Produce Isometric Rendering with Height / Depth / Normal Map for Dynamic Lighting layer I am trying to render an Isometric scene for a game project. I also want to include depth / normal information so I can do some dynamic lighting in the game world in real-time.

Goal

So I have a 3D blender scene; I need to bake a cycles render of this scene into a 3D mesh that I can import into the game scene and will allow me to apply some dynamic lighting from within the game engine I import it into.

My Attempt

To do this:

I render a 3d scene into three different textures, with the camera in orthogonal isometric perspective. Using the Blender Compositing Nodes, I produce the following 2d images:

2D color texture
2D Normal Map
An OpenEXR depth texture (distance from camera basically)

Then, I open a new blender scene and add a 2D plane with many many subdivisions. Then I apply the above textures onto this plane. This produces a deformed plane like seen below:

This is a 2D plane, deformed by the Depth Map, not the original 3D scene.
The idea is, that I can rotate this mesh such that the ground aligns with the game world's 2D surface plane, and navigate it like a normal 3D scene with lights / characters. Using an orthogonal perspective, this will look like the isometric scene rendered in step 1, except I can apply dynamic lighting etc.

The Problem

There are really two problems with this approach that I have run into. Both are related to the faces seen in the below image (highlighted)

Lighting wont pass through these walls, which isn't a huge issue since I can probably find a way around that.
Those faces, while in theory should not be visible, due to the resolutions constraints on subdivisions of the plane, that are slightly visible in an orthogonal projection. These faces slightly overlap entities behind the front-facing faces of the object (for example, if I had a character standing behind the cross) and creates a border effect for the cross. See below picture:

Is there any way to either solve these problems, or maybe a better approach I can take to achieve the above goal?

Thanks!

I think you should approach this a different way.

Using a displacement map to generate your whole world probably isn't a good idea. It will actually lead to lower quality and worse performance.

When making a game, the usual process goes something like this:

Make individual models (assets) for the game. This would mean things like houses, trees, walls, etc. would be individual objects. I would imagine that is how you made your scene initially.
Add materials to these objects. When you export a model to a game engine from Blender, the only information about how the objects look is stored in an image texture. Thus, anything that can't be stored in an image texture (fog, glowing objects, anything that has to interact with the world in real-time like a reflection, etc.) usually shouldn't be done inside Blender, at least not in the way that you'd normally set these things up in Cycles.
Export the individual assets with their textures to a game engine, and build/rebuild the world in the game engine.

When making the individual assets for a game, there is a general process that is usually followed for this too. I'll use a house as an example since you have one in your scene.

Start by making the 3D model. If your goal is to make the house as realistic as possible in the game, you would make a very detailed house model in Blender. If you're not going for really high detail, you can make the house with less modeled detail in Blender. This can still give really good results too.
Texture the house, using whatever methods you want. You can use image textures, procedural textures, whatever it takes.
If you made the house with more modeled detail than you think the game engine can handle, at this point you would "retopologize" the house, meaning making a lower detail version based on the high detail model.
Bake the various kinds of detail into image textures. I think this is the step that will help you the most. Cycles has a bunch of options to bake detail, including normals, roughness, color, shadows, and many more. These settings are all found at the bottom of the Render Properties tab (the Camera icon) on the right side of the screen. If you have a high detail and low detail model, you can bake the normals from the high detail model to the low detail model, making it look like it has more detail than it actually does.
Once you have an individual object made, with as little modeled detail as possible, and you have all the textures that you need for that object, you would import it into the game engine. This process can vary depending on the engine, so if you need more information on how to do that I would look up tutorials or other information on the specific game engine.

I mentioned that using a displacement map will give you a lower quality result, so I'll explain that a bit more.

Let's look at a simple cube. A modeled cube has only 6 faces, which will be converted to 12 triangles when rendered. No matter how close you get, the faces will appear perfectly flat, and the edges nice and clean. If you use a displacement map, you will need a very dense mesh to displace to get even close to the same amount of definition. If you wanted to a get an edge that appears perfectly straight and sharp, you would actually need a mesh that is so dense that each face ends up smaller than a single pixel. Otherwise you would get jagged edges, rounded edges, weird faces on the edge, or other issues. For certain things displacement maps can be great, but in general, a properly modeled and textured object can be more detailed with less faces.

If your concern is realism while keeping it easy to render, I would look up more information on modelling game assets, baking details such as normals, and how to setup game worlds using whatever engine you choose.

I know there's a lot of information here, and this still isn't a perfect guide to making games, but it should give you enough to get you started and help you find more information.

Hope this helps!


script or addon to add animation tools button in the N properties? did anyone know what script or add-on to make new slide in the N properties and add the animation tools to these slide??

the simplify button is from scene tab properties
, the constant button is from user preference editing (new f-curve default)
, the red button and in/out box is from animation tools (start/end animation)

i think if there's a script or addon to make UI like this, it will help animator alot to save the work space.. btw sorry for my terrible eng

EDIT
Added repository. Can now be properly installed, activated and deactivated as an addon.
This script creates the desired section with other properties added.
import bpy

class anim_tools_ui(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_label = "Animation Tools"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_le_animation_tools_ui"

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

        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(context.tool_settings, "use_keyframe_insert_auto", text="")
        row.prop(context.tool_settings, "keyframe_type", text="")
        row.operator("anim.keyframe_insert", text="", icon="KEY_HLT")
        row.operator("anim.keyframe_delete", text="", icon="KEY_DEHLT")
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(context.user_preferences.edit, "keyframe_new_interpolation_type", text="")
        row.prop(context.user_preferences.edit, "keyframe_new_handle_type", text="")

        row = layout.row()
        row.separator()

        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text="Playback")
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(context.scene, "sync_mode", text="")
        row.prop(context.scene, "frame_current", text="Frame")
        row.prop(context.scene.render, "fps", text="FPS")
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(context.scene, "frame_start", text="Start")
        row.prop(context.scene, "frame_end", text="End")

        row = layout.row()
        row.separator()

        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(context.scene.render, "use_simplify", text="Simplify")
        row.prop(context.scene.render, "simplify_subdivision", text="levels")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(anim_tools_ui)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(anim_tools_ui)

register()

It is important that after pasting the script in the text editor, the name of the text data block ends with ".py" and Register is checked.
Further Resources
Building a UI Panel
Conversion into an addon


Mesh appears purple after join After I joined together a mirrored joined duplicate into one single mesh, the duplicated mesh becomes purple:

What is going on here? Do I need to be worried about this? When joining the roof with the base of the building, this doesn't happen.

The difference in face colours is an indicator that the direction of those faces are not uniform.

Enter edit mode and look for the side panel submenu called "Mesh Display"

In the normals subheading, select the face icon. Lines (called normals) will start to emit from each face. I've adjusted the size slider so those lines aren't ridiculously large or small. The thing to note here is that if you don't see the line emitting from some faces, that those faces are flipped.

To make them uniform press cltr+F to get the faces menu and Recalc normals   (Or Directly using Ctrl+N)

This makes the mesh faces point in a uniform way, and the colour difference will go away:


Cannot join armatures without mesh detaching I am trying to join two armatures and cannot get the meshes to stay in place. I've tried applying transformations and made sure there weren't any bones with the same name, but the meshes still detach. What am I doing wrong?

Did you apply scale to the rig/armature after re-sizing the armature? If you don't apply scale (Ctrl+A) the mesh will not follow it.
Or are you trying t o"join" them together? Ctrl+J.


Paste x flipped pose does not change I'm having issues where the pose I want to mirror does zero to bare minimal change, as in the arms may move slightly but nothing is mirrored it stays the same. My old pose was scrapped and remade simply because when I use the x paste pose mirror it deforms everything. I recreated a new armature with proper naming conventions (.L and .R) Everything seems to be in order however the pose does not mirror or move at all. Is this a roll problem? Or something else?

You have some name problems, like "Leg Control.R.", you must delete the final dot ("."), otherwise it won't copy paste "Leg Control.L". Same thing for "Lower Arm IK.R.", "Leg Pole Target.R.001" and maybe some other ones...


Error when I try to check off POV-Ray 3.7 in Add-ons When I try to add POV-Ray 3.7 to Blender 2.75a in Windows, I get the following message:

  Report Error
  Trackback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75a\2.75\scripts\modules\addon_utils.py", line324, in enable mod=import(module_name)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75a\2.75\scripts\addons\render_povray_init_.py", line 56, in from.import(
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75a\2.75\scripts\addons\render_povray\render.py", line 32, in from.import df3 # for smoke rendering

  ImportError: cannot import name 'df3'

I've downloaded povwin-3.7-agpl3-setup.exe, povwin-3.7-editor.exe and povwin-3.7-editor.exe into a folder on my desktop. I executed both installs but the message I got is still the same as stated above.

Any help is appreciated.

Download the Blender program again when some library is missing (here df3)


How to set frame rate to 25 FPS as default? Is it possible to set a default frame rate to Blender? I usually use 25 frame per second. If I started a new scene it would be useful to have 25 FPS as default.

Just change your default .blend file. In a new Blender window, change the default framerate, then go to File > Save Startup File or press Ctrl + U.


How Can You Animate a Flat Eye Texture? So, I have a VRM that I've exported into a GLB file as of now. Issue is, the eyes iris or pupil isn't movable because of it's pupil being flat, and it's a texture. I've looked up ways to fix this like AnimAll but I don't get it, and it's not really helping.
Anyone know how to fix this?
--
The thing is, I'm new to the software so I don't know where it is.

I'm in UV Editor, But I have no idea where the UV Warp is, I'm very new to it.

If its a texture and you want to animate that check UV Wrap modifier in the modifier tab of the object.

Then, you can animate the texture in the Transform options of the UV Wrap modifier.


