How to fix inconsistent behavior of two quads defined by the same corner vertices? I have two objects with two separate meshes. You can snap vertices of one, to the respective corners of the other, set the origin of both objects to the center of mass (surface), and their positions will be different. Moving the blue one up along Z axis a little, will show the two faces intersecting (in material preview mode):

Triangulating the top (blue) face fixes the issue, which leads me to believe that internal Blender's triangulation divides the quad across the other two corners for some reason:

As a confirmation, manually dividing the quads in inconsistent way leads to the same result as on pic. 1:

However, after consistent triangulation, when the quads double triangles no longer intersect, Set Origin still gives inconsistent results.

Edit (Better understanding of OP)
If you show the internal triangulation for rendering by using a Wireframe node, you can see that the (non-planar) quads are indeed triangulated in opposite directions:

..(and here the shipped add-on Measureit has been used to show vertex indices at a reasonable size.)
I've found that can be flipped by CtrlT manually triangulating with a real, editable edge, selecting the appropriate direction, 'Fixed' for 1st and 3rd vertices, 'Fixed Alternate' for 2nd and 4th:

Then CtrlX Limited Dissolving the new edge, setting the angle high enough to lose it:

After that, the internal triangulation appears to follow the hint:

.. and you get good ol' Z-fighting between the coincident faces, which is what you would expect.


After converting a mesh to a curve , how to have a smooth curve? i have converted a square mesh to a curve , so i have a really narrow agle i didnt find any way in the curve editor to modify that , and i cannot change the handle of this cuvre ..i just want to transform this thoses line into real curve but they stay straight ...

is there a way with a converted mesh; to modify the lines into a real curve ?

In the left menu (displayed with T) > Tool > Set Spline Type > Bezier


"Use UV for mapping" on curve object in Blender 2.82 I'm trying to use this option to uv map a curve, but i can't found it anymore in Blender 2.82. I'm using cycles.

has it been removed?

Thank you.

Regards.

Already default Curve can be UV textured ...

... converted to Mesh - UV map is generated.

I never used it, so sorry if I misunderstood the reason you asked for.


Model won't move right with the rig I made an account just to make this post because I've googled it 50000 thousand times and nothing. Please keep in mind I'm new to blender, I've only been using it a few times and this is my first time rigging.

Okay so I'm trying to rig my character to move but it keeps doing this-

It looks fine at first and it does move, but its also moving things that it shouldn't. As soon As I move that left arm bone, the right one has a seizure. I have no idea what the problem could be. Any help would be appreciated :(

It sounds like the some vertex groups have been connected to the wrong bone in the armature.  Click on the bone that is causing problems then go into weight paint mode and look at what parts of the mesh are being influenced by that bone.


Script for export vertex in CSV dont work I'm quite new in the blender and many things I do not understand yet.
I would like to extract the coordinates of each vertex in CSV
Well... I'm trying to use this script, but I can not make it work, supposedly copying / pasting it and pressing the "run" button should work, but there's no way.

Surely it is a very basic question, but the truth is, I have no idea.

I do not even know how to write the code correctly on this page :(
  (but I just found out ^^ )

import bpy

outputFile = 'C:/someFolder/mesh.csv'

verts = [ bpy.context.object.matrix_world * v.co for v in bpy.context.object.data.vertices ]

csvLines = [ ";".join([ str(v) for v in co ]) + "\n" for co in verts ]

f = open( outputFile, 'w' )
f.writelines( csvLines )
f.close()

It always gives the same error in line #9  :

Thanks for reading this, any help will be very grateful. A greeting!

Given that the error appears at opening the file, I strongly suspect that your outputFile is malformed:

Check that the path exists, the filename doesn't point to a directory, spaces in directory names are handled correctly etc.

You can paste the lines in the console one by one, the python interpreter will give you a verbose error message

Check these answers here

Where does console output go

Python script fail, look in the console for now


differences in quality of brush alphas I wanted to do a something like skin pores. I tried to do it with brush alphas but the quality of it was very low or was different in different areas. And here is my question: what affects the quality of the results when using alphas on brushes when texture painting? I will put some images to show what I mean. (I apologize for my English)

I make some alpha in gimp. I cant remebere where i found this one from the begining (this "skin").
Brush texture 1k:

Brush texture 4k:

I worked it out a quite some time ago, but maybe it will help someone else. I did bad UV mapping, begginer mistake.


Error message when trying to open blender I have downloaded blender but an error comes up ...can't detect 3d graphics card...blender requires card with open GL 2.1

How do I get this driver?...I am on windows 10

Thanks

https://www.khronos.org/opengl/wiki/Getting_Started#Downloading_OpenGL

In the contents, it has 2. Downloading OpenGL
The link varies by Operating System

Read your Graphics Card Vendor notes about openGL support.
For instance, NVIDIA has notes about openGL support here:
https://developer.nvidia.com/opengl-driver

Hope that helps.


Can I scale a mesh with baked physics? I'm having a lot of troubles with a cloth simulation for a flag flapping in the wind and I'm starting to suspect that my problems are related to small scale at which I'm running the simulation (length of the flag is 0.04 Blender units).

Is it possible to bake the simulation at a more typical size, then scale down to my mini-flag? Alternatively, are there tricks one can play to work around problems with simulating physics with really small objects?

Here a workaround if someone else encounters this issue in the future:

Simply bake your animation and export it as albemic file (.abc). The animation playback will be slower, but as you import the albemic file you will find a transform cache in the constraints tab. In the transform cache you can simply scale and offset your animation to your likings.


Rigging makehuman character in Blender 2.79 I  used makehuman to make a character, but rigging it in blender 2.79 failed.what could be the problem because whenever i go to pose mode the bones dont move with the character's body
I use blender 2.79
I use makehuman 1.1.1

This sounds like a basic armature mis-configuration. If the armature was not provided with the model, check the following:

Vertex groups in the model are not only existent but are assigned to the right areas (use weight paint mode to check).
The model has an Armature modifier on it, and the modifier’s target is the correct armature object. What’s more, the modifier is turned on (visible in both viewport and render).
Further modifiers on the model would not be interfering with the Armature modifier results. Shrink wrap would fall into this category, while corrective smooth would not.


How to insert a keyframe in the VSE via script? I have the following code in which I want to add a keyframe at two points at the end:

import bpy
import os, glob

# glob all movie files from
vid_dir = "/Volumes/Temp/Grau_Benjamin/01_avi_sequences_264frames_backw/0_glitched/"
# note this will recursively find movies in folder
exts = bpy.path.extensions_movie
files = [f for ext in exts for f in glob.glob(os.path.join(vid_dir, "*%s" % ext))]
files.sort()

scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.sequence_editor_create()
seq = scene.sequence_editor.sequences
for i, fp in enumerate(files):
    frame_start = (i * 48) + (i * i) + 1# some offset
    name = os.path.basename(fp)
    seq.new_movie(name=name,
                  filepath=fp,
                  channel=32 - i,
                  frame_start=frame_start
                  )
    scene.sequence_editor.sequences_all[name].blend_type = 'CROSS'
    bpy.context.scene.frame_current = frame_start + ((i+1) * 48) + ((i+1) * (i+1)) + 1
    scene.sequence_editor.sequences_all[name].blend_alpha = 100
    # Here I want to set a keyframe for the blend parameter
    bpy.context.scene.frame_current = frame_start + ((i+2) * 48) + ((i+2) * (i+2)) + 1
    scene.sequence_editor.sequences_all[name].blend_alpha = 0
    # Here I want to set a keyframe for the blend parameter

I tried using the automatic keyframe insertion, but this wouldn't work. And I don't see what's happening inside the console, so that I could paste it to my code, when doing it manually.

Thank you very much.

Benni

Keyframe insert

In a late edit to previous answer I wanted to point out that the sequencers new_movie(..) method returns the newly created strip. (In the docs from the link where it says "Returns") Assigned it to variable ms

The context scene alreasy is assigned to scene.  Hence there is no need for bpy.context.scene.sequences_all[name]...  Doing it this way will cause problems if there already a strip named "foo", the new one will be named "foo.001" and you will be looking at old one instead. This is one big reason to use API methods that return a reference to the object they've created.

There are oodles of questions and answers on bse re adding keyfraems using keyframe_insert(datapath, frame) which can be used like

# set the value
ob.foo_bar = 22
# insert the keyframe at frame f
ob.keyframe_insert("foo_bar", frame=f)

There is no need to change the scene.frame_current first.

Ammended code.

import bpy
import os, glob

# glob all movie files from
vid_dir = "/home/batfinger/Videos/"
# note this will recursively find movies in folder
exts = bpy.path.extensions_movie
files = [f for ext in exts for f in glob.glob(os.path.join(vid_dir, "*%s" % ext))]
files.sort()

scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.sequence_editor_create()
seq = scene.sequence_editor.sequences
for i, fp in enumerate(files):
    frame_start = (i * 48) + (i * i) + 1# some offset
    name = os.path.basename(fp)
    ms = seq.new_movie(name=name,
                  filepath=fp,
                  channel=32 - i,
                  frame_start=frame_start
                  )
    ms.blend_type = 'CROSS'
    f = frame_start + ((i+1) * 48) + ((i+1) * (i+1)) + 1
    ms.blend_alpha = 100
    ms.keyframe_insert("blend_alpha", frame=f)

    f = frame_start + ((i+2) * 48) + ((i+2) * (i+2)) + 1
    ms.blend_alpha = 0
    ms.keyframe_insert("blend_alpha", frame=f)

To see what's happening you need to print something (or throw an error)

print("this will be seen in system console (terminal)")


multi gpu also for viewport? does having more than one gpu also have an impact on speed of the rendered viewport in cycles ? (renderd viewport i mean the traditional shift z render )

or multi gpu rendering is only okay for the f12 final render ?

and about eevee ? doest is support multi gpu for viewport as well as f12 final render ?

thanks, im planning to upgrade my pc and i want to be sure before i make the purchase

Yes, multiple GPU's will also be used for the shift+z viewport render.

