After downloading your file this is what I found ...

Your model surface normals are flipped randomly.
The flipped normal caused the add-on to give an incorrect readout.
To solve the issue go to Shading/Uvs tab on your 3dview Tool Panel here

Click on the Recalculate button in the Normals section.
Now your Normals are rearranged so they are facing the right side up.
Do the add-on volume calculation will give you the correct result.

REMOVE OPEN EDGES...
1. Go into edit mode press Tab
2. Make sure to select all your model's faces.
3. Hit W and select remove double.
4. Remove double command here :


Weird artifacts in shadow when rendering transparent objects

Denoisers use an algorithm to predict and remove noise (the fireflies). However, when your image gets too noisy, the algorithm will be unable to predict what is supposed to be where (remember it's looking at the pixels and running some sort of math to try and guess what you don't want in the scene, and how to use the surrounding pixels to fix it).

In this case, you're going to need to increase your sample count.


Is there a way to link unlinked objects?

Alt-D should work, in Object Mode? .. To create links (of various kinds), also in Object mode, select the target objects, and the source object last, so it's active, and hit CtrlL.

Then select the aspect of the source you would like the targets to link to. In this case, 'Materials'.


Duplicating a group - (right now it just puts it as a sub group when you do)

After using Shift+D to duplicate the group it will indeed create those ugly copies. No, go to Objects > Group > Remove From All Groups. Then just regroup them.

All the objects of interest should've stayed selected.


How can I reveal these groups inside of collections in blender 2.9

Click this button and you will get dropdown for restriction tools
Click on monitor looking icon.

Now you can see additional icons  for your objects and collections.
Greyed out object should have monitor icon disabled

Enable the icon to make objects/collection visible again.
Now, you may ask what's the difference between Eye icon and Monitor icon visibility.

Visibility controlled by eye icon is bound to current view layer.
which means it does not affect the visibility of object in other view
layer.

Visibility controlled by Monitor icon is global which means if you
disable it in current view layer then object's visibility in all other view layers are disabled.


To disable tiled render display, use N button in Render window to show properties panel, then in Display section disable Repeat. If the image is offscreen use F button to center it.


How to snap the 3d cursor to a specific vertex?

I think you want to move the 3D cursor in order to use bpy.ops to create the empties.
You should avoid using it because it involves updates at each usage and is slow.
In your case you can use directly objects data.
The code is commented below but ask in comments if anything is not clear:
import bpy
import bmesh

def empties_from_indices( context, obj, vertex_indices ):
    #Get the current collection
    collection = context.collection
    #Access to obj vertices
    vertices = obj.data.vertices
    #Get its world matrix
    matrix = obj.matrix_world
    #Loop over indices to get vertex locations
    for location in [vertices[index].co for index in vertex_indices]:
        #Create an empty
        empty = bpy.data.objects.new("empty", None)
        #Set its location converted in world space
        empty.location = matrix @ location
        #Add it to the current collection
        collection.objects.link(empty)

#Get current context and object
context = bpy.context
obj = context.object

vertex_indices = [1, 4, 6]

empties_from_indices( context, obj, vertex_indices )

If you need to access vertex location when the object is deformed by a modifier or has an armature for instance, you can use the following (same principle, only the way vertices are accessed changes):
import bpy
import bmesh

def empties_from_indices_with_deform( context, obj, vertex_indices ):
    #Get the current collection
    collection = context.collection
    #Access to obj vertices
    dg = context.evaluated_depsgraph_get() #Get the dependency graph
    bm = bmesh.new() #Create a bmesh
    bm.from_object(obj, dg) #Get object data
    bm.verts.ensure_lookup_table() #So that can access verts with indices
    vertices = bm.verts
    #Get its world matrix
    matrix = obj.matrix_world
    #Loop over indices to get vertex locations
    for location in [vertices[index].co for index in vertex_indices]:
        #Create an empty
        empty = bpy.data.objects.new("empty", None)
        #Set its location converted in world space
        empty.location = matrix @ location
        #Add it to the current collection
        collection.objects.link(empty)

#Get current context and object
context = bpy.context
obj = context.object

vertex_indices = [1, 4, 6]

empties_from_indices_with_deform( context, obj, vertex_indices )


How to get Global object location - Python

Thanks @Jaroslav Jerryno Novotny for help: I'm dumb because I forgot to select everything and set origin to center of its surface/volume (every object had pivot in the middle).
But anyway thanks for "objectTrawa.matrix_world.translation" I will use it instead of location
and zfill() function (I didn't even think that this would be so good for my code)

final code

ObjectNameNumber = 1

for i in range(1,649):
        ObjectName = "Trawa." + (str(ObjectNameNumber).zfill(3))
        objectTrawa = bpy.data.objects[str(ObjectName)]
        objectTrawa.select = True
        print(ObjectName, "and its location is: ",     objectTrawa.matrix_world.translation)
        #bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
        ObjectNameNumber+=1


How to reduce noise on transparent animation?

Try enabling Transparent Shadows in Properties > Render > Light Paths:

This setting enables an optimization which greatly reduces noise in shadows cast by partially transparent objects, at the cost of some speed.

Here's a comparison rendered with sampling settings identical to yours (except for the shadow setting of course).

With Shadows disabled (1:59):

With Shadows enabled (2:11):

Note that you can also disable this option per-material via the Transparent Shadows setting in Properties > Materials > Settings


The answer is simple. Select your object and then right click and click shade smooth. I would reccommend you see a complete beginner tutorial series.


How to identify missing collections by Python?

Read from the original
For example sake have library "xxxx.blend", in it I have renamed a collection from "OLD" to "NEW", the previously linked collection "OLD" is in my blend but broken.
All the collection names in the library.
>>> lib = D.libraries['xxxx.blend']
>>> with D.libraries.load(lib.filepath) as (data_from, data_to):
...     data_from.collections[:]
...
['NEW']

All collection names in my blend linked from lib
>>> [c.name for c in D.collections if c.library is lib]
['OLD']

If it's the same collection, renaming and reloading does the trick.
>>> D.collections['OLD'].name = 'NEW'
>>> lib.reload()

.. or get rid of it
>>> D.collections.remove(D.collections['OLD'])

Careful note re above that linked collections can have the same name as an existing collection. So to use keying and be sure it is the one desired, add the filepath of the library
>>> D.collections.keys()
['NEW', 'NEW']

>>> D.collections['NEW', lib.filepath]
bpy.data.collections['NEW']

>>> D.collections['NEW', lib.filepath].library is lib
True

Use sets
For a more robust solution recommend using sets. Using example above compare the names in library
set(data_from.collections)

against
set(c.name for c in D.collections if c.library is lib)


I would start with a flat plane in “Top View”. Cut it in half and add a “Mirror Modifier”. Select the edge where you want the bend to take place then press “Shift” + “S” and select “Cursor to Selected” from the drop down menu.

Then change the “Pivot Center” to the 3D Cursor.

Then select the part of the plane you want to rotate and rotate around the 3D Cursor constrained to the “Y” axis. Press “R” + “Y” to accomplish this.

Then add a “Solidify Modifier”


Choose Mirror from the Select menu and check the Extend option.


How do I get a very soft lighting effect in the Game Engine?

Soft shadows like that are hard to calculate with standard approaches.
The only out-of-the-box realtime solution i know for Blender is using a sun- or spot-lamp with a low-resolution variance shadow map in GLSL shading mode. Note that this technique might "detatch" the shadow from an object.
Lamp settings:

Result:

If you do not need real-time solutions you can also bake all the lighting of the scene into textures. Then you have the full rendering capability of Blender at your hand and can use lamps with soft shadows. But you will only be able to apply this effect to static objects in your scene. You would probably still have to combine baked shadows with the variance shadow map approach for your characters.


When you have Proportional Falloff Editing enabled, you can adjust the falloff size with scrollwheel while moving/rotating/scaling. As it is affecting the whole mesh, it seems you have the falloff size being bigger than your view, so just scroll down while editing. The falloff size can also be edited after action in bottom of toolbar (hotkey T) or by hitting F6.


Why is my object getting clipped when I render?

There is a plane that is hidden from the viewport,
but is enabled for rendering.

Delete it or disable it for rendering.

Just as a reminder:

The Eye icon is to toggle object visibility on the 3D viewport.

The Arrow Icon toggles selectability.

The Camera Icon toggles rendering.


How to get a square brush in texture paint?

Blender paints within a circular brush, you can use an image like a stencil when painting to get different shaped brushes.

When you create a image to be used for a brush there are a few things you need to keep in mind. When you have a square image, blender's brush will only paint within it's circle and that circle will be contained within the image dimensions, in practice I would also leave a little margin inside that circle as well.

Anything in the red area will not show in blender's brush, while the green area can be considered a safe zone for brush shapes.

To create a square brush using gimp you can create a 100x100 image and fill it with white then resize the canvas to 200x200 and click the center button then export to png.

Draw the shape you want in white and leave the non-drawing part of the image as transparent and save it as a png. Then in blender create a new brush texture as an "Image or Movie" and select your brush image. The transparent parts show as black in the preview, unlike normal transparent texture previews. You can use multi-coloured images as brushes, the colours will be mixed with the active brush colour based on the blend mode, so white will maintain the brush colours while other colours will tint the brush accordingly. Feel free to experiment with different alpha values for soft edges.

Texture masks work in a similar way but they don't mix colours like a texture brush, any colour info will only be used as a greyscale mask for the brush.

To get a crisp edge you will want to give the brush a sharp curve, this can easily be set by clicking the square preset button at the end.


Subdivision Surface modifier not working if applied

When you apply a subsurf modifier, it uses the number of levels in the Viewport box, not the Render value, so make sure the first one is set to the number of subdivisions you want.


Why does the satin fabric appear so metallic to me while it is a dielectric material

The theory I had seems to be correct: the light bounces in the ridges of the fabric and give the gloss a color toward the diffuse.  We cannot simulate this in blender with a bumpmap or a normalmap. So I did an experiment with real geometrie.  Here two illustrations. First illustration shows that we cannot achieve this with a bumpmap. Second illustration shows that we can achieve this in blender only with real geometrie and enough light bounces.