Can't open recently downloaded textures: "Cannot read...no such file or directory" I recently bought the new updated textures from textures.com (cgtextures), and after more than an hour of intense download and sorting the textures, i get this annoying message:

"Cannot read '//....\Desktop\Trabajos Blender\Do Widzenia\Blender\Biblioteca del Blender\Texturas, Materiales\Texturas de páginas random\Metales, industriales, engranajes, etc\Plástico, polímero, goma, etc\Plastic polymer\TexturesCom_Plastic_Polymer_1K_albedo.tif': No such file or directory"

Another thing is that every textures i recently downloaded are marked as 0b files instead o 777kib or 1.5mib or such.

What's happening and how i can solve this?

MS Windows includes limitations on the maximum file path to any accessible file - it appears that you have exceeded that limit.

See docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/fileio/naming-a-file - in particular the following section :

Maximum Path Length Limitation
In the Windows API (with some exceptions discussed in the following paragraphs), the maximum length for a path is MAX_PATH, which is defined as 260 characters. A local path is structured in the following order: drive letter, colon, backslash, name components separated by backslashes, and a terminating null character. For example, the maximum path on drive D is "D:\some 256-character path string<NUL>" where "<NUL>" represents the invisible terminating null character for the current system codepage.

Your path (including the assumed 'c:\users\' prefix not shown) exceeds the 260 character limit. This means that when Blender (and other programs) attempt to access the files the file is effectively unreadable.

Since this is a limitation of the operating system (rather than a limitation of Blender) the only option is to relocate the files to a more O/S-friendly directory.


Where does a rotation go when I Apply it to a mesh? When you Apply a rotation to a mesh, where does it go, and where can you find it in bpy?

I.e. bpy.data.objects['mesh']. ...?

The transformation is applied directly to the world space locations of the vertices/edges/faces, then removed from the object transform. As a result, it is lost, as it is no longer distinguishable from any other change to the base mesh data. Such as edit mode changes, other applied transforms, applied modifiers, or the original script/primitive/tool that spawned geo there in the first place.


Why are my objects 'exploding'? I have just encountered an issue with a model I have created. When I scrub through the timeline parts of the model seem to explode away from each other. To my knowledge I have not added any modifiers to it and do not want this to happen!
Here are a couple of images which illustrate the problem:

At Frame 0

At Frame 10

Here is a link to the blend file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/x3pw00lmhvw0tut/Cabin.blend

Any help would be much appreciated!

You set several of the roof pieces as rigid bodies. To delete the rigid body and all of the motion calculated from it Select the roof pices, then in the physics tab of the tool bar press remove.

You can also get to the physics settings in the physics tab of the properties window.


How to preserve measurements when manipulating an object I’m making kitchen cabinets for a project of mine and here’s a problem I ran into: The cabinets should have spaces in between them and at the same time the measurements are supposed to be preserved from left to right. How can I do that?
Without spaces

With spaces (a little bit exaggerated so I can make my point. This is an eyeballed example just to show what I mean)

In other words - There are 4 squares where the first and last edge are overlapping with the green line:

I want to resize the squares equaly with equal spaces btween them, but the overlapping to be preserved:

I know this can be solved by having a little knowledge of algebra and just tipe the number for the array, but I think there should be an easy way to achieve this in blender without having to bother with algebra too much. Using empties in combination with array and snapping is my guess. Any ideas?

after applying the array modifier seperate the object :

in edit mode hit  P and select seperate by loose parts
set the origin to geometry for all objects
for the side objects set the origin to the side faces

scale all to induvidual origins


How to change the axis of the Move Tool within Edit Mode? (2.8) When I enter the editing mode and move a vertex or edge, the tool's axes (gizmo) is always diagonal / sloped. When I manipulate a polygon, the Z axis follows its normal.
I can't change the Transform Orientations:

How to make the move handler follow the global axes? I've already tried changing the Transform Orientations to global, local, view but nothing happens.
How to force orientation to be like this?

This problem only occurs with the Move Tool. When I switch Transform Orientations with Rotate and Scale Tools, it works perfectly.
Thank you.

Nevermind. I discovered the solution. All manipulation tools have their own definition of Trasform Orientations that will only respect the TO of the viewport if it is as 'default'.

As my Move Tool was with Transform Orientations = Normal, it was no use changing the TO of the viewport. Just set to 'default' to resolve.

Thank you. I'll leave the topic to anyone who has this same problem in the future.


What are View Coordinates? I was reading a wikibook about Blender, and it started talking about view coordinates. I don't exactly understand what they are or the purpose of their existence.

Could someone please explain them in a newbie friendly fashion?

When you switch to View space Coordinates, all transformations depend on the view; So the x axis is horizontal and y is vertical; If you move your view, so move the axis.

It's useful if you only want to move a particular object relative to the view.

To lock a transform to any axis, while in View transform orientation, press the respective axis key twice; So to lock translate to the View's X axis, press G X X.


Is there any function that allow us to clone mesh or a kind of stamp tool? I am developing a pair of shoes from a standard template, which already has 2 sides of shoes. I have edited the right shoe, but hasn't done the left shoe yet. So, I wonder if there is a way that allows us to copy the shape I have edited in the right shoe to be on the left shoe without manually edit it once again? Both shoes are in the same object, but different vertex groups. Please advise and thank you so much!

With your object selected, you can press Shift + D to duplicate it, and then Ctrl + M as well as a letter denoting your axis (X, Y, Z) to mirror the object along that axis. Foe example to copy a shoe and Mirror it along the Y axis, I would do Shift + D (Duplicate) and then Ctrl + M + Y (Mirror on Y)


How can I save both FK and IK animations in one .blend file? Here’s my problem: I exported a model from MakeHuman using the “game” rig. I imported the model into Blender, and made an animation using FK. From here, I am able to import my model and animation into Unity without issue.

Then, I added some IK bones/constraints to my model’s rig, and made another animation using IK. Now, I can't find a way to successfully import both animations to Unity. If I turn off the IK constraints, my FK animation works great but my IK animation is broken. If I leave them on, the reverse is true.

I've tried using visual keying, but it doesn't seem to apply to IK.

Is there some way I can bake the FK animation to always ignore the IK stuff? I would like to be able to get both of these animations into Unity without having to completely redo one of them (and further, I’d like to be able to work with IK or FK in the same model depending on what kind of animation I want to do.

Thanks!

An old question, but based on this link, you need to set up IK through a script so it works correctly.


connecting two objects so i wanted to connect two objects in this case its a plane connected to the bottom of a head mesh, i create a plane, line it up delete a edge on the head mesh and plane and i select both vertices in edit mode and i fill them the problem is that it shows up black while the middle is simply extruding the mesh. actually im not sure why it shows up as black?, but im trying to achieve the same results as if i was extruding the mesh. shouldnt the uv map of the head be making it atleast the same color

Pressing "CTRL-J" in object mode should join the two objects, and make them the same color. It works in my case.


Rigify moving and posing, origin doesn't seem to move When I Rigify a model, pose it in a scene and move it around etc.
The model seams to remember the "origin position", from when I created the character.

(mesh origin as in blender terms, this is a property of a mesh)

When I then want to edit the rig, or mesh.
I put it into "rest position".
Then it jumps back to that original position. This is a bit frustrating in large scenes. Apparently I moved or posed it wrong.

Or is this normal behavior?

An armature moves the mesh data of an object, not the object itself. If you make the armature the parent of the mesh object, the mesh object will move with the armature when you move it in object mode. You will also notice that adjusting the armature in pose mode will leave the origin of the armature at the start position.

The modifiers have some display options that can be turned on/off. Some modifiers only have two some three and some four, the armature modifier has all four. Enabling all four will prevent the mesh snapping back to it's original position in edit mode.


How to make one object gradually disappear as it passes through another object How to make one object gradually disappear as it passes through some object (e.g. teleportation gates)? How to make it gradually appear in other gates?

For a basic effect, you could animate the transparency.

Almost all UI properties are animatable, You can keyframe them by right clicking and selecting Insert Keyframe (1 or I), or hovering over the value pressing I.

Also see

How can I animate my Cycles shaders?
Can modifiers such as "Subdivision" and "Array" be "animated"?

You could keyframe the transparency out as your object enters one gate, then keyframe the object location to move it to the other gate (or use a duplicate object) and keyframe the transparency back.

Cycles:

You can do this in Cycles by using a mix node and animating the factor:

Blender Internal:

This can be done in BI by enabling Transparency in Properties > Materials and animating the Alpha:

Other methods:

Another way you could try is using a Boolean modifier to remove parts of the object as it intersects it. You could then have a duplicate of the object moving out of another boolean cube to make it appear the sections are teleporting:


Is there a way to apply uv texture in the middle of animaton? I want to apply a UV texture (on the selected object)  in this frame but when I enter edit mode it pops back to the original position, can anyone tell me how to apply UV texture in the frame and this position? thanks

To unwrap it in the cloth simulated position you need to apply the cloth sim as shapekey, then activate that shapekey and project your texture in editmode, then delete the shapekey and add the clothsim back in.


How can I make an image plane have transparency in Eevee with nodes? I have an imported model from Adobe Fuse with a basic animation. I have set up the clothes and skin to have the appropriate transparency but following the same workflow for the eyelashes does not seem to work. I have currently tried linking the file to a Diffuse BDSF and a transparent BDSF node mix shader but that doesn't seem to work out. In cycles this works out just fine but in Eevee this still shows the planes. I have checked that screen space reflections are on and that refraction is checked. Even still the render always shows the planes.

Any advice would be appreciated and I will make sure to follow up if I am able to figure this out.

I figured this out just after posting, Isn't that just the way...
Anyways the answer to this question was to enable the blend mode in the materials settings to "AlphaBlend" along with the Screen Space Refraction. I also cranked the shader factor to 0.0 (I can essentially disconnect the Principled BDSF) which gave me the eyelashes I was looking for.


cycle units measurement through hotkey is it possible? i find imperial is much easy or convenient to setup with camera distance from
object a to b and eye level height

i want to set a hotkey that cycle through units ( metric , imperial )
hitting same hotkey instead of manually going to tab and click the desired units button

i tried to use wm.context_toggle_enum and type the following attributes but gives error
context.scene.system , scene.system , UnitSettings.system , data.scene , data.scene.system
or do i need a custom .py script in order to achieve the cycling of metric and imperial units

thank you for answer

The path to use for the context Attribute is

scene.unit_settings.system

Where you find a class name of UnitSettings is shown with it's name in CamelCase, you will often find a corresponding property that represents it will use the form unit_settings with all lowercase and underscore separating words.


