Render 3 dimensional scalar field I have a function which assigns to "every" point in space (x,y,z) a scalar value d. I want to, somehow, visualize this function using Blender. This could be done with interpreting the value d as some kind of density and rendering coloured glass which absorbs more light at higher density values and seems transparent at lower density values.

I found the material type Volume to be in the proximity of what I am looking for but I do not know how to control the density at the points in space.

Has anyone an idea how to do this? Some solution with python is desirable.

Bender uses python for the user interface and it can also automate many tasks that manipulate blenders data. However when you want to customise a material python isn't much help.

If you want to use blender internal render engine you will find that there is some support for external voxel data.

For cycles, I think your best option would be an OSL shader.

I made a quick sample script as a starting point for you -

float myFunc(float x, float y, float z)
{
    return 1.5;
}

shader MyVolShader(
    color   BaseColour = color(1.0,0.0,0.0),
    output closure color Volume = 0)
{
    // P is the current point
    // P[0] == x
    // P[1] == y
    // P[2] == z
    Volume = (BaseColour * myFunc(P[0], P[1], P[2])) * absorption();
}

You then fillin myFunc using your algorithm, and the final colour as desired.

If you want volume scattering, swap absorption() with henyey_greenstein(0.0) in the final calculation (or add them together).

The OSL Language reference should be helpful.

I have a collection of OSL scripts here but none that use volume yet.


Merging meshes in the hierarchy In the hierarchy, I have two meshes called "Cube" that I'd like to merge together:

Most answers that I've found online say to Shift select both and press Ctrl+J to merge them. However, weirdly that doesn't work in my case. If I select both the green triangles with dots and press Ctrl+J, nothing happens. If I select both of the yellow triangles and press Ctrl+J, nothing happens. If I select all four of these and press Ctrl+J, nothing happens. In all of these situations it's as if I wasn't pressing J at all, nothing changes on screen.

Is there something weird about my situation that would cause Ctrl+J to not work?

It's especially frustrating that Blender 2.8 doesn't give any errors or any reason why it's not joining the meshes as I wish it to.

As per @Edgel3D's advice and my own experimentation, it seems that it's impossible to merge meshes in the hierarchy. All merging must be done in Object Mode in the 3D view, or else nothing will happen.

Hopefully this helps someone else who had the same problem and is wondering why Ctrl+J isn't working.


How do I invert this timer in BGE to make it count-down? This is from an answer I received here: timer

  I suggest to avoid this method to measure time. The BGE will try to
  keep the given frame rate as much as possible, but there is no
  guaranty.

  I recommend to use a timer property. It counts the seconds. I think
  that is what you really want.

  Then you have several ways to show the time. I think you want to
  format it to minutes:seconds. You can use this little script
  timeToText:

 import bge
 from datetime import datetime

 textObject = bge.logic.getCurrentController().owner
 time = datetime.fromtimestamp(textObject["time"])
 textObject.text = '{:%M:%S}'.format(time)

  It expects a property time to provide the seconds and should be
  applied to an text object.

  You can indeed refresh the display each 60 frames. But you will not
  know when the seconds changed. Therefore I suggest to run it
  constantly.

  Hint: If you want to show microseconds too, use this format:
  {:%M:%S.%f}

This works. But the timer in bge counts upwards. What if I want it to count let's say from 30 minutes downwards?

How can I "invert" the timer?
I guess I can assign the original value 30 to the property time but how do I achieve the countdown logic afterwards?

You could simply negate the time property (-1800 seconds) and parameter of datetime.fromtimestamp(-textObject["time"]):

import bge
from datetime import datetime

textObject = bge.logic.getCurrentController().owner
if textObject["time"] < 0:
    time = datetime.fromtimestamp(-textObject["time"])
    textObject.text = '{:%M:%S}'.format(time)


How do I clean up unintended mesh inside a mesh? I'm a novice Blender user and I could use some advice on cleaning up some unintended mesh.

I'm working on a 3D model that I extracted from microscopy data. For this purpose the volumes are extracted from the raw data using a program called AVIZO. Then I exported the volumes to blender for smoothing and animation etc.
I've been working on the model for a couple of months and I was adding the finishing touches when I found out that there was a lot of unintended mesh inside of the model. I think that I must have been sloppy with the "fill holes" or "fill" functions in an earlier version of the model.

I've deleted part of the unintended mesh by hand but it takes a lot of time.  I'm wondering if you know a faster way of cleaning it up? Due to the pending deadline I don't have enough time to go back to an earlier version. I can provide some screenshots of the mesh if that helps.

I hope it's okay for me to ask such a question on this forum.

Thanks!

Edit:

This is the screenshot of my mesh. As you can see there is a lot of stuff going on in the centerpart.

Edit:

I've uploaded the most troublesome part of the mesh

Your mesh is really a mess.

I think the method I show here can help you with it.

In Edit mode, wireframe view, use the border select to select the up and bottom parts.

Hide them or invert the selection.

In case you use HIDE: Select all the rest and separate it (do not delete it because you can need it later ).

Now the interior is a separated mesh.

See the image below.


Rig is hidden in Weight Paint? I have this rig Rigify made for me and this model I made, but when Im weight painting, the rig is hidden for some reason. Heres some pictures to explain my predicament.

Thats what the rig is supposed to be, but in weight painting it's gone:

Where has it gone? :o

In order to have your armature (and any object actually) show through any object in any mode, turn on X-ray mode. You can do this by selecting the object and going to the Properties panel -> Object -> Display Panel.

Interestingly, for the armature specifically, you can also turn on X-ray, by going to the Properties panel -> Data -> Display.


Possible way to have a different background than the HDRI background? If the title was confusing to you, let me explain in further detail. I have Suzanne here, and I want her to show the surface reflection of an HDRI environment background picture I have set up, but in the actual render, I want to have a different color, or picture show in the background. But I still want her to reflect the first environment background. Is it possible?

Now yes, it is a posiblity to export a render with a transparent background, and edit said render in Photoshop or Afterfx if it's a video, but is it possible to do in blender?

If you want to use the HDRi to light the scene, but want a transparent background to be composited later with the background, or want to blur the HDR or maybe replace it all together, enable film transparent.

Then you can use alpha over to combine the scene with any other image.

If you enable the Environment output for the render layers, you can also make the HDRi background avalable to be used it as a different element in the compositor.

The Env socket contains the information from the background so that it can be manipulated any way you want.

  Update. To do this in Eevee in 2.8

Just enable Film>Alpha>Transparent.

Then on the compositor use Alpha over to mix over the background you want to use.

Alternatively you can use a background for the world that is only seen by the camera and not by other rays, therefore not contributing to the lights, reflectons,etc.

Set two different Environment background shaders and use the Is Camera Ray from a Light Path node to control the shader mix.


How to modify a model for Unity? I made the model in blender 2.77(a soccer room locker). The main problem is with the texture, it's textures aren't imported. I want to know how to do that, exporting UV maps and using them in unity. i just don't know how to do it. Can anyone help? Please be a bit detailed.

Alright, i'll be as detailed as possible.

Okay so first, create your model, for demonstration purposes, I have a cube.

After creating your model, select all the faces in edit mode and press U then select whatever option is best for you. I used the normal "Unwrap".

After that, create your texture, and apply it to the model, to do that, click New or Open in the UV/Image editor (while in edit mode and with your models faces selected).

I clicked new and in the menu it opens I set the image from Blank to Color grid.

Now that that's all done, we've got our texture, time to save it. Do that by clicking Image (It should have a little * at the end of it) and click "Save As Image", and select your location, can be anywhere.

(set the render view to Textured to see what it looks like)

And now, finally save the model as well. You should use a .blend as the format, but some other formats may work too, but for the sake of a tutorial, you should use .blend.

Alright, so next, drag your model into the Project in Unity, do that by simply dragging and dropping the file from the location you saved it to, into Unity's Project window.

And now, drag it into the Hierarchy, it should be in the scene now.

Nice, we've got a model imported into unity now. Okay so now we do the dragging and dropping of the texture in the project window as well, like we did with the model.

After that's put into the Project window alike the model, we will then drag it onto the object.

Nice, we've got our model all textured and ready to go, and all set up. And now time to make some scripts so it does something. :)

Good luck!


How to make an animation play in the blender game engine? Ok so I have created a character and rigged it and when I hit the play button for the animation it plays just fine.
I have set up the logic bricks multiple time yet whenever I hit P to play the animation never plays.  I cant seem to find my mistake if anyone could help me it would be much appreciated.

edit: here's the link

First you had the logic bricks on the wrong object. You needed the Action actuator on the Armature not the mesh object, because it is the armature that is animated.

Your second problem was the mirror modifier (I applied it). The mirror modifier was causing the animation to not play in the BGE. Just another one of the differences between the game engine and blender.
In general you should not have any modifiers or transforms (scale or rotation) on your objects in the BGE.

Your working blend file.


Bones make objects scale and shrink I created a simple Stick Figure, and I intended to rig it and make a animation resembling a 2D drawing. But I am not very good at rigging, and I cannot figure out why after an object is attatched to a bone, when I rotate it, the object shrinks as it rotates. The object also does not move exactly with the bones. I have no clue how to fix this, and the tutorials I use don't have any explanation.

The Blue is about how it should be positioned, and the red it what it actually does.

This is (probably) because your mesh isn't correctly assigned to your rig.

Each vertex needs to know which bone(s) to follow, and how much. If you've got one vertex assigned to two bones, then that vertex will do a combination of what both bones are doing. If you've got a vertex that's only assigned to one bone, but only at 50%, then it'll only move/rotate/scale half as much as the bone does.

To check this, go into pose mode and then from there directly into weight paint mode and check the colors of the mesh as you select each bone. Blue is zero, red is one. Zero means that vertex will not follow the selected bone at all. Red means it'll follow that bone 100%. Somewhere in between will do some combination.

You can use the painting tools to modify this, but they are also just vertex groups. You can use normal vertex group assignments to assign vertices to a given bone. With a mesh as simple as yours, that might actually be easier.

Hope that helps!


How to achieve this rigging-animation effect? Is there a way to achieve a similar effect in Blender: https://youtu.be/g532sTE1bEk?t=2038 ?

