How can I get a bullet-time effect (slow motion) in the BGE? I'd like to transition from normal speed to slow-motion on certain events, such as a keypress.

Is it possible to animate time in the game engine?
If so, how?

This functionality has just been added. It will be in 2.77, until then it's only available in development builds.

  getTimeScale(): Get the time multiplier between real-time and
  simulation time. The default value is 1.0. A value greater than 1.0
  means that the simulation is going faster than real-time, a value lower
  than 1.0 means that the simulation is going slower than real-time.
  setTimeScale(time_scale): Set the time multiplier between real-time
  and simulation time. A value greater than 1.0 means that the simulation
  is going faster than real-time, a value lower than 1.0 means that the
  simulation is going slower than real-time. Note that a too large value
  may lead to some physics instabilities.

You can set the time scale with bge.logic.setTimeScale(multiplier), where multiplier is the number by which the base timestep is scaled.

For example, here's a simple function to toggle between slow-motion and normal-motion:

from bge import logic

def toggle_slomo():

    if logic.getTimeScale() < 1:
        logic.setTimeScale(1)
    else:
        logic.setTimeScale(.1)

And here's an example .blend. Note that you'll need a recent version of blender for it to work.


Preserve UVs when modifying topology First question here. I came from a 3DSMax background, since then I've succeeded to find pretty much everything I needed to make the switch from 3DSMax to Blender, except for this : there a very useful option called "preserve UVs" that allows to move vertices / edges /faces without stretching the mapped texture on the mesh. In fact it moves the selection simultaneously in 3D view and UV view.

As far as I know, actually the only way to "Preserve UVs" in Blender is to use the "Slide Edge" tool and select the "Correct UVs" option. I would like to know if there's any workaround to apply this "Correct UVs" option when moving elements in 3D view

Is this a planned feature for the further Blender's updates? Actually it's a kind a straight forward workflow, modeling everything, we have to make sure that everything is ok before Unwrapping UVs. It would be nice to have a way to going back and forth easily.

Thanks for your answers.

In the following animation I'm double-tapping the g key to move points and edges.

In the video, an entire corner piece was moved and I don't think this can be easily done using Blender yet.  There may be an Addon for this, I'm not sure.

As mentioned in the comments above, the UV Project Modifier can be useful and there is also a way to do something similar in Cycles.

It's called Box Mapping and uses the Texture Coordinates node to create coordinates using various methods, in this case I used the Object Coordinates.  This way, you can edit the mesh all you like without affecting the texture and then once you have the model ready, you can bake the box mapped texture to the UV coordinates.

Here is a quick Cycles render that shows Blended Box Mapping in Action.

This is just a plain cube with no UV coordinates.  There are 3 other cubes that are being used as Boolean Objects on the cube that is being rendered.  The next image shows the node and model setup for the brick box looking thing

You can pretty much do whatever you want to this model and not have to worry about the UV Coordinates.

Finally, the Booleans are applied, the model is unwrapped and the texture is baked.

Now back to the original question.  Loop Cut and Slide Ctrl+r can be set to maintain UV's.  The Inset tool does this as welli.


Blender Made an object inside my object I am new to blender and I am trying to make a character player. I just finished creating the model and somehow messed everything up. There is a character object inside my character object. But, they are the same object. It is almost as if blender copied every vertex and re-added it slightly out of line. Looking for some help and advice. Attached is a drive link to my blender file.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QALbFkmGPriKuchhaha0Xx1PFYW3G2-x

Well I dunno how you got into this situation, but @cegaton is right, "Remove Doubles" will help.  In this case I had to bump up the Merge Distance to .06 to remove what looks like all of the doubles, although it's hard to be certain.  And then I had to recalculate the normals.


How to fix This Seam in Fork I have this weird seam in my fork that I'm making. It wouldn't be such a big problem but it seems to interfere with the shader and causes a weird seam. I found out there was faces underneath the topology, so i tried removing them with a small amount of success. Here are the pictures,

I tried smoothing it in sculpting but it makes it much worse. I also tried merging any double vertices, no success. I cannot even select the edge loop. I think it occurred when I subdivided? But by the time I noticed, it was too late to undo the subdivision. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

your topology has many errors:

red circle: you have 5 edges come from a single vertex
green circle: you have 3 edges come from a single vertex

You need to have only quads (A square or rectangular polygon is referred to as a quad or quadrilateral polygon, and is a four-sided polygon. It has exactly 4 vertices at the corners connected by 4 edges) for best shading results.
How to fix it?
Edit your topology to have only quads:

merge the vertex in orange circles. Select the vertices and press M (or Alt+M in version 2.79 or older)
remove the vertex in the yellow circle
continue fixing the topology to have only quads

here's a good topology for a fork (source here: https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/fork-metal-3d-model-1360722)


Rendered texture mapping is different than in the viewport I have UVmapped an object to a texture/image but when viewing it in the render it changes, this does not apply too all however I can't quite figure it out.

I think your problem is that you are working on a different UV map from the one you've set to actually render.

Under Properties Editor > Object Data > UV Maps, you can click on the camera icon next to a UV map name to activate it for rendering :]


Animating a snowboarder So I am currently working on a snowboarder character and I would like him to do certain things.

I've been playing around all day with different constraints but I just can't get the desired result. What I would like it to do is when the spine moves along x axis, first the leg gets extended (totally straight), then as it pulls the board - the board starts to bend. Also I need him to be able to rotate the whole lower body, without an upper body, and be able to do the same board flexing thing. How can I do that?

Update
So I have been working with this armature, solved a few problems on the way, and new questions arose. The main one - is it possible in the "copy transform" constraint settings of the "board" bones limit "local space - local space" only to vertical axis, z in this case, and leave "world space" for x and y? So the board bones would be only flexible on the axis that a real board is flexible and I could easily apply rotations to the board? Or maybe I should look at this problem from different perspective and find some workarounds? Opinions appreciated. And thanks again to Italic_ for an awesome rig concept

I think you'd be better off using a character animation technique over a constraints-based setup.  Why not use something like Rigify to quickly animate the character, and then use a very simple rig to bend the board.

I first learned Rigify with this tutorial: Quick Rigging with Rigify

As for bending the board, simply make an armature along the board with as many segments as you want.  Then, parent with automatic weight the board to the armature.  If you want, you can set up an IK Chain to make the bending a bit more realistic.

Use the Action Editor to make actions for the board and the character, then put them together with the NLA Editor.


How can an OBJ sequence be converted to an FBX animation? for a school project, I am trying to import a series of obj models scanned from a Kinnect and import them into blender as sequence of stills, and then after making changes, export them as an FBX to be used in Unity. I have tried using this stop motion addon to import the OBJs as a sequence, but when selecting .fbx when exporting, only a single frame (the first) is ever exported. Is there anything I am able to do to export as an animation?

If you can guarantee the same number of vertices will appear in the same order in each .obj file (such as a single character model exported to individual frames), you could accomplish this by interpreting the vertex movements mesh transformations on import. Otherwise, you're stuck with entirely separate objects on each frame.

I don't know of any off-the-shelf versions of this, though the stop-motion script you mention in your question could be modified to work this way (in particular, the bakeSequence() function which creates a separate mesh object per-frame).


How do I apply the texture paint to a specific object? I am new to Blender and I am using Blender 2.8. I want the texture paint that I created to apply only to the character's jacket but it's applying to the entire body. How do I fix that?

Go into edit mode. Select the polygons that you want a different material on. Go to the Material tab. Click (+) to add a new Material slot. Choose a material  or create a new one and then click "Assign".


how to render animation in background on mac i try to render my animation in background with this command:
blender -b /Users/cd/Downloads/name.blend -x 1 -o // -a
Unfortunately it renders just a still image as animation. so it is a .mov file, but no animation at all.
the animation has some physics in it -> maybe ...do i have to bake it first!?
If i render it manually in Blender it is an animation. What am i missing here?

ok, i baked the dynamics and then it works...but i think this is a bad solution, if i first have to bake it in blender and then i call the animation process in terminal....would be better if i could bake it in the terminal too...
but now i found this answers, which hopefully helps me a lot...
Baking smoke on headless machine


Changing preview animation fps How can I change the preview FPS (the animation rate when pressing Alt+A or Play) in Blender 2.72?

It seems locked to 30 fps, so somewhere there is an option that says 30, but I've looked everywhere and can't find it. The scene is extremely simple so not locked by performance reasons.

This other question asks the same thing:

Is it possible to adjust the frame rate of viewport playback?

and the answer there was to change the rate in the Scene tab under Dimensions, but that is 24 fps currently and changing it doesn't change the preview rate.

I don't want to render and playback etc, I just want to play the animation faster in the preview window.

Thanks!

Ok, after some more digging, I found this:

The scene tab does change the FPS, but there is some lock at 30 fps preview rate (at least on my setup) because the FPS indicator goes "red" at exactly 29.97 fps or so. It's most probably not due to scene complexity and the value is too close to 30 fps exactly to be a coincidence. Some kind of vertical sync issue?

To increase the rate anyway, the "Time Remapping" box just underneath the Frame rate box can be used, for example setting it to 100:50 will in effect make the animation twice the speed.

HOWEVER there is a bug (in 2.72) it seems that makes this time remapping not work completely smooth - the "remapped" frame numbers are shown inside the Timeline and Action editor, but the "unmapped" frame numbers are (of course) used for the keyframes (since these are not actually changed by the setting).