No, multiple GPU support is not planned for Eevee yet.
https://devtalk.blender.org/t/is-will-eevee-support-multi-gpu/625
It will just use your "display" card.


Why don't I see an object in UV Editing? Default:

UV-Editing:

Files: here и here.

Simply turn on both layers, now only 1 is active.


Are the books written for blender 2.5 or 2.6 still useful for the latest blender 2.7 version? I know that latest blender will have more features and better perfomance, etc., but is there a big difference between 2.5, 2.6 & 2.7 that will cause trouble for me as a beginner?

Whether or not you can use information for a old version depends on what you are comparing:

Cycles came out in 2.61, so anything prior will be for the blender internal.
The Python API has changed a fair bit since 2.5. So scripts, addons and python tutorials will most likely be incompatible.
Many of the buttons may have sightly different places: example in 2.70 tabs for the toolbar came out.

In general anything written for 2.5 and up is still (more or less) relevant and use full now.

If you get stuck, or something is not where it was then, ask a new question here.


Render issues with subdivision surface The issue is I modeled a coffee mug, and I did several renders of it with different colors. But at a certain point it started rendering as though the subdivision surface modifier wasn't there.

For the time being I found that if I set the viewport value to 6 it renders alright. But if I set it to a lower value it looks pretty horrible and square.

Working like this is tedious because I set the viewport value to 1 to make the computer go faster while I am making some changes to my design, and then I forget to reset it to 6. Then I find myself swearing my head off to the ceiling as after 20 minutes of rendering I have to start over again. And my computer isn't terribly quick, which doesn't help.

I hope someone can help me out and explain why this is happening to me, and what I need to do in order to fix it. I am a complete novice in blender and for the moment I am completely clueless.

Best to post a screenshot of your mesh and the modifier.

Check the image attached to make sure the camera icon on your modifier is on.


How to make rounded faces to model a human face? I would like to know how to curve edges and faces in order to make a nose or a cheek. Can someone help me please?

Edges are by definition straight, and faces by definition planar. A strip of edges or faces can be curved by offsetting the direction of each a tiny bit to the former.

Luckily, you don't (in most cases) have to do this by hand. For examples of how it works and looks, try out the sculpting tools sometime!

EDIT as Duane Dibbley points out below, it IS in fact possible to curve faces that have more than 3 vertices but it may cause some rendering oddities. The reason I did not consider it is because most applications I import models into accept tris (tri-verticed faces) only. Check your target application (if any) before attempting this.


Render showing nothing I'm rendering a particle explosion in Cycles but the render shows nothing. When I hide the particle emitter it only shows only the emitter. Not the particles. What is going wrong? The camera clipping length is 500 & I don't have the particle emitter hidden (in the outliner) or disabled during renders.

Just wanted to clarify: what are you using for your particle renders? I know halo is not supported in Cycles. If it is an Object Instance, did you uncheck "Show Emitter" from both the Render panel and the Viewport Display panel of the Particle Settings?


Can't change my object duration on timeline Total noob question, but how do I change the duration (in/out point) as to where it cuts in and out (appears) on the timeline.

First go to the Timeline window.

There you can define your rendering and playback range by choosing your start frame and end frame:

In order to adjust your keyframes
open the Dope Sheet window:

Press A to deselect all keyframes
Press B to border select the keyframes you want to adjust
Press G to move the selected keyframes to the desired position


Blender 2.71 parenting objects transforms objects Whenever I parent an object it gets distorted or transformed in some form or fashion when I press "P" in game mode...is there a way to fix this?

See the top picture shows what it supposed to look like...then I press "P" in game mode and we jump to the picture below and objects go megatron on me and are transformed.

Typically the scaling does not change when entering the game engine. This is different, when you are playing an animation or change something via Python.

My advice to you is to void scaling (especially the in-homogeneousscaling) at the parents.

If you need scaled meshes, you can create the object tree by using empties as parent. You can parent the previous parent objects to the empties. This way they are no parents anymore and you can scale them without side effects. Just make sure the empties are not scaled.

Example:

Frame (scaled)
- Button A (scaled)
- Button B (scaled)

changed to:

Root (Unscaled Empty)
- Frame (scaled)
- Button A (scaled)
- Button B (scaled)

or

Root (Unscaled Empty)
- Frame (scaled)
- Button Base (Unscaled Empty)
  - Button A (scaled)
  - Button B (scaled)


Blender animation file turn into "Textedit" file and never came out as a video I'm new in blender (I started in January 2018), this is the first time I try to get an animation and it still doesn't work "as expected".
I used JPEGs as frames when I rendered first into animation, after I created a new file in which I added them in the video editing mode.There is (only) 100 frames and the preview looks good. When I render the animation in the video editing mode, I finally get a file that is neither a .MP4, or a .avi, or .mov BUT a sort of "Textedit document".

To fix it I already try to change the output, the codec, the quality & rapidity for the render. (even switched from blender render to cycles render too, to see if something different could happen)

I had this problem myself. You need to have File Extensions checked under Render: Output tab and then it will be saved in the correct file format - PNG in my case.


Make a black background transparent in the compositor I'm having trouble adding a render layer, the layers I have are:

Stars
Sky
Clouds
Billboard (problem)

I've managed to merge together stars, sky and clouds. However I'm having trouble adding the billboard layer. The rest show through one another but the billboard layer has a black background.

How can I make just that layer transparent?

First Possibility

You might use the Color / Mix / Add node, or use the Color / Mix / Mix and with Fac of your billboards luminosity, which can be obtained with the Converter / Separate HSVA node.

Second Possibility

Insert a Converter / Math / Bigger Than node between the Separate HSVA and the Mix nodes abowe. This will only make totally black pixels transparent.

Third Solution

If your Billboard is rendered in Blender, you can set the background of the render to be transparent. In Blender Internal renderer set Properties Panel / Render / Shading / Alpha to Transparent. In Cycles renderer set the Properties Panel / Render / Film / Transparent checkbox to true.


Animating using shape keys, not animating There are actually quite a few posts of this question, but apparently I'm having a different problem. All i want is for my character to slowly open his eyes using the shape keys. I set frame 1 with eyes closed. then frame 30 with eyes open. When I go back to frame one, it doesn't reset to the closed eyes and when i hit play nothing happens. Does anyone possibly have a solution on why this may be happening??

I just figured out how to get my eyes to slowly open the way i wanted them to. Instead of going to the object data, setting the values and inserting the key frames from there, I instead went into the dope sheet editor, and set the values in the shape key editor which automatically created the key frames for me (as long as i had the right frame set when changing the values.)


In Blender 3d, how do I start or change a wind force in a scene? Some force fields, such as "turbulence" can be moved or changed.  But wind is one of those that does not seem to have any handles for controlling it with key frames.  Its just on all the time, and the  you can only change it and set its parameters before animating the scene.  Is there a way to control it?

Most values displayed in the properties can be keyframed. This includes the Strength, Flow and Noise for Force Fields.

With the mouse over the field press I or right click and select Insert Keyframe.

For more variation you can add a noise modifier to the value in the graph editor. Press N to show the properties sidebar to find the modifiers panel.


Is it possible to vary the material color by location for a fluid? So, I imagine to illicit the effect I'm looking for will be a rather complicated node setup...

I'm currently working towards animating a fountain at night with multiple nozzles, or inflows. At each nozzle I would like to have a light of sorts to illuminate the water with different colors (for clarity one color per nozzle, but a different color at each nozzle). I've messed around with emission objects and I can't seem to get the effect I'm looking for. I'd like for this animation/render to look as realistic as possible and have the volume of the water to glow with the corresponding color. I achieved this effect by doing away with emission objects all together and instead having an emission shader plugged into the volume of the material output for my water (albeit with the strength turned wayyy down).

This method works fine with only one inflow... Except I would like the color to fall off the further you get away from a predetermined position, or rather the further away you get from the inflow, aka the nozzle with the light.

Also... If at all possible my end goal would be to have this same effect for each nozzle. Each one having a different color and lighting up the fluid with the color/emission falling off to zero the further you get away from each nozzle/inflow.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Eureka! Thanks to Vince Scalia's suggestion of using a gradient node I figured it out and the results work perfectly.

Now this was just for testing so it's a really simply case but you can see this material now simulates a light illuminating only the inflow.

I'll show a picture of the node tree for clarification:

So the mapping nodes are for the coordinates of where we want the illumination to be. You need to have both the x-y location as well as a separate node for the height (z) of the inflow. Set the gradient texture node to spherical as well as your scale; a math node to combine each of them... input that into the factor of your mix shader with glass and an emission node and viola! Then you can add as many other lights as you want by just duplicating the entire node setup, changing your coordinates in the mapping node and adding another mix shader to combine them. Input all this data into the volume parameter of the material output. With this scheme you can now illuminate a fluid at any location any number of times with varying colors and best of all you can animate the whole thing with key frames!


How to use only the luminosity of the environment texture but without color influence? Sometimes, environment textures are good to give a more realistic look to the rendering.

But, it may be hard to tune the colors because of it :

Blue sky visible on the top right part (from the environment texture)
Greeny sand (which is normally more yellow) on the bottom part

Is it possible to have the lighting only on the mesh objects (no color influence, only the light strength), but keeping the colors in the background ?

I think this setup will work. It desaturates the image that will light the scene, but the original image will be visible to the camera.

A different version suggested by JtheNinja. I also needed substract node to switch 0 and 1, and multiply node to control the strength of light.


Not able to add node sockets to an existing node using python scripting I am trying to add a new input NodeSocket to an existing node using the below code:

tree = bpy.context.scene.node_tree
tree.nodes['File Output'].inputs.new('RGBA', 'Image')
tree.nodes['File Output'].update()

Below are the nodes that I have created for my blend file.

As shown in the above image, the "File Output" node has 5 input sockets. The above code should add a 6th one, however it is not adding. Am I missing something here?