How can I make a round pipe? I am trying to make a roundish pipe for my project. I am not very experienced in Blender yet and this project is very ambitious for me.
Basically, I am trying to make Pathfinder from Apex Legends, and I am still at the head part. He has two pipes going around his eye (I will show the image below). To make a pipe, I followed this video tutorial:
The Fastest Way to Model Pipe In 5 minutes Blender 2.8

You can just use a nurbs path (or any curve) with a curve circle as a bevel object...

Model the curve into place, and choose the circle as the bevel object in the curve>geometry properties and adjust from there.


How can I render with RenderMan in the GPU, in Blender 2.76? I just find out Pixar made free non-commercial renderer for Blender.
So I downloaded it, installed, added addon into Blender and try to render with it...

tt works really great but.... I don't find out how to change render settings to GPU.

Is it possible to turn on GPU rendering while using Renderman addon for Blender ?

Thank you very much.

Renderman currently doesn't have GPU support:

Does Non-Commercial RenderMan support GPU's?
The current version of Non-Commercial RenderMan is a multi-threaded software application that does not use GPU's due to the current fluidity of graphics hardware and supporting software standards. However GPU's are an important aspect of the future direction of rendering that Pixar is currently researching, some of which has already demonstrated in public. As the technology matures for comprehensive production usage we will reveal more in future.

EDIT For the new Renderman 21, there is a separate Technical FAQ which adds the sentence

For the first time, RenderMan 21 introduces GPU accelerated denoising, and as GPU's mature for comprehensive production usage, we will reveal more in future.


why is the diameter different on these two Bezier curves using the same Bezier circle as a bevel object? I have created three closed Bezier curves. The first, "loop" and the second "shape" are simple Bezier circle that have been scaled and the scale applied. The third, "knot", started out as a Bezier circle.  In edit mode, I added 3 more Bezier circles, positioned them, and then edited them to be connected into a single curve.

Next, I set the Bevel object on loop and knot to shape.  I expected two closed tubes of the same diameter, but instead the diameters are different.  Why are the diameters different?

I know I can duplicate shape, rescale the duplicate and use it as the Bevel object for one of the paths, but I would like to understand what is going on.

If you enter edit mode and select the vertices of the curves you can see it in the n panel that the radius of the vetices of the thicker one is set to 2.5 while the other one has vertices with radius of 1.

If the profile needs to be a simple circle you do not need to use another curve as Bevel shape at all. You could also just set the fill type to Full in the curve properties and then set a desired Bevel Depth. You will need to increase the resolution for it to be round as well:

It might be a few clicks less to set it up this way.


Why is my fire simulation blocky even with 5000 resolution divisions? For some reason, my fire simulation is really low resolution even if i set it to a crazy number of divisions. why is this happening?

here it is with 5000 resolution divisions

here it is rendered out

I have found the solution, i looked at the size of the domain like you told me to and it was actually huge, so i scaled it down and now it works fine.


Vertices—loop indices vs. unique indices I need to set the colors of vertices from data generated by third-party simulation. To do this, I need to access the vertices by their unique indices with the Python API.

I can do this with bpy.data.objects[].data.vertices[], but there doesn't seem to be a color attribute there that I can set. I can access (and maybe set) vertex colors with bpy.data.objects[].data.vertex_indices[].color, but it seems that vertex_indices gives me the loop indices (which are not unique, as neighboring edge loops will generally share at least one vertex).

Can someone clarify how to do this (access vertices by unique index and set color)?

Many thanks in advance!

In Blender, Vertex Color maps don't assign a single color to each vertex but instead assign a color to each vertex of each polygon, as described in this answer by zeffii.

As you noted, loop indices are not unique. So if you want to assign a color the vertices by their unique index you would have to create a mapping of vertex indices to loop indices, i.e. for each polygon, map poly.vertices to poly.loop_indices:

import bpy
from collections import defaultdict

obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
col = obj.data.vertex_colors['Col']
polygons = obj.data.polygons

vertex_map = defaultdict(list)
for poly in polygons:
    for v_ix, l_ix in zip(poly.vertices, poly.loop_indices):
        vertex_map[v_ix].append(l_ix)

Once this is done, vertex_map will be a dictionary with the unique vertex indices as keys and lists of loop indices as the values. E.g. something like this for the default cube:

{ 0: [0, 8, 21],
  1: [1, 11, 12],
  2: [2, 15, 16], ... etc.
}

To assign the colors, you can now loop over the dictionary and set the color for each loop index of each vertex:

# color vertices 0 to 3 in red, all other vertices white
for v_ix, l_ixs in vertex_map.items():
    for l_ix in l_ixs:
        if v_ix in [0, 1, 2, 3]:
            col.data[l_ix].color = (1, 0, 0)
        else:
            col.data[l_ix].color = (1, 1, 1)


Import multiple non OBJ models? I'm having a problem trying to import multiple models from a format that uses a custom plugin. I press a to select them all, but only the first is imported. I have well over a thousand models, how would I go about doing this? I tried the solution here: How to batch import Wavefront OBJ files?, but it only works for OBJs. How would I do this for .rip files?

The plugin I am using is located here:
https://github.com/Dummiesman/RipImport

You can do this by calling bpy.ops.import_scene.rip() as shown below:

import os
import bpy

path_to_rip_dir = os.path.join('C:\\', 'rips') #where C:\\rips\\ has the list of rip files

file_list = sorted(os.listdir(path_to_rip_dir))

rip_list = [item for item in file_list if item.endswith('.rip')]

for item in rip_list:
    path_to_file = os.path.join(path_to_rip_dir, item)
    bpy.ops.import_scene.rip(filepath = path_to_file)

You will need to install the addon first as mentioned in the readme file of the addon:

Blender 32 Bit:
   On 32 bit Blender installations, extract the downloaded ZIP file to
   C:\Program Files (x86)\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.77\scripts\addon
Blender 64 Bit:
      On 64 bit Blender installations, extract the downloaded ZIP file to
      C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.77\scripts\addons
After you extract the Add-on, it will NOT show up in your
import/export list by default!
After extracting the Add-on, start Blender. Once Blender is
started, open up File->User Preferences, and navigate over to the
Add-ons tab. Find the add-on or search "NinjaRipper", and enable it.
Click "Save User Preferences" on the bottom of the dialog, and close
the dialog.
Now you will be able to use the Add-on.


How to prevent things from out of sight rendering I was wondering if there was a way to only calculate the things that are currently visible in the frame. My scene has a lot of trees that are slowing down my render times, and these are mostly out of sight. This would be especially efficient especially in my scene.

TL;DR Is there a way to stop things in the background that are out of sight from being processed/ slowing down rendering?

and these are mostly out of sight

but we can still see them!

Please read How is Cycles different from Blender Internal first.

  Most materials [and objects] scatter light, so Cycles needs to account for light bouncing in different directions. How this is done depends on which [Integrator][6] is used.

Objects scatter light even if they are outside of the visible frame.

If you remove them, you will likely receive a different result, even if they weren't directly visible. There are many ways to restrict rendering manually.

You could do a check with python to see if an object is in the cameras frustum. Adapting the code from this reddit post1 we can select all the objects which don't contain points in the frustum. However for a production ready check, we would also have to take edges/faces modifiers and reflections into account.+

import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector
from bpy_extras.object_utils import world_to_camera_view

def check_if_vertices_in_frustum(scene, cam, obj):
    mat_world = obj.matrix_world
    cs, ce = cam.data.clip_start, cam.data.clip_end

    for v in obj.data.vertices:
        co_ndc = world_to_camera_view(scene, cam, mat_world * v.co)
        #check wether point is inside frustum
        if (0.0 < co_ndc.x < 1.0 and
            0.0 < co_ndc.y < 1.0 and
             cs < co_ndc.z <  ce):
            return True
    return False

scene = bpy.context.scene
cam = scene.camera

for obj in scene.objects:
    if obj.type == 'MESH':
        if (check_if_vertices_in_frustum(scene, cam, obj)):
            obj.select = False
            # obj.hide_render = False
        else:
            obj.select = True
            # obj.hide_render = True

1 Help with finding whether a vertex is visible from a camera or not


Using 2 Texture-Atlas for UV Mapping a Mesh , How do I setup same Configuration in Unreal Engine 4 I UV mapped My Level using 2-3 Texture-Atlases in blender , Now I have to export whole Mesh in Unreal Engine 4.
How do I setup Material-Mesh so that I read UV Map from Both Texture-Atlas.

if you have different material slot for reference to this atlases - just make 2 materials with different textures. if slot one - you can multiply two textures or make some lerp by mask


Can blender import collada files with external references? I am trying to import a .dae collada file that contains external references in the form of:

<visual_scene id="Scene" name="Scene">
        <instance_node url="./trees.dae#appletree-0" />
</visual_scene>

The referenced file lives in the same directory as the referring file.
When I import the .dae I see no errors on the console.
Yet, no new geometry shows up in blender.

Are external references broken for Blender as they seem to be for many Collada readers?

I tried with Blender version 2.76b

Yes, Blender can indeed load geometry from external references.

I had bungled the test, because my referenced file was missing the tag:

<library_nodes>
   ...
</library_nodes>

Once I put those in, Blender did a great job of loading external references from Collada. Sorry for the confusion.


What's the meaning of 0 to 1 space in UV? I would like to know why many instructor talk about 0 to 1 space in UV mapping or related areas of UV unwrapping.

Are 0 to 1 values part of a Boolean, or some programming stuff?

It is actually a coordinate system in percentage of image size.

A coordinate [0,0] corresponds the lower left corner, and [1,1] is the upper right corner (depending the the render engine/software.

It is made in such way that unwrapping is actually image size independent, so that if at a later time, you decide to use a larger image or an image with different dimensions the UV map still works and adapts (with distortions) to the new image format.