Blender Global undo is very slow on complex scenes

The undo buffer works by actually saving the entire blend file in memory, and loading it to undo. If you have such big, complex files, that'll take a while.

A possible way to speed things up would be to enable Simplify (scene properties panel) to restrict the subdivision level, and to write parts of the scene to different blend files and link them into the scene (rather than having all data in one blend file).


Nevermind, I figured it out.  I needed to select the whole UV layout with A before exporting.


How to create shape keys from posing armature?

If I understand your will, you should:
- 1) set the pose you want
- 2) In the armature modifier apply as shape key
- 3) in pose mode select all bones and reset all transforms (Alt G, Alt R, Alt S)
- 4) add an armature modifier to your mesh
- 5) select the mesh as "object" of the new armature modifier

In this way you will have the mesh controlled by the armature and a shape key which will reflect the pose you set in point 1)


Hair particles not appearing in cycles mode

So I ultimately downloaded the experimental Blender 2.9 and it fixed the issue. I guess that means it's a bug.
EDIT: Another fix, should this happen to any of you, is to create a new project and append all of the assets from the original project. The hair will then render properly in the new project.


Which keyframing option should be chosen to animate movement and scale?

Instead of using a preset keyset  (like loc, scale) just can just add keyframes in the channels you need using "insert single keyframe"


imported rhino .obj shows 0 faces 0 verts 0 tris

It looks like you've disabled the viewport visibility of your imported object, or it has been imported in a disabled state.

In the outliner, enable the "Viewport visibility" column/filter (Funnel icon > Monitor icon), then enable the Viewport visibility for your object.


After you add your math function mesh, on the bottom left of the 3D view you will see the operator editor (circled in middle image). Open it to view the various parameters of the operator you last executed, including the add math function mesh.


Use Decimate modifier as a realtime LOD generator

To add a driver to the Decimate Modifier's Ration value, right click on it and choose 'Add Driver'. The slider will turn purple.

Go to the Graph Editor and choose the Drivers context.

For the driver Type choose Distance.

For one object choose your Camera, and for the other your object with the modifier on it. Name your variable something that makes sense to you (mine is 'dist'). For the scripted expression you can use 1/(dist/8) for example and the Ratio value will decrease as the distance increases.

You can replace 8 with a lower number for less distance required for decimation, or a higher number for more distance required.

As for setting a minimum of 0.2, I don't know how you could do that, but I bet if you look in the Python documentation or maybe ask on Stack Overflow you can find out how to write that specific expression.


I am trying to render two renderlayers, but the second layer black background is on top of the first layer

The lens distortion node is making all the pixels in the asteroid layer opaque so that the alpha over covers up the earth layer.

The solution is to do the lens distortion after combining the layers:

The lens distortion should be done after combining layers anyway, as with a real lens everything in the image is distorted.


How to create a circle with the Array Modifier

You have probably scaled your empty (the empty is the object that you use as offset object in the tutorial).

For correcting your error you can select your empty and then press alt+s for reseting the scale of your object.


World displays as grey even though set to white

"White" is not an absolute value. The values change depending on the transforms  used in the color management section.
If you are using sRGB, with a sRGB view transform, white should be 1.
But If you are using filmic view transform, white is at a value of 16.29
The Color Management settings can be found in the Render Properties :


The way I was able to do it was to use the knife project. All you need to do is make the words 2D with no faces, go into object mode and select the words then shift select the cup and go into edit mode. Then go into the view you are in in the first image and press knife project. The only problem with this is that it will go from the view, so you may have to do each individual letter at a time from different views so you can get it looking as nice as possible. Once you finish projecting it onto the cup you can just select the faces of the words on the cup and extrude them out. Sorry it’s such a time consuming way to do it but I couldn’t figure out anything easier. Please msg me back if you need more details. By the way I was able to successfully 3d print what I made with no errors.


how should i align the axis to the propeller center in this model.so that i can rotate it in animation

You can parent your object to an 'empty' object.

Add an empty object (Shift+A > Empty (choose another display type if necessary)
Parent your object to the empty (first select the object, then the empty and press Ctrl+P

Now the Rotation properties of your object can be animated in the empty referential. In my example, just animate the "Z" component and that's it.


Python to get and iterate loose mesh bodies

Separating objects based on disconnected geometry ("loose parts") can be accomplished through the operator bpy.ops.mesh.separate(type="LOOSE"). This operator attempts to separate all selected objects by loose parts. After its execution all separated objects, will be selected. If an object is initially selected, that doesn't contain loose parts, it will also be selected after the operator is finished. Therefore, you can access bpy.context.view_layer.objects.selected and get the resulting objects.

Depending on what you intend to do with the objects, you may not want to store references to the objects in a list. If you e.g. modify the collection or view layer, these references may become invalid and accessing them could crash Blender. The safest way is to store the unique names of the objects and access them by name when needed. This is explained in the Gotcha chapter of the API docs.

  TL;DR: Do not keep direct references to Blender data (of any kind)
  when modifying the container of that data, and/or when some undo/redo
  may happen (e.g. during modal operators execution…). Instead, use
  indices (or other data always stored by value in Python, like string
  keys…), that allow you to get access to the desired data.

import bpy

# Separate the selected objects by disconnected geometry
bpy.ops.mesh.separate(type="LOOSE")

# Get the selected objects
separated_obj_names = [obj.name for obj in bpy.context.view_layer.objects.selected]


render animation with eevee, volumetric disappear some frames

I resolve my prob with this configuration of world shaders :

But use volumectric on object is not fixed with Eevee, i have no idea how fix this bug


Characters' Shirt Texture Deforming Strangely

I solved my own problem and it was simpler than I thought it would be. The reason for this strange deformation on the texture of the shirt wasn’t due to any of the reasons above. It was because I hadn’t noticed that if I change the angle of the camera view in Unity, I would see that there’s a serious weight paint problem in the shoulder area which I already know how to fix. This problem doesn’t show up in Blender because of the differences in how Unity and Blender process the visuals of weight painting. I thought I share this in case anyone else is having a similar problem and can’t figure it out. Make sure to change the angle of the camera to make sure what you’re seeing is actually what you think you’re seeing.


pbr shaders need an environment to look more properly. It's one of the key parts in physical based rendering method.
Here is a metal shader under different environments:

to the left we have no environment (black), blender jungle in the middle and blender default room environment in the right.
A quick fix for this would be to add a good environment texture that matches your presentation of the area or comes close to it.
you can start looking for one here: https://hdrihaven.com/


How to use textures with transparency with eevee's principled bsdf?

The setup you have there will not work. You cannot plug a shader into the Base Color socket of the Principled BDSF. That socket is expecting RGB input. Generally, you can only plug a Shader into the Material Output or a Mix Shader node.

Your Mix Shader node should come after the Principled BSDF. It should mix between the Principled BSDF and the Transparent shader, and plug into the Material Output node.

As an alternative, you can also use the transmission property of the Principled BSDF itself (towards the bottom), eliminating the need for mixing. I would personally advise that you do this as it's cleaner and easier. You then have just one shader.

That would be it for Cycles. To get it to work with EEVEE, however, there are two additional settings:

In the materials panel for your material, under Settings, you need to change the Blend Mode to Alpha Blend.
In the render panel, you need to turn on Screen Space Reflections, and then tick Refraction.

That should do it.


How do I convert a bone to b-bone with Python and set the number of segments

You cannot have specific bones as b-bones..it's all of them or none of them - the type is for the whole armature. You can have all as b-bones and set the segments to more than 1 only for the specific ones.

import bpy

bpy.data.armatures['Armature'].draw_type = 'BBONE'

bpy.data.armatures['Armature'].bones['Bone'].bbone_segments = 3


There are a bit of errors:

The pot-like object has to be converted to a mesh. (Alt+C then Select Mesh from Curve/Meta/Surf/Text)
The modifier should be applied to the pot-like object and the object in the modifier should be the parallelepiped (The one Selected in The Photo).
The normals in the pot-like object are pointing in the wrong
direcion, so you have to adjust them if you won't the modifier not
to have a strange behavior.  to adjust the normal press tab to go
into edit mode, then press w and select Flip Normals

Then The modifier Should Work.


How to pass variables in the game engine to a newly loaded .blend?

You could dump it to a file.

a.blend

with open('/tmp/mydata', 'w') as f:
    f.write(a_setting)

b.blend

with open('/tmp/mydata', 'r') as f:
    b_setting = f.read()


Can't create a specific displacement based on voronoi texture

To save too much strain on the GPU, you may want to separate the business of displacing faces and coloring them, to give the renderer some geometry to work with in the cracks.
You could make a displacement map based on Distance From Edge, shown on the left, below, and a sparate parallel Voronoi to color the displaced faces.

This is a 2D Voronoi, mapped to the surface of the sphere as described here, but the principle would be the same for other cell-like textures


What's the fastest way to turn a triangular face into three quads?

Subdivide triangle. Select face of middle triangle. Repeat. Select inner vertices and use AltM to merge at centre.

My 5 cents. What's yours?

p.s. no need to go into vertex mode. Face select and AltM is enough.


I just finish the donut course of blender guru where do I go next?

I think the best way to improve on your skills is to join a community, and blender has a large community.
You could join these communities to see other people's workflow, styles and ways of working with blender.
My two favourite communities are:

Blenderartists: in this community you get to see fellow blender artist workflows, reels and the community creates challenges weekly to help you grow and learn faster. Here is the link
www.blenderartists.org

BlenderNation: is a very great community here you could get links to any tutorial in blender, assets (paid or free), documentation and so on, basically it an informative and educative community. Here is the link

www.blendernation.com


Why won't blender 2.8 bake more than 250 frames?

Blender has different simulation engines, and they have different cache length settings¹ (it's honestly true that these settings could be made more consistent...).

It appears that you have extended the cache length for the Rigid Body physics inside the Scene tab, but you actually wanted to extend the Cloth cache.

