How to correctly bake glossy/reflection from camera POV?

Blender uses the normal as the camera ray vector when baking. While it's not possible to change this, it is possible to change the surface normal.

The trick then is to calculate a surface normal that produces the same reflection vector from the camera ray as the original surface normal would have from a custom camera position. You could do this with either a bunch of Cycles nodes, or with a OSL script:

shader osl_reflection_normal(
  vector FakeCamPos = 10,
  int IsCameraRay = 1,
  output normal ReflNormal = N)
{
    if (IsCameraRay)
    {
        // Normal pointing from FakeCamPos to here
        normal fakeCamNormal = normalize(P - FakeCamPos);

        // Reflect fakeCamNormal across the surface
        normal fakeReflection = reflect(fakeCamNormal, N);

        // For some reason I points towards the camera? Otherwise we'd use -I
        normal incidenceNormal = normalize(I);

        // The average of the incidence normal and the fake reflection normal gives us a normal that reflects one to the other.
        ReflNormal = normalize(fakeReflection + incidenceNormal);
    }
}

You'll want to plot in the camera position for FakeCamPos, and supply the "Is Camera Ray" from a Light Path node. The output goes into the Normal input of the glossy shader.


In 2.8 and beyond, you have a drop-down in middle (top or bottom) of the 3d-viewport where you can select the Pivot Point.   You probably have it set (defaulted?) to "3d-cursor".  Change it to "Individual origins".


How can you smooth the edge between two materials?

You can't really smooth the transition between two materials; materials are exclusively applied to faces and always delimited discrete peaces of geometry. Here are some alternative workflows:

Smoothing the transition between materials:

You can use a texture to mix the "materials", but everything is actually in one material instead, and different parts actually just use different shaders.

Use a wave texture as the mix factor of a mix node mixing the two node setups used to make the bright strips and the dark surface of the ball (everything is inside one one material datablock).

By using the Color Ramp node to adjust the falloff of the wave texture, you can control the sharpness of the transition.

Also see

I'd like to have portions of a texture not glossy

Other techniques:

Some other things which may make the transition a little more natural:

Using separate materials based on mesh topology (like in your question), extrude the faces with the emission material in a bit:

Extrude (E)
Cancel the grab part of the extrusion (Esc)
Scale along the normals (AltS).

This may give a more natural looking separation between the two:

Use the Material Index Pass to create a bit of glare in the compositor:

Enable the pass in Renderlayers > Passes
Set the Pass Index of the emission material to a number that no other material has as its pass index (though we can use one index for all the different colors of the emission material).
Set up the composite nodes (click for bigger image):

Make sure to set the ID Mask node to the same index as the material index defined before.


The Nvidia GeForce GT 1030 supports CUDA 6.1 rendering, therefore it is compatible with the most recent version of Blender Cycles rendering. (Currently 2.92). To make it work, simply select and enable it as a Cycles CUDA rendering device in the Blender Preferences, then select GPU rendering in the Cycles rendering properties panel.


How do I merge multiple rows of vertices together?

Just to illustrate @moonboots' point

In Edge Mode CtrlAlt select the edge ring
X > Edge Collapse


AMD Radeon r9: weird results using GPU compute

after reading through the related topic post my @Mr Zak, going back to to an older driver sorted the issue out for me using the 16.4.2 version, thanks for the help guys


BI

Reduce the value of Tip to in the hair material under Materials > Strand > Size:

Cycles

Again decrease the value of Tip, but in Particle Settings > Cycles Hair Rendering:


Can't rotate objects in edit mode in Blender 2.8

Apparently I was in face select mode and my circle doesn't have any polygons...

When I changed to edge select the object rotated.

Thank you for trying to help me. I'm dumb.


How can I adjust keyframes of multiple objects when some are invisible?

Yes, you can do that. At the bottom of the graph editor there is a ghost button:

Push it in, and now you need to make everything visible in the viewport. Since it is keyframed, this won't do anything. Then, without changing frame enter a. You can now return to the graph editor and edit everything. I just needed to reset the 3d cursor and resize everything


I didn't understand well, but you can try Alt + R to clear an object rotation, or Shift + C to set the cursor at the center.


Please go to the edit mode

Hit the Loop Cut and Slide as shown in the picture below

Hover over on cube and wait for the line appear, move pointer to switch between, horizontal and vertical edges,

scroll your mouse wheel two times to increase the number of cuts to 3, hit enter or double click to finalized it.

You will get your required result.

As shown in the image below:

Here is the solution based on your updates

Add a plane on the top of your cube, slightly bigger than your cube, go to the edit mode and add 3 loop cuts on the plane
Hit A to select all faces of the plane, hit x and delete only face, so that we have only a grid of edges, as shown below:

Select the plane and then your cube (in order), enter edit mode, go to top view (numpad 7), make sure you are in orthographic mode
Hit "knife project" and check the box "Cut Through"

Go to object view and select your cube and edit mode you will get the same loop cuts as you did in your plane, delete the plane for the clean up

I hope it worked for you :)

As per your updates

These edges are not seems to be required.


How to get motion blur without an animation

Use a directional blur node in the compositor for the background, it should work for all other superheroes as well.


Using dupli-faces changes the orientation of the child object

It looks like you can't avoid both problems:

The duplications follow the faces normals. So if you want them 90° you need to rotate the original object 90°.
The original objects is still visible in Solid mode. It won't be visible in Rendered mode though. If you want to make it more discrete you can scale it down, select the faces, and in the Duplication panel enable the Scale option, then adjust the Inherit Scale value.


Instead of two empties use one curve and an empty as follows :

add a curve circle
add  Array modifier with some offset ( 1.05) and set it to fit curve
add a curve modifier and set to use the curve circle
add Array modifier with the empty as an offset object
this is the setup now :

and the modifiers ( on the brick ) :

the result and manipulation :

all object should be at the origin, sclale the curve to change the diamater , and rotate the empty to create the rotation offset

update : for any wall shape :

add a stack of 3 array modifiers and one curve modifier as follows  :

You control the length and shape of the wall using the curve :


How to easily draw a grease pencil on top of an image

[EDIT: added second way, easier method]
So, you want immediate feedback since you want to draw something on top of an image. There are 2 ways:

Draw while having background image activated on your camera (while also in camera mode obviously):
Select your camera, go to the Camera properties, check the Background Images, then Add Image, then open file manager icon and select the image you want.

Tweak the settings of the background image, it's straightforward and you can see the result on your camera. Note that the default frame method is actually stretch, but I change it to fit to show you the white gap on the sides of the image from the camera since the dimension output is not the same as the image.
This background image is only reference, so you still need to composite the image and render output in compositor, next step is make sure you know what you're doing around the image size difference (if any) in the compositor.

Import image as plane (bundled add-on): enable this add-on first (if you haven't already) from Preferences > Add-ons > search "import image", check to enable.

Now there will be new option: Add > Image > Images as Planes. If you have selected the image, change the settings first: Material Settings: Shadeless, Align: Face Camera. this way you don't have to rotate the plane to match the camera.

Now, match your image size with the output dimension: scale the plane until its 2 sides match one of the camera width, then adjust the Y accordingly.

or even better PRO TIP: if you don't know the image ratio, or the image is too big and you want just smaller size for the render output, you can input math into the input field. For example, if the image is 3687x2142 px (landscape), but you only need lower than 1500px for the each side, you can input 3687/3 in the X resolution, and 2142/3 for the Y, resulting in 1,229 x 714 px.


How to get vertex snapping to snap to one vertex

I think what you are wanting to do is make those two segments, the handle and base, into one solid object.

Well, the easiest way I would recommend doing this is to select the two objects in Object mode, then apply a boolean modifier set to union. This will instantly merge the two objects together for you.

Here's a tutorial that helped me understand using boolean modifiers better if you aren't familiar with them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcUe-ab_jQs


Are there any non-standard meta objects available?

No, and adding new meta-ball types to the existing system can't be done using python/addons.

(unless you count composing shapes from many metaballs).


How to make my logo spin showing the front side on both sides?

it seems you want to show the same image on front and back (we don't know if as in a coin, ie the same exact image on both sides, or as a photographic film, ie the backside looks reversed ).

This is also a multiple question, as different steps are needed. So I will just drive you through what you need to learn to do.

Since you import a svg you get a curve object: it must be converted to mesh object first (alt+c), then add a face. If it needs depth, you can extrude that face (and so you get two faces, one on each side).

then you must assign the image to the face(s). This can be done in a number of ways (uvmap, different materials...) and it also can depend on the rendering engine used...

Lastly you need the rotation. This is done adding a few (rotation) keyframes at different frames, enough for one full turn. by default you get an "eased" movement (starts and stops slowly) but you can later edit animation curves to make it constantly rotating, without "easing", if you wish so...

As you see, you have different (simple) tasks to learn. As there are already many answers for these tasks, look for them with the search tool...

edit: I noticed you added an example image but it seems not symmetrical, so it won't be possible to show the exact image on both sides, apparently. To explain better, I created an example with a (even more) asymmetrical mummy image and imported svg curve, like this:

here

the svg has been converted (ALTC) to mesh, and rotated 90°over X
then selecting all vertices I created a face (F).
then I extruded it over Y (EY) a bit to give it depth.
then in edit mode, ortho mode, I created a UVmap (U project from view, bounds) for the face
then I created a simple material, shadeless.
added a texture (the mummy .png) and used the UV mapping method, specifying the UVmap created at point 4. This makes the .png fit perfectly the object face.
lastly I animated a full turnaround with using keyframes, then gave linear extrapolation.

If you wish to learn, try asking here about each of the above points that you don't understand (maybe try before because it could be really simple) just by referring to manual or other examples


Blender 2.8 GPU Cycles Compatibility .. NVidia Quadro M1000M ... Windows 10

By coincidence, today I did a render using Blender 2.8 on a laptop with a Quadro M1000M card. No issues there, worked fine!

Quadro cards seem to be made for rendering and GFX design, so a good choice. A good read: https://www.engineering.com/DesignSoftware/DesignSoftwareArticles/ArticleID/18630/Whats-the-Difference-Between-GeForce-and-Quadro-Graphics-Cards.aspx.