So when we move the head of the dragon the rest of the body moves smoothly, looks like some sort of inversed kinematics but it's different...

On a quick glance there might be a small chance that this is what you need:

Is there a way to Time Delay a Constraint (Like Slow Parent)


Where is Point Cloud? Just downloaded version 2.92 for Mac. I am unable to find the Point Cloud option in the Add menu. Am I missing something?

Go to Edit-> Preferences -> Interface and check Developer Extras
This will create new tab in left column called Experimental.
In that tab you need to check New Point Cloud Type.


Rendering Animation quicky I'm about to render a minute long animation with one lamp and one camera. Are there any ways to reduce the render speed besides changing the quality and fps?
Please put as many of possible because I'm only going to have about 96 hours.

Options:

get a faster computer
use sheepit (https://www.sheepit-renderfarm.com/index.php)
mess with the render settings so that you don't have to use as many samples


Surface Edges Appear Beveled I extruded a curve and the result has the right geometry but the shadows appear wrongly on the flat surface. How/what do I have to adjust to correct it? I already checked for duplicate vertices.

If you're talking about this shape, increase its V resolution:


Animation Nodes: Copy a selection/group of objects I have several objects in a group. The objects are related to each other via modifiers. The modifiers are stuff like text objects following curves via the Curve modifier. If I select all of them and hist shift+D, then I can create a copy of the entire hierarchy, and the modifiers will automatically assign to the new version. For example, if I had TextObject with a curve modifier to CurveObject, then after duplicating, TextObject.001 will be on CurveObject.001.

You get the same behavior if you make a group instance and then explode it with Make Real. However, if you copy just one object at a time, then of course it still points to the previous version's curve. I can use the Object Instancer to make copies of single objects, but how do I do the whole lot? What's the proper way to go about this?

The overall goal is to copy the whole group, change some of the text in the text objects, then apply all modifiers and join the whole thing into 1 object.

I can only recommend creating everything explicitly. So your node structure should be something like:

Instance all the objects you want, possibly using the Copy All Option or by disabling the Copy From Source option and injecting the object data later.
Loop over all your objects, add missing modifiers as described in my answer here, and set modifier values using Attribute nodes.


Is there a way to render to PNG as raw pixels / without converting color space to sRGB? Sorry if this was asked before, I did find similar threads on other websites with a workaround, but it would be great if there was a way to do this without having to go through photoshop.

What I need:

https://i.imgur.com/qA6X4FL.png

I'm rendering normal maps for foliage textures. The background in that image is a plane with an Emission material with the color 128, 128, 255, and I would expect it to be that exact color when rendered out.

What I get:

https://i.imgur.com/siGUcG7.png
Instead, it renders out as 188, 188, 255, because it gets gamma corrected/converted to sRGB color space.

Workaround that I'm aware of:
Rendering to OpenEXR does not convert images to sRGB. That EXR can be taken into Photoshop and exported as .png, since Photoshop has a checkbox to convert to sRGB, which you can turn off. This works and it's how I got the first image, but I need to do this process dozens of times, and it's not convenient. Any tips?

Thanks in advance.

Use the color management controls . Change the Viewfrom sRGB to LinearRaw


How would I make the unpainted part of a texture paint image not affect object color when mixing? I am trying to model a face in Blender.

I am having an issue where I am trying to use texture paint to make the lips red. I have already set up a procedural skin texture for the head, which works perfectly except it also makes the lips skin-colored.

In order to fix this problem, I tried to texture paint on a red color. Unfortunately, when I created the image for the texture paint, everything was black. This made it impossible for me to combine the procedural skin texture and the texture paint image into the base color of the face without severely darkening the rest of the head.

See if this image helps:

Use a math node set to "Less than" with a very low threshold, and use that in the factor input of the mix RGB.

Illustration :


Non-uniform fading from one texture to another I'm just looking for broad suggestions here. I'm barely post-noob:)

I'm animating a pool of water which will start green and murky, then be magically transformed into clear and sparkly. It's pretty easy to just keyframe the material to change from one to the other, but what I'd like to do is this: have the texture change from a central point, expanding until the whole body is changed: ie, in mid transition, the murky green would have an expanding clear sphere at its centre.

What would be the simplest way to achieve this? If anyone can suggest a tutorial they think might help, I'd be very grateful.

Here is a simple setup how you can do this. I created a spherical gradient that will control the transition from one material to another:

And to control this gradient I use coordinates of empty.

You can use this setup to control textures to.

And you can add some distortion or waviness for this effect using noize texture:

To animate noize move texture in Z-axis:


Blender 2.79 to 2.8 Menu problem I made a model in Blender 2.79 and would like to modify it in Blender 2.8. I can open the project in 2.8, but can't seem to find this feature:

When I open up Blender 2.8 without opening my 2.79 project, I can find the feature. Help!

Try to uncheck Load UI before you open the project in 2.80

Hope that helps.

Good Luck


Dolly Zoom breaks orthographic view (Blender 2.8) Is there a way to dolly zoom in an orthographic view without it switching to a 3D perspective view? I much prefer to work with a dolly zoom over a mouse wheel incremental zoom.

I solved this issue by using the view3d.zoom tool instead of the view3d.dolly tool. As far as I can tell, they work the same, but the view3d.zoom doesn't break an orthographic view. Problem solved!


Use Node Setup for various Materials for a current project I used regular planes and applied a solidify and a bevel modifier on each.

Each of the planes should have another logo on it. So the materials all have the same BSDF - in my case a principled shader - but are all different Materials because of the logos. Also there is a material for the back/side channel of the solidify modifier.

Since I used quite many logos I was wondering if there is a way to change e.g. the roughness for all shaders at the same time.

In other words: Is the a way for objects to share the same Shader but all have their own color input?

Best regards

Janek

You can select the node or the group of nodes you want to share with all objects, then press Ctrl G to group them and rename it (I called it "My Own Node").

So everytime you will edit (pressing Tab) the group, every material will be updated.

In the group you can choose which inputs to show (in my example only color input).


Any way to copy texture coordinates like UVW Map in 3ds max? I'm quite new to blender and I am trying to build a simple room with a repeating texture on all walls. In 3ds Max, this can be done quite simply by applying the UVW Map, setting the required size and copying this modifier to other objects.

And I spent half a day trying to do the same in Blender.

Is there any simple way to do the same in blender?
I would be grateful for any answers!

You can use tri-planar mapping, which is even faster to setup and allows to control the scale in one place.

Create one material for all objects
Set the projection method of the Image Texture node to Box (Tri-planar option in Blender)
Adjust the Scale values of the Mapping node


(Animation Nodes) How do I get an object to follow a spline without rotating along it? Fairly simple question but I'm new to animation nodes and don't know how to do this. I want an object to follow a spline using the Follow Spline Action, but maintain its rotation. Basically like unchecking the "follow" box in the curve data, but with nodes. Is there an easy way to do this?

You just need to apply the action and a transform output with the rotation you want.


Animate a travelling wave - graph view like an oscilloscope I am looking for some guidance and suggestions as to the best approach towards animating some elements of my goal - before I jump in and hack around in "the wrong" or awkward direction.

WHAT I AM TRYING TO ACHIEVE

I want to animate a travelling sine wave - with a graph view like an oscilloscope.

In other words unlike:

a traditional graph diagram
where the leading point of a wave travels forwards

(to the right)

from the 0 point on the time axis
a typical "history" graph

For the end result, I want:

the wave to travel from right to left
the leading edge of the wave to remain at a fixed point on the time axis

(on the far right edge)

which is effectively the current time
so it's more of a "live view" - like an oscilloscope

(or the machine that goes ping!)

Here is a sample target end result:

(modified) animated GIF image that I culled from Wikipedia

[ Thank you User:LucasVB/Gallery ]

WHAT I AM COMFORTABLE WITH

I should be fine with:

the stationary frame

pretty trivial/straight-forward

the leading edge plot point - the red dot

add a red sphere element of an apropriate size
use a location driver to move it up and down the Z-axis
python math sin(radians(current_frame))

ASSUMPTIONS

What is the simplest approach you suggest I should use for the:

1. The moving red sine wave

I'm thinking of:

generating a long stationary sine wave element

(length as long as the number of cycles as I need for the animation time)

use an X-axis location driver

current_frame
to move the element from right to left

Then I would need to:

mask the portions of the sine wave that lie outside the graph frame

left & right

2. The moving graph background

Pretty much the same approach as above.

generate a long background axis "strip"
move it as above with a driver
mask the portions of the background axis that lie outside the graph frame

left & right

1 & 2 Together

I could combine the two elements above into a single moving strip

and mask the portions of the single moving strip that lie outside the graph frame

left & right

REQUEST

Does anyone have any better suggestions for me ?

Simpler, faster, neater ?

As usual, I'm happy to read up if I am given some pointers.

I just want to make sure I use the best or most effective technique to skin the proverbial cat.

Thanks

UV Warp modifier (first approach) shifts, scales or rotates the UV map of an object depending of the relative positions, scales or rotations of 2 other objects (generally, you can use empties for these two objects).

So here, if we move one empty, the UV map shifts and so the texture of the plane looks like it was moving.

Here is the setup :

Create two empties : place one of them on X=0 (that will be easier later) and the second one elsewhere
Add the UV Warp modifier to you plane, like this :

And here is the setup of the plane material :

UV unwrap the plane and adjust the UV map to the sinusoid shape on the texture
Use this texture to mix two shaders : one for the red line and the other one for transparency

The transparency is need to show some grid behind the curve when rendered :

At this step, you can move one of the empty and see that the curve seems to move on the plane.

Now the red dot :

Create the dot (a plain circle for instance)
Place it on the border of the plane
Add a driver to its Y position
The driver need to be dependent on the X position of the empty, and to follow a sinus function

As the UV map is 0 to 1, the UV map shifts of 1 when the empty moves of 1 unit. So we need to multiply the X value by 2 PI.

The setup is the following (can be seen in the graph editor, in drivers editing context) :

Edit : another approach
You can also set up Cycles nodes to draw the curve directly. The main interest here, there is no need of a "static" texture.