Found out from here that instead of adding sockets to these node using the node.inputs collection, the node.file_slots or node.layer_slots collections should be used. Both of them work, they just provide slightly different properties for use with simple files or multi-layer EXR.


Camera - set background image - python I'm trying to set a background image to a camera using python, but no luck so far. The background image checkbox on the camera item is checked, but no file is loaded.

Also, I'm actually trying to load an image-sequence, not a still image.

filepath = "D:/path/to/image_seq.jpg"
img = bpy.data.images.load(filepath)
# cam is a camera object.
cam.data.show_background_images = True
bg = cam.data.background_images.new()
bg = img

You have to assign your image to bg.image. The last line should therefore be:

bg.image = img

Below you find a modified version of your code that runs properly.

import bpy

cam = bpy.context.scene.camera
filepath = "D:/path/to/image_seq.jpg"

img = bpy.data.images.load(filepath)
cam.data.show_background_images = True
bg = cam.data.background_images.new()
bg.image = img

If you want to use an image sequence you will have to set the img.source:

img.source = 'SEQUENCE'

Make sure that your filenames of the sequence are numbered, so that Blender can automatically identify the consecutive frames.


How to install Blender on OS X (Blender directories?) I need help installing Blender on OS X. I unzipped the file, dragged the folder to the Applications folder, ran Blender, opened User Preferences, went to the directories setup (File tab), but there were no directories listed. I looked in the manual, which referenced a folder which is not on my system, or, if it is, I cannot find it. Then, I read that I have to create each directory, but I don’t know where to create them.

You don't need to install any directories. If you're looking for where the scripts, config and cache folders are, they're in the Application Support folder under your user account directory.

  /Users/$USER/Library/Application
  Support/Blender/2.74/cache
  /Users/$USER/Library/Application
  Support/Blender/2.74/config
  /Users/$USER/Library/Application
  Support/Blender/2.74/scripts

The cache folder is where the BVH cache files are saved, and you can sometimes free up quite a lot of space by deleting them.

The config folder is where your startup and userpref files are kept.

The scripts/addons folder is where all your installed addons will be.

There will be separate folder for each version of Blender under Application Support/Blender.

If you're looking for Scripts/Addons/Presets/Modules that come with the Blender install, you have to look inside the Blender.app file. On a Mac, the application appears as a single file, but it's actually a folder with files within it.

If you right click on the Blender.app file, and choose Show Package Contents, you'll see a Contents folder. Open that and you'll see a number of files and folders. The scripts and presets are in the Resources folder.

The file hierarchy is like this:

Blender 2.74.app
+--Contents
   +--Resources
      +--2.74
         +--datafiles
         +--python
         +--scripts


Directional Offset of an noise wave texture When creating wood floors or other materials based on blender textures like noise wave ect., the Pattern that is created is clearly based on the same Seed and Point of Origin.

Example: A wooden floor where every plank has an original crack wooden pattern instead of what is currently standard a pattern were cracks are going visible from one plank into another.

What i would like to achieve is that i can break those up with an given amount.

So that you would get for a face with a diffrent pattern for every brick/plan/tile instead of what is now just one pattern for the whole face and then the bricks/tiles/planks painted above that.

And i dont want to create an object for every plank / brick. I know how that is achieved but that is also a pain because the array modifier doesent influence the seed so that wont work and copying by hand is just awful.

The desired effect is seen here at 3:30

Substance YT Video about Wood material and Warp

I found a way to wrap a noise texture using a brick texture. Actually, with at least three:

To create diferent brick textures I use very different location value on each node.

[Edit: you can use only one brick texture with black and white values, the 'difference' blend mode works well with the texture coordinate for example]

Next step is mix the texture coordinate with the result, you can play with the blend mode and the factor to get the result you want. then use this as normal input for the noise texture:

Then play around to get the desire result:


How to improve this rendering so it looks more like the target image? (Disaster) I'm trying to replicate the following image using Blender:

the image http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/62862049/Screenshots/03k.png

For this, I've used MakeHuman to generate a similar-looking human, an ortographic camera and a Lattice to deform the mesh (to give that specific distorted projection). I've set the render size to 64x64 (the original image is 32x32) and used FreeStyle for outlines. I'm also using a Sun Lamp and I've deactivated anti-aliasing. This is what I got:

blender http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/62862049/Screenshots/03o.png

But rendering results are terrible:

results http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/62862049/Screenshots/03l.png

I have that feeling that I've done everything I could to get close to it but somehow it still fails miserably. The color is pale, the image is blurry, the outline is wrong in hands and face. I don't know what else to do.

Link to the .blend

Original 32x32 target image

When I look at his ankles in the target image, they do not seem to be proportioned like normal human ankles -- they look MUCH too thick. I suspect the creators of that figure ran into the same problems you did with trying to generate a realistic looking figure on such a small scale and compensated by not using anatomically accurate proportions.

So, if you want to try to use Blender's environment to make your figure, I would recommend finding proportions that might not look correct in the 3D Viewport or in MakeHuman, but that do look correct when rendered at 32x32.

It is also possible that the original creators did not use a 3D model rendered at 32x32, but rather just painted the image by hand, pixel by pixel, or perhaps used some process other than rendering from a 3D environment.

Another possibility is to render your figure at a much higher resolution so you get all the details you want, and then shrink it down & selectively edit it in Photoshop.


Is there any way or addon to facilitate the attachment/alignment of armor to a model? I am trying to fit this armor into the model's arm, but I just can't get it too tightly firm around the arm, I know it fits, the armor piece and the model came in the same size, however, I just can't make it work.

I have tried scaling up the armor piece, but it just won't fit correctly, can anyone tell me if there is a better way to do this?

here is a reference image of how its supposed to look:

here is my attempt:

armor file:

problems related to the first answer

Juding by your model, rough scaling should work but since the scale has already been altered, the best methods you have are :-

  Using Shrinkwrap:- Delete the outer faces and use the shrinkwrap modifier to stick to the faces to the main model's mesh directly or use a lattice. Then add a solidify modifier to give it some thickness
  Retopologizing:-

  Turn on snapping and change the mode to face and then snap the individual faces/verts on the main mesh and use solidify to give it some thickness.


Error rendering on ec2 : Specified pix_fmt is not supported Here is the context, i have a amazon ec2 micro instance with ubuntu 14.04 and with blender 2.78 installed, i have a custom blend file with in output : file_format is H.264, color_mode is RGBA, in Encoding format is AVI and Codec is PNG. The problem is that when i launch rendering by the command line, the render fails and in the log i get this message :

Error: Specified pix_fmt is not supported

It may be a ffmpeg problem which i installed prior to blender following this :
http://www.faqforge.com/linux/how-to-install-ffmpeg-on-ubuntu-14-04/

When i render it locally (Ubuntu 16.04, ffmpeg, blender 2.78) it works just fine.

Has anyone any idea how to resolve this?

Thanx.

Chances are your remote FFMPEG is missing one of the legion of codecs when it was compiled. You will need to use a version compiled with the codec required.


Blender render (cycles) animation slows down midway. What causes this and do I depend on the new time per frame? My render started off as 2mins per frame, slowed down to 5mins and now it’s 11mins.
I have moving metaballs in the scene that enlarge overtime. Perhaps this is the cause of slowing down significantly?
Right now it’s 11 mins per frame. Is it going to stay this way?

The render time on each frame depends on the content of the scene at that particular frame. So it is normal that render times vary, if the complexity changes throughout the scene.


UV Mapping to meshes I have two main mesh objects in my scene. Each mesh object has a UV mapped texture. No bump maps ect. Just a 512 x 512 png. I want to export them for use in Aurasma 3d. It is suggested to have only one material per mesh. In the properties editor there is a separate material and texture tab. When I load my image in the texture tab, it creates no material. Do I also have to add a material to my mesh? What if I didn't want to?  Could I still attach the png image to the mesh and have it show up? Or would that not work because it needs materials to light it up somehow?

Whatever material you currently have on your mesh is the default color that object would be.  Something like this:

Go into Edit Mode, and Unwrap your object (I used Smart UV Unwrap):

Open up your image in the UV Image editor, and align your UVs to where you would like.  Little inconsistency I accidentally put in, move the little group of squares outside of the image, this is required for the clipping:

Now go to the texture tab, and set the mapping to UV (from Generated) and select the UV Map you want to use for that image (don't forget to open that image in the texture tab).  I set it to Clip instead of Repeat for the texture mapping:

I set the diffuse color of the material (back in that tab) to be red, so now the scene has a cube with the texture used on one side of it, but the color red is used on the other parts, resulting in something like this (in the rendered view):

All of this combined shows you how to add a texture to a model already built, and maintaining the material for the other portions.  It will be affected by the specularity of the material if you have adjusted that.


How do I set up a control bone for a mechanism that follows an arc? The easiest way to visualize this is an elevator that moves up and down on a track that's built into the side of a cylinder. At this point I have three bones.

The arc bone describes the track that the lift follows along the wall. It's head is in the center of the cylinder, and it's length is the radius of the cylinder.
The train bone is parented to the arc bone, but points in the opposite direction. It will be a little train that drives up and down the track and holds the lift. It will always be pointed toward the center of the cylinder.
The platform bone is attached to the end of the train bone. It needs to remain at the same angle like a platform would.

I have a copy rotation constraint on the platform bone that copies and inverts the rotation of the arc bone. This compensates for the rotation of its parent bone, and keeps it flat.

What I want is some way to create a control bone that I can move up and down along the z axis such that the platform is always at the level of the control bone. Is it possible to set up something like this? Would I have to rig the platform in a different way in order to make this possible?

You could achieve that using an action constraint on the arc bone.

First create an animation of the lift going from the lowest position to the highest position (or vice versa) and then set the z axis location of the control bone to be what drives the action. you'll need to adjust the settings of the action constraint to fit the length of your animation and define the range as well.