Regarding the number of tiles, here are the answers:

Cycles only uses 1 tile per GPU (does not apply to CPU);
The number of tiles are dictated by available logical cores (or
threads);
Blender seems to use a maximum of 8 tiles;

So what brought me on the wrong track earlier: I thought I was seeing 4 tiles for the quadro and 4 for the CPU, but actually it was 1 tile for the quadro (as expected) and the remaining 7 tiles for the CPU (being a quadcore with hyperthreading = 8 logical cores (or threads) in total).
In retrospective to my desktop, where I also have a quad core CPU with hyperthreading (8 threads), but also 4 GPU's (2x 1070 TI's + 2x 970) = 8 tiles total.


Problem : Character fbx export has weird animation becaus of IK

Thanks my merciful God ! Solution Found !
I make the character like a 2D in (( X-Z Plane )). Its just like a 2D object.
So in fpx export settings and in Armature options , i set primary bone axis to X axis and secondary bone axis to Z axis.

Now legs are okay !


CTRL + A Menu Apply Transformation : where to find in Python document

For this one ( or other shortcuts ) :

go to User File -> preferences -> Input
search for a key combination  "Ctrl  A"
expand the shortcut for "call menu" under "Object mode"
you can see the command is "wm.call_menu" and the name attribute is "VIEW3D_MT_object_apply"

since the shortcut point to an operator which should be under "bpy.ops", we use this line to call the same menu  :

bpy.ops.wm.call_menu(name="VIEW3D_MT_object_apply")


When Export from UE4 to Blender as fbx. IK Bones are gone and the skeleton from my character changed

The IK bones were still present. I just had to rename them. To be honest, I still don't know what Blender deleted and why the traceback error occurred, but at least I still have the IK bones and the other bones. The best part is that the bones are even in the right position. :D


How can I make cloth never get inside mesh

I think you first should increase the Cloth Collision Quality.
See How can I make sure that simulated cloth doesn't go through other objects?


What's the recommended method of circumventing infinite recursion with the scene_update_post handler?

I ran into this problem myself a while ago - the way i solved it was basically using a semaphore-like approach, where the handler would set a boolean value to true when it is invoked, and set it to false before it returns. Before setting the boolean, it would first check if it was already set, and if so, return without executing. I doubt that race conditions are a thing in Blender's python API, but hey, it works.

handler_running = False

    def handler():
        if handler_running:
            return
        handler_running = True
        # Do something
        handler_running = False


How can I texture a complex road system?

What I do with road textures is to differentiate the roads by type. Multi-lane, controlled access, divided throughways, might be one type; multi-lane urban roadways, where there may be four, six, or more rarely more, lanes in each direction, but where the roadways have frequent junctions with perpendicular streets, two land urban streets, two lane rural roads, &c. Then I create a material and texture for each type of roadway, and apply it to the appropriate sections of roadway. It's relatively easy, but not particularly fast, as sections have to be created, and materials mapped to them individually.

REVISED ANSWER

I have found that in many cases, software packages like Blender are so easy to use that it's easy to do virtual doodling, and then because of the time put into a project, we start seeing the doodling as something more. When this happens it can become a challenge to do something different due to the time we have invested in the doodle. But sometimes it is expedient to let the doodle remain a doodle, and go back and start over with a better, and more thoughtfully considered workflow. Using the screenshot posted by the OP as an example, there are a number of considerations that could benefit from this. For example, the screenshot seems to suggest only two types of roads, but the sizes may not be of the proper proportion. Some of the wider lines, might represent 4 lane roads, while others might be 6 lanes wide. Same with the smaller lines. Some might be two lane streets, and others might be one and one-half lane alleys. And the overall layout of the streets might not be quite what one would wish, either, given a bit more thought.

What I frequently do, after having a map such as the one in the image, is to create a screenshot of it, then scale the image to the sizes I might imagine it to be. So, suppose I decide that the image needs to be transformed a bit: I want it somewhat rescaled, so that what is the vertical dimension (as seen on the screen) is 2 units, and the horizontal dimension is 3. I'll create a plane object in Blender that is 2 units x 3 units, and use the image as a UV texture to place the map on the plane. With the lighting and camera in layer 1, I place the background image in Blender layer 2. Next, also in layer 2, I create a grid mesh as a separate object, but the same size as the background image. I place a separate grid mesh object in layer 3, to use as the basis for my modeling. Unless the city is unusually flat, I mark terrain contour lines first, usually outlining these in the base grid. Then I place waterways--streams, rivers, ponds, and lakes--second, since that is the usual natural order of things. These are created as separate objects at the beginning, so that I can hide and reveal them at the click of the eye button in the outliner window. Third, I place the roads. Having previously considered the size and nature of the roadways, I start by creating a small segment to the desired profile, using appropriate profiles for various types of roads. a lane and a half alley in an urban area may be simply a flat surface. The two line street with which it intersects will have a more complex profile: created with a pedestrian walkway and curb on each side, with the two lanes each with a small grade which goes from a peak in the center of the street, to a low point at the curb edge. Generally speaking, each lane of the roadway will be represented by a separate division of the roadway. When I have a profile for a particular type of road way defined to my satisfaction, then I'll copy the profile to a point over the background image, and extrude it a short distance, then define the necessary materials (and textures, if I use any) and assign them to the section of road created. Then I extrude the road sections, which will generally reproduce the assigned materials and textures on each new section of roadway created by extrusion.


Is there a tool to combine two different sides of a asymmetrical bottle design? Previously used rail sweep in Rhino

you can use the Bridge Edge Loops function. As Gorgious says, make sure that you have the same number of vertices, switch to Edge Selection, select all, press right click > Bridge Edge Loops, and in the Operator box set the Number of Cuts and the Smoothness values:


Strategy to reduce polygon count of Comet 67P shape model using python

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApzVWuPa4A4
Try creating a normal map out of the high poly comet. The above tutorial teaches how to do this, so far i only thinks this works in blender render unless someone else knows how to make it work in cycles (if that's what you want to use). Basically use the decimate to to remove polys from your mesh then add the normal map to create the illusion of all the valleys etc. Watch the video to understand what i mean/


Height Map Using Vertex World Height (Z) as RGB Value

Connect the depth output to a viewer node, then open an UV/Image window and select the viewer node as display.

If you click on the image (which seems generally totally white) you can read the values of every pixel.

So, you can directly save as image using a format that can handle theese "super white" values, like openEXR.

Just remember that Depth pass is not world height but distance from camera, so you will have to add a simple math node, subtracting the Depth value from the Z location of the camera (in my example 5 Blender Units)


The scene_update handlers are called on every update, which is basically the Blender's refresh rate. On empty scene I measured 200 updates/sec. On every cycle Blender has to update the whole scene and run the python code on top of that - that leaves a very small processing time for the python part (cca 17ms is ok which translates into 60 updates/sec).

Thus any code that is being run inside scene_update handlers is extremely performance sensitive and should be optimized.

Optimization tips:

Before updating or processing anything, check if it has to be updated or processed. In this case run the code only when number of objects changes, check the length of the scene.objects list first:

import bpy

num_objects = 0

def handler(scene):
    global num_objects
    if len(scene.objects) == num_objects:
        # Nothing to do
        return
    num_objects = len(scene.objects)
    # Your code here
    return

bpy.app.handlers.scene_update_post.append(handler)

You can use global variables, custom properties, properties of objects or binary flags to memorize when code needs to be run.
Update or process your stuff in an efficient way:

pre-sort arrays where it will increase performance
use data-structures optimized for the task (like dictionaries, numpy arrays, etc.) and access them in an efficient way
use list comprehension for cycling through list elements
use local variables wherever possible
profile your code to know where the bottlenecks are: How can you profile a Python script?

If it needs to be really fast, write it in Fortran, C, C++ or Assembly, then call it from Python.

Python is not C, Java or Haskell. Knowledge of how other languages perform to Python isn't very well transferable, your python code will pick up speed and performance with your experience in the language. The next example illustrates it well (from: wiki.python.org - Performance Tips):

  % timeit.py -s 'x = 47' 'x * 2'
  loops, best of 3: 0.574 usec per loop
  % timeit.py -s 'x = 47' 'x << 1'
  loops, best of 3: 0.524 usec per loop
  % timeit.py -s 'x = 47' 'x + x'
  loops, best of 3: 0.382 usec per loop

  Note that there is a significant advantage in Python to adding a number to itself instead of multiplying it by two or shifting it left by one bit. In C on all modern computer architectures, each of the three arithmetic operations are translated into a single machine instruction which executes in one cycle, so it doesn't really matter which one you choose.

Other resource for performance tips: Optimizing Python Code


Exporting coordinates of vertices to CSV


What is the 4th coordinate of spline points?

NURBS curves are a set of weighted control points.

Control Point, Vertex
In case of a NURBS curve, there is a fourth component available (W),
which defines the weight of the selected control point or the median
weight.

For further technical details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-uniform_rational_B-spline#Technical_specifications

A NURBS curve is defined by its order, a set of weighted control
points, and a knot vector.[4] NURBS curves and surfaces are
generalizations of both B-splines and Bézier curves and surfaces, the
primary difference being the weighting of the control points,

How to specify Nurbs path vertices in python?
Create curve from Numpy Array using Python


Support is planned OpenCL 1.0 in Cycles?

Not all ATI cards are supported.

The list of supported cards per Blender Development can be found here. While this is not the entire list of cards that have shown to work, I believe they are the GPUs that have been tested "working" by development. From what I've observed from other ATI users, any card that does not have OpenCL 1.2 or 2.0 support, does not work with Blender 2.75 (and 2.74 w/ ATI Patch), and will not show in the list of Computing Devices.

With that said, Blender only works with the latest drivers from AMD, and if that driver does not have the OpenCL support for older cards, Blender will not support it. On a good note, the Blender viewport will support more versions of OpenGL in the future. Some users have had luck using beta drivers with older cards, and using an ATI patched Blender (2.74.5 - 2.75rc2).


How can I merge vertices into an object in Blender?

