand my problem.

Ok here is a simple solution go to your collection and move the ground from background collection to foreground collection

and the other way is to disable holdout for the background you will find it in the filters in collection


Blender Viewport Texture Limit Size affects render resolution I am not sure if this is a bug or a wrong setting. I have quite a big scene with a bunch of textures, therefore in the Preferences I set the Texture Size Limit for the Viewport to 1024px. Otherwise the scene wouldn't work properly on my hardware setup.
Now when I do a render, the render result is pixelated, I would assume it's scaled down to the Size Limit of 1024px. When I turn Texture Size Limit off, it's shown in full resolution.
Since it is not very convenient to change the Size Limit all the time, has anybody encountered this problem and knows a solution or a workaround?
Working with Blender 2.91 for MacOS

Yes, it seems to be a fork :)

On one hand you would probably expect to see final render in a full res.
On other hand it make a sense keep lowers across whole app for its consistency.

You can say OK - lets use "limit size" only for external images, but that rule doesn't make things work better since you can "pack" images into a blend file.
Also your render is not always the last operation in blender. Image editor, Compositor, VSE, with viewers and previewing options ... all of these editors can continue in editing of this render too. So also here user still could benefit from "limited size". By other words - render starts to play a roll of a "texture". So I guess it is not an easy task to decide where to use limited and where to keep full size texture.
But it's just my theory, probably there is a simple solution behind a lot of my words :)

Suggestion
Try "Auto Save" add-on that saves render automatically, so you can just switch to folder and preview (view) your saved render ... similar step to switch to blender's image editor to check result.


Trying to recreate an effect that envolves emission and cant get it right at all this is a picture of the effect I am doing

The original work: https://instagram.com/p/BjFdQfEgthj/

I just can't seem to get the same glow like effect. I'm not sure if I am missing something with the emission material itself or is it the surrounding elements that are making it realistic.

when I made it I just added an emission shader, I'm assuming there should be other stuff with it too but mine just ended up looking extremely dull. ignoring the imperfections on the glass, the glow in mine is just meh and not even glowing at all. am I missing something big with emissions? increasing the emission value just makes it white so that didnt help either

You can do this with Volume Scattering.
In the world tab (icon of globe), under "Volume", select "Volume Scatter" from the dropdown and set up the Density and Antisotropy to be similar to mine (feel free to tweak but this should work well):

This brought my emission object from this

To this:

Again, feel free to play with any of the values shown to get it to look as you imagine!


Material appearing as bright white or white on some objects while using Eevee Render in 2.8 I have a scene with 7 different materials and 405 objects. One of the materials is displayed as I want it to for some object, while other objects it is applied to behave either like a bright white emission shader or a dark black diffuse. The material uses the Diffuse BSDF shader only a with normal map, a red diffuse color and a value of 1 for roughness. Using the cycles render in

Alright I realized the issue is that I only UV unwrapped some of the objects. I thought I could save time by only unwrapping the larger objects. I hope this behaves more similarly to the Cycles render in the future.


Mesh deformation after armature parenting When I tried to set parent with automatic weights my mesh was deformed.
What did I wrong?

Your rig is not in its "rest pose". To set the current pose as the rest pose press Ctrl+A then apply as rest pose

Checkout this answer for more details:


can't mirror objects on other side i'm trying to mirror 3 still objects that are: shoulder, biceps and forearm.
i remember it was like this: select all of them, center the cursor to world origin (shift + c), duplicate, scale, x, -1. but the rotation screws up for some reason. same for the legs

I agree, it seems counterintuitive, how SX-1 or ⎈ CtrlM work in this case.

You can always apply a mirror matrix to the object matrix. Simply select the object and execute the following script.

import bpy
import mathutils

ob = bpy.context.object

mat_mirror = mathutils.Matrix.Scale(-1, 4, (1.0, 0.0, 0.0))
ob.matrix_world = mat_mirror @ ob.matrix_world

# For Blender 2.79 and previous, use the * symbol for matrix multiplication.
#ob.matrix_world = mat_mirror * ob.matrix_world

With mathutils.Matrix.Scale(-1, 4, (1.0, 0.0, 0.0)) we construct a matrix scaled -1 along X.


Is there an easy way to add a hole into an object? If I wanted to add a hole into an object e.g. Create a tube

Is there an easy way to do that?

I haven't seen anything regarding negative space so far in Blender, and it would be really helpful for my project

Thanks in advance!

Examples

In edit mode you can switch to face select mode (control tab).  Select faces and delete.  You may need to  created additional faces to delete.
Extrude or inset and remove faces
Use any mesh primitive with multiple faces and delete a face.
Add more faces (loop cut and slide) and delete a face to create hole.
Use a Boolean modifier with operation Delete to create additional geometry suitable to the final step to delete faces.
In the image below we see from left to right

a plane
a plane with sphere placed to intersect the plane
goal mesh achieved with hole cut from Boolean modifier with [apply] clicked and user editing to delete extra vertices
plane selected with Boolean modifier present
plane with extra geometry created by Boolean modifier with [apply] clicked. Extra geometry will be deleted. N-gons may be present.

If rectangular outside with circular hole is desired use a torus or sphere or cylinder and use a shrink wrap to a rectangular outside.  Below is an example of a torus with 3 vertex cross section.

The geometry created above may be more suited to some situations rather than a triangulated n-gon.


Trouble importing STL produced by VTK I am new to blender and am unsuccessfully trying to open an STL file.
Our own visualization software offers STL export via a library called VTK, which we can import into other CAD software (e.g. to feed into a 3D printer).
Blender's Import Stl function also loads the exported STL file, and I do see the number of vertices, faces, tris, objects, etc. increase, however, I fail to see anything in the view.
I assume this comes from my lack of even basic understanding of how blender works and that for instance the faces are just transparent, or everything is very small or somehow else rendered invisible.
Could one of you please have a quick look at the STL file and give me a hint of what I am doing wrong?

Rendering in our own VivoQuant software
What I get after import to Blender:

The import goes fine, but the model isn't visible in the viewport because the view isn't pointing at it, you could do a few things:

zoom out  (mouse wheel)
rotate the view. (middle mouse button)
press home to View All.

Use the Outliner View to see if the object imported, then select the object by clicking the name.

With the mouse cursor in the 3D View press . (period) to focus the view on the selected object.


Turn off “parent in place”? Right now, when I parent an object to another object, the child remains in its original place. Is there a way to “turn this off” and have the child instantly snap to the position and rotation of its parent?

You can use the "(Object) Keep Transform" variant of parenting when you hit Ctrl+P.  Then just zero the locations/rotations of the child object.


Stencil Stamp not showing up I am trying to use texture stencil, but sometimes the stencil stamp of texture that I want to paint doesn't appear, and I can not find it. Perhaps the position of stencil stamp is elsewhere. How can I reset the position to see it again? I am using Blender 2.69.

Blender file (go to left upper window in blender: texture draw).

Two steps would help to solve what happened in your case:

Set the Alpha percentage of Overlay to some non-zero-percent value;
Press Reset Transform button right behind the texture selector.

As shown below.

Btw, your texture stencil is on the upperleft corner of the 3D Viewport, which can be seen if you maximize the 3D view.

Shortcut tips when working with texture stencil and texture mask stencil:

For Texture Stencil:

RMB: Stencil translation

CtrlRMB: Stencil rotation

ShiftRMB: Stencil scale (Allow constraining on X/Y axis)

For Texture Mask Stencil:

AltRMB: Stencil translation

AltCtrlRMB: Stencil rotation

AltShiftRMB: Stencil scale (Allow constraining on X/Y axis)


A snakelike group of Objects running on the same path I have a group of objects (toys) that should run trough a cone then along a curved pipe then falling out, down  to a production line and going along that line. The objects are one after the other so the second object enters the path when the first item has done a short distance so the items should work like 'one object' but each one should follow the path. I have tried parenting them and also tried joining them into one object, So whats the best solution for that sort of animation?

In the not so extreme case you might consider an armature with a one to one correspondence between and object and a particular bone. Spline constraint.
In the not so extreme case you might consider physics in the comment above.
Consider a [Follow Path Constraint] and .  Enable [x] Fixed position of the constraint.  Keyframe Offset.  (You have done that already)
In the [follow path constraint] case ...place keyframes on each object in the constraint in staggered (shifted) time form.  The [Follow Path Constraint] can be used with no deformation of the object.
Consider adjusting the off curve control points of your keyframes in the graph editor for more control.
The image below shows 3 object with a follow path constraint to the same path.  The dope sheet shows the staggered keyframes.  This is a slightly simplified view. You many not want the speed up and slow down associated with Bezier curves.  And the objects may have different starting and ending keyframe values when spacing is a requirement.

Read this bullet at your own risk.  By staggering form I mean the following.  Object[N] (where N is in the set of numbers (1 ..K)), Q is another convenient static positive integer for pausing, may have keys on frames [math formula ((N-1)*Q) and (N * Q)] approximately.  The keyframe values would be [0.0] and [1.0]. Yes that paragraph is not easy to read.
If you have a few objects to place, (<20 perhaps), the above can be done by hand.  If you have more than that a Script might be worth the cost.
Once those keyframes are placed and correct they may look like bumps and inclines ... just translated in the positive x direction in the graphs editor.