You find it here: under Physics > Cloth > Cache > End:

¹ fluid cache is bound to the Start/End of the animation; Rigid body cache is under the Scene settings; Soft body, Cloth and Smoke have their cache options in the relevant Physics tab for each object; particle cache lasts for the lifetime of the last emitted particle


Your "staff" object has many duplicate vertices and all normals are inside, boolean can't work.

In Edit mode, A to select all, then press W > Remove doubles,
After fixing duplicates, select all, press Ctrl+N to fix normals
apply boolean modifier to object "staff" with type of Operation set to Difference, with object "Esvele"

In order to see the effect, hide object "Esvele" or set its "maximum draw type" to "bounds".

Adding pictures for the whole process...

I hope it is clearer now... you just have to set boolean for every other text, now, it will work and have the right color......


UV Mapping a sculpted object shows glitches

Don't apply the subdivision modifier. This makes the geometry unnecessarily dense. Re-meshing may have solved your problem but this will not hold up.
Also smart UV unwrap isn't the best way to unwrap because of lack of control. Instead make creases and then unwrap using U>Unwrap>Unwrap. Also learn about edge-flow. This is very important when modelling.


Can't Edit in Sculpt Mode After Un-Hiding Parts of Mesh in Edit Mode

It's the Mirror modifier that causes the glitch in Sculpt mode. Have a look at the modifier panel and you will see a warning message: "Sculpt: Hide, Mask and optimized display are disabled". That means the body is hidden but because hide does not work you still see it. A Fatamorgana ;-)
Press the little monitor icon "Realtime" right next to the Mirror modifier's name (in the modifier panel) to disable it in Sculpt mode and you will see what Blender sees. It's only the left hand visible.
Solution: In Sculpt mode, press Alt + H to unhide the hidden body.


Make sure your render strand steps (currently 3, under the render heading in particle settings) match your viewport settings (currently 7, under Display in particle settings). With curly hair you may need quite a few steps to capture all the bends.

You may also need to adjust the scaling value under Cycles Hair Settings if you want the strands to be thinner.


Can a single object in an array be exported?

To avoid unexpected behaviours, it's better to duplicate the object (Shift D) and apply the array modifier.
Then in edit mode there are several ways of fast selecting, some of them:
B to box select, C to paint select, L to select all the area where the mouse is hovering, Ctrl L to select all the geometry linked to the selected area, H to hide every unwanted or occluding geometry, Ctrl I to invert the selection, vertex groups select/unselect buttons (if there are vertex groups), Alt left click to select loops, ....
When all the desired area is selected you can press P to separate it into a new object and delete the duplicate.


Mesh in front of Grease Pencil: how to remove the outline?

It is a known issue: https://developer.blender.org/T78795
The workaround mentioned on the bug report is to disable anti-aliasing for EEVEE (Film > Filter Size = 0) and for Grease Pencil (Anti-Aliasing Threshold = 0). Which in turn means you'd have to render double the size then downscale the result to get anti-aliasing back.
EDIT: I came across a way to do this without losing GPencil anti-aliasing. Basically it requires isolating GP and Meshes in different View Layers and compositing them back together with a Z Combine node (as explained in my answer here), and disabling the node's "Z anti-aliasing". You still have to set EEVEE's Filter Size to zero but at least the edges of GPencil objects stay smooth without doubling render size.


Camera dark outline (passepartout) not working

If you really just pressed SHIFT+C then you changed your view to show all objects in the scene. To get back into camera perspective press Numpad 0.

If you disabled the passepartout instead, select the camera and check Passepartout in the camera tab. The setting has no influence on the rendering only on the display in the viewport.


Transfer weight operator changes vertex groups

You can use the weight tool Clean to fix that. It will remove from the group, every vertex with a weight under the specified threshold.

To remove every vertex with weight 0, from each vertex group :

Subset : All Groups
Limit : 0


I finally got good output by converting the file I was trying to use to a wave file and using that in Blender.  The weird thing is the video in Blender would then be choppy when previewing it, but the rendered output was ok.  If anyone knows why this happens, or a way where files other than wave can be used, please let us know.


you can change how your object is drawn by changing the "Draw Type" in Properties panel -> object -> display.

To my experience, less objects you have in your scene better blender run, so it's a good idea to merge them in 1 object.


How can I subdivide this plane into even squares?

Use loop cuts, press Ctrl+R and use the scroll wheel to select how many. Hover over the edge you want the cuts to intersect, then double-click to finish the action.


How to import bone locations form a text file?

The script you have doesn't dump a lot of important information, like the bone roll, or parenting info.
Assuming you're trying to dump the editbone info, this script should work. By default it exports. Change command in the options at the top to 'IMPORT' to import instead.
# !!!! Options, edit me!
path = 'C:\\Bones.json'
command = 'EXPORT'  # EXPORT or IMPORT
# !!!!

import bpy
bone_props = [
    'name', 'head', 'tail', 'roll', 'use_connect',
    'use_local_location', 'use_inherit_rotation', 'inherit_scale',
]
if command == 'EXPORT':
    ob = bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active
    if ob and ob.type == 'ARMATURE':
        pass
    else:
        obs = [ob for ob in bpy.data.objects if ob.type == 'ARMATURE']
        if len(obs) == 1:
            ob = obs[0]
        else:
            raise RuntimeError('Select an armature')
    arma = ob.data

    data = {}
    data['armature'] = {}
    data['armature']['name'] = arma.name

    if bpy.context.mode != 'OBJECT':
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = ob
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="EDIT")

    data['edit_bones'] = []
    for ebone in arma.edit_bones:
        bonedata = {}
        bonedata['parent'] = ebone.parent.name if ebone.parent else None
        for prop in bone_props:
            val = getattr(ebone, prop)
            if prop in ['head', 'tail']: val = list(val)
            bonedata[prop] = val
        data['edit_bones'].append(bonedata)

    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="OBJECT")

    with open(path, 'w') as f:
        import json
        json.dump(data, f, indent=2)

elif command == 'IMPORT':
    with open(path, 'r') as f:
        import json
        data = json.load(f)

    arma = bpy.data.armatures.new(data['armature']['name'])
    ob = bpy.data.objects.new(arma.name, arma)
    bpy.context.collection.objects.link(ob)

    if bpy.context.mode != 'OBJECT':
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = ob
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="EDIT")

    for bonedata in data['edit_bones']:
        arma.edit_bones.new(bonedata['name'])

    for bonedata in data['edit_bones']:
        ebone = arma.edit_bones[bonedata['name']]
        if bonedata['parent']:
            ebone.parent = arma.edit_bones[bonedata['parent']]
        for prop in bone_props:
            setattr(ebone, prop, bonedata[prop])

    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="OBJECT")


Approximation of smooth surfaces with polygonal meshes

This is a very good question.
It all comes down to fooling your brain.

1. “Approximating a curve with polygons is pretty crude”
Well, human eyes have considerably limited resolution.
Screen resolution also contributes - it isn't infinite.

You don't need infinite polygons, just enough to fool the human eye.
It's easier to do, than most people think.

2. “You would need billions of polygons for a smooth-looking surface”
Smooth-looking is the key word.

Surface needs far less geometry to look smooth, than a silhouette.
Most of your focus is on surfaces, not silhouettes.

3. “I don't recall seeing a straight edge anywhere”
Don't recall is the key phrase.

You don't focus on details, but on the moving imagery.
When you pause the animation, chances are you'll find some jagged edges.

Try pausing older movies like Toy story 1, Shrek or Ice age.
This is what Pixar understood first - you don't need it perfect. Just non-distracting.

Fig. 02 - Surface of a low-poly object looks perfectly smooth, while it's silhouette is jagged


File format for importing from Autodesk and Tinker CAD?

Welcome to Blender SE!

Which Autodesk product are you using?

This documentation talks about what file types Blender can import. Depending on what Autodesk product you're using, Blender might be able to just open the file that it uses. OBJ is usually the most widely supported, but materials can be difficult and it doesn't support any proprietary features: OBJ will only export the mesh and sometimes materials (no shapes, no rigs, no animations, etc).

I can't tell for sure, but I'd be willing to wager than Tinker supports exporting OBJ files.

If all you want is the model, OBJ is your best bet. In which case:

Export your original file as an OBJ
Open Blender and File -> Import... your OBJ into a new scene, or a scene you've already started.


Import object without bpy.ops.wm.link_append

Since Blender 2.72, there are two separate operators:

bpy.ops.wm.link()
bpy.ops.wm.append()

Apart from operators, there's also a lower-level API to import datablocks (selectively) from .blends: bpy.data.libraries.load()

The docs include a few examples how you can use this function.


Why is my BezierCurve shaded like a tube?

Because by default is spline set under
Properties Editor > Data Properties > Active Spline as Smooth
When Smooth unchecked, curve become shaded Flat, which means flat also in curvature.

To make it smoother you can increase Resolution U (segment subdivisions)

But in some cases it would be still segmented ... so Edge Split  modifier seems to be better choise anyway :)


Sampling points of a nurbs surface using projections

1) Z-buffer (real depth map)

Place a camera above the surface

Set it to Ortographic. Then go in Camera view (Numpad 0) and change its Clipping values in such a way that they are the "tightest" possible to display all the curve (i.e. the biggest possible "Start" and the smallest possible "End")

Render the image (F12), then select "Z-Buffer" in the list of Channels below the render window:

This will give you an actual depth map.

or 2) Z-dependent Emission color (faked depth map using Cycles)

Place your surface in a scene where the world is completely black and there are no lights. Use "Cycles" as the render engine.

Note down the minimum and the maximum "z" location (in my example, 0.1 and 0.9)

Assign a material that has the following node structure:

where in the Math nodes you'll use the values of min(z) and (max(z)-min(z)) noted down before, in my case 0.1 and 0.8.

Of course the colorRamp can be changed according to your needs.

This will color your surface with a different color according to its height:

.

Place an ortographic camera along the "z" axis (frame the surface from above) and render. The render will be a depth map


You add a "Child of" constraint to the ball, and select the armature and bone of the character you want to pick it up with.  You can then animate the influence of the constraint to change when the ball is influenced by the character.

hope this helps.