Here is an example, made rapidly and so to enhance (using more calculation via drivers, instead of doing it with nodes, surely).

The principle is the following (quickly described) :

Add a keyframe to an input value (to define the speed of the curve)
Use it in the node editor to calculate where the sinus is depending on this value
Use the result on a mix shader node to output red or white, and so draw the curve

Here is this second blend file :

This is to enhance : more calculations need to be done outside of the nodes (using drivers probably), so that math expressions are more accurate and the nodes setup simplified.


Is there a way to avoid overlapping or intersection for randomly distributed objects with Animation Nodes? I distrubuted objects with instancer and the loop function see below:

As we can see the problem is they are overlapping occasionally. Of course, the more object I distribute the more likely they overlap. My first idea was to use the Intersect Plane Plane node but I didn't know how to incorporate it into the graph. To avoid overlapping we should also measure distance between objects to limit the calculations (only adjacent objects matters) because otherwise the node graph could be very slow. So the soulution might be very comlex.

The current graph can be seen below:

I don't have a solution that is not computationally expensive. But if performance is not a big factor in your node tree, here is method you can use.

Append Condition

You create an empty vector list, at each iteration, you construct a KD tree from this list, generate a a random vector, check if there are any vectors in the vicinity of radius equal to circles diameter, if there are, don't append it, otherwise, append the random vector:

Blend File:


Add a glow to a boolean modifier boundary I'm building an animation where an object starts as wireframe, then transforms to solid. Blender 2.79b, Cycles.

I have two duplicates of the object, one of which has a wireframe modifier applied. Then I use an object (a cylinder for now) as a boolean object, set to Difference on the wireframe copy and Intersect on the solid copy. The boolean object has its Camera setting turned off in Cycles Settings. By animating the shape, position and scale of the boolean object, I can achieve what I'm looking for.

However, it would be cool to add a glow effect at the boundary, as if there's electric, transformative energy, say. I can't think of a way to do this. Any ideas?

Thanks!

More than one way.

Use a vertex weight proximity modifier after the boolean to assign vertices to a "glow" group, then use a UV warp modifier to translate this glow group into add UV that you can read in your shader.

Our boolean will create new vertices, and vertex weight proximity only affects vertices already assigned to the group, so we'll first need to use a vertex weight edit modifier, immediately following the boolean, to assign all verts to our glow group.

Then our vertex weight proximity modifier overrides that, assigning only vertices that are close to the cylinder (from 0 to 0.13 distance in this case.)  We use that vertex group to warp a UV map where all verts have been mapped to 0,0 in order to convert weights to something readable by our nodes.  The empties off to the side just establish a 1 unit X difference for the UV warp mod.  See Weight paint in cycles nodes?.

I'm not sure how the boolean modifier generates UV coords.  I believe it interpolates them from existing coords.  Here, any verts created by the boolean are being written properly to our glow map at 0,0.

In our material, we're simply using our UV output from our glow map-- which, remember, represents the proximity of any face of the cylinder-- as strength.  I'm doing a little math just to make it look better.


How to turn these voronoi texture stars white So how do I turn those black star areas white, if I reverse the color ramp OR use an invert function is almost acts as a clipping mask for the wavy purple-blue texture "behind it"

You can for instance take the star from the Voronoi and use that to mix white with the current color output:


Show progress bar in Blender 2.8 exporter Does Blender 2.8 have default Progress Bar in GUI (not in console) to show exporting progress for my exporter plugin (something similar to DrawProgressBar from Blender.Window in Blender 2.49) ?
Thanks

This is all I've found so far:

import bpy

win = bpy.context.window_manager

win.progress_begin(0, 100)

for i in range(1,100) :
    win.progress_update(i)

win.progress_end()

Update

According to the source code this was intended to be a real progress bar, but that was back in 2013, unfirtunately it seems to have fallen into obscurity.


How Do You Stack Instances on Z axis with Animation Nodes 2.0? I'm relatively new to blender and extremely new to Animation Nodes 2.0. (I found out about it 2 days ago). I'm trying to make a cube falloff animation but I can only stack the cubes on the X and Y axis. I would like to stack the instances on the Z-axis and I'm stumped on how to accomplish it. I've rotated the object every which way to no avail. I've attached an image of my current workspace. Any ideas on how to get them stacked on the Z-axis? I'm scantily familiar with Python programming so please be kind to my confused brain with your answers! :-)

Thank you!

The Distribute Matrices Node allows you to do exactly what you want:


boolean difference working weirdly So I am making a cassette tape

the body of the cassette tape (yellow outlined in the picture) is a single object
I added boolean modifier to the body and set the white cylinders protruding in the middle in the picture as a subject.

Now when I hit apply, the hole appears only on the right side.

I checked the mesh in edit mode and the left hole is also there but its not showing up correctly/
How can I fix this issue?

This has been asked before in different ways, so you’re not the only one. The Boolean modifier typically runs into problems with miscalculated normals, so double check your normals in both meshes. If both sides have the same wrong result, check the mode setting on the modifier. If the results are not the same on both sides but you’re sure the normals are correct, you might have some non-manifold mesh or micro-faces somewhere.
Edit: looking at the hole, and thinking about what you want, I recommend calculating the cutting cylinder’s normals to its inside, and using the “union” mode on Boolean. I could be wrong, though.


Diamond Shape Topology on a Flat Surface With No Deformation Planned Is it ok to use this type junction for reduce this shape on a Flat Surface? There will be No Deformation Planned to happen on it.

Your loop flow being good or bad is mostly depend on what you want to do with it.
on a flat surface that does not deform, and it has support loop on top and bottom so it's good to me at least.
on a high deformed surface it "might" cause problems.
as I see now your model is a hard surface and you did it on a flat surface and I don't thing it will ever deform so you are ok.
some might use their loop flow to make new parts out of it or help make stuff separate or help make textures.


How do I change material render preview? I want to change the render material preview by removing the floor in the preview and replacing all the lighting and environment in it with an hdri image, and setting an image as a background, so that the render preview changes from this:

To this:

I also want the material shown in the preview to look the same in Blender's file browser when I use append, like this:

So how do I do all this?
I do not mind using programming with Python if there is no other than this solution.

Had the same question found your then just worked it out by pick things.
Top right hand corner of the 3D viewport there is a drop down arrow.
In viewport shading you can select scene lights and scene world.
I didn't try to see if this would give you the result your looking for but it has worked for me.
Regards


How to do texture painting on a character? I am currently trying to add some color to my human model. It's Nothing fancy with depth and textures, I just want to add some color over the smooth shading. However, this task seems impossible since I don't know how to work the texture painting properly.

I have separated the body parts of my mesh into separate pieces (head, torso, arm, hand ect.) in hopes this would make painting easier. However I find it odd that when I paint on one piece of the mesh the paint will also appear on a piece of the mesh I did not select. Also some areas of the selected mesh are not even being effected by the paint. I have looked at several youtube tutorials but most are dealing with painting on a single mesh and aren't working for me. Does anyone know why this is happening?

It sounds to me like you don't have your UV maps set up properly. Did you unwrap the model after shaping it? What you're describing is something I've had happen when Blender is still trying to use the UV map for the object I started with, when extensive modifications have made that useless. For example, paint appearing on two parts of the mesh at once suggests that you have portions of your UV map overlapping each other.

You have two options, I think: first, you could UV unwrap. To do that, go to the "UV Editing" tab with one of the pieces of your model selected, select the whole thing, press "U" and then click "Unwrap". It may result in a pretty bad map, so you may need to look up some tutorials on UV unwrapping. You'll also need to unwrap each piece separately, and it'll probably be easiest to use a separate image texture for each one.

The second option is easier but not as good for detail -- you could just vertex paint. For that, just switch from "Object Mode" to "Vertex Paint Mode"; I'd also recommend looking up a detailed tutorial on using Vertex Paint, though it's not terribly complicated.

Oh, and one more option: if all you want is a single color, all of this is overkill -- it would make much more sense to just change the material to one that uses the right base color.


retopologize based on a texture? I can subdivide a mesh, for example a coin, many times, then add a texture to it as a Displacement modifier to add detail on the mesh (coin), for example a bust of a famous person.
However, the displacement modifier will require a lot of polygons (over few millions) to make the relief look smooth and detailed. A lot of those polygons are useless and piece in a large group of planar polygons. The 3D preview can also get hard to navigate with the CPU/GPU reaching their limit.

A more practical and easier approach in my opinion would be to have the topology regenerated based on the texture used for the displacement modifier, then adding polygons to that mesh instead.

Is something like that possible?

As far as i know, it is not possible, you have to do a manual retopo or use a decimate modifier to reduce the polycount.


Blender addon development I have a hard modelling addon idea for blender. I have no coding experience and have no idea where to even start with learning coding or what I need to learn. It's an add on building on an existing function in blender which I guess all addons are haha. Could someone point me in the correct direction to learn to code an addon ? Or an easier option for me would someone like to support me and help me build it ? I think it could be quite successful as I am a digital modeller and the function I want to create does not exist in the way I want it. Thanks for reading ! Any help would be really appreciated!!
Have a good day,
Max

Prepare for a long journey. Start small. Aim to have something functional and complete, but simple, as soon as possible.
Here's a good intro on Python: https://automatetheboringstuff.com/
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/advanced/scripting/addon_tutorial.html gives a good overview of writing a simple addon.
I personally learned Blender addons best with Michel's tutorials. Since then he wrote a book about it. The old tutorials seem to be gone. https://blendermarket.com/products/creating-add-ons-for-blender
After you've learned everything, you need a good ref: https://docs.blender.org/api/current/index.html https://docs.python.org/3/reference/
And of course, as all addons for Blender are open source, go and open the folder of your favorite addon and start reading.


What are the advantage and disadvantages of Project From View unwrap method? I would like to know how is the disadvantage to unwrap with the option Project from view

I think is very useful for sharp angles such 90 degrees or planar geometries , but I think is not useful for shapes such as "ornaments" for example , Medieval houses , where there are ornaments with rough or rounded shapes.

I think I can not export that kind of UV mapping, I like or prefer Mark the Seams and I think I have more control on the UV.

