How to append .L and .R to my vertex groups with script - AND maybe how to duplicate I'm trying to create a simple script that appends '.L' and '.R' to my existing vertex groups respectively. They already have an existing naming convention that begins with 'b__R' and 'b__L' and I don't want to change that, you can see that's actually an important part of my 'if'.

The mirror modifier does not recognise the L and R in its current format, so I just want to append the .L and .R then be able to remove it when I'm ready to import to my game. I want it to ignore central groups I have that do not have b__R/b__L in the name so that those just mirrors themselves into their existing groups.

Here's what I currently have, and it's not working:

import bpy
obj = bpy.context.active_object

vg = obj.vertex_groups[:]

for g in vg:
    if g.name.beginswith(‘b__R’):
        g.name = g.name+’.R’
    if g.name.beginswith(‘b__L’):
        g.name = g.name+’.L’

To reverse:

import bpy
obj = bpy.context.active_object

vg = obj.vertex_groups[:]

for g in vg:
    if g.name.beginswith(‘b__R’):
        g.name = g.name.replace(’.R’,’’)
    if g.name.beginswith(‘b__L’):
        g.name = g.name.replace(’.L’,’’)

I am COMPLETELY unfamiliar with Python just keep that in mind, I'm just taking guesses here. I'm really just using Python as a means to an end and copied and edited the script from an answer to a similar question on here (linked below).

How to remove a common prefix from vertex-group names?

Also, importantly - your opinion. Is this the best way to do it? I already have an L and R with assigned weights and groups BEFORE deleting half of my mesh (in order to use the modifier). I'm working with a pre existing mesh here. Or should I delete the groups associated with the side of vertices I have deleted to use the modifier, then use the script to also CREATE the other side's groups again? I ask this because I'm not really sure how the data transfer works in the former case and whether those groups will be holding onto information from the deleted vertices.

If it turned out that the latter is the better way to do it (make the script create the other side's groups again), how would I do this?

Sorry for the load of questions, I've avoided this aspect of mirroring the weights in the past because I'm not too clear on its effects in my situation. I'm more than happy to answer any questions for clarification.

Here's the error I'm getting when I Run Script in Blender.

There are three problems currently.

You seem to have pasted the code into a text-editing programm with has encoded the script, then opened it up in Blender. Most likely the ending of your file was .rtf. As you can see in the text editor of Blender, this introduced numerous characters which we don't want. Right now your script starts with {\rtf\ansi ...
You have to simply open the text editor in Blender, paste the script directly, then press Run Script.
If you really want to edit your script externally, use the ending .txt or better .py (the python extension).
You have replaced the command startswith with beginswith (accidentally probably).
You are not using single quotes ', but other special characters ‘ and ’. The were probably generated by your text-editor as well. Use a simple texteditor instead, such as Blenders builtin text editor.

Here is the corrected script.

import bpy
obj = bpy.context.active_object

vg = obj.vertex_groups[:]
for g in vg:
    if g.name.startswith('b__R'):
        g.name = g.name+'.R'
    if g.name.startswith('b__L'):
        g.name = g.name+'.L'

However, I would suggest more changes.

Using the same script to toggle the ending on and off.
Comparing parts of the name with the slice notation.
E.g. to compare the first four characters: my_name[:4]
Replacing the ending letter with the fourth (fixed) L or R character.

These are a lot of obstacles for a beginner, here is the improved (changed) script, the benefit beeing to only need one.

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.active_object
for g in obj.vertex_groups:
    if g.name[:4] in ['b__R', 'b__L']:
        if g.name[-2:] in ['.R', '.L']:
            g.name = g.name[:-2]
        else:
            g.name = g.name + '.' + g.name[3:4]


Tell Blender to ignore tracker for camera solve I want to have blender ignore some markers during camera tracking. I have drone footage of someone running around on a rooftop and shooting at "things" to be added post.  I tracked his gun barrel before doing the camera solve. Naturally if that marker is included in the solve, I get a massive error.  If I delete that marker, I get a good solve. I spent a lot of time putting in that gun barrel track (frame by frame). Can I tell blender to ignore it (or more trackers) during the solve?

No need to delete the tracker.

Each tracker can be assigned a weight, which determines the tracker's contribution for the final camera or object solve.

Just bring the value to zero.

More info: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.70/Motion_Tracker


Smoothing corners in mesh Any modelling experts? I have a mesh that even with Object smoothing On and Normals Auto UV Off has sharp corners (circled green in attached). Is there anything I can do other than remodeling from scratch (was a purchased asset)

Try to add "Subdivision Surface" Modifier.


Creating a spiral along a bezier path How can I create a spiral that follows an arbitrary bezier path?

Here's an example of this in Fusion 360:
So, in other words, this is a bezier curve that winds itself around another bezier curve to produce a spiral. The spiral profile, climb angle, and distance from the central bezier curve should all be customizable.

I gave a detailed answer about a phone cable here. If you want to keep a curve instead of a mesh you can do it the way below. At the end you can convert your curve to mesh if you want. I'm not sure you can use 2 curves and array a mesh along the spiral though. So:

Create a spiral.

Create another curve, a straight one this time. Give your spiral a Curve modifier with the second curve as Object.

Select your spiral. In the Properties panel > Object Data > Shape > Choose Fill > Full, and in Geometry play with the Bevel Depth and Resolution values.

Move the straight curve, the spiral will bend.


Loop Cut and Slide Hotkeys I'd like to change the centering of the loop cut (Factor 0) from a right click to a keyboard shortcut, say, 'Cmd Return'.

In 'User Preferences > Input > 3D View > Mesh > Loop Cut and Slide', I cannot see an option to change the input for the Edge Slide Factor.

Blender 2.78, OS X.

Thank you!

Okay, I can give a more complete answer to describe how to make a custom shortcut.

The desired feature in this case appears to be under "Transform Modal Map" and the desired value is "Cancel".  It is by default mapped to "Any Esc" as shown below.  (This is in User Preferences-->Input.)

You can simply scroll down to the bottom of that section and click on "Add New" to create an alternative mapping for Cancel, as shown below where I have mapped it to "Ctrl-Alt-X":

. . . and you've now got a new keyboard shortuct for that function.  Obviously save your user preferences if you want it to persist.


Image broken when render in Video Sequence Editor mode I have a video and I want to add another audio to it by Blender. But when rendered it happened an error like the image below.

And this is source video properties and rendering settings

This error occurs with some image frame, not at all. What can I do?

Speculating as we don't have enough information here to be conclusive, but this looks suspiciously like an issue with I / B / P frames.

Specifically, your in point on a sequence with B frames may not have enough information to fully build the frame as the decoder would need to decode both the previous I frame, but also the following I frame. If you have trimmed the strip to be in the middle of those I frames, you don't have enough information and you end up with that half broken frame.

Best advice, as usual, is to never use codecs for editing. Render to an intermediate frame sequence and use those as your footage inputs. This will also increase the quality of the work.


Is the roughness setting is based on a standard measuring unit? I was wondering since Blender implemented the 'PrincipledBSDF' shader and it is based on improving photo realism in Blender, I want to know if the roughness index is based off of any unit and if it is what is it?

There are several models how light interacts with surfaces. Cycles supports Beckmann, Ashikhmin-Shirley, GGX and Multiscatter GGX models. They all model surface imperfection (roughness) with microfacets:

  We assume that surfaces that are not perfectly smooth are composed of many very tiny facets, each of which is a perfect specular reflector. These microfacets have normals that are distributed about the normal of the approximating smooth surface. The degree to which microfacet normals differ from the smooth surface normal is determined by the roughness of the surface.

So the roughness is only a statistical value how microfacet normals deviate from the mean (smooth surface). How the surface looks is determined by the lighting model used.

There are many methods for measuring surface roughness on materials and they all are also just statistical values. They are based on the amplitude and frequency of surface imperfections ( how they deviate from a perfectly smooth surface). These imperfections can be measured using profilometer.

The Beckmann model uses Rdq roughness and like this it's results could be validated against physical objects. The Beckmann specularity distribution formula is defined in this paper on page 6.

The Principled shader uses the GGX specularity model and uses perceptual roughness defined in this Pixar paper. It is the same roughness that many apps use, like Arnold renderer, Substance painter, most pbr game engines, and many others (Renderman of course, etc..):

Roughness = (Perceptual_roughness)^2

This perceptual roughness has more linear progression and is more friendly to artists, but doesn't directly correspond to physical methods of roughness measurement.

Blender version 2.79 has inconsistency in this (between Principled and GGX glossy). If you want the same result using Principled shader as you are used to from Glossy GGX, you need to square root the roughness.

However this inconsistency is planned to be fixed in version 2.8 and unified using perceptual roughness.

You may find this related answer thread also useful:

What do glossy distribution models do?


How to make NLA strip pick up location based on previous action? I am progressing on my complex animation model. Now I have just a small problem. I have create 3 action strips: walking, movingstraight and crouch.
In the NLA editor, i try to compose these actions.

In the first test, I did like this image and the animation correctly works

Now, I need that the person continue to walk form the current place. I add walking and moving action like this

the problem that the person return continue to walk but form the first place. I think that i can resolve this by creating an other moving action from the current place to the next place but i think it so complicated if i need to move the person in different place. I hope that the question is not confused.

You can blend the actions in the properties of the Action Strip:

The extrapolation and blend settings are important.

Result:

You have keyframed the scale some bones of the upper body in the crouch action (perhaps accidentally) in case you wonder why this looks like this.

To stop movement while crouching simply keyframe the same position for the frames:


Image with transparency used as texture shows white line on the edges The plane object have the bubble text as texture.
The texture have alpha channel, but in the 3d view and the render is generate lines of white color, I don't know why. I wait that you can help me. Thx.

In the Textures tab scroll down to Image Mapping and change Extension to Clip.