Bone constraint rotation not working correctly I am following a skeleton rig tutorial on youtube step by step and despite having the exact same setup, my armature behaves incorrectly. https://youtu.be/jp_SqjB0468?t=920 at minute 15:40.
This is the result I am supposed to be getting:

This is the result I am getting, the foot seems to rotate around its own local Z axis and not the parent's, even though the "Copy rotation" Space is set to "Local With Parent":

This is my constraint setup:

I am struggling to find the error. Can this be a potential glitch in blender 2.8? I remember giving this tutorial a try in 2.79 and I can't recall having this problem.

UPDATE:
I confirmed that this is caused by version 2.8. I created an identical armature in version 2.79b where it rotated correctly. When I opened the exact same file in 2.8, the bones rotated differently. I will follow a different step by step tutorial made in 2.8 and see if I can find what has changed in 2.8 that's affecting this.

FINAL UPDATE:
"Relationship - Child of" constraint used instead of "Transform - Copy rotation" has solved the issue.

I may be wrong but I'm not sure about this method, I think it works on the video because his foot is almost aligned to his controller on every axis, that's a solution by the way, but if they are not aligned, it will be ok as long as you rotate the controller on the X axis (because both bones are aligned on this axis), but, as soon as you rotate the controller on its Y axis or Z axis, the foot will go crazy (because you ask it to rotate on its own Y and Z and that's what it gives).

In my opinion the solution is to parent the foot to the controller.This way, the foot follows the controller no matter what. Then, if you want to make sure that the foot bone will stick to the shin bone, you can give it a Copy Location with Space > Pose Space and a Head/Tail value of 1.


creating n random points on face of mesh I'm trying to select 400 or so random points on the face of a mesh using a script (just on the face, not inside the volume) but I'm not sure how to do that.

I've tried looking into the following function:

bpy_extras.mesh_utils.face_random_points(num_points, tessfaces)

but I'm not sure how to use it in a script.

Currently, I've tried running it as such:

import bmesh

obj = bpy.data.objects[1] #Gets the object
me = obj.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
faces_select = [f for f in bm.faces if f.select]
bpy_extras.mesh_utils.face_random_points(400, faces_select)

but I get the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\modules\bpy_extras\mesh_utils.py", line 533, in face_random_points
    verts = f.id_data.vertices
AttributeError: 'BMFace' object has no attribute 'id_data'

and I have no idea what that means. A simple script to select an object from bpy.data.objects and select 400 points from its faces would be really helpful.

as it is written bpy_extras.mesh_utils.face_random_points(num_points, tessfaces) takes tessfaces not faces and to get access to the you'll have to calculate first :

obj = bpy.context.object #Gets the object
me = obj.data
me.calc_tessface() # recalculate tessfaces
tessfaces_select = [f for f in me.tessfaces if f.select]
bpy_extras.mesh_utils.face_random_points(400, tessfaces_select)


How do you convert a rotation to use as a value between 0 and 1? Basically I have a bone that rotates, and I want to use it's rotation to drive an Influence of another bone that ranges between 0 and 1...
For example:
If the bone rotates 0 degrees, the value is 0.0
If the bone rotates 45 degrees, the value is 0.5
If the bone rotates 90+ degrees, the value is 1.0
How can I achieve this with drivers / constraints?
Thanks for any help!

As the rotations are calculated in radians (degrees are shown only as helper), the correct driver formula to get 0.0 - 1.0 range from 0 to 90 degrees is: 2*var/pi.

Check theese answers for more infos.
About driver rotation Degree and Radian


Transparent gobo not working I am trying to use a gobo in cycles but having no luck at all. Seems that the transparency is not working. What am I doing wrong? Is the PNG broken?

Thanks,
Douglas E Knapp

You have unwrapped your object but didn't use the UV coordinates
you are using the color from the image instead of the alpha
the non transparent part of the object is better to have a material

here is node setup for the object :

if you want the other part to be transparent switch the order of the 'transparent' and 'diffuse'


How to copy material settings from one object to another I have a huge amount of image planes, each has a different image linked to the base color, the texture applied is a png with alpha, in order to make the alpha work in EEVEE I need to change the material settings Blend Mode to Alpha Blend, and Shadow Mode to Alpha Hashed, by default both are set to Opaque.I changed this for one of the materials, but going through this manually for each image plane is not pratical, is there a way to copy the material settings only without having to copy the whole material?

Here's a little script for you. Just select all the planes and run the script. (It assumes that each plane has only 1 material)
import bpy

for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    m = obj.data.materials[0]
    m.blend_method = 'BLEND'
    m.shadow_method = 'HASHED'


list comprehension, avoiding the none return on animation nodes expression I'm stuck with an issue which is actually solved in the documentation of Animation Nodes here but as I'm still learning python I can't find the error.

This expression should append elements to a list after a condition:

[filas.append(x) for x in list if x == sector_name]

But as in the docs is explained the return will be none we have to add the list created like this:

[list.append(element), list][1]

but I can't figure out how to write my expression correctly, please some help.

Lists can be joined with "+":
So you make a new list (list comprehension) with all the x for which the condition is True and simply add it to the existing list.

filas + [x for x in list if x == sector_name]


Understanding Texture Projection and UV Mapping I'm trying to get my head around UV mapping in Blender, having never had to use it in other CAD packages. From what I can tell from various tutorials, UV Unwrapping is pretty fundamental, so I'd expect to do it for most objects in my scene - even if they're simply various boxes and planes. But I'm struggling to get a sense of general rules...
A few aspects I can't get my head around:

Would I always Unwrap an object? If not, why not?
Would I typically set up a UV map for each usage of a material on each object? So 3 objects, each using 2 materials, would need me to unwrap 6 UV maps?!
What are the projection types (Box / Cylindrical / Sphere) in the UV menu about - are they an alternative to UV Unwrapping, or just providing a starting point for it?
If I Unwrap something, I assume I would always then use the 'UV' option in the Texture Coordinate node?
The Image Texture node seems to have an option for mapping type too! How does this relate to any UV unwrapping? Is it best just to leave it at Flat?

Apologies for the list of questions - if anyone knows any tutorials that go through more of an overview explaining the stuff above, that would be helpful!
Thanks.

Since a texture is a 2D image that's supposed to be wrapped onto a 3D object, there needs to be some way of converting a 3D position of each point of the surface into a 2D coordinate to use for the texture.  Since x, y, and z are already used for the 3D coordinate, u and v are used for the texture coordinate, hence, they're called UVs.
There are several methods for converting between XYZ and UV, each of which are options on the Texture Coordinate node.  For example, "Generated" automatically converts the XYZ coordinate of the surface to a UV texture coordinate, and "Normal" converts the surface normal into a UV texture coordinate so that any points facing the same direction on that object will share the same UV coordinates and thus be colored the same (if you're using a texture to color the object as opposed to something else).
Each of the automatic options work great depending on what you want, but if you need precise control over how it converts XYZ to UV, you'll need to use a UV map.
When you unwrap an object, it takes each vertex on the object and automatically converts it to a UV coordinate.  Then, you can adjust the conversion in the UV editor.  For example, if one vertex by default maps to the UV of (0.3, 0.2) which would be 3/10 horizontally along the texture image and 1/5 vertically along the texture image, by moving the vertex in the UV editor, you can change it to map to a UV of (0.2,0.2) or anything else you want.  That way, you can get precise control over how the image wraps around your 3D model.
When you unwrap an object, it gives you several different options or projections for how to unwrap the 3D model, but these are just starting points.  Ultimately, it doesn't matter which one you choose, but choosing the right one can help reduce how many tweaks and edits you have to make in the UV editor.
The main projection options are:

Unwrap which just does a default unwrap.  If there are seams (see below) on the object, it will account for those.  Otherwise, if it's already unwrapped, it will do nothing.
Smart UV project which splits the object into several different shapes based on the angle between the surfaces
Cube/Cylinder/Sphere Projection which work well for their respective or similar shapes
Project from View which just takes how the object looks from you're current perspective and copies that over to the UV map (kind of like placing a projector right where your eye is and shining the texture onto the entire object.  It works well for that particular view, but often doesn't look very well from the side)
Project from View (bounds) which does the same thing, but it scales everything to fit the texture more nicely.

For the default unwrap option, if you first mark certain edges as seams, it will split the object along those seams as it unwraps the image.  For example, notice in the image below how the edges of the islands or groups of connected vertices correlate with the red lines (seams) on the object.

And that's the basics of UV mapping.  Now to answer some of your specific questions:

You only need to unwrap and object when you're going to use a texture on it, and even then, you can sometimes use the other options on the Texture Coordinate node.
You only need to set up one UV map per object
See above
Usually, but not necessarily.  For example, maybe you created the UV map for a modifier but just want to use the "Generated" option on the Texture Coordinate node for the material.  Or maybe you want one texture to use the UV map you created and another just to use the "Generated" option.  But usually you'll just use the UV map option if you already created it
Honestly, I'm not 100% sure how these projection types on the Texture Coordinate node work, but it seems that "flat" is the best option with UV maps, and the other options work best with the "Generated" option on the Texture Coordinate node.

Let me know if you have any other questions.


Getting associated texture with an exported wavefront object I'm exporting OBJ wavefront models from blender into my game development, thing is, it's black and white like this:

I presume it's because I don't have the texture.png file associated with this blender export.

Now I'm a noob, and I don't understand blender to it's slightest, but is there a way I can get the associated texture.png with the OBJ that I export at the same time?