So, for example, if you have a 100 frames long animation setup, and you set the remapping to 100:50, you will need to change the start and end frame in the timeline to 0 and 50, or it will not loop correctly. This will show only half the range of your keyframes, since the "display frames" are now remapped compared to the "animation frames"... :/

I can post a screenshot of this if needed but it works for me (don't know if there are any hidden problems other than a display issue).


Path animation curve issue I have a bone constrained to follow a path. the pivot point is at the end of this blue line when I expected it to be the origin. I messed around with settings and positions and couldn't figure out how to make the origin the pivot point.

As a result this is what my animation does...

Any idea how to fix this?

THE BLEND
https://www.dropbox.com/s/g7y3nedlsgsz4oc/carwashdoora.blend?dl=0

You can fix this by positioning the bone at the start of the path, where you want the object too start. I know, seems to simple, but that will fix it.


Branched Path Tracing About Branched Path Tracing, I'm using the Arnold Renderer theory without Square Samples as many forums said, but seems Cycles goes different.

I have better times/results with higher AA Samples value and less Light Sample value than AASamples < LightSamples. To explain it better:

AA = 128 & SS = 1
better than
AA = 8 & SS = 16

And for example, with AA=64 & SS=1 is faster and with better results. And I can use my GPU 1070...
Following maths I don't understand well what's happening, are there any explanation about this?

And one last thing, Path Tracing has different results. SS Indirect is different between Path Tracing and Branch Path Tracing... Anyone knows why?

Thanks in advance

About Arnold Renderer theory, I want to explain that:

AA Samples are for aliasing and multiply every other light component sampling. If you want less noise on glossy component you only have to increase these glossy samples, not others. It contributes to maintain render times under control.

But what I've found on Cycles is that this theory is not real. It makes increase render times and indirect light change on a non-physical way.

In Cycles is not the same:

AA= 8 * Diffuse= 8 == 64
VS
AA= 64 * Diffuse= 1 == 64

You won't have the same results, times, etc... Seems the second way is the correct one for Cycles nowadays...

Thank you so much for your far explanation. This is what I read and understand about "Arnold theory" or this kind of engines. I understand that AA Sample is a multiplier for every kind of ray on the scene, like diffuse, glossy... And at the same time which define super-sampling/over-sampling. Following this idea, the best way to take control and lower rendertimes is to set low AA value and increase any ray as we need. And here is the BUT... When I follow this steps I have unwanted results:

And here is the BUT... When I follow this steps I have unwanted results: - I have higher rendertimes for the same results - Appear another kind of noise with green, red, blue pixels I can't clean with more samples. - If I push up diffuse samples, the indirect power increase and give me unphysical results

All these makes me think Cycles need core development to fix it, because if I increase only AA samples and other rays at 1 everything goes perfect: less noise, faster, no errors. And I can use my GPU (970 and 1070)

Is this an error? Am I losing something?

I hope I have explained better. Thanks to every contribution

So what is "Arnold Renderer theory"?

Let's read some Arnold documentation:

  Camera (AA) Supersampling control over the number of rays per pixel that will be traced from the camera. The higher the number of samples, the better the anti-aliasing quality, and the longer the render times. (...) This control acts as a global multiplier of all the different rays, multiplying the number of Diffuse and Glossy rays. Motion blur and depth of field quality can only be improved by increasing Camera samples.

This is also true in Cycles:

As you can see, the total number of SS samples is the number of AA samples multiplied by the number of SS samples.

How should we work with these values? As another Arnold page explains:

  Noise nearly always comes from insufficient sampling, but increasing sampling for the wrong rays can make the render times increase without helping to remove the noise. As an artist is usually working to a render time limit or amount of rays the aim is to allocate those rays as effectively as possible to minimize the noise in the most efficient manner. So if the Camera samples have to be increased to remove DOF noise, the other settings must be lowered to keep render times manageable. However, if DOF or motion blur is not a concern, then increasing Camera samples would fix all noise elsewhere but would also slow render times from the unnecessary rays.

This suggests that you have a rays budget, all rays are equally useful and expensive, and 64 AA rays with 1 diffuse ray per AA ray should be the same as 1 AA ray with 64 diffuse rays per AA ray. Let's examine this in detail. I will call the following configuration the 64*1 config:

And I will call the following the 1*64 config:

If I understand your question correctly, you expect these two configurations to create the same results equally fast, but this is not true: the 64*1 is better and slower than the 1*64:

Is this a bug in Cycles?

No, I actually tested it in Maya+Arnold, and there are also similar differences. The Arnold settings were the following (note that Arnold always uses "squared samples"):

OK, it is not a bug, but how do you explain the difference?

One obvious difference is that the 64*1 image is anti-aliased, while the 1*64 is not. About the rendering time also consider that the initial number of AA/camera rays does matter, those initial AA/camera rays have to be calculated, and 64 AA rays are more than 1 AA ray. And probably the code is full of tricks and optimizations that could work in one specific case, but not in another.

Conclusion: Don't take the "Arnold Renderer theory" about the "rays budget" too literally, even in Arnold it does not work exactly that way. It is not enough to think about the number of rays, it is necessary to analyze the render passes in every scene, and play with the settings until you find the optimal configuration.

It is also interesting to check the individual render passes.

The shadow pass is very ugly in the 1*64 case, it contains only black and white, suggesting that Cycles uses only one shadow ray per AA ray.

The diffuse indirect pass was actually better in the 1*64 setup.

The lack of AA made several 1*64 passes ugly, but for some passes the anti-aliasing was bad in the 64*1 version (and in the simple pathtracing) as well.

As an interesting fact, I see another problem with these settings, as described here: Minimum number of samples for the Branched Path Tracing


Run opengl render in background I working on an addon and i need to run an opengl render by subprocess. When i run my script test, i've got this error:

RuntimeError: Error: Cannot use OpenGL render in background mode (no opengl context)

This is my command:

sub = subprocess.Popen([bpy.app.binary_path, blendfile, '-b', '--python', render_script])

Does it mean we can't do opengl render in Background ?

No, you can't use OpenGL in the background. You shouldn't use the -b flag, and instead, close Blender in the end of your script using bpy.ops.wm.quit_blender().
Blender creates screenshot using python script but not when running in background
Render with openGL from the command line?


Thicken Walls of Building without Distortion I've been designing a building in Blender 2.77a. Tried making the external walls out of scaled and altered cubes, but I had a lot of overlapping faces issues. I then went back and redid it with just planes; now the source of my question is how can I take the shape of the walls, which are made of various sizes of planes and scale it or alter it so that the planes can be made thicker without losing the shape of the structure? Extruding then scaling on one or multiple axis results in glitches in the mesh where the overlapping from alternate positioned planes mix up.

As a bit of information to assist possibly, I have tried doing this same building with Archimesh which works fine for single story simplistic buildings but crashes if making multistory, and cannot do interiors easily. When I made the walls with the solid cubes that were shaped there was so much overlap the Boolean tool actually glitched leaving hangover after vertices were deleted. I have never found a real way to scale or alter even slightly complex shapes without them messing up.

Solidify & Shrink/Fatten

A way to give thickness to planar object is the Solidify modifier you can find in the modifier tab of the object. As you want to keep the profile even, you should enable the Even Thickness checkbox:

This will keep the wall straight and clean till your current topology allows.

Once the modifier has been apply, the correct way to increase the wall's thickness only on the seleced faces is to use the Shrink/Fatten tool you can find in the Transform tab of the Tooshelf or call it with Alt+S shortcut.

Press Alt (or S) while ruiing the command to enable Even Thickness option to keep walls straight during the transformation.


How to load an image and use it as vertex weight Many times I have come accross this, would be possible to exchange vertex maps as images between different scenes, or even load animated ones to serve as weight maps ?
I have an intuition that either sverchok or AN would be capable for doing so.
Any advices or directions would be really appriciated, thanks in advance !

try to use this node
https://github.com/nortikin/sverchok/blob/master/docs/nodes/generators_extended/image_components.rst
it allows to do vertex masking by coefficienting.


Smoke trail Effect particles not showing up in image render I have created a particle system but when I try to render an image none of the particles show up. Only the plane used as emitter is rendered.

The particle circles show in 3d camera view but not when I render an image.

Have I forgotten something?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ta1hqu2orzzubma/screen%20capture.mp4?dl=0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmYYIrwTBEs

After playing around a bit I found that the AutoKeying button will do the job. Simply parent your emitter to your model, then parent your model to an empty, press the AutoKeying button and start draging your model around using your empty. This thechnique may have limitations depending on what you want to do, so any other comments or answers are welcome.


How to exclude vertices from subdivison modifier? I'd like to have the subdivision modifier connect those 3 points and not interpolate between them. This question is the opposite of this question: How to include vertices to subdivision modifier?

Well, you can't exactly exclude the vertices rather you can tell the subdivision modifier to not affect some vertices. To do that follow the steps

Select the vertices you need to exclude
Press Shift + E
Drag your mouse up to set the crease to the value of 1


custom layout (via scripting) I am trying to transform blender interface my idea is to display only the 3d view, showing only the green area:

I want to remove the main toolbar, timeline, outliner and properties panels

So my first question is, is that possible ?

The second is, can someone point me in the right direction =)

Thanks in advance

Ghus

Press Ctrl-Up Arrow (Cursor up) while the mouse pointer is in the viewport.