Should I avoid this method for export the UV's to an engine such as Unreal or Unity?

PS : I think project from view is useful for Ccycles or stuff to work only in Blender, not for export, not for very professional, but it is useful just quickly method to avoid seams.

You might have a photo of an object in real life that you want to map onto a 3-D object.

So you align the 3-D object to be in the same angle/scale as in the photo and project from view it so that the photo gets a bit more depth than simply flat image being manipulated.

If you have a persons head photoed from different angles, you can stitch together the face using this method.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZDMFkj8GqA


Don't have H.264 as a video output format option I don't seem to have H.264 as a video output format option. I need it to be able to put out video in RGBA (so with an alpha channel). Tutorials on YouTube all have H.264 available, but not my Blender.

I have Blender version 2.79a

Choose FFmpeg Video and then it's available as codec. In 2.79 the Encoding panel has been improved, see the release notes for more information.


A Hollow Hole Around The Equator Of A UVSphere Could someone help me make a straight hole into the center of my sphere. Like this but into the center of my Sphere. https://i.ibb.co/gj8Xg2h/Image4.jpg
My Sphere - https://i.ibb.co/nmxr92K/Image1.jpg
Wireframe Version Of My Sphere - https://i.ibb.co/9YKyp8S/Image3.jpg

-Select that inner ring.
-Ctrl-B and drag to desired width.
-E (extrude), S (scale), Ctrl-Shit-Z (so it does not scale to Z axis)
-Done
I hope thats what you needed!


How do I use bmesh on a set? I have an array that is called ccValids, which contains "good" center coordinates for the cylinders I want to create. These cylinders are created as follows:

for c in ccValids:
    leafs = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add( location = c, enter_editmode = True )

bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(leafs)

It appears that the cylinders are created as one object, which is very good since there is a great number of them and they are all supposed to be manipulated by the exact same operations. However the bmesh.new() command does not work.

The error I get is "Expected 'Mesh' found 'set' instead". Is there a way to use bmesh methods on my nicely gathered cylinders though?

Firstly the issue and error with your code.

Operators only return a python  set containing the status of the operation, for example {'FINISHED'} if finished normally, or {'CANCELLED'} if there was a problem.

On looping a primitive add operator, the object will be context.object the mesh context.object.data on each iteration.  If run in edit mode, (enter_editmode takes you into edit mode on first iteration) then all will be added to the edit objects mesh. This is why you have one object.

Secondly, I'd probably use the bmesh create cone operator as pointed out in answer by @TLousky,  for completeness here is a way to put the created cylinders into a "live" bmesh, that is a bmesh from the edit objects edit mesh.  To demonstrate, I've put in code to select the ngon caps of the cylinders.

import bpy
import bmesh
context = bpy.context
ccValids = [(1, 1, 1), (2, 2, 2)]
for c in ccValids:
    leafs = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add( location = c, enter_editmode = True )
# we will now be in edit mode
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(context.edit_object.data)
# deselect all but ngon faces
for f in bm.faces:
    f.select = len(f.verts) > 4

Result.  Still in edit  mode, cylinder ngon caps selected.

When you've finished operations, a bmesh.update_edit_mesh(context.object.data) will update the edit mesh.


Why can't I change the names of annotation layers in Blender 2.8? When I hover over an annotation layer the tool tip says "Active Layer Index. Double click to rename". However, when I double click, nothing is happening.

Is this a bug?

I use Blender v2.82.6 under Ubuntu 18.04.

There seems to be a workaround:

Hover with the mouse cursor over the annotation layer you want to rename, press ctrl and double tap enter.

After that I was able to enter a layer name.


Controlling 2.8 startup behaviour The 2.8 manual states:

  For locally extracted Blender distributions, the user configuration and run-time data are kept in the same subdirectory, allowing multiple Blender versions to run without conflict, ignoring the USER and SYSTEM files.

How exactly can I control this behaviour for "locally extracted" versions of blender?

Currently (2019-06-25) when I download the blender 2.8 development package and extract it on my harddisk, a change in the preferences will affect not only this specific version, but all parallel installations of blender. This behaviour is the same on windows and linux.

I'd like blender to ignore the USER and SYSTEM settings. How do I do this?

Apparently there needs to be a "config" folder with the appropriate files inside the version folder of a locally extracted blender version (e.g. C:\BlenderTest\blender-2.80.0-git.c0c1b4542f39-windows64/2.80/) for it to ignore USER and SYSTEM settings.

Creating this folder and copying over the appropriate files "userpref.blend" and optionally "bookmarks.txt" and "recent-files.txt" isolates the respective blender.exe from the user and system settings. Any changes made from this executable are saved in the local userpref file.

See this answer for file paths under common operating systems.


How to add a specific amount of loop cuts without the mouse I am working on a blender project where I have a cube in which I want 14 loop cuts.
Blender 2.8 can do exact loop cuts with scrolling the mouse.
My Question is: Can you do this without a Mouse?

Yes you can. Here's how:

with the element selected, hit → Tab
hit ⎈ Ctrl + R and hover your mouse to activate the loop visualiser
hit 5 (if you want 5 cuts)
hit ⏎ Enter
enter a number between -1 and 1 to define the offset of the cuts, or use the arrow keys to move them in increments
hit ⏎ Enter


How do unparent my model from plain axis(object) while keeping rotation There is a empty plain axis that is like parent of my model(s), id like to unparent the model(s) from the empty plain axis but if i delete the plain axis my model gets rotated 180, which is something i cant allow. I need to get the model inside the empty plain axes out whitout it changing model(s) rotation(esentially keeping the same rotation and xyz placement it has inside the plain axis object, aka unparent cant not move the model(s) or worse to rotate the model(s)...

Press ALT+P and choose " and Keep Transformation" from the drop down menu.


Viewport objects became transparent gray. Fix? My viewport was working normally halfway through this project, but all the objects became a light transparent gray. I now see very little definition, and can't really select faces. How do I turn this back to the standard?

Be sure to have the X-Ray disabled in the Viewport Shading menu (see image).


Motion tracking : setting parameter for multiple selected trackers I have 20 trackers which need to be re-tracked and i want to change the method from  'loc' to 'Affine'. But how to set this for all the trackers at once ? i can select multiple trackers but the parameter only apply to single active tracker only. Of course if possible, i don't want to do this one by one for all those 20 trackers.

Any help ?

I would advise you not to treat all trackers the same. Not all trackers need to be in a single mode, some work better with perspective, some with loc rot, some with loc rot scale. It all depends on the kind of motion you are tracking and how the particular tracked feature moves in the video and the item's visibility. If you are learning, think of trackers as individual processes. Supervise the behavior of each tracker individually to learn how to get more accurate results.

And to answer the question, no there is no easy way to select all trackers and change the motion model for multiple trackers. It could probably be done by scripting.


Detect walls and prevent player from jumping on them My main goal is to have the best jumping experience - (Keep jumping up and down when spacebar is held down, longer jumps when spacebar is held longer), where there is no wall jumps.

Currently, minus a few features I kinda wanted to have, you can only jump (With the Force Motion) only when the spacebar is pressed, in a collision with an object (Walls too). This creates the ability to wall jump, which I do not want. Removing the Collision sensor makes things worse, where you can keep jumping in the air to space.

My question is, how do I use the collision sensor (if it's a good way), and to detect/prevent the player from jumping up walls?

First your problem was that you set the ray sensor range to a kilometers (100000.00), set it to 1 or 2 (1.00), also there is no objects with "walls" propety in your file and the ray should look for ground, i set the higer floating ground to wall and you not able to jump over it, the other i change from ground to floatingGround property so this way the ray's and collisions sensors will not add 2 times the force of jumping when the player is over 2 grounds and add another set of ray and collitions sensors and motion actuator  to jump over the floating grounds.

Before edit

Use a ray sensor property ground combined with the kerboard sensor and collision sensor property wall.

PD. Its late here and this gif take to much lol.


Volumetric Spot Light with Cycles I'm using blender 2.76 rc1 with an AMD Raedon HD 7900 series, I'd like to create a volumetric spot light with cycles render. I set the volume scatter (density 0.1) in volume and mist pass in world, and put the spot light slightly below the street light, but, there isn't a volumetric effect.

UPDATE 1: I tried to set volumetric light in a pc with an Nvidia graphic card and works, I think it's an incompatibility problem

UPDATE 2: I read the wiki blender of openCL status, and talks about the AMD limitations, including the volume:

  AMD

  Limitations

  Initial split kernel patch was done by AMD and was aimed to make Cycles render on Windows platform. This kernel works reasonably well with simple scenes, but has much harder time to work on a production files, it also lacks following features:

  Transparent shadows (they're disabled due to AMD compiler issues)
  Correlated multi jitter pattern, SSS and Volumes, which could be
  added to the split kernel, but prefer to focus on making existing
  feature set rock-solid first.
  Branched path tracing which is quite tricky to integrate into current
  implementation of split kernel and supporting it will mean we'll do
  split kernel once again

.

For volumetric lights you need to control a few things:

The emission values of the lamps need to be a bit higher than normal to compensate for loss due to the volume Scatter.

Rendering will be slower, a lot noisier, and with lots of Fireflies, so be ready to bring up the samples and clamp indirect samples. The best solution time/quality I've found is using branched Path Tracing and increasing the volume samples and a value for clamp indirect around 3.00

Work with the lowest volume scatter value that still yields the desired result. Higher values will be even noisier and the lights will need to be even brighter.

Keep in mind that volumetric light effects are better seen when the background is dark. How you combine your mist pass will make a huge difference as mist will tend to make things brighter and make volumetric lights less visible.

In my opinion a more realistic approach would be not to use mist, but to use volume scatter and volume absortion together.

sample file to play with:


Why does this cycles render have grainy edges? I am trying to simulate a camera calibration procedure using Blender and for this reason I am trying to generate images of a checkerboard pattern to use in the calibration algorithm. After rendering I noticed two problems (as you can see in the attached image):

The straight lines are "pixelated"
The angles of the squares in the pattern are not touching

Complete view:

The problem:

I am rendering with cycles at 1600x1200 resolution, the lens used is a perspective lens. The checkerboard is generated using the materials checkerboard option and roughness is set to 0.