If your goal is to have the platform move along the z-axis at a constant rate (which is what you would need for it to always be at the level of the control) you could use a circular interpolation for your animation so the change in height would be linear.

However, doing this would result in rapid rotation of the arc bone at the top and bottom of the lift, which may or may not be a desired result.


In camera tracking how do i figure out the settings for the cannon 6d In camera tracking how do i figure out the settings for a cannon 6d. I know the sensor width it 35.8 but I'm unsure about what to use for the other settings. Especially pixel width and optical center.

Thanks

Optical center should be the center of your image height/2 , width/2 ,  unless you have cropped the image. Then it should be the original center of your image. There is button for this labeled center. This is relevant to accounting for lens distortion.  The

Pixel aspect ratio should be one unless you used something like an anamorphic lens, which stretches the pixels when the image distortion is countered in post.


Why is the shader editor stuck on 1 material? I have been working on a car model but just now I found that the body material is still stuck in the shader editor when I was working on something else. The selection drop-down menu is completely greyed out and I can't do anything to fix it. I tried exporting the FBX file and saving it as .blend but nothing worked. Can anyone please help? Here is a photo for reference:

The push pin button is enabled on the Shader Editor View.  This locks the view.
[       ]
Please disable the the push pin to allow the view to synchronize with the current object selected. ⛸


Why is png image in video fade out pixelated? I have used a png image in a video and added a fade out in VSE using the Gamma Cross. I just have another audio layer in the video. See attached images. I am using Blender-Render engine.

I am attaching three images sequentially fading out. You will notice that towards the fade out end the image starts to pixelate. Why does that happen?

See image state while fading out:

The image has been created in Gimp with following

Even on a 200% zoom it does not pixelate.

What should I be doing to avoid the same?

Blend File as requested:

I can seem to download the blend file. see

The "Lossless" setting is a variable bitrate value. When the image looses information during a fade to black the bit rate drops. Change the Output quality to "Constant Bitrate". Place a high value, that retains the quality that you want.


Material Icon tab missing from the properties window? My checkered sphere missing, the Materials tab is missing from the Properties Window!

I don't know how to change the skin of the Minecraft Rig. Is there a reason the checkered sphere is missing?

This happens because you are in Pose Mode, you need to be in Object Mode as shown below:


Skip frames in rendering This might sound weird. I have a scene with alembic files. There are chunks in the timeline which do not need to be rendered. For example in a 200 frames timeline I want to skip say 20-51 and then 110-167. I cannot do this manually as I will be leaving my PC to render overnight and to save the render time I do not want to render the redundant parts. Is there a way to setup the file so that I render the parts I want from the timeline?

This addon called Loom is exactly what you need.
It allows you to specify ranges and specific frames that you want to render or skip. It's even possible to render every nth frame.

The addon allows to render single frames, multiple frame ranges as well as subframes, either directly within Blender's UI (as usual) or in a new terminal instance as background process in case you want to continue working while rendering.

From: How to render specific frames of animation


How to scale an extrusion from a rectangular plane equally along all four sides? I'm trying to create a very basic shape in the image of a beveled mirror. To do this, I create a plane, extrude from the plane, and then scale the extrusion. However, the beveled edge is deeper on the shorter sides than the longer sides. Dividing the plane into two faces doesn't seem to help. Any ideas on how to create an evenly-sized beveled edge?

Scaling works relative to every single axis.
X is 200cm, 75 percent of that is 50cm smaller than before.
Y is 100cm, 75 percent of that is only 25cm smaller.

Use inset (press 'i') instead - it works with a fixed offset - and move the new face after that.


How can i optimize the polycount of hard surface game assets? After doing a retopology i want to check if i can optimize the polycount even more by removing unacessary edges that doesn't affect the silhouette of my hard surface game asset with flat surfaces, is there a quick way to do that?

Here is a method to optimize hard surface models with a lot of flat surfaces for round shapes a decimation is preferable:

You can combine muliple tools or modifiers to remove the edges that doesn't affect the silhouette automatically.
The modifier has the advantage that you can keep modeling/retopologizing while your game asset will be automatically optimized, but you will need to apply the modifiers and unfold the UVs for a correct result.

Shortcuts

With the shortcuts go in Edit Mode (it's for the low poly to look good with a smooth shading, so it's purely optionnal), select everything and press x then Limited Dissolve, this will remove by default every vertices at an angle of less than 5 degrees, you can change this value in the "t" menu. Blender will keep one (bad) edge on some faces it depends of their shape. Then do Ctrl + t to add triangle.

Redo a limited dissolve then Ctrl + t to remove the bad edges that were created.

Modifiers

With modifier add an edge split modifier then a decimation modifier in Planar mode Sharp. Change the angle of the split modifier until you get the result you want.
Then add a triangulate modifier.

Like for the shortcut version you must redo the decimation and triangulate to remove the first edges that weren't placed correctly.


Smooth option in blender? Is there a way to smooth those „cubes“ into straight line? I’m still new to blender.

I didn't exactly understand your desired result, but you could maybe use "to sphere", to get something like this:


Can we use the UV seams in combination with Smart UV project? Can we use the marked seams in combination with the Smart UV projection? Or is there a trick to achieve that?

"Smart UV Project" is ignored on edges with seams. The edges with seams are unwrapped along seams as if simply using "Unwrap" (but only for those edges -- the rest are smart UV unwrapped").

Using "Smart UV Project" and seams together would be advantageous where you'd like most of the mesh to unwrap based on the angle between faces, but would like some parts to be completely cut along each face (which is what marking seams is for).

For example:

If we "Smart UV Project" Suzanne, each edge is sliced when the angle between faces reaches more than 66 degrees (default angle setting for "Smart UV").

Where the rim of her ear meets the front of her ear forms an angle larger than 66 degrees, so the rim is unwrapped as it's own island.

However...

...let's say we wanted a very specific texture mapped on her ear, but would like the rest to stay unwrapped as it is, then we could mark-seam each edge of her ear. In this way, the angle threshold (used to determine Smart Unwrap) is ignored and we're able to view each face separately.


Accidentally made a partial wireframe. Does anyone know a fix? I'm new to Blender and I stumbled into a problem where my model suddenly became partially wireframe when I deleted some edges. Is there a way to get my faces to fill themselves back out?

So far all I've done was create a cylinder, add some edge loops, scale said edge loops, then select every second vertical line and delete them to reduce poly count. When I deleted the edges, the model turned into this:

You have deleted the edges.

  [Delete Edges] Deletes any edges in the current selection. Removes any faces that the edge shares with it.

As you can read in the manual entry, the adjacent faces are removed.

You probably want to dissolve the edges, since this will retain the faces.

  [Dissolve Edges] Removes edges sharing two faces (joining those faces).

However, since you have already deleted the edges you will have extra vertices between to adjacent edges. This would have not happened with the dissolve operation.

You can box select B the vertices. Then dissolve them X > Dissolve Vertices. After that you recreate the faces by selecting all A and filling with F.


How to display armatures in front of the object? In every tutorial I found the armature renders in front of the object regardless of its depth or mode. In both Edit Mode and Object Mode the armatures are solid grey and always visible.

But my armatures sinks into the object just like any regular object. This makes it impossible to adjust unless I turn on the wireframe mode, which is still difficult due to armatures and model's mesh having the same color until selected. How to make the armatures renders in front of everything?

Select armature, in Properties go to Data>Display and tick X-Ray.


Whats the hotkey for changing viewer rotation? Right now when I MMB move it rotates turn-table style, whats the hotkey to free rotate around an object and return to turn-table?

There is a solution to this, but it's a work around.

You can set an empty at the center of your focal target, and parent your camera to it.

To do that select the Camera 1st, then while holding the Shift key select your Empty.

Then on your keyboard Ctrl+P to parent.

To get the turn table effect go into camera view Numpad 0, then select your empty and rotate it about the Z Axis.

Then use middle mouse as your trackball.


Patch for Non-ASCII Characters My OS (WIN7) uses non ASCII characters in the file system. Doesn't have to, but does.

I know in general it's not a great idea, but some of my directories have names which use these characters.

Blender shows it all non-readable gibberish, which makes it pretty difficult to understand what directory I'm looking at.

Is there some kind of UTF-8 patch, or update to help out here?

Blender does display unicode (utf8 and latin1), try change the system user-preferences to enable 'international fonts'.

This loads a font with a wider range of characters that may display your paths correctly.


How do I join several objects into one? I'm creating side skirts for a truck and I am duplicating the frames I want. The problem is it's making the duplicated object into another object. How do I put it into the same one?

You can join objects by selecting them (ShiftRMB) and pressing CtrlJ in the 3D view while on Object mode.

The selected object(s) will be joined to the active object.

The active object the one with the yellow outline, usually the last object selected.


ManuelLab: Glowing eyes: How? This sounds like what would be a way to make eyes glow in the dark, but would this affect the ability to change it's color? Would it overwrite the texture? What about making the skin all pure dark like with Japanime models given by ManuelLab?

This is possible through Nodes, not just menuing:

By using the ColorRamp, you can edit the color without overwriting the texture.

By using the Skin Value matching nodes, you can make skin as bright or dark as the UI would not realistically allow.


Using Blender as a video editor can I only add an audio track without recoding a video track? The task is to add an additional audio track to a video file (mkv).
But I do not want to change a video track in any way while rendering.
Can it be done in Blender?

No, it can't.

Blender only sends its render output to ffmpeg internally which means it's being encoded (again when using decoded footage in the VSE). You can use Blender as a Frameserver as well, but that won't help you out either.

Instead you should use Avidemux or mkvtoolnix to accomplish your goal.

Edit: As pointed out by Troy James Sobotka in the comment below, using FFMPEG directly would be a solution:

ffmpeg -i video.avi -i audio.mp3 -codec copy -shortest output.avi


Making an hanging object with ribbon tape I'm a beginner of Blender, so cannot find out where I have to start. I've searched several tutorials but it is not matched with what I want to make. I have to make object like a photo(hanging object and ribbon with herringbone pattern).