This wouldn't remove the main toolbar but is reversible by Ctrl-Down Arrow (Cursor Down).

You could get rid of the OS/Window-Manager decorations using Menu: Toggle Fullscreen Alt-F11.

What you (probably) want is this:

Select 3D View Full and drag the main menu away.

From python you can select a manually prepared screen layout (save in the .blend) by:

bpy.context.window.screen = bpy.data.screens['screen_name']


how to create letter "s" through nodes? i create part by part . like top of the s first than middle part of s.

it doesn't look very professional.

is there any better way to do it?

letter A

Create a half circle by attaching a colorramp to a spherical gradient and removing the bottom half greater than math.

Make these nodes into a group. CtrlG

Create a square by clamping X and Y coordinates to [-1, 1]

Rotate the items with vector math operations or mapping nodes.
Squash the square into a rectangle and place it in the center. Use the half circles for top and bottom.

We can improve this setup by using a Radial Gradient and plug it into a colorramp to control the half circle, then we can increase the angle.


Ctrl+B - Smoothing problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X9YjsR5wSA

As seen on the video, when demonstrating smoothing with Ctrl+B, notice that on the back (when dragging the mouse), the inner circle stays a perfect circle. 1:45 - 2:00 mins

When I do it, the inner circle turns in to an oval when I drag the mouse and as I drag it further the edges of the oval eventually overlap.

Does this sound familiar?

Here is the blend file:

I suspect that you have scaled the mesh in Object Mode and did not apply the scale before entering Edit Mode. To make the bevel operation work as you expect it to:

Press TAB to exit Edit Mode.
CTRL + A, select "Scale".
Press TAB to enter Edit Mode again.


Solid color for each face in cycles when using image textures? I'm trying to create a polygonal art background, based on an image texture, like this penguin picture at this link: http://www.polygenapp.com/
That image was generated using this method, How can I do something like it using cycles. Note, I already have a mesh, I just want to texture it.

Ideally I prefer OSL, but anything that is one or two click to update will fly.

The method works by finding the color at the center of the face. I believe the is better then averaging vertexes in many instances.

Note: It would mean a lot if I didn't have to apply any modifiers on the mesh in order for this to work, just heads up.

Here is a practice file with modifiers:

This is not a duplicate of this: Is there a smart way to apply a better transition between colours while maintaining one solid colour per face?, That is not applicable to any textures, just gradients.

Here is one way to do this :

duplicate the final mesh (modifiers applied )
UV unwrap the new object using this method :

select all face
hit Ctrl+E and select Edges Split
resize all faces to Zero with Individual origins as a pivot
U and select Project from View Bounds

copy this map to the original object, using CtrlL>Transfer UV map

After that all points on the same face will have the same UV coordinates meaning they will have the same color in render.
You can adjust the UVmap for more precise output.

For the workflow of setting up a good mesh  :

Add the Image as a background in the view
Add a plane (or simply import the same image as plane to skip setting up materials)
Delete the face (in Edit mode Select All and X and select Only Faces)
Start doing a loose tracing of the image by adding vertices in Edit mode (Ctrl+LMB, don't worry about crossing edges!)

Delete all edges (Select All and X and select Only Edges&Faces)
For this step you need the Delaunay/voronoi Addon it will create a triangulated mesh from the points

The rest is described in the first part above

And here is a sweet penguin render :


How to enable internationalization? (translations) I would like to know if there is a German translation of Blender.

In User preferences (CtrlAltU), under System check International Fonts, select your language (German is available, I just checked), and mark the parts you want to translate (Interface, Tooltips and New Data).


How can I render a material with wireframe and keep the faces showing, in the BGE? OK so I know how to render a material with just wireframe only, but when the game engine is on, the material becomes completely transparent and only displays the wireframe with the color i gave it in the material, that's expected, but is there a way for me to render the wireframe while keeping the faces visible when game engine is running?

Select your object then

Properties Panel -> Object -> Display -> Maximum Draw Type -> Wireframe

Running in game mode should use whatever material you have assigned to your object.

Object mode:

Game mode:


Is it possible to use 3D perlin noise to manipulate a mesh in the Blender Game Engine? Specifically, is it possible to generate a 3D mesh/terrain that is capable of producing holes that can connect from one part of the mesh to another?

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjAywUh5m2s&t=86s

The BGE does not generate anything. It loads all mesh data from .blend.

Therefore you can generate your mesh within Blender save it inside the blend and load it from there.

This is pretty static (a fixed number of meshes). There are various methods to hide this limitation:

combine different "patches" to build an object with variations (Example: puzzle, grid tiles). This works with any structural design and can have any detail (from large patches to very tiny ones). It is important that patches fit together.
manipulate the mesh vertices in-game to get variations of the same mesh (Example: terrain as height-map. This does not match your requirements as it is not possible to create bridges and loops.). The basic idea is to ensure the mesh does not look exactly the same as the original. Therefore the limited number of available mesh-"types" is not noticeable that easy.

Both methods can be combined. E.g. you can have an height-map mesh but add bridges and loops as patches on top of it.


How to fix 3D view cutoff my 3d view window seems to cut off the view

is there a way to fix this

Clipping options for the 3D view are here :

These values are different from the camera options (you may need it also) :


rendering a rigged 2D character I'm using blender to create a 2-D animation. I have made a character by importing .pngs of the characters body parts, placing them together and applying a rig (I used this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htFYQcvHXUs). But when I go to render the animation, the character's limbs are in each others way; the head overlaps a bit of the chest and some of his shoulder and his arms when when he raises them above his head.

Anyone know what I did wrong/how I can fix this?

While you are working with 2D, don't forget that the Z axis still exists! If you're doing 2D you should be using an orthographic camera, so further elements won't appear farther. The Z axis essentially becomes the sorting order:

The reason your arm is cutting through the head is because you have the transparency set to Mask instead of Z Transparency. Just go through and make sure everything is on Z Transparency, and you should be good.


Align vertices between two edges The problem is that I have two edges on the correct height. Now I want to align the vertices between those edges to make a smooth transition.

But I can't figure out how to do this without moving the ends which have the correct height.

Does anybody has a suggestion?

There is LoopTools addon way.
Select edges on the border you want to stay untouched. Run LoopTools addon > Curve operator.


How to model blebs like structure as in lungs alveoli? I am a medical doctor and blender enthusiast. I am working on an animated medical lectures. I want to model these lungs alveoli. Similar to shown in illustrations below. Can someone please help figure out how to do this ?

Would something like this work? Here is the .blend file.

Here is what I did:
1. Made 1 UV Sphere
2. Made 1 Plain Axis Empty
3. Added the following modifiers in order: Displace (Object: Empty), Solidify (Thickness 0.1 m), and Boolean (see step 5)
4. Duplicated these UV Spheres. I did separate objects, but going into edit mode and duplicating there would work as well.
5. Add the shape you want to be the cutout.
6. Select a sphere and in the Boolean modifier, set the object to your cut out object and have the operation be "Difference"
7. If doing separate objects, select the other spheres and then the sphere with the Boolean object selected last. Hit CTRL + L and link Modifiers.

Tada!

Instead of manually creating each blob, you can also make a particle system then convert the particle system to a mesh and do steps 2-7 (maybe it would work without converting to a mesh too).
If you have any questions, or I did not make quite what you are looking for, let me know.


Bezier curves not rendering like preview I'm having trouble getting the  bezier curve to be smooth when rendering, but it looks fine on preview. Help!

You have a high resolution preview and a low resolution render. Suggest you turn that around :)

p.s. welcome to BSE!


How to draw a text using the bge module II I´m trying to draw a text using the bge module. After adding the path of the "Zeyada.ttf" file my code looks like this:

# import game engine modules
from bge import render
from bge import logic
# import stand alone modules
import bgl
import blf

def init():
    """init function - runs once"""
    # create a new font object, use external ttf file
    font_path = logic.expandPath('C://Documents and Settings//Guillermo//Mis documentos//Google Drive//Gproyectos//Proyectos con Blender/Zeyada.ttf')
    # store the font indice - to use later
    logic.font_id = blf.load(font_path)

    # set the font drawing routine to run every frame
    scene = logic.getCurrentScene()
    scene.post_draw = [write]

def write():
    """write on screen"""
    width = render.getWindowWidth()
    height = render.getWindowHeight()

    # OpenGL setup
    bgl.glMatrixMode(bgl.GL_PROJECTION)
    bgl.glLoadIdentity()
    bgl.gluOrtho2D(0, width, 0, height)
    bgl.glMatrixMode(bgl.GL_MODELVIEW)
    bgl.glLoadIdentity()

    # BLF drawing routine
    font_id = logic.font_id
    blf.position(font_id, (width * 0.2), (height * 0.3), 0)
    blf.size(font_id, 50, 72)
    blf.draw(font_id, "Hello World")

The rest is as I put it in my first question.
I don´t know what is failing, why I don´t see anything.

A python controller will run the script from top to bottom, the same as if you were running any python script.

The code you show defines two functions but does not call them. I expect you need to add a call to the functions for your script to work.


Grease Pencil stroke disappears Everytime I press D + LMB I see the pencil as cursor and the indication that I'm about to draw something, but every time I draw a line, the line disappears.

Check to make sure you don't have the [Grease Pencil layers] and [Grease Pencil Colors] set to invisible (eye icon).  I spent an hour trying to figure out why, but forgot that I turned them off.