It is not a Boolean value nor is it limited to the 0~1 range, it is a float and can take on any value like -3.2, or 158.56.

The image will tile infinitely in X and Y axis repeating at every 1 unit, so for values bellow 0 or above 1 it will tile the image so that coordinate [2,2] will show the same part of the image as [1,1].


UV Editing - Unwrap object and display measurements in the view How can i display the measurements from the 3D-editor in the UV-editor as illustrated in the picture?

I have found a rather complex workaround for my use case. Hopefully somebody will post once a cleaner solution.
So since I want to print out the unwrapped model with the dimensions to help with a sewing project I came up with this way:

I export the model as an SVG file in uv/unwrap (one face at a time)
Import the SVG file in QCAD.
I scale the dimensions to match the edge the ones in the 3d model
Now I can set all the dimensions and angles in QCAD


How can I use the same material at another slot and change it independently? I modelled something and want to select some specific faces for this object to give it another material. Works with applying. But now I have an existing material and don't know how to change it (e.g. make it darker) without changing it for all the other faces too.

When I click on the second material slot and want to change it and apply, the first slot changes too. How do I avoid that?

Click the New Material button - to add a new material based on your current one.
Then change the new material.


How to parent a cloth to a rigged mesh? So, this is my setup:

I have parented a plane with the cloth modifier onto the mesh. However, when I play the animation, the cloth falls downwards, while the mesh continues on the path animation.
I want the cloth to follow the bird exactly like an advertising banner -- without  the mid air fluttering -- attached to an airplane.

PS : any other modifier-related help also welcomed.

This doesn't answer your question exactly, but it might produce the result your looking for.

First un-parent the banner. Then clear the location(Alt + G). Add a Curve modifier and add your path as the curve object with Y as the deform axis. If the rotation is now wrong, rotate on the Y axis 90 degrees. Make sure your at the first frame of the animation, and move the banner on the Y axis until it is positioned behind the bird. Set a location keyframe(I, then "Location"). Go to the end of the animation and move the banner on the Y axis until it is again positioned behind the bird(type 302 into Y location it will get you close). Set another location keyframe. Go to the Graph Editor and under Key->Interpolation Mode choose "Linear".

So its not using a cloth simulation, but it should do what you want.


Rigging question about Spline IK and having all controls on one armature So, i'm finally getting a handle on rigging in Blender and am doing pretty well except for one thing. My brother is doing the animating and had a few complaints/requests, so I went in and tried to fix it.

The spline IK controls have to be on a separate armature than the other bones. My brother would like all the controls on the same armature so he can access all controls at once and have them all on the same list in the dope sheet.

I tried creating all controls on a separate armature for the rig, but this results in double tranforms for everything and i'm having serious trouble keeping things parented. The finger controls won't follow the wrist control for example without throwing the deformation rig out of wack (with childof constraints on the fingers, and the controls for the fingers parented to the wrist, it just doesn't work)....

Is there a way to do this? (have all controls including splineIK on the same armature).

It's possible, here is a flow chart of the dependencies:

You want all your bones in your Control rig (deform and non-deform), except your Spline IK bones.
The control rig will control Curve vertices with Hook modifiers.
The Curve controls IK Splines in deform rig. You want to copy all the deform bones from Control rig to Deform rig and copy transforms from Control.
The Deform rig now should have all the bones to deform character. Bind the mesh to this armature.
Parent everything to Control rig. You can hide the Curve and Deform rig from view and render.


Node with 2 color & alpha options I've figured out a way to change the colour of the atmosphere on my Earth model, however the output node only has 1 option for "Color" and "Alpha". I need to be able to attach the blue part and the orange part to the output in the same way.

This is what it looked like before. The Extended Material node needs to attach to the output with both "color" and "alpha".

I've done the same node set up for the atmosphere as I did with the day to night textures. I've tested without attaching the alphas and it works perfectly, however the alphas MUST connect in order to be transparent. Is there a node that can send the color and alpha of both materials to the output?

For the record, there are a few different methods to combine alpha correctly, loosely summed up as:

Correlated geometry: Use an add. Examples are where you are certain the geometry doesn't occlude each other at the subpixel level.

Uncorrelated geometry: Use a probabilistic A+B-AB. Examples include two pieces of glass overlapping, or any element where the geometry overlaps another piece.

Further reading:
http://lists.openimageio.org/pipermail/oiio-dev-openimageio.org/2012-July/005642.html


Translucent plastic foam I could use some advices regarding a challenging material. As a side note I'm a pretty new blender user, switching from another 3D program. I'm ok now with the workflow and classics shaders, but this one is a bit too much for me.

So I need to render this object for a friend :

A white half-transparent plastic foam made from small cells. I've made lots of research ant tests, with a mix of SSS, translucent, transparent shaders (with image textures) and emission shaders. Even adding some layers of polygons inside the model.

But I can't get both the glossiness, the white color, the displacement and the "depht" of the material, especially with the transparency on the edges.

This is one of my tests, quite disapointing :

At this stage, my main option is to post-process (a lot) the render to enhance the look, but I feel I'm missing something either technically or in my way of approaching the problem. (As I said before this material is a bit too complex for me)

If anyone has an idea, critics or resources, I'm all ears.

Edit :
Just adding the last render using the main suggestion : procedural volume shader + a glossy shader mixed with a transparent one with the same voronoi node. It looks way way better, almost here I think. It just needs more shininess and speculars on top, while keeping the transparency (this is the hard part), but I will do my best to fix this with the final lighting.

My main concern was to find a way to get the volume shader really white, but it seems ok with a little trick (using a number above 1 as color value). Alas, the render is, of course, a lot slower.

Modelising the cells with the cell fracture addons or by hands seems doable, I've made some tests for both, but way more time-consuming, as expected.

Thanks everyone, I've learned a lot.

Edit 2 :
As requested, just uploaded the blend file. All credits to yann, LukeD and Duarte for the idea. I'm sure it could be perfected easely by more experienced blender users, but it has worked great for my project as it is.

I don't know if the hdri is embeded, if not I'm using one of these : http://zbyg.deviantart.com/art/HDRi-Pack-2-103458406

This Answer is incomplete, but might bring you closer to your goal.

I used a Volume shader hooked up to a voronoi texture to create the bubbles, but I didn't manage to make them glossy or refractive.
Is that even possible, using volumes?

The biggest problems with your render are:

it is only one closed volume, it will never give realistic results
don't use emission shaders in non-emissive materials

With materials like this, I would strongly recommend using a completely procedural way, without any image textures.


How to prevent holes that makes the displacement modifier? I made a displacement texture and it looks fine, but when I apply it with the displacement modifier, there are this hole outlines that is surrounding every object.
How to prevent the modifier from making those holes?

This is the texture -

On the Displacement Modifier, you can change the strength to a negative value.

EDIT:
You'll get what you are looking for if you modify the image that you're using to drive the displacement so that the value for the plane in isn't gray, but black.

Think of it this way: Black becomes the lowest point in the displacement and white the highest.


Scientific Illustration: Non-photorealistic rendering of sparse wireframe with dashed/dotted lines for backfacing areas - Blender 2.80 I'm interested in creating a material that gives this end result:

I'm studying the possibility to use Blender as a tool for scientific education in pure mathematics.

The idea is that the material should be:

transparent
wireframe visible on the viewing side
Wireframe dotted on back side
small border around the picture

In the long term, I would like to be able to draw small patches such as the "V" patch here.

Other examples:

Thanks!

Images from: Discrete Differential Geometry - Keenan Crane

This can be accomplished by using Freestyle and Freestyle Edge Marks.

No silhouette

With silhouette

Assuming you already have a model that you would like to render using this style, select it and switch to edit mode (Tab). Deselect all vertices (Alt+A).

Next you need to select all edge loops that you should appear in the rendered image. Edge loops can be select by using the Shift+Alt+LMB shortcut (or RMB if your using right-click select). Once you have all the desired edge loops selected press Ctrl+E and select Mark Freestyle Edge. Alternatively you can use the menu Edge > Mark Freestyle Edge as well.

Enable Freestyle in the Render Properties.

Switch to the View Layer Properties. First we are going to create the line set for the directly visible parts of the wireframe. Selection By should have Visibility and Edge Types enabled and Visibility should be set to Visible. The only edge type that should be enabled is Edge Mark.

Create an new line set through the plus button and select it. This line set is for the dashed lines. Selection By should have Visibility and Edge Types enabled and Visibility should be set to Hidden. The only edge type that should be enabled is Edge Mark. In the Freestyle Line Style enable Dashed Line and give it the desired spacing.

A third line set is needed for the contours of the object. Enable the Contour edge type for this line set. The Silhouette can be enabled as well, if you want the boundary between visible and hidden faces marked with an edge (See example at the beginning). You can give the line set a larger thickness in the Freestyle Line Style if you like.

Now you can add a shader of your choice to your mesh, adjust lighting and camera position and you're done. In my example render I used the Toon Shader for Cycles, a single point light and Ambient Occlusion (World Properties).


Point Lamp cannot be rotated - Need confirmation I am using R and trying to rotate the point lamp, but it does not. I came across this answer - Point Lamp Rotate Answer
I have a noob confusion - Doesn't a point lamp correspond to light TO A POINT, so ideally if I rotate it, it should have corresponding effect of the light source to THE point. So ideally we should be able to rotate the light source i.e Point Lamp?
Kindly help me understand.
Thanks

Point lamp in Blender is an object that emits light from a single point to all directions. It is impossible to rotate a single point - it remains the same. You can rotate it around some other pivot like for example around the 3d Cursor, however it will only effect the location of the point light. It makes sense for it to have rotation properties, because the type of Lamp can be changed so if another type of lamp is rotated and then changed to a Point lamp it would loose the rotation information otherwise, while right now the information is kept and it can be changed back to any of the directional types pointing at the same direction.