Possible bug? Sculpt Mode -> Simplify Brush is affecting far side of mesh

It can be a bug, or something in developement.

For you question: You can use various Mask tools / operations to temporally "block" the areas from being affected. For example, There is a brush type called Mask (or press M to switch to it), and also a menu category called Hide/Mask on the 3d View header when in Sculpt mode.

However, to quickly meet what you need, you can ShiftCtrlLMB to drag the block area (it will be shown in dark grey). Then just paint. When finishing, clear the mask by AltM.


Why does my Eevee renders freeze at 98%?

The only reason for this warning is that Blender is trying to read a TIFF.

Objects are not the only things that might use TIFFs. You might check your skydome or environment texture. If you have BlenderGuru's Pro-lighting Skies, then it's probably loading TIFFs at some point. You may have some other addon that uses TIFF images.

If you can upload a copy of your .blend file, someone here might be able to help you track down what images are causing the problem.


"Blend from shape" What does this do? how can I use it?

One very common use is to repair a shape key from a mistake, while leaving the desired deformations intact: if you like your shape key but you see some moving vertices that should stay still, you can select them, choose blend from shape, pointing at the basis shape, unchecking the "add" option (so to replace the moving vertices informations with the basis static locations).


A few things:

there is a retopology shading feature in development. The RCS proposal has the "in development" tag and I saw a few tasks on developer.blender.org about it (here's one I could find back).

in the mean time, there are add-ons. Draw X-ray uses a shading method to put the geometry of the edited object "on top" of other objects using a distance threshold and Backface Hiding (made by yours truly) simply uses the face normals like backface culling does, except not in real-time but with the push of a button. Finally there's Retopoflow which does a lot of things including a similar shading method to Draw-XRay. They all have their pros and cons and use cases. If you need the hiding feature but don't need other retopo tools. In terms of pricing, Backface Hiding is completely free, Draw X-Ray is a "pay what you want" on Gumroad and Retopoflow is currently $86.


The picture of your node organization is too small to understand, so it's not easy to guess why you failed. If you want to fake the bumps, i.e. if you don't want to use real displacement, it seems like a simple node chain like this one works fine. If you don't want too many details, decrease the Noise Detail value. I put a ColorRamp to create the flat surface.


You can divide any window by right-clicking along its borders. Your cursor will change to the resize symbol so you know it's in the right place.
Then, you can choose to create a vertical or horizontal split in that panel. You can actually split any of the available windows by dragging the dotted split line, and clicking when satisfied.

Joining panels back together is also done by right-clicking, but it should be noted that you can only join two windows which share sides. For example, you could join the 3D view window above with the new 3D view just created, but you couldn't join the 3D view window with the Outliner and Properties Shelf windows on the right. Those two windows would first need to be joined themselves.
Alternatively, you can also hit CTRL+ALT+Q to toggle quad view, which will automatically split your 3D view into four panels - one for each of the three orthogonal cardinal directions, plus the view you already had open.


Where is the rendered viewport shading mode in Blender 2.78

Here it is in my 2.78: note this is using official PIE menu addon.


How to use Nonlinear Animation NLA Editor with Grease Pencil

Glad you asked, I had a eureka moment a few weeks ago and been using the NLA with GP ever since, quietly thinking to myself that it's the best thing since sliced bread.
TLDR; Re-implement the timeline by placing keys on a Time Offset modifier then push those keyframes as action strips.
For a super simple example, we're drawing on 4s and only doing half a walk cycle (it's a silhouette so no difference between right leg in front and left leg in front). So our loop has 4 drawings, the first on frame 1 and the last on frame 13 (and in this case those 2 frames are actually the same):

Add a Time Offset Modifier and switch it to Fixed Frame. Go to the first frame and add a keyframe by pressing I over the Frame field in the modifier. Then go to frame 13, set the Frame field to 13 and add another keyframe:

Right, so we've just painstakingly re-implemented what the regular Blender timeline does by default, which might seem a bit of a waste of time, but far from it: we have two keyframes that show up in the action editor!
Now go over to the NLA editor, push those keyframes as a new action strip and you're good to go. Using the Action Clip section of the Strip tab in the right panel, you can set it to repeat and/or change the playback speed. You can of course also duplicate the strip and move it about as per usual.
I suppose it is just a workaround, but what's awesome is that if later you decide to add extra frames to the loop (say, draw it on twos or on ones) it will automatically update the entire animation. Just remember to disable the modifier in viewport when you want to change/add frames.
Another cool thing is that, by using multiple Time Offset modifiers with the Influence option to limit it to certain layers, you can combine different animations in the NLA editor, which really opens up a whole bunch of possibilities.


Modeling on round surfaces without deform

Your best bet (depending on your workflow) is to work on the cylinder's round surface 'unwrapped' then wrap it around with a curve and modifier after doing any changes to the geometery.

Looking at the model you've created, you might also have luck with boolean modelling. The concepts of boolean modelling are using many modifiers - boolean, bevel, subsurf. To get this look, create the cylinder, apply a bevel to create the top and bottom edge bevels, apply a subsurf to smooth the surface, then use a boolean to cut out the rectangular piece. Once that is done, you could apply another bevel (limiting the influence based on angle) to create a bevel on the cut-out edges.

By doing this, you retain editability of every step and can go in and make changes as required.


How do I clear sharp edges on my models / apply one smoothing group to the whole piece?

You only need to clear sharp edges if they have been marked sharp in the first place, If you are unsure, go to edit mode, select the whole object (all), right click, and select "clear sharp". See below:

And yes - one smoothing group means select the whole thing (in object mode) and select "shade smooth" - this is to differentiate from some models which have different sections selected, and smoothing applied to only those sections.


all the edges go in in their direction so as you can see they all go in the right direction, if you do not want this do E and then right click and then while the face is still selected Resize it with S and that will do the trick usually.
Side note, if you are using clipping on your mirror node it will not inset normally.


Seeking better way to add precise hemispherical caps to a swept curve

Maybe, instead of the native curve bevel, you can use Array and Curve modifiers on a profile segment ..(blue section, below)

The array can have 'Start' and 'End' caps (red and yellow). It's easier to use Constant Offset in the array. Adjust (here, in  Z,) the positions of the caps in Edit Mode, until the  'Merge' in the array takes, before giving the array a Curve modifier.

You can set the count of the array to fit the curve, and parent the curve to the mesh to keep it all together.

This is reasonably reusable, the curve and array can be duplicated together, and the curve edited as you like, the caps will stay in place.

If / When you want to fix the mesh, you can Header > Object > Convert To > Mesh, which will apply all the modifiers at once.


You have to go to Weight Paint mode and paint over the hair, or even better all over the head. While Bone.004(which is the head bone) is selected.


Viewport colors look darker in Vertex Paint mode Blender 2.8

By default vertex colors get multiplied when entering vertex paint mode.
Set opacity of vertex paint mode overlay to 0 in viewport overlays to make object and vertex paint mode look the same.


free editing a rigged character's pose similar to editing bones in edit mode

You can pose your character, then apply the armature modifier, so your deformed mesh will become a base mesh. Then you can select the armature and choose "Apply pose as rest pose", then add a new armature modifier to the mesh and select your armature in its "object" field. In this way the deformed mesh and the posed armature will act as "base mesh" and "rest pose", without having to rebuild the weights.

If you need to unparent a bone from another you have to do it in edit mode.

If you add new geometry to the mesh you will have to give some weight to the new vertices, in weight paint mode or directly in the vertex group tab of the properties panel.


Blender Bones: How to Join Bones with Objects

In Blender Select mesh. Then Select armature. Both are selected.
Control-P  will produce a dialog similar to the image below
Consider a blender tutorial video on some well known video site such as YT
In the past some (new to Blender) questions are cast away.


How can I model indentations on a surface?

The secret is to model the indentations first, then use a deformer to create the twist.

Start with a cylinder with 9 sides.  Bevel (Ctrl + B) the edges and add an edge loop top and bottom, this will be the lip of the indentation.
Select the sides that will be indented.  Use polygon inset tool (I) to make them inset and indented.

Add a Simple Deform modifier.  Adjust the angle to meet the reference image.

Add a Subdivision Surface modifier and preview the result.  Apply the deformation modifier.
Select top and bottom edge loops.  Use the LoopTools Circle tool (this requires the LoopTools addon).

Extrude (E) the top and bottom faces and model the rest of the bottle.


Is there a way to render a wireframe independent of its topology?

The Brick texture node makes the grid texture.
The settings to change in the Brick texture node are:

both Frequency fields, set to 1
brick width and Row height must match to get squares.
Mortar size to set how thick the lines are.

The Camera socket of the Texture Coordinates node, sets the mapping to match the camera. Thus the grid will be straight.
The Mix node is used to overlay the grid over any shader you already have on the object. It works from the Fac output from the brick texture. white = 1, and black = 0 so where ever there is black in the grid it will use the bottom shader, and whereever there is white (where the bricks would go) it will use the top input of the Mix shader. The brown Diffuse node would be the underlying shader.

Those nodes will render this:


Is there a way to change the color wheel used in the node editor?

You can choose from four different color picker types in the user preferences:

Perhaps you like one the options better:

You might be also interested in the Palette addon which only works only in paint modes (Image Painting, Texture Paint, Vertex Paint, Weight Paint)


Combine two normal maps and control the strength of each

A more precise result can be found using these formulas...
Here's an adaptation of it including a Factor value for mixing:

some more details can be found in this thread in BA

And the nodegroup can be found here.


Preview in Video Sequence Editor doesn't show render layers

It actually is taking the render layers into consideration, you have OpenGL Preview enabled so it is using that to give you a realtime viewport render which apparently takes all layers into consideration it seems, press N to bring up the view properties and untick it.


How to enable all in viewports? Collection manager right hand side

There may be a better way? But here goes..
In the (funnel) 'Filter' dropdown of the outliner, enable the 'Disable Selection' dart-icon, if you haven't already.
If there is a top-level collection, below 'Scene', containing all the others, Shift-click the dart icon next to it, to recursively set the 'Selectable' state of all the collections and objects beneath it.
If there is no top-level collection, you can temporarily or permanently create one.