I could make a 3D modeling like that in the screenshot, but I couldn't put the ribbon into the hole of the object and connect them. Also, even though I used 'soft body' function, it didn't work well.

Can anybody give me a tutorial to solve this problem and make this ornament? I'm totally stuck.

I'd try a cloth physics simulation on the ribbon, with a collision added to the rod. Most of cloth tutorials will give an idea.


Cloth sim problem levitating pillows I have a massive problem with cloth sim. I'm trying to recreate sofa from reference photo (so far so bad) and when I'm trying to "drop" cushion on a sofa (both back side and seats are set to be collision). Unfortunatly everytime no matter how i tweak settings my pillows levitate in the air... What is the cause of this problem?

Try changing the collision minimum distance;


Non-destructively joining meshes Blender has no object joining modifier. I think it would be useful to somehowe achievce it. Can anyone suggest a method for properly doing it? I would like to retain the objects transform, like when simply joining objects, but of course with all the previous modifiers and the two original editable meshes kept non-destructively.

Array Modifier

If I want to join A with B, I can add an Array Modifier to A with zero count, using Object Offset with B and setting End Cap also to B.

Drawback

If A is not centered, scaled or rotated, the two B objects will not align.

Workaround

I can add a C object and use the End Cap method two or more times, with A and B and other objects I like to join together.


Procedural leakage shader from roof and others stuff Any suggestion in creation of leaks(dirt) from horizontal planes (black color planes on picture)?

Thank you. I tried myself to do some sort of mask for leaks or dirt ...but not very accurate
Reference picture of wall with leaks

Some updates

I think that I have methods for both simple and complex shapes.  To set up our scene I have this model that I've assigned this PBR texture.

For now we want to treat this as a simple shape and generate a leakage map on the top edges.
To do this we need to be looking at Generated Coordinates separated into only the Z axis.

Now, separately, we can generate some noise and scale it on the X and Y axes with a Mapping node and we get the beginnings of some sort of overall leakage map.

If we mix this noise into our coordinate space and look at the Z coordinate now, we have generated a leakage gradient.

Now we can use a Math node set to Subtract to control where this gradient terminates.

Once you have it placed, I would use a Multiply operation (also clamped) to bring the values up.

Now we can go back to our original PBR setup.  What I did to apply this is simply drop a Hue/Saturation node on the base color and use this black and white map as the factor input.

You have all of these sliders to adjust the effect.

And if you need more variation, feel free to mix in as many layers of noise as you want.  You'll be constantly adjusting your termination zone, though.

So this should work for pretty much any simple shape, but you'll notice there's a lot missing from this.  For more complex shapes you could always generate several masks and add them together, but if we want it to automatically account somewhat for corners and especially windows we need to look to the Bevel node.
If we set our bevel radius pretty high and separate out the blue channel, we basically catch every top face and a bunch of the connecting faces.

We can use similar methods to mix this into our noise layers and come up with something like this.

Which I think works pretty well.  I'm not exactly 100% happy here, but considering you can just mask out anything you don't want and can mix and match methods I think I'm satisfied to finally leave the answer here.


Wireframe modifier messing mesh up When I add in a wireframe modifier, my mesh goes bonkers. The scale is perfectly fine and the mesh's topology is fine, so why is it doing this?

First you need to fix your mesh a bit.
You have a lot of duplicate vertices. Go to edit mode, select all and then > M > By DIstance
Your mesh also has uneven parts so: Add the modifier and Then, Uncheck "even" and make the thickness smaller.


why the material not copied I have 2 mesh with color white and green. The white (no color on it). I want to copy the green material on to the white mesh. Just i selected the white and then green and in the properties tab i click on copy to material. It copy the material to the mesh but when i click on preview render it show glass material on it. Whats the magic. Any suggestion. Thanks

Your material uses the Ray Length. The thicker the object is, the more green and dark it gets.

The left object has very little thickness, because you added a Solidify modifier to it. Add more thickness to it, by disabling the solidy modifier to see a similiar color as in the right object.


Material that emits light, but appears diffuse? How can I have an object that emits light (using an emission shader) onto other objects, but when rendered appears to be diffuse (or any other shader for that matter)?

In essence, I want one object to emit light that shows on other objects, but that only itself receives light from other objects (not itself). Is this possible?

I tried doing this using Max/Add Shader nodes, but this just mixed in the "pure white" emission shader look with the diffuse shader I was using.

Use the Is Camera Ray output of the Light Path node to mix the shaders.


Displacement causing detached faces I'm trying to make a simple brick texture for this archway I made, and I want to use displacement in my material. Problem is that when I attach the displacement, the faces all become detached from each other.  It doesn't seem to recognize that the faces are attached and so there's big gaps in the corners. What could be causing this? I tested the same material on a basic cube and it worked fine so the problem must be with my mesh but I have no idea what the problem could be.

It's hard to tell on a still pic but here's what I mean by the detached faces (I made the scale high for the pic so it's easier to see).

Strangely, contrary to this answer, you need to disable auto-smooth to get rid of the gaps.

Also, add a solidify modifier, before the subdivision surface:

Result:


Mirror modifier is not working how expected? I'm following the blenderguru chair tutorial and when he adds a mirror modifier, it does not look like this (mine)
His looks like this

You're mirroring off the wrong axis. Blender guru is mirroring off x, you seem to be mirroring across y. You may also need to apply the object position (ctrl+a, object position) such that the origin of the object (where the mirror modifier works off of) is at the world origin.
Edit - Additional Explanation of the Mirror Modifier
An object's position can't easily be calculated in 3d space: Any point in 3d space, even if on the object, is unrepresentative of the vast majority of points on the object. So when we say an object is at x coordinate 2, we really mean that the object origin is at x coordinate 2. An object's origin is just an arbitrary point that we tell blender to use. It could be absolutely anywhere (generally moved with the 3d cursor as described in the comments), and the mirror modifier interprets it as the center of an object. So if you have a single point at (0, 2, 2) and its origin is at (0, 0, 0), that point mirrored across the y axis will be at (0, -2, 2). The mirror object does this with every vertex of the object. So if your mirror is showing up in an unexpected location, it'll be because your object origin is an unexpected location. If you want to change the position of the object without effecting the origin, just go into edit mode (and select the whole object with a) and move it.
Then there's clipping and merging, which are ways to tell the mirror modifier that if a vertex has crossed the axis which it is being mirrored on (the axis on which the object origin lies), it should merge it with the mirrored vertex. If you want to make something perfectly symmetrical, these are often completely necessary.


How Do i add colour to this image texture? I think i have bumped it correctly? I now want to add colour so that the planet looks nice. Also I am having trouble with the image texture after unwrapping and scaling in the uv image editor- not sure how to fix this? As shown in pics. Thanks.
enter image description here

I have attatched a detail of the updated nodes, although I cant see the colour option the same as shown in your multiply nodes.

i think you can do it like in this example. your uv maps must be wrong unwrapped tho.


How do I view normals in blender 2.8 - 2.81 How would I see the normals because in past versions it was in the thing that comes up when you press N.  Where is it in blender 2.8 also is there a shortcut Key.

When in Edit Mode - Expand your Viewport Overlays menu at the top right, than at the very bottom you will find buttons to enable Normals overlays.


Creating pipes with a bezier I am trying to create pipes, however, I don't understand how the bezier works so I've only been able to create pipes with some simple extrusion. I would like to know how I would like to know how to create angles and such with a bezier.

Down below I've added what my pipes currently look like and the reference picture.

I think that what you are looking for is the bezier geometry menu:

After you create the curve which you want to make into a pipe, you can change the depth and resolution to edit the thickness and amount of faces here. Also, to make the bezier curve look like a pipe you will need to set the shape to 3D and the fill to full. This is an example:

If you are confused about creating the bezier curve in the first place, you would add a bezier curve (shift+a, bezier curve), and then enter edit mode (tab). Here you can select the control line things, and move/rotate/scale using the usual blender controls. To add another control line you would use "e".

Hope this helped

If you need more clarification check out this video specifically about creating pipes using beziers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMXcQ2V-VGA


How to scale an image source at a specific resolution The scale node use a multiplier, 0.5 to reduce the image size by half and 2 to increase by 2. What should i use if i want to convert any image source at the desired resolution, for example i want to input a 4096*4096 or 512*512 and always get a 1024*1024 output and get the entire image not cropped.

You can set the Resolution Size (in pixels) to the desired output size in the Scene Dimensions section of the properties window..
Using a Scale Node,  will rescale an image connected to it to the predetermined output resolution.

If you want to double the number of pixels just render at 200% (in this example rendering a 512 x 512 pixel image will result in an image of 1024 x 1024 pixels). To cut the number of pixels in half, render at 50%.

Note that if the images are a different aspect ratio than the output, you have three choices:
stretch: deform the image to match within the aspect ratio of the container)
Fit: keep the images proportions but fill the remaining either with a transparent background or with black (if the "Use Alpha" option is unchecked)
or Crop Not stretching the image, resizing to fit vertically center cropping horizontally.


Detailed error report for every object in the scene I am rendering via Win7 command line and each frame I get message like cycle dependencies, shrinkwrap out of memory, can't create particles with current modifier stack... without mentioning actual objects.

This reports are quite vague. As I have lots of objects that are using shrinkwrap and particles, I do not want to go through every object manually.

Can I get more specific info?

I don't know if it is possible to make Cycles more verbose to print the name of the object which causes this problem.

The error message indicates shrinkwrap out of memory : only objects with a Shrinkwrap modifier should cause this error. This can help you to reduce the number of objects to analyze.

You can use the Outliner to quickly enable or disable the render of an object (with the Eye button at the right of the object name). With a dichotomy method, you should find quickly the wrong object :

In a first pass, disable the render of the alf of the objects with a Shrinkwrap modifier and try a render. If the error disapears, the wrong object is in the alf you just disabled. Otherwise, it's in the second alf.