PyNodes: get active node tree from context in Blender 2.72 I'm working on a custom nodetree-based addon for scientific analysis. My code requires knowledge of the active nodetree in the current context (or alternatively the parent nodetree of a selected node) which I haven't been able to obtain yet.

I noticed the addition of a "get_from_context" NodeTree class method in the 2.72 API changelog (http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_72_release/bpy.types.NodeTree.html#bpy.types.NodeTree.get_from_context) which would be perfect. However when I try to call it from either bpy.types.NodeTree or an existing NodeTree object I get an attribute not found error.

What is the correct way to call this method from the NodeTree class directly? Or does anyone else have this issue? I'm quite new to Blender python dev so it could be a stupid mistake.

Alternatively, does anyone know of a way to obtain a node's parent nodetree?

To get the parent of any node:

node.parent

To get the node, you can get it from the context active_node, if you can access the Nodes context, or, from the global context, get the scene and then the node from the correct node tree.

The function get_from_context you mention is a part of the NodeTree class. You would have to show your code for me to know what is the problem.


Shadows follow topology too well I sculpted a kind of awful model and wanted to make a little scene out of it. After retopologizing and rigging, frames from my animation look like this:

The JPEG compression is pretty bad (sorry, my original file was way too big) but the shadows follow the topology of the mesh to the point that they outline the polygons and individual ones are visible.

Why are the shadows following the mesh while the texture is mostly indifferent? I've added a subsurf modifier, but the problem only shrinks a bit and the lag grows a ton. Thanks for any help you can provide!

Edit 1

Sorry, my other image demonstrating the problem was not great... Here's another one (scaled 200% with no interpolation).

Maybe try changing the world lighting so that the shadows aren't so dark. Softer lighting seems to be a solution to this problem.


f-curve modifier to an object that has an object contraint (track to) I am working on a scene with a car chase and I am struggling with adding noise (rotation) to a camera that is tracked to an empty via object constraint.

I have one camera that is static and tracked to an oncoming car (object constraint 1), once the car passes, the camera starts tracking a new car coming from the same direction (chasing the first one; object constraint 2). The transitions are made via keyframes with influence parameters of both tracking constraints (see the picture).

I would like to add a bit of noise to the rotation of the camera to simulate action. However, whatever I do to the respective curves in the graph editor seems to get overridden by the tracking constrains.

A workaround would be to parent the camera directly to a tracking empty (one on each car), but then I would need to use multiple cameras because the parent value cannot be animated.

Thanks for any tips!

Lukas

solved it by limiting the influence of both constraints to 0.8


How do I orientate an object exactly flat to a plane? I am building a turtle. With some boolean operators I'm cutting the plates on the back. I have to do this in place (round surface) especially because of boolean interaction.
Now I need the shields/plates alone, lying on the ground.
So I duplicate the shield-object, apply all modifiers, and seperate all plates by "loose parts".
But now they are hanging skewed in space.
How can I align them exactly(!) to the ground?
(I'm doing it now by manually rotating in very hig resolution, but it allways remaines eye balled.)

Solved!!
   @Xtremity Sorry, I didn't read carefully enough first!
The clue was to go in edit mode, and select a FACE, not the object!
Now it works like charm! (Though a bit complicated, so I'll try to write (or find) a macro, as you told, because I'll have to do it many times.)

This is where it would be handy to have Maya's Bake Pivot Orientation command.  Sadly, I haven't been able to find a straightforward way to do this.  The best method I have come up with so far is as follows:

Set the mesh object's Origin to Geometry.
Create a custom Transform Orientation for the face you want to be considered 'up'

Create an Empty at the object's origin
With the Empty selected, use Object, Transform, Align to Transform Orientation
Parent the mesh object to the Empty

With the Empty selected, use Object, Clear, Rotation.  The mesh object's orientation will now be reset to 'normal'
Optionally, you can apply the rotation transform on the mesh object.


When is it useful to mirror? Having discovered the mirror modifier I have been assuming I should always use it when modeling a symmetrical object.
For instance, take a simple stool. Is it more efficient to model one half with a mirror, or model the round top, and one leg, and then copy the leg around to each quarter?
Can I make a mirror of a mirror and model just a quarter of the chair? Should I?
Basically I am asking for alternatives work flows to mirroring, and the relative merits of them.

" When is it useful to use mirror? "

If you can imagine placing a mirror along one half of an object, and the object appears correct, use a mirror.
Even when the geometry on both sides is mostly mirrored and differs slightly, you can edit each side individually after applying the mirror (breaking the symmetry).

For anything with symmetry:
you can mirror x,y , try it! place the origin at the center and tick both x,y axis for the mirror.

an Array Modifier can be useful when the repetition goes beyond straight x,y mirroring. Use an empty as the object offset and rotate the empty on (for example) the z-axis by 60 degrees, to get a radial array like this example:

Note: object offset is generally referred to as the pivot point when talking about radial arrays.
And then there is the Screw Modifier, which can be considered a Lathe modifier, which lets you draw a profile and rotate it around to form the shape. This is very common practice. I prefer the screw modifier instead of the Spin tool, because you can keep editing the profile without having to 're-spin'

You can combine these geometry modifiers, for example you can mirror a section then radial array the result. Here's a crude example


My UVs are not in the same scale when I apply 'Average Island Scale' I cannot make the UVs the same dimension, they shrink when I apply Average Island Scale. Is this behavior normal or is it my way of thinking?

Here's the steps to reproduce the problem I found:

Start a new project, default settings, and recreate the mesh in photo 1, also apply the same Seams.
Using project from view or cube projection, create the UVs for the front and side.
You can see the UVs match the height and are at the desired scale.
Apply "Average Islands Scale", the uvs get's squished, and there's a clear difference in scale.
If Textured, you can see visually the difference, how is that "Average Islands Scale"?

My problem was that, in a project with a object, I had multiple separate pieces, so I unwrapped it okay, with correct seams and everything, and needed to average the different islands, but if I apply the "Average Island Scale", it reproduces the same effect in step 4, it squishes and break the UVs proportion. And yes, I am well aware that objects out of scale 1,1,1, give errors, my objects are always have applied rotation and scale.

I am a fan of the Textools Add-on for Blender, but it seems that the function "Apply Texel Density by Scaling the UVs to match the ratio." gives the same result as Average Island Scale.

Finally, my question is, this effect is clearly undesired, shouldn't the Average Islands Scale take into account the dimensions? Or is it normal to consider angles and geometry when Averaging islands?

It works with Areas

Average Island Scale is (to my kowledge) based on the 3D faces surface area, not it's dimensions. This would make more sense with more complex, irregular figures coming out from the unwrapping of a character, for example.

Take as instance the following example: two faces with the same area (1 square unit) and individual UV island. Running the operator doesn't affect the UV mapping in any way, wether the two figures have different dimension.

If I alter the scale of one of the two islands, and re-run the operator, all the selected faces are being scaled in order to show the correct ratio: they have the same surface in the 3D viewport, so their corresponding islands have the should cover the same area in the UV.

In the example you are providing, everything is going fine in my opinion. The portion with the trapezoidal face has less surface in the 3D viewport, so it should be smaller in the UV map.

If you would to get UV island that shares the same units, the faster way is to unwrap them at the same time (your figure n°3 is probably what you were looking for).


Cancel Blender Looking for Missing Textures I have downloaded a blend file from the internet I hope to use in a personal project, everything is pink in the rendered scene (missing textures).
I do not care for the textures, and I do not want to find them, I just want to get rid of the pink (I already have materials I can use). How do I tell blender to stop looking for the damn missing files?
All other searches have led to "just find the missing files", yes I know how to do that, I DO NOT WANT TO DO THAT. I just want to forget about textures, and use the materials.

Thank you for your responses, even though the textures on materials were not missing, the world texture (HDRI texture) was found to be missing.
In this case, just go to the world settings and deselect use nodes, of course you can use another one from there if you have it.
Leaving this here in case anyone has the same issue and can't figure out why.


What is the replacement of 'scene.render.layers['RenderLayer']' in blender 2.8? It seems that the property scene.render.layers['RenderLayer'] is no longer available in blender-2.8. I just want to set the use_pass_uv property of the current scene, then what should I do?
'scene.render.layers['RenderLayer'].use_pass_uv=True' works well in blender-2.7, but in blender-2.8, there was an error like this ''AttributeError: 'RenderSettings' object has no attribute 'layers

Render layers have been replaced by View Layers. Recommend do a search in the API docs or use the python console to figure out how to access the ViewLayers of the current scene:
 >>> C.scene.view_
                 layers
                 settings

>>> for vl in C.scene.view_layers: # Iterate through all view layers
...     print (vl.name) # print the name
...
View Layer
View Layer.001
View Layer.002
...

You can also access the current ViewLayer (in context) by using bpy.context.view_layer (or by using C convenience variable in the console C.view_layer):
>>> C.view_layer # View layer reference
bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].view_layers["View Layer"]

>>> C.view_layer.name # View layer name
'View Layer.001'

Another way is using get(<LAYERNAME>) on Scene.ViewLayers collection:
>>> C.scene.view_layers.get('View Layer')
bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].view_layers["View Layer"]

>>> my_vl = C.scene.view_layers.get('View Layer')
>>> my_vl.name
'View Layer'

Basic example on how to set attributes of the current view layer (in context):
import bpy

# Get the current view layer
vl = bpy.context.view_layer

# Set uv pass attribute
vl.use_pass_uv = True

# Set normal pass attribute
vl.use_pass_normal = True

# Enable diffuse light passes
vl.use_pass_diffuse_direct = True
vl.use_pass_diffuse_indirect = True
vl.use_pass_diffuse_color = True

Example on how to enable the 'UV' as well as the 'Normal' pass on all view layers in the scene:
import bpy

for vl in bpy.context.scene.view_layers:
    vl.use_pass_uv = True       # Enable UV pass
    vl.use_pass_normal = True   # Enable normal pass


Shadowless render pass I would like to have full control of the shadows in post production.