It looks like you projected the contour of the same object onto it's side, thus i believe the newly generated vertices should be lying on the edges of the object you want to connect them to.
Since you want to merge them, i can offer 2 ways:

Join the mesh objects and then cut the faces that you want the vertices to be merged into with the knife tool. The new generated cut gives you new vertices that should all be lying on the same edge as the vertices you want to merge, thus selecting each vertex per edge from the new cut and merging it to the vertex from the projection would result in a merged geometry with the projected vertices incorporated.
Merging the 2 mesh objects (object and the projected vertices object), then delete the faces&edges that cross the projected vertices. Afterwards just bridge the edges left and right from the vertices projected to the edge of the projected vertices. Closing the gap again and essentially merging all into one editable mesh as well.

You could depending on what is easier use both options. But since you used the contour of the object to project onto its side, i believe the second solution might be easier.


Object moving on it's own when rendered!

I should have looked at the Graph Editor and the Dope Sheet - after deleting the unwanted keyframes the problem is resolved.

Thanks atomicbezierslinge and m.ardito for pointing the issue with keyframes.


This, if it was an imported model, could have been sculpted with dyntopia sculpting. It may have also been modeled in edit mode, instead of sculpting. In this case, the best way to achieve a nice-looking result would be to subdivide, or to save memory, subdivide those faces.


It is the same as in 2.79 only the corners now look different - if you click on a corner of one area and then start dragging it in the direction of itself then it splits, if you start dragging it in the direction of another area it joins them. I believe the design for these functions might still be worked on and I would not be surprised if it was made a bit more intuitive in the end.

You can also rightclick on the edge between two areas and choose Join.


I tried your file in BGE and UPBGE.
The bug still persists in BGE but seems completely fixed in UPBGE.
Commit Proof
https://github.com/UPBGE/upbge/commit/d05cb9bca5654a621a9daf7547fa031ab467ef85
https://github.com/UPBGE/upbge/commit/bd8f4cc4d6de396c902ee47261baba11bdd8f0a1


Principled BDSF shader is not showing up in shader list in node editor

As there's not a 2.89, I'll assume you're talking about 2.79.

Check that you're on Cycles mode, and not Blender Internal. You can find it on the upper menu.


Never mind, It turns out that due to a subdivision surface modifier, too many vertices were being made, and lagged out the application. By not applying the modifier, it stopped the lag.


Artifacts in Render which actually don't exists geometrically

This could come from having to little geometry on your plane.
Basically Blender shows you editable points which we consider geo but uses triangles to compute the mesh. (not the most accurate description but oh well...)
Your boolean creates very long triangles which aren't displayed in the viewport but create problems in the render.
To fix this you can just subdivide the plane a bunch of times before applying the boolean.
Hope this helps :)


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

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


Ocean modifier (animated) with small waves

You can't modify the scale of the texture internally displacing the mesh, like you would do with a procedural texture like Noise...

I think one good way to get more details on the waves here is to increase the repeat X Y, and decrease the (spatial) Size...

This will work fine working with tiny waves like you have on your screenshot, but as soon as you are working with big waves, it gets uggly because you immediately spot the repetitive pattern:

To make the ocean feel more realistic you can increase the random amount so you don't have this uggly thing you see above. Although, this will not remove the "pattern" of the water completely, it will just change the way it looks until it's good for you.

An other solution consists in using procedural textures in top of the actual displaced geometry.

We can use textures as normal maps without uv unwrapping the plane because they are procedural, and work with generated uv map.

I'm not going to go into the process of creating ocean textures proceduraly because the community already did this messy work for us. For oceans, I'm using the ocean shader available in the Blendermada addon.

This addon is great if you don't want to get into the mess of creating realistic materials yourself.
Here you can find a link to the download of the addon.
If you don't need the addon and just need the extra waves, here's the ocean material in a blend file. (use Shift+F1 to append and go into the node tree of the blend file to append all of the node groups)

You can experiment with the shader. It's a bit complicated if you go inside it, but if you don't want all of the extra things it provides, you can try to steel some generated normal textures and append them into your original material.

I think the shader looks fine though, here is a simple plane with no displacement. It's unbelievable what you can do with 4 vertices and generated textures:

If you get a grey result, use a hdr environnement texture to light the scene, because by default the light comes at even strength and color from every direction. Your sky texture will do the job as well but you will get less of the glossiness I got in my render.

By combining these two methods you can get some really interesting results.


How to edit a custom property in a python script?

_RNA_UI dictionary

As descibed here https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/43786/15543

import bpy

context = bpy.context
obj = context.object

if not obj.get('_RNA_UI'):
    obj['_RNA_UI'] = {}

# set it
obj["scale_factor"] = 1.0

# property attributes.for UI
obj['_RNA_UI']["scale_factor"] = {"description":"Scale Factor",
                  "default": 1.0,
                  "min":0.0,
                  "max":10.0,
                  "soft_min":0.0,
                  "soft_max":10.0,
                  "is_overridable_library":0,
                  }

# test UI in text editor footer

def draw(self, context):
    ob = context.object
    self.layout.prop(ob, '["scale_factor"]')

bpy.types.TEXT_HT_footer.append(draw)


Render an object from "all" perspectives

You can use the Curves Extra Objects Add-on to create a spiral and convert this into a Path. A Follow Path constraint and Track To constraint on your camera will then allow your camera to follow the spiral whilst tracking the object.

While it isn't strickly each 'face' (since it's a spiral rather than a set of concentric circles) it might suit your particular requirement or be able to be "adjusted" to suit - eg, by adding drivers to 'modulo' the coordinates to force them to be in discrete steps rather than continuous.

To achieve this, first go to File/User Preferences... and select Add-ons. Find the 'Add Curve: Extra Objects' and enable it.

You should now have a Spirals option in the Add/Curve menu in the 3d View.

Add a Spiral, set Spiral Type to '3' and set Turns and Steps to the desired values.

Select the spiral and select Object/Convert To/Curve from Mesh to convert it to a curve.

Move the camera to 0,0,0 and add Follow Path and Track To constraints as shown :

This can produce the following result :


It is part of the upcoming 2.79 release and unavailable in previous versions of Blender.

It is not available as a stable release yet and you are recommended to await for the official 2.79 version (available When It's Ready™) to use it, unless you understand the risks of using pre-release testing software.


Here is an example setup for rendering both front and back depth using red and blue channels with Blender Cycles.

We are rendering "depth" through Cycles emission that mixes with transparency so we can receive emission from the backfacing surface as well. In this setup the emission value is derived from world space Z-coordinate and orthographic camera is facing down.

Red emission receives depth as is, so a face that has Z-coordinate of 0 is black and 1 is fully red. Red depth is multiplied by inverse of Transparent Depth so we are only receiving it from the front surfaces where the value is 0 and inverse is 1.

Blue emission receives inverse of depth, so a face that has Z-coordinate of 1 is black and 0 is fully blue. Blue depth is multiplied by the Transparent Depth so we are only receiving it from the backfacing surfaces where the value is 1.


animate object shaped with curves modifier by moving curve vertex

As Ray Mairlot says, you can hook your vertices to empties, you can also hook them to bones (which, contrary to empties, would allow you to have a Rest pose). In my opinion, converting your nurb to a bezier will make things easier (I don't know where the Set Spline Type is in 2.8 though).

Create your armature with as many bones as you have vertices in your curve. Put them over those vertices.
Switch your armature to Pose mode, select the bone you want.
Shift select the curve, go in Edit mode, select the vertex that is supposed to be controlled by this bone.
Press CtrlH > Hook to Selected Bone.
Now you can animate your curve.


Why my object change material when using node shading

Hope it'll help somebody out there, i already found the answer after messing around with it. So here what I found
Clicking on the material names in the node editor will also change the material of whatever is currently selected (or the group of vertices that have been assigned that material).
If you want to edit different materials in the node editor that are all part of the same object you can use the "Slot 1" and "Slot 2" options to the left of the material name.
TLDR; it changes if you select (material icon), it'll changed whatever the material. To change anything in node for material (in green box). It'll make the baked texture remain as intended.


How to turn a linked group into independent objects?

You can make objects instantiated by group to be real ones.

While group instance selected, execute Make Duplicates Real operator (or press Ctrl+Shift+A if in 2.79 or prior) to make objects from group as real ones. You can now deal with them as with meshes, because they already are.

Then you can run Make Single User operator from Object menu (or press U > Object Data if in 2.79 or prior) to make these objects use their own mesh datablock (if there is needed possibilty to edit them individually).

While this will work, it has it downsides:

Pros

Make objects from group finally editable (sometimes may be useful)

Cons

Additional geometry will be added that can lower scene processing or rendering time.
Additinal objects will appear in Outliner (if objects were made to use their own mesh datablocks), so in case of there are many objects in the scene, you may want to avoid this so not to slow down 3D View.


Disappearing wireframe after clicking on green triagle 2.8+

Apparently these wireframes were created after importing models to old blender and then copying to 2.8+.

Probably it is a bug since I can't reproduce that effect on new models.


Freestyle is applied after the actual render, so the short answer is: no, you have to work with post processing (maybe filtering the freestyle edges with a Kirsch filter and apply the blur only to that portion of the image).

But, you might be able to fake something using the "Distance from camera" modifiers in freestyle. This modifier can be applied to color, alpha and thickness. The settings are under line style - here is a quick example:


To unlock or lock a keyframe, you can do three ways.

1) click on the icon symbol to unlock the keyframes for the entire object

2) hover over the keyframes for the selected object press tab once, if grayed out the keys are locked if not then the keys are not locked.

3) if your mouse cursor is outside the timeline boarders (gray part of the timeline) with this icon greyed then those keyframes are locked.

and including the dope sheet

If somehow you are still stuck, just go into the dope sheet then Shift + Right Click select the key(s) you want to delete

Next tap X while hovering over the dope sheet Select left click the "delete keyframes".


Is it possible to have seamless material blending on two separate objects?

I was working on expressions with shape keys and kept running into issues where manipulating the mesh of a body would break the face and vice versa. I disconnected the two for more control (i.e. two objects), but ran into this issue again. I figured I'd just fix the edge in post, but happened to notice a difference when adjusting the subsurf value.