UV mapping and removing hidden faces? So, I made a geometric realistic house Buuuttttt, I didn't know importing to a game was going to be a NIGHTMARE! I have spots that appear to be missing, that is "invisible", and when I try to UV-map them automatically I get very bad results. How can I quickly remove the interior faces "that will never be seen by the player" and then UV-map this thing so I can go into Mudbox and make this puppy super texture realistic THEN import it into UDK without a hitch? In the future I might just make simple rooms and wood blocks that are pre UV mapped and then build the house from assets in UDK. But, so i don't feel this entire house project was a waste of 3 days of off-and-on work, how do I go about the easiest possible way of getting this bad boy ready for my game engine?

If you're looking for a quick way to delete faces that will never ever be visible from the outside, you're in luck. If you're trying to do something more complex, you're going to be stuck with manual work.

To delete these inside faces, select everything using A. Then switch into face mode Ctrl-Tab>Face. Set your camera to orthographic Numpad-5. Finally enter each one of the side/top views, use Box select with MMB to de-select all the visible faces. You will need to do this for all 6 views: The short cuts are 1,3 and 7 for front, right and top (respectively) To get back left and bottom, combine  1,3 and 7 with Ctrl to get back, left and bottom (respectively). The selected faces you will now have are the inside faces. Delete them.


How to get rid of fireflies ?I had tried many solutions but it doesnt work How to get rid of fireflies ?I had tried many solutions but it doesnt work. I tried to increase the sample count, but it still remain the same. Tried to increase the lighting but it doesnt get rid of the fireflies.

Go to the layer properties tab and tick the denoising box


I've compiled all my tracking data but when I go to default to add the object, the video isn't in the background I'm tracking a child on a swing on the video editing window and clicked the Setup Tracking Motion button in the Solve tab to ready the footage to edited with 3D objects in Default.

But lo an  behold, every time I try to go to default, the video doesn't appear.

What can I do? Is there a better way to do this?

Solving the scene doesn't automatically set the image as background, nor does it prepare the necessary nodes in the compositor to render the scene over the video background.

Once you solve the scene press:

Set as Background.

And Setup Tracking Scene


Bake animation with modifiers, including "real" location of vertices I have created an animation with the displacement modifier (for a fish based on https://youtu.be/58lc8sLpJzY). Now I want to bake the animation to keyframes. Additionally, I need the locations of some vertices for further processing in animation nodes later.

The solution with exporting as mdd and then re-importing shape keys doesn`t work for me. After importing, the scale and direction of movement changes and shape keys are keyframed, so it is hard to correct.
Object - animation - bake to... doesn`t work. The positions of the vertices are not updating.
Applying the modifier doesn`t work. Then the fish remains frozen in the first "shape" and just moves straight.

Is there a better way to bake the animation after modifiers, including location of vertices?

Create a duplicate of the object for every unique frame of the animation.

Apply the modifier separately on every object, with each object on a different frame.

Use "Join as Shapes" to combine all the objects into one. (Menu next to the Shape Keys panel, or ops.object.join_shapes().)

This will produce a single object with a shape key for every frame of the animation. You can then keyframe these shape keys to show on the correct frames.


Joining the meshes of two previously separated objects I'm new to Blender, and new to 3D modelling in general, and have created a dog. So far so good, but I wanted to mess around with animation and separated each limb into its own object so I could tie them to armaments. Then when the fun was over, I wanted to refine the look of the model. I have now recombined all of the objects back into one in order to use Edit Mode to manipulate the entire mesh at once. Seemingly to be a feature of Blender, each object that was previously separated is now torn from the original mesh of the body.

Now, I know I can bridge the edge loops and then soften their interaction by reducing the size of the polygons, but I'm seeking to simply make all of the vertices of each edge loop (seeing as they're lined up to be identical) to be merge into one another without having to individually merge each pair, as this would be quite time consuming. Essentially set each vertex equal to the other. Removing doubles seems to remove vertices, but it doesn't actually combine the two meshes and tearing still occurs.

Is there a tool for this?

The problem is the precision. If the meshes don't align perfectly you need to increase the Merge Distance for the Remove Doubles tool. Also make sure you select everything before you use it.


Render over the previous render result Is there any way to get Blender to paint a fresh render over the top of the previous render, to make it easier to see the result of changes?

So: I render a scene, then make some changes, then hit render again, and instead of being blank, it shows the previous render result, but gradually replaces it with the new result.

You could technically do this in the compositor, but you would have to make sure to save each of your renders out as images, and then be diligent to add them all back into the node editor. Then you could use (overlay, add, multiply, Mix, etc...) nodes to see the backdrop change.

It may be a very good way to learn the "Gut Feel" of what your parameters are truly affecting.


Transformation of object based on axis ive been doing some sculpting in blender and i run into a problem that i need a proper transformation of my object. I tried with rotation but it does not help. This is what im talking about:

I want the last horn, the big one, to actualy be like the first two horns : "MIRROR-ED" , but i seem to cannot do it right. This is what Happens when i do SHIFT+D to copy object(Duplicate)

I tried rotation, and this is kinda "best" what i can get :

Which does not look right.
So, how do i get a mirror of my right side big horn to be on left?
Actualy, the first two horns had the same problem, but its not that visable, so i left it like that. But for big one i need fix. Any help?

You want a mirrored copy of your horn, right? Select your horn, apply its rotation and scale with ctr A, duplicate it with a shift D (or alt D if you want a linked duplication), then press S, Y and -1, the duplication will be mirrored.


Character mesh becomes transparent or reversed when I import it into unity I'm new to Blender and unity and working on getting an animation that I made in Blender 2.8 into Unity. I'm having issues with the character's suit, which looks great in Blender but becomes weirdly transparent and reversed in Unity. The way the figure is constructed is pretty simple- the shirt and suit and pants are all one piece like a skin, so he's basically hollow.
Here is the character in Blender:

Here's the front of the character in Unity. Ignore the white head, I can fix that: but look at the weird suit!

Here is the back of the guy. It's hard to tell which way he's facing, but the direction of the head is correct, so you see the tie through the back of the suit, and not from the front.

What the what? Any help will be wildly appreciated!
Edited to add: THANK YOU! The flipped normals idea makes sense, but when I flipped anything problematic and re-import it still looks the same. Am I missing something? Here is the suit in Blender...

The normals on the object are flipped.
To visualize which normals are facing in or out, enable the option in the 3d viewport overlays > Geometry > Face Orientation

Blue faces are pointing out, orange are pointing in.
Or you can use overlays as well to display face normals.

Normals are displayed as blue lines, and you can choose the length of the lines.
To flip faces, select them and press Alt+N and select flip normals, or recalculate outside.


what parameters to imagemagick will convert from EXR to PNG that matches how blender interprets the RGB values? When I take an EXR image rendered by blender and use imagemagick to convert it into a PNG

convert /var/tmp/blender/easter-eggs/vr360/0007.exr  /tmp/x

the resulting image is rather dark.  I have to use the -modulate option like

convert /var/tmp/blender/easter-eggs/vr360/0007.exr -modulate 200  /tmp/x.png

and even then looking at the PNG in gimp doesn't look the same as if I load the .EXR in blender's UV/Image editor.

Why do these two pieces of software disagree on how to interpret the values in the .EXR file, and what workflow should I use to convert .EXR to PNG on the command line?

The short answer is that EXR holds data. In the case of visual data, it is a convention that the visual RGB data is stored in a linearised format.

When encoded as a linearised format, there is no idea of what transfer function is embedded into the data. This means that the imager has to apply the proper transfer function that covers the proper range of data within the EXR.

If you are using the "Default" rendering view, which is the sRGB EOTF, you can identify the different transfer functions and have ImageMagick convert appropriately with something like:

convert myexr.exr -colorspace RGB -colorspace sRGB mynonlineartiff.tiff

If you are using any transfer function other than the sRGB EOTF, the process would require further effort, and in most cases, ImageMagick would be an unacceptable tool to harness. OpenImageIO and OpenColorIO would be more suitable.


What is the problem with my bump mapping? I am trying to map a high resolution bump map on a UV sphere, I am using a UV map, and I get this result:

What causes the renderer to make these huge blobs? This should be a moon, far away and big (distance is about 500, size is 300 blender units), my bump map is 3840 x 2160  Pixels TIF file (I got the same result with a half resolution bump map, too), UV-mapped to the sphere. Mesh is set to smooth, Subsurf is set to 4 subdivisions, and the node setup is as follows:

Mapping (if I map the bump map to the color of the diffuse shader, it does not get pixelated):

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for the help.

I have figured it out.
The subsurf for rendering was accidentally switched off when baking the bump map.

Thanks for all your inputs!


How can I create an Empty in Blender 3D 2.73? In "Mirror changes to side of cube across all six sides", it is advised to add an Empty. However, I cannot find that option in Blender 2.73. How can I add an Empty in Blender 2.73?

When I do a Shift+A on the 3D View the context menu displays:

[Mesh||Plane|Cube|Circle|UV Sphere|Ico Sphere|Cylinder|Cone|Torus||Grid|Monkey]

Shift+A > Empty > Plain Axis

Note that you must be in Object mode for this to work, in Edit mode you may only add mesh elements.


Saving rendered image into a file doesn't work I've seen many videos on saving your work as an image, and it is told that pressing F3 should do that.

However it does not work for me - when I press F3 nothing comes up when a menu for saving is supposed to come up.

If it has to do with what computer I have I use, I have windows 10.

You have to actually render your image first before you can save your render as a file. To do that press F12 while your cursor is over your 3D View window.

Wait for the render to finish and only after that with the mouse cursor hovering the rendered image can you press F3 to save it. Alternatively if the hotkey for some reason is not working you can save your render by going to the Image Menu > Save Image As, by default at the bottom of the UV Image  Window

Are you using a laptop computer by any chance? Some computers by default use the function keys F1  to F12 as direct shortcut keys for Microsoft Office or other Microsoft applications, and to use them as regular F keys you have to press the Fn button on your keyboard.


Is this Normal when starting Blender? Whenever I start Blender, this console window keeps popping up!
I'm not that techy with devices, is there anything I should do to stop it?

As other users said, this is normal. Do not try to remove this.


How to integrate knoll to soil? I want to add some knolls onto a ground surface by using textures. Currently it looks terrible and I don't know how to integrate it properly.