As suggested in the comments, this is an artifact from anti-aliasing.

In the Film section of the Render tab in the Properties panel, set the Width of the Pixel Filter all the way down (0.01). That in essence turns off the anti-aliasing.

If you are using a shadeless material (Emission shader) so noise is not a problem, then there is another way to remove the anti-aliasing.
Set the samples to one.
With only one sample there are not enough samples for the anti-aliasing algorithms to work, because there is only one.


Material opacity not working I'm trying to use a texture and maps for a chain-link fence, nut for some reason when I try to use opacity it makes the whole thing turn black

this is what mine looks like

and this is what it should look like

I got the maps from here: https://3dtextures.me/2019/10/01/metal-fence-001/
no matter what i do it won't change

What render engine are you using? Are you rendering on the GPU?
If you are using EEVEE, check the blend method of the material: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/eevee/materials/settings.html#blend-mode
If you are using Cycles and are rendering on the GPU, try rendering on the CPU. It may be a GPU driver problem.
If the problem still persists, call your mom. :-)


How do I add extra bones to rigify armature? I am using rigify on my blender character, but I added some extra bones because my character has wings. I'm trying to make the extra bone I added become one with the rigify add-on. How do I go about doing that?

You can add new bones without modifying the script.

Just create new bones or duplicate existing bones in the MetaRig, before generating the rig, orient and parent to the bone you want them to follow, then, in Pose mode, set the rig_type in the bone options.

The rig type determines how rigify handles the new bones. Wether it will create controls, etc.

Video demo from DanPro


Cycle's image sequence texture not playing I have an image sequence texture that plays fine in eevee but when I switch to cycles it no longer plays. This happens in a new scene as well.
Has anyone seen something like this? I have heard of a animate checkbox in the image texture node but I can not find anything like this in my 2.83 version.
The last thing I did was update my RTX drivers and render settings.

I was able to solve the issue by upgrading to Blender 2.9 as it recently came out.
I am still not sure exactly what caused the problem in the first place but I made sure to reset my settings and preferences over from scratch and I now have full image sequence functionality.


How do I get the object to follow the Mixamo Rig I want to get the lightsaber to follow the stormtrooper's hand but when I try to parent the lightsaber to the hand armature, it doesn't move.

.Blend File: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WRyeYB08a70tibXILOAZLvfxa9XX-OPw

There is an Armature of Trooper and Armature of Lightsaber consist from one bone.

Parent Lightsaber to this bone - select Lightsaber add Armature modifier > Object = Armature.001 and Vertex Group > Bone

Parent this bone to Troopers hand bone - in this case seems to me enough to select bone in pose mode add Bone Constraint > Copy Location > Target Armature > Bone mixamorig.RightHand and enable Offset to adjust proper position in hand.

On frame 60 the left hand if shifting so you would have to compensate that by Lightsaber rotation in that direction. Since Rotation Constraint doesnt use offset (like Loc does). You will need

add Empty
Parent to bone "LeftHandMiddle1"
for Lightsaber add Bone Constraint > Track to Empty
position Empty somewhere in a middle of fist

For animating object holded by two hands would be better snap hands and animate object. Like here Rigging two handed weapon. Animation from mixamo has quite a lot shifted hands so they dont match for holding stick (like lightsaber), fingers are also out of healthy human position :) nothing for camera close look.


Remap wires or simplify triangles? I'm working on a quick project for work where I need to turn an STEP file into an FBX for Blender, which I have done... However, now that it's in Blender I'm noticing some problems with its wireframe and things of that sort.

For one, the wireframe is really... messy? For lack of a better word. It has made the right shapes and amazing 3D model, but a lot of the triangles/polys are stretched and bundled together near pivot points-- I'll attach an image. There are too many, too close together, that aren't doing anything.

The other issue(s) come along with this. There are over 6 Million triangles. The file is huge. And there are 3000 objects, which I can join, but I'm throwing it in there to help make a point.

Is there any way for me to just... remap my model? Simplify the triangles? Please help out if you can, and thank you.

First of all select your triangular mesh faces then press ALT+J for shortcut of 'Tris to Quads'. it can help you to solve some of triangles, for rest of tricky areas you have to do it manually.


How can I make a wall around a road on a cars track? I'm new on blender and I'm doing (at least trying) a Assetto Corsa track.
The question is about creating a wall on the two sides of the road.
I created a wall with a cube, added an array modifier pointing to my nurbs path and then I created a curve modifier, so the wall follows the middle of the road. But I can't edit the X axis of that wall, so I can't scale it to match the outside or the inside of the road. It looks like this:

Any suggestions?

Here I leave you my .blend so you can check anything you need.

Thanks in advance for any help :)

Enter wall edit mode and move it along local Z axis, then duplicate it and move it again on the Z axis. To know better what you're doing, turn Display modifier in edit mode and adjust edit cage to modifier in modifiers stack.Like this:


Physics: mesh moving on top of of another I'm not sure how to use physics to make a mesh move on top of another, lets say a ball rolling on an uneven surface.

I'd like to be able to keyframe the moving object from point A to point B on the X and Y coordinates, but to have it follow the uneven surface of the Z axis.

If you really do not need the Physics simulation, you could use a Shrinkwrap constraint. To use a shrink wrap constraint, Add an empty, then  parent the empty to the ball (Ctrl P). Then add a Shrinkwrap constraint to the empty. Set the Shrinkwrap Target to the ground. For your case, you could set the Shrinkwrap Type to Project, then set it to -Z.

Keyframe your ball. Set the ball as a active rigid body (Add Active), in the Physics tab of the Tool Shelf. Then on your ground plane set it to a passive rigid body(Add Passive) in the Physics tab of the Tool Shelf. Play the animation from the beginning Shift Left arrowto jump to the beginning, and Alt A to play.


How can I merge vertices into an object in Blender? I have these vertices that I've projected onto my object the question is how can I merge them (not just join objects) into the faces so they are actually editable and the faces are altered so I can edit the object using my vertices?

It looks like you projected the contour of the same object onto it's side, thus i believe the newly generated vertices should be lying on the edges of the object you want to connect them to.
Since you want to merge them, i can offer 2 ways:

Join the mesh objects and then cut the faces that you want the vertices to be merged into with the knife tool. The new generated cut gives you new vertices that should all be lying on the same edge as the vertices you want to merge, thus selecting each vertex per edge from the new cut and merging it to the vertex from the projection would result in a merged geometry with the projected vertices incorporated.
Merging the 2 mesh objects (object and the projected vertices object), then delete the faces&edges that cross the projected vertices. Afterwards just bridge the edges left and right from the vertices projected to the edge of the projected vertices. Closing the gap again and essentially merging all into one editable mesh as well.

You could depending on what is easier use both options. But since you used the contour of the object to project onto its side, i believe the second solution might be easier.


How to have a nice visual join between two colliding meshes? I don't know if the answer is in the modeling, texturing or even the compositing part but my aim is to be able to achieve a nice visual look between two meshes (like in the render shown below).

The picture is a snowman scene and one of the worse parts of the render is the joint between the ground and the snowman.

When looking at it, it is pretty obvious that both snowman and ground are two separate objects and that is because when I tried modeling the ground as an extension of the snowman, the textures wouldn't apply properly and the overall look was even worse than the current result.

This is only one example out of many other situations in witch I get this kind of issues.

I'm interested in knowing what solutions could be found to that problem.

In 3D modeling this is often quite difficult.

You could make them the same mesh and join the geometry, then use a vertex-group or vertex-colours to blend between 2 materials (most obvious solution, check on tutorials for blending between materials).

You could cheat...

add grass (particle systems), pebbles, rocks etc - this is what happens in real life isn't it? It will likely increase your render times but hide the join.
you could apply alpha to the lower part of the mesh that meets the ground so you don't see a sharp change.
You could add a strip of faces which sits just above the join and blends between the 2 surfaces (with alpha on both sides so you don't see any hard edges), I don't recommend this but it can be made to work, you just have to be careful that lighting is ok and its not casting shadows on the faces below it.
You could render them on different layers and composite them, alpha blending parts of the lower mesh. (I don't recommend this but adding for completeness)


Cannot render from CLI: wm_main_playanim_intern: no filepath argument given When I try to render from CLI using something like:
blender '/home/lxif/VFX/OZELOT/vfx clip/VFX/scenes/TREES _ FLOOR/FLOOR_2.blend' -a

irrespective of what file I try to render, I get the following errors:
AL lib: (EE) GetLoadedHrtf: Invalid header in /usr/share/openal/hrtf/default-44100.mhr: "MinPHR02"
AL lib: (EE) GetLoadedHrtf: Failed to load /usr/share/openal/hrtf/default-44100.mhr
AL lib: (EE) GetLoadedHrtf: Invalid header in /usr/share/openal/hrtf/default-48000.mhr: "MinPHR02"
AL lib: (EE) GetLoadedHrtf: Failed to load /usr/share/openal/hrtf/default-48000.mhr
wm_main_playanim_intern: no filepath argument given
AL lib: (EE) alc_cleanup: 1 device not closed

If I use sudo, I only get:
wm_main_playanim_intern: no filepath argument given
AL lib: (EE) alc_cleanup: 1 device not closed

What can I do to alleviate this? I want to be able to render multiple files overnight.
xx

Your command should be:
blender -b '/home/lxif/VFX/OZELOT/vfx clip/VFX/scenes/TREES _ FLOOR/FLOOR_2.blend' -a

You missed the -b option, that tells blender to batch render.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/advanced/command_line/render.html


How would one go about creating a genetic algorithm and/or neural network for blender? Where would I need to start? I am just about able to code genetic algorithms and neural networks using Python, C# etc so that is not primarily  the problem.

Is it just a case of importing modules into the blender script? Does anyone know and is able to explain in rough detail how GAs/NN would be implemented in blender?

If you can, many thanks. I've seen someone do it before, but I suppose they're too busy to give feedback.

Edit:
Due apologies if my English is bad, it is not my native tongue.