In a second pass, keep disable the render of objects witch do not cause the error, and disable the alf of the remaining objects. With a new render, you will see if the error disappears or not.

After few iterations, you should find quickly the wrong object.


Bevel only certain edges with Bevel Modifier I am trying to bevel only some edges on my cube and I manage to do so with the bevel tool, but I fail with the bevel modifier. I tried adding those edges, which I also selected when using the tool, to a vertex group and applying the modifier only to those, but still all edges get beveled in the result. I understand that this happens because the vertices and not the edges are in the vertex group, but I don't know how to work around this.

How can I achieve the same result with the modifier as with the tool?

Am using blender 2.8

I don't think you can do it with the Vertex Group method, but if you choose Weight, then set the edges weight in the N panel, it works.


Curve'ss data modification How to get the bevel diameter then remove bevel or extruded value on curve with a script addon?

I have a scene with many objects including some cables made with bezier curve type poly with bevel.
The curves are cables with the proper diameter and length, the cable's Diam is done with  the bevel depth.

So I started a script for getting all curves and for each curve I made a copy.

Now how do I get the data from the copied object?

First I need to get the size or diameter of the bevel, then remove the bevel on the curve, and after that I can convert to a mesh line and find the length.

Here is beginning of script for this

for  i in obj_sel:

    if i.type=='CURVE':
        print ('name = ', i.name,'Type',i.type )

        ob = i.copy()
        ob.location.x = 10
        ob.data = ob.data.copy()
        bpy.context.scene.objects.link(ob)
        bpy.context.scene.update()
        print ('new ob name new curve =', ob.name)

                # get diameter of bevel for that curve and save it
        # Make a copy of the curve then    ?????
        # Remove the bevel

            # convert curve to mesh

        bpy.ops.object.convert( target='MESH')
        print ('new ob name new mesh line =', ob.name)

        MESHNAME = ob.name

                ect..

for more details see following thread

https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?441516-how-to-remove-bevel-or-extruded-value-on-curve&p=3261143#post3261143

If a  file sample is needed let me know on that thread and I can upload one

thanks for any help
happy blendering

You can get curve Bevel depth with bpy.context.object.data.bevel_depth

or set it with bpy.context.object.data.bevel_depth = 0.1 (replace 0.1 with desired value)


Rigging: Arm moves the pants even though it has no weight So as the title says guys, i did a whole mesh and the clothes, imported my character as fbx and added armature and a rig, now i was setting weights and noticed that my model left arm is making the left pants side move even thought it has no weights.

I alredy assigned the weight in object mode to the pants as 0.
Dont know what else to do pls help
tnks in advance

I finnaly figured out how to solve this, i hope this helps someone with the same problem.

what i did was i deleted all vertex groups that corresponded to the upper body inside the pants mesh, if i go to weight mode you can see that its purple because it has no vertex assigned as the arm in the pants mesh. somehow removing weight wasnt working so this was the only way i could solve that.


UV map either not unwrapping or is collapsing in a merge I downloaded this model.  And I'm trying to add its textures.  I get to the eyes and for some unknown reason the UV for it is just a tiny little dot in the very bottom corner of the image texture.  I have tried to unwrap it and nothing happens.  I tried to scale the UV and nothing happens.  It just stays stuck there.  This happened to a previous model as well.  I merged two objects together and the UV for one suddenly turned into a small dot.  Which makes no sense as to why.  Other objects I merged had no problem at all.  It was just those two objects.

Right now the problem seems to be just the eyes but I haven't gotten to any other part of the model yet to be sure.

Blend file

The eyes unwraps fine, but because it has no UV seams the generic 'Unwrap' option doesn't work. Either add seams to it to use the normal 'Unwrap' option or use a different unwrapping option like 'Sphere Projection' or 'Smart UV Project.

More information about unwrapping spheres can be found here.


shrinkwrapping opposite direction? I'm trying to work out cloth unveil effect with blender, but I cannot get the shrinkwrapping correct. Even if I test it with just a cube, it still turns out flipped, and unchecking 'negative' does nothing..
How can I solve this?

Looks like your plane is on the wrong side, try flipping it 180° or flip its normals. But using shrinkwrap probably won't look like you need it to, you should use cloth physics instead.


Updating material does not take affect until restart I am testing the new 2.8 build and can not get materials to update in the preview or 3D Viewport until I restart or reload the .blend

Is there a setting I need to turn on to get these to refresh automatically?

Using OSX Majave and Cycles render.

It appears there was a bug in the Feb 15 build.  I downloaded the source from blender.org and the issue is no longer happening.


Blender EEVEE pixelated render. No denoise options? I'm a beginner in Blender and I'm trying to render a scene using Blender 2.8.

Unfortunately the result shows strong pixelation.  As far as I learned for version 2.7 (Cycles) you have to use a denoise function as described here.

But I don't find a function like this for EEVEE. I have tried to use a higher number of samples. this also improves the result. But these coarse light pixels remain. Does there exist a function or method I missed to reduce pixelation?

Main Object

4K resolution - 512 Samples

HD resolution - 32 Samples

Indeed there are no denoise options in Blender Eevee for now.

What you can do instead is playing with the filter size, which can be found here:

Little demo of how it works:

Just do some tests and see what works better on your case. Each render is different.

Alternatively, you can use the D-noise addon which will allow you to use denoising on anything using Blender's Compositor.

Download page.
Demo video


How to have gradient type effect Im made a Hud background. And i want to make the center part blur (transparent) and from center it should go unblur like a gradient effect. Is it possible with the camera or other way .Any suggestion or help.Thanks

You can setup your material like that :

The texture coordinate node control the position of the effect. I centered it on Circle.005 but you can create a new Empty if you want to fine tune the position.

The mapping node control the size (area of influence) of the effect.

The color ramp control the transition between fully transparent (black on the ramp) and fully emissive (white on the ramp).


Lost my rotary selector (Tab Key Pie Menus) I just updated to v2.79 and found that the Tab key mode selector is gone. When the Tab key is pressed, a rotary selector appears that allows selection of any of the available modes. I had added it under v2.78c to make it easy to select different modes. I can't remember where I got it. I remember finding it in a video tutorial, but which one (I've favorite-ed about 200 so far).

The Pie Menu is an addon

You can enable/disable it on the User Preferences Add-On section (Ctrl+ Alt+U)

Note that one can customize which Blender menus are displayed as pie menus using Preferences settings group in the User Preferences > Pie menu rollout (settings are available only after the addon is enabled):


Blender 2.8, Simple Rigging - What am I doing wrong? Another confused noob here.

I have a basic model of a paper crane that I'm trying to rig to make the wings flap. It seems like a simple task, but for the life of me can't figure out why its not working. I've watched gobs and gobs of rigging tutorials but can't seem to make the armature control the mesh. Here's what I've done:

Here is the model:

I then add a bone armature as the main base bone:

I then extrude another bone for the main wing (just focusing on the .L side now):

Then, in object mode I select the mesh, shift+ select the armature and press ctrl-P, to parent to armature with automatic weighting:

I then enter pose mode and rotate the wing.L bone and....

What am I doing wrong?

To test this workflow, I create three cubes and loosely stack them on top of each other, start with a bone at the bottom, and extrude 2 more to match rough positions of cube. Then I select each cube and parent it to the corresponding bone. The rig behaves how I expect it to:

Okay, three objects parented to 3 bones is working. How about a single mesh then? - so I create a cylinder, and (just to alter the armature method a bit) create an armature bone and then subdivide with 2 cuts to get a similar armature, select mesh and then armature, ctrl-p to parent, and it behaves the way I'm expecting to:

Yes, adding loop cuts would give me a properly bending rigged cylinder, but the point is, the armature is working.

So what am I doing differently with the bird?
Does it have something to do with not having proper geometry? I pulled up the weight paint view and it's all blue, so things should deform with the rotation of the bones, no?

I am so confused.

Any insight would be appreciated.

[ROUND2]

I've been taking everyone's suggestions and watching even more tutorials and I still feel like an idiot.

I took the knife tool and added more geometry to make sure there were more vertices:

I then look at it in weight painting and painted the areas so they can deform:

I click on the mesh and it seems to be parented to the armature, but in pose mode:

Thoroughly confused and saturated in Nooby frustration.

File is here, in case any expert wants to take a stab:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N56w5vovNqkCVvlcbv3VqDTJN0tHrw0o/view?usp=sharing

Much appreciated to everyone who has chimed in.

Thank you!

If the parent armature with automatic weights doesn't give you a result, it just means that blender isn't picking up that the bone is near the vertices that you expect it to move.

This just means you need to assign the vertices yourself. You can use weight painting, or manually assign a weight to the vertices.


Unable to use pen pressure in Blender using iPad I’ve been having trouble enabling the pen pressure when using Blender grease pencil using my iPad connected to my PC using the EasyCanvas Pro app.
The brush strokes I make stay the same size and opacity no matter how much pressure I use and even when I change the size and strength of the pen. I set my preferences to use the Windows Ink for the tablet API and have the pen pressure sensitivity icons for the size and strength enabled. I tried the other options for the tablet API and restarted the program each time but I still have the same issue.
Any help is much appreciated!
Update
Here’s a snapshot of the issue I’m having:

Update
I found that if I switch from wireframe to viewport shading, my pen strokes don’t really show. But when I draw with my finger, the stroke matches the opacity and size I set

And when I switch to wireframe it reverts back:

chiyopet,
If you are using Grease pencil, there could be a couple things that are causing the issue.
Lets get the basics out of the way:
If you new to Blender...Welcome! if you not and having trouble, a really simple things would download a fresh copy of Blender from https://www.blender.org
on the slashscreen click "2D Animation"

start drawing with you iPad.....(I have no idea what application your using to draw with ....so that could be getting in the way...but let see if we can help you. If this works.....wonderful! if not, keep reading.
Then follow these directions:

Start Blender
Click "File" in top left corner and select "New" > "2D Animation" from the dropdown list

This will open the 2D Animation workspace and with a grease pencil object selected and in the "Draw" mode with the Draw Tool Selected. It will also have a material for you selected to draw with.
All this means that Blender is ready for you to Draw in 3D.
Try to Draw....if you still do not see anything.
A) Check you are in Draw Mode:
Look in top right corner of 3D Viewport:

B) Check that you have the large enough brush size and strength of brush
and most importantly that you have "Use Pressure" icon checked:
Here is a nice graphic with a copy of setting for you to use:
C) Check 3D Viewport is in the correct Viewport Shader. If you look on the top right side you will most likely want to be in "Material Preview" or "Rendered"

Here is the blender Documentation on the what the different Viewport Shaders
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/3dview/display/shading.html
This video does a good job of at least giving a quick overview of viewport shading and what is does in a very quick way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=knO-oz6_ffI


How to drag rigid bodies with a rigged mesh? I started the animation of my project and I want to carry stones from one place to another. I am using rigid bodies on the stones so each one of them is an individual object. Here in the first picture are they in the initial position.