What is the best procedure to do this? At the moment the stones do not look integrated into the knoll, there is a sharp border around it and it does not look natural.

I would like to use the bump map of the stone texture and then to texture paint over this bump with the sand texture stamp. How can I realize this in blender?

Additionally I want to work in Cycles. Does it make sense to create the textures in Blender Internal mode at first and then add the created texture to a material in Cycles mode?

I suggest this method because the handling of texturing is much easier in Blender Internal than in Cycles.

The current picture is like this:

Using cycles textures with an image you can take advantage of the true displace feature available with the experimental feature set

What this does is using a musgrave as factor for mixing both color and displacement textures


Customizing a shortcut for the UV Editor no longer works in 2.8+ Customizing a shortcut to Snap Cursor to Selected in the UV Editor used to work in 2.79
The syntax to define this shortcut is no longer working in 2.8+
That syntax is: uv.snap_cursor

After typing it in, the Target drop-down selector appears, indicating that Blender still recognizes the command on some level.
Furthermore, after performing this action using the standard ShiftS (and Pie Menu) the Console indicates that the command has not changed. It just doesn't seem to be assignable to a keyboard shortcut anymore.

What needs to be changed for this to work? Thanks.

The shortcut has to be created in the correct category otherwise it won't work. For the UV Editor that is: Image > UV Editor > UV Editor (Global)


How can I smooth this face? I have a face that does not follow suit I have tried everything I can come up with but for some reason this face does not have the same shading as the others.

Any help here would be great cause it is like a bad headache and rater be rid of it.

I already have edge split and tried to extrude the face from the previous one that does have correct shading.

I want to give credit to this post the answer to put the f2 add on was a bit weird but simply deleting the face only and removing doubles and after selecting the vertices and fill helped and is the solution for me.

Smooth shading is seemingly creating incorrect normals


Boolean difference not carving correctly After applying a boolean modifier there is no surface on the area that was carved by the cylinder. It's kind of hard to explain in words. I have a before and after picture. In the after you can see there is no surface on the first part of the hole that was created. Wondering what is causing this...

before

after

you could try the following:
Go into edit mode, press a to select all, then w and remove doubles
now back into edit mode, press ctrl+a and apply the rotation and scale.
now try the boolean modifier again

are there any other things in your modifier stack ?


Creating a path with differential equations I'm currently trying to create a 3-D vector field based on an equation. Once I create a vector field, how to actually make the object move along the vector field when placed at a point?

My Approach:
Every vector field has an associated system of differential equations. For example, for a vector field, $$\vec A = x \hat{i}+y \hat{j}+z \hat{k}$$ the associated system differential equations are, $$\frac{dx}{dt}=x \\ \frac{dy}{dt} = y\\ \frac{dz}{dt}=z$$ and the corresponding solutions are $$x(t)=x_0 e^t\\ y(t)=y_0e^t \\ z(t)=z_0e^t$$

So now, we have path(i.e.) by varying t, we obtain a set of $(x,y,z)$.

Is there a way to solve this system of ODEs with blender. I found an answer, that was relevant, Can you animate objects using differential equations?, but I couldn't understand how to implement all those in this context.

When I have understood you correctly, you have already the solution of your diff eq, and you know x0, y0, z0 as parameters of this solution, defining the start location. When you run under Python a loop by incrementing t in discrete steps, you will be able to create a 3d chain of vertices with these coordinates and use this polygon as path for animation (convert to a curve, if needed). Since I am a newbie myself, I cannot provide any code, however.

Greetings from Germany, Tschöbbel


Blender 2.8 - Cloths Don't Follow Armature In Pose Mode or They Shift Positions First off I'm very new to blender so this has been a huge learning experience for me.
I have generated a character using "MBLab" Add-On from blender. It has made an armature for me that I would like to have my cloths follow. The end goal is to be able to have a rigged character with cloths exported to my game engine of choice.
I have all the cloths modeled now I just need to make them follow the bones. However, I can't seem to get it to work, properly. Here is what I have done:

Selected the mesh, then selected the armature, and pressed Ctrl-P
I selected Armature Deform > With Empty Groups
I added the "Data Transfer" modifier, selected the character mesh as the "Vertex Data"
I go into pose mode and it doesn't move with the armature. I can rotate it just fine in object mode because of the parenting

I can get the clothing mesh to move with the armature if I select "Bone Envelops" in the Armature modifier. However, if do that the mesh is moved slightly and no longer aligns with the character.
How can I properly make my cloths move with the armature without shifting their positions? If there is no way to do that then how can I reset the clothing meshes' positions back to their original positions prior to selecting "Bone Envelops"?

Without Bone Envelops:

With Bone Envelops:

I've tried to correct with the method explained below, if it still doesn't work, try with the Mesh Deform method as explained here.

Deactivate the Armature modifier visibility (screen icon button) for both the arm and the straps, so that the armature doesn't move the one or the other:

Then you can see that arm and straps are not aligned, and the object even go through each other, you need to correct this in Object mode and in Edit mode.

Once you're good, in the strap's Data Transfer modifier, click on Vertex Data, on Vertex Group(s), Generate Data Layers and Apply:

Reactivate the armature visibility for both arm and straps, move the bones, it works, even though it will probably need some adjustments:


Registering classes in 2.80 I would like to start developing in the new beta build environment. For that, I want to register classes the new way:
https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.80/Python_API/Addons

However, I get the following error:

  TypeError: 'type' object is not iterable

Also, when trying
"help(bpy.utils.register_class_factory())" in the inteactive python console, I get:

  AttributeError: module 'bpy.utils' has no attribute 'register_class_factory'

Some simplified code I am "working" on right now:

import bpy

class MakeProxy(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_OT_object_make_proxy"
    bl_label = "mProxy"

    "more code"

classes = (
    MakeProxy
    )

register, unregister = bpy.utils.register_classes_factory(classes)

What am I missing? Thank you!

import bpy

class OBJECT_OT_object_make_proxy(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.make_proxy"
    bl_label = "Make Proxy"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.active_object is not None

    def execute(self, context):
        pass # More code here
        return {'FINISHED'}

classes = (
            OBJECT_OT_object_make_proxy,

          )

register, unregister = bpy.utils.register_classes_factory(classes)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

This works.

I do not understand what they mean to say about the new naming conventions here. Browsing the web it seems I am not the only one.

It says:

  This constraint applies to the bl_idname of each class (or the class
  name which uses it if no bl_idname is defined in the class).

  These are: UPPER_CASE_{SEPARATOR}_mixed_case, in the case of a menu
  the regular expression is:

    [A-Z][A-Z0-9_]*MT[A-Za-z0-9_]+

  The separator for each class is listed below:

    Header -> HT
    Menu -> MT
    Operator -> OT
    Panel -> PT
    UIList -> UL

  Valid Examples:

    OBJECT_OT_fancy_tool
    SOME_HEADER_HT_my_header
    PANEL123_PT_myPanel (lower case is preferred but mixed case is supported).

  At the time of writing this, names that don't conform to this
  convention will produce a warning on startup. Eventually we will make
  this into an error, eg:

  Warning: 'Oscurart Files Tools' doesn't contain 'PT' with prefix &
  suffix Warning: 'Oscurart Overrides' doesn't contain 'PT' with
  prefix & suffix Warning: 'Oscurart Animation Tools' doesn't contain
  'PT' with prefix & suffix

So this might mean that the bl_idname should actually be
something like "object.MY_ADDON_OT_some_object_operator"
It still requires a '.' to be there so object.OBJECT_OT_something_something does not seem to make much sense to me. Let's make this a new question as well, maybe someone else knows.


Run python script after transforms I almost always forget to do the ctrl+a scale&rotation.  So, I don't know if I have really jacked up my scene :(

I was wondering if I could tie a python script to the actions of scaling/rotating an object. Such as when I'm done scaling or rotating an object the python script applies it in the background for me.

you could use a python script that runs through all your objects and checks if their scale is 1,1,1 and rotation is 0°,0°,0°. if not it applies rotation&scale

import bpy

for obj in  bpy.context.scene.objects:
    if obj.scale!=[1,1,1] or obj.rotation_euler!=[0,0,0] :
        bpy.context.scene.objects.active=obj
        bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=False, rotation=True, scale=True)


How to create copy of animation Hi how can i create a copy of animation. In adobe Flash we make a symbol a movie clip. For more information about what is a movie clip watch this video
If we make a movie clip and once drag and drop that movie clip on the art board we can create many copies. Is there any option or how can i create copies just drag and drop and get that animation. Any suggestion or Help Thanks

Go to the action editor. Press Push Down. The action is moved to the NLA editor.

Open the NLA editor. Here you see the Action Strip. You can change it's start and end frame. You can move it around with G. You can add actions strips with ⇧ ShiftA. You can set an action strip to repeat.


Cloth Wont Stay Attached to Character I am trying to make a wing suit character but I cant get my cloth to attach properly to the character. I am using a child of constraint to attach the cloth the  bones but if I move the arm it wont still stay attached to the leg and if I move the leg it wont stay attached to the arm.

You can use a stretch to constraint, pointing from the foot to the hand bone.


How to render the movie texture in the Open GL viewport rendering? I try to render animation using Open GL render animation option. I added a movie clip as a texture to a plane.

When I change the keyframes manually (in Material viewport shading ) the following animation frames are visible (they're refreshing right).

Interesting fact is, it only works this way if the Preview panel is expanded.

The problem appears when I try to render it using Open GL render. Despite the fact that I enabled the 'auto refresh' option in Image Texture node the animation on the plane is not visible (it display only the current frame image). Is there a way to make it work?

Thanks to Jerryno's tips, I've found an answer how to do this finally in Cycles. I've discovered, that to make it work, Blender has to have the preview of the texture visible. So I've set up windows as below. In one window you have the viewport shading set to Material and in other one it is set to Rendered.

When you press play button all images refresh fine. After pressing the Open GL render active viewport button (or clicking Render--> Open GL Render Animation) you get the movie with an animated texture. Don't know why, but sometimes you'll have to press/click it few times until it works though.
...............................................................................................................................................