ShiftA once or twice to collapse the Outliner view and
make it easier to see what you're doing.

Right-click below 'Scene' to create and name a new top-level empty collection.

Select all the top-level collections and objects whose state you want to change, drag them over the new collection and Ctrl-drop them there. This will link everything to the new collection without disturbing the originals.

Shift-click the dart next to the new collection.

Once done, you can X delete the new collection of links, if you want to.
There is also the per-viewport 'View Object Types'setting in the 3D-View header to look out for, if objects are unselectable.


How to render without evaluating keyframes?

You need to mute all channel in current object's animation data. Muting Actions and NLA strips can be done by pressing LMB on speaker button at each action channels or NLA track.

A faster way if involving lots of channels/tracks is to press A with cursor placed atop channel list to select all channels (or select channels manually with Shift-LMB), then press Shift-W, and choose Mute:


So here is how you would do this using game logic. (The blend file at the end if you want to skip my explanation).

1) Connect an Always sensor to a Mouse actuator (the default state of this actuator is to make the mouse visible so you shouldn't have to change anything).

2) Where the yellow box is add a Boolean property and make sure it's starting state is True (checked).

3) Add two mouse sensors (as seen in the light blue box). Set one to Mouse Over and the other to Left Button. Connect both sensors to the same controller and make sure it is set to Add (that is the default). Now connect the Add controller to a Property actuator set to toggle the property you created in step 2 (see the dark blue box).

4) Add a Property sensor and set it to Equal "True" then connect it to a Visibility actuator in which Visible is checked.

5) Add a Property sensor and set it to Equal "False" then connect it to a Visibility actuator in which Visible is unchecked and Occlusion is checked.


Do you have modifiers applied to the model? If yes, make sure that the hair modifier is below all other modifiers.


How to map UV on generated Mesh from Curve?

You need the UV map to be flat and straight, as if the rebar was still straight.
The rings will then just follow the bent shape.

UV Map
The UV Map is the most important thing here. It needs to be flat and straight.
Don't forget to cut off the end caps with seams, like I did.

I used the default Angle Based unwrap, which may/may not work in your case.
There's also an addon called UV Squares which comes with Blender and will do the work for you.

Mapping Node
The Mapping node will allow you to precisely scale the texture.
Notice that in my case, the Y Scale is considerably smaller.
Also, don't forget to plug in the UV Map output.

Note
I used a generated wave texture for the rings. With a proper image texture you'll surely get better results.

Good luck.


My render is complete gray or transparent

First: Select the object you want to appear on the render. Check the eye icon is active. Check the camera icon is active.
Second: With the object selected, press "." on the numpad. This will focus on the selectd object. Now, press CTRL+ALT+"0" (zero on the numpad). This will make your current view your CAMERA view. This is ASSUMING you have a camera on scene. If not, create one, and go to step 1 again.
Finally, when you see your viewport and camera; on the outliner select your camera and go to CLIPPING. Set END to : 10 km. This should allow you to extensively look deep into your scene.
Finally if all of the above fails: Go to object properties (the cube icon on the properties region area) and scroll down to CYCLE settings: Make sure CAMERA is CHECKED for ray visibility:

Thank you for your consideration to vote me as the answer by clicking to the left :the icon with a check mark and upvote this answer.

BFCT_Schiller


IK on eyeball does not move how I tell it to - Resolved

For the specific eye problem, you should not choose the eye bone as the parent of the eye handle bone, also give your eye bone a Track To constraint with the eye handle as bone target. You have other problems like you should apply your Mirror modifier, only the eye bone should influence the eye mesh, the control bones need to have their Deform option disabled, your IK handles should only have the root bone as parent, in Edit mode recalculate the bones roll with ctrlN, etc...


Rigid body. Why doesn't the ball fall into the cone?

On the Rigid Body Collisions set the Shape on the cone to Mesh


Boids particles - setting Render as Object breaks simulation

i think you changed the scale of your object, when you changed to render as object, right?
Just leave the scale as it is

and select your icosphere.
Press tab to enter edit mode, press A to select all then S to scale and scale this little guy up until you see enough and run simulation again.
result:


I think what Duarte was trying to say is that the resolution of the textures doesn't matter for the UV layout. UV coordinates are bound to the mesh, not to the texture.

You can create a 1024x1024 texture in blender, then resize it in whatever image manipulation software you use. For example I tend to create quite hi-res textures (4k and above) in blender, baking them and later resizing them in gimp to whatever size the final result should have. The only problem is that you are losing detail on your texture map, the UV layout fits perfectly, though.


Can't use sculpt brushes unless I press control

It sounds like your normals have been inverted on your model, since CTRL is usually used to invert a brush. This is a pretty easy fix, if it's the case, but you do have to go into edit mode. I hope you don't have too many faces!

Go into edit mode, select everything, then on your toolshelf (on the left of your screen by default) go to your Shading/UV tab and click on 'recalculate' (you should find it under 'normals'). This should fix your problem, if it's normals-related.


Is there a way to smooth a selected patch of vertices but preserve the contour?

Perhaps Laplacian Smooth will suit your needs better. Access it via the Specials menu (press the w key while in Edit mode). The image below indicates the menu placement and (in the lower left) where to alter the parameters for Laplacian Smooth:


Make particle group both perpendicular to normal and random

Change your Emitter Geometry Normal to 0
Be aware of [edit mode] vs [object mode]
Change your Rotation Panel / Initial Orientation to normal tangent.  This will depend on the [edit mode] orientation of your leaves.  In [edit mode] rotate your leaf by 90s degrees an an axis until you get the desired result.  You initial leaf orientiation should be lined up to the xyz axis much like your back is aligned with your spine.
Set the affect of field weights panel/ gravity to 0


How do I programmatically query the state of the timeline "record" button?

If you place the mouse cursor above the record button, you will see:

bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].tool_settings.use_keyframe_insert_auto


Why is glossy shader adding pink in cycles?

Nevermind! so I checked/unchecked "Use Nodes" and the pink went away.


Why is my foot mesh moving out of place when rigging?

everything is fine with the rig, but the Knee IK.L (pole target) bone is the child of some bone in the IK chain. If you parent it to main bone things look much better.
If it still doesn't work, see the blend file attached ( http://www.pasteall.org/blend/41604 ).


How do i turn multiple of the same object into instances?

Select all your leaves (if they have the same material, press ShiftL (Select Linked) > Material), select one last to make it active, press CtrlL (Make Links) > Object Data, now all the leaves share the same mesh, they are all instances.


You need to create 2 or 3 variation meshes to correctly display what you want. You can use 1 emitter but different particle settings (many particle systems inside 1 emitter). Since you´re using hair, the scruffy look is given by the parameters in Kink, Twist and Roughness (use custom roughness curve). Hope this helps. Yes, it will look fantastic, but please create 2 or 3 variations to be used with the 2 or 3 particle systems for the body emitter (one of the systems irremediably will be long feather looking hairs scruffed).

Hope this helps.
BFCT_Schiller


You need to override the context. AFAIK setting area.type does not work.

Baking cloth is very similar to baking fluid or smoke.
This question has already been asked for smoke and fluid, so I will quote one of the answers here:

  Baking smoke is very similar to baking fluid, so I will quote
  brecht's answer:

    It's a bit more complicated than it could be because fluid simulating baking is only exposed as an operator. That means it expects an active
    object in the context, which is usually provided by the user interface
    that is not available in background mode.

  However, it is possible to override context manually, see the api
  docs.

  So for a smoke simulation:

import bpy

for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
    for object in scene.objects:
        for modifier in object.modifiers:
            if modifier.type == 'SMOKE':
                if modifier.smoke_type == 'DOMAIN':
                    override = {'scene': scene, 'active_object': object, 'point_cache': modifier.domain_settings.point_cache}
                    bpy.ops.ptcache.bake(override, bake=True)
                    break

  This will bake the selected cache for all domain objects in the file.

Using the simple script below which is adapted from the script in the above quote (which is in turn adapted from brecht's answer about baking fluid), you can bake the cloth cache for every object in the file which has a cloth modifier:

import bpy

for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
    for object in scene.objects:
        for modifier in object.modifiers:
            if modifier.type == 'CLOTH':
                override = {'scene': scene, 'active_object': object, 'point_cache': modifier.point_cache}
                bpy.ops.ptcache.bake(override, bake=True)
                break


You'll have to give the color ramp something to work on through its "fac" input (using e.g. the "fac" output from your gradient node).

But your example does not have a simple radial gradient, but one that follows the body curve. In that case, it might be easier to make an image with the gradient you want and use UV mapping on the sound board to place the color.


is not clear imho: do you wish to know the volume of the mesh, or the surface area, or the UVmap width/height?

I guess you perhaps need help from the (default bundled) 3d print addon:

this is what you get if you're using the default unit: "blender unit".

But you can change it to a custom unit, like this:

and get the area or volume calculated in the same unit (depending on your model size).

If you can't see this addon on the toolbox's side, you just need to enable it in user preferences.


If you do triangulate (ctrl+T) you can see why you have problems with your mesh structure (you have some Poylgon-faces there which will be exposed by this)

I would strongly suggest to do some manual retopology to clean the mesh base structure. It is really not that hard as it sounds.

The easiest way to do this would be to just select some points, copy and seperate them from that object and than connect them to make nice quad-faces, then you could use edge slide (press "g" twice) to make the positioning of the vertices more even if you need to... etc.:

So you can see how the geometry affects the subdivusion surface behavior here is a comparison: (your faces above, quick manual retopology below)

If you want to maximally reduce the real geometry you can apply the modifier, select the loop cut with Alt-select and delete it with "dissolve edges":


Can this software be used to design a logo?

yes indeed, In fact, Blender does more than I really expected to get from a free software.
Blender can be used to: Model in 3D, UV map, Texture, Rig for animation, Animate in 2D and 3D, even make games using the logic brick method. So yes, a logo is a simple matter for a user of Blender.