For the new players:
N to open the right hand menu.
Uncollapse the  ▼ ☑Grease Pencil and ▼Grease Pencil Colors
Look to make sure the eyes are visible for both layers.  Also try creating a new Grease Pencil layer and seeing if that fixes any issues.


How to 3D model a shirt (from an image - man wearing a shirt)? Need to put the shirt on a different 3D character in Blender. New to blender Problem statement - I want to show in 3D (superimpose) how a piece of cloth (say shirt) from a 2D image will look like on a 3D character of another person. How can I import just the shirt on blender and add to the 3D character? Very new to Blender. Tried researching a lot with no background in this field but couldn't find anything.

Many thanks
Pankaj

This is a rather large question actually. If you need a full 3d solution, you will have to post some time in learning Blender, as You will need to model the clothes, UV unwrap the clothes and create textures from images taken of original product, and create materials from these.

You can then apply something like the cloth simulator

But it is a large task. If You are looking for a 3D gimmick to a webshop or the like, it is a lot of work. So please consider if it is worth it.


How to retreive the hotkey of a function/tool? I want to print the hotkeys for some tools in the console. How can I retreive the hotkey for let's say the circle select tool, or the hotkey for rotating the viewport with python?

Note that I do not want to execute those tools. So I guess I need to access the keymap directly, and read the hotkeys from there. But how does it work?

You need to have some clue about how each command is executed (i.e. the operator) in order to find its hotkeys, but if you do, it's not too difficult:

wm            = bpy.context.window_manager                       # Blender window manager
keymaps_3DV   = wm.keyconfigs['Blender'].keymaps['3D View']      # 3D View hotkeys
circle_keymap = keymaps_3DV.keymap_items['view3d.select_circle'] # Circle select keymap object
main_key      = circle_keymap.type                               # "C" in this case

If you want to see if any modifier key is used, or if the ALT / SHIFT / CTRL keys are used, you can access this info this way:

modifier_key = circle_keymap.key_modifier   # Is 'NONE' in this case
shift        = circle_keymap.shift          # Is False in this case
ctrl         = circle_keymap.ctrl           # Is False in this case
alt          = circle_keymap.alt            # You've guessed it

There's lots of other interesting properties of hotkeys to investigate, but I'll leave it to you.

To see the rotate operator's hotkey, access it thus:

circle_keymap = keymaps_3DV.keymap_items['transform.rotate']


Blender exporting incorrect uv map for .obj When exporting a mesh I've created in Blender, the (.obj) file does not contain the uv coordinates I have created in Blender. I made sure Blender recognizes my custom uv map along with the texture but when I load it into my OpenGL program the coordinates do not match the texture. In fact it looks like the coordinates try mapping to the default uv map the mesh provides.

All other data points of the obj are correct (ie. the positions and normals), just not the uv coords.

Update: I've tried using a full obj loader to eliminate the problem and I've reduced my conversion to 1-1 with the obj index (ie. no mesh optimizations). No luck.

Example rendered mesh in OpenGL

Blender view

Found the issue sigh. OpenGL reads the uv coord (t) backwards. Blender exported the obj correctly I just forgot about upside-down textures in OpenGL.


Animate winding a ribbon/rope/cable around a cylinder? Actually, it's not so simple as the title suggests... :)

I might be asked to animate something like this - https://youtu.be/1A3vaJaNDLY?t=132

Here's a still from that video:

It's the process of doing helical wrapping of carbon fiber a ribbon around a pressure vessel. And later in the video you'll see a simpler activity of hoop wrapping, which I'd also need to animate.

I've got some basic experience with Blender (e.g. https://vimeo.com/207323639), but I have no idea where to start with this kind of animation! At this point I haven't spoken to my client, so I don't know whether this will be requested; but I'd value input from Blenderheads here so that if I'm asked for it, I'll be able to respond with "sure!", or "can't be done", or "sure, but it'll cost ya!". :)

Pointers, anyone? Thanks!

The strip follows the cone using this principle:

The cylinder turns due its parent, an empty which rotates
The strip object turns too, with the same empty as parent
The cone orientation (-Z axis) and location are used to ray cast on the cylinder: this gives a new position on the cylinder to complete the strip

All that is done using Animation Nodes.

More detailed steps:

Calculate the cone location and -Z orientation in world coordinates
Raycast on the cylinder from these previous parameters
This raycast gives a position on the cylinder and the normal of the hit face
Calculate the new strip part position from this previous data, extending it along the cone X axis and shifting it a bit along the face normal
This calculation replaces the last two strip vertices
Add new two vertices to the strip and place them at the cone position
Make a new face for these last 4 vertices
Input back all these vertices and polygons in the strip geometry

The overall cartography:

1/ Calculate the ray cast and new strip part's position

2/ Give a width to the strip

3/ Extract strip's current geometry

4/ Calculate last 2 previous vertices index

5/ Injects updated and new vertices in the strip data

6/ Make a new face from the last 4 vertices

7/ Put all back to the strip data

Note:

To make it work, the strip have to include at least an edge at the beginning of the animation.
This node setup is "constructive", at each frame it creates new vertices, and this is not rolled back at the end of the animation. So, to replay it, edit the strip and delete all its vertices except the two first ones.

To do list:

Constraint the cone -Z axis to always point to the cylinder, as if not the raycast will fail
Raycast on the strip itself too so that it superimposes on both the cylinder and on itself
Not only raycast one (middle) point, but the two extremities of the newly created strip's vertices

Another example, following the comment:


Multiple versions of autosave files Very recently, blender crashed and deleted some of my work.  I looked into the autosave directory after I tried to reopen my file.  The reopened older version (without my recent changes) was the only version available in the autosave directory.  It disappointed me that my changes were gone in the very recently autosaved file.  In the user preferences panel I saw some autosave settings, none of which seemed to change how many previous versions of autosave files there were.

My question is this:
Is there a setting in the user preferences that will alter the amount of autosave versions saved as seperate files?  Is there an addon that will work to the same effect?

Cheers

There is an addon now. You can find it here.

The Save on open option lets you go back to the start, while Save before close covers you for forgetting to save when opening another file or starting a new one, it doesn't get triggered before closing blender so that can still get you. While they do sound good, they can be a bit much if you just go quickly looking through a lot of blend files.

File copies are saved with a timestamp prefix in the name, so you can easily see how old any copy is or choose how far back you want to go.


Cursor keeps selecting vertices through the mesh without X-Ray on When i try to select vertices on the side of a mesh, the vertices on the other side of the mesh is also being selected, as if i had X-Ray mode on. I cant figure out what could be the problem.
Here's a video to better understand the problem.
https://share.getcloudapp.com/Qwul0meR
I dont have X-Ray on, and i dont know anything else that would disable this.
Update: So apparently its not actually selecting through the vertices, but rather only through the mesh. Here's a video.
https://share.getcloudapp.com/nOuekZ2L
I cant find any options to disable this mechanic.

Looks like a bug. First thing to do would be to make sure GPU drivers are up to date. Also try 2.83 version, see if maybe that is fixed already.
You could also see if enabling or disabling OpenGL Depth Picking has any effect on the issue:

If the problem persists, you should probably report it as a bug providing as much detailed info as possible.


Write the Rotation Matrix Values of an Object by XYZ individually? So I've got the matrix values in a row format like this.

My code:

import bpy
obj = bpy.context.object

f.write(str(obj.matrix_world))

However I'm not quite sure how I can make this write for X, Y, and Z individually. Specifically I need the rotation values which are setup like this in the grid.

$$R_x=\begin{bmatrix}
1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\
0 & \cos\theta & -\sin\theta & 0\\
0 & \sin\theta & \cos\theta & 0\\
0 & 0 & 0 & 1
\end{bmatrix}$$

$$R_y=\begin{bmatrix}
\cos\theta & 0 & \sin\theta & 0\\
0 & 1 & 0 & 0\\
-\sin\theta & 0 & \cos\theta & 0\\
0 & 0 & 0 & 1
\end{bmatrix}$$

$$R_z=\begin{bmatrix}
\cos\theta & -\sin\theta & 0 & 0\\
\sin\theta & \cos\theta & 0 & 0\\
0 & 0 & 1 & 0\\
0 & 0 & 0 & 1
\end{bmatrix}$$

How to make the three basic rotation matrices rotate around the x, y, or z axis.

import bpy
from math import pi
from mathutils import Vector, Matrix, Euler

theta = pi / 6

for i in range(3):
    angle = Vector()
    angle[i] = theta
    mat = Euler(angle, 'XYZ').to_matrix().to_4x4()
    print(mat, "\n")

Or directly

from math import pi, sin, cos
from mathutils import Matrix

theta = pi / 6
s = sin(theta)
c = cos(theta)

mat = Matrix()
mat[1][1] = c
mat[1][2] =-s
mat[2][1] = s
mat[2][2] = c

print(mat, "\n")


Exporting UV layout with modifiers applied I'm trying to export an UV layout with subdivision surface modifier on to paint it in photoshop, but I'm failing to do so. Whenever I export it it gives me my lowpoly model UV map

You have to apply the SubDivisionModifier to get the correct polycount and UV layout first, then export to Photoshop.

if you would like to work with the lowpoly without applying, I would make a copy of the original object, apply the modifier on the copy to get the correct SupDiv UVs and then use the texture on the original object.