Seems like what you need is simply to import python machine learning libraries to Blender. Blender has its own python, but you can enable importing machine learning libraries to Blender in two ways:

Install these libraries on Blender's python, hopefully using pip.
Make blender use the system's python (has to be the same Python version as the bundled python installed with Blender).

If you're not sure where to find Blender's bundled python, type this in Blender's interactive python console:

import sys
sys.path

This will show you all the included libraries available to scripts running in Blender, and among them Blender's python directory. Here's the output of this line on my machine:

['C:\\Program Files\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\2.78\\scripts\\addons_contrib', 'C:\\Users\\tfc64\\AppData\\Roaming\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\2.78\\scripts\\addons', 'C:\\Program Files\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\2.78\\scripts\\addons', 'C:\\Program Files\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\2.78\\scripts\\startup', 'C:\\Program Files\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\2.78\\scripts\\modules', 'C:\\Program Files\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\python35.zip', 'C:\\Users\\tfc64\\Anaconda3\\Lib', 'C:\\Users\\tfc64\\Anaconda3\\DLLs', 'C:\\Program Files\\Blender Foundation\\Blender', 'C:\\Users\\tfc64\\Anaconda3', 'C:\\Users\\tfc64\\Anaconda3\\lib\\site-packages', 'C:\\Users\\tfc64\\Anaconda3\\lib\\site-packages\\Sphinx-1.4.1-py3.5.egg', 'C:\\Users\\tfc64\\Anaconda3\\lib\\site-packages\\win32', 'C:\\Users\\tfc64\\Anaconda3\\lib\\site-packages\\win32\\lib', 'C:\\Users\\tfc64\\Anaconda3\\lib\\site-packages\\Pythonwin', 'C:\\Users\\tfc64\\Anaconda3\\lib\\site-packages\\setuptools-23.0.0-py3.5.egg', 'C:\\Program Files\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\2.78\\scripts\\freestyle\\modules', 'C:\\Program Files\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\2.78\\scripts\\addons\\modules', 'C:\\Users\\tfc64\\AppData\\Roaming\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\2.78\\scripts\\addons\\modules']


How do I make a high poly model from a low poly model and a normal map? Complete noobie to Blender here.  I was wondering if there was a way to add the bumps from a normal map into a model so I can 3D print it with all the indents and such.  I assume it's something to do with the Displacement modifier but I have absolutely no idea how to use it or any nodes or such.  If you need more info on what the normal maps look like and such I'll be happy to send them.

Moonboots was kind enough to provide one link in the comments, which I'll check out further.  Scroll down that Reddit page to find usage instructions; it works for me.
Another option here is njob ( http://charles.hollemeersch.net/njob/ ).
Njob just outputs 8bpc height maps.  Neither NormalToHeight nor Njob can properly handle texture tiling.
Note that conversion of normal maps to displacement maps is inexact.  There exists some data necessary for displacement that isn't present in a normal map.  Neither of those utilities take your UV tangents into account, and you'll find that displacement is incorrect as your UV rotates.  You will need to adjust displacement parameters to eye.
It's also possible for a normal map to encode for impossible angles, that can't be represented by geometry.
However, I know that it is possible to get reasonable results using Njob.  I sometimes convert from normal to bump in order to not have to worry about UV tangents during material creation, or to smooth out a rendered displacement-- smooth shaded normals interpolate differently than position, so rendering as normals and converting to height can create a smoother displacement map than just rendering height/position.


How do I rearrange the list of render layers? This may seem like a strange question but I set up a space scene with stars and planets and etc and each had their own layer except the planets which I accidentally put on the same one as the stars. I create a layer for the planets but it's on the bottom of the stack and I'm not sure if it affects it, so here is my question:

How do I take the bottom layer and put it on the top?

Also due to copyright reasons I can't upload the file. Sorry guys :(

Render layer order doesn't actually effect the render (aside from maybe changing the order in which the layers are rendered).

However, for organisational purposes it can be nice to reorder them. For this reason I created a script, available on Github, which adds up and down arrows to reorder the render layers:

https://github.com/RayMairlot/Move-Render-Layers

Note: Untested in the latest version of blender, not guaranteed to work, save before using etc.


What is the most efficient way to model this kind of wrought-iron shape? I only care about the sphere and its design, not the bird on top.
This kind of curvy iron design shows up on many Victorian designs and other examples of old-fashioned smithing. How can I efficiently produce a sphere like this? (Also feel free to comment/edit if you know a more precise term for this than just "curvy Victorian ironwork.")
My first idea was to make a wireframe UV sphere, then model the curvy bits separately. Then, if I could somehow snap the curvy bits to the sphere in a way that makes the bits follow the curve of the sphere, I could do something with an Array modifier. However, I don't know how to snap objects that way.
Another example of the "curvy bits" I'm talking about:

(source: rackcdn.com)

This is no shortcut. But you will have detailed control over your model.

I would start with a highres UVsphere and then add geometry with snap and shrinkwrap to follow the spheres surface.

Then add a solidify modifier followed by a subsurface modifier:

You can apply the solidify modifier and fiddle with the geometry if you want to make it beveled or such.


Get value of FloatProperty Probably this is a very newbie question, but I am having issues trying to access the value of a FloatProperty.

I have something like:

    float_property = bpy.props.FloatProperty(
        name='Test float property',
        description='This is an example of a FloatProperty used by a UserExtension.',
        default=0.0
        )

    def export(self, blender_object, export_settings) -> Extension:
        print("Example extension")

        print(self.float_property)
        print("Float value", self.float_property[0]())
        return None

Printing the float_property directly shows the following

(<built-in function FloatProperty>, {'name': 'Test float property', 'description': 'This is an example of a FloatProperty used by a UserExtension.', 'default': 0.0, 'attr': 'export_ExampleExtension_float'})

and printing the self.float_property[0]() shows this

Float value (<built-in function FloatProperty>, {})

For a BoolProperty I can simply do

if aBoolProperty:
   print("bool property is true")

so the question is: How am I supposed to read the float value of the property?

You can access the value of any declared operator property within all provided methods.

The following demo is based on Templates > Python > Operator File Export. Once the execute method is called by the user (when hitting the 'Execute Some Data' button) the values/states of both user properties (in this case my_float and my_enum) are going to be printed into the console:

import bpy

# ExportHelper is a helper class, defines filename and
# invoke() function which calls the file selector.
from bpy_extras.io_utils import ExportHelper
from bpy.props import StringProperty, BoolProperty, EnumProperty
from bpy.types import Operator

class ExportSomeData(Operator, ExportHelper):
    """This appears in the tooltip of the operator and in the generated docs"""
    bl_idname = "export_test.some_data"  # important since its how bpy.ops.import_test.some_data is constructed
    bl_label = "Export Some Data"

    # ExportHelper mixin class uses this
    filename_ext = ".txt"

    filter_glob: StringProperty(
        default="*.txt",
        options={'HIDDEN'},
        maxlen=255,  # Max internal buffer length, longer would be clamped.
    )

    # List of operator properties, the attributes will be assigned
    # to the class instance from the operator settings before calling.
    my_float: bpy.props.FloatProperty(
        name="My float",
        description="",
        default=0.0
    )
    my_enum: EnumProperty(
        name="Example Enum",
        description="Choose between two items",
        items=(
            ('OPT_A', "First Option", "Description one"),
            ('OPT_B', "Second Option", "Description two"),
        ),
        default='OPT_A',
    )

    # Methods
    def write_some_data(self, context, filepath, use_some_setting):
        print("running write_some_data...")
        f = open(filepath, 'w', encoding='utf-8')
        f.write("Hello World %s" % use_some_setting)
        f.close()

    def execute(self, context):
        # Print property values
        print ("User values:", self.my_float, self.my_enum)
        # Write the data
        self.write_some_data(context, self.filepath, self.my_float)
        return {'FINISHED'}

# Only needed if you want to add into a dynamic menu
def menu_func_export(self, context):
    self.layout.operator(ExportSomeData.bl_idname, text="Text Export Operator")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(ExportSomeData)
    bpy.types.TOPBAR_MT_file_export.append(menu_func_export)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ExportSomeData)
    bpy.types.TOPBAR_MT_file_export.remove(menu_func_export)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    # test call
    bpy.ops.export_test.some_data('INVOKE_DEFAULT')

Also read: What do operator methods do? (poll, invoke, execute, draw & modal)


How to draw line with 2d thickness using Animation Nodes? I trying to make something like this (callout title. like in image) with animation nodes. And i need to draw line with thickness and animate it. If i use curve with Bevel Object (second curve) it give ugly result near twist (image1).
I know how to draw curve or line mesh using animation nodes but they havent thickness.
Does anyone know how to add thickness?

Let the thickness be $T$, the length of the base be $L$, the length of the other side be $W$, and the angle between the base and the other side is $\theta$. Then you should create a mesh composed of 6 vertices with the following vertices locations:

$(0,0)$, $(0,T)$, and $(L,0)$ are trivial. For the point $(L-T\cot{(\theta/2)}, T)$, the y location is trivial, the x location is computed by noting that $T\cot{(\theta/2)} = T\frac{\text{base}}{T} = \text{base}$, where $\text{base}$ is the base of the triangle composed from $(L,0)$, the point, and its projection on the x axis. For the point $(L+W\cos{(\theta)}, W\sin{(\theta)})$, $W\cos{(\pi - \theta)} = W\frac{\text{base}}{W} = \text{base}$ where $\text{base}$ is the base of the triangle composed of $(L,0)$, the point, and the projection of the point on the x axis. And $W\sin{(\pi - \theta)} = W\frac{\text{height}}{W} = \text{height}$ where $\text{height}$ is the height of the triangle composed of $(L,0)$, the point, and the projection of the point on the x axis. Finally, for $(L+\cos{(\pi-\theta)}(W-T), \sin{(\pi-\theta)}(W+T)))$, we add a vector to the aforementioned point, this vector is computed from the triangle composed from $(L-T\cot{(\theta/2)}, T)$, its projection on the the side whose length is $W$, and the intersection point between the projection lines of the point on the x axis and the side length whose length is $W$. Which conclude the derivation of the point locations.