But naturally, it will take time and a bit of practice to get good, but hey, when you're there, you're there.


Why does my model look messy and contains dents when I turn on the multi-resolution modifier?

There are 3 main issues that can cause problems for Catmull-Clark subdivision (the algorithm that both MultiRes and Subsurf use).

Non-quad faces.  When modeling in general try to use all quads, i.e. faces with 4 sides.  Subsurf requires quads or tris (3-sided faces), so any non-quad faces will be automatically triangulated which can give undesirable results.  An occasional well-placed tri can be fine, but in general stick to quads.

Inside geometry.  Geometry inside a mesh should be avoided at all costs.  Inside geometry occurs when an edge is shared by more than 2 faces.  This can cause major issues for Subsurfing.  (It seems to be the biggest problem in your case.)

Stretched faces.  Try to avoid extremely non-regular faces, i.e. long, extremely non squarish or equilateral-trianglish faces.  These can create some messy stretched looking and pinching in the resulting mesh.  Your faces don't have to be perfect regular polygons, but long skinny faces will cause problems.

As an aside, your normals are a bit messed up (indicated by the darker faces).  While normals don't play a factor in Subsurfing, messed up normals can cause a lot of other problems.  After removing inside geometry you should select your entire mesh and hit Ctrl+N to recalculate the normals.


This is not a question about using Blender, licensing and legal matters are considered off topic here, we are not lawyers and cannot be liable for answers given here.
Since there is an official document about it online in the Blender official website, where you can find the recommended Blender logo usage guidelines, I will just quote it verbatim.

Blender logo usage guidelines
Blender is a registered trademark (®) of the Blender Foundation in EU
and USA. The Blender logo itself is a property of the Blender
Foundation. The logo and the brand name “Blender” are not part of the
GNU GPL, and can only be used commercially by the Blender Foundation
on products, websites, and publications.
Under the following conditions, third parties may use the Blender logo
as well:

The logo can only be used to point to the product Blender. When used with a link on a web page, it should point to the URL
blender.org.

You will visualize and promote your own branding more prominent than you use the Blender logo. The Blender logo only can be used as a
secondary brand, which means it has to be clear for an average viewer
that this is not an official Blender or Blender Foundation website,
publication or product.

You can use the Blender logo on promotion products, such as T-shirts or caps or trade show booths, provided it is a secondary
brand as described in point 2.

The logo is used unaltered, without fancy enhancements, in original colors, original typography, and always complete (logo + text
blender).

In case you use the logo on products you sell commercially, you always have to contact us with a picture of how it will be used, and
ask for explicit permission.

If you have further questions or doubts, do not hesitate to contact
us.

In short you can use it as long as you don't make it look like your product is made by the Blender Foundation, nor that you are somehow endorsed by or officially associated with it.


Test for the object with the biggest x-vector using python

You can do this without constructing an auxillary dictionary, in one line:

biggest = max(bpy.context.scene.objects, key=lambda ob: ob.location.x)

The key parameter makes max() return the item from bpy.context.scene.objects with the largest location.x property.


Texture painting on the alpha channel (2.73)

The paint modes named Add Alpha and Erase Alpha may be what you are looking for.

If you are using a pen tablet then you can use the pen eraser to use Erase Alpha without having to change the blend mode in the UI.  There does not yet seem to be an alt key press that allows the pen eraser to toggle between Erase and Add.

Personally, I think the better way, for now, is to paint the texture the usual way and then use GIMP to add this texture to the Alpha channel of some other texture.  Blender does not really seem streamlined yet for working with and packing multiple images together in a convenient way. Maybe I'm just missing something and it's all there nicely workable already, blender can do lots of things that are not well documented :)

If you follow this link, I show how to add an image to the alpha channel of another image using GIMP.  Dotted line on curve?


Problem faced while doing re-topology - can't maintain quads

Quick Aside: I find it easier to work from general to detailed when doing retopo work, doing the details and then trying to stitch them together means you lose control over the general topology flow because you are trying to reconcile your dense detail loops.

One of the first things you learn doing subdivision surface modeling is that you will need to cheat occasionally.  You will have to break one of your tenants every now and then, and knowing when and where is one of the primary ways to grow as an artist.  So, some suggestions:

(Addition) One of the things LukeD was trying to point out with his comment and that I missed is that you want your mouth to be the radial anchor for the rest of the face.  This means that the concentric topology loops should be drawn from the mouth.  This allows for the least amount of unnatural deformation when posing the mouth and lips.
If you want to preserve your flow, you should just extend the poly rows to the rest of the lip and have them converge at the lip's taper.  You would also keep your polys as quads, but they will be very small.  This is generally how it is done, see Polycount's face topology examples .
From experience, I would at least consider breaking the flow near there to deform in a collapsable way.
You could also entertain putting a loop reduction quad there as well.
(edit) This is an arrangement of polygons that reduce loops in a way that allow high detail to low detail transitions, and look like such:   Source of picture and a great guide to using them effectively here:  http://topologyguides.com/post/163679954765/loop-reduction


Blender is not using CUDA, aulthough it is configured to do so

on your render settings, make sure you have the rendering device set to GPU and not CPU, selecting CUDA on user preferences only enables the option to render with a GPU but you still need to change it on the render settings


Select the keyframes in the graph editor and press T> Linear. This will only affect the selected keyframes:


Translate a texture in Cycles Material node editor?

First you must provide texture coordinates to the texture node, something like Object or Generated should do.

Then you can use a Vector Mapping node to add or subtract values.


While the .mtl format has options for defining displacement, the obj exporter add-on currently doesn't support them.


How can I control the viewport without a mouse?

You won't have fine-tuned control of the viewport without a mouse, but there are extensive options for controlling it via the keyboard:

You can rotate the viewport using 2, 4, 6, and 8. You can also change between "Perspective" and "Orthographic" views by pressing 5.
By holding ctrl and any of the above, you can pan the view.
You can press / to switch between local and global view.
You can use Shift 2 and Shift 6 to roll the view, as of Blender 2.69 (r59707).
You can centre the view on an object by pressing "." on the number pad.
You can zoom in and out of the view using + and -.
You can access the current camera view with 0.

  * Note: All of the number commands require that you either use your numberpad or enable "emulate numpad" in the preferences.


AMD Radeon R5 M330 is not listed in Blender Preferences

After a quick search I found this:

OpenCL is supported for GPU rendering with AMD graphics cards. Blender supports graphics cards with GCN generation 2 and above.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/gpu_rendering.html

Your GPU is GCN 1st generation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units#Radeon_R5/R7/R9_M300_series


Create text containing a new line with animation nodes

Characters Node in Animation Nodes

Line Break character is added to a list and then joined for output.

Click image above for larger view.

Animation Nodes. Search or Menu.  Composed image above.

Menu >> Add >> Text >> Characters. AN Menus have many items which creates vertical size. Thus the large image to minimize vertical scroll at BSE.


How do I make the supports for the roof of the car?

Edit mode, use circle-select C to highlight these corner vertices of the hood.

Turn on Proportional-editing with the little blue-dot icon at the bottom of your screen.  E Extract, then use G Grab, R Rotate, and S Scale down a little.

Use X Y and Z constraints where needed.

Repeat this a few times to extend your vertices in the right direction, and get the level of detail you're going for.  The more times you extrude, the more control-points you'll end up with.

It may be easier to bring down a secondary view-screen by dragging down on the \\ diagonal-slashes in the corner of your viewport.  Set one to front-view, and the other to side, with your numpad.

I'd also recommend naming your objects in the heirarchy-tree, so it's easier to tell what items are what.


Why is my glass looked like this? , I follow Blender guru's Part 3 Level 3, but ended up having this kind of glass

It was not obvious because your cup seems almost normal but actually you have some flipped normals, go in Edit mode, select all and press AltN > Recalculate Normals, it will fix your problem.


Compositor Effects in Video Sequence Editor. Adjust global brightness/contrast

Bloom. White Range bleeds and blends onto other areas

Compositor and Render windows in Blender
The 3D View Composited Rendered image can be input to VSE.

Above image shows the Render Layers allows the user to select another scene.  The Input node in yellow is for a sequence of images. It is not yet connected but it can replace the Render Layers Node as input. 88 seconds of work or less.

The VSE rendered image can be input to Compositor.  Any Rendered image can be Composited in a different Scene.  Similar to GIMP or Photo????
Some Blender Users may need to create an image sequence in intermediate stages.   Next those images are used again in another scene.  This may or may not be acceptable.  The question of one scene using another scene may arise, or these steps can be manual.
Note the Render Layers Node has an entry for a Scene.  Thus one scene can reference another scene.  This answer will not focus on that useful feature of Blender.  That may be a new question about that feature.
[Scene A] may produce a sequence of PNG or other format images on some storage device.  [Scene B] can read those images and produce new image to write to storage device. Device is hard disk, flash drive or other.  [Scene B] might have a text object, which is not rendered, reading [See The compositor]
Click image to see larger image.
Please verify and improve Compositor Nodes

Yellow arrow shows Compositor is enabled


Can you animate objects using differential equations?

Many differential equations can be solved and animated using animation nodes. For example, the equations for a mass on a spring with a damper were used to animate this cube.

This example is at

Overview

Differential equations can be simulated, frame by frame in an animation, if they are in the form of a 1st order, ordinary differential equations. See an example of forming 1st order ODEs at Example.
Once in the form of a 1st order ODE, simulation consists of calculating the change in state when the frame changes.
The state is used to change some aspect of the animation, like the position.
This can be done by saving the state in a text block, and at each frame change, updating the text block by solving the differential equations.
The animation nodes add-on makes it relatively simple to implement this.

Detailed steps:

Start with the differential equations. Arrange as 1st order differential equations. The equations for a spring-mass-damper are . By rearranging this equation into a 1st order differential equation, this is easily simulated. The 1st order differential equations for the mass spring damper are below. These equations show that the change in velocity is a function of the spring force and the damping force. The change in position is a function of the velocity.