The OBJ consists of two parts:

.obj file with the geometry etc.
.mtl the material library with the associated textures

when you export from blender, make sure you check the "write materials" checkbox. (then you get the .mtl file)

The other thing that is relatively annoying with blender is that it exports absolute paths to the textures. Some applications expect a relative path though. You can open your mtl file in a text editor (e.g. Sublime Text) and change the paths manually.

hope that helps.

edit: the obj format is relatively easy (so is the mtl) you can basically write/ manipulate your materials in the text editor (add/remove textures, change or add values)


Blender character rigging with cloth wrapped over the body I've a character that's draped with a piece of cloth along it's waist and it runs down along the leg as well. That is, the legs of the character are loosely (not tight fitting) , but entirely covered by some garment. I have fit a rig to the character and did the skinning by parenting the character to the armature. So now when I move the armature the corresponding limbs of the character also moves , as expected (in Pose mode). But the legs of the character penetrate through the cloth when the legs are moved.
I want the rigging such that the cloth is also part of the system. When the legs are moved, they should push the covering garment, and not penetrate through it, or tear it. The character has a Collision modifier already added to it, and the garment has a cloth modifier. How do I do the rigging with the character's clothes on?

There is a function to copy vertex groups to non-matching meshes. It is great for automatically skinning clothing on characters.

First select the character mesh, then shift + select the clothing. Press spacebar and type "transfer weights". An operator should show up. This seems to be broken in the latest blender 2.74+ but try 2.73. (I just tried on a copy of 2.71 I have laying around and it works well).

The new versions have "Transfer mesh data" but it does not seem to work for me.

Cheers!


How can I cut a complex Blender object in half? As the title suggests, I have modeled an object, and I want to cut it perfectly in half, or close to perfectly.

But as the object is quite complex, nothing I've found on google worked that well and/or I didn't know how to apply some of the methods properly.
I tried using the bisect tool, but you can't quite make a perfectly straight cut and split the object almost perfectly in half, which is needed in my situation as I am planning on 3D printing this to full scale and I need a perfectly straight face the object can lay on while printing.

Bisect Tool
If you need precise adjustment - open tool properties (left-bottom at 3D viewport editor) and set cut numerically.
For 3D print you would need to have a mesh as manifold, so check Fill option.

After Bisect operation, when cut edges are selected search for Edge Split to separate a half. With mouse cursor close to an one half click L to select linked (or box select.

Or box select a half and click P > Separate by Selection


Missing model whilst viewing in active camera Wonder if someone could help? Whilst viewing a simple pulley model in active camera view, I can only see the foremost part of the model. What am I doing wrong?

Much appreciate any help.

I attach a pic of the full model in 3D View.

The problem is the value of your camera clipping in the Properties Panel N. At the top of the Panel you should see a section called Clip. Increase the End value and this should fix your problem.


Copy rotation rotates through wrong axis I want to rotate hand bone when I rotate IK bone as well. So I decided to using Copy Rotation constraint. Here's how looks like:

Nothing special, important thing is that Hand Bone has Copy Rotation to IK Bone. I set the Target Space and Onwer Space both Local Space.

But when I rotate IK bone, hand rotates totally wrong axis:

I think this happens because Copy rotation just copy the rotation values literally, my guess.

How do I make hand rotates properly? I think it needs to be change the rotation based on current rotation, but there's no option for that in Copy Rotation constraint.

Any advice will very appreciate it.

Copy hand bone. Make the copy a little larger or a little smaller than the original hand bone, so it'll be easy to select. Parent it only to the root bone and make it an IK target. That's the easiest way to avoid Copy Rotation problems and have clean, easy to work with rig.


How to get the object created by bpy.ops.object.duplicate()? How can I get a reference to the object created by bpy.ops.object.duplicate()? It seems that bpy.context.object used to have it, but not anymore.

bpy.ops.object.duplicate() finishes with the duplicated object as the currently selected object. Therefore, bpy.context.object is the reference to the new object.

Ex (assume object selected in 3d viewport):

import bpy
bpy.ops.object.duplicate()

dupli_obj = bpy.context.object
print(dupli_obj.name)             #check the console

If you run this code, does it not give you what you expect?


Lights Not Affecting Scene I'm new at lighting and texturing, so I've likely done something catastrophically stupid.

Got a relatively simple scene, a hockey puck slides along the ice. Started trying to add some volumetric lighting only to find that none of the textures are receiving light. When I turn Ambient Occlusion on, they all show up at full value. Ambient Occlusion off, everything goes dark.

I'm hoping this is as easy as I've accidentally touched a setting I wasn't supposed to or linked a node incorrectly, but I've uploaded the .blend since I have no clue where to begin with cause/effect on this.

Any help you can offer this despondent n00b would be appreciated.

Blender 2.79b
Cycles Renderer
using the Filmic Blender color management add-on, but I've found
no indication that it's the culprit.

EDIT 08/15/2018: I've discovered a new development. Objects with emission shaders WILL affect scene lighting, but specifically not lamps.

You were only displaying the first layer in your viewport. Make sure to highlight both layers when previewing.


Keyframed Objects Clipping Through Each Other I am very new to Blender and have made a scene where a mannequin (animated and downloaded from mixamo) is falling through a tunnel. A basic falling animation has been applied to the mannequin via mixkit.co and I have also animated the mannequin to follow the path of the tunnel, keyframing the offset to have it fly past the camera. However, as the mannequin is falling its hands and feet often clip through the tunnel (screenshots attached). Is there a way for the mannequin to interact with the edges of the tunnel?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Jake
SCREENSHOTS:
Foot Clipping: https://imgur.com/cQRI7EC
Hand Clipping: https://imgur.com/o9rm0YE
Viewport: https://imgur.com/VlAlJIV

I'd suggest you to Check the Collision Margin and then increase the margin for the tunnel in the rigid body animation tab.That might solve it.


How can panels be rearranged / order be changed? To avoid the need of scrolling I'd like to move MHX Layers between Transform and Grease Pencil. Once I saw a video tutorial where this was done but I can't remember which one it was.

The panel list can be re-arranged by dragging the top-right corner of each panel (the little triangle-like area with three small backslashes), then drop it after moving up or down.


F-curves ignore custom "transform orientation" I'm trying to have this cell fractured sphere have each piece/object have it's own Z Orientation pointing to the center of the sphere. I've attempted doing this manually by setting a custom orientation through the Edit mode> Normals orientation then saving it as a custom to use in object mode. It appears to work, but the F curves animation set to Z Location seems to be using the Global Z and I can't seem to find where I can change that to my custom one. Is there a better way of doing this? A script perhaps, as I'll be doing this for 32+ objects of the sphere.

Because the fcurves (like PGmath has indicated) are in global-space, you might be able to get done what you want with a small work-around:

For each piece of your sphere, add an empty at the center of the sphere and parent that one piece to it. Then rotate each empty such that the sphere-piece is directly below the empty. Apply the rotation to the empty, then manually rotate the empty back so the sphere-piece is back to its original location/orientation.

Any subsequent changes to the z-rotation of the sphere-piece should cause the rotation you are looking for. If you need an example .blend, I might be able to put one together and post it later today.


Move an object on an irregular plane with python At this moment I would like to move an object, suppose a "cube" along its y axis, with a slider from the UI panel with a FloatProperty. So far there is no problem.
Now, suppose this object encounters a terrain (an irregular mesh with various polygons) is there a way to make it follow the normals of this hypothetical path?
Normally I would have used a path with a bezier, but I would like to be able to do this with a simple control in the UI panel, I insert an image to understand better

I have no idea  to do this, I suppose I probably have to register all the faces of that plan? Or something similar? It seems a bit complex to me.

Edit: I was kindly suggested by Leander, to use the raycasting method, obviously I did not know this function , I would also like to understand if it is possible to record the animation correctly using keyframes, I could put a kind of operator that cooks the keyframes, or something similar

There's something wrong with the ray_cast, which messes up on a few casts. But I think this could clear up if placed in a modal operator.

I believe the script from this answer achieves what you want.

The result looks very similiar to your gif.

Convert the collision geometry to a bmesh, apply the transformation matrix and get a bvhtree from the transformed bmesh.
Cast a ray from above the Cube's location straight downwards (0, 0, -1) and check if it intersects with the bvhtree.
Create a keyframe.

import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils.bvhtree import BVHTree
import mathutils

# the epsilon value for the BVHTree calculations
EPSILON = 0.0000001

# maximum ray distance XY plane
MAXIMUM_Z = 1000

# make sure you have a Camera and an Empty named like this
landscape = bpy.data.objects["Landscape"]
cube = bpy.data.objects["Cube"]

# create the BVHTrees from a bmesh of the "sticky" object
# the bmesh conversion makes it easy to apply the individual objects transformation matrices
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_object(landscape, bpy.context.scene)
bmesh.ops.transform(bm, matrix=landscape.matrix_world, verts=bm.verts)
tree = BVHTree.FromBMesh(bm, epsilon=EPSILON)

# the main method for setting the new z position
def reposition_z(scene = bpy.context.scene):

    # create a direction vector, which points downwards and
    # a origin for the raycast
    dir = mathutils.Vector((0, 0, -1))
    origin = mathutils.Vector((*cube.location[:2], MAXIMUM_Z - EPSILON))

    # if there is a hit, move the cube to that location
    loc, no, i, d = tree.ray_cast(origin, dir)
    if d is not None:
        # assign the cube's location
        cube.location = loc

# remove all handlers, then create a new one with the reposition_z function
post_handlers= bpy.app.handlers.scene_update_post
[post_handlers.remove(h) for h in post_handlers if h.__name__ == "reposition_z"]
post_handlers.append(reposition_z)

Setting a keyframe could look like.

for i in range(start, end):
    bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].frame_set(i)
    reposition_z()
    cube.keyframe_insert(data_path = 'location')


How do I accurately make a 14 tooth gear in Blender? I want to recreate this gear in Blender.