How to know when to use seperate meshes When modelling an object, how do u know if it is best to create a new mesh, or keep modelling out of the same one. How much effort should you go into keeping the model out of all the same mesh?

Do the same thing as real world factory/builder creating the object, if doing this help you to keep clean topologies

Saying that you have to add a button on a plane panel, and you don't care about the gap that between the button and panel. Then you should consider direct add a new separated button mesh.

Since as moonboots said, if the thing is created that way in real world, it should modeling in that way. The crafting pipeline in real world factory already test the SOP. Unless you have a good reason, just create a new mesh.

You can also create a Suzanne monkey in your Blender, and see the mesh of it. The eyes are actually separated from the face.

There are some exceptions, like when you are creating game asset. The number of vertices inside the object matters the performance. And by merging the button vertices and the panel vertices will give a less vertices object. Then you should consider merging those geometry for game.

Also, when you are modeling living creatures, and you need to control them by non-rigid deformation(bent). You should probably use an intact mesh for a good behavior in deformation algorithm.


How to open the lid on the laptop I am having issues with a laptop I converted from the sims 3 to the sims 4. The laptop in the sims 3 was animated, when a player clicks on the laptop, the lid opens when the sim goes to use the laptop.

The sims 4 does not have laptops, the game has desktops and pads. One other person was successful in getting the lid to open, but it stays open and never shuts. It is not animated.

I can either get the lid to open and stay open, or I can animate the lid.

I know nothing of animation and I do know it has to be outside of Blender.
So, I will need to open the lid and keep it open, but have neither "cut" through a mesh before. I am extremely new to Blender let alone to meshing and creating.

So, I would need detailed explanations; preferably with photos, I'm a visual learner.

Here is a photo of the laptop Here is the file

Thank you in advance for all of the help with this. It is greatly appreciated.

Ok I am not sure exactly what you are trying to do.

In edit mode make sure you have the option to select faces.
Click random faces on the top and along the sides and corners, then Hold Ctrl and then hit the + on keypad about 15-20 times to make sure you got the entire top lid selected.
Hit P to seperate the object, Position the top lid how you would like it to be open, follow the link "how to create a hinged door" suggested in the above comments section.
Once the object is where you want it, select everything and hit CTRL+J to join it all back to one.

keep in mind nothing is modeled on the inside where the computer screen would be, so you would need to put something there


Hair mesh to hair particles Is there a way to "convert" a hair mesh to hair particles? I have a few hair meshes and their textures are really low quality. So I would like to keep the hair shape and change it to particles, if it's possible somehow. Maybe by converting the parts of the hair mesh  to curves? But what if it's one solid part only?

There is an addon called hairnet that can do this in some cases:
https://en.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Objects/HairNet

This only works on mesh hair that has been modeled in certain ways though.


How do you place a cut at a specific measurement? I am learning Blender and come across this instance often yet still can't figure out how to solve it. If I have a wall and I want to cut a hole out using boolean difference, how do I place the object to do the cutting at a specific measurement from the edge of the wall? Say for example, .880m from the edge. (I have my units set to metric)

You can use snap to attach the face to the wall edge:

Then use typing move to manage your door to the desired position:


Blender 2.8 greasePencil Poly and surface drawing In the new grease pencil what is the way to stick a surface and where we can find the poly option to create simple block shapes like a typography custom.

When you select a Grease Pencil Object and switch to the draw mode, an Origin dropdown menu is available at the top right of the window.
You can choose your stroke placement there!


Mirror modifyer not mirroring the movement of an object to be specific im creating a character, i mirrored the left eyeball and i grab it and  move towards the centre which suppose to make the two eyeball closer , but what what happend instead is the right eyeball moved outside the skull. When i move the other objects, such as eyebrow, it is mirroring the movement. Dont know why just the eyeball is moving wrongly, thanks for the help

Sounds like you're in object mode. Check that. It should get closer if you move the eyeball in edit mode.


Why is Ambient Occlusion creating this extra light? (Eevee) (Includes pic) Does anyone know why turning AO on is creating this extra light, as well as a sort of bloom effect? This is in Eevee. Thanks.

I don't think that there is much you can do. To me, it looks like that large amounts of light in your scene are reflecting off objects onto others. What ambient occlusion does it it doesn't only let light fall from the lamp to the object, but it can bounce off objects onto others. This bloom effect might just be light bouncing off the wall onto other (probably reflective) materials.
Just know I am not positive, as I am just basing my prediction of the picture.
Some things you might be able to do is fiddle with the roughness and specular values of the object. Specular values would probably be better, as they break the rules of light physics.
Hope this helps.


How to create a bridge loop without selecting face? The face in the middle keeps being selected even though i only want to select the vertices of the missing faces to create a bridge between them so that they connect

I believe the right question would be how to fill the gaps/holes.

While vertex selection does not work here to do it in one go, each side can be done without a problem, edge selection also works and in some situations avoids the unwanted face selection as well.

I made a video with what i believe you were looking for:

The Bridge loops tool would create new faces that would overlap 2 faces, the one mentioned in the question and one in the back. Even if you only bridge the top and front, you would close in the face mentioned in the picture, then it would be better to delete the face and bridge from the back to the front, spanning over the 3 edges in the back to the front 3 edges.

Like so:


Local anchor for group master (move/translate/offset of group master moves group instances)? Let's say I start with the default Blender (2.64) file, except I set the cube to be 1 for all dimensions. At that point, the cube is at xyz location (0,0,0).

Then, let's say I select the cube with right mouse button, and go to Object / Group / Create New Group, and confirm the name "Group" in the "Create New Menu" bar with [Enter]. The selection outline turns green, meaning it's a group "master" (as far as I can see).

Now, let's say I press Shift-A; and choose "Group Instance" > "Group", and set the new instance to Z=2.3; with all selected, the view looks something like this:

Now, let's say I deselect all with A, then select the group master with right-click; and let's say I move it to Y=-2; then the result is:

... that is, it is noticeable that the group instance/clone also moved in respect to its center (note the group instance axes, which remain in the set position)! Which means, I guess, that groups are defined in respect to the global coordinate center (0,0,0) as anchor.

My question is: is it possible to define a group, but in respect to the, say, bounding box center of the group as anchor - such that when I move/translate the group master, the group instances would remain anchored at their set position (basically, at the center of the group instance axes)? Also, is this documented anywhere in Blender documentation (I had problems finding this info)?

Creating a group-instance is a different thing from creating a linked duplicate.
When you create a linked duplicate, the object data is shared between the two objects, but each object can be transformed or changed with modifiers without affecting the other.

group instances, on the other hand inherit all of the geometry and data characteristics of their defining group of objects and also inherit their transforms with respect to the scene origin, not the group objects center.
The empty of the group instance acts as an additional displacement gizmo so that you can transform the instance, but moving the parent objects in the global coordinate system will propagate that change to the group instances.

Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a group origin-even a temporary one, so you can't produce a group instance that doesn't behave this way.  Programs like AutoCAD have what are called 'blocks' which are collections of entities with a local coordinate system so that you can instance and transform them.  AutoCAD stores block data in a non-graphical part of its and replaces the defining geoemtry with an instance of the block.

You acheive this same effect in blender by creating a group in a seperate blend file and then instancing it in your scene.
It's not always convenient to have a file link between a group definition and an instance of the group, so what I've generally done is assign my grouped objects to a layer that's turned off or create them in a new scene and then use instances everywhere in the layout scene.


Is it possible to use object motion to drive audio properties in Blender? I've seen plenty of examples on how to drive motion of objects in Blender with audio, but I'm trying to do the opposite - drive audio properties based on the motion of objects.
More specifically, I'd like to tie the volume of an audio file to the rate of motion of an object in Blender (length of the displacement vector?) so that it adjusts "automatically".
So if the object is stationary the audio is quiet (or silent). As the object speeds up the volume of the audio would increase in tandem (to some limit of course), and as it slows down the volume would decrease again.
If this is possible, can it also be used to control playback rate as well to affect the pitch of the audio?
Note that, despite my previous question, I am definitely not trying to achieve a Doppler effect here (which would depend on rate of approach/retreat from the viewer).
Thanks!

For anyone else interested in this, the following StackExchange post contains a script which does exactly what I need.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/66257/70741
Having never used drivers before, I found this an incredibly useful introduction to them, and I can see myself using them a lot in future - I am, by trade, a programmer, so it kind of suits my mindset I guess.
Basically just follow the instructions there to get the delta X,Y,Z between frames and drive some custom properties dX, dY, and dZ on the moving object - the linked discussion talks you through doing all of this.
Once you've done this, you can use the custom properties in turn to derive the distance of motion between frames as sqrt(dX*dX + dY*dY + dZ*dZ) and drive another custom property distance
Once you've done that, you can use the custom distance property to drive the volume of a speaker object (or whatever else) however you'd like. You can also easily calculate a speed value using the frame rate if you need it (distance was sufficient for me)
You'll likely need to tweak the resulting values to suit your requirements, but it's not that hard to do.
The adjustments are a little "choppy", but I'm pretty sure that can be smoothed out by updating the script to track a moving average over several frames, rather than just between single frames (which I'll be experimenting with next).
Thanks to everyone who dropped by to help out!


Mesh not mirroring correctly I'm new to blender and am running into issues with mirroring.  I am trying to mirror the truck's cabin over the z axis but it's mirroring over on the other side of the vehicle. I tried flipping it and moving the origin.  How do i fix this?

First apply rotation using ctrl + a then move your 3d cursor to right edge of the cabin and set the cabin's origin as the 3d cursor(object -> set origin -> origin to 3d cursor).Also move up your boolean modifier above the mirror modifier.