How to toggle visibible / selectable / renderable for multiple objects? For quite long time, I was looking for a faster way to toggle (or toggle off) visible / selectable and renderable for many objects, as illustrated below:

I know we can do the relatively quick select by dragging in the Outliner, but it is not so fast though; Also, we can try H and AltH, as well as Ristrict Render, but the objects must be selectable first.

So, how can I do this in a faster way? Script would be acceptable, if necessary.

Edit:

To simplify my question in another way: Is there a way to make all hilighted items listed in Outliner to have either of these properties unified?  For example, I want to have all objects selectable, what should I do instead of having to toggling them one by one? Intuitively, I tried to press A twice in Outliner, then hit S, I thought it would work similar to what A works everywhere, I mean a kind of "unified" toggle, to toggle all of them on or off, regardless their initial slectibility. But appearently it cannot be done in this way. So I'm looking for a better way to do this.

The only way I can think is to group them all first, then switch the outliner display type to Groups, now I can toggle them all by a single click. However, four problems here:

Again, It doesn't work with the unselectable or invisible ones, which cannot be grouped since I cannot even select them.
it means I have to give up the current selection first, which is sometimes unwanted.
Even if all objects are initially selectable and I don't care to give up the current selection, creating a temporary group then delete it afterwards seems not as fast as expected.
I'm particularly talking about a complicated scene with a large number of objects, which makes Outliner the important place to organize them.

The outliner is written in C, and not much is exposed to Python.

The operator that toggles the (render-)visibility or selectability is:

bpy.ops.outliner.object_operation()

Possible arguments for the type parameter are:

('SELECT', 'DESELECT', 'SELECT_HIERARCHY', 'DELETE', 'TOGVIS', 'TOGSEL', 'TOGREN', 'RENAME')

As you see, there are only toggles. Someone had to add some to only turn on or only turn off all pre-selected items (would unify the settings). Seems like a simple C task, but not sure how to do the interaction with the user...

Wouldn't make much sense to clutter the right-click menu with

  Toggle Visible
  Make Visible
  Make Invisible
  Toggle Selectable
  Make Selectable
  Make Unselectable
  Toggle Renderable
  Make Renderable
  Make Unrenderable

Hotkeys should work well however, Shift + R/S/V to turn all on, Alt + R/S/V to turn all off. Ctrl + ... wouldn't work, 'cause CtrlS is globally for save .blend.

Update:

I duplicated the toggle code and changed it to set visibility/selectability/renderability. This means you can switch each of them on, just like you would toggle them. If you want to turn them all off, turn them all on, then toggle to invert. Benefit: 3 operators / entries in the right-click menu less.

It might make sense to refactor the code and have only one operator each (so 3 in total) + an enum to turn on, off or toggle. I would still add turn on and toggle to RMB menu only.

Diff: http://www.pasteall.org/49381/diff

Windows 64bit build: http://graphicall.org/1101


How can I edit two materials simultaneously? Whenever I open a new shading window, whatever I do in one is just mirrored on the other. If I click a node in one window, the same node and material get selected in the other. I can't edit two shaders at once. How can I edit two shaders simultaneously?

The windows sync with the selection you do. However if you want to retain a specific selection, just use the little pin icon, in the upper right handside of the shader editor to keep the tree "pinned". The second one will still update if not using the pin.
Release the pin to go back to the active selection


Exact Measurements - or resize to specific dimension I’m pretty new to blender and started with sketchup. I find overall that it is much more powerful software that is generally not as buggy - and can be used for many more things.

Still, I struggle with one tool in particular, the measure tool. When I want to measure from a vertex to vertex, I turn on snapping and can use the ctrl key to snap to the second vertex but for some reason I can’t do that with the first one. And so I zoom in very far to click on the first point then go all the way across the the other point. It is always wrong - really. So I zoom in even further to the first point and I see that it didn’t snap to this point. I mean, with ALL of the amazing capacities of blender this definitely surprises me.

I’m not expecting the great features of the measure from sketchup like resize the model by measuring a distance and rescaling it to that size - such as for a doorway or table height or other known quality, nor for the easy snap to x y or z direction. But am I missing something - is there a good snappable add-on I don’t know about?

I realize that blender is not a cad software, but I hope you understand that the measure tool seems super underdeveloped given the other aspects of blender that are now so sophisticated.
Thanks for any clarity!

First point can't currently be snapped from the start.
It is a known limitation that is currently being looked at, it is part of a broader limitation that includes among other things not being able to set a base point for moving before transforming
Current recommended workaround is to eyeball the first point, precisely snap the second one, then return to the first one and move it while using snapping.

Edit
As of commit Gizmo Library: New Snap Gizmo from 27 May 2020, there is now a new generic special type of gizmo whose purpose among other things is providing snapping before use for various tools and operators in Blender, like base point snapping for transforms such as move or rotate, or snapping the first measure point of a ruler without having to backtrack


I for insert frame is disabled or changed while opening the insert frame menu i accidentally pressed a button that made blender ask me to select a key which i left or right clicked to and now i can't use i to insert keyframes on my armature.
the "I" Key still works on everything else besides the objects i did this to.
any way to reverse this?

Try going to scene settings (icon with the light, cylinder and sphere) and make sure the "keying sets" tab is empty.


projection geometry example I just can't find the blender way to do this. I have two objects (cubes) at a given height above a plane. These two cubes are 5cm apart, say. How can I view the perspective projection of these cubes onto the plane below ? I tried shrinkwrap but it gives the ortho projection only. This is probably very simple but this is my first week with blender.

Thanks

GT

Not sure exactly what you want to do, or how you plan to use this information, but depending on you purpose Knife Project tool may do what you want.

If you need to generate actual geometry from this, one way to obtain a bi-dimensional projection from a shape onto another is using the Knife Project tool.

For this to work the projection receiving object must explicitly be of mesh type. Also the objects to be projected must b non manifold, or open geometries for a projection to be found. If you want to project all edges (visible and invisible) then ideally you would have only a "skeleton" composed of edges.

Proceed by entering Edit Mode on all your cubes or whatever geometries you choose, select everything and then erase all faces with X > Only Faces.

Exit edit mode, select all cutting objects, and in the end Shift-Select the plane you wish to project onto, so that all objects remain selected, but the plane is the active one.

Without deselecting enter Edit Mode on the plane objects, switch to User Perspective if desired by pressing Numpad 5, adjust the perspective as desired (the Knife Project operator is view dependent so current viewport position/aperture matters), then invoke Knife Project from the Spacebar-Menu.

Have in mind that this will invariably produce bad topology


loop cut and slide to all edges selects? Its possible to do loop cut and slide on 2 or 10 or 50 edges selected??? LIKE THE EXAMPLE

Thank you very much in advance!

Another way of cuts:D

select edge ring.
subdivide it and choose the number of cuts.


Find "Smoke" settings under Domain tab I am following some basic tutorials of smoke simulations. And I always can't find the settings tab "smoke" under the smoke domain settings. I jumped through some tutorials to see if I am just using another blender version (2.92) but I always have the same problem. Also, the smoke sim looks a behaves different. It feels like they have different preset settings, but the most looks the same. I am also using mantaflow as everyone else. I am very new to smoke sims but have a good understanding of blender. I hope someone can explain. Thank you in advance
Here is a picture of the smoke sim of my desktop:
´
And here is an example of a tutorial file:

The option that you are looking for is now called GAS


How to rotate a procedural texture on a single object? When several objects share the same procedural material, how do you place it on an individual object the way you want to?
For example, how do you rotate the texture on one object, but not on other objects with the same material?
For image-based textures, the answer is simple: you can edit each objects's UV-coordinates. But how do you do it for procedural textures?
I know you can rotate procedural textures by using a mapping node, but that causes the texture to rotate on all objects, not just a single one:

I'm sure that must be a simple solution for this. I can't imagine you'd need to make a seperate material for each individual object.

The solution is to make a separate material for each object (or set of objects that share the same properties) - as that allows you to adjust it for each object. However, it's not that you need to replicate the whole material and can't share sets of nodes, since you can create a Node Group that contains most of your material and re-use that group within each seaptarate material - maybe just adding a Texture Coordinate and Mapping node to each one so as to allow the orientation and scaling to be adjusted.


Is there a hot key that automatically makes a group of vertices into a circle? I know that SZ0 makes vertices straightened on the z-axis, but I'm wondering if there's a way to make vertices into a complete circle on the z-axis with a hotkey?

You can also use the To Sphere function for that.
When used with a 2D mesh it makes a circle.

Mesh > Transform > To sphere
Shortcut: Shift+Alt+S and press 1 for a full circle.


How can I get a list of the installed addons using the API? How can I get a list of the installed addons and the version number so I can print out and use as a simple reference when checking for updated scripts?  I've looked at bpy.types.Addons and bpy.types.UserPreferences.addons but getting a list of the addon names is eluding me.  Any help would be appreciated.

Blender has a module it uses for addon management called addon_utils, this isn't in the API docs and is only for internal usage. But its a fairly straightforward module.

This script prints all addon versions or (-1, -1, -1) if there is no version.

import addon_utils
for mod in addon_utils.modules():
    print(mod.bl_info.get('version', (-1, -1, -1)))

Note, that the modules may be fake, that is to say, a module object that only contains bl_info, this is done to avoid importing the module just to display it in the preferences (before its enabled).