Looks like the way light bounces around inside of any given object will generate darker spots where objects overlap. Handy to know for certain effects. It also happens to be the reason for my hard edge issues. (educated guesses here)

Here's a quick and dirty demonstration with four separate objects:

The 'hardness' of that clipping edge is dictated by the level of Subsurface applied. Top two renders have the value at .5, and the bottom two are 0:

Fairly simple once I realized what was going wrong. It's worth noting that a combined group of meshes (single object) won't have this problem since the surface is treated as a whole instead of separated bits.


The green color is a Face Set that Blender automatically creates when you join two objects. Check out Face Set in the main menu of the Sculpt mode.
Face Sets can limit the effect of certain brushes in Sculpt mode, see brush options for details. There is also a Face Set brush to paint the color. That way you can highlight edge loops or important faces.
In the Viewport Overlays you can turn it on/off and set the transparency of the color.


Make sure the option Automatically Pack Into .blend is unchecked, in the File > External Data menu.


I have had to do this before with a boxy shaped object but it was a couple of years ago. I think what I did was join both of those meshes as a single object and then use the remesh modifier on that.

I'm just for the life of me trying to remember how I fixed the messy geometry between the scans XD


Backside of object will not get dark, why not?

This shadow cannot be made if there is no light source at back side of the chair.

And given that there are multiple lights in your collection, I think you deactivated viewport visibility(Eye icon) only. Click the Filter icon, and click the "Camera" button to see render visibility.
If it's on, object will be seen in the render. Turn off the "Camera" button to disalbe the light in render.


How can I stretch a bone's tail to another bone or empty with a constraint?

It seems to me that there is some confusion between pose mode and edit mode: if your end goal is to apply pose as rest pose, it means that you want to have your rig modified in edit mode: this is the same result as editing in edit mode: so go to edit mode, select the head of the third bone, press Shift S "cursor to selected", then select the tail of the second bone, press Shift S "Selection to cursor". Then you'll have to choose if the third bone is connected and parented to the second or not (by now they only share the same location in one joint): if you want that select the third, shift select the second, press Ctrl P and choose "connected".


How can make objects invisible in only certain areas?

You can use the boolean modifier to achieve this. Put it after the fluid simulation modifier for the domain object, set its operation to difference and the target object to the region you want to hide.


Blender Game Engine logics sensors and python script

Each object has a self "scope" or "namespace", so the (object 1) controller can no access sensors from (object 2) controller even if they are using the same script, which is your case.

BUT you CAN CONNECT SENSORS from multiples to one (or more) CONTROLERS

Simple select all objects which sensors would be used and at the last select the object with the controller. to select multiple objects keep press Shit and Mouse Rigth Button on objects.

objects: Sphere has "Mouse_Sphere" sensor while Cube has "Mouse_Cube" and i want to use each sensor in one script and the controller is in Torus.

[


Audio/Video out of sync in rendered video

What you need is AV Sync. AV Sync makes sure that your audio and video play together by dropping frames to match the audio. What you were experiencing before is your computer not being able to combine and output all the inputs for each frame in the amount of time it was given (1/30 or 1/24 of a second).

What you probably currently have:

Good:


Trouble: i have a fresh project and hitting view animation shows a video, i didn't even make anything yet!

Delete the old video file (or image sequence) in you temporary folder. On Windows it's in "C:\tmp", on Linux or MacOs it's in "/tmp".


Cycles emission behavior for colors at high strengths

Not possibly related @JTheNinja, absolutely related.

The answer is that your colour values are rendered in the scene referred domain. This means that whatever view transform you are using will end up having a "maximum" scene referred value. So what is happening with purple?

In the case of the red, we expect it to actually "blow out", or turn white. This is due to the emergent and learned aesthetic of photography. It however, remains a perfectly saturated 709 (Longer term ITU-R Recommendation BT.709) light red.

In the case of the purple, we are relying on a mixture of the 709 flashlights to mix to the colour. In this case, a purple clearly needs some 709 blue, but also possibly a bit of 709 green. What is critical to understand is that the colour of the purple is a byproduct of the ratios between the flashlights. Those ratios must always remain identical to "hold" the colour we see.

As a result, as the 709 flashlight for red exceed the display referred transform, the other values continue to ascend. The scene referred to display referred transform however, has ceased being able to maintain that ever critical ratio as the lower values crush towards the maximum ceiling. When the ratios skew, the resultant colour skews. In this case, given that we cannot express "more 709 blue", we lose the ratio, and the 709 red continues to crawl up and give you the more fuchsia colour.

So what is a more ideal solution? Ideally, what would happen is that the colour maintains a straight line between the original colour and the Illuminant white point. Why is this more ideal than what you are seeing? Because it allows you in grading to go back and pull in those desaturated values as you creatively need, maintaining the original colour if done correctly. It also "looks more normal" in that as a colour ascends up our virtual camera's dynamic range, it indeed "blows out" according to what our mental models expect. This has a tremendous impact on the aesthetic of renders. So it is win-win[1].

In the case of an ignorant tone map / sRGB transform however, the values have a fixed scene referred value (a dismal and pathetic scene referred value of 1.0 in the case of the sRGB EOTF), and the original colour, or chromaticity in colour nerd terms, is skewed wildly.

If any of this interests you, go take Filmic Blender for a whirl, as it seeks to solve this very issue.

[1] This is in fact a key difference between the hacky cameras such as RED and Ursa, and the more high-end industrial cameras such as the Sony F55/65 and the Arri Alexa. In the case of the formers, they skew their colorimetry precisely as you are seeing in your demo. In the case of the latter, there is a careful hardware transform that attempts to gracefully desaturate higher values such that the chromaticities hold, albeit desaturated.


TLDR; Download the latest release: https://github.com/stuffmatic/fSpy-Blender/releases

Scroll down the github page and read the instructions on how to install the add-on properly:

Download the latest version from the release page (fSpy-Blender-VersionNumber.zip)
In Blender go to Edit > User Preferences > Add-ons and click Install from File
Select the fSpy-Blender-VersionNumber.zip file by using the file browser
Don't forget to enable the Add-on

If successfully enabled, a new menu entry in File > Import will appear:

Don't download the entire repository!

Again, download the latest release: https://github.com/stuffmatic/fSpy-Blender/releases


In the Properties side panel, Shortcut key N > Shading menu ...


How to make a permanent spot of light in a characters eyes?

To find the right materials and light setup so you can replicate this look I recommend the following tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPK6JlWESM8

For Anime-Style Chractere it looks better to take a .png/.jpg file, split it into white/transparent and attach it to the armature of the iris. VRoid has some complete models ready for download free of charge.


I'm not sure if this is a bug (when stuff is added) or by design but this addon seems to expect Cycles as the default engine as the new objects get created with a cycles mat (perhaps ask on the github repo?). Notice the engine switches when you add a new archimesh object. The texture isn't disappearing, the engine just changes and Blender Internal and Cycles materials can't be used simultaneously or interchangeably .

Simply switch back the engine, delete the cycles material from the archimesh and add a new material and texture that.


Are there Z Transparency in Blender 2.80 or above?

Directly, no. Practically, yes. Z transparency was a component of materials for the blender internal render engine, which was discontinued with 2.80.
I’m guessing the problem you are encountering is that your materials have been either non-transparent or dead black.
How to fix: In EEVEE, you must manually set the blend method of the material to something besides “opaque.” Said settings panel is by default at the bottom of the Properties editor -> Materials tab. Your options are:

Opaque. Ignores transparency. If pure transparency comes in, it turns black.
Alpha Blend. Tries to do full alpha mixing. Has had trouble working correctly with more than one face in a row.
Alpha clip. Either fully opaque or fully transparent.
Alpha hashed. Like alpha clip, but with a random threshold. Good for most applications if you don’t mind a little fuzz. More rendering samples will provide better results.


What is the best way to scale UVs to fit an image?

Grab to corner + Scale (not preserving proprtions)

With the Rotation/Scaling Pivot set to 2D Cursor and the cursor in the origin (0,0), activate the Constraint to Image Bounds option, grab the island in the corner and then scale:

Pack island+Scale (preserving proportions)

As stated by the Blender Reference Manual:

  The Pack Islands tool, shortcut Ctrl+P, will uniformly scale, then individually transform each Island so that they fill up the UV space as much as possible.

You can select multiple UV island to scale them while maintaining their relative proportions, or even just one as in the example to quickly scale every possible previusly unwrapped island to the bounds being sure it will not be stretched.

Notice that the box in the toolshelf is unchecked to prevent island's rotation.


Texturing - Best approach to apply textures from photos

As mentioned by Greg Zaal taking photos to use in textures can be full time project on it's own, especially if you want to take the time to make them reusable elsewhere in other projects, which frankly is the only situation I would see it being worth the trouble to make new textures from scratch.

As mentioned, textures should have as generic as possible lighting as to avoid visible shadows, lighting gradients and shading artifacts that would ruin tiling, an no reflections at all, since those will be added by the software from the virtual 3D scene at render time.

Besides that if you want them to have any value besides the very specific scope of the current project, reusable wood textures are generally desired to be tileable or repeatable. That means they are edited in image editing software in specific ways so they can be repeated side by side without noticeable seams or borders and avoiding repeating patterns.

So unless for some reason you want a very very realistic, down to specific wood features in the right places, and very true to the original recreation of your furniture (which is a perfectly valid goal, if that is what you want) I would recommend downloading some "off the shelf" generic textures from the internet.
There are plenty good quality tileable textures everywhere, I am sure you can find some that suit your need, with the same wood type or one that is similar enough.

One other desirable alternative you may be interested in, since your goal seems to be learning Blender, is to go the procedural way and try to use computer generated materials and textures which can have a high reuse value.