As you can see, there are 14 teeth on this gear.

Tracing the shape with vertices is not an option as it needs to be exact.
.

Figures with a recurrent shape that pivots around a center are easily generated with the spin tool in the edit mode of the 3D viewport. However, since it seems like you might benefit from "editability" of the shape I would suggest a different approach.

Mirror a cube and model a single gear tooth.
Add an Array modifier to the object.
Set its count to 14.
Add an empty object where you want the center of the gear
Rotate this empty by 360/14 (Blender will automatically calculate the outcome of that fraction)
Set the array only to "Object Offset" and select the empty.

The result should be as follows:


Freestyle distance to camera modifier not working correctly I have created a sphere with a wide angle camera close to the sphere.

I set the freestyle distance to camera modifer to the following and get the sphere as expected. The lines closer to the camera are thinner, and farther away they are thicker.

But now I would like to invert this so that when the lines are closer to the camera they are thicker than when they are farther away, so I try the invert button, and I also try inverting the curve, but both result in line thicknesses that don't vary.

Any idea what I am doing wrong?

Thanks,
Brent

The cause of the reported issue is most likely the Range Max value you have specified  (i.e., 8.726).  Try to decrease it and you will see stroke ends get thinner.

I believe you have chosen the Range Min and Max value by means of the Fill Range by Selection button upon the selection of the sphere mesh.  I found a bug in this automated method and the distance calculation between the camera and individual mesh vertex locations was not correct.  A fix of the bug has already been in the official Blender code repository and will be included in a future release of Blender (likely in the forthcoming 2.79 release).  For the time being, the auto-filled values may not be accurate.  You might need to tune the values manually as suggested above.

It is also noted that the auto-fill method takes all mesh vertices into account when identifying the Range Min and Max value.  This means that not only visible but hidden vertices are considered.  Recalling that you have a wide angle camera close to the sphere mesh, only a small fraction of the mesh surface in the frontal part of the sphere is visible.  The auto-filled Max value is hence likely too large because I guess you actually expect the distance-based thickness only accounts for the visible part.

Try also to turn off the "Visibility" toggle in the "Selection by" section of the Freestyle Line Set panel, and you will see the line thickness is indeed at the minimum on the far (invisible) side of the sphere.

To make it easier to fill the Range values by taking only the visible part of the mesh into account, I also made an improvement of the Fill Range by Selection button so that in the edit mode only the selected vertices are considered for distance calculation.  This code revision has also already been in the code repository and will be available in a future release of Blender.


How to position solid objects so they're attached, ie links on a metal watch strap? Well I've created my watch strap, it's made up of stainless steel links. It's a common design, 3 links wide. The centre links are offset to the outer ones.

Currently it's all laid out flat. Each pair of outer links is its own object, and all the central links are seperate objects.

Now, what is the best way to join them at the pivot points so that I can grab one link and the rest will follow at their pivot points properly, without the individual links deforming. Would it be rigging, parenting, or something else?

I figured it out. I thought I'd share the solution. It was a lot simpler than I thought. I left the outer pairs as seperate objects, and inner links as seperate objects too.
Then, I added an armature, went into edit mode and positioned the ends at either end of the strap.
Then I subdivided (W) the armature in edit mode a few times until there was enough bones for each segment.
Then I went into pose mode. Selected the left most link, then shift selected the left most bone. Ctrl+P, parent to bone. Then I continued doing that for all the segments of the strap.
Then, in pose mode I selected the last bone and went to Add constraint, IK solver. That's it.
Now when I move that last bone in pose mode everything follows it sweetly. PS this is in blender 2.49b but it will be very similar in later versions I'm sure.


How do I add a texture to a model in 2.82? I've been a Blender user for a few years at this point, and I finally just switched over to 2.82 after having used the version in my system's package repo for a while.  Now, I can't find gosh darn anything and I'm starting to get frustrated.
I can find the Materials window, and I can add a material.  But I've been looking for ten minutes now and I cannot for the life of me find where to add a texture.  Can someone please tell me where to find that setting, preferably with screenshots?
Update 3-6-20:  Here is a screenshot of my window.  The first response shows a tab or button that just isn't there on my interface.
(Like I said, I've been using blender for years.  I've already looked in all the places where it would actually make sense for it to be)

The texture button is here (not available in edit mode):

To add a new texture, click here:

I strongly suggest to have a look at tutorials on youtube like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-ncKGhDih8


Why is the colour picker displaying tinted colors? The colour picker is behaving not as I expect it to. I cannot move the selector towards most of the edges, setting the RGB to 1.00 for red and the rest to 0 just gets an orange colour. Also I cannot simply keep the "value" the same and select a different shade, the "value" resets.

I'm not sure if i've pressed something in error or there is a setting in the user preferences/elsewhere that needs changing.
I'm using the cycles renderer. The issue occurs with any colour picking :- material, background etc. Quitting Blender and restarting does not resolve the issue. Version 2.79.6

Colour picker behavioiur easier to see

In Scene tab set Display device to sRGB.


Should I turn off Dynamic Topology if I have a huge number of verts? So, I'm making quite a big mesh and at some point I've reached 1.5-2 million verts. This, obviously, slowed down Blender and it's near impossible to work. Is it ok if I turn off Dyntopo? If so, how do I make sure that the part of the mesh I'm working on is at enough high detail level?

Lets be clear:  If a feature isn't working, don't use it.  But I'll also provide an alternate perspective.

Z-Brush only recently got its Dynatopo equivalent: Sculptris mode. The workflow for Z-Brush, which has been the industry standard for years, is to make a lowpoly base mesh and sub-divide it until there is enough density of vertices to keep the detail.  The artist usually is working with a mesh that is at least 3 million polys at this point.

What I'm trying to say is: it is ok if you are starting with a high vertex count and work from there, it's an established pro-workflow.  It is a shame Blender isn't able to handle  larger poly counts right now, but that is out of our control.

Remember that while in Dynatopo, the size of your brush will affect the vertex density.  This means you can remove verts by making your brush larger.  You can reduce parts of the mesh that don't need the detail so you can redirect that budget for parts that do.


How to stop execution of a Python script without closing Blender too? I'm debugging my Python code and I wanted to make my script only execute until a certain line, so I can easily see what is happening.

# python code I want to execute

break_here_and_let_me_read_the_console_output()

# more python code I don't want to execute

I've found out that there's Python's built-in functions like exit() and quit(). The problem is - if I use them, not only my script it terminated, but the whole Blender instance that I was running that script inside is terminated too.

How can I stop only my script, but not Blender itself?

Maybe not too elegant, but it will stop the script in the middle and won't close Blender:

raise KeyboardInterrupt()


How to animate when pivot point travels? I have an object, a tilting board inside a frame, with three pivot points: two of which are fixed, and one of which slides along a member (actually, the member slides along the pivot).

How would I animate the board tilting at various angles about pivot (#1), while keeping the sliding member constrained by the intersecting rod (#3) and the pivot (#2)?

You can use constraints, here...

Construction

All objects constructed with local orientation aligned to world
Flap and Frame origins both at world 0
Slider origin at its hinge point
A target Empty at the center of the constraining rail

Parenting

Flap and Empty CtrlP parented to frame
Slider parented to Flap

Constraints

Slider given locked track constraint targeted on the Empty ( In this example, positive X is to our left)

Flap's Rotation limited to a range in Y so as not to run off the end of the slider

Now you can simply key the rotation and location of the frame, (the rest will follow), and key the Y rotation of your flap.The slider will behave appropriately.

Here's the implementation on your file, (revised, I've made a correction to center the hinge of the flap to the flap's rotation)

And a 2.79 version:

On the question of how parenting interacts with constraints, I have to reverse-engineer.. I wouldn't know where to look in the code in a reasonable time, so what follows is an informed guess, which I would be happy to have corrected.

Further to @sambler's answer here, at a lower level, to perform a transformation T of a child C in a parent P's space, you would:

Give C the inverse transformation of P (as it were, bringing everything into World space), followed by...
... executing T on C, followed by...
... giving C the transform of P again, to put it back in the frame it came from.

These transformations would be multiplied together in the right order, as matrices,  to yield a single transformation matrix by which you can multiply the coordinates of all the vertices of C.

Naively, I can imagine, if 'Local' is selected, constraints being checked at step 2, with any targets undergoing step 1 as well as C, so they are compared in P's space. The effect is that constraints are applied after parenting.

In this case, the slider (its origin) does rotate with its parent. Its local rotation (at step 2) is constrained.


Object colours disappear when I turn on 'Texture Solid' I have imported a build-set roblox roblox studio into blender. It looks like this:

But when I click the textured solid, it looks like this and all of the colours in the background have dissappeared:

Is there any possible way that the colours in the background (the door & bed) still keep their colour, but also te textures are shown with it?