Are there good techniques for creating high poly regions within lower poly meshes when using subdivision modifier? I have been learning to model in Blender using the subdivision modifier, cuts, and support loops. (For an example of what I mean, see this video from Arrimus 3D. I find this technique is quite good for generating smooth and interesting geometries while retaining a pretty low poly mesh to work with.
I find sometimes I would like to add a high-poly region within an otherwise low-poly mesh. Consider the following simplified example:

Here I have a somewhat low-poly cylinder, with two levels of Catmull-Clark subdivision modifier applied. I would like to add an extruded panel (seen in the bottom left of the picture). Do do this, I extrude out some faces and then beveled the corners with a few segments. The beveling tightens up the corners nicely, in effect forcing the sub-div modifier to interpolate over that smaller region.
At first glance it seems ok, but if you zoom in there are noticeable artifacts (most visible w/ the red racecar matcap, but also visible with studio lighting):

I understand that this is likely the consequence of the ngon being generated in those regions. Converting to quads is tricky in this case, because the bevel has higher geometry density than the rest of the cylinder (although I am also new to this and possibly just missing the obvious solution). If I try cutting across the corner quad I seem to get different (but still visible) visual artifacts.
I realize this is a specific instance, but there are other simpler examples of what I mean. For example, consider a scenario like this:

In the image above, I start with a low poly plane and then slice one of the interior quads. I extrude the sliced quad, convert its inner region to a circle, and then extrude once more. At first glance it looks ok, but the normals have some odd artifacts where the high-cut and low-cut regions intersect:

The effects are less pronounced in this example.
My question is: are there some general retopology techniques or guidelines I can follow in instances like this? It seems like a relatively common thing - wanting to create a more detailed region within a low-poly mesh and avoiding artifacts at the boundaries.
You can download the blend file here if you want to take a closer look: Download (800KB)
Thanks for the assistance.

So the rules for good subdivision topology, which you're violating and which are responsible for your artifacts, are:

Quads only-- no ngons, and minimal triangles.
No 6+ poles.
Put 3 and 5 poles on the most planar parts of your mesh-- definitely not at places where your mesh has a right angle.

There are other rules.  The rules only really matter for non-planar faces-- for faces that are out-of-plane with their neighboring faces-- because any verts created in the middle of a planar neighborhood will still be in-plane, and it doesn't much matter where exactly in the face they get created.  (As long as you don't have any concave faces-- when you subdivide a concave face, the subdivision-generated vert might not actually be in the bounds of your face, leading to double of the mesh and z-fighting.)
One way that good subdiv topology is sometimes communicated is, "Follow your edge flow."  If you look at the top of your circle in N2RPm.png, you can see that you're just laying a grid over your circle and bridging to the edge.  "Follow the edge flow" isn't always very useful advice for beginners, because it's something that doesn't make sense for a while, maybe not until you're good at topo anyways, but that's a good example of not following your edge flow.
Now, given those rules, how do we bridge areas of dense verts with areas of sparse verts?  Something like this:

Notice something especially important: I bridge the higher vert count to the lower count in a planar part of the mesh.  Not where the mesh bends 90 degrees.  Notice, no ngons, no triangles.  All 3 and 5 poles are placed on planar parts of the mesh.
There are limits to bridging like this.  You can drop two verts, or multiples of that, every time you use a new edge loop.  Here, I'm bridging 16 verts to 8 verts.  But you cannot ever drop one vert-- you cannot ever, using pure quads, bridge an even number of verts to an odd number of verts.


major wobble on my rigged cat I have a cat model that I have sculpted and rigged. He is a pretty fat cat, in between realistic and cartoonish. I made the legs kind of short and not anatomically correct. When I do the walk cycle everything works fine but his belly mesh wobbles way to much. I have tried everything that I can think of to reduce the wobble. I have tried weight painting. I brought down the bones for legs to match with legs. Body looks kind of like a balloon, (that is the way I want it). Some wobble would be good but looks ridicules. I have tried constraints but end up with other problems. I been at blender for a while but haven't done a lot of characters as of yet. I am really desperate to finish this character and start on others for my cartoon I am working on. I would be really grateful for any help or suggestions, good tutorials etc. Thank you!

I have found a fix to my problem, posted picture just incase someone else has the same problem with a character. I basically added bones to areas that what distorting more than I cared for. The rig is complex (blenders own rig) but I like it. I tried resizing bones and adding sub dividing bones that only caused more problems. So I finally thought adding to breast bones and placing them in areas that caused to much mesh deform. I also did the same for torso and made two sub bones from it. also from the torso bone a stomach bone. stomach does not deform at all any more when animating but I can use it manually if I want.


How to flip direction of dupli objects? I want to know how to get the dupli object to flip? Examlpe: I have bolts distributed on one side of the default cube. How can I get the "bolts" to point out on the other side of the cube.
I have a mesh that I'm using for the duplication (have tried with dupli faces, and verts). I have the "bolts" placed on one side of the cube no problem, but no mater how I try to rotate the faces of the duplication mesh the bolts still face the same way. I have tried adding a mirror modifier on the duplication mesh, copying and rotating the faces but to no avail.

If you scale an object by negative 1, it will reverse it on all axes.  Then you can just rotate it by 180 degrees on a single axis, and you will have essentially created an exact mirror image of an object without the hassle of a mirror modifier.

Hope this helps!


How to open properties panel? I've opened a downloaded file that does not have a properties panel where you can change materials etc. and I don't know how to reopen it. This is the panel I mean:

Easy solution first: Avoid loading the UI saved in the file, un-check the box shown in the picture below:

Shows the top right corner of the open file browser.

Click on the little cogwheel/options icon and you can un-check the "Load UI". Results in opening all data but leaving your User Interface untouched.

Longer solution for completeness sake:

If you have no properties and outliner area, you can hover with your mouse over the separation between the 3D View and the Menu, as they are essentially 2 different areas. Your mouse will turn into the 2 sided arrow and you can right click and select "vertical split", then split the 3D View where you want the new area to start. After that you can do the same again along the line separating the 2 areas and this time split horizontal. Afterwards you can simply switch each area to which ever type you want.

Easier to understand visually:


Why my volume nodes not working in blender? I tried experimenting with volume nodes in blender but none of then seem to work. Every node just produces a rough volume cube. This includes for every type of volume node like Principled Volume, Volume Scatter etc.

Eevee is still limited, you can't use volumetrics for other shapes than cubes, plus keep in mind that you need to increase the Sampling to get a better result. Also play with the Volumetrics > Tile Size, lower looks better, and Samples:

That said, you have new objects, ShiftA > Volume > Empty that allow you to create custom volumetric shapes. Once created, give it a modifier > Mesh to Volume, in your scene select an object as Object of your modifier, then hide the object, and you have your custom volumetric:


Kit-ops: how are cutters done? I was looking at the free version of Kit-ops plug-in, and I noticed that the selection of a single component of the cutter, selects all the element of the cutter. This happens both in the 3d view and in the outliner.
It looks like all the elements are grouped, but I don't understand how it is done. There is parenting, but even removing the parent the selection works as before. Also, parented objects can not be selected that way.
I also noticed that the main object has a number of user data corresponding to the "child" objects, but the data-block is at object level, not mesh level. Maybe this is the reason, but I don't have any idea on how to do that.
In this screenshot, after selecting ADV Cube3 1 cube 002, ADV Cube3 1 plane is selected as well.
Also, ADV Cube3 1 plane has 3 users
Any hint or explanation on how this is done would be much appreciated.
Thank you,
Luca

After @Xylvier's suggestion (thanks!) I wrote in the Kit-Ops support page and the developer explained to me that it is a function within the plug-in which can be turned of.
I suppose there is a recursive function which selects all the elements which are recognized as part of the main container object.


Blender Flame Smoke animation rendering I am playing around with my first fire animation attempt.  Settings are done but I have the following 2 difficulties,

I would like the flame animation to be a constant one.  As it is it starts from nothing at frame 0, develops into a flame at frame 66 and stays constant till frame 100.
I would like it as in the part from frame 66 to 100.  I tried starting the animation at frame 66 but it did not work.

The flame is not rendering, only the smoke is.  I tried to enable the volumetrics as in the tutorial I saw but there is not enabling button.

Here I uploaded the file I am working on.

Thanks for any help given.

To display the flame, connect the Volume Info/ Flame socket to the Blackbody intensity socket of your Principled Volume shader

As regards having a sustained flame, without the moment when it "ramps up", I believe the easiest way is to just bake your simulation cache for many frames, then remove the first 66 frames from the animation (Render > Start > 67). It's impossible to skip the baking of the phase where the flames develop, because you can't easily create an already-burning starting condition.

You could in principle move the smoke cache 66 frames forward, but it's hacky (requires moving several files manually) and I wouldn't suggest it.


How to duplicate render layer could be render layer duplicated? With all its properties and freestyle settings preserved ?

There is only button for adding, but newly added layer is not set.

At the top of your Blender window, select Cycles Render.
In the Screen-layout drop-down, select Compositing.
At the bottom of that panel, put a check next to Use Nodes.

You can now branch the Render Layers Image output to several nodes.
You get to decide which nodes to use.  Just Add whichever ones you need,
then send the output from your nodes to Composite Image.


How do I fix my texture appearing backwards? I am a blender "noob" and I am following this tutorial

Now, I have two problems. First, I have no idea of what nodes go where, and second, the world is in the mirror dimension.

Probably you just need to open UV Editor, selecet all uvs and scale on X Axis with a value of -1, which will mirror uvs back to normal

You can also mirror with a vector mapping node on shader editor


Problem with the Specular Glossiness node and Metallic Roughness Goodmorning everyone

I write because I have a problem with the Specular Glossiness node: I do not know how to connect it to Metallic Roughnes.

I'm creating a 3D file, to be exported to glTB 2.0 (glb) to create a 3D post on Facebook.
I downloaded Importer / exporter from KronosGroup, then I imported the Metallic Roughnes node onto my project on Cycles Render and later I imported also Specular Glossiness.

I was able to give a metallic look to my 3D element, but I would also like to give the effect of the reflection so that the Synapticweb logo that you see in my first pic, is reflected in the element that is below it.

But I do not know how to do this.
Although I link the Specular Glossiness output to Metallic Roughnes, there is no Glossy effect.

Here is an example of my post: https://www.facebook.com/paginaprovaSynptc2018/posts/2225106837534167

Can someone help me?
Thank you very much

I guess that facebook's 3d viewer does not support real time reflections. Cycles uses raytracing to calculate the reflections while most online viewers use rasterization like game engines. In order to get reflections in these engines you would have to create reflection probes or screen space reflections (which does not seem to be supported by facebook yet).