Other functions of interest are...

addon_utils.enable(module_name, default_set=True, persistent=False, handle_error=None)
addon_utils.disable(module_name, default_set=True, handle_error=None)

# (reloads from disk)
addon_utils.modules_refresh(module_cache=addons_fake_modules)
# returns all modules
addon_utils.modules(module_cache=addons_fake_modules, refresh=True)

Suggest reading addon_utils.py, if you need more info.

Note, if you just want to access enabled addons, this is a lot more simple...

what about:

import bpy
print(bpy.context.user_preferences.addons.keys())

that returns something like:

['io_scene_3ds', 'io_scene_fbx', 'io_anim_bvh', 'io_mesh_ply', 'io_scene_obj', 'io_scene_x3d',
'io_mesh_stl', 'io_mesh_uv_layout', 'io_curve_svg', 'cycles', 'sire_o', 'space_view3d_move_orig
in']

So to get the modules you can do...

import bpy
import sys

context = bpy.context

for mod_name in context.user_preferences.addons.keys():
    mod = sys.modules[mod_name]
    print(mod.bl_info.get('version', (-1, -1, -1)))

@zeffii noted this in his answer which has since been deleted so including here.


Problem with appending model after previous linking Just starting to add external models to my scenes. I first tried linking a model but found that it wasn't really suitable for what I wanted since I couldn't apply changes or edit the model. I deleted the object from my scene and appended instead but still couldn't apply or edit. I tried with an older version of my scene by appending and I am able to apply and edit with no issue so it seems that somehow linking first has left something lying around that is causing me problems. I tried making everything local and that didn't help. Is there any way to see or "cleanup" these items that might be causing me trouble? (Or is it perhaps something else?)

Well, putting it into words helped me look for the answer. In the outliner, there's a drop down which lists orphaned data. I cleaned that out and then I was good to go. There's also a clean up->purge option in the file menu but I never got to try that.


Why are UV mapped textures rendered as black color? Actually, it is very weird, since the uv works on some model parts and not on others. It shows up in the materials but not in the render. The UV is mapping correctly to the wheel strut. The left wheel is fine, the right is just black.

There is a sun lamp and the world background is set to white.

I tried the attributes node and the texture coordinates method. As you can see from the screen shot, it does map correctly. It just won't render.

I also tried flipping the normals. Although I don't understand that part technically yet.

Since I can see it with the 3d view set to materials, does that mean that the mesh is bad? The file came from tf3dm.com  . I tried the .3ds import but that one was missing parts and blown apart.

Here's the screen shot of my import and attempts.

Here's the blend file: Link to mq9predator.blend file.

I found the answer!

After digging around and hitting random settings on just about any button and setting known to man, I discovered the Geometry Data under the Object Data (to the left of materials panel).

I hit Clear Custom Split Normals Data and the map showed up in the render! Now to figure out what the heck a custom split normal data is...


BGE: Add animated object from empty object that plays at wrong position I put the:

1a. Simple animation of a cube that moves forward and backward on layer 2.

1b. Logic brick I set always sensor to action actuator.

1c. Placed on x,y: -4,-5

2a. An empty object (any kind) on layer 1.

2b. Logic brick I set always sensor to edit object > add object > cube from layer two.

2c. Placed on x,y: 3,5

Sorry I cant put screenshot or gif or blend file for easier understanding above.

So, from layer 1, when I hit play, the cube is played in wrong position ! The cube just plays on same position from layer 2 ! It should be positioned to where empty object is added.

Even if I:

Parent both of the object
Clicked the 'add' from action actuator of the cube on logic brick
Or clicked the 'force' <<< this works but it doesn't play the animation
Applied location (by shift + a) the cube <<< this works but the origin is wrong placed, I want use this for collision
Using animated with armature applied to cube

Still doesn't works… Are I'm doing something wrong or missing ??? I'm desperate and I wouldn't ask to this if I could find the right solution. Any solution and even with  python,would highly appreciated. Please note that I'm very noob at this. I can't Googling with the right keyword. Help please. Thank you.

I replicated your scene based on your description. If you look closely, the cube spawns in the correct location for one frame, and then the animation forces it back because it is being animated in global space.

In layer 2, add a new empty at the center of the cube. Let's call this empty CubeAnchor. Now parent the cube to the CubeAnchor. This will make the cube animate in the CubeAnchor's local coordinate system.

Lastly, in layer 1 on your empty spawner, Spawn the CubeAnchor instead of the cube. The CubeAnchor's children will spawn with it, including your animated cube.


How to change texture interpolation of many images all at once? I have imported many images as planes and need to change the texture interpolation from linear to closest to solve an issue similar to this one: Transparent image planes in cycles have strange borders (although I am on eevee).

This could be done with python right?

You would have to find all image texture nodes and set their interpolation type to 'Closest':
import bpy

# Run through all materials of the current blend file
for mat in bpy.data.materials:
    # If the material has a node tree
    if mat.node_tree:
        # Run through all nodes
        for node in mat.node_tree.nodes:
            # If the node type is texture
            if node.type == 'TEX_IMAGE':
                # Set the interpolation -> Linear, Closest, Cubic, Smart
                node.interpolation = 'Closest'

See: https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.types.ShaderNodeTexImage.html#bpy.types.ShaderNodeTexImage.interpolation


Changes made to mesh does not appear in final render but appers in viewport render I did some detailing on a mesh with the knife tool, the details appear in the rendered viewport but when I render it out, either in cycles or eevee the details dont show, it renders the mesh how it was before I did the detailing, i tried applying the scale, unwraping it but nothing works can you help me?

It looks like maybe you created a backup copy of the object, hid it from the viewport, then did your editing. Hiding it from the viewport does not prevent it from being rendered however.
If you click the little Filter Dropdown above the scene collection hierarchy in the Outliner, you can enable the Disable in Render restriction toggle, which allows you to also prevent objects from being rendered by clicking that icon in the hierarchy.


How reproduce a real led lamp with IES photometric data? First of all excuse me for my english, i try to explain better than i can.

I need to reproduce this real led lamp.

I have all the data of this lamp and the IES file.

Watt: 8W
Lm: 880lm
Lm/W: 110lm/W
Kelvin/CRI: 3000K / >85 SDCM/L70 B10: < 3 / 50000

My problem is how to use the IES file and if i can reproduce a realistic lighting.
When i import the IES, where i put it?
The IES origin cannot stay inside the translucent or the light is lower.
Can i scale it ?
If i do larger or smaller, the light will be more or less strenght and if i import as it i must change all the scale of the room.
The translucent part of the lamp is a glazed plastic, how realistic that can be reproduce? That obviously depend where the IES is.
In alternative, with the data can i reproduce an emission surface? Or a blender light ( spot, area...)?
I like to use this answer for all lamp i need to reproduce in the future.
I know probably is a noob question. I try to search here ( and on Google ) something about that but i cannot find nothing.
Thank you in advance

The first bit of info you need is that in Cycles, the emission unit of light is Irradiance (or Radiance Flux), it is in watts per square meter.

You can read how that corresponds to Lux (in lumen) here: What kind of units does the Cycles emission strength use?
The second bit is that you can import IES files into Blender through this addon. It will create a light with rig that you can control to for example set direction of the lamp.

This light uses mapping vectors and a custom Curve (that is imported from the IES file) to influence the strength of light based on emission direction:

The tricky bit is that the imported light type is Point, so you are getting only the emission of light, but not the light surface itself. You will have to fake the light's glass cover with translucent shader, that does not effect the light from the Point light - for camera ray it will be translucent, for light it must be completely transparent.
The third bit of puzzle is that you get the color from black body radiation node:

Note that in sRGB color space the white point is at 6500K, so you might want to compensate for that.


How can I fix this uv unwrapping issue? So I tried making this human model from a tutorial, but when I try to texture it, the uv mapping is acting all weird. The chest area is really disproportionate from the rest of the body:

When I tell blender to unwrap everything, it makes the upper body tiles really small for some reason:

I probably just need to add some seams here an there, but I can't quite put my finger around it. How do I fix this?
Here's the blend:
http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=50207

There are not enough seam cuts, you really have to think like you're cutting the shirt with scissors, otherwise Blender can't properly unfold the mesh. If you add some additional seams on the shoulder and on the sides it will map properly.


add an object from bpy.data.objects in context scene? i'd like to "append" a deleted objects that is stuck inside bpy.data.objects via python in the context scene, how to do so?

right now, i'm creating a new object and doing something like that

    stuck = bpy.data.objects['my_hidden_obj']

    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add()
    New = bpy.context.object
    New.data = stuck.data
    New.name = stuck.name

but i'm almost sure there's a way better technique to do so ? correct ?

Link to collection

bpy.context.collection.objects.link(stuck)

or for < 2.8 link to scene

bpy.context.scene.objects.link(stuck)


Where did my file Save to? I'm using the Blender Video Editor. I finished, rendered it, and went to open the file, but I do not know where my file saved to!

I want it to be saved as a video file and I would like to know where it is, but I do not. I've already tried to look through all my folders, but I don't know if I'm checking the right place.

The output settings determine where your video file (or image sequence) should be saved to:

2.7$x$$x$

For 2.8 look here:

If you are rendering a single image (By pressing render or F12) The image does not get saved automatically, you need to save it manually.

in 2.7$x$$x$ use Ctrl+F3 to save the image, or go to the UV/Image editor and Select Save Image

in 2.8$x$$x$ Use the image editor and select Save as (or press Shift+S)


Is there a way to split a face in cubes (but remaining as one mesh) ? (explode modifier ?) I want to find a way to split the face of a character in separated cubes (but remaining as the same "face mesh" !), as if my character was a man made from stone for example.