That's why I would like to have

A shadow render pass containing only the shadows of my scene
A shadowless render pass containing everything else but not the shadows

I know how to accomplish the shadow pass, but the shadowless pass is giving me trouble.

Someone told me to subtract the shadow from everything else using nodes. But how do you do something like that in practice? I tried if using the math node in different modes like "subtract" would help, but the results were weird.

So to recap my question:
How can I create a render pass that has no shadows in Blender?

EDIT: I should mention that I'm using cycles as the render engine.

Blender Internal:
You can exclude a pass from the Combined pass by toggling the camera icon next to the appropriate pass in Render Layers > Passes:

Cycles:
The trick with cycles is that there is direct lighting and indirect lighting.
If you only want to filter out shadows, then it's as simple as dividing render by the Shadow pass with a Mix node. However, indirect lighting gets in the way of this. If you combine the Indirect pass with the Shadow pass, then use that to divide, you will remove all the indirect lighting and shadows. (you end up with a Color pass that has no shading at all).
here are some workarounds:
Renderlayers:
There might be a better way to do this, but you can use two renderlayers:
Layer 1 contains the cube object.
Layer 2 has the lights, floor and background.
Settings for Renderlayer1:
For this render layer all scene layers are enabled to render the object and background.

Settings for Renderlayer2:
For the no shadows layer, the scene layer with the cube is excluded and masked to remove shadows cast by the cube and to create a mask to combine with the other layer later.

Composite nodes:
All that remains to be done is combining the cube into the no shadows layer.
If you have Render settings > Film > Transparent enabled you could use an Alpha over node, or you could use a Mix node with the Alpha of the no shadows layer as a mix factor:

Material nodes:
You can filter out shadows per material with material nodes, e.g. for a shadowless and bounceless diffuse shader:

This will let light through the object when it's bounced indirectly of a diffuse object and when sent directly from a light source:

The obvious downside to this is you have to use two scenes and recreate your materials to use this for compositing.
Object shadow property:
You can also remove shadows per object by unchecking the Shadow box in the Properties Editor > Object > Ray Visibility:

To do this for all objects for use in compositing, you could

Create a new scene from your current scene.

A> select all

After disabling the Shadow box in Object > Ray Visibility, right click it and select Copy to selected to set this for all selected objects.

This will prevent all objects from casting shadows.
You can now use this scene in the compositor as a renderlayer.


Objects are not counted in the header and will not export I have a scene full of objects that won't export properly (I need either FBX or Obj, it's for Unity but that's irrelevant). After a lot of work I've been able to narrow down the problem to the fact that those objects are not being properly counted.. (see picture, objects counts 0..)
The objects that are being counted export fine. :(

Any idea what is wrong with those objects?...

I have a work-around: joining a problematic object to a working  object, and then separating them again, but there are dozens of objects in that scene, it would take me days to fix all this like that.

Any help would be very welcome. :(

Only objects which are in visible Scene layers are counted in the info header.

Note the difference between Scene layers and View layers:

View layers are set in 3D view > Header, and are independent between different 3D view editors. Only objects in the the current 3D view's view layers are shown in that 3D view.
Scene layers are set in Properties > Renderlayers > Layer > Scene, and control the visibility of objects for the enter scene. This visibility is used for scene-wide operations such as renders and exports.

By default these two layer sets are locked together so that they are always set to the same layers, however this option is disabled in your file (1).

Either re-enable this option, or set the scene layers to match your view layers in the header of the 3D view (2).


2.7 How to make an anime looking object I'm wondering how I would make an object have lines on some edges when rendered, like it was
drawn. I believe the feature is called freestyle, and I activate it in the render options, but my test cube doesn't render with the lined edges. What I'm asking, to be clear, is how to make an object that renders with hard lines on edges to give the appearance of being drawn in blender 2.7 cycles render. The blender wiki has outdated info about this.

Enable freestyle in the properties->Render window:
You can control the line thickness there.

The controls for the shading are in properties->scene->line_style->Freestyle Line set and Line style.


Porous object, texture or geometry? I'm trying to model something like this (sorry for the small picture)

that is basically a half sphere made of sintered or aggregated smaller spheres, like a thick multilayer.  I was wondering if this could be achieved by simulating gravity with lots of smaller particles and them emptying the core, or with a particle system of any kind, or even with a solidified sphere with a porous texture, any idea?  I'm not that knowledgeable in Blender.

Solved!

I followed this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gM8yEMFMjg, where the author is using a sphere as a volume container, and then sets up a particle system emitting from the volume.  I haven't managed to run the physics simulation to avoid particle overlapping, but in my case should be good enough.


How to make mushrooms stand on floor? I have been following a cave tutorial from Blender Guru and I am stuck with my mushrooms after the weight paint. The mushrooms are located in the right area but the steams are sticking through the cave floor and not standing on the cave floor.
I have been changing the origin of the cave but it doesn't make a difference.

This is because hair is grown from the origin center of the original mushroom i.e. origin center is in center of the hair object that is mushroom. Try changing the origin center from center to bottom of the mushroom you can do it just by placing 3d cursor at the bottom and then press "Shift + s" and then origin to 3d cursor,
Another way of doing this is Just select the mushroom and go to edit mode and in edit mode press 'A' to ensure All Vertices are selected and then move the mushroom up so that origin point comes to bottom and then just go back to object mode and this will do,

Overall you have to change the centre of the origin of object to it's bottom so that hair is grown from the bottom
i hope you understand


Render settings are not applying Why i have 40 Path Tracing with low render setting?
It seems like the render settings i make are not applying anymore.
What can i do solve this? I want to regain my old render settings with 1 Path Tracing.

What you are seeing is 40 tiles to be rendered. In the posted image the computer was rendering the 23th tile out of 40


Multiple objects following the same path at different rates I'm trying to set up multiple objects to follow the same Path. To achieve this I have created a NurbsPath and manipulated it into the desired shape and added multiple objects (spheres) with Follow Path object constraints with Target set to the NurbsPath.

For a single object to follow the path I would simply set the NurbsPath Path Animation properties and keyframe the Evaluation Time to vary between 0 and the value of Frames. This would animate the object along the path (in this case it's 52/100th of the way along the path).

Animating multiple objects along the same path at the same rate is not a problem as each object's Follow Path constraint can be set with a different Offset to offset the animation by the required amount.

The problems comes with changing the rate of the animation. Since the Frames and Evaluation Time are properties of the Path I don't see how this can be achieved - other than Duplicating the path and changing the duplicate path to have different Path Animation settings to set a different rate. This seems messy - especially if the path needs to be adjusted as both paths would need to be kept in-step.

(the above animation was achieved by having 3 paths, each with different Path animation settings)

Is there a better way of achieving this? ie, without needing multiple duplicate Paths.

With just a follow path constraint, with fixed position set to True, an offset of 0 is start, 1 is end of curve. The offset can be keyframed / driven.

Sample file, 3 cubes, All at 0 offset at frame 1.  Two are keyframed, one traverses path in 50 frames the other 80 with an offset value of 1 at those frames respectively.

The other is driven by the frame number

(frame - 1) / 100

which will be at 0 at frame 1 and 1 offset at frame 101 and above.


How can I move/reorder a vertex group more than one spot at a time? I have a model with a lot of vertex groups. I've found out that I'm missing one, or need to add one for a new reason, or whatever. However, to keep the list usefully organized, the new group should be near the beginning of the list. The problem is that all new vertex groups are added at the end of the list, and it seems that the only way to reorder them is to click on the "move up" button once per spot. I don't really want to be clicking the "move up" button a couple dozen times, especially if it turns out I need to (for example) add four new groups that all belong near the beginning of a sixty-long list for a couple dozen models.

How can I move a vertex group multiple spots at once?

I can't use name sort or bone hierarchy sort because that's not how the groups should be ordered. The "copy group" function also sticks new groups on the end rather than after the selected group. The intuitive "click and drag" doesn't exist. I'm not seeing anything relevant in any expected locations.

Quick vg move addon.

Debug run showing setter output to console. Move "Group" from top to bottom to top.  Add new group "Group.040" and move to top

Here is a script solution to set the destination index of the active vg.  To run copy, paste into text editor, run script and the slider will appear below the vg listbox.

Can install as addon.

bl_info = {
    "name": "Ouick Move Vertex Group",
    "author": "batFINGER",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "location": "Properties > Mesh > Vertex Groups",
    "description": "Quickly move vertex groups",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "Object",
}

import bpy
from bpy.props import IntProperty

def vgmove(delta):
    direction = 'UP' if delta > 0 else 'DOWN'
    for i in range(abs(delta)):
        bpy.ops.object.vertex_group_move(direction=direction)

def get_move_to(self):
    return self.vertex_groups.active_index

def set_move_to(self, value):
    delta = (self.vertex_groups.active_index -
            min(value, len(self.vertex_groups) - 1))
    vgmove(delta)

bpy.types.Object.move_to_vg = IntProperty(
    name="Move to",
    get=get_move_to,
    set=set_move_to,
    min=0,
)

def draw_vg_move(self, context):
    layout = self.layout
    ob = context.object
    if ob and len(ob.vertex_groups):
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(ob, "move_to_vg")

def register():
    bpy.types.DATA_PT_vertex_groups.append(draw_vg_move)

def unregister():
    bpy.types.DATA_PT_vertex_groups.remove(draw_vg_move)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Render parts of object(s) only when they are within a defined area I'd like to animate a train car entering and exiting a diorama from left to right. As the train car exits the station, "breaking the plane" that is the boundary of the station, the parts of the train car outside the station should be transparent.
Here's what the train car would look like passing through if there were no masking or holdouts or anything:

What I'd like is for it to be "chopped off" outside the diorama bounding box, resulting in something like this:

...but I don't want to accomplish this with booleans. It's way too expensive and intense, as the train will have many objects and shaders involved with it.
I can achieve the desired effect behind the station with compositing and render layers using holdouts. But the foreground part of the train as it exits, I'm lost on how to achieve that.
Thanks!