Blender Importer/Exporter Addon updating to 2.8

and to answer my own question, finally I found it via Texteditor.
The needed command is TOPBAR_MT_file_import e.g.
bpy.types.TOPBAR_MT_file_import.append(menu_func_import)


Check your render settings. To get 29.97 fps you should have a framerate of 30 with a framerate base of 1.001. If you change the base to 0.123 then you will get 243.9 fps


Custom Render Stamp, Principled BDSF values

I found a solution with various references.  The big thing that helped was finding how to enter the value for a Principled BSDF parameter in the console;

bpy.data.materials['Material'].node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"].inputs[1].default_value = 3

Mostly from here:

Change value of material emission strength from Python console or script

The final script looks like this (input 7 is Roughness):

import bpy

def stamp_set(scene):
    note  =   "Samples: "                     + str(scene.cycles.samples)
    note += ", Bounces, Max: "                + str(scene.cycles.max_bounces)
    note += ", Roughness: "                + str(round(bpy.data.materials['Material'].node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"].inputs[7].default_value, 3))
    note += ", Version: "                     + bpy.app.version_string
    scene.render.stamp_note_text = note

bpy.app.handlers.render_pre.append(stamp_set)

ref:

Editing Lamp Strength with Python

Change value of sun light emission strength from Python console or script

decreasing excess precision:

How to show render-stamp for arbitrary values?

-snaok


How do you create a slice of ocean with an animated surface in blender 2.8?

Add a Plane and subdivide it couple of times
Select its border and add it to a new vertex group

Add all modifiers to the stack, pay attention to green highligts

Ocean should be Displace instead of Generate in order to utilize vertex group.

Vertex group later is displaced strictly on Z axis down below and cut by Cube via boolean Intersect.

Adjust Cube's scale as you need and enable Autosmooth (80 deg) in Plane settings to have a sharp corner at the cut.


As of version 2.77 the option seems to have been removed.

With the OpenGL version bump vertex arrays are no longer supported, so Vertex Buffer Object are always enabled by default as of commit c402a379a23a so the option was removed from user preferences, according to the release notes.


Create a "hard plastic" material node-setup in Blender and a bump mapping?

Here's another node setup you could try...

It produces a waxy sort of plastic.

Here's what it looks like with some "bump" added:

But what's the point of giving you example node setups? If you don't really understand how Cycles' nodes work you won't be able to put together a recipe that conveys the look you want.

The real answer is: study Cycles a bit more to understand what the nodes do. Then you'll be able to create the material you are envisioning in your mind.

Once you feel comfortable using all of the common Cycles nodes, I suggest you do some research on PBR with Cycles. It will help you to get even more realistic results. But don't try to jump ahead, because if you don't first understand how Cycles works you will just get even more confused. I am mentioning this as a suggestion for the long term.


I suggest another approach. It needs some calculation at the beginning to handle correctly where the holes are to be placed, but it does so your final shape has no 'ngons' (faces with more than 4 vertices) which is always better.

The principle is to start with a plane, and give it some symmetrical loop cuts in order to place the future holes :

Now we want to make one hole (this one will be duplicated after that) :

Select a place for the future hole
Inset I and move the mouse to scale/place the inset faces
Select the outer vertices and make them circular AltShiftS
Scale a bit to adjust

Now extrude E the inner part

Add a subdivision surface modifier to check the result and eventually refine it (add some bevel for instance, if needed).

Once done, all is matter of duplicating the hole and merge the six faces.

Make each die's face by duplicating the initial hole :

Delete a vertex to make a place for the hole
Select the hole
Set the snapping mode to vertex
Duplicate the hole and place it
Once done, select all and remove doubles

Do that for the six faces and reassembly all in a complete die :


I'm not able to leave a certain selection tool

Try pressing "W", it will change the pointer type from select circle to select box, hope that helps.

i accidentally pressed it and had the same issue, pressing it again fixed it for me.


Transfering UV Maps/Custom Normals to identical object

Transfer UV Maps is working just fine.

Select object with bad UV map.
With Shift select one with good UV Map.
Press CTRL+L > Transfer UV Map.


Rendering detail on close-up views with lower resolution models?

In Edit mode, select all faces with A, then press T to open the toolbar, then select Shading/UV, then Faces, then Smooth.

Is that what you were looking for?


Apply texture/ structure to a plane with an image

The simplest way to put an image as the texture of a plane is using the import images as planes add on. Go to edit, preferences, add-ons and search images as planes. Click the checkbox next to the add on and close the preferences window. Now, press ShiftA to add to scene. Then, in the mesh menu there should be an option image as plane. Select that option, and choose your image. Please upvote and mark as accepted answer if this helps.
EDIT
Based on what you are asking, instead of putting the texture into the displacement slot, you should add a mix node, connect that to the surface slot, put the current Principled BSDF node into the top slot and add a second Principled BSDF node with the image texture there. Fiddle with the alpha slider until it looks how you want.
I'm on my phone right now, so I cannot guarantee that this answer will work. I will edit this response if this doesn't help, and I'll get onto my computer to test the answer first. However, if this helps, then you're welcome :).


Blender file keeps crashing - how do I open it in safe mode?

You can find the terminal in Applications/Utilities and you can start blender by typing the following into a terminal window (this is the default so you may have to adjust folder names if you have altered them)

/Applications/Blender/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender

This may only give a simple message like Segmentation Fault

A few things you may want to try -

Turn off Load UI when opening the blend file - this will leave you in the default screen layout and not take you straight into the VSE where you where last time.
Turn off Trusted Source when opening the blend file - this will only help if you have drivers/scripts setup to run automatically
Use File->Load Factory settings before opening the blend file - this will disable non-default addons that may be causing an issue.
Also turn off Load UI and Trusted Source after loading factory defaults.
Start with a new file and import objects/animations from the bad file.


Having a material as part of the list of materials for an object does not mean that it is applied to it.

In edit mode, select the material you want to use, then select the faces where you want the material to be and press Assign


I'm 99% certain that your normals are inverted. Try the following with each object:

-Select the object and tab into edit mode

-Select all of the vertices

-Use the Mesh menu to select Mesh->Normals->Recalculate Outside

Alternatively, you can select a face in edit mode and press ctrlf to "flip normals." This will just reverse whatever direction it already is, so it's not quite and handy, but it might be helpful if the first method doesn't work.

The actual problem is that polygons only have one side. If they're viewed from the "wrong" side, they are completely invisible. So, you have to make sure that the visible side is facing out, not in. The "normal" is the vector that points straight out from the surface of the visible side. So, recalculating the normals so they face outside will make it look right.

Good luck!


Absolutely, but it depends on neither light nor the camera changing (but you can get around this problem by animating the texture). Just bake your rendered result from the angle you want, and apply the texture to that plane.


As said, the best way to model symmetrically is to use a mirror modifier, but that also means that you'll have all the model symmetrical...

If your model is not symmetrical overall, but you need to have some part modeled symmetrically, you can use an alternative approach, although there are limits to what you can do...

So, this could easily not fit to your needs, but hopefully it could give you just another idea:

here I "duplicated linked" the somewhat asymmetrical model, then I rotated it over Z 180° so to have one side aligned "to the other side".

Being a linked copy, the second object shares the same exact copy of the first object's mesh. But here it is somewhat "mirrored". And you see that the new edge loop positioning is replicated in real time (of course, it's the same mesh!).

Then on the first copy, I used loop cut on "one side", and placed the edge loop where needed. The same cut and position should be achieved o the other side...

To replicate the same cut on the other side, I activated snap tools (vertices), and after cutting, to create the needed geometry, I moved the new edge loop precisely to the position of the "other side" edge loop, using a suitable viewing angle.

It is just regular modeling, of course, but this gives you the chance to refer and snap to "the other side" of the same mesh (although "seen" through two different objects).

Hth.


How can i make it so when I go into edit mode the mesh stays deformed by armature

Enable this, almost every modifier has this I believe.


How to enable Vertex Color Paint in v2.81.16? Can't find material options in new UI

First the video, then some explanation:

In the top left corner of your 3D View window, there you can find a Combo Box with the choice for "Object Mode" usually the one you start in, "Edit Mode" and further down "Vertex Paint Mode". That said, materials, you find on the right side down, in the "Properties Panel", all the way down. If you ask for material related settings in the render settings, 2nd from top, then you will have to consider which render-engine you want to use. Evee and Cycles have "some" specific options, while most materials you can set up with the nodes can be used with both. In case something does not work, you can build one material with 2 output nodes, one for Evee and one for cycles.


How to export into .3ds and keep materials?

Additional regarding Fbx

3dsMax

Make sure your units match that of Blender (meters for this example) - Customize menu - units setup.
Import your Fbx file.
Although your lights and camera import they are not compatable with 3dsmax rendering.  You will need to discard your lights and camera and install most probably photometric lights and at least one of the system cameras in order to render.
2) - Your scale will be correct.

Maya

Change working units in Maya to meters or match your settings from blender.
Windows - Settings and Preferences - Preferences -- Click on Settings. Under working units change to meters or match blenders settings set before your project.
Import your Fbx file.
On importing you will have your lights and camera. However they are probably not compatable (untested as yet). You will probably have to set up new system of lights and cameras.
3) - Your scale will be correct.

Fbx Review

Opens correctly in Fbx review.

Lightwave 2015

Opens correctly in Lightwave 2015 Modeler. Scale is correct. No lights (modeler).
Imports correctly in Lightwave 2015 Scene. Scale unverified. Option to play with scale on import. Cameras and Lights available but compatability unverified.

Other systems as yet untested

Exporting to Collada from Blender

Phases 1, 2, 3, and 4. as above

Phase 5 Export your model to .Dae

Export to .Dae as below
In the properties panel -(Render Tab) set animation frame rate to match your target systems default. check defaults or settings on other systems.
Select File - external data - (check) Automatically pack data into .blend
Save your .blend file
Select File - Export - Collada
Leave all Collada export settings at their defaults. Change only if you are deviating from this recipe for good reason.
Export Collada
Open the file in an application that supports Collada. Autodesk FBX review is an excellent one for checking (make sure textures are switched on)

Additional regarding Collada

3dsMax

Make sure your units match that of Blender (meters for this example) - Customize menu - units setup
Import your .dae file
You will loose your lights and cameras. - Set up new lights and cameras.
Your scale will be correct

Maya

I don't have the version that supports .3ds import.

Fbx Review

Opens correctly in Fbx review.