The colors will appear once you render the picture. I had this same problem.

Go under System Preferences > Input , and look for Emulate Keyboard (turn this on temporarily). Now exit out of that and press 0 on the keyboard. The exterior should go grey and show a frame. use Shift + F to navigate and find your desired camera angle then click Render on the side of the screen in the render settings menu.


Smooth zooming in viewport I have experience with Maya and C4D and I’ve become very accustomed to the way view-port navigation works in them. I know that one can set the key-mapping to that of industry standard; however then the orthographic views’ key-maps on the numpad gets changed (which is a no no).

So I’ve set up different key-mapping for camera panning and rotating on the Blender key-maps but I want to add the function to smooth zoom via ALT and RIGHT CLICK and dragging the mouse up and/or down. I know that it is mapped to CTRL and MIDDLE MOUSE on the default Blender key-map.

I realize I can just go into the settings and do it manually but I’m afraid of effing it up too much. So I’m hoping that someone here might have already sorted this out (hopefully).

Thanks a million

You can do that zooming for sure if you know how to add a new keymap:

Go in that keymap setting panel and choose the 3D-view(global) panel, scroll down to see that Add New Button. Press it, it will give you a None keymap.

Setting up the identifier field with the thing you want, in the zoom case view3d.zoom

And then setup rest of the key setting, you shouldn't need other details setting for your task.


How do I make my vertices fill correctly with mirror Instead of the vertices filling on the correct side, they meet across the z axis. Thank you  (I hope that you guys can see the picture)
I’m sorry, am I doing something wrong? I tried to use the options  that you’ve told me to. I want it to look somewhat like this:
But instead it now looks like this (please help):

You've enabled the Adjust Edit Cage To Modifier Result option of the modifier (fourth button), so you're confusing the real mesh and its mirrored image, and you've created the new vertices in the mirrored space. Deactivate this button and it will appear clearly. Also, activate the Clipping option so that the vertices stick to the axes and don't trespass.


Why bendy bone segmenting does not work? The first picture is when I haven't yet segmented the bones:

The second one is when I have segmented (segmented to 16) both two bones:

As you can see, the bending is still sharp. Please help.

Your bones don't seem to be displayed as B bones but as sticks. You need to go in the Properties panel > Object Data > Viewport Display > Display As and choose B Bone.


Can't Get Soft Body Sim to Work I am trying to do a simple simulation of crushing a can between a plane and a can crusher.  The can crusher and planes are collision objects and the can itself has soft body physics on it.  I have tried recalculating normals, adjusting inner and outer settings on the collision objects, I've messed with the order of modifiers that I put on the can, I've applied location, rotation, and scale, the objects are on the same layer etc.  Also, I uploaded a gif.  You notice right away that the object disappears which I couldn't figure out either. Is there something I'm missing here which is making my simulation not work?

See this answer. Looks like a similar thing is happening to your mesh. If you check the dimensions in the properties panel you'll see the values go crazy once the can disappears.

Removing the softbody modifier and re-adding a fresh one stops the disappearing act, and it doesn't look like you have any overlapping geometry. I think it's something in your softbody settings, in the Soft Body Edges section. It looks like you've tweaked that quite a bit; perhaps you've pushed it to its limits.


Shape Keys plus Armature I have already rigged a character in blender.

I am trying to create viseme's using Shape Keys. The shape of the mouth is dependent on the jaw position. Most of the viseme's happen with my characters jaw is open.

So I rotate the jaw, select the mesh again, and add a new shape key. When I do the jaw will snap back to its closed position. I can't do the shape key while its mouth is closed.

I tried this several ways, the other way is you create a shape key, go into edit mode and then try to shift the jaw, which just closes the shape key.

Is there a way to combine the shape keys (mouth shape) and armature (jaw)?

To view the deformation by an armature in edit mode you have to check the two options of the armature modifier (1) Display modifier in Edit mode (2) Adjust edit cage to modifier result. They're located next to the visibility icon. This allows you to edit the mesh in its deformed state. – Leander Sep 18 at 10:14


Topology not smooth and trying to work with a 6 pole I have this situation

I want to smooth off the edges so with some basic cuts I get

With a sub-d of 2 applied

I have played around with this for too long trying to find a solution. I know the problem is the pole and I have had so many crazy topology solutions that honestly became unworkable.

Any suggestions would be very welcome

thank you

Here is another image to show the 6 pole

Changed the topology based on comments (thank you) and there is an improvement. Makes sense to add a loop Any other suggestions would be great - thanks

added autosmooth at 50

Additional edge loop added

Seems so far this is the best I can achieve?

In response to comment on the issue. The light looks wrong on this image and slightly creased. thanks

FINAL SOLUTION

I think you can solve the problem adding some kind of inset around the pole.
Like this:

If you want to adjust the sharpness around the pole, select the 12 surrounding vertices and use G G to edge slide more or less closer to the pole.


Missing threshold in the post processing section There is no threshold under the post processing title for my current working file. If I open a new file, threshold appears as in right picture. It seems that I've changed some settings but I couldn't find. What can be the reason of this situation?

Note: I think this is related to settings, not objects, because I took the screenshots for newly added object in both files.

This panel changes depending on if your render engine is set to Cycles or Blender Render in the info bar at the top of the Blender window:

You have probably changed the render engine to Cycles in your current file, but in the new file it goes back to the default Blender Render.


Why isn't the modifier icon appearing when an object is selected? I'm brand new to Blender, and am attempting to subtract one object from another. Simple, I know, and all I have read says to use the modifier tool, which is a wrench.  However, I can not find this wrench.

attached is a screen shot of my toolbar showing where I thought the wrench should be.

Can anyone please tell me what I am doing wrong?

I thank you kindly,
Matt

Metaball objects cannot have modifiers applied to them. Once an object that can have a modifier applied to it (like a mesh or a curve) is selected the wrench icon will appear.

Objects that can have modifiers added to them are:

Meshes
Curves
Surfaces
Text
Lattices


How can I achieve a "hand-drawn" look? So I watched "Suits" Episode of the Netflix Series "Love, Death & Robots".

I really liked the overall style. Sometimes you see it's low fps so I guess it's almost completely hand-drawn. Anyway, I took these screenshots:

I started Blender, created a feather mesh and used the hair-particle system to achieve this:

This is a hand-drawn texture on a default material (blender internal, viewport) with emission 0.5 (left) / shadeless (right).
But I am not yet pleased with the look. Do you have any tips to achieve this fluffy look?

You need to create 2 or 3 variation meshes to correctly display what you want. You can use 1 emitter but different particle settings (many particle systems inside 1 emitter). Since you´re using hair, the scruffy look is given by the parameters in Kink, Twist and Roughness (use custom roughness curve). Hope this helps. Yes, it will look fantastic, but please create 2 or 3 variations to be used with the 2 or 3 particle systems for the body emitter (one of the systems irremediably will be long feather looking hairs scruffed).

Hope this helps.
BFCT_Schiller


How to make a eyelid-system in BGE? Knowing the limitation of the animation system in BGE, I would like to make a eyelid-system for a character. I made a system that works in Blender, but it has a constraint influence driven by a bone, something that doesn't work in Game Engine.

You can download the test file here: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/41543

When eye.anim is animated (by being rotated), the eyelid.deform is influenced (with a Action constraint) to be raised or lowered, to have a natural movement. But, when I close completly the eyelid by animating eyelid.anim, eyelid.deform mustn't be influenced by eye.anim.

Again, the system that is in the file does work in Blender, but not in Game Engine. This is because it uses a constraint influence driven by a bone. And something like this doesn't work in BGE (*). The only way to change an influence is by Python... but I won't do this only for the eyelids.

(*) I reported this some years ago (and, by mistake, again some hours agou), but it is not a bug but a known limitation of the game animation system.

@Monster comment made me remember that I used to use shape keys in eyelid movement. Now, I'm using bone deformation (because of someone suggest). To make any eyelid-system, I need to drive the influence of "something".

Using Bone Deformation: I have to drive some constraint influence.
Using Shape Keys: I have to drive shape keys value.

In BGE we can't drive constraint influence, but we can do it with Shape Keys values. So, the second method is the suitable one for me (at this moment).

I make a new file, with a Shape Keys based Eyelid-Movement here: http://pasteall.org/blend/41589

It respects the eye (bone) rotation (to raise and lower the eyelid.2 automatically).
When I close the eyelid (with eyelid.1 bone), eyelid.2 stands still.

How the system works:

eyelid.1 is the bone to animate.
eyelid.2 copies eyelid.1 location (using Offset) and it has an Action constraint, to move itself when the eye is moving.
The mesh has a shape key eyelid.down that is driven with Minimum Value by two variables using eyelid.1 and eyelid.2, both with Transform Channel in Y Location at Local with its respective bones.
The shape key eyelid.up is driven by the same variables, but with Maximum Value and with the inverted curve.

... it's better to see the blend file.


How to make this thorny decimated effect? I would like to use a modifier or something to quickly get something like the picture below without too much hand modeling.

Is this noise effect possible to apply such a remesh to a base mesh?

Using a child object for hair particle system can give something close to what we want.