With Holdout:

Create a layer with the train and with a holdout object both visible (make sure that the holdout object is alpha blend and no shadow):

Create a second layer with neither of these 2 objects visible:

Render and mix in the Compositor through a Color > Alpha Over:

Or create a black and white image that will allow you to mask the left part:

Create 2 layers, one with the train, one without, use the black and white image as a mask in the Compositor:


Subdivision Surface Modifier Mask? Can I mask certain edges/vertices/faces from a subdivision surface modifier? I am working with small models and want to have some edges sharp yet others smoothed. Because of how think the object is and how I beveled it, it looks horrible when smoothed. I'd like it if I could somehow mask certain edges or faces from it, or to choose faces that should be sharper?
I have tried to add loop cuts and bevels, but with how badly I made the model, it wont work with the vertices. I will try moving them and seeing if they may be overlapping, or I messed up by making a complicated panel without extra edges. But loop cutting isn't working as it should.
I also tried adding creases but they didn't change anything about how the model looks with the modifier. I will show images of all that I tried. I want to have the sides sharp, but the inside smoothed out. I don't know if shade smooth renders, but it it does it still looks weird for what I am going for.
I also tried using an edge split modifier, but it didn't change anything either, like the previous answers. I did clean up the vertices, there aren't doubles.

The basic problem you have is the topology. Avoid faces that have more than 4 vertices. Those will not work for what you want to do.
All of those examples don't work because of those n-gons.
Start with a shape like this:

You can create all kinds of "unusual shapes", but you have to have the topology in mind when creating them.
Then you will be able to appreciate the difference between all of the proposed ways to mix smooth and hard edges.


Array modifier does strange things with mesh I am attempting a very simple (or so I thought) mesh to make the base for a laser cutter table. It is simply a tweaked square with an extended base.

I used the solidify and bevel modifier to give it a little depth and rounded edges.

When I went to put the array modifier on it to duplicated it, the first piece of the array didn't show up. And the second piece gives me both together for some reason. See the gif for the behavior.

Also, the problem seems to go away when I unclick "merge". But, it doesn't really merge them so the bevel modifier still makes them appear to be separate pieces.

What is the best practice here?

Any idea what is going on?

It is very likely that merge distance is set too high. Array modifier behaves unexpectedly when the merge distance is larger than the object. Try applying the scale with Ctrl+A and setting the merge distance to a reasonable value. That should be all that's need to fix this.

Modifier order does change the result, however they should work correctly in any order.


how to use the color black on an alpha texture? What do I when I have a model that I am painting on, the texture has an alpha layer, and I want to do something like paint the color black over some other color on that texture. when I do this of course the color black just ends up making any other color on the texture invisible. So is there way to paint on an alpha texture with the color black and have it show up instead of alpha things out? I'm trying to do this using nodes in blender 2.82.

in the end, i got it to show by turning the blend mode in the materials settings to alpha blend, then i could see the color black as i painting on the model.


Making a camera with a green tint I'm trying to make a horror game with a green tint to the camera (like above)
Is there any way to make this?

Yes, its possible:

You have to use GLSL, make your horror scene, dont use any lights (for the scene).
After, you may parent a Spot to your camera (Ctrl+P make parent, keep transform), and set the color of the spot to a green tint, decrase the energy for a better effect. There is many parameters for the spot, you just have to try ;)


Ease camera acceleration which follows a path I let a camera follow a round path which also tracks an empty (see reference). There is no problem in animating this, however I want the camera to start moving slowly and generate more speed and also to come to a halt slowly (ease in & out). But when I take a look in the graph editor there is no curve to edit.

Edit:

Also if I choose the curve there is no graph to adjust.

If you've used either a 'Follow Path' constraint or parented the camera to your path with the 'Follow Path' option, the keyframes you're looking for are on the path itself, not the camera.


How can I improve my mesh imported from Sketchup? I have created a mesh in Sketchup Pro, imported using a plugin in an older version of Blender, and then opened the file in the latest build. As you can see the Mesh looks awful. As I plan to use Brick and tile textures, I'm guessing I will need to do some cleaning of the mesh first?

Is there a better way to import the files that will give me a cleaner mesh? I have the pro version, so lots of options. Do I need to add Loopcuts and new edges everywhere to get rid of the triangle faces?

Any advice on where to go next to make texturing simpler would be appreciated.

Is there a better way to import the files that will give me a cleaner mesh?

This is less a Blender question at this point than a Sketchup question; The import isn't making all the tris, Sketchup is. Perhaps see if there's a "quads" export option.

Assuming that isn't an option  (because if it is, you can stop reading), you have two options;

1: Retopologize the mesh (either by modifying the current mesh, or by making a new mesh on top of that one with the intention of recreating the same shape with a different edge flow)

2: Don't model in Sketchup first (obviously not applicable for this model, this is future-looking).

If my memory of Sketchup holds true, it isn't concerned with per-vertex manipulation, it just allows you to make shapes and plunk them together. That said, you will always get haphazard meshes from it. If you start with Blender, you can keep edge-flow in mind from the get-go, and you can skip all the cleanup or remeshing.

  Do I need to add Loopcuts and new edges everywhere to get rid of the triangle faces?

No. Yes. Kind of both, depending on what you need;

If the mesh needs to be one continuous part with no missing faces (otherwise referred to as "manifold"), then you do have to make loop cuts if you want consistent edge-flow (particularly on meshes that use subdivision modifiers).
If is can be multiple parts, you could make, for example, one part for a roof section, and one part for the walls. Then, if you want to add a windows, you wouldn't need to loop cut all the way around the roof every time.

Also, in general, if you are working on hard surfaces (mostly non-biological, like a house, or a car) you can forgo loop cuts throughout the model by carving up a face, then terminating the edges locally. For example, let's say you started with this house (forgive the quick model);

Now, you want to add a door here, but then these would be the loop cuts;

Yuk. Instead, you could add the following edges;

Now you can extrude out that one face, and you have the start of a door;

(Then maybe you add a door frame, get a little fancier, etc etc);

Of course, this is all well and good, and everything is still in quads, but it can be argued that you've traded one problem (bad edge flow) with another (poles). What's a pole? Any vertex with more than 4 edges. We've created 2;

Now, this is a VERY wide topic, so you'll want to research both edge flow and poles, but the short version - in this specific case - is that

1: This is a solid structure that might be subdivided, but won't be distorted (like a human elbow or shoulder model might need to deform). So the poles shouldn't be an issue

2: We've hidden them in an out of the way area (which also applies to a human model). At some point or another, many models will end up with poles, even subdivided biological ones. The key is to hide the pole (and thus, the potential artifacting and UV issues) somewhere out of the way (like a rafter, or an arm-pit, or a nostril).

The above example works on windows as well. Not only would you have cut through the roof;

You would have cut through the entire middle of the house (and any other details along the way);

Oof. But we can apply roughly the same process as before. You can use "cut" (the "k" key) to draw the basic shape (hitting enter at the end);

Then use "cut" again to fill in the missing edges (one at a time, hitting enter after each);

Two windows can be achieved with the following pattern;

Of course, now we have 4 Tris. If you want to reduce that to 2, you can add a single loop cut (instead of the 4 you might have tried before, one for each left and right side of each window);

Then you arrange the edges like this (and maybe extrude some faces for window frames, first pulling them out, then pushing them back in);

You could get rid of all Tris, but at this point it's a game of "how badly do I want to have all quads, and what kind of edge flow do I want to maintain?"

Hope this helps!


Unwrapping Mesh Hair I want to UV unwrap this hair mesh, and then texture it with a procedural Wave texture (parallel lines). I want the lines to converge to the tip of each spike of hair.

It seems that I could do something like mark seams on sharp edges (or edge split modifier, unwrap, and remove doubles) to get the main pieces of the surface separated. But I do not know how to get them oriented to match the directions of the Wave lines cleanly, or how to change their tips to get the texture to converge probably.

What workflow would let me do this?

You can unwrap individual segments, then using P button to add some pinned vertices in the UV/Image editor to control the shape to match the wave texture while using Live Unwrap.


Parametric primitives through python script I'm trying to get into blender Scripting and am having a hard time finding examples or info on how one would create something like 3DS Max's Scripted Primitive; parametric objects that can be modified at any time after creation, not only until you perform another action, like standard blender object.

Main thing is I want to generate geonetry through code, not with blend shapes or by simply moving components around, and I want to be able to go back at any time and adjust this geometry.

Ideally there's an example script out there that does something similar, I'm experienced enough with Python to figure it out, it's just documentation is very lacking and I find info on google that is over 10 years old!

I don't know if you're still searching for this but I found something that may be what you're looking for. It's an Add-On called "Wonder Mesh". The Add-On allows you to generate and edit the parameters of its available primitives. That being said, the author states that you need to convert the object to a "regular mesh" if you want to modify the primitive. It overwrites modifications to the Object Data that were made in Edit Mode.

Here is a direct link to the Add-On:

https://blendermarket.com/products/wonder-mesh

(You can purchase it here or go to the bottom of the page for the GitHub link)

Here is a video on the most recent version for Blender v2.8:

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

Here is a video on a older version (in case it's useful):

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


Can a curve object modifier created geometry be used as boolean factor This question is related to this question.

Let me use an exemple to illustrate what I mean.

We've created a text object (made of curves). It can't be used in a boolean modifier as it won't appear in the list of usable objects in the modifier because it's a curve object.

But if we add a remesh modifier on the text, geometry is created from the shape.