But when I move the loader in a diferent frame the stones stay in the initial position like in picture 2

How can I move these stones with my rigged mesh (front end Loader)?

Rigid body objects only interact with other rigid body objects. To make the loader bucket "pick up" the rocks it will need to have rigid body enabled. As you are using an animation to move the bucket you should enable the animated option. You also need to set the collision shape to mesh so that the bucket will be hollow to allow the rocks inside it.

You will also want to use similar settings for the truck.


Why does the elbow turn the wrong way? I'm doing a character for a (very) low poly game. Since I already had a very basic IK rig laying around, I figured I'd adapt its armature to the recently created character.

However, even after setting the modifiers exactly as they are in the original armature, the elbow bends the wrong way (I'll try to fix that horrendous deformation later).

Why does it happen and how can I fix it?

With an IK Constraint, you specify a pole target to control the way the bones bend. I expect you created Bone.009 and Bone.010 to be these pole targets.

Set the pole target to the armature and then the choose the bone to use. To control the direction of the rotation, you adjust the PoleAngle. You can then animate the pole target bone to control the bend during animation.


Multiple problems: rotating, rigging 1:
I want to rotate mesh in object mode. If "manipulate center point" is inactive, it wont do anything.
If it is active, i can rotate only around X axis. (Same in edit mode)
Nothing is locked in Transform panel!

2:
In pose mode: If "manipulate center point" is inactive, I can not either translate or rotate.
If it is active, and i try to translate, it is rotating, but only the middle bones and the bones on the right side.

If I try to rotate, nothing happens.

I tried 2 versions of blender, but same problems.

The "manipulate center point" setting is only useful when you have more than 1 object selected.

If you have (eg) 2 cubes selected then without "manipulate center point" (lighter icon background), the two cubes rotate together as a group, as a whole single object.

Enabling "manipulate center point" (darker icon background), the two cubes rotate individually around their group (ideal) center.

So, if you wish to rotate only 1 object, deselect that setting and try again.


Complex mesh with armature and mesh deform modifier Warning: Many pictures! May be annoying... ;)

I'm trying to build together a rig where I can animate with armature most of the times, and fix something or add some specifics with mesh modifier. There are 2 problems with that. Let me explain my setup.

To represent my complex mesh I've created a cylinder.

Then I've assigned 2 vertex groups

Then added 2 cubes to represent my mesh modifier cages.

Then added mesh deform modifier to a cylinder to modify it with cubes.

Then added armature and rigged cubes.

Works good. My result is something like this:

Not quite what I want, but now I can go to edit mode and fix whatever I don't like. I can even animate changes with animall addon, but not with an ease that I would like to. So, I've added a hook.

Ok, but now whenever I use armature, hook stays in place.

Still can modify mesh with hook, but something that stays out of place would be bad in a real complex mesh situation. Just imagine 20 hooks are out of place and you don't really know what changes what... I tried to parent, to copy transforms, etc.,etc.,etc., but to no avail.

Right now, I am manipulating a cage that is manipulating an object. So the 2nd problem comes when I want to manipulate an object directly with armature, and then fix with mesh deform modifier.

If I rig my model and not my mesh cage, then whenever I move my object with an armature the cage obviously stays in place like a hook, creating a mess and if I rig both, then it's obviously doubles all the deformations

Is there any way to do it right?

Blend File if needed: Test.blend

Your use of mesh deform is not really warranted here in my opinion. Keep your bones, maybe subdivide them into many smaller bones (in edit mode, "w" -> subdivide). Then, change armature to object mode. Select cylinder, then shift+select armature, ctrl+p, "with automatic weights".

This should give you a nice smooth deformation.

If you are going to use mesh deform, why do you use 2 cubes. It should be one mesh. I think a better explanation of your exact problem may assist in answering in a more detailed fashion.

I will add another note. Maybe a better solution for you is to use shape keys to correct issues after armature deform. There is another method, add object -> lattice. In mesh panel subdivide it more. Then add modifier to your object -> lattice and select the lattice you created as the source. You can parent the lattice to bones just fine.


Exporting camera tracking markers from Blender I am trying to use blender to do some matchmoving and then export the camera along with the tracking markers for use in other software. After getting a successfull track, I have created a vertex cloud using the "3D Markers to Mesh" button. But when exporting the vertex cloud using alembic they do not get properly exported as they don't show up in any other software (I have checked in maya, houdini and nuke). The camera however does get exported, and any geometry that I export also works, I am just missing the vertex cloud, which is going to be useful for recreating the environment.

I am thinking that if the issue lies in exporting vertecies with no actual geo, I could perhaps instance some geometry onto the vertecies and then export that, but as blender is not my main 3D software I do not know how to do this. Any other suggestion on getting the points exported would also be appreciated.

So I have come to the conclusion that blender is simply unable to export single verts in alembic files, so I ended up writing a python script that places cone objects on each vert which can then easily be exported (similar to how other tracking softwares visualize tracking markers). I have included the script below if anyone else run into the same issue.

import bpy
import math
from mathutils import Vector

class myClass(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "dialog.box"
    bl_label = "Tracking Marker Instancer"
    nameCtrl = bpy.props.StringProperty(name = "Name:", default="Tracks")
    depthCtrl = bpy.props.FloatProperty(name = "Size:", default=2.0)

    def execute(self, context):
        obj = bpy.data.objects[self.nameCtrl]
        verts = obj.data.vertices

        # Create cones
        selection = []
        for i in range(len(verts)):
            depth = self.depthCtrl
            position = obj.matrix_world * verts[i].co + Vector((0.0, 0.0, depth/2))
            bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cone_add(location = position, rotation = (0,math.radians(180),0), depth = depth, radius1 = depth/3)
            selection.append(bpy.context.selected_objects)

        # Iterate over selected objects and join them
        for i in range(len(selection)):
            bpy.context.scene.objects.active = selection[i][0]
            selection[i][0].select = True
        bpy.ops.object.join()

        self.report({'INFO'}, "DONE!")
        return {"FINISHED"}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        return context.window_manager.invoke_props_dialog(self)

bpy.utils.register_class(myClass)
bpy.ops.dialog.box('INVOKE_DEFAULT')


How to disable fcurve sync? I created material with some parameters animated. I applied different copies (with unique names) of this material to different objects, but for some reason animation parameters are still in synchronization, like I edit exact the same fcurve in different materials.
How can I disable this and made fcurves unique for each of the materials?

There is a simple solution I use in 2.76b. Just use nodes for those materials, and animate values in the nodes. It will block each material instance. But if you animate the same options in the properties editor - it will animate them all. It's a bug.
Note: To see your keyframes on the timeline you have to select the node.
And yes, check beforehand, whether or not you use the different materials indeed. I mean, material can be linked to the objects, and to their respective object data as well. So, this check may show, if you have multiple objects, sharing the same object data, hence the materials.
I did reproduce that situation, and I think, I found a solution to avoid the channels to be linked but not copied on material duplicated.
So the solution is pretty simple - DO NOT PRESS PLUS BUTTON to copy the material, instead use the numbered button which shows the number of shares. This works for me in Blender v2.76b on Windows XP 32 bit.
See the explanations below.
The problem:

The solution:

And please, don't tell Captain Disillusion about those buttons! ;-)


From *3ds-file Imported objects have no extensiveness and are all locaed in the origin Dear StackExchange Community,
I am currently trying to import a 3ds file into blender. The Problem is, that all the objects get imported into the origin of the coordinate system and have no extensiveness whatsoever.

The file I am trying to import is a 3D Model of parts of the city of Berlin, which is available for free.
http://www.businesslocationcenter.de/berlin3d-downloadportal/

Does anyone have a suggestion as to what could solve my problem?

Cheers Luke

Basically it is a problem with scale and geometry to origin offset and so its easy to fix:

Start with a new blender scene ctrl + N and move the camera, cube and pointlight to another layer. In your scene properties you could set units to metric if you want.
In your 3D View go to top ortho view with numpad 7+5 and toggle on the 3D view properties panel with N.

Import the first of your .3ds files and set "Size Constraint" to 1000 (maximum) in the import options (down left).
After import just hit home (View > View All) and you should see your objects. Problem is they are very far away from the center and you are not able to view both the center and your objects at the same time with the default viewport clipping values.

In fact your objects are several million blender units away from the center while their origins are at the center. This is a bit impractical to work with ...

To fix this I would do this:

After importing all .3ds files as described above just hit home to bring them all to view. Place the 3d cursor where you want to have your new coordinate center. Select all objects and set their origins to the 3d cursor. Next shift + C to center cursor and shift + S >Selection to Cursor. Finally home again and all should be fine.


Pageturn: Duplicate animated objects with time offset (Animation Nodes) I animated a book page and want to instantiate the page with all its animation. Because the page is modified by several objects like empties and a lattice I don’t know how to do it in an easy way.

I could duplicate the whole collection and shift the keyframes manually, but then I would lose control about it and it would be a lot of work for 100 pages.
I also could instantiate the collection with empties, but then I couldn't shift the animation.