To do it, I started from a free model downloaded, then:

Added a particle system (the parameters are visible in the image) with an object as render element (a small pyramid)
Convert the particles to mesh using the convert button in the modifiers panel
Here you get individual instances of the initial pyramid. You need to select them all and use the menu "object/relation/make single user" to make independent instances of this pyramid
Once done, select and merge them all using AltJ
I've also added a material, and a rapidly done texture on it.

Variations can be obtained with different ways:

The amount of particles
Scale and scale randomness in the particle system setting
Scale of the particle object and its shape, of course
Add a second particle system with another shape as render object
...

Once the final mesh obtained, you can:

Resize individual pyramids inside the mesh (scale using 'individual origin' as pivot point)
Give a try at "merge by distance" (with a relatively big distance), which allow to link several pyramid parts

I also think that the material and textures on it are important for the final effect. Here the texture is roughly done but you may pay attention to this point if you want to go further.
The blend file below contains several attempts, so you can play with it.


Render Smoke split in background and foreground for composite with a recorded image I'm trying to render a smoke to composite a filmed character in the middle of it, as in the example.

I was wondering if there's a easy way to render the back of the smoke in one layer and the front of the smoke in another layer without creating two different domains as the smoke turns around the character.

For the moment the only idea I had is using two cameras with complementary clipping, but it means to calculate two times.

If anyone had any better idea, i'll be very glad to know it !!  :-)

is the character moving or is it only a still ?
Maybe you can create something like a card as a holdout for smoke in the back ?


Bump Map applique in Blender 2.8? I understand the principle of the thing, but being a novice I just can’t get the pieces together.

I’m modeling a LEGO brick, and want to add the raised logo on the tops of the studs.  I thought a height map would do the trick.

I found the logo in a PNG file.
I added a seam around the top (round) face of the stud and UV Unwrapped (just that face), and lined things up in the UV editor.

Now what?  I’ve tried feeding a Bump Map node to the Normal input of the Principled shader, and various ways of feeding information to the Bump Map node.  Nothing works.

Meanwhile, I tried using the Texture Paint mode, but it shows its own UV mapping unrelated to what I unwrapped, and does not seem to connect with the images I have available rather than painting something directly.

Please note that I’m using Version 2.8 Daily Build.  Old tutorials will not help; I already looked, and the UI and nodes just don’t line up, or uses the Texture Paint.  (Specifically, the video in this answer is not useful for me.)

In this version, there is a “UV Map” node, not any “Map UV” node.  This one has a UV output but no inputs, and a field that can be left blank or choose “UVMap”.

Feed the “Image Texture” to “Bump Map” to the Normal input of the shader.
Be sure to set “Non-Color Data”.

Be sure the 3D view is in LookDev or Rendered mode.  The default when you open the Shading tab might be Shaded, which will not show this effect.

Color or Alpha:  Use the intensity (black/white is low/high or high/low), or use the Alpha channel (the transparency in a PNG file).

The Bump node is used to convert height to Normals.


Weight painting Issue I am doing some animation on my mesh and notice that the foot is stuck to the ground when i try to move it. I tried to use weight painting on the selected bone but it would not work.

As his left foot is correctly rigged you can check how it works. Notice that there are actually 2 bones overlaying on each foot, they are called Toes Control (R and L) and Toes (R and L). So to make it simpler, switch to Pose mode, hide the bones called Toes Control (R and L), then switch your mesh to Weight Paint mode and check how Toes (R and L) influence your mesh. You can see that Toes.R, contrary to Toes.L, has no influence. So begin to paint the area that is supposed to be influenced by this bone, exactly like Toes.L influence the left foot. You're good.


Texturing/UV wrap help I need help with lining up some things for my model when using the UV wrap. I have attached what the model looks like and the texture I want to apply to it. Is there an way to do it that a beginner could understand or would it be a bit difficult?

First, some general UV unwrapping tips

If you want to make it easy on yourself, first fix the topology of your object to be all quads that flow together.

What this means is that you want the faces of your mesh to be squares instead of triangles where possible, because the subdivision will occur smoothly and predictably, and most importantly in this case - your UV unwraps will be much more clean and manageable.

More on quad topology here.

Addressing some problems specific to your model

There is an area with bad topology - faces are overlapping. Move these edge loops:

And here are the problems with your seams:

Here is what I suggest doing instead to fix it:

How I approached this

Now that you know a better way to place your seams, I should explain that for an unwrap as simple as this, you don't even need to use seams. You can simply select the faces you want and unwrap by section. Only selected faces will be unwrapped.

Select everything except the two end caps. Then do a UV unwrap using the 'Follow Active Quads' method. This method gives very clean results on topology consisting of long spans of quads.

'Length Average' is the way to go to minimize texture distortion in this case, since it curves around corners.

In the UV/Image Editor, scale your unwrap result down to fit within the square area.

Next, select only the two end cap faces, go into top view so you're looking at them straight-on, and UV unwrap again. This time choose 'Project From View'.

Place your two unwrapped cap faces on your UV Map.

Here is the result:

If your texture looks strange on the tips you can Extrude the end caps so that the texture will be pulled in to a tiny point.

You would want to do this if you were creating a candy cane, for example:


Link full .blend files I'm trying to split a big .blend into several smaller ones, so that several people can work on different parts.

I split it into 5 smaller .blend (~= 200MB and > 1000 objects each), and I created an empty one (container.blend) that links to each scene.

The problem is : each scene is completely separate. From my "Container Scene", I can't get to make the 5 others visible. Only one is active, only one is visible :

When I render ContainerScene, I want Scene_62XXMECH-1 to be rendered, too.

Is there a button I missed ? Should I add all 7000 objects separately in the container scene ? Is there another way ?

Scenes in blender are like separate environments, each one is visible independently and renders it's own output, while you can have linked objects that can be moved in each scene at the same time.

One way of combining multiple scenes is to composite them together.

Most likely I think you want to import all of the objects from the other files into your container scene, not the scene itself. Your container scene can contain many imported objects from many different files. When you import objects from another file you can select all of the objects (press A in the file browser) in one file and import them in one go.

A common method used when linking files is to assign a group to a number of objects and import the group into your container scene. Each group will then show up as one item visible in your container scene. With objects to be animated, this often includes an armature in the group. You can then make a proxy of the armature to allow animating it in the new file while the mesh can only be altered in the original file.

There is an addon called Edit Linked Library that makes it easy to switch between files containing linked objects.


Help implementing Script node for material Intermediate Blender user here. I am trying to create a procedural emission shader that only effects areas of an object of a given range of thickness (i.e. if applied to a character could make the characters fingers glow - because they are thinner, but not the arms)

At the end of this stack exchange someone seems to have developed a script that can vary materals according to thickness (the Uniform Depth, script).

Get Object Width In Cycles as Value

But taking the script into textedit and copy and pasting it into the internal script function on the node doesn’t do anything, and trying to link to the file as external script returns an error! Wondering if there are any general tutorials for implementing external python scripts as nodes in materials. Will be very grateful for any help!

The related post you mentioned is not in Python but in OSL. In order to enable OSL you must set your render device in CPU mode and enable the Open Shading Language Option. I tried the code and it was working quite good (except the last part which crashed my machine).


Lost all my custom keyboard shortcuts So I think I accidentally deleted my shortcut presets by a mis click and can't get them back.

I believe I had a custom preset name and I accidentally clicked '-', which immediately deleted my custom presets and set them back to default.

All the keyboard shortcuts I carefully set over the months / years are gone.

I thought I had been saving the shortcuts when I clicked "Save User Settings" in the user preferences file. Unfortunately this does not appear to be the case. I backed up both that file and the startup.blend file. Unfortunately loading startup does not have the shortcuts either.

Am I fated to go through and redefine all the shortcuts again? I suppose everything is a learning experience..

My guess is that you just upgraded Blender, and didn't click 'Copy Previous Settings' in the splash screen. This would copy your settings of 2.78 to 2.79; without this, Blender uses the defaults after an upgrade.

If you haven't saved new settings yet, the 'Copy Previous Settings' button will still be available in the splash screen. If you want to remove your 2.79 settings, you have to visit a platform-dependent path. These paths are documented in the Blender Manual.


Animation: How to bake physics to export to Sketchfab Following this tutorial

How to make rig that reacts to gravity or seem to behave physically correct?

I made this animation

I am having trouble to bake it/export it so I can display the animated chains in Sketchfab or so. I tried exporting the mesh as alembic and then baking the action to keyframes but that did not seem work.

Here is the file (Blender 2.8):
http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=51625

Select the toruses and the rig then export it to fbx. In the fbx exporter "Main" tab (lower left corner) check in "Selected objects". In the "Animation" tab disable "All actions" and "NLA Strips".


parallel processing and Job API Someone told me that the long data processing task can be parallel processing by JOB API of Blender. But I can't find any doc or example about JOB API. Could someone give me some suggestion about it?

The job API is a C API, and not exposed to Python. For parallel processing of data in Python, use the regular tools Python gives you for this, like multiprocessing or concurrent.futures.


Human model and other textures won't show up on render I've been making animations of different accidents happening to the human model and recently I grouped them in folders. When I made another one which is already made in a new folder but still used the base file of a previous animation, the human model and other textures won't show up. The weird thing is, the shadows show up but the 3d model itself won't. I've tried almost every solution I saw in the threads here such as disabling the Render Layer, checking the toggle buttons and the Disable Restrict Layer thing- nothing works. Our deadline is on Wednesday and I'd appreciate if someone would answer ASAP. Thanks.