I tried to make it work in Blender Internal also. When you press play button images don't refresh, unless you do one tricky thing. You have to keep the Preview and Image panels of the Texture header expanded. Then you hover the cursor over Preview panel and press Alt+A. Now the images in the Texture viewport shading are refreshing well. Sadly they don't behave the same after pressing the Open GL render active viewport button. I guess making the Open GL animation render with a working video texture is impossible in BI.


Python API: How to pick the last created object? the circumstance is that I trigger "GPencil Convert to Curve" operator
then it creates a Curve Object deriving from selected Grease Pencil Object,

and also change Bevel depth for the Curve Object

but how do pick the Curve Object

Try this(I am on Blender 2.81a):

(set grease pencil object name to "Stroke")

import bpy

# De-select all
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

# Make blender think you are in a 3D drawing area
context = bpy.context.copy()
for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        for region in area.regions:
            if region.type == 'WINDOW':
                context['area'] = area
                context['region'] = region
                break
        break

# The grease pencil must be active (name = Stroke)
context['active_object'] = bpy.data.objects['Stroke']

# Convert(create a new curve) grease pencil
bpy.ops.gpencil.convert(context, type='CURVE', use_timing_data=True)

# New curve will be the only selected object
obj_curve = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]
obj_curve.data.bevel_depth = 0.04
obj_curve.data.bevel_resolution = 8


How to make this animation look more like a satellite orbiting a binary star? I'd like to increase the reflected light from the two rotating stars off of Suzanne the satellite, without making them appear brighter to the camera so that the pulsing of the two colors is noticeable.

I'd also like to darken the overall scene so there isn't so much "stray light" reflecting off of un-illuminated faces, and so that deep space looks closer to black.

note: I've left the default sun so I can see what I'm doing, I may like to keep it on at least low, to help with depth perception. Camera is 512pix square f=20mm at [7.5, -2, 1.5].

Original light blue color for satellite - The dot is half way between saturated (no red) and the center(equal values) but since that scale is quite non-linear, the value is low, only 0.24 here. Based on suggestions from @Matt I'm changing the color to 100% white [1, 1, 1] now.

import bpy
import numpy as np

pi = np.pi

n_frames = 150    # 5 seconds

binary_period = 30
th_bin = 2 * pi * np.arange(n_frames, dtype=float) / float(binary_period)
rbin = 1.0
x_sat = np.linspace(-5, 5, n_frames)
y_sat = np.zeros_like(x_sat)
z_sat = 3.5 - 0.2*x_sat**2     # parabolic (but velocity not correct yet)

aloc = 0.8*np.vstack((np.cos(th_bin), np.sin(th_bin), np.zeros_like(th_bin))).T
bloc = -aloc
sloc = np.vstack((x_sat, y_sat, z_sat)).T

makeit = True

if makeit:
    # create the universe
    asiz, bsiz, ssiz = 0.55, 0.55, 0.5
    ok = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_ico_sphere_add(subdivisions=4, size=asiz, location=aloc[0])
    a = bpy.context.active_object
    a.name = 'a'
    ok = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_ico_sphere_add(subdivisions=3, size=bsiz, location=bloc[0])
    b = bpy.context.active_object
    b.name = 'b'
    ok = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_monkey_add(radius=ssiz, location=sloc[0])
    s = bpy.context.active_object
    s.name = 's'
    s.rotation_euler = [0, 0, 0.5*pi]

    bpy.context.scene.frame_end = n_frames

    for i_frame in range(n_frames):
        for obj, loc in zip([a, b, s], [aloc, bloc, sloc]):
            # print (i_frame, obj.name, loc[i_frame])
            obj.location = loc[i_frame]
            obj.keyframe_insert(data_path="location", frame=i_frame+1, index=-1)

renderit = True

if renderit:

    # from: http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/17840/5334
    scene = bpy.context.scene
    scene.render.engine = 'CYCLES'
    fp = scene.render.filepath # get existing output path
    scene.render.image_settings.file_format = 'PNG' # set output format to .png

    ffracs =  [0.1, 0.5, 0.95]

    for i_frame in range(n_frames):

        # set current frame to frame 5
        scene.frame_set(i_frame+1)

        # set output path so render won't get overwritten
        scene.render.filepath = fp + 'f01_' + str(i_frame)
        bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True) # render still

    # restore the filepath
    scene.render.filepath = fp

There are three things I'd recommend.

One is making your background black. Any other color will artificially reduce the contrast, making the stars (and Suzanne) seem less bright than they are.

Another is improving Suzanne's material. It should be a correct, Fresnel diffuse (if diffuse is what you're going for), and it should be a lighter color, something closer to white. It looks dark green at the moment. Dark colors don't reflect as much light as light colors (that's why they're dark ;-) ), so the light source has to be brighter. Colored materials react to colored lights in funny ways. In particular, your green material is going to be preferential to the white light, over the red light, making the red light look dimmer, even if it's the same intensity.

For a (mostly) correct Fresnel diffuse shader, just mix a diffuse shader with a glossy shader, plugging a fresnel input node into the factor slot on the mix shader. Fresnel in factor, diffuse in top slot, glossy in bottom slot, mix piped to surface. This will make her reflect light a bit more reasonably.

Lastly, if you need a sun lamp to "see what you're doing" then something is wrong. It's necessarily going to mask/diminish/hide the effect of the two stars. It won't LOOK like Suzanne is being lit by the pulsar because her dark side isn't DARK... it's being lit by the sun lamp. If you want to make the depth more obvious, decrease your focal length, and re-position the camera.

Hope that helps!


Which cycles rendering pass is antialiased In all render passes that Blender Cycles support, which one are antialiased and which one is not by default. And, if possible, how can I turn all the anti-aliasing for all of them completely? I got know before that Mist passed is anti-aliasing, Z-buffer is not (correct me if I'm wrong).

Here are the list of the other render passes:

Diffuse Direct, Indirect, Color

Glossy Direct, Indirect, Color

Transmission Direct, Indirect, Color

Subsurface Direct, Indirect, Color

Emission

Environment

Shadow

Ambient Occlusion

Normal

Vector

Object Index

Material Index

You need to know, that there is nonstandard algorithm to get anti-aliasing in cycles instead normal render. Each pass in cycles also is an anti-aliasing pass too. Each pass specifies the color, shadow and antialiasing at same time:

And cycles has a setting to manipulate how far each pixel sample can deviate to get anti-aliasing:

Making the filter size value smaller will squeeze the samples more into the center. So there is no option to turn off anti-aliasing, but you can make filter size at minimum to get similar result:


How to use textures from texture tab with material shading I found a book of an older version of blender to learn from. We are suppose to make texture in the texture tab and apply it later on the object. But many features are not available in the latest versions of blender.
Can anyone explain how to approach this thing.
Secondly, how do we use a texture, for example cloud texture from texture tab, as input to any node group for shading.

I couldn't tell if this is the way it was always meant to be, but a workaround could be to use the Texture Paint workspace. On the left panel you could create a new image and name it anything you want. In the Shader Editor, you add an Image Texture, browse to select the image you've named earlier and connect it with the Base Color of the Principled BSDF. At this point, in the Texture Paint workspace, you could paint using the earlier created Clouds brush from the Texture Properties either Image Editor or in the 3D Viewport, for perspective painting.


Orthographic Cam with HDRI in background Basically I'm trying to make an animation birthday card 4 my friend. There is this airbus a400m plane scene, which I'm trying to film it like mission impossible fallout. The view of the plane is in orthographic, and the problem is that with using orthographic cam on blender, I can't see MY HDRI. Increasing the distance didn't quite work so pls give me some tips thx.

The longer the camera lens, the smaller part of HDRI is visible.
Orthographic camera is infinitely long, so it only shows one pixel of your HDRI.

Solution: Use a perspective camera.


Transparent image textures in cycles I added two planes in Cycles with Image Texture in png with some transparency. I covered one by the other but transparency doesn't work, I mean it is impossible to see the one which is under despite transparency in the one which is above. What could be the problem?

As @gandalf3 pointed out, you can check out the answer here.  I'll redo it with a bit more detail though.

I'll assume you've already UV mapped your plane (select plane, go into Edit Mode, U > Unwrap) and you already set up the texture in the Materials tab to look like this:

So, you render and the alpha appears as black.

To fix this, you go into the Node Editor and you use the alpha information to set where the plane should display the texture image and where it should have transparent material.

Render and you should have transparency.


The dialog box size cant show all the letter I am change the resolution of my pc.
The dialog somehow can't show all the information.
How to fix it...?

Go to 'File > Settings'. Look at the 'Interface' tab, and adjust the Scale. You probably want to adjust it down. Default is 1.00.

Remember to click on 'Save User Settings' after doing it, so the setting is saved until next time.


how can i keyframe on animation node properties? I can not keyframe on animation nodes, So Falloff animation will not animate as I want.
Can someone tell me how to do??
thank you

you cannot animate the falloff because the falloff basically is just an array of numbers.
I think, what you wanna do is:

The timeinfo just outputs the frame number (i think you know that) and the fade falloff recalculates this to values between 0 and 10, where amount is just the step value. Of course you can use whatever falloff node you want here. So the falloff will be something like [0.1, 0.2, 0.3 ...] as you can see in the viewer.
The evaluate falloff node then just gives you the value at the index of that array.
you can try out itself in this easy example, which just moves a cube:


How to deform a plane according to the shape of other objects I have 2 planes: 1 with Displace modifier (so random hills and valleys according to a cloud texture) and another flat of different size. My question is if it is possible to deform the flat plane according to the first plane.

Depending on where I place the second plane regarding the first plane it'll take exactly the same shape the first one has at the position where I place it. Think of the second plane like a piece of cloth that when I put it on top of a rough surface, depending on where in the other surface, it would deform and take the shape of the irregularities it is placed on.

If the base terrain plane is deformed by a displace modifier why not just give the second plane the same modifier stack?