If not already installed, install the animation nodes add on. See Animation Nodes on GitHub
Create a new Blender file.
Create two text blocks. Name them 'IC' and 'state'. Add the initial condition for the equations in to the 'IC' block.

Open up the node editor and create the following animation node setup. The setup is explained below. This setup consists of 4 major parts. A part to read the state from the data blocks, a part to write the new state, a apart to solve the equations for one frame, and a part to update the animation.

The part that reads the state from the text block includes logic to determine if the animation just started. If the frame number is 1, then the initial conditions are used for the equations. Otherwise, the last stored state is used. The contents of the blocks is converted to numbers to work with the equations.

The differential equations are solved in this part. These equations mirror the equations in step #1 with some modification to solve the differential equation (see euler method). The time step (dT) for each frame is used to determine how much the position and velocity change. These changes are added to the prior position and velocity.

The updated state is written to the 'state' datablock.

To have the animation affected, the animation nodes take the position variable and use it to change he position of the cube.

The blend file with this example is located at


Script calculated multiple times on frame

Clean the handlers.
with no handlers appended at all, running question script will print the frame once.
There is only one function assigned
>>> for f in bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre:
...     f.__name__, f.__module__
...
('tester', '__main__')

running question script three more times
>>> for f in bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre:
...     f.__name__, f.__module__
...
('tester', '__main__')
('tester', '__main__')
('tester', '__main__')
('tester', '__main__')

will see frame printed 4 times. (One assumes you made an edit to get the -1)
Clear the handler.
Can clear all the functions assigned to a hander via
bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.clear()

to remove all the methods from each time you run script above.
Or iterate over appended funcions and remove those where f.__name__ == "tester" or by module if testing in text editor (__name__ == "__main__")
When a handler is assigned a method via an addon, it can be appended in the register and removed in the unregister.  The namespace of the addon ensures its the same method both times  my_addon.foo_function  whereas when run from main thread "__main__.foo_function" is not seen as the same.
Example in console of removing any frame change pre handler function added via main thread.
>>> fs2remove = [f for f in bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre
...     if f.__module__ == "__main__"]

>>> fs2remove
[<function tester at 0x7ffac5165ca0>, <function tester at 0x7ffac51659d0>, <function tester at 0x7ffac5165d30>, <function tester at 0x7ffac5165550>, <function tester at 0x7ffac5165700>]
>>> while fs2remove:
...     bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.remove(fs2remove.pop())
...
>>> bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre[:]
[]


Please use [ctrl+a, f] instead .
Description

shift+a shows this popup :-

If f is pressed now, you will virtually press the "Search..." which show nothing.
For some unknown reasons, the button is  currently  broken.

ctrl+a shows this popup, which is what you want:-


How get object possition after action in Blender_Game

Bpy does not work in the game engine. Instead you have to use the game engine modules

For this particluar application, your script could look something like:

import bge

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
own = cont.owner
scene = own.scene
button = scene.objects['buttonLogic1']
print(own.worldPosition)

The standalone modules are also available in the game engine.


How to make a rope curving in a certain way

It's easy to lose bits if their origins aren't in the right place. Here's one approach to your job: I hope the loops are circular enough for you. Working in the XY plane..

The curve:

(As suggested by @Robert Roth)

Make an unfilled 6-sided mesh circle, ShiftD duplicate it in Edit Mode, X delete a couple of edges, and F join the loose ends.
Then, in Object Mode, AltC convert the mesh to a curve. With all vertices selected,  In the Tool region, set the Spline Type to Bezier, and V convert all the vertices to 'Auto'

There may be a bit of tweaking to do...

Note where the origin of the curve is: at world 0. When you create the profile / set up your rope, to make things easier, put its origin at the same place. Make sure all object-level transforms of the rope (especially scale) are applied.

The rope:
(For example)

A little trefoil profile, made out of 3 6-sided unfilled circles, snapped together, doubles removed, internal edges removed.
With all vertices selected, ShiftAltOSet Origin to geometry, and set the transform of the profile object to (0,0,0) Now everything is lined up.
Screw modifier, 120 degrees
Array modifier, relative Z, Merge on, Count to fit the curve.
Curve modifier, Deformation Axis Z, target: the curve
Subdivision modifier, level 1

With this sort of result:

EDIT: (response to @Teglik)

You can manipulate the path-mesh in various ways: here, working on the left half, E extending terminal vertices, and R rotating and  S scaling the new vertices in/out from the 3D cursor at the origin, before duplicating and rotating the whole left half through 180 to make the right half, F joining the ends, before converting to a curve.


Round Cube

I don't know if the codes comes from the "original" polysphere script, but with Extra Object add-on comes an operator called "Round Cube" which create a very similar geometry.

You'll just have to make sure to use the "Quadsphere" preset:

You can get the "original" polysphere script for pre-2.61 Blender version from the author website and then append the object in your scene (if you want to use a more recent version).

It seems to be slightly difference between the loopcuts position of the object created with the two methods.


Using localPosition to create a property based tracking system

So this is the code I ended up using. But then I realized I can just check the worldPosition.x and y directly. So this was kind of a dumb question sorry


Splash Screen 2.79 test render does not work

You need to select frame 11 for rendering. Otherwise the initial frame is rendered which is a blurry screen with a small pose of the agent in the background.


Volume shaders should provide the desired result.

1) Create a solid geometry for the volume. Make sure the volume does not touch anything on the interior. In this case, the blob on the cylinder had a Boolean added to remove the interior, then the original cylinder was hidden. A slight smaller copy of the cylinder was used in the rendering.

2) Use a combination of the surface shaders and volume shaders for the material. The surface shaders should be mostly transparent so the volume effects are apparent.


Question about particle systems ("static particles")

Is it possible to achieve a similar result with Blender?

Yes. Absolutely.

What follows is a sloppy facsimile to demonstrate technique not artistry.  You are the artist.  The background use is black for legibility.  I have no idea of your future background.  Blender Render not Cycles.  No lights. Emission material.

You wrote

    over a photo with Gimp

Your writing seems to imply you want a transparent background.

Any single or range of frames can be rendered and saved to disk with a transparent background.
PNG format.

Because you state you only want one image and not a sequence that can be critiqued as a moving image you might just need a circle or sphere mesh and generate particles or spherical texture for density.  Forces are convenient.  The movement or location might come from the [normal velocity] of the Blender Particles System.  Color and Blur if that suits you in the Compositor

The particles themselves can be group of mesh objects or PNG bill board images.  You can also generate all particles in 1 or 2 frames and by the 3 frame the image is static if there are not forces, normal velocity, gravity or similar.  Splurge and generate a few hundred images and pick the one you want. Since the shape is generally circular spherical you can layer PNGS with rotation for increased density.

If you do not value your originality, and the mentioned image is intended for sharing you could  you can also remove the background from the image.  GIMP or Blender Compositor.


How do I gradually go from one material to another?

I would normally handle something like by using one material across the entire face (or, if it's for a game, one material for the entire character) and paint into the texture the details like skin transitioning into lipstick, etc.
You can use Blender's Texture Paint mode to achieve this, but your object will need to first be UV unwrapped.


Procedural Text in Video Sequence Editor

You can add stamp like this in Render -> Metadata section:

There is now so much settings, but you can bake over image a strip name, labels of markers, frame number and time here.


As John Eason, set origin is not available in the ShiftS pop-up menu, you need to go in Object mode and right click > Set Origin > Origin to 3D Cursor.
Or enable the Transform Affects Only > Origins option and in that case you can use the ShiftS > Selection to 3D Cursor as in that case it will move the origin:


Where is the Symmetrize option under Remesh is located now?

Just expand the ► Symmetry section (next section in your screenshot), at the bottom there is the Symmetrize button. (Blender 2.91)


Weight Painting: How to set weight for part of mesh for only one vertex group?

If you select those vertices, then on the right of the Vertex Groups list, there's a dropdown menu (down arrow) > Remove From All Groups.


Removing doubles will merge vertices that are close together, in your case you still have duplicate vertices that are further apart than remove duplicates is configured to merge.

You can increase the merge distance used by pressing F6 or looking at the bottom of the toolbar region.

You may also want to switch to vertex select mode to see where the extra vertices are and either delete them manually or move them closer so that remove doubles works, snapping can be used to move them to the same location for merging.


Shadow catcher casts light (?) on the floor

It's a problem in Compositor. Seems like by mistake you connected AO pass instead of Shadow pass of Background layer to Add node in Compositor. The same issue as yours:

And correct one:


Having issues with bridging simple edge loop

Your normals have different directions. You can tell by looking at the shading of the two pieces, whereas the left one has the shadow on the underside, the other one has it on the top.

To clear this up, in Edit Mode, select all faces and hit Shift + N to Recalculate the outside Normals.


How to see whats beyond the video sequence editor

You may choose to do some of the scrolling in the 3D View first to produce an image sequence, then  later used in the Blender Video Sequence Editor, VSE.  The 3D View can show objects not in the camera.

As another example if a Blender User wanted to have fancy 3D titling that would be created in the 3D View first as an image sequence first.  Simple titling is available in the VSE.

By using planes with a texture and a camera with orthogonal settings you camera will behave more like the VSE.  The texture is the movie or image sequence that has already been created.

I tend to have two scenes.  SceneA, 3D View and Post processing No VSE.  SceneB, VSE only.


How to set fast the same customizations that i had in the previus versions of Blender?

Just copy the preferences files to the new version.
Look for the userpref.blend of the old version and copy it to the folder of the new one.

In Linux is usually in /home/yourusername/.config/blender/version number/config.

For Windows it should be in \users\ your user name\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\ version number \config.


Distortion in the whole mesh when applying scaling to a part

Is it possible that you have enabled proportional editing with random pattern?

You can disable it by click on the blue circle and selecting disable or by using the shortcut, o.


