How to compare values properly with expression in Animation Nodes?

Floats in general have a limited precision and most real numbers can not be fully represented using a float. So when you set the input float node to 0.1, it is actually represented internally as 0.100000001490116119384765625. See this answer for more information. Python's representation of 0.1 is different from blender's representation, python's is more accurate 0.1000000000000000055511151231257827021181583404541015625. Hence the result you see in your setup.

In general, don't try to compare floats as this may yield some unexpected results. You can use something like isclose() function to compare floats, this function is the standard math module.


You can see anything in your scene in the outliner.


how can i Attach both hands to the same object (gun's main grip and front grip)?

You have to make a seperate bones and on the wrist use the copy transforms constraint. Place the Seperate bone at the foregrip , apply the constraint to the wrist and the should follow , You will need to tweak the position of the bone , but it will work.


How can I view my 3D rendered 360 pictures on gear VR?

This might be helpful:

How to render an environment to a Cube Map in Cycles

There is a section about rendering an "Equirectangular Map to Cube Map".
You can also download .blend files that come with the 3D camera and a compositing setup which seems to be pretty well documented.

I do not know of a way to view spherical images. You can view equirectangular images in the Samsung Internet Browser with some html biolerplate but the resolution really makes this a non-viable option.

Turning your scene into a Cube Map allows you to upload the file for viewing in the Oculus Photos app and it is the best solution in regards to quality.

The only downside is that you need to modify the cubemap image to follow the Oculus format which differs from what the Blender Internal mechanism expects.


Hair Dynamics do not work on a object that has been parented

It wasn't parenting. You need to start the animation on frame 1, rather than frame 38. This allows it to cache from the beginning. I figured it out by rebuilding a .blend file and testing everytime I changed something until I found the issue, which I did.

Here is the fixed (Start 38 --> 1) .blend file.


According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavefront_.obj_file :
"OBJ coordinates have no units[...]"

This means that it is up to the importing application to decide what a unit is. It could be yards, kilometres, centimetres etc. If you know that Adobe Dimension uses centimetres then you need to export it as such.

You can set the scale to 100 in the obj exporter for instance.

The obj file format can be opened with a text editor to review how the object is exported.


Revised per chat conversation to get down to the real problem.

The problem at its root had to do with a parent object relationship, and the sphere subordinate to this parent object was parented without the 'KEEP TRANSFORM' option. when this happens, the values begin to change in the scale of the subordinate, then the parent calculates what the subordinate should be and the subordinate changes its scale value automatically to adjust. So it became pretty unstable to adjust the values in the subordinate object.

To fix the root of the problem, we cleared the parent (Alt+P), then reparented the subordinate back to its original parent (via Ctrl+P >> Then clicked the 'Parent (keep transform)' option).

Then the rest of these steps worked in this scenario...

Change the dimensions to all be at full scale (12.756, 12.756, 12.756).
Then Apply the scale.
Then change your scale on X to 12.720/12.7560000000.

Appended per comments below:

(desired size) / (original size + 'appended zeros to go to the 10th decimal'), ENTER


Bevel modifier not working on SVG converted to mesh

Curve objects get really bad topology when converted to mesh. Boolean operations will also contribute to make the topology even worse.
And at the end the irregular and triangulated topology of the object will not let you bevel.
So keep the object as a curve.
Create the object, with the holes, in illustrator as a path (no need to use booleans).

Import the SVG into blender, do not convert to mesh.

To do the extrusion as curve make it a 2D curve, set the fill to mode  to "both".

In the Geometry controls set the extrusion level and the bevel  as well.


Hide mesh light source but keep the light it EMITS using EEVEE?

You can do it with a shader like this - This will exclude the object from visibility, but will allow the cast lights and shadows to operate. However, since you are using an emission object to cast your "light", you will need to bake the lighting from it using an Irradiance Volume, before it will show up in the render. Also - remember to set the Blend Mode to Aplha Clip.

To get the full effect, make sure to enable "bloom" in Render Properties.


How can I add a custom button to a panel?

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

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

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

import bpy

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

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

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

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

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

If you want bigger buttons a different approach is needed.


How to ensure the selection direction using Alt Select

It all depends on where you click it will try to follow the direction of the nearest component.


Volume Absorption is only applied to the "top" of a mesh

I am new to Blender, so I can't say I solve this problem (I am quite sure if the coffee cup is animated, the coffee liquid won't looks right)
, but I do discover what causes this problem.

When the scene setting is like the follow (the camera looking at the perpendicular to the light source), the side of the coffee mesh looks transparents.

I changed the scene setting like the below (the camera facing the light source)

Now the volume absorption works! the side of the coffee is now brown instead of transparent.

I am guessing this is due to how volume absorption works. If there is no light passing through the mesh to your camera (i.e. camera perpendicular to the light source), the volume absorption calculate that there is no light absorbed at all, meaning transparent. (but in real world, it should appeared darker, or something else, but not transparent).