If I understand correctly this is the effect you are aiming for, kind of like a manta-ray wavy hover motion

Just add a second plane above the first one, subdivide it accordingly, and link the modifiers to the original one. Select new plane > select terrain > Ctrl + L Modifiers.

Make sure both objects have the same displace modifier or most importantly share the same displace texture and with the both Texture Coordinates set to Global


Attaching a skull cap back to the head I created a skull cap to do particle hair, moved it to a separate layer to edit it, now I need to reattach it to the head.  Any suggestions about how to do this, so it fits?

Tim

One way you could do it is join them together (Cntrl J) and then you can bridge the vertices by bridging edge loops, you could also join them and the line the cap as close as you can to the mesh in edit mode and then remove duplicate vertices. this will reconnect them. If you don't have a whole lot of corners to connect you could always merge vertices one at a time, with alt m. If you want further help on how to perform any of these functions just ask. If you are wondering how to connect them and continue using the particle system, just use the same particle settings on the new mesh but use a vertex group of the scalp for the density slot under vertex groups in particle settings.


How to get rid of black triangles and artefacts? for the past few days, I've been struggling against artifacts problems with a mesh.

I used the boolean modifier on this following cube :

After applying the "Difference Operation", here is the result :

At first, It looks great, but if I zoom in, you will notice this problem :

I have tried to use the Edge Split modifier, It did nothing.

I also tried to remove doubles, and this happened :

Not only It accentuated the problem, but It also created some holes (as you can see at the bottom left of the picture).
My guess is that some faces are overlapping. This problem happens with all the rounded edges.
Do you guys have any tip on how to solve this ?

Solved !
Credit to @Hikariztw and @Duarte Farrajota Ramos for pointing out the answer !

Sadly, I was only tweaking the clip start and not the clip end.

By tweaking BOTH of these options, here is the result :

z-fighting no longer showing up.

Thanks a lot for the help !


LoopTools Bridge not working I tried to join the two selected loops by pressing W and LoopTools and selecting Bridge but it came out distorted. Please see attached .blend file.

As long as your edge loops have the same number of vertices you can use the bridge edge loops tool to join them.

In Edit mode, select the edge loops you want to connect, press the space bar and type bridge edge loops.

After that just recalculate your normals: Select all and press CtrlN


Remove drop shadow from label? I'm completely new to blender, I'm trying to create a simple label for a product as an exercise.

When I use the shrinkwrap modifier to the face of the object in Cycles I get a drop shadow that doesn't appear in Eevee.

I have tried UV Unwrapping as well, and I get the same result.

Q: Is there an easy way to remove this shadow for the label?

The more direct fix is to make your outer material have a mask between the metallic label, and the glass or whatever sub-material it lays upon. This also lets you skip the Shrinkwrap modifier because it uses the UV coordinates to wrap the texture around the object.

For example:

This will blend the Metallic and Color Principled shaders depending on the strength of your mask. In my case, I had a zig zag pattern lying around:

This way you have less geometry, you have very sharp control over the position & pattern using the same image texture as before, and you can make changes on the same material graph.


BMesh polygons with holes Is it possible to create a BMesh polygon (BMFace) with holes via Python?

Use case. I need that for my addons that import geographical data. A polygon for Rome has a hole for Vatican City.

Polygons in Mesh or BMesh aren't permitted to have holes in the sense of providing a perimeter and adding an internal part to subtract. This means considering alternatives.

You can construct an irregular polygon / Ngon.

But it will contain at least two duplicated vertices for that pathway between the cutout and the perimeter.

You could script a mesh.fill(), which could take two given edge outlines and fill from the outer edges inwards. (will add script when I have time)

Alternatively you might use a counter intuitive solution namely a 2D Curve (of straight parts) : code included in link


Selected to Active texture baking incorrect colors + Blurry texture I have this voxel model and it's pretty high poly. So what I do is decrease the number of polygons using blender and after that I bake using selected to active on the original object to the copy object. Though I've noticed that it bakes the colors incorrectly:

Original:

Baked:

Not only that, but the texture also comes out blurry, probably because it tries to smooth out the texture, even though I really don't want it to:

Original:

Baked:

Is there a way I can fix these 2 problems? If you want to reproduce this for yourself, follow the steps I made in this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MY3rsq5JGw.

Update:

I fixed the incorrect color problem! I unticked "Interpolation" and "Mip Map" from the Original's Image Sampling panel, and then baked the texture. I still have the blurry texture problem, though. What I noticed is that the texture image itself isn't blurry, only in the model it's blurry.

I fixed the incorrect color baking problem by unticking "Interpolation" and "Mip Map" from the original's "Image Sampling" panel, and then baked the texture. As I'm using the model in Unity, I fixed the blurry texture by setting some values in Unity's inspector panel.


Blender 3D object editor skipping frames I started using Blender to learn 3D design. I'm using Blender 2.78. My problem is that when I'm in 3D editor, the editor skips frames. For example, if I want to extrude a finger out of the hand, it won't show me the extrusion until I've dragged it out quite far. Due to this I am unable to select various positions and sizes. This was not happening before. It started when my model got a little bit detailed.
My specs are:
GPU: Nvidia Geforce 940 MX.
RAM: 8 GB.
CPU: Intel Core i3 6100u 2.3GHz.

Can anyone please tell me how i can fix this? Thanks.

Most probably this happens because you have the snapping option on as shown below. Try to disable it.


Python: How to display per render layer properties in a UI list? I'm trying to make custom properties per render layer but I get an error. I tried to add a property to bpy.types.SceneRenderLayer and it seems to work. Then I try to make an UIList to show the render layers and that works, but it can't find the prop. I want to make a blender submitter for our render farm and want to have the ability to change things per layer.

The error is:

rna_uiItemR: property not found: SceneRenderLayer.test2

when I print(dir(layer)) for the renderlayer test2 shows up. Here is my code:

import bpy

class RENDER_UL_my_renderlayers(bpy.types.UIList):
    def draw_item(self, context, layout, data, item, icon, active_data, active_propname, index):
        layer = item
        row=layout.row()
        print(dir(layer))
        row.prop(layer, 'name', text='')
        row.prop(layer, 'test2', text='')
        row.prop(layer, 'use', text = '')

class TEST_PANEL(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "TEST"
    bl_idname = "RENDER_PT_ui_test"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "render"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        col = layout.column()
        col.prop(context.scene, "test1")
        col.template_list('RENDER_UL_my_renderlayers', 'RenderLayers', context.scene.render, 'layers', context.scene, "testindex")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(RENDER_UL_my_renderlayers)
    bpy.utils.register_class(TEST_PANEL)

    bpy.types.Scene.test1 = bpy.props.IntProperty()
    bpy.types.Scene.testindex = bpy.props.IntProperty()
    bpy.types.SceneRenderLayer.test2 = bpy.props.IntProperty()

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(RENDER_UL_my_renderlayers)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(TEST_PANEL)

    del bpy.types.Scene.test1
    del bpy.types.Scene.test2
    del bpy.types.Scene.testindex

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

SceneRenderLayer cannot be assigned a bpy.props property.

From the docs on property defininitions

  Assigning to Existing Classes

  Custom properties can be added to any subclass of an ID, Bone and
  PoseBone.

Run a little check in console using builtin issubclass (don't need to consider bone or pose bone in this case)

# bpy.types.Scene.prop = ...
>>> issubclass(bpy.types.Scene, bpy.types.ID)
True

# bpy.types.SceneRenderLayer.prop = ...
>> issubclass(bpy.types.SceneRenderLayer, bpy.types.ID)
False


Making text more visible&noticeable on texture? I made a model that is covered with a transparent glossy surface.
Under that surface I placed 2 bars that are emitting light, and a layer that has custom texture on it (which has numbers on it)

As you see the numbers are faded and not well lighted, even though I’ve placed the bars besides it.
How could I improve its look to be more outstanding and easier to see?
I made a normal map for the texture and it is a bit 3d-like now, but still isn’t the best.
Could someone help me out?

Maybe just fake the emission by texture?

Should be more easier than making the light actually penetrating the glass with less and simple light path.


Bevel Edge after Boolean Difference I used a Boolean operator on a cylinder to punch a hole through my vase (see image). I want to bevel the edges of the hole. How can I do this? The vertices of the hole don't align with that of my vase.

The reason the vertices don't line up is because the boolean makes its cuts wherever the two surfaces intersect. This leads to all kinds of artifacts and other issues and is often not ideal. For this reason, booleans are often a bad choice when we need very even topology after we are done modeling. That said, you may still be able to bevel, provided you don't need the bevel to be very deep. With the desired edges selected in edit mode, press Ctrl-B. This will allow you to create a bevel by moving the mouse to determine the extent of the beveled surface. However, be warned: As the included pic illustrates, you may have trouble because of your uneven topology. If you do, you will need to remodel the area of intersection so as to give the edge to be beveled better surface flow (or at least, to give yourself more room to create the bevel). Based on your pic, I would say almost any bevel you create is going to cause a problem like the one I'm showing in my image. What you don't want is edges crossing through other edges or vertices as you adjust your bevel (which is precisely what my image shows happening in the third frame). If you don't want to remodel anything, then consider redoing the boolean, and take care to ensure that no vertical spans on the cylinder that you are cutting into happen to intersect with the hole made by the cylinder that will be doing the cutting. If you can ensure that, then your bevel will probably work, though it will have ngons and possibly other odd edge artifacts even under the best of circumstances. Sadly, the only surefire way to avoid all this trouble is to avoid using booleans altogether.

In the first frame is a bevel performed after a boolean, while taking care to leave sufficient room between the intersecting objects to ensure that the bevel edge will not later encroach on any other edges. If you look closely, you can see that there is still a problem with extra edges forming in the bevel region, due to bad topology. The second frame shows what I get after deleting theses extra edges and then adding topology sufficient to get rid of all the n-gons. This isn't exactly pretty topology, but this should hopefully illustrate what can happen after using booleans and what kind of outcome you should be working to achieve so that you can create your bevel without inviting further complications. Note that because of this extra effort, if I was now to add another bevel to the rim of the object in the second frame, I would not have any more issues.