Lightwave 2015

Opens in modeler. Geometry only. UV mapping unknown. Scale is correct. No lights (modeler).
Imports into Lightwave 2015 Scene. Lights lost camera displaced and probably inoperative. Scale unverified. Option to play with scale on import. Texture (will turn some lights on to verify)

Other systems untested

Exporting to 3ds from Blender

The methods above do not work for Autodesk Fbx reviewer and 3dsMax but 'Load object' does work for lightwave 2015 modeler. However the scale of the import is 10 times too large. There is no where to adjust scale on the exporter and lightwave is fixed in meters. My thinking is that you must model in blender at 1 tenth scale to achieve the expected result for lightwave. Further cameras and lights are not imported as it is Lightwave modeler only. Further Lightwave's rendering package does not support .3ds.
in Autodesk FBX review - scale is lost - proper geometry is lost - textures are maintained. UV mapping appears correct but the object is warped.
In 3dsMax I have proper looking Geometry although there seems to be a few additional verticies somewhere. Scale is correct but textures are lost. If you look in the textures 'slots' in the materials editor the correct name of the texture is there but the swatch is black. This is someting to do with paths I think. If the texture can be located in the correct place then perhaps it could become available. You would still have to manualy map the texture adjacent to the diffuse colour tab in the materials editor. The uv mapping may still be intact (untested) as the result from Fbx reviewer would suggest that the uv mapping does make it through the export at least.
Regarding Maya I don't have the version that supports .3ds import so I could not test.

Additional

Lightwave 2015

Does open in a lightwave 2015 modeler. (File load object). Uncheck Scale Object in the import dialogue for correct scale.
Does open in a lightwave 2015 scene. (File load object). Uncheck Scale Object in the import dialogue for correct scale. Load object means system cameras and lights.

Other systems untested

Exporting to obj from Blender

As above for Phases 1, 2, 3, and 4. as at top

Phase 5 Export your model to .Obj

Export to .Obj as below
The obj file format does not support animations natively so don't waorry about frame rates.
Select File - external data - (check) Automatically pack data into .blend
Save your .blend file
Select File - Export - wavefront (.obj)
In export settings export set scale to 1 if you are going to 3dsMax and 100 if you are going to fbx review. Only deviate from defaults for good reason.
Export OBJ
Open the file in an application that supports OBJ. Such as Autodesk FBX review (make sure textures are switched on)

Additional regarding obj

3dsMax

Make sure your units match that of Blender (meters for this example) - Customize menu - units setup
Import your .obj file
In the import dialogue of 3dsMax - Check - flipZY-axis.
You will loose your lights and cameras. - Set up new lights and cameras.
Your scale will be correct

Maya

Change working units in Maya to meters or match your settings from blender.
Windows - Settings and Preferences - Preferences -- Click on Settings. Under working units change to meters or match blenders settings set before your project.
Import your Obj file
You will not have any lights or camera. You will have to set up new lights and cameras.
Your scale will be correct.

Fbx Review

Opens correctly in Fbx review with the 100 x scale adjustment in the Blender Obj exporter settings.

lightwave 2015

On 'open object' the following error message occurs - Can't find file "Images\myTexture.jpg" select an alternate file?  Select Yes and locate your texture file manually.
The scale will be correct. (The Lightwave grid can cause some confusion regarding scale)

Other systems untested for .obj thus far


How to prevent the file browser from showing folders before files?

As far as I know there currently is no way to sort folders mixed with files.
As a workaround you can temporarily hide all folders from view.
Open the filters popover, then from the file types untick the Folders entry.


One way is by putting all the source objects on a separate layer (M).


You want to export your model, rather than save the file.

You need to know which file format your 3d viewer uses and select it from the menu.  Not all of the export formats are enabled by default.  You need to go to user preferences (CTRL-ALT-U), switch to the addons tab and look for the right exporter

You can find most of the exporters by selecting the import-export category.

If the exporter you want isn't there, then search for the question 'how do I export files of type


Blender 2.79 Numeric Loading Cursor (like the timer or beachball, only with numbers)

In short
You are reading: «33.33 percent, 66.66 percent, done», or more literally «3333 per ten thousand (‱), etc». These percentages don't necessarily correspond to a "fraction of the evaluation time", but more likely to a "fraction of the total number of steps", in this case: 3.
In detail
The cursor displays the current progress, mapped to the range 0 to 9999.
It is called, for instance, in $SOURCE/blender/makesrna/intern/rna_wm_api.c like this:
static void rna_progress_update(struct wmWindowManager *wm, float value)
{
  if (wm_progress_state.is_valid) {
    /* Map to cursor_time range [0,9999] */
    wmWindow *win = wm->winactive;
    if (win) {
              int val = (int)(10000 * (value - wm_progress_state.min) / (wm_progress_state.max - wm_progress_state.min));
              WM_cursor_time(win, val);
    }
  }
}

where a given "value" is compared to a "min" and a "max" and expressed as "val" in terms of a fraction of 10,000 of the (min, max) interval. The function WM_cursor_time from $SOURCE/blender/windowmanager/intern/wm_cursors.c takes care of "visualising" the cursor.
Of course script creators can pass to the cursor number mapped to 1-100, or 1-1000 if they want: "WM_cursor_time" doesn't check that the number is a fraction of 10000. So it really depends on context here!
In your case, probably the process of loading an OBJ has three checkpoints, that were hard-assigned to 1/3, 2/3 and 3/3 and don't necessarily correspond linearly to their evaluation time. These fractions, mapped to 10000, with the decimal part ignored ("floor" rounding) are 3333, 6666 and 10000.
I speculate that what you are seeing are just the first two of these numbers while "10000" (999) is skipped because it's probably overridden by the next event.


How can I recover camera presets in blender?

You can find the camera presets here:

https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/B/browse/master/release/scripts/presets/camera/

download the one you are missing (Samsung_Galaxy_S4) and place it in your

[blender]/2.77/scripts/presets/camera folder.  Where [blender] is the folder the program is in and 2.77 is the version, change to suit.

Might need to restart blender or hit F8 to reload scripts.

PS.. did same only yesterday with a different preset, kinda needs a confirm IMO.


You have to go into User Preferences > System and select CUDA or OpenCL, and then select your GPU to enable you to choose the GPU Rendering option.


Creating a 30 degree angle at a corner of a cube

One way to do it numerically, assuming Y up, X across, and starting with the end of your bar square..

CtrlC Copy the height of your bar from its Y in
the Dimensions panel
Select the top edge or point, (whatever will wind up where your arrow is..)
GX, and then in the Adjust Last Operation panel, type into the 'X' field: "CtrlV / tan(pi/6)"

You can stash expressions like this  in a text-block to copy and paste from if you have to do this sort of thing often, but usually you only have to do this once, the rest is duplicates and snapping.


Compositor: File output with custom range

Create a frame change callback and drive the mute of those output nodes with script:

import bpy

def frame_change_handler(scene):
    nodes = scene.node_tree.nodes
    nodes['File Output 1'].mute = not (15 < scene.frame_current < 50)
    nodes['File Output 2'].mute = not (45 < scene.frame_current < 55)

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

Adjust the names of the nodes and the ranges like you want. You can also insert a driver to mute property in outliner dataview but such drivers on nodes do not update correctly, that's why it needs to be frame change handler.

If you need to change something in the script and want to re-run it call bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.clear() in console first. Enjoy:)


You can get the transparent background for free. Just enable Transparent under Render > Film.

In case there really is no way around the green screen, use an emission shader for your plate, set its color to green and disable all Ray Visibility options except Camera Visibility.


Sculpting brush tool only makes fancy triangles, no depth

It sounds like the Strength is set very low.

Try setting it to a higher value:


As first I must say only for correctness: Does not matter, how much memory have you graphics card. Important is how much free memory have your graphics card, when you start render. Keep in mind: system need some video memory for running.

You are not only one who have this problem. I thing Blender have some issues with freeing VRAM. I used Win and now I'm using Linux and it's the same. What help is restart Blender.

About peak of used VRAM - I don't thing this is correct number in case of error. From my experiences, if Blender give you "out of memory" error, this number is incorrect. You can determine exact size of scene by switch to CPU rendering and you can see how much memory is really used for your scene.


When you are exporting to DAE make sure that you export the Material textures, because the texture coordinates are exported correctly but the material doesn't get bound to the texture correctly (and there's no color in the obj, MagicaVoxel uses a palette texture and so it encodes the color in the x component of the UV coordinates).


There is one large object blocking your view.

In outliner go to MEGACUBE > POOL > Cube.001 and disable the Render Toggle.
You also see the object in viewport if you toggle the Eye icon.


My image won't render. Every time i go to render, all I got is a grey screen

Reason number 7 on this post:

OBJECTS ARE NOT WITHIN THE RANGE OF CAMERA CLIPPING

You have a scene with huge objects. Each of your figures is tall as a skyscraper.

The camera clipping distance is set to a short range that does not encompass your scene.

Increase the End clip distance.

But as a piece of unwanted advice: in Blender it is better to work in a scale that matches the real world. Physics, and other simulations, depth of field and lighting will behave differently depending on the scale.

READ ALSO: Why does part of my model disappear when I zoom in on it in the 3D Viewport?


How do I fade a procedural clouds on the edges of a bounding box?

Basically you can try it with this setup and tweak a bit the values to your needs:
What it does: a spherical gradient texture influences (multiplies) the value of the clouds so that they "disappear" to the edges of the sphere.
Of course you could do something similar with a box if you prefer box-like-clouds.

result:


Blender Mesh/Modifier Animation to Bone/Keyframe Animation

You need to use an armature. Constraint bone positions to empties. Those empties are children of your curve points (hooks).
You can only export deforming BONES.
An extensive series about this subject is here> https://youtu.be/hdGkKbtQxE0


Parenting fails: with the error "can only make proxy for referenced object"

According to the commencts I decided to put the answer like this.

In situations where some shortcuts does not work like they should and restart of a program does not help then try to search for stuck keys (keys stayed pressed).

The question above looks like a keyboard problem (ALT key) and sometimes its really hard to find out!