I've tried to Ctrl-B on the desired faces, which gave me what I wanted (I also apply this modification to the arms and hands), but I was not able to scale the new faces inward the character (to create a bump effect), and I don't know if its possible.

Is there a way to do so ?
 - Could the explode modifier help me to reach this result ?
 - Or maybe the Ctrl-B shortcut ?

Thanks a lot guys :)

The frontmost image has used inset, extrude, and some faces between extrusions have been deleted.

Select, Inset, Extrude Individual Faces which can create faces targeted for deletion if you like. Blue sphere shows inset before any extrusion.  Yellow edit mode is the extrusion. Image above.

Inset skipped.  Image Above

In Edit Mode

Face Mode
Make a selection of faces
Inset Faces with the individual option ... See the tools keystrokes listed in the UI. Press I for individual inset [ON]
Menu ... Extrude Individual Faces .  Be careful to use the new selection provided by the tool.  If you loose the selection then use [undo] to recover the selection
Set the pivot for scaling to individual origins .. with the upper tool bar ... yellow arrow
Scale ... to scale the selected faces to the center of each face
Improve these steps

Delete Faces if you like to create islands
Know that you in edit mode you can add another shape such as a cube et cetera
You can always join two different meshes into one mesh


Is it possible to bake dynamic paint waves simulation as a black and white displacement map texture? I am working with the dynamic paint waves function to simulate ripples along the surface of a sphere. I was wondering if it is possible to bake the deformation into a black and white displacement map texture so that I could use that texture with a displacement modifier instead of dynamic paint.

Also, another question I have is how do I bake(point cache) the animation on file? When I press bake, it doesn't let me choose where I want to save the files and the bake doesn't even play in real time. I come from 3ds max and the flex modifier is similar to this. I am able to use a point cache modifier to save the animation to a sequence of files so that I can preview the simulation in real time. It also allows me to save an instance of the simulation so that I don't need to re-simulate every time. Is there a way to point cache the dynamic paint wave simulation onto file?

Dynamic Paint can output to different targets depending on the Format. In your example you're baking to Vertex weights. However, changing it to Image Sequence will give you a new Output panel that allows the output to be baked to a sequence of images :

Once stored as a series of images you can use an Image Texture node set to 'Image Sequence' to retrieve the data and use it to drive the Displacement.


How can I add a custom button to a panel? I have made a custom panel in Blender and I would like to have 3 buttons. Currently I've taken the render button and just copied and pasted that into my panel and changed the name of it just for a place holder. How can I make my own button, like how I would make my own checkbox etc. Also, it's currently one of these kinds of buttons:

How and also make it this kind of button:

Panels can't have their own properties defined inside the Panel's class (by design), this means you must register properties either as part of the Scene or as part of the Object class, or as part of a higher level PropertyGroup. A group keeps your properties organized and avoids potential naming conflicts between other add-ons.

Here's a small snippet that creates a Panel, and registers a property group with as many properties as you might need. The update function called by the enum is where you could execute code.

This is one way to do that, scavenge what you need from this:

import bpy

def update_after_enum(self, context):
    print('self.my_enum ---->', self.my_enum)

class IgnitProperties(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    my_enum = bpy.props.EnumProperty(
        name = "My options",
        description = "My enum description",
        items = [
            ("Silver" , "Silver" , "Description..."),
            ("Gold", "Gold", "other description"),
            ("Space Grey", "Space Grey", "Some other description")
        ],
        update=update_after_enum
    )
    # my_string = bpy.props.StringProperty()
    # my_integer = bpy.props.IntProperty()

class IGLayoutDemoPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the scene context of the properties editor"""
    bl_label = "IG Layout Demo"
    bl_idname = "SCENE_PT_layout"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "scene"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        scene = context.scene
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(scene.ignit_panel, "my_enum", expand=True)

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)
    bpy.types.Scene.ignit_panel = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=IgnitProperties)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)
    del bpy.types.Scene.ignit_panel

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

If you want bigger buttons a different approach is needed.


How to offset multiple smoke instances by time? I want to use pre-simulated smoke simulation assets from a library to avoid having to re-bake each time. For example, a large open scene with several smoke stacks rising off of a ground plane, I would simulate one smoke stack, bake the cache to an external file and then in my new scene file link same-sized cubes to the pre-baked caches and move and rotate them around to duplicate that particular smoke simulation. Is it possible to offset these by time so they're not exactly the same, or is it only possible with separate caches for each?

If you look at the point cache files, the default filename follows the format: [identifier]_[frame]_[index].bphys. Unfortunately, the [frame] in the filename doesn't actually correspond to the cache's actual frame number.

That means, the only way to offset a cache's frames is by parsing the contents of each file (e.g. writing a python script). Apparently, modifying the contents is not that straightforward. This page explains a little (towards the bottom). Glancing at the blender source code, it looks like you'll need to edit the points time, dietime, and lifetime; some cache files may also store the previous cache point's time data too.

If you know C, It may be easier to just write a patch for Blender to add the feature. That way, you can make use of the read/write methods from Blender's source. You could also request the feature; perhaps there is a developer who is familiar with the code who can easily add it.


vertex slide within face I recently discovered vertex slide and edge slide which are very useful. Now I'm in a similar situation, but I want to move a vertex such that it stays within the plane of a face. Is there a similar way to do this?

(What I am trying to do is modelling the Szilassi polyhedron, where you could see the usefulness of such a tool.)

You can move a vertex along the normal of the associated face. This doesn't ensure that the face was planar in the first place.

Switch to Normal orientation mode.
Select a Face in face mode.
Scale its Z normal to 0 in face mode. SZZ0

At this point nothing should have changed. If anything changed your face was not planar to begin with.

Make sure all vertices of the face only belong to a single face by ripping them. V
Move them along the face normal. G⇧ ShiftZZ


sikand

I don't know, if fbx ASCII changed from blender vers. 2.75 to 2.77 or 2.78, but it is not wrong to update.

Maybe you can repeat a test again with only the z-rotation:

I did the test this way:

New file, n-key to follow the rotation data

Before you rotate the cube, you have to decide, whether you want to rotate the cube with xyz-Euler-angles or quaternions. It will break the animation, if this setting is changed afterwards.
(I think the reason is, that keyframe interpolation is calculated, when the second keyframe in inserted and can't be done, when the rotation mode is changed afterwards)

So lets choose xyz-Euler-angles instead of quaternion wxyz for this test (the result should be the same: keyframes change at Channel: "R" and Channel: "Y"),
in object mode choose i-key and in keyframe-menu choose rotation (rotation data become yellow and a yellow keyframe is inserted at keyframe 0 in the keyframe editor),
go to another keyframe - 12 - for example, r-key followed by z-key, rotate the cube with a mouse-movement (z-axis rotation data should change),
hit i-key again and choose rotation in keyframe menu. moving the green mark in keyframe editor
should rotate the cube now, a green color indicates the "linear interpolated states" between the keyframes (maybe you can control it in the "dope sheet editor").

That the animation becomes broken, when the rotation mode is changed afterwards can be tested:
When now quaternions-wxyz is selected, moving the green mark does not move the cube anymore and no interpolated keyframes are exported to the ASCII fbx-file.
So go back to xyz-Euler-angles.

Now Export to fbx ASCII 6.1 with -z forward and y up, only choose "armat" and (shift) "mesh", animation, all actions and default take selected, export..
Compare files with WinMerge or notepad++

Do you have any info about the "default Lcl Rotation" or the 4x4 posenode matrix ?

greetings testuser

update:
Rotation with bones:

New file, delete the cube, if necessary center 3d cursor with "shift C" and add a single bone, the bone can be handled as an object and be rotated in object mode, (what one usually won't do, when a mesh is rigged - as far as i understand).

In edit mode the head (at the bottom), the body and the tail (on top) can be selected. Selecting the tail and rotating over x axis changes the tails y and z position.
Global and local transform orientation is z-up. In "object data" switching between rest position and pose position makes no difference. Thus with the rotation in edit mode
the rest position is changed, not the pose position. The corresponding changes in the fbx file can be found at "Lcl Rotation" (= default rotation, these values are also used as default values of the default take).

In pose mode you can see, that a bone has an own additional local coordinate system with the green y-axis always aligned to the bones body (change transform orientation to local in pose mode).
Perhaps this may be the reason for your bizarre rotation results ?

The global z-rotation is a bones local y-rotation (if the bone is aligned to blenders z-axis) and this is exported to x-rotation-data, when export-options are "-z forward and y-up"

When rotating in pose mode, you create a difference between rest and pose position (with ctrl A and "apply pose as rest pose" the pose can be converted to default rest pose again).

What i think is, that this local system of the bone is used for rotation, if a model is imported for example into a game engine like unity or a "OpenGL code project". Manually changing one of the values of a keyframe inside the fbx file (rotation channel
of a bone) rotates the bone over the bones local axes. When a bone (together with the mesh) in pose mode is animated and rotated inside blender, this rotation uses the global coordinate system instead and blender calculates
the x,y and z-values for the bones local coordinate system. These values are displayed under transform-rotation in pose mode and are calculated for each keyframe, when blender does the keyframe interpolation.