And the blender file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_pEJgt9uYGSTmxVNzRYTkllZVE

The problem is that all of the materials are transparent. Change this in the material settings by disabling the transparent option.


Only first slide is rendered I do have my animation done. But I don`t know what I pressed and now when I press Animation, only the first slide(frame) is showed in the rendered window but there is no files on the output folder. No JPG or AVI or MPEG. Any suggestion?
Thanks in advance!!
Here is the screenshot

The image in the left side is the result of the render after clicking over the animation button. Blender rendered the first frame and then stop.

@DiegoAdum the problem is in the composting , you are combining a layer from blender_internal and a layer from Cycles ,you'll have to render the Volumetric scene first , or remove the composting and render both than pass the images through the processing.

Thanks @Chebhou!! Following your suggestion I change the scene and press Animation button. the render start but only for the 2 scene. I change back the scene to the first one and hit Animation button and now is working again! It seems something was blocked!!! Thanks a lot!!!


Buildings Projected to Terrain - Lattice and ShrinkWrap - bypassing the terrain and deforming the roof I'm trying to project many buildings or many shapes into a very uneven Terrain.

I've tried many ways, the closest where to use: only ShrinkWrap constrain, and the best is to use a combination of Lattice modifier and ShrinkWrap modifier.

Most of the times the problem is that the buildings go thru the terrain, some more than others. I would like them to all just sink a little bit.

The other issue is that the roof gets deformed to follow the angle of the terrain mesh.

In my example, the red building is higher. and if you look underneeth half of the building is under ground.

And all the roofs are flat, and as you can see some get an inclination ( deformation ).

Here is the file and a photo:

[![enter image description here][1]][1]

[EDIT]
The problem I get with the suggestions (which I read many times), is that the lattice ( yes, I moved it up and down, under the buildings, scaled it, ... ) but it doesn't adapt to the mountain. For you to understand see next new image, showing the bottom of the mountain: the buildings are underneath the mountain, and they don't even show on top of the mountain.

Unfortunately I couldn't download your file but here are some ideas.

Set the lattice so that is at the bottom of the buildings.

To prevent the deformation on top of the buildings generate a vertex group, and assign only the bottom vertices of your buildings to it.

Then use that vertex group for the lattice. That way only the vertices on the group will be affected by the modifier.


How to avoid tube overlap in rigid body simulation I created two tubes by Bezier curves and add sodify modifier to them with a small thickness. And add rigid body and collision to the tubes. I check the normals, upscale the steps per second and iteration number, set sensitivity margin to 0, but they still overlap. And when they hit each other, they rotate together.
I hope someone may give me some advice. Thank you.

Don't set Margin to zero, use as much as you can (to result with good looking sim). To simulate thick objects is always problem. Low margin value increase possibility of objects penetration (like that you see with your setup - they hook each other and rotate as crazy).

Anyway ... Margin didn't solve the issue here. Result was hysteric as in your case.

I had to start with defaults.
In this example - add Curve object, set Depth, Convert to Mesh, add Rigid Body / Active / Shape>Mesh / Margine 0.01, add Solidify modifier (Thickness 0.02) ... copy object few times and run sim.
What definitely helped here ... use tubes thickness as modifier not as real geometry.
Solidify modifier > Thickness 0.02

Note: Margin 0.01 is from some angle view visible so you can use also 0.001, but sim can became jumpy.
General rules for successful sim - Apply Scale, Origin to Geometry (it is not your case).

So the issue is caused by inner faces of a tube (when real geometry). That is weird for me since margin is low so there is not even a possibility collision margin crossing from inside tube through to outside (to create effect like switched Normal direction). So I don't have an explanation for that.
Increasing Solidify modifier Thickness to 0.06 and Apply Modifiers make the sim possible.
Solidify modifier > Thickness 0.06 ... Apply modifier (make real geometry)

Note: In a middle of anim it exploded because of collision penetration so I enabled Margin for floor object 0.04 that make it stabilised.


display object data name in the wiewport Ewery time I want to check witch data block is used by the selected object I have to switch to object data tab in the properties view, is there a way to instantly display the used object data name somewhere to be allways visible?

Thank you

The only solution I found is to create another propertis window with the object data tab opened.


Blender scripting: How to change texture color I'm trying to create a picture in Blender using only Python/scripting (no animation). I have a model loaded in and I can change it's base color using active_material.diffuse_color but now I want to put a texture on the model and then change the texture color. I've googled for a while and couldn't find any good resources for how to do so.
This is what I have so far:
mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="Material")
mat.use_nodes = True
bsdf = mat.node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"]
texImage = mat.node_tree.nodes.new('ShaderNodeTexImage')
texImage.image = bpy.data.images.load("../textures/texture.png")
mat.node_tree.links.new(bsdf.inputs['Base Color'], texImage.outputs['Color'])

color_ramp = mat.node_tree.nodes.new("ShaderNodeValToRGB")
mat.node_tree.links.new(bsdf.inputs['Base Color'], color_ramp.outputs['Color'])

ob = bpy.data.objects['model']
if ob.data.materials:
    ob.data.materials[0] = mat
else:
    ob.data.materials.append(mat)

The code correctly puts the texture on the model, but I'm not sure how to use the color_ramp node to actually change the color or if it's even the right thing to try. Thanks!

Thanks brockmann, I figured it out from your links.
mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="Material")
mat.use_nodes = True
bsdf = mat.node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"]
color_ramp = mat.node_tree.nodes.new("ShaderNodeValToRGB")
color_ramp.color_ramp.elements[0].color = (0.2,0.8,0.7,1)
mat.node_tree.links.new(bsdf.inputs['Base Color'], color_ramp.outputs['Color'])
texImage = mat.node_tree.nodes.new('ShaderNodeTexImage')
texImage.image = bpy.data.images.load("../textures/Fabric.png")
mat.node_tree.links.new(color_ramp.inputs[0], texImage.outputs['Color'])