Hope this makes sense, if you guys happens to know how to make it more realistic, please tell me. thanks!


Understanding scenes in blender. (linked objects)

The way linked option is intended is to have a base file in which you perform modeling, rigging, skinning, texturing and everything referred to the "building" of characters, props, environments and so on.

Then instances of all theese objects can be linked into a new file in which you will perfom the scenes, animations, lighting, camera movements and so.

The idea is that if you decide later to modify something in one character, the edit will be reflected into all the scenes in which that character has been used.

So, for a "correct" workflow you can simply save a new version of your file, delete all the animations, and link from this new file.

I've read that the link function will be changed in future, to let edits also over linked objects (by now you can also use the simpler "append" function, which will not automatically reflect any new change in the base file).


How Can I add an Object so that is not facing the current the view?

Look at the bottom left of your picture. See a box that reads Align to View?

Disable it


How to remove yellow circle in edit mode interface?

if you select a tool on the toolbar,this handle(yellow circle) appears.You can use the tool by pulling this handle.To swich back to selection click the icon on the top of the toolbar.


Different options in Blender 2.8 when selecting Loop Cut via the toolbar or the shortcut (CTRL+R)

There's a little pop-up menu, where you can adjust the parameters.
The tool works the same, you only don't control it through shortcuts.

It's an alternative for those who don't like using shortcuts :). (like me)


How to make water treatment device hatch?

This is not your final object but it's a way to get the basic shape:

Put your image as a background image.
In Front Ortho, create a plane, rotate it on the X axis, apply rotation, center it, mirror it on X and Z axis to make a symmetrical 2D copy of the blueprint.
Switch to Right Ortho and extrude a bit.
Select some of the vertical bars and extrude again.
Create a UV sphere that follows the shape of the object.
Boolean the 2 objects with the Intersect option.
You have your basic mesh. Dissolve some edges, merge some vertices...
Add some edge loops to sharp the edges. The knife tool will be helpful.


Syntactically something like this should work (I striped the DB code):

import bpy

mat_M= bpy.data.materials.get('2015')
year='2014'
for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    c = None
    print(obj)
    if obj.type=='MESH':
        c=obj
    if c == None:
        continue
    c.active_material=mat_M
    c.hide=False
    if c.name in bpy.data.groups["Child"].objects:
        parent=c.parent
        recentParent = [[2014],[2015]]
        for recent in recentParent:
            if recent[0]!=None:
                yearParent=str(recent)
                if yearParent>=year:
                    c.hide=True

for recent in recentParent iterates over the result of the db query, try your exact statement in a UI for your SQL server. If it doesn't return any data you need to fix that first. DB connections are better ask on stackoverflow. Note that there is a space in id_ works


Normal map seams/blocky shadows in Cycles renders

That looks like a UV mapping issue, perhaps with lighting baked into the texture. Try temporarily removing the textures and see if it looks any better.


How do I change the End Frame in an animation without changing the max frames in other animations within a character?

No.

The start frame and end frame are properties of the scene. That's is why they're located in the scene section of the properties area. Each scene has its own (but exactly one) start and end frame.

Actions have no start and end frame. They are automatically starting on their first keyframe and ending on their last keyframe. If you add an action to the NLA editor these are the frames which are used for the length of the action. (You can still trim the actions used frame range in the NLA editor.)


Fluid won't go through a hollow-moving-effector, they just move aside

I've downloaded your file and changed a few things to make it work: first of all I disabled Only Rim in the Solidify Modifier of the screw. That way your pipe has an inner wall with face normals pointing in the right direction.
Then the Domain Resolution of 120 is too small for your pipe. It measures around 30 cm on the outside while a voxel at that resolution is about 5.5 cm big. In combination with  possible margin issues there's not much open space for the voxels to enter the pipe. I've set the resolution and now (some) liquid goes into the pipe.
And I've expanded the length of the animation to 250 frames, even then the fluid hasn't gone very far up the pipe. If you want it to climb further up, the animation needs to be quite a bit longer.
Finally I've set the Particle Radius of the Mesh to 1.2 instead of 2, so that the fluid doesn't look more like a blob, although with the higher Domain Resolution this might not have been necessary.


How to have the same coordinates for an object in Edit and Object Mode?

If I understand what you want, You can Apply Transformations, the object will stay in the same place but the origin will became the Center and location will be the (0,0,0).


Location coordinates/grid in blender - how are coordinates/locations set?