The object could be used as boolean if we convert it to mesh. The remesh can't be applied on curve object.

My question is : Can we dynamicaly use the remesh modifier created geometry as real geometry or make the boolean modifier consider the text modified object as a real mesh?

The idea behind this is to be able to change the text (or any curve 3D shape) without having to make it a real mesh.

(don't hesitate to edit my poor english to make it understandable :) )

As you have guessed blender doesn't let you use a curve object for boolean operations. While the remesh modifier technically turns the result into a mesh, it is still a curve based object.

I think your best option is to duplicate the text ⇧ ShiftD, then ⎇ AltC to convert the duplicate to a mesh and use it for the boolean. As you leave the original text object you can delete the mesh text, alter the text and repeat.


How to approach the modeling of paneling on walls and floors? Panelling in Sci-fi models is especially important because it adds visual interest and I would love to learn how to do it. I would like to learn how you model paneling, especially with complex shapes? I think I'm mostly confused about getting the fine lines between panels and how to conform them to the model especially on complex shapes.

Here are some references for what I want to do.

This can be done with the Array Modifier and a few modelling tricks.

First start by adding a defining shape for your panel, in this case it is a wall panel. Make sure that the edges join together properly:

Add an array modifier to see how it tiles and for reference when modelling in the next steps:

Now start adding some details to this shape, beveling edges and doing basic extrusions:

Now start modelling other pieces, like pipes, wiring, etc. and then join it to the mesh using Ctrl+J:

This is the basic technique, feel free to experiment and make it your own. Standard texturing and materials methods apply. I would very much recommend watching the BlenderGuru tutorial on making a space corridor as well.


Getting a stack trace when addon crashes Blender I am developing an addon for Blender 2.69, and a specific python library call is causing Blender to crash. I have tried to enclose the call in a try-catch block, but it still crashes. As a result, I can't view the error details in the system console.

Is there any way I could print the stack trace to a file before crashing, or any other way I could access this information?

The problematic library call is intriguing on its own, and I've posted it as a Stack Overflow question here: PIL Image.save() function fails in Blender python

If you really want to invest time to find why it crashes you might be best doing your own debug build of Blender and checking exactly where it crashes in a debugger.

Failing that, blender does write a stack trace on exit (on Linux at least).

Try run blender from a terminal and on crash you will get a message like...

Writing: /tmp/blender.crash.txt

# Blender 2.69 (sub 9), Unknown revision
bpy.data.window_managers["WinMan"].(null) = 'F8'  # Property
bpy.data.window_managers["WinMan"].(null) = 'F8'  # Property

# backtrace
/src/blender/blender.bin() [0x709cf1]
/src/blender/blender.bin() [0x709f7a]
/usr/lib/libc.so.6(+0x353e0) [0x7f617dd343e0]
/src/blender/blender.bin() [0x141ca0c]
/src/blender/blender.bin(RNA_property_type+0x27) [0x141d77e]
/src/blender/blender.bin(RNA_property_collection_begin+0x2f) [0x1424665]
/src/blender/blender.bin(WM_operator_properties_sanitize+0x55) [0x727453]
/src/blender/blender.bin() [0x720de3]
/src/blender/blender.bin(WM_keyconfig_update+0x9f) [0x7240bb]
/src/blender/blender.bin(wm_event_do_handlers+0xa03) [0x718d6a]
/src/blender/blender.bin(WM_main+0x33) [0x70da43]
/src/blender/blender.bin(main+0x44d) [0x70c971]
/usr/lib/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xf5) [0x7f617dd20b05]
/src/blender/blender.bin() [0x709009]

Or you could look into Pythons faulthandler module, which can catch segfaults and report information about this too.


Understanding Checker Deselect I don't succeed in selecting a group of faces and deselect with Checker Deselect.

Consider a cube that has been looped cut ...

Select all the faces of the top side ...

Click on Checker Deselect ...

What does it mean ?

(I am using v2.78c)

You need to have an active face. This is a way to give an indication to Blender in order to control which faces will be kept selected:

If no face is active, you obtain the message mentioned in your question.


Mesh + Armature Problem I finished modeling a LEGO man, so I decided to rig him.
After I rigged him, everything was fine:
https://youtu.be/ahPx-qFXO4o

But, when I tried to move the hips or body, the other parts were glitched out and didn't move correctly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjmQoTe8Xlg&feature=youtu.be

Would really appreciate it if someone told me what the issue is. Thanks :]

Finally fixed it
if anyone has this problem, just recreate the bone structure and it should work :)


Blender on Linux - list of AMD GPUs that work with Cycles/OpenCL Which AMD GPUs are useable with a recent Linux, more specifically Ubuntu (18.04) and AMD drivers? Or are there some that definitely don't work?

This question is not off topic because either a GPU evidently works with Blender or it doesn't, so it's not about subjective hardware recommendations.

Thanks in advance.

P.S.: The open source OpenCL implementation of Mesa still doesn't seem to work, or did someone get it to? Because if possible I'd of course use that instead of the AMD drivers.

This is a list of AMD GPUs known running together with OpenCL and Blender Cycles. It is composed by either personal experience or from sources on the web:

╔═════════════════════╦═════════╦════════════╦════════════╦════════════╦════════╗
║         GPU         ║   OS    ║ OS version ║ Blender v. ║   Driver   ║ Source ║
╠═════════════════════╬═════════╬════════════╬════════════╬════════════╬════════╣
║    Radeon cards     ║         ║            ║            ║            ║        ║
║ RX580               ║ Xubuntu ║ 18.04.02   ║ 2.8beta    ║ OpenCL-Pro ║      5 ║
║ RX580               ║ Linux*  ║ N/A        ║ 2.79       ║ N/A        ║    1,3 ║
║ RX470 4GB           ║ Kubuntu ║ 16.04      ║ 2.78       ║ AMDGPU-Pro ║      2 ║
║ RX Vega 64          ║ Arch,   ║ N/A        ║ 2.79       ║ AMDGPU &   ║      4 ║
║                     ║ custom kernel, libdrm downgrade   ║ AMD OpenCL ║        ║
║ RX480               ║ Linux*  ║ N/A        ║ 2.79_build ║ N/A        ║      3 ║
║ RX Vega 56          ║ Linux*  ║ N/A        ║ 2.79_build ║ N/A        ║      3 ║
║ RX Vega 64          ║ Linux*  ║ N/A        ║ 2.79_build ║ N/A        ║      3 ║
║ RX Vega Frontier E. ║ Linux*  ║ N/A        ║ 2.79_build ║ N/A        ║      3 ║
║ Pro WX 7100         ║ Linux*  ║ N/A        ║ 2.79_build ║ N/A        ║      3 ║
║ Pro WX 7100 DUO     ║ Linux*  ║ N/A        ║ 2.79_build ║ N/A        ║      3 ║
╚═════════════════════╩═════════╩════════════╩════════════╩════════════╩════════╝

* likely Ubuntu or a derivate (officially supported), see this comment. Also means that AMDs OpenCL implementation must've been used, as there's no other known working so far

sources:
1,
2,
3
4: user gandalf3
   5: myself, using Xubuntu 18.04.02 with an all open stack (standard) plus the OpenCL portion from the closed AMDGPU-Pro driver

This list is obviously far from complete, it's just meant as a start. I'll gather more and more information in the near future.

Feel free to edit, improve and add to this list to complete it and make it comprehensive in the end!

P.S.: The table was made with https://senseful.github.io/text-table/, as the standard SE markdown does not support tables in any way, see here.


Custom nonlinear distortion lens Is it possible to create a custom nonlinear distortion lens in Blender?

I'm assuming that Blender superimposes a rectangular grid in front of the eye, and fires out a ray through the center of each cell on the grid, returning the colour for that pixel.

So my question reduces to: is it possible to replace this grid with my own warped grid?

EDIT: I'm most interested in a code-level solution -- this is for experimental project and as such I would like fine-grained control.

PS I can't find any tags, such as ray-tracing, eye-ray, lens, distortion

Why not use the compositor to achieve this affect?

Doing this in the compositor is really easy. All you need to do is to add a lens distortion node.


Why have I got an extra vertex when exporting to ply format? The following is a very simple object in Blender (that I have cut out from a much larger object in order to highlight where the issue lies). It has nine vertices and four quad faces. There is vertex colour applied, although it is not obvious here as there's not much variation over this scale.

When I export this object to .ply format and examine the file, I see this:
ply
format ascii 1.0
comment Created by Blender 2.91.0 - www.blender.org
element vertex 10
property float x
property float y
property float z
property uchar red
property uchar green
property uchar blue
property uchar alpha
element face 4
property list uchar uint vertex_indices
end_header
-6.090830 9.806936 23.743603 144 133 135 255
-6.092340 9.750036 23.692902 147 130 134 255
-6.125180 9.707676 23.744701 145 134 135 255
-6.123610 9.763186 23.793701 124 113 116 255
-6.137280 9.662676 23.802002 149 136 136 255
-6.136250 9.718307 23.849602 162 143 138 255
-6.130440 9.814006 23.842001 152 137 142 255
-6.085920 9.851616 23.802301 178 163 168 255
-6.144290 9.771136 23.897602 160 138 134 255
-6.123610 9.763186 23.793701 124 113 116 0
4 0 1 2 3
4 3 2 4 5
4 0 3 6 7
4 8 6 9 5

I now suddenly have ten vertices!

Note that vertices 3 and 9 (or rows 4 and 10 of the vertex list if you prefer) have identical values except that one has an alpha value of 255 and the other 0.

From the location, I can tell that these two duplicates correspond to the central of the nine vertices.

On a larger scale, this has happened to 19 of about 100,000 vertices in the full original object, so it's a rare but not unique occurrence.

As far as I was aware, I never did anything that might edit the alpha channel.