ob = bpy.data.objects['model']
if ob.data.materials:
    ob.data.materials[0] = mat
else:
    ob.data.materials.append(mat)
```


How to get exact camera view? I'm currently a beginner when it comes to 3D modelling but doing okay so far. I'm struggling a bit when it comes to the final renders of my scene, specifically on the camera view I want. Sometimes its to zoomed in and sometimes to zoomed out that it's gone out of the environment of the blender. I realized the settings for the camera on blender are for actual cameras / photography and I'm no expert on that too. A tip on how to control them precisely would be nice. Thank you.

Go into camera view (Numpad 0) and use Lock Camera to View.

Then, navigate as you would normally do in the 3d viewport using the mouse or the keyboard.
Numpad 4 and Numpad 6 will rotate left right.
Numpad 8 and Numpad 2 will rotate up and down
Numpad + and Numpad - willmove the camera forward and back

Or Use Fly/Walk mode:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/3dview/navigate/walk_fly.html?highlight=walk%20mode


Can't bevel an inverted edge using bevel tool Im creating this steel part for a trailer chassis.
I used the bevel tool with sucess for edge 1, now I want to do the same with edge 2 but no sucess. How can I do it?

I found the problem, mesh had too much double vertices.
Went into edit mode (TAB), vertex selected, selected all vertices (A) and W (Remove Doubles).


Help building a square box under my complex 3D model! My 3D model has the complex geometry of a small, rocky river. To be able to import it into my fluid dynamics software, I need the boundaries of the model to be rectangular.
I am looking for something similar to the table in the attached picture. This will include extending the riverbanks a bit so that they create a straigt edge (as the river is not straight in itself). Then increase the depth of the model such that all faces are flat rectangles except the top one, which contains the river texture.
Is this feasable? Any help or tip would be greatly appreciated!

The following approach gives you an object with the river bed on the bottom side and a volume with planar surface.

First load the model of the riverbed, then switch to edit mode and select all vertices A.

Then extrude the surface either with the extrude tool on the left hand side or by pressing E. Then move the mouse cursor upwards so that the model is a bit taller then the desired end result.

The following steps depend on whether you want to modify only the Z-direction or if you want intersect the entire model with another volume.

If you just want to modify the Z-direction press S, Z and 0 with the extruded part still selected. This will scale the Z-direction to zero making it completely flat. You may have to adjust the Z position to the desired height by pressing G and Z. Then you should be done, unless you want to flip the normals which is described in the last step below.

If you'd like to intersect the model with a cubic volume you need to do the following steps.

Next add a Cube in object mode and scale it so the desired section of the riverbed is inside the volume. The height of the Cube should be the height you want the final model to have.

Now apply a Boolean modifier to the Cube.

Set the Operation to Intersection  and set the object to your riverbed model.

Now you can remove or hide the other model and just keep the result of the boolean operation. If you need the normals to face inwards for the simulation you can switch to the edit mode and recalculate the normals inside (Mesh > Normals > Recalculate Inside) or SHIFT+CTRL+N.


Why is my Shadow Catcher layer shadow-pass entirely black? Using the standard layers / compositor setup created with the Setup Tracking Scene button (in Cycles), I've used the second layer 'Background' to build a rough mockup of the street in order to act as a shadow catcher. However:

1) The shadow-pass for this layer is always entirely black. Is that correct? If not, how do I correct it?

2) With default settings, the shadowcatcher model darkens EVERYTHING it covers in the render, whether a shadow is cast there or not. I imagined that shadowcatcher layers should ONLY darken the movieclip in areas where the foreground layer (the ship model (please ignore the cube!)) is casting a shadow - that's not happening... so how can I achieve that effect?

3) Is bothering with Ambient Occlusion more trouble than it's worth for the shadowcatcher model? Given that the ship rarely touches the roofs, etc, but that the shadowcatcher model has lots of places with planes meet each other, etc...

(Still quite new to this! Please explain like I'm five!)

All the best,

--RoB

As Sanix, Marasoftware and Sebastian Kónig point out (https://twitter.com/s_koenig/status/656693360955150336), the Cycles shadow pass does not work with environment texture lighting (nor does it work with mesh lighting), hence my shadow pass was entirely black.

A number of solutions were suggested, usually to identify the direction of the environment texture sun light ("Is there anyway to match a sun lamp to the direction of the sun in an environment map?") and then to mimic this light with a sun lamp, excluding it from the main layer. This made a lot of sense - and then I happened across the following:

Cycles: Shadeless "Shadow-catcher" Material for Rendering onto Footage

What a brilliant, simple idea! Render the shadow catcher twice, once with shadows from your main object and once without - then subtract the clean shadowcatcher from the shadowed layer, leaving only the shadow behind! (Then use RBG curves or what have you to tweak the darkness of the shadow).

Barring any future mishaps or objections from the community, I'll be using this in from now on.

Two side notes:

1) This seems like an insanely useful material for this kind of task in future, though I haven't done all my research on it yet. Could be handy for someone doing a little compositing...

2) Had some trouble with backfaces in my Cycles shadowcaster, this solved my problem. Hope it's of use.


Animating scale of edge loop to cover texture, not stretch I have a circle with a inner loopcut, and would like to be able to scale the ring without affecting the UV texture on the circle. Currently it warps it, as Blender tries to fit the UV to the (now thinner) ring.

I also need the ability to animate the scale of the inner loop.

When scaling the inner ring, I'd like it to simply "crop" the outer UV texture, instead of "squashing" it.

Use Edge Slide for editting - Ctrl+E > Edge Slide
In the operator panel check the Correct UVs option:

This will crop the outer ring. For the inner ring use different material

If you want this effect in an shapekeys animation it wont work since they do not affect UV coords. You would have to use a UV Project modifier for the outer rim material:

add an empty

and setup the modifier for the circle like this:

Now it should work also with shapekeys


Blender particle system with video layer Very new to Blender...but I'm attempting to create animated rain ripples with just a texture layer. I have set up a video layer as a plane in Blender then plugged it through a particle system to display across a plane. The only thing I can't figure out is how I can randomize the playback of the video layer so that the ripples aren't all playing back in sync. I know you can offset frames for playback, but I need to randomize it for the particle system. Is this possible?[

I'm afraid out of the box that is not possible. They all share the same material and therefore the same texture. If the texture is animated all of them will be in the same point of the animation.
Workarounds:

make 3-4 planes, add them to a group and instead of object in your particle emitter choose group and pick random. Then create 3-4 materials with the same image texture and offset them by n frames.
Use dynamic paint. It takes a little longer to bake, but you can actually use the result as a normal map, giving you much more realism. Or you can even bake the animation to vertices to get real displacement. Careful though for a large plane that could take a lot of vertices.


Objects disappearing in viewport but visible in outliner Hi I am having a very similar problem when objects are visible on Outliner but not in Default view. I tried in '3D View Full' and they appear. Not seeing any issue with layers as working on single layer. Please suggest a stepwise process to fix this problem. I searched on net and nothing really helped.

thanks PK

Might have set View - Local toggle. If so, go to object menu View/Local and click toggle off, or shortcut key Numpad /. (I saw this in other listing in this chain).


2.82+: How to use fluid.bakeData() in python code Before Mantaflow (2.82+), we were able to bake smoke sims with custom python code like follows:

o = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]
c = {}
c['point_cache'] = o.modifiers['Smoke'].domain_settings.point_cache
bpy.ops.ptcache.bake(c, bake=True)

o in this case is the selected object (Smoke Domain), while c is a custom context supplied to the op. Now with Mantaflow, I've tried the following, which causes Blender to crash:

o = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]
c = {}
c['point_cache'] = o.modifiers['Fluid'].domain_settings.point_cache
bpy.ops.fluid.bake_data(c)

Resulting error isn't much help:

Error   : EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION
Address : 0x00007FF71D40835C
Module  : C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.82\blender.exe

What is the correct way of calling fluid.bake_data() in custom python code?

Thanks for your help!

This works to an extent for me on an AWS GPU instance:
for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
for object in scene.objects:
    for modifier in object.modifiers:
        print(object.name, " - modifier type: ", modifier.type)
        if modifier.type == 'FLUID':
            print(object.name, " - fuid_type: ", modifier.fluid_type)
            if modifier.fluid_type == 'DOMAIN':
                print("Bake All: ", object.name)
                bpy.ops.fluid.bake_all({'scene': scene, 'active_object': object})
                break

The problem I have is that I have three objects


Play a sound, then another when the first is finished? I want to play an intro sound, then when the intro is finished, play the full looped song.

What is the best strategy/tactic? Delay the playing of the loop by the lenght of the intro? Detect when the intro actuator has finished its job?

Play this audio file first: A "always" sensor connected to a "And" with use_priority connected to a "play_end" sound actuator
Then, connected to the same always sensor but with a regular AND python module connected to a "Loop_end" sound actuator :

.

def menuMusic(cont):
    loop = cont.owner.actuators["Loop"]
    time.sleep(0.5) # delays for 5 seconds
    cont.activate(loop)

But both my files are playing (in perfect sync, I must say)...

Here's what I ended up doing: there's a property time that I did not know about: Timer. I then set a property sensor to track this "Timer" value, but the "equal" eval type did not work, I had to use "interval" and set my interval using the right n.000000 notation. By precisely tuning the Minimum value, I managed to get a sample-perfect intro+loop sequence.


Sidewalk and grassy dirt? So, I think I actually "get" blender pretty well, I want to know from a workflow approach, how would I make a sidewalk, with lumpy ground underneath it. I want the sidewalk to look like it is pressing the dirt away, and the grass growing on my dirt should not be poking out through the "solid sidewalk" right now I have them as two separate objects, one named "sidewalk" the other "dirt" since they are both very different materials I assumed they need to be two different objects.
Generally the thing I'm looking for would also apply to how to make animal tracks in snow, tire tracks in sand, etc... if you guys could just point me in the right direction, I don't mind doing my research, I just don't know where to even start.  Oh, also, I can't shrinkwrap my sidewalk to the land, that would cause the sidewalk to be lumpy on top.
update
So, lol I just tried to apply the sidewalk as a shrinkwrap to the ground then I added the sidewalk to a vertex group, assign, selected only the top of the sidewalk vertexes and removed them from the group....That worked pretty well, now if I could get the particles to stop "coming through"
Here's what I want, the only comment I got seemed to focused on a very specific situation, as I said, this question applies to any situation where one surface should be "disturbed" by another.  Here are images like I am describing

if you subdivide a plane, unwrap it, and paint a MASK as the one you can see here, you will be able to use it with a displace modifier, also use it to control the particles emission, and finally to split two materials with a mix slot.So that the object is one. Cheers.


How to snake extrude in edit mode? I want to extruding edge/faces with flow movement using my drawing tablet instead of extruding with ctrl+RMB or rapidly type E

is there any solution how to do this? (with or without addon)

I don't think there is a way (as per my limited understanding). But in your case, I think to simplify the mouseclicks (without having to press Ctrl), you can select an edge or a face, and Select the Extrude to Cursor (same as Ctrl+RMB), and just click away :)

Like this (I'm not pressing Ctrl+RMB)


Is the object that is associated with an action selected? I have a script that goes through all of the actions in bpy.data.actions. for action in bpy.data.actions: First, is there a way to return the object the action is associated with and second, is there a way to return whether or not that object is selected?
Any help is greatly appreciated!

Make a lookup table.
In going the other way can look at all objects in blend and from their animation data check all actions either assigned directly or via the NLA.
For example sake have used a defaultdict assigned to a set. Iterated over all objects and added all assoc. actions to set.
import bpy
from collections import defaultdict

actions = defaultdict(set)
for ob in bpy.data.objects:
    if not ob.animation_data:
        continue
    ad = ob.animation_data
    if ad.action:
        actions[ob.name].add(ad.action)
    actions[ob.name].update(s.action for t in ad.nla_tracks for s in t.strips if s.action)

# print results

for k, v in actions.items():
    print(k, v)

Example output
Cube {bpy.data.actions['Action'], bpy.data.actions['CubeAction.002'], bpy.data.actions['CubeAction']}

Once we have created lookup above can iterate over actions where  any that  intersect actions[ob.name] are associated with object ob
An object is selected if ob.select_set() is True
Alter above and use for ob in  context.selected_objects: to only look at actions assigned to selected objects in the context scene. (context = bpy.context If we make test code using context it pastes nicely into operator / panel code)
When an action is created by keyframing in the UI the action is assigned name, for example on object "Cube", "CubeAction" and the action is given an Action.id_root = 'OBJECT' to associate this action with objects (not meshes, shapekeys etc).
However IMO perhaps neither can be relied on, if the action is renamed, or created via code and the id_root is not set.