Sincerely, Jan


Luckily PDF is a standardized format that will wrap both vector and raster elements.

Depending on the PDF in question, it should be viable to open it using any vector based application (Illustrator / Inkscape) or design publishing document application (InDesign or Scribus) and peel apart the various entities you require, or even save en masse to a vector or raster format as required.

If the document entities are raster elements, it would likely be most ideal to export them to a standardized raster file format such as TIFF. Be careful to match the native resolution of the raster elements to avoid inadvertent rescaling / resampling.

If the document entities are vector splines, both InDesign and Inkscape should be capable of pulling apart the actual splines for saving as SVG. Beware however in that you may see odd quantization of point positions or fill colour strangeness. Anything beyond basic fill colours and position or shapes will likely not translate to the import. Make sure to have enough subdivisions when importing the SVG file as the bezier knots may not be rendered correctly otherwise.

As a last resort and the worst possible case that you require a spline based version of a rasterized element, both Illustrator and Inkscape offer a method to do a quantized colour based outlining automatically via their tools. It may require some experimentation to get a reasonable set of splines, but it is possible.
The bulk of this is exactly as Duarte pointed out in his comment, with further detailed instructions to help the solution along.


You can use a speed strip in the video sequence editor. The one disadvatage of this method is that you will need to recombine your audio.

Steps:

Import movie in the video sequence editor
Shift-A>Effect Strip>Speed Control
Set the speed to Current FPS/Target FPS.
Render movie
Bring it back into video sequence editor, along with original. Hide the video from the original, and the audio from the accelerated strips.
Render again.


How to create this square bevel/curved effect

It looks like the intersection of a cube and a sphere. You can get it easily with a boolean modifier :


Solidify Modifier solidifying the wrong way for only a few vertices

Your normals on the offending tooth had gotten flipped somehow.  I fixed this by selecting the entire mesh and hitting Ctrl+N.  Alternatively you could have selected the individual faces and hit Ctrl+F > flip normals.

You can visualize normals in the 3D view under N menu > mesh display rollout > normals.


Rendering sharp shadow on cycle rendering


Triggerring left click events via python on 3D view screen

You could try casting a ray from a specific angle, and see where on the mesh the ray intersects.

Check the mathutils library for the function intersect_ray_tri

mathutils.geometry.intersect_ray_tri(v1, v2, v3, ray, orig, clip=True)

Blender API intersect_ray_tri Function

Here is some code I found googling:

http://blenderartists.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-154521.html

def CheckIntersections(mesh):
     intersects = 0
     obj = Blender.Object.GetSelected()
     origin = Blender.Mathutils.Vector(obj[0].getLocation("worldspace"))
     ray = Blender.Mathutils.Vector(0,0,20)
     print "Shooting ray from ",origin," towards ",ray
     for f in mesh.faces: # for each face
          v = f.verts # get vertices
          intersectionpoint = Blender.Mathutils.Intersect(v[0].co,v[1].co,v[2].co,ray,origin,1)
          if intersectionpoint != None:
               print "Ray intersects face at ", intersectionpoint
     intersects = intersects + 1

If you know the vertices of the object you want to position the 3D cursor on, you can select those verticies (1 or more) and snap cursor to selected (with more selected, it will go in the center (average) of the selected vertices).


Morphing smoothly between two totally different objects with different vertex counts that also contain submeshes like text or single words is done more easily and efficiently by using particle systems and keyed physics. You basically "fill" your objects (the meshes with its submeshes which in this case are our letters) with particles and then use keyed physics to do the transition.

I recommend the video tutorial from BlenderHQ which you can find here:

Morphing Particle Systems with keyed Physics in Blender


How do I use Shrinkwrap Modifer with more control?

Shrink Wrap with Vertex Group Weights

By using vertex groups modified in weight paint you can exert more control.

A the very flat square box begin as a cube Mesh. Subdivided as seen, High Vertex Density. I will call it a box. Left to Right parts of the image -->

For simple models you can consider texture painting.  I tend to think you do not want this.
On the left the box is showing weights in edit. Painting occurred in Weight Paint Mode.  You can see vertex group names.  A Mesh can have many vertex groups. All hidden vertices are zero weight.
Next the box with NO modifiers
Next the box with Shrink Wrap Modifier ..and vertex group specified ... Note the red weights allow the vertices to move the most. The top of the box is stable and does not move, this is the control weight paint efforts allow.  Lets call this [Context 1]
Next the box with Shrink Wrap Modifier ... No Vertex group .. it collapses to where many faces are close to each other .. lack of control
Next same as in [Context 1] but the inverse of the group has been selected.  Only the red paint area stays in it original place. Weight of Vertex X is now (1 - original weight)
Consider adding a second or more Shrink Wrap modifier your waist area.

Notes

A flexible fabric in daily life conforms to a body.  Stretch Fabric even more.
A bullet proof vest and bomb squad disposal suit might conform very little.
You must use your judgement.  Breaking a model in to flexible and inflexible parts should be considered one of your tools, along with others.
Practice simple cases of Weight Paint and ShrinkWrap.  Improve the example you see here.
Weight Paint mastery is an essential skill for Shrinkwrap.
Once you have control over the vertex group weights you can make more informed decisions.
Then see more advanced tutorials.
This is just a quick highlight. This topic requires further research.


I figured out the problem! When I duplicated the first side to the other and renamed it to flip them, it did not get rid of the ".001" from dupli automatically, and that's what was making the other side go wacky. I'm annoyed how easy of a fix it was.


Here is what I got:

Analysis:

According to the result, there are some evidences that the author might very possibly take AO pass into account:

So the basic idea is to multiply AO pass with Image pass something like this:

Then it should come with a few color related nodes such as Color Correction, Color Balance, RGB Curves, etc. to mimic the tones for each channel, something like below:

Materials are very basic, no magics I bet. Just use Sun lamp with a very small size value to get sharp shadow:

There are generally two methods to model poly mountains:

Method A:

Create a plane, then subdivide and decimate:

Apply all modifiers, then paint vertex weights in Weight Paint mode, and use it for a Displace modifier:

Method B:

Use Sculpting tools. Use dynamic topology to create these randomized triangles, and use Flatten brush to create the flat tops:


Mirror modifier distort ambient occlusion texture on mirror axis

I think your problem is not the mirror modifier but the Subdivision Surface modifier.
It has a checkbox Subdivide UVs which is enabled by default.

If it was enabled during baking it can create this kind of black seams if you

delete the subsurf modifier
do not display the subsurf modifier
lower the subdivision level
or disable Subdivide UVs afterwards

I guess you want a low poly character with smooth AO, so you probably deleted the subsurf modifier. In this case you should just deactivate Subdivide UVs during baking.


How can I fix a distorted character mesh?

This probably is caused by the fact that you moved the character and not the rig. When the character is rigged, move it using the rig.


The Lattice Object has its origin point outside the cage, not at the origin of the bone which it's parented to. So all rotations of the bone move the mesh around this origin point, not at its center. To fix this, do the following:

Select the Lattice Object in Object Mode.
From the menu, go to Object > Set Origin > Origin to Geometry
Shift+S > Cursor to Selected.
Select the eye and the pupil, Shift+S > Selection to Cursor.


How do I make an Npr shader that responds to lighting

In your tree, the 'True Normal', (which is the unsmoothed, geometric normal in World space), is being used as the color of a Diffuse BSDF, before the light-response of the BSDF is extracted as a color, put through a B/W ramp, and used as a mask.
The True Normal is the direction of the geometric normal at the shading-point, encoded as a color in this case, and will not change with the light. It's in World space, so it will change when you rotate a non-spherical object shaded with it.
The BSDF will respond to the light, but by that time it's been colored, and the response will be affected by the color (which will be black, over a lot of the surface).
For NPR shading, you often do want to manipulate the the normals of a surface, but you would typically use the 'Normal' (which is smoothed) rather than the 'True Normal', and manipulate it on the way into the Normal, not the Color, input of the BSDF.
If you plug a color straight into a Material Output, it will be treated as if it went through an Emission shader, strength 1.
TL;DR
Unplug the Geometry node, color the BSDF white, and then you will find the light response of the surface acts as a mask between your two textures. The contrast of the mask will be controlled by the color-ramp. The textures will use the active UV map of the shaded object, unless you specify another.
I'd recommend installing the shipped add-on Node Wrangler, so you can ctrl-shift-click nodes on the way down the tree, and see what they're doing.


How To Create a Matte Car Paint Material?

I'm not completely sure what you are going after, but for an image like the top one lighting will be very important.

I don't have car model to demonstrate, but hopefully this gives you some ideas:

Material nodes:

If you want that paint fleck look that a lot of car paints have, try using a voronoi texture to modify the normals of a glossy shader underneath the main surface:


You can make it keep its shape by selecting the verts in the area you don't want to be smoothed, and turning the "Mean Crease" setting in  the upper right to 1


modify texture on certain parts of extruded shape

My suggestion would be to switch to Object's texture mapping with a box projection on the texture:

Since your model is basically a box, it will project the texture from an invisible box around your object, with discontinuity between each side (though you can use the "Blend" option below the box projection setting if you ever want a seamless effect).
You can then control the stretch and position of each X Y Z axes, either via the mapping node or by targeting an object in the Texture coordinates node and transforming that object around as you wish.

If this isn't enough, the next easy solution is to set back the texture projection to flat, remove the mapping and texture coordinates nodes, and edit the object's UVs so that they match.
In the top bar, click the UV Editing tab. Your faces'UV are most likely attached to each other's neighbor, which is normal, but in your case you will most likely need to create some seams. You can select some edges and hit Ctrl E → Create seam, or in the 3D viewprt select one face on your whose texture is in the wrong way, then press U → unwrap. Then rotate the faces as you need in the UV editor.


How to create a curved surface for Savonius VAWT?

To me they just look like three half cylinders, rotated by 120°.
Add a cylinder, select the top and bottom face and half of its shell and delete them.

Then select the remaining faces and move them so that the last straight edge is located on the center of the scene. Make sure the 3D cursos is located at the center as well. If it is not, hit [Shift+S] and select "Cursor to Center". Make the cursor your current transformation center by pressing [.]