Vertex colours originally came from a texture bake using the "Bake to vertex color" add-on. After a bit of experimenting, I have narrowed down the problem to this add-on, or at least to the vertex colours in some way. If I export prior to creating the vertex colours, I get the correct number of vertices.

What gives, and how can I fix it? I am working on the .ply file via some external scripts, and it is a nightmare having doubled-up vertices in the list.

This script will set all vertex color alphas to 1 on the active object (I couldn't find a way to do it through the UI). Select your object, make sure you're in Object Mode, paste it in the text editor and hit run.
import bpy
assert bpy.context.mode == 'OBJECT'
for vc in bpy.context.active_object.data.vertex_colors:
    for c in vc.data:
        c.color[3] = 1

However a vert might still get split up if there are different vertex colors at the different corners that meet it, like this:

This will export with 16 verts. There's not really anything you can do about that, I think that's just how .ply works.


Get vector location list from matrix list via script node in Animation Nodes I want to be able to view the coordinates of the locations of the matrices after I have manipulated the matrices with matrix nodes. Would someone be able give me an example script, which I assume would be a loop to show the extracted vector list from matrices in the viewer at the top right as shown in the screen shot I took. The viewer is attached to vects a vector list socket. I have been trying, searching with no success for solution.

I eventually worked out how to make the loop in the script nodeto extract the vectors into a vector list.


Does the bone size influence its relationship with other bones? For example, does the size of the parent bone affect its influence over unconnected child bones?

Yes, the size (scale) of the parent can influence the children size, depending on the "inherit scale" parameter, as shown here, in pose mode :


How do I fix vertices that aren't following the armature? I wanted to report a problem I had recently with my rigged and clothed character.
Whenever I move the head or body, there is ONE vertex that does not follw the rig :
Here it is in T-Pose:

Now positioned :

How could I find the exact vertice creating this issue and how could I fix it? I am currently checking the weight paints of every bone and did not find anything so far. I think this has mostly something to do with the head bone as every head part has this issue.
Also this appears everytime the head moves, even under the influence of another bone like spine or neck.
P.S. I would also love to ameliorate my cloth rigging. you can see that the denim part is pretty sloppy. I applied a Solidify Modifier, but it seems the weight paint is not the same on the inside than the outside.

In Object Mode, select the character mesh. Go into Edit mode and makes sure the Properties Shelf is exposed (to the right of your 3D View). If it is not, press n to open it, so that you can see what happens when you select various vertices. Now select any of the vertices which is currently behaving properly. Immediately, you should see an entry appear in the Properties Shelf called Vertex Weights, which will have vertex group names listed, and their associated values.

Now select the vertex that's refusing to behave. You will likely discover that no Vertex Weights section appears in the Properties Panel when this vertex is selected. That would be because it is not assigned to any vertex groups currently, which would explain why it doesn't move when the bone moves.
To fix this, while still in Edit Mode, go to the Object Data tab in the Properties Panel, and then the Vertex Groups Section. Locate the vertex group in the list which you would like the problem vertex to become part of. Select the desired vertex group in the list of such groups, and then press the Assign button. Note the Weight bar. You may not want the vertex to have a weight of 1.0, which it will usually get when pressing the Assign button, because a weight of 1.0 is usually listed by default. Wherever you set this bar is what weight the vertex will get once assigned.

Once the offending vertex has been added to a vertex group that the bone already controls, and it has a level of influence greater than zero, the bone will control it. To further refine the influence, you can either use Weight Paint mode, or you can look in the Properties Shelf again for the Vertex Weights section, and now you will see the weight values listed for the newly added vertex.
One nice thing about this list view is that it displays every source of influence for the currently selected vertex, not merely one single source. You can manually adjust the level of influence for each source, or even remove a source altogether, using this display.


Texture Paint gives off a checkboard color I am trying to paint my texture and when I try to paint it gives off a checkboard color no matter what color it is. Is there a button that needs to be toggled off that im not seeing ?

Blender File Below

You have an image texture set as your brush - remove that, and then you will be able to paint.


Selective ray visibility In the Object Properties tab I can choose the ray visibility of that object.
In other words I can choose if that object is visible on camera, if it casts shadows on diffuse shaders, on glossy shaders, and so on.
Is there a way to choose on which objects it will have ray visibility?
Maybe a trick using layers?
What I want is an environment HDRI that is visible reflected on a glossy object A, but not on another object B.
EDIT: I saw the question was marked as a possible Duplicate, but maybe I need to explain my question in a better way.
I don't need to remove the environment reflections from the glossy objects.
Both the object A and B have a glossy component in the node tree but I need:

the object A to reflect/refract the environment map with all its material components (glossy, diffuse, glass, etc...);
the object B to NOT reflect the environment map with any of its shaders.

I can choose which kind of shaders an object casts (in the Ray Visibility panel) but not on which objects it casts it (and that's what I need).

One possibly solution to to render the image twice - once with the Envionment and the other without the environment - and then use the compositor to combine the images, using the render without the environment for the chosen object.

To demonstrate, consider the following scene :

The cube is set to emissive (to reflect in the surfaces of the other objects), Suzanne is reflective, as are the two spheres. The left-hand sphere will be the one that doesn't reflect the environment; to indicate this, its object Pass Index has been set to '1' - the other sphere (and all other objects) have been left with Pass Index set to '0'. The environment has been set to an HDR image.

In order to render the scene twice, we can add an additional render layer :

One render layer should have Use Environment enabled and the other should have Use Environment disabled. Ensure to enable the Object Index pass - this will give us access to the object Pass Index in the compositor.

Setup the Compositor nodes as follows :

The IndexOB is used to generate a mask to pick out the object set to Pass Index of 1 (the left-hand sphere). The two rendered (one with and one without the environment) are mixed together based on this mask so that the 'without environment' image shows where one sphere is and the 'with environment' shows for the rest of the render. The Dilate/Erode node allow you to control the blending at the edges of the transition to remove any harse artifacts.

This produces the following result with the left-hand sphere showing all reflections except the environment :


How to Flip Rotation from Positive to Negative? So, I have two eyebrows on my character, both are controlled by bones.  In pose mode, when I rotate the left eyebrow counterclockwise, the rotation goes into the negative (the values are negative).  That's fine, but I want the right eyebrow to also go into the negative but when rotating clockwise.  So that way, when I want to rotate both eyebrows at the same time, they will move in a mirrored way and make an angry look or a sad look.  But right now, if I move them at the same time, they will rotate in a parallel way instead of a mirrored way.  So how do I get the right eyebrow to move in the negative when being rotated clockwise?

You may recommend to just turn the bone 180 degrees but then in pose mode, this will make the forward and backward rotation opposite to the other eyebrow.  I want all rotations in pose mode to be the same between both eyebrows except on the axis that let's you rotate the eyebrows in a normal way (in this case, on the X axis).  Anyways, so how do I do this?  There's a picture below that shows you what I mean.

You have a few options. For all methods, orientate the bones as such, that the most important rotation is mirrored by default. In my case I made the X rotation control the in-out-movement.

1. Don't change anything

Blender features a mirrored copy-paste functionality. Select the left bone and press ⎈ CtrlC, then press ⎈ Ctrl⇧ ShiftV. The copied pose will be pasted mirrored. These functions are also available as small buttons on the right of the header in pose mode.

When creating good/solid shapes for animation, a  symmetrical pose is seldom desired anyway. The animator will have to manipulate both brows anyways.

2. Add a parent control bone

Add an additional bone in the center, with which the animator can manipulate both brows at once. If he wants to manipulate either bone individually, this is also possible by selecting them directly.

This has no drawbacks from the first method, since both brows are transformable individually. To set this up, add a parent bone to each brow and a Brows bone in the center. (Hide the parent bones at the end.) Then add Constraints, transfering the transformation of the centered Brows bone to parent bones. I used a copy rotation constraint for one Axis (Z) and a Transformation constraint for the other axes, transfering the translation to rotation.

The transfer has to be inversed (mirrored) for two axes.

3. Scale the parent bone

This method achieves mirrored behaviour of two axes. Add a parent bone to both brows and a child bone. The child bone will be the deforming bone for this method. Since the X axis already mirrores, we can now add a second axis to be mirrored; I choose Z. To mirror Z, scale the Parent and the new Child (Deform) bone to -1 on Z.

X and Z will be mirrored. Add a driver to the scaled bones and hide them, just to make sure the inverse scale is never cleared.

4. Use inversed constraints for the deforming bones.

Add a deforming bone to each side, which is located at the same location and orientation as the brow. For one side, transfer the rotation from Brow control bone to deform bone with a copy rotation constraint. On the other side, do the same, but inverse the desired axes (in my case Y and Z). For the inversing side, select the Brow control bone and set its Custom Shape to display At the deforming bone.

Manipulating this bone will now display the Widget in a mirrored rotation, it may feel unnatural though.

Methods 2 - 4 are distributed on the first layers of this blend.


Multiple instances of one object/mesh In Blender, I'm laying out a scene. This involves having multiple, identical meshes within the scene.

I'm wondering if Blender has a concept of a "prefab" where I can have multiple instances of one object. That way, if I modify one such instance, all of the other meshes will be similarly updated.

Looking online, I haven't found anything with these terms and am wondering if I just don't have the right terminology.

You have 2 solutions:

Linked Duplications: altD allows you to create a linked duplication, meaning if you modify one of the instances it will change all the others as they share the exact same mesh data (while a simple shiftD creates a non-linked duplication). To unlink a copy, select the object and Object > Relations > Make Single User > Object & Data (create a Q shortcut if you plan to use Make Single User a lot).