Is it possible to instantiate the rig in animation nodes in a way I can change the animation easily later on?

My scene looks like this right now:

I've done a similar thing using shape keys instead of animation keyframes.  Then you can duplicate the object, and build logic to animate the shape keys differentially per object and get time offset programmatically.

In my case, I had a crowd of robots walking and I wanted them to walk at different paces and different parts of the walk cycle.


How to prevent cuts between adjacent array copies in freestyle? I am using the array modifier to create a train track, but I am getting "cuts" between the copies which cause a problem in Freestyle:

The "merge" option on the Array modifier does not fix this. It will close the gap, but does not remove vertices and make continuous geometry.

It is possible to automatically remove those cuts?

Generally, array segments will have edge loops between them even if you use the merge option. The merge essentially merges the vertices at the bridge between segments, but does not dissolve the edge loops generated by the segmentation.

To avoid seeing the edge loops with freestyle, you can limit the edges that are rendered by freestyle by marking those you want manually, then setting the freestyle to only render marked edges in:

To mark an edge, go to edit-mode, then select the edge, press CtrlE --> Mark Freestyle Edge.

To set freestyle to only render marked edges, go to the render layer settings in the options panel, then to the Freestyle Line Set settings, then uncheck everything except Edge Mark.

Alternative method

In this case (and similar cases), where you essentially have an object that simply needs to scale on a specific axis based on the dimensions of another object, you can use a driver instead of an array modifier.

To do this I added a driver to the beam's y scale property (In properties N panel, right click on y scale and then press "Manually create later (single)".

I then added a driver variable (single property type) that points to the wood beams array overall y dimenions (dimensions.y data path), and set the expression to be that variable's value divided by the original y dimensions of the metal beam object (2 in the example above).

This sets the scale so that the metal beam's y dimension fit the wood beam array's overall y dimension, and you have one seamless, "edgeloopless" metal beam that even looks smooth with freestyle renders.


Move randomly a plane with cut parts| Paper Furr I am looking to create a sort of "flag", a plane with some cuts that are creating sort of "leaves" and I need to open these apertures with turbulence or wind.
Basically I need to recreate the same thing that is happening when you take a piece of paper and made a lot of cuts inside. When you will blow behind these little parts will open showing the hole of the paper
I tried with a particels system and vertex group. I created a surface with the holes and in a separated object, I have several "leaves" grouped with different vertex groups.
The static render is nice but for animation is absolutely not realistic and super heavy.

Is there any good way to approach this animation?
After I should shrinkwrap the entire thing on a curved surface that will be hidden.
Any suggestion?

SOLVED:
I watched some tutorials about flags, flying plastic bags and posters from IanHubert YouTube channel and I found the solution.
I made a plane as a piece of fabric, cut some faces and pinned all the vertex. Then I created the small faces with the same dimension of holes and let free to move with a wind force. Then playing with subdivision surfaces, boolean division and simply deform I get the right surface and shape of this "sail".


How to distribute objects in a circular pattern on a surface (Radial Array, Polar Array) I'm modeling a bathroom interior, and I was wondering if there were any nice ways to distribute the little water spouts in their pattern along the black plastic for this shower head.  Here is my reference image (sorry for the low quality) :

Thanks.

Radial / Polar / Circle Array

First decide how many rings of holes you want, and the sizes of these various holes. The inner ring usually has a different hole count than the outer larger ring.

For the sake of demonstration let's say I pick 3 different sizes

hole count per ring | angle between each hole
--------------------+----------------
big hole: 20        | 360 / 20
smaller hole: 15    | 360 / 15
smallest hole: 10   | 360 / 10

A convenient way, which doesn't appear to be obvious for a lot of people, is to use the Array Modifier and a rotated Empty. The rotated empty will be used as the centre of the radial array. The rotation of the empty will control the angle of rotation of the arrayed objects.

If you want a radial array of 15 objects (for educational purposes I will array around the world center (0,0,0), and the plane is X,Y :

you place an Empty at (0,0,0), rotate it around z by 360/15

add a circle to the world at (0,0,0) and in edit mode move the vertices to in the X direction to until you are happy with where it is

Pick your Object, add Array Modifier to the it
set the Object Offset to the rotated Empty

From that point it's up to you what you do, add more rings. In the end you might have something like this, i've zoomed into the Empties to show that it might look a bit cluttered and that's to be expected (this is why naming your Empties is very important)


animation: edit the way an object moves by grabbing the pose in the curve editor or graph editor A Maya user asked me if it is possible to do this in blender: slow or accelerate a movement, rotation, etc. by grabbing a frame (not necessarily a keyframe) into the timeline, the graph editor or the dope sheet, and Maya automatically creates a new keyframe.

In blender you can go to any frame where the wanted pose is, insert a keyframe and then move it to the wanted location, but in Maya you can do it by a single click (grabbing the frame where the wanted pose is, to a different location in your timeline) which saves a lot of time when you are animating and need to test different times and speeds.

there is a way to do this in blender? I mean, the one single click stuff? thanks in advance

In the graph editor and dopesheet you can press I to insert a keyframe just like in the 3dview. You will get a menu to choose between all or selected channels.

In the graph editor with a key selected you can press G to move it, also pressing Y will keep it locked to the frame so you only change the value. You can drag an existing key with the mouse to adjust it's value, the drawback of using the mouse is you need to drag the mouse some distance to start the movement, at which time the key snaps to the mouse location making small accurate adjustments hard without the keyboard.

Once you select a key in the graph editor you can move it more precisely using the keyboard eg. GY.5

You also have the properties panel N in the graph editor that shows the frame and value of the active key, you can use the mouse to drag the value slider.


Why are there gaps in an imported .svg? I've traced a bitmap of a political map in inkscape. I've even simplified the nodes of Russia and Canada to have less total nodes than e.g. Brazil.

However, Russia and Canada can't seem to import properly into blender, with or without the simplification.

I'm very confused about the reason or how to find anything about this problem online, so any hint would be greatly appreciated.

Susu was correct in assuming that there are overlapping sections. More specifically, overlapping sections in which the same border crosses over or folds over itself kind of like if one would write the number 8. Intersecting with another path doesn't cause the evident gaps.


Blender VSE - import multiple rendered PNG frames? I usually use the Blender VSE for my normal video editing (for lack of After Effects).

I also usually render directly into AVI format, not PNG sequences of frames. I would however like to move to PNG sequences, because it's a lot easier to sort out any mistakes and to edit that way.

I would therefore like to load the sequences I render into the VSE quickly and easily (30fps) - which would normally require tweaking of every frame because they normally when added add an image strip which is 25 frames long (and I want each frame to be 1 frame long) - I can also only add one frame at a time.

How can I load a frame sequence into the VSE?

When you select multiple Images in the File Browser while adding an Image Strip, you will get one Image Strip which can be scrubbed along through all your frames. Make sure to set up your Project frame rate properly before.

You can de-/select all Images in a folder by pressing A. Or you can select the first, hold Shift and press the Down-Arrow until all of your Image files are selected. This works over multiple columns in the File Browser if applicable.


Overlay image sequence onto a video? I have an image sequence that I rendered out that contains a smoke simulation and I am trying to overlay the sequence onto a video.  The background is rendered transparent to PNG's but using the compositer, I cannot figure out how to mix them properly.  I have tried just using a mix node with the two input and the alpha as the factor but to no use.

Your image showed that the alpha was plugged into the image input while the image was plugged into the mix factor. So if there was no alpha you would be mixing with black. However to save re-rendering you could try using a lumakey node to remove the black background:

or use a simple mix effect, like "screen" or "add":


How would I make these object legs? I'm having the hardest time figuring out how to create the legs of this bowl. I tried to create the legs from cylinders and attach them but it doesn't look good at all that way. I've tried making handles for cups etc and I've had no issue but I'm kind of stumped on doing legs this way. Any help is appreciated!

Here's one possible way:

Start with a round cube (quadsphere preset) from Add Mesh Extra
Objects add-on.

Delete top half of the object

Select groups of faces that will make up the legs

Change pivot point to individual origins with
Ctrl+. (period)

Run loop tools circle operator on the selected faces W >L > C

Extrude by nomals with Alt+E then adjust geometry as you need.


stretching problems with curve modifier I am building a tank tred using a combination of the array modifier and curve modifier.  The problem that I'm having is that the tred is experiencing uneven stretching when it bends around the corner wheels.  Is there a way I can fix this  (maybe something is wrong with my bezier curve?)

Attached are the curve points and also the settings on the tank track

Consider a path constraint.  You may want a script for placement of objects.

Consider a rigid body constraint.

Neither of these are trivial to do from starting point zero.

Curve Modifier by comparison is less work.


Modal Operator that is mapped to a value So I want to make a modal operator that allows mouse input to set up another parameter in the bevel like the width. I read the wiki on modals however I don't think i understand it right. Now right now my script is one big 1263 line mess so I was thinking I needed to reference a modal operator externally. Any ideas?

Using Update
For this example I've used the modal timer operator available in the templates > python menu of the text editor.
Around line 16 add this bit, I've used an operator named CSharpen (from a prev answer to test, change to suit the operator you want to "go modal" from.
    if event.type == 'TIMER':
        print("timer")
        op = context.active_operator
        if op is None:
            self.cancel(context)
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        if op.name == 'CSharpen':
            op.angle += 0.001
            if not op.run_modal:
                #stop it
                self.cancel(context)
                return {'CANCELLED'}

Leaving in the bg color change lets you know it's running, as well as the angle value of your operator changing.  Change the events to suit your needs.
In your operator set up an update function
class sharpenOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    '''ToolTip'''

    def go_modal(self, context):
        if self.run_modal:
            bpy.ops.wm.modal_timer_operator()

and a property to turn on the modal timer
run_modal = BoolProperty(update=go_modal)

and in the draw
    box.row().prop(self, "run_modal")