You can override the context when calling view_axis() operator:

import bpy
for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        override = bpy.context.copy()
        override['area'] = area
        bpy.ops.view3d.view_axis(override, type='TOP')
        break


Mark freestyle edge to all objects in a collection with Python

I did some more research and found the solution.

import bpy

for obj in bpy.data.collections['wireframe'].all_objects: obj.select_set(True)

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='SELECT')

bpy.ops.mesh.mark_freestyle_edge(clear=False)


Blender 2.79b (and RC 2.80) require opengl32.dll be present before Blender will open (Windows 10)

I had the same problem. Here is how I solved it.
The PC has two graphics cards: one built-in Intel and one NVIDIA. By default, Windows (10-pro) recognizes and enables both. However, Blender default will work only with one of them. If you happen to use the other one instead, then Blender will close on start up.
Solution: Disable the graphics card which you are not using. Blender will go with the other one. It should work.
(Actually my experience is with Blender 2.90.1. Blender closes/crashes on loading/start up)


It's in the "Input" section of the "Add" menu (4th from the bottom).

There may be another issue (like you're looking at the world shader, or nodes are enabled). More can be determined if you share a full screenshot of the node editor.


When you add a particle system to an object and change its type to "Hair" one more mode appears in the VIEW 3D modes (like Object mode, Sculpt mode, Edit mode, etc) - it is called Particle Edit mode. Select it and you will find many options allowing you to manually edit hair, including deleting, adding and editing them one by one.


Is Volume distribution for Geometry Nodes available at the moment?

well, it is a really easy setup:

grid is this:

the object with the geometry node itself is just a cube, from which you delete all vertices. That's it.
and you will get:


How do I change the MTL File to an actual image?

A MTL file is just a material definition. It doesn't contain image data. See here for further (all) details about the MTL file format: http://paulbourke.net/dataformats/mtl/

If you're using OBJ files, you need three things:

the model data as OBJ, contains vertices, faces, smoothing groups and texture coordinates, etc.
the texture(s) (any image format, e.g. PNG)
the material library file (which is referenced in your OBJ file)

See also:

the blender manual about the OBJ file format
this question for OBJ exporting options in Blender


How to create a minimap with independent movement?

Moving map camera

The code snippet does not move the camera at all.

I guess it is supposed to setup the VideoTexture source of an object that shows the output of the map camera.

You simply move the map camera as you like. I guess you break the parent-child relationship to the character to achieve what you are looking for.

Finding the minimap camera

The code snippet contains a strange way to find the minimap camera.

I suggest following search:

for scene in logic.getSceneList():
    mapcam = scene.cameras.get("map_cam")

Edit:

You already split the task down into smaller operations. This is good.

My above answer was telling you how to improve your code snippet, which btw. does not do any of the described operations. So I'm a bit lost where your problems are.

I suggest to discuss that in a forum like blenderartist.org or ask single more specific questions.

Here is a short strip down of the mentioned operations.

move camera only

As easy as it sounds. Do not parent it to something. Apply logic to move the camera.

camera travel a long the mini map shows the map in a litle circle in a corner of the screen

Do you mean you want to minimap shown in an edge of the window?

Place a mesh object (disc) there.
Add UV and a material with a texture
apply the videotexture as you mentioned in your snippet to show the render of the minimap camera. (You might want to use the DynamicTexture project if you are not that familar with Python)
refresh the texture at each single frame

without Character

This depends on what the minimap camera is seeing.

Typically you do not show the same thing as the main camera. You show a corresponding "level" that contains a map (several objects that form the map).

The minimap camera gets moved over this map. As result the minimap object (see section above) will show different parts of the map (rather than the level). As the map does not contain the character, it will not be visible.

The trick is to know how to move the minimap camera to get a correlation to the level camera.

press a button to back to start place

Play an action that set the minimap camera to that start place (above the map)

parent camera again to the character and walk with the camera follow the character

Parenting is an option. This will work fine when

the level is the map
the map is at an offset of the level and has the same scale as the level (e.g it is under the ground.

Example: the map is under the terrain:

(side view)

It will not work fine when
* the map is in a different scene
* the map has a different scale or orientation

In such cases you need Python to synchronize the motion of the minimap camera with the motion of the character.


Can I make animated body interact with rigid body object

I've had issues with this as well and this is the solution that works well with segmented characters. Rigid body objects don't respond to the armature modifier. To work around this, make the hand a separate object, remove the armature modifier from it, and parent it to the hand bone. Then enable rigid body physics, make it passive, and check animated.


Firstly, I'm assuming that these are blender settings.

To fix your problem, I would start with load factory settings. Loading the factory settings will reset every thing to the default settings. You can then customize from there.


You may want to try using a particle system to control the smoke. If you add some normal velocity to the particles they will spread out form the head a lot more. Particles will still be affected by the force fields, but you will also have a number of other controls as well to control how they behave.


There are two techniques for animating text.

The first technique is to have a vast number of text objects whose hide_render property (the camera icon in the outliner) is keyframed so that each only shows up in the rendered scene for the appropriate frame or frames.

The other is to use a frame_change_pre handler (python) to change the body of the text curve.

Here is a modified version of the example from Garrett's answer to How can I make dynamic text in an animation?

import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene

def recalculate_text(scene):
    obj = bpy.data.objects['Text']
    bar = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
    obj.data.body = "h=%.1f" % bar.dimensions[2]
    obj.location[2] = bar.dimensions[2] + bar.location[2] + 0.2

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(recalculate_text)

(I modified the default cube by moving its origin to the bottom of the cube, and animated its Z size property).

You would have to put this python script in a text buffer and run it.  If you want it to automatically run every time blender loads the file you should give the text buffer a name ending in .py and click the Register checkbox for that text buffer.  This also means you will have to load the .blend file Trusted (either using the Reload Trusted button, or by invoking blender with the -y flag).

The other technique of having a swarm of text curves whose visibility is animated is demonstrated at http://web.purplefrog.com/~thoth/blender/python-cookbook/data-graph.html .  Here is a relevant excerpt:

def setVisibility(obj, f1, f2):

    if not f2 is None:
        obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='hide', frame= bpy.context.scene.frame_end+10)
    obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='hide_render', frame=f1)
    obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='hide', frame=f1)
    obj.hide = True
    obj.hide_render = True
    obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='hide', frame=0)
    obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='hide_render', frame=0)
    if not f2 is None:
        obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='hide', frame=f2)
        obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='hide_render', frame=f2)

def makeText(text, loc, f1, f2):
    curve = bpy.data.curves.new("label", 'FONT')
    curve.body = text
    o1 = bpy.data.objects.new("label", curve)
    bpy.context.scene.objects.link(o1)
    o1.location = loc
    if not f1 is None:
        setVisibility(o1, f1, f2)
    o1.parent = bpy.data.objects["font folder"]

    curve.materials.append(bpy.data.materials["text"])

    return o1

def make2Text(text1, text2, loc, f1, f2):
    o1 = makeText(text1, loc, f1, f2)
    o2 = makeText(text2, loc, f1, f2)
    o1.data.align = 'RIGHT'

    return (o1, o2)

# animating text by creating hundreds of individual text objects that pop in and out
f1 = -1
for i,xy  in enumerate(data):
    f2 = frameForX(i, len(data), f0, f9)
    f3 = frameForX(i+1, len(data), f0, f9)
    if (i+1 >= len(data)):
        f3 = None
    if (f2>f1):
        make2Text("x=%d,"%xy[0], "y=%.1f"%xy[1], [4,6,1], f2, f3)
    f1 = f2


The primary problem with the lack of visual space is that you're using an Emission Shader for the blue and the red.  Emission shaders cannot receive shadows so they look more cartoony for something like this.  I would change the material to Diffuse:

I added a UV Sphere with a Solidify Modifier and mixed the Glass Shader with Transparent (mostly transparent) to take the "edge off the glassiness".


Material setings in properties window is missing

You just need to scroll up in the properties panel.

Because there is no material on that object, the panel is much shorter. If you had just scrolled down when editing the material on your pink object, then the New material button will be off the screen.


Color panel in the properties section is changed

Did you accidentally change to Blender render instead of Cycles? At the top bar in the 3D editor try switching it to Cycles Render. Hope that helps :).


I imported an obj file into Blender and cannot add an uv wrap from a png file

To do this you must unwrap the .OBJ, (wavefront). You can do this by going to Edit Mode, selecting all of the faces by hitting 'A' on the keyboard, and pressing 'U' to unwrap. Then select unwrap or smart UV unwrap in the options drop down menu you get when hitting U, and you are done with the first step. The next step is to select a texture. By the way, you must be in Blender Cycles render mode to continue. Once you set your renderer to Cycles, go to the material settings for the object in the properties tab. Select whatever material you want for the object, and set the color to image texture. Then you can import your texture by clicking the file icon next to the image texture settings.


These might be the possible errors:-
1. Check if there is sufficient space in the drive your os is installed.
2. Check if the addon downloaded is of correct windows architecture I.e. 32 bit or 64 bit.
3. Check if the blender version you are using is same as mentioned for the addon.
4. Install a stable blender release instead of nightly build or alpha build.
5. Check that the python version you are using match the one on which the addon is scripted.
6. Check if the addon is complete and is not missing any command line.

If it still doesn't work you may have a error or bug report on the respective page.


I have figured out the answer to my problem. It seems you can keyframe a rigid body's collision group and so I did. by pressing I on the collision group layer and positioning your marker to the specific keyframe where you want your rigid body to not affect other meshes.


In any mode, if you want to switch between wireframe and solid use Z.
You can also use Alt+Z for toggling x-ray.
Alternatively, you can use the viewport header.
Take a look at the manual.


Can't Find Color Mapping for Fluid Simulation in 2.9

they removed it from blender. You have to use 2.8


That example tutorial runs and returns an error if you haven't saved the example image in the tutorial to your home folder.

Texture paint is easy enough without python code being necessary, but this seems to be over-complicating what would be normal per face material and image texture assignment. The example tutorial provides no result that is of benefit other than to understand how the code works - but I may be biased toward using a paint or bake option instead.


You can use Pointiness from the Input Geometry Node
But as you can see here from these wire-frames the geometry plays a big part.

Using a Mix Shader with a BSDF Shader and an Emission Shader and controlling the effect with a Color Ramp

Of course, you could remove all the extra geometry that does not affect the effect.