If you want to rotate a bone for yourself, it may be necessary to do this calculation for your own - the question is how, because the angle of the bone may be relevant..


What problem is being displayed in this shader? What phenomenon is causing this waffle-patterning in this transparent texture? I want to research what is happening, but don't know what direction to go.

Originally, I started off using a principled shader, but even the plain sss shader is exhibiting this.

Can I add a blend file to these questions?

Here's the blend file:

this was the pbr shader, with the Christensen-Burley surface method. It took a long time to render, compared to the random walk one with the plain SSS

Plain SSS

I added the level 1 modifier, but these artifacts are still visible

Here's the node tree that I ended up going with, after taking the subdivision modifier back off of the mesh. The influences of the SSS in the shader seem to be negligible, and I'm happy with the result-- wasn't going for physical accuracy.

Hopefully, this helps someone out there

I believe it's the fact that the resolution of the mesh is so low that the angles from face to face are so sharp that the SSS sees it as a corner that is thinner and thus lightens it up (expected from SSS, but rather extreme). The sharper the corner the brighter. As soon as i added a lvl 1 subsurface modifier, it made the surface smooth enough geometry wise to calculate the surface as if it was one rounded shape.

The fact that if you change the shading to Flat Shading the brighter lines along the sharp folds of the faces becomes even more pronounced makes me sure that SSS really only gives that result because on the low resolution surface.

Here a comparison with a quadsphere with just one point dragged out to create an extreme that the SSS instantly shades as it did in the file shared.

Also visible here is that the quads seem to be internally triangulated and the resulting edges are generating the thinner corners or folds which get calculated by the SSS algorithm. Specifically the "Volumetric" version used in Random Walk as that is a volumetric approximation of a physically based volume scattering.

While it was not asked for a solution, i would still think that a level 1 subdivision modifier should get rid of the pattern.

This result i got from rendering with 128 samples at full resulution and only lvl 1 subdivision surface modifier. I had to remove the background and replace with a color, as the image was missing. Also due to the camera setup being a bit stubborn, i deleted it and created a new one for a simple close up. If you did not use anything on the camera.

This is with the adjusted Principled BSDF shader.


How do I transfer .blend files to a new PC and still keep all the materials? I have been using my laptop for the longest time with blender. I recently got a new PC. When I copied the .blend file and dropped it in my new PC, no materials were on my mesh. How do I fix this??

Pack all your files into the .blend before you save and copy. See below:


Baking from high poly gives unexpected results When I tried to bake my high poly to my low poly I followed every step of the tutorial online. But the image just doesn't appear like it should. I've also tried shuffling with the ray distance from 0.0 to 0.001 to 0.5 and even 12....

On high poly object go through any modifier that may affect the baking and turn them off for render like this:

In addition, make sure you follow this steps too posted here:
High Poly to Low poly normal bake looks weird


How convert particle system to mesh blender 2.8 I tried convert my particle system to mesh but I don't have any convert button under modefier setup. What did I do wrong?

I have same problem with official 2.8 now It worked just once and now when I convert it all particles jump back to plane. I solve it just simply exported particles  as obj and all is fine


Blender extrude problem I'm currently learning blender as a beginner by Blender Guru. When I was making the mug, I had to extrude the top to form the interior of the mug. But as I was extruding the top part of the mug, the top part of the mug is seen and the interior is not shown. Here are the screenshots:

I was thinking the problem was the inset above the cup. But I tried to fix it many amount of times but it gives the same problem. The interior of the cup should be seen. Is there a way to solve this problem?

The issue there is that you are selecting the two innermost loops of the cup, but if you only select the innermost loop, it will extrude correctly. In the images below, I only select the innermost loop, and it extrudes correctly.

Result after extruding only the innermost loop instead of the two loops in your picture.


Exporting / Importing Object with Animations I've been trying to work on a bow and arrow and get it working inside unity. I don't have much experience with animations, but I've successfully got my characters to run, walk, idle, attack, get hit, mine rocks, cut trees etc. Today I finished rigging my bow and got it all animated. I tried exporting it as a .FBX and importing it into another project I have with the character rigged already with a pulling the bow string back and releasing. When exporting the bow, everything works great, the key-frames are perfect just like they should be but after importing into another project or even a blank blend file, my animation always adds extra key-frames and totally messes with the animation. I've spent over 2 hours trying every possible configuration I could think of inside the settings and more that definitely made no sense but I tried for the hell of it. Has this happened to anybody before? Any help, knowledge or guidance would be greatly appreciated! Thanks ahead of time and have a great weekend!

For this, you will have to do the animations in the 'dope sheet' tab.
If you still do not know, I'll show you how it works.
Basically, it is equal to timeline. But here, you can define several separate animations, and each one will have its own name.
To access the 'Dope sheet' tab, pull a new tab and select it.

Now you will have to switch to 'action editor', because this is where you can name animations and do other things.

Click New and type a name for your animation.

Check the F box so that the animations are saved in your project, so you will not risk losing them when you leave the blender and open the project again another time.

Now, do a little simple animation and export again to see if everything will work fine.
If you want to create more animations, just select + next to F.


Blender crashes during bake I made a model of a small building, lit with HDR and some light planes.  The walls are textured with images, normal maps etc The whole file is about 28mb.  The 4 walls are separate meshes, and I am trying to bake the textures one wall at a time.  I unwrap a wall section, create an image in the UV editor, add a new image texture node in the node editor,  etc. and hit bake and every time Blender crashes immediately.  If I copy and paste the wall section into a new Blender file it bakes just fine. The wall panel by itself is about 1.5mb. I have tried baking while in Object mode, Edit mode, to no avail.  I'm just trying to bake one small mesh at a time so I don't understand if this is a memory problem?  Using 2.79, Cycles, CPU.

This may be standard practice but it works for me so I wanted to post it here. It seems that Blender looks at the render layer settings when baking.  I have a bunch of detail in my file (wall framing, interior trim, furniture etc.) that doesn't effect the baked texture on, for instance, exterior walls.

so when I bake the exterior wall texture I exclude those items in the render layer panel.  This seems to have eliminated the crashing problem. It's just important to be sure that none of the excluded layers would have contributed to the bake.  In this case the exterior lighting casts shadow on the walls so that layer isn't excluded.  There may be better ways of handling this but this is what I have found that works for me.


Align view in quadview mode I want to align the 3D view like the menu item "View/Align View/Center Cursor and View All" does it, but with Python. If in "Scripting" layout this works fine with the following code:

import bpy
override = {}
override['window'] = bpy.context.window
override['scene' ] = bpy.context.scene
override['screen'] = bpy.context.screen
override['area'  ] = bpy.context.screen.areas[2]
override['region'] = bpy.context.screen.areas[2].regions[4]
bpy.ops.view3d.view_all(override, center = True)

But it does not work if the view is in quadview mode; only the view in the lower left corner is aligned then.
I tried to replace the region line by

override['region'] = bpy.context.screen.areas[2].space.active.region_quadviews[x]

(x = 0..3) but this fails because the region_quadviews[x] are of type RegionView3D instead of type Region. Is it possible to get four regions of type Region of a quadview?

Strange: Clicking on the menu item shows the same behaviour, i. e. only the lower left view is aligned; but using the shortcut (Shift-C) aligns the view the mousepointer is over - this is my goal.

import bpy
override = {}
override['window'] = bpy.context.window
override['scene' ] = bpy.context.scene
override['screen'] = bpy.context.screen
override['area'  ] = bpy.context.screen.areas[2]

for region in [r for r in bpy.context.screen.areas[2].regions if r.type == 'WINDOW']:
    override['region'] = region
    bpy.ops.view3d.view_all(override, center=True)


The blender program starts with a blurry interface Hello.
The screen is causing trouble and I am asking questions.

Because of the nature of the model, I can only use the old version of 2.67 version.

When I run the program, I have a problem with the screen as if it were foggy unlike the latest version.
How can I solve this problem?

[For a new visitor to this page for the same problem ] Try installing 2.79 it will support your required plugin for which you are trying to install an older version and also won't give blurry effect on the interface. (Answered based on my personal experience with the same problem.)


Shadow artifacts in Eevee As visible in the image, the render is showing artifacts near close edges. Cycles is not showing any such problem.
Now, I am planning on adding a lightsabre in the scene and would like to render it in Eevee, for the Bloom. So, how to remove these artifacts?

In Render Properties, under Shadow, you can pump up Cube Size to attenuate those artifacts.
Also, those artifacts may appear in the Viewport, but be less visible while Rendered. This is beacause Viewport and Render don't necessarily have the same Sampling (in Render Properties / Sampling).


Why is my cloth simulation doing this? So I've just learnt about cloth simulation and I've applied it to my player's skirt as well as added a collider on the player model but this is where the issue is:

I've included the settings I have for both the cloth simulation on the skirt and the collider modifier on the player's body.

When I press play, the skirt shrinks into itself but then goes back to normal and I have no idea why. I followed this tutorial for pinning and using the cloth simulator on the skirt(in case it helps at all)
https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/create-clothing-for-a-character-with-blender--cms-27059

Any and all helpful advice would be greatly appreciated :) Also due to this model being for an upcoming game, I cannot upload or share it, sorry :(

It's usually better to make a cloth sim with a single surface and add a solidify modifier under the cloth sim because this way it has half the number of polygons to compute for the simulation and it keeps the thickness of the cloth constant.