Here is a basic summary, Hope that can help:


How to combine Meshes created with python

You can use the bmesh module to do this. You start with creating a new, empty bmesh object with bm = bmesh.new(), then every time you want to add a mesh to this bmesh, you can use bm.from_mesh( mesh ):

import bpy, bmesh

# Reference to existing meshes, replace these with your code generated meshes
m1 = bpy.data.meshes[0]
m2 = bpy.data.meshes[1]

bm = bmesh.new()

bm.from_mesh( m1 ) # Add mesh 1 to bmesh
bm.from_mesh( m2 ) # Add mesh 2 to bmesh

m3 = bpy.data.meshes.new( "newMesh" )
bm.to_mesh( m3 )

o = bpy.data.objects.new( "new", m3 )
bpy.context.scene.objects.link( o )


change selection type for left click-drag

On the off-chance anyone still wants to know the answer to this: Blender's selection tool now supports four different selection modes, which are accessed from the top icon in the new Tools menu, on the left side of the screen. The click-and-drag option is the new default setting, and is just called "Select"; the tool can also be set to box selection, lasso selection and circle selection modes. There is, iirc, a keyboard shortcut to cycle through the options — which is presumably what Wohe1 pressed accidentally — but I can't remember it off the top of my head. However, if you run up against the same problem he/she did, you can rectify it by restoring your preferred setting, which you can do by clicking and holding on the Select tool icon and waiting until a little menu pops up with the four options.


How to undo a camera binding to a marker?

Just select the marker from the timeline and press X to delete the marker.
Note: Your cursor must be on the timeline to delete from timeline.


Store viewport display color and toggle shading type

That's not that easy as you might think and there are a few concepts involved.

For one, you would have to find a reliable way to store the actual object pointer or at least the name of the object and its corresponding viewport color for all selected objects. I would recommend register a CollectionProperty per scene and set its type to a prevously declared PropertyGroup to hold an object and its original color per item:
class CUSTOM_PG_objectColors(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    # name: bpy.props.StringProperty()
    obj_color: bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(size=4)

bpy.types.Scene.custom_color_coll = bpy.props.CollectionProperty(
    name="Custom Object Collection",
    type=CUSTOM_PG_objectColors)

Even better would be using a PointerProperty for the actual objects, further reading:

Is it possible to use bpy.props.PointerProperty to store a pointer to an object?
Populate a list with custom property dictionary data
How can I store and retrieve a custom list in a blend file?

Next, in case your custom color is already assigned to Material.diffuse_color, you would have compare the color components due to limitations of floating point values before adding the object and its color to the list:
# Get the collection
obj_coll = context.scene.custom_color_coll

# Add the name of the object and its material to the list
for obj in context.selected_objects:
    mat = obj.active_material

    # Compare the colors per component before adding the item to the list
    self.color_match(mat.diffuse_color, self.color)
        item = obj_coll.add()
        item.name = obj.name
        item.obj_color = mat.diffuse_color
        # ... and set your custom color
        mat.diffuse_color = self.color

Further reading:

How to compare colour values in Blender using Python?
Code to toggle viewport display material alpha

And finally, notice that you do not need to iterate through the Screen.areas in order to set View3DShading.color_type since the operator is already part of the properties panel in 3D View. Consider adding a check if there is no material assigned to the object.
import bpy
from mathutils import Vector

class CUSTOM_PG_objectColors(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    # name: bpy.props.StringProperty()
    obj_color: bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(size=4)

class CUSTOM_OT_displayColors(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "view3d.custom_display_colors"
    bl_label = "Custom Display Colors"

    action : bpy.props.EnumProperty(
        items=(
            ('SET', "Set custom Display Colors", ""),
            ('RESET', "Reset Display Colors", "")))

    color : bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(
        size=4, default=(1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0))

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return len(context.selected_objects)

    def color_match(self, col1, col2, tol=0.001):
        def vector(col):
            # sanitize range (-2, 3, 5) = (0, 1, 1)
            return Vector([max(0, min(1, c)) for c in col])

        d = vector(col1) - vector(col2)
        return d.length <= tol

    def execute(self, context):
        # Get a reference to the list composition
        obj_coll = context.scene.custom_color_coll

        if self.action == 'SET':

            # Add the name of the object and its material to the list
            for obj in context.selected_objects:
                mat = obj.active_material

                if not self.color_match(mat.diffuse_color, self.color):
                    item = obj_coll.add()
                    item.name = obj.name
                    item.obj_color = mat.diffuse_color
                    # ... and set your custom color
                    mat.diffuse_color = self.color

            # Set Shading to 'TEXTURE'
            context.area.spaces.active.shading.color_type = 'TEXTURE'

        else:
            # Iterate through the custom list and reset the color
            for item in obj_coll:
                obj = context.scene.objects.get(item.name)
                if obj:
                    obj.active_material.diffuse_color = item.obj_color

            # Clear the list
            obj_coll.clear()

            # Set Shading to 'OBJECT'
            #context.area.spaces.active.shading.color_type = 'OBJECT'

        return {'FINISHED'}

class CUSTOM_PT_viewportToggles(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Toggle viewport"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_category = 'Toggle viewport'