Duplicate the vertices by pressing [Shift+D] and immediatly press [Esc] to cancel translation. Rotate the selected vertices by pressing [R] and moving your mouse or by typing the desired angle of 120 degrees on your keyboard. If you chose to use the mouse, you can hold [Ctrl] to make Blender increment the angle in five degree steps. This makes aiming for 120° easier. Hit enter to apply the rotation. Duplicate the selected vertices again and rotate them in the same manner.
The result should look something like this:

If you want to give it some thickness, go to the modifiers tab and select the solidify modifier:


i am lost how do i attach clothes to this character it is clipping out when i attach them how do i fix it

First make sure that you're in Rest Pose: in Pose mode you can select all your bones and press altR and altG, or press the Rest Position button in the Properties panel > Data (then press back Pose Position button).
You need to remove a lot of overlaying vertices, so select your cloth mesh, go in Edit mode and press W > Remove Doubles. Increase the Merge Distance value on the bottom of the Tools panel (on the left of the 3D View).
Same thing for the rest of the character, remove doubles.
Now enable the Proportional Editing option on the bottom bar of the 3D View, and move the cloth vertices until it fits the arm. Actually you'd better have a proper topology to do this operation, i.e. quads and not thousands of tris.
Also select your armature and in Edit mode make the bones fit the arm.
Select your character meshes, then the armature, and parent the character meshes with ctrlP > With Automatic Weight.
It works.


Grid Alignment in Viewport when Numpad Keys are used

As Mr Zak says in his comment:

  Try to press Numpad 5 to enter Orthographic mode for those preset views.


How can I add a detailed material/texture to a curve?

The bumps are showing up on the curve, however they are very stretched out. You need to add a Mapping node to adjust the scale of the texture with. Press Shift+A and select Vector > Mapping:

Now press Shift+A again and select Input > Texture Coordinate:

Now take these nodes and set them up as shown:

By changing the Scale values you can now change the size of the texture you are using.

Notice that it will repeat/tile, so it is best to have a seamless/tileable texture.


How to display and use Vertex Color from OBJ model

As others stated, the OBJ format specification officially does not have the ability to contain any vertex color information, but some apps extend the format to support this feature (RGB values are appended after vertex position values).

I managed to modify the Blender's OBJ importer to import & assign vertex colors as well.

Caution - the current implementation is really dirty at this moment (I am going to dig into the code more in the future), also I have not tested it properly so some bugs can occur.

DOWNLOAD / HOW TO USE

To try the modified importer, download the latest version of the import_obj.py script from my GitHub repo and replace the original one located in blender\2.x\scripts\addons\io_scene_obj (make a backup of the previous one, of course).

Then just cross all your fingers and try importing an OBJ model. To see vertex colors clearly, create & assign a new material to the object, set it Shadeless and enable Vertex Color Paint in Options. Then just set the 3D view shading to Material (as in the gif below).

This is an example of an OBJ model exported from http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~psxasj/3dme/index.php and imported using the modified importer:

Please let me know whether it works for you!


Workflow for batch rendering in the same scene with different cameras

Oh, never mind. I would rather use the old approach with Python script to change all the render settings like this

import bpy

def RenderAllScenes():
    for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
        bpy.ops.render.render(scene = scene.name, animation=True)

def CommonSetup():
    for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
        scene.render.resolution_x = 1920
        scene.render.resolution_y = 1080
        scene.render.tile_x = 256
        scene.render.tile_y = 256
    return

def Setup(resolutionPercentage):
    for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
        CommonSetup()
        scene.render.resolution_percentage = resolutionPercentage

In Blender's interactive console I can then import renderSettings.py then renderSettings.Setup(50), etc.


You can get all restriction icons by clicking on the filter dropdown.

Once they are all enabled:


Why solidify modifier extrude extra edges

You model as duplicate geometry and overlapping faces at the bottom.

Either:

Enter edit mode and press W > Remove Doubles. You may have to increase the Threshold value in the tool shelf, or
Manually delete the duplicate faces at the bottom of the mesh, then close the gaps.


(Not a complete answer, but comments have a limited amount of characters, and i still thought it helpful to share some things i noticed)
Wow, this is really weird. Most of your settings in EEVEE look the same but the color shading is different somehow. The sky (or himmel) object is light blue in the Shadow file, but the sky in the No Shadow file has a turquoise quality to it. I couldn't figure out why.
The most notable difference between the files was the scale, though. The sky object in the Shadow file is 430+ times larger than the the one in the No Shadow file ( I had to increase the Clip End value in the Shadow file a lot to be able to navigate the scene). This can account for a difference in resolution of shadows (one being sharp and another being very blurry and hardly noticeable) but I don't see how it would cause the absence of shadow.
I wonder how this scale difference happened and wonder about the way things where appended. Maybe it helps to use Ctrl+C to copy element to the clipboard in one file and Ctrl+V to paste them in another in the future, instead of appending via file menu. In any case, the scale difference might point in the direction of solving the problem.
EDIT:
In eevee, shadows are clipped by camera distance


How to Import Another Python script using Python Script

Here's what I've just done, it seems to work.
My paths are:
scripts path -

C:\Users\Drew\Documents\Development\bfd-graphics\Blender Scripts

mainscript path -

C:\Users\Drew\Documents\Development\bfd-graphics\Blender Scripts\main.py

blender file path -

C:\Users\Drew\Documents\Development\graphics\3D
Assets\Prototype\Blender Projects\Templates\Builder.blend

I wanted to be able to import scripts from a completely different but known relative directory. So here is how I tackled it:
import bpy, sys
from pathlib import Path

path = Path(bpy.data.filepath)
sys.path.append(str(path.parent.parent.parent.parent.parent) + "\\Blender Scripts")

import test_import

test_import.print_a_message()

The number of parents determines where in the directory structure I am, and then I add the rest of the path as a string.


Why my custom enum property becomes an integer property after restart blender?

If only a single .blend uses your property, tick the Register checkbox for the script in Text Editor. The text datablock name must end with .py!

The script will be run when the .blend is loaded. Note that auto-run is disabled by default. Click Reload Trusted in the Info header and confirm (Revert).

import bpy

def my_enum_cb(self, context):
    print(self, self.my_enum, context)

bpy.types.PoseBone.my_enum = bpy.props.EnumProperty(
    items=(
        ('identi_1', 'Name 1', 'Descript 1'),
        ('identi_2', 'Name 2', 'Descript 2'),
        ('identi_3', 'Name 3', 'Descript 3'),
    ),
    name="My Enum",
    default="identi_2",
    update=my_enum_cb
)

bpy.data.objects["Armature"].pose.bones["Bone"].my_enum = "identi_3"

If you need this property to be globally available, turn the code into an addon, install and enable it. Don't forget to save user prefs after enabling it, or you will have to tick the checkbox every time you start Blender:

bl_info = {
    "name": "My Enum Addon",
    "author": "Your Name Here",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 75, 0),
    "location": "",
    "description": "",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "Rigging",
}

import bpy

# Define our own panel (optional)
class HelloWorldPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Bone properties window"""
    bl_label = "Hello World Panel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_hello"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "bone"

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

        pbone = context.active_pose_bone
        if pbone is not None:
            layout.prop(pbone, "my_enum")
        else:
            layout.label("No active PoseBone.")

def my_enum_cb(self, context):
    print(self, self.my_enum, context)

def register():
    bpy.types.PoseBone.my_enum = bpy.props.EnumProperty(
        items=(
            ('identi_1', 'Name 1', 'Descript 1'),
            ('identi_2', 'Name 2', 'Descript 2'),
            ('identi_3', 'Name 3', 'Descript 3'),
        ),
        name="My Enum",
        default="identi_2",
        update=my_enum_cb
    )
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)
    del bpy.types.PoseBone.my_enum

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    # This is not supposed to be done in an addon.
    # Every access to bpy.data and bpy.contet during init is prohibited.
    #bpy.data.objects["Armature"].pose.bones["Bone"].my_enum = "identi_3"


Why is the Mask size mismatched in the Compositor?

The reason seems to be that the render resolution didn't match up with the image size.


can textures and bumpmaps be "baked" into a single texture?

Just make a full bake

Note: this does not work for animation


How to round values of a Float List in Animation Nodes?

Adding 0.5 before flooring gives you rounding. Alternatively, subtracting 0.5 before ceiling gives you rounding.


As far as I know you can only access the full files of Sintel, and all other Open Movies on the Blender Cloud, which is $10 per month. So the full files "should" not be open freely for everyone on the web. Also Blender Cloud offers many awesome products and tutorials so the money is worth. Blender Cloud


Everything is explained here, in Node Record Format section. Below I’m just rephrasing that document:

The first four bytes are an uint32, the total size (in bytes) of the node.
The next four bytes are an uint32, the total number of properties.
The next four bytes are an uint32, the total size (in bytes) of properties (aka propertieslen).
The next byte is a uint8, the total size (in bytes) of the node name (aka namelen).
Then you have the node name itself.
Then you have the properties.
Then you have the nested list of sub-nodes.
Then you have the final 13 NULL bytes.

So, you know nested subnodes (if any) start at 4 + 4 + 4 + 1 + <namelen> + <propertieslen> bytes from beginning of current node. This is your “opening bracket”.

If you can “read” python, you can also have a look to our FBX addon code, in particular parse_fbx.py and fbx2json.py, that code is fairly simple and short, and illustrate well how to parse binary FBX.


Difference between push/pull and shrink/fatten?

They don't actually do the same things.

Shrink/Fatten scales the selected elements along their normals.

I've enabled face normals display in the above gif so that you can see that each face is moving along it's normal (blue lines).
Push/Pull moves the selected elements farther/closer to the pivot point.

Here you can see that the faces are not moving along their normals, but instead are moving away from/closer to the pivot point. In this case, the pivot is the median location of the selected elements, which happens to be the world center in this particular example.


If you don't assign some verts to any bone those verts will be assigned to the root bone in Unity. You can't make this animation works in Unity with only one bone. So add an other static bone and assign the big cube's verts to it.