Collection Instances (former Group Instances): Place your cursor on the center of the grid with shiftC (the position of the object to the center of the scene will determinate the collection center). Create your object(s). Create a collection with your object(s) with M (before 2.8, CtrlG). Now with a shiftA > Collection Instance you can create an instance of the collection you've created (shiftA > Group Instance before 2.8). You can't change the instance, if you want to do it you need to edit the original object(s). If you want to make the instances "real" press CtrlA > Make Instances Real (before 2.8, press shiftctrlA). It is still linked though, if you want to unlink it, go in the header menu > Object > Relations > Make Single User > Object & Data (before 2.8 press U). As you can see, the instance is followed by an empty. The empty is placed where the grid center is relatively to the original object(s). If you want to change the position of the empty, select the original object(s) and move them or place the cursor where you want the empty to be, go in the Properties panel > Object > Collections, click on the down arrow and choose Set Offset From Cursor (before 2.8, Properties panel > Object > Groups).

As you can see, linked duplication is much easier to use, and it doesn't weigh more than group instance, so most of the time I guess you should choose this solution. But as said by BatFINGER below, group instance can be very useful sometimes (you can mix several types of objects, modifiers or constraints will affect every object...).


AN: Platonic Solid Fractal Maker. Help! I need some help with Animation Nodes.
I have this node setup:

and am trying to make this object:

What I want is to be able to take one of those "iteration" boxes and loop it.  But when I try to do it, I get this problem:

Also, when I connect the object list of the Invoke Subprogram node to the Object socket on the Loop Input, it keeps creating a Create Object List node, which is useless for what i'm trying to do.

Is there another way to do this that keeps the Object Instancer out of the loop?
I want to be able to animate the number of iterations, as well as have the Scale value of the Object Transforms Output node reduce with each iteration by a factor of n, which I will also animate.
Is this possible in AN?

I'm not an expert in AN, but I believe you need to put the Object instancer out side of the loop; this instancer is used to crerate the list of objects; you use the loop to iterate through the list of objects.


Why does my lighting not work Blender v.28 I am new to blender and I am following along with a youtube tutorial. I have tried to add lights but none have any effect on the object I have made, like the icon and direction shows but the literal lighting is not there. All objects have designated materials and I have messed with the strength and radius etc... but still nothing. I'm hoping it's a simple fix but I am not sure what's happening.
link to file here
https://www.dropbox.com/s/42qxlq2omy9wq37/Sheeps.blend?dl=0

The biggest issue is that the light you are using was only 10W. This is the default "power" of new lights added to the scene with the exception of a sun which starts at a value of 1. This is why all the new lights you added seemed to have no effect - they were way too dim. I upped it to 10000W and the light shines brightly. Also, however, you have the spot radius size set to 126 - I think something like 65 should be OK for what you're doing, unless you have some special need for it. Click the "show cone" box to make the light cone cast by the spotlight more visible so you can see where it's going. See below:


Does Blender downgrade textures? Kinda focusing on what is not working here, but hey, I noticed that Blender kind of downgrades my textures/paint-work ... it gets a bit pixelly after I switch to Object mode and then back to texture paint mode..

Maybe its just my impression, but it does seem to me as if the textures get kind of bland and pixelly after a while....

I am using 2048x2048 px res right now, too small?

Am I alone in this? May I prevent this somehow?

Would be really nice if my textures stayed nice and smooth the way I paint them....

Blender doesn't change the textures in any way by itself and this applies to all possible actions.

The texture size does not necessarily define its quality, it depends on the source (image texture, procedural material, tiling, up/donwscaling...) but normally I'd say that everything from 1k upwards is fine.

You might want to check Blender's System Settings. Hit Ctrl+Alt+U, go to "System" and play around with the settings for "Mipmap" and "Anisotropic Filtering". Deactivating them seems to help in many cases.


Apply *Relative* Shape Key to another mesh? I haven't started yet, but I'm asking now in case it affects my workflow.

I plan to rig a male/female character, and use shape-keys to deal with the problem joints (shoulders/hips).

I understand that to copy a shape-key to another mesh, the topology has to be the same and that can be done. But the shape of the male/female shoulder is different.

Is it possible that the relative transformation of the male's shoulder shape-key could be applied to the female's shoulder? For example, a vertex in the male's shoulder is moved -2(x) via shape-key. Would the female's shoulder also move -2(x) from its unique location, or do shape-keys use absolute co-ordinates?

Shapekeys save relative movements. You can test this by adding a shapekey then altering the mesh and seeing how the shapekey effects the mesh.

A simple shapekey movement - up four across five

After moving the original corner the shapekey moves up four and across five from the new starting position.


How to render picture as 4 mega pixels? I wanna create Shutterstock friendly pictures but it has to be 4 megapixels. How do I render my picture as 4 MP so that I can upload it on Shutterstock?

one megapixel is one million pixels. Make the area of your picture equal 4 million pixels
The dimension for a 4:3 ratio would be 2309 x 1732 with 4 megapixels, so set width to 2309 and height 1732
if you dont know how to set dimensions use the amazing google recource... thats how i answered you... with https://www.scantips.com/mpixels.html


How to combine three non-orthogonal cylinders with sphere Description

I am trying to use blender to visualize a molecular systems. One of the issues I am running into is creating a box that shows the domain of the molecules. In order to do this I need to combine three non-orthogonal cylinders with a sphere in 8 places to form the box. I would prefer a solution that ends up with one fully connected mesh that is rounded (not necessarily perfectly spherical) and could be implemented using blender scripting.

What I have attempted

Adding a uv sphere to the end of the same radius

Adding a uv sphere of slightly larger radius leads to jagged edges at sphere cylinder interface. If worst come to worst this is the solution I will use.

It might be an idea to use the skin modifier in combination with particles? It's pretty easy to set up and manipulate.

Create a mesh and then in Edit Mode delete 'Only Faces' - essentially leaving
you with a wire-frame.
Add the skin modifier and then a sub-surf modifier to smooth.
Create a Sphere object.
Add a particle system set to hair and choose Verts from Advanced
settings.
Under Display choose the Sphere object.

The particle system will have to be moved up to the top of the modifier stack.


Why is my object invisible in the game? I'm testing my door and saw a problem. as you see on the image you see that my object is normal in edit mode/object mode

But when I press P a part of that object is invisible, how is this possible? Can someone help please

Ensure to disable transparency on opaque objects.

This does not only speed up render. It avoids sorting conflicts (that is what I think happens in your case).


How to UV unwrap a circle? I am modeling an alarm clock and they say to go to mesh UV unwrap then unwrap in my face for the clock. I have to giant circles I just want one.

1: Are you following the  “Blender for beginners: Alarm clock 1 of 2” tutorial.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay7fgeQC1WI   ?

2: When UV unwrapping the clock face at 11:40 are you saying that you have two circles showing up in the UV space instead of one big one?

Two circles unwrapped instead of one means that you have two circles selected in the 3D edit window before unwrapping.

You need to go back to the 3D edit window and check out why two circles were selected instead of only one.

Perhaps you have the the glass lens selected instead of the clock face?

If you still don't see how two circles are being selected then I suggest you add your .blend file to your post

https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

then someone can take a look at it for you.


When Blender model is exported, it looks completely different When exporting this coin into Roblox Studio, all of its faces seem to be crazy. (No, its not the lighting). Is there a way to fix this?

This is an inverted normals problem. Go into edit mode, select all, and Mesh -> Normals -> Recalculate Outside, and I hope that’ll fix it.


Fluid simulation can only last 100 seconds? If so, this cap is a rather significant hindrance.

Example: If I have a project 2 minutes & 11 seconds long, that's a 131-second sequence. If I can only have 100 seconds of fluid simulation time, and it's forced to span the length of 100 seconds to 131 seconds, then it's evidently not going to flow in normal/real time. I can increase the speed, but there's no real easy calculable formula between speed and length to attain that real-time appearance; you'd just have to evaluated it by what looks right.

Is there a better solution that I'm not seeing here? If so, how can I accomplish normal fluid speeds beyond the 100 second time barrier?

It appears this was an arbitrary limit no one knew the reason for. As of this commit the limit is removed (will be in 2.76 or any recent build).


Proportional Editing mode in Object Mode? In Edit Mode we have Proportional Editing mode. I need something similar in Object Mode. I need to edit properties of several Objects (scale, position, material diffuse color), but the value dependant on distance from some center point in 3d space, similar to Proportional Editing.

Say you have meshes, for the sake of simplicity just cubes, in a grid.
Now you want to pull them closer to one of the cubes proportionally, which is what would happen if you selected a vertex, edge or face in Edit Mode and started scaling. How can you do that?
Or I want to scale the cubes each along their center, which is possible with setting the Pivor Point to Individual Origins, but change the center and the result dynamically (for an animation).

About my specific use case and what I need this for:
I need to create a simulation on how human vision works, the part about seeing more "pixels" in the center of our vision relative to the edges.
The animation consists of a 160x120 grid of planes and there is an eyeball looking at the plane. The eyeball mesh rotation is locked to an Empty on the grid of planes. I need to be able to, as I move the empty, have the objects (Planes) closer to it be pulled closer to each other in a smooth falloff and since they get so close also scale them down so they won't intersect, and also scale up the planes farther away to reduce the gap created between them. I also need to have the planes pulled closer to get their material diffuse color to red and go blue farther away. This is for an animation so the empty is going to be constantly moving, so changing which planes it influences and how much.

Does not cnecessarily need to be done with meshes and maybe particles would allow such a feature, so would work for my specific use case with simple identical planes. But for other use cases where such Proportional Editing-type animation is required on more unique group of meshes the answer might not apply.

What you describe is similar to Animation Nodes.

This plugin allow to manipulate with objects based on algorithm, described by nodes.

Unfortunately, Animation Nodes is to difficult to explain in one post. But I give you a file, there you can start with.

(Note, you need to install Animation Nodes to view this file)

This is the nodes, that I used in the scene:

Here for every one object in my group (all cubes are in this group) it mix Initial transform and position of empty and set result to position of cubes.

Initial transform sets in T menu, here (select all objects and press From current transform):


My fluid domain disappears and appears to turn into the fluid object when I bake I made this scene with a fluid simulation a few days ago, but the fluid domain turned into the melt word "ICE" instead of the cube I used as the domain. Is this supposed to happen? Where is the cube domain now and how can I see or edit it again? Even after I click "load start up file" or close the blender and reopen,the domain stay that way in my next project.

Fluid Domain "Disappears" When Baked

Don't worry, that is what is supposed to happen, even though it may seem odd. When you bake a fluid simulation, the domain object visually becomes the fluid flowing and no longer is visible as the cube domain object you started with:

But notice that if you want to see the original domain cube again, you can toggle (turn on/off) the visibility of the Fluid property of the domain by clicking on the "Display Modifier" icon (  ) next to the "Fluid" button.

Another way to see the domain object's original shape (geometry) is to set the "Viewport Display" to "Geometry" in the domain's settings:

In addition, the fluid domain cube is still intact if you want to modify it -- just switch to Edit mode and you can see and edit the cube:


External image editor not found? When I try to quick edit in texture paint I get an error saying that it couldn't find an image editor even though there is one (see photo)

You entered a link on your desktop.

Change the image editor to the executable C:\Program Files\Krita (x64)\bin\krita.exe (or where you have installed Krita)


Cycles shader that renders its objects transparent when they are 'inside' of a sphere? I have a long line (thin cylinder) that runs through a semi-transparent sphere. Using the sphere as the cylinder's 'bounds', I would like the parts of the cylinder that are inside the sphere to render transparent. Is this possible with a cycles shader?

I found that using the Transparent Depth output of the Light path node was the key for me.

I used a Math node to control its value which gave control over how much transparency was applied to the portion of the cylinder within the sphere.


Can I extrude a path in x/y I'm trying to make a Game of Thrones-style map scene. The roads are defined by curve objects. I'm trying to extrude the roads in the x/y plane, but it seems to only go in Z:

Is it possible to control the extrusion plane for curves?

You cannot.
Extrusion is always performed n the local Z axis of a curve, particularly for 2D curves.

In 3D curves however you have a Tilt property (Ctrl+T by default) that you can use to your advantage. By tilting the curve by 90 degrees you can make the extrusion appear horizontal.

This is not advised however if you curve is mainly 2D. You will lose the ability to properly fill it, it will be hard to ensure bidimensionality, and among other things you will lose the ability to maintain constant width on tight corners

For 2D curves you are advised to use a second bezier curve as Bevel Object, this can consist of a simple horizontal line, or a narrow squished rectangle if you wish to give it some thickness.

You can then control the "width of extrusion" always from the bevel object. You can adjust on a per-vertex basis with a scaling factor using the curve Radius property (Alt+S by default).

It is advisable to maintain the bevel object width shorter than the tightest curvature radius to avoid self intersections and potentially resulting artifacts.


Is it possible to bevel vertices in a plane? I am making a victorian style chair, and am now working on the upholstery, and am trying to get the classic attachment button depression shape. I have the basic shape blocked out, but I can't figure out how to make the shape on it.

Here is what I want:

I have just the vertice now, I want to do something like a bevel and end up with the square. It seems there should be an easy way to do this, does anybody know one?

You can bevel vertices using Ctrl+Shift+B shortcut. Dragging the mouse will change bevel depth, and scrolling middle mouse button will change the amount of segments.


How to store particle locations in a list? my question is how to store the locations of a particle or any changing data in a list so as to use the locations for effects like trails.

What I intend to create are particle trails, the following steps come to mind:
1. Get the locations of a particle through a loop node(so that the subsequent steps can be applied to other particles).
2. Use the stored locations to make splines.
3. Make the splines only have a definite length over the period they are present, that means they can only be created from say the last 3 stored locations at any given time.

This is the theory of how I plan to do it, in fact I have tried, but I could not find a way to store constantly changing values.

Also I would like to know a way to store the location of the particle for each frame or any arbitrary number of frames so as to be able to control the smoothness of the splines.

There is no intuitive way to do this in Animation Nodes. I proposed a system to the developer that should hopefully allow us to do this intuitively. But he is still studying it. In the meantime, I will tell you how to make such system manually.

Storing Data

Each execution in Animation Nodes is independent of the next one, and thus we can't pass data between executions. To solve this, we need store the data in some place accessible by all executions at all times, a typical solution is to store the data in-memory, somewhere in the animation_nodes or bpy modules for instance. In python, to store some data data in the animation_nodes module in an attribute called test, we can use the setattr() built-in method as follows:

setattr(animation_nodes, "test", data)

If you are still not sure how this work, you can think of it as follows. We are storing the data data in a place in memory called animation_nodes.test, we can later access this data simply by getting it from the place we stored it in, that is, animation_nodes.test. Enough about this, lets talk practicality.

Implementation

What I shall show is tracing the location of the particles in a form of splines. First, we are going to compute what is known as the initial condition, which is the initial state of the system. In our case, the initial condition is a list of empty splines. We can generate it using the Fill List Node set to Spline type, where the amount of empty splines is equal to the number of particles (make sure not to filter the particles in anyway, because we want to maintain the number of particles):

What are going to do is append the particles locations to each of those splines at each frame (execution). In an expression node, I am going to input the initial conditions and set this expression:

initial if bpy.data.scenes[0].frame_current == 1 else animation_nodes.splines

Basically, this returns initial which is the initial condition (list of empty splines) if the frame is equal to one and animation_nodes.splines (some data we are going to set later on) otherwise. Why did we do this step? We are merely resetting the splines to be empty (to be the initial condition) when the frames becomes one, that is, when the time line resets, and that is what we want, we want the animation to reset when the animation resets. Now, I am going to make a loop that appends the current particles positions to their corresponding splines:

And lastly, I am going to assign/reassign the data at the memory location animation_nodes.splines to be the new data after appending using the setattr() method we described before:

Lets recap what is happening here. At frame 1, the input to the loop are empty splines, the output of the loop is splines with a single point that has the location of the particles, this output is assigned to the memory location animation_nodes.splines. At frame 2, the input to the loop is the data at animation_nodes.splines, that is, the splines with a single vertex that has the location of the particles at frame 1, the output is splines that has two vertices, the first is that of locations of the particles at frame 1 and the second is that of the locations of the particles at frame 2, this new splines are assigned to animation_nodes.splines. So, you see that at each new frame, the splines get a new point that is the location of the particle at this frame. The result is growing splines as the time passes:

The structure we just used can be edited appropriately to suite your needs, and it nearly stays the same, get data, edit it, reassign it, repeat.


Bones are not bending as intended First of all, I am pretty new to all of this but wanted to try it, so I followed a tutorial from Youtube by Sabastian Lague. Although it was posted in 2016 and pretty much was changed, I tried to adjust it. However, there seems to be a problem existing in my character and I have tried to solve it for like two days, of course, squeezing this in while doing other things, but got no luck yet. I have IK bone set up and I have a pole target. The problem is that the pole angle can be adjusted however, it will also change the angle of the foot bones. But when I make the foot bone angled right, this happens

In Edit mode, you need to bend the knees a bit so that Blender knows in what direction it is supposed to bend:


How would I attach text to a tracked point on video clip I am using Ubuntu 15.04 and Blender 2.72b.

I've got a video clip where I want to display some annotation-like text next to some potatoes on a white table. The potatoes move a little in the video so I would need to adjust the text a bit every few frames.

(I am a total beginner, I have not used Blender's clip editor before.)

How would I attach text to a tracked point (to the potato) and manually adjust the text's location when required?

Let's say you've successfully tracked an object in your scene:

Go to the Solve Tab and in the Geometry section and click on Link Empty To Track.

That will create an Empty that, if seen from the camera, moves within the frame like the tracked object.

At this point you might want to add your image as background for reference and make it visible for the camera axis.

Add a text object in the 3d View (ShiftA > Text ) and select the Align to View option:

Edit your text, set the orientation to view and place it where you need it.

Select your text object, then select the Empty by holding Shift and simply parent it to the Empty (CtrlP).

The text will now move like the tracked object.

To render both images create a node tree like this:

If the text element is an image and not a 3D object

You can overlay the background video with the foreground element using the compositor:

The text (with a transparent background) is placed and scaled with a transform node.

The result of that is then passed to a translate node that uses the information from the tracker (select the video used and the object, usually "camera" and the tracker you want to use to control the movement)

Then use an Alpha over to overlay the image on top of the video background.

Tracked image in the  Movie Clip editor:

Result:


Create quads from vertices I drew these vertices over a shape to copy it. I want to make faces out of these vertices. I am now manually clicking 4 vertices at a time and then fill them by pressing F.

Is there a faster way to do this?

Proportional Edit Saves Time

The image above shows using a sphere as a starting point for mesh.

If its educational for you to draw vertices one by one then so be it.  No one can argue with that. Or can they?

The model does not appear to be an organic model or face model subject to high levels of inspection.   Also I am assuming a bowl shape with a drape is above.  Below a plane with moderate vertex density created in a few seconds with edit mode Subdivide.

If you choose to take a different approach I suggest you use

Proportional Editing.  That term can be searched here at BSE.

The image above shows edit mode proportional edit. The arrow shows the proportional edit button with tool tip.

There are many completed introductory videos on the famous video website that rhymes with noonoob. Video may serve you better. This writing is not a tutorial. You may also want to include shape keys. One could could also used a hemisphere as a starting mesh rather than a plane.  No artistry here. Just a technical suggestion.  Of course there are plenty of other ways to  achieve a similar mesh model.

Once you have practiced a few times with proportional edit you may recreate your model in 8 minutes or less.

Tutorial Link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrNVVHdKd3E

I suggest seeing many of these videos and especially one on Shrink Wrap or Cloth Simulation.