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

        layout.operator(
            CUSTOM_OT_displayColors.bl_idname,
            text="Set custom Viewport Colors").action = 'SET'
        layout.operator(
            CUSTOM_OT_displayColors.bl_idname,
            text="Reset Viewport Colors").action = 'RESET'

        layout.prop(context.scene, "custom_display_bool")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(CUSTOM_PG_objectColors)
    bpy.utils.register_class(CUSTOM_PT_viewportToggles)
    bpy.utils.register_class(CUSTOM_OT_displayColors)

    bpy.types.Scene.custom_color_coll = bpy.props.CollectionProperty(
        name="Custom Object Collection",
        type=CUSTOM_PG_objectColors)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(CUSTOM_OT_displayColors)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(CUSTOM_PT_viewportToggles)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(CUSTOM_PG_objectColors)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Also a toggle usually means a BoolProperty. As the name suggests it's typically used to store a simple state rather than assigning values to other properties like the viewport color. You can trick it using its update function though:
def update_func(scene, context):
    if scene.custom_display_bool:
        bpy.ops.view3d.custom_display_colors(action='SET')
    else:
        bpy.ops.view3d.custom_display_colors(action='RESET')
...

bpy.types.Scene.custom_display_bool = bpy.props.BoolProperty(
    name="Display Toggle", update=update_func)

Related:

How to pass multiple operator properties via UI layout?
How can I add a checkbox in the tools UI?


How to exclude smoke from collision mesh

Ah. It looks like I was misled by the viewport. In the viewport, I see smoke inside the cone (I've got the cone set to wire). However, when I render in Cycles, the area where the invisible cone is has no smoke in it. Confusing, but I can live with it... :)


How do I insert two edge loops equally spaced from the edges?

CtrlR for the first loop.

CtrlB to bevel it using the percent option.


How can I paint uniform sized textures on large surfaces?

If you paint in the 3d view, the brush will increase based on your view. If you instead use the UV/2d Image Editor, then you will see a more constant relationship with the brush size/texture size. There are benefits to both behaviors, but hopefully this helps you get farther along.


Texture goes away when using the explosion modifier

Never mind, I figured it out. I didn't connect the textures to a texture coordinate node. Once I connected it to the object coordinate, the texture appeared again.


You can animate the Diffuse color parameter :

Put your mouse over the color selector, press I to insert a key. The color selector should be highlighted in yellow to show that a key is present.

Move a few frames forward, change the color, then insert a new key.

(You can do the same with almost every parameter)


I think you have to do something like this for the texture to show up in viewport.


Make sure in Object mode you press Ctrl-A and choose Apply Scale and Rotation, then back in edit mode you should be able to get the mirroring across the X axis.


Overlaying 2 transparent images on another texture

You're mixing up shaders with texture compositing operations.

The shaders are the ones with the green sockets, and you should never connect other colours to the green sockets or vice-versa.

The yellow and gray sockets are used for colours and values respectively. In practice it means you'll use the yellow sockets to add colour textures to your shaders inputs, and grayscale textures (or single values) to control properties.

(that's a gross over-simplification, but it will help to have a minimum grasp of what you should/shoudn't connect to each type of socket).

With the above in mind, remember that you can mix and combine textures BEFORE connecting them to a shader. So in this case you should use mixRGB nodes to combine them and plug the result to the shader.

In your example of brick texture and grunge textures it would be just matter of blending the first grunge texture over the brick texture (using a mix node if the grunge one has alpha channel will do, but you could also use a different blending and connect the second texture's alpha to the Fac input to drive the mix).

Once you did that, the output of that mix will be textures 1 and 2 blended, so you only need to add another mix and blend the third texture over.

That will be your "combined" texture that you will plug to the colour socket of your shader (most likely a diffuse shader).

You can add further work to your shader if you need some glossiness or other surface properties to your material, but that's basically the procedure of combining textures.

*) Note that mixing two shaders (one transparent and an emissive/reflective one) to create a material with transparency based on a texture's alpha is a completely different procedure.


Blender does not update the file's information when rendering

I can replicate that in Windows 10 and the default Explorer window. By creating a basic animation with the default Cube in Green and then re-rendering with Red.

If I check the resulting file Properties then, the Date Modified and Date Accessed values are updated correctly.

This is expected behaviour. Windows is only showing the Created Date

In Explorer you can go to the View menu and click Add Columns to add Date Modified and "Choose Columns" to add Date Accessed.

From what I can tell, this is when Windows decides the folder you are in is designated"Photos", as all my other folders default to show Date Modified.

/me shakes fist at Microsoft


Color Ramp Particle System Not Working With Age

You need to be in both CYCLES rendering engine and in RENDERED preview. I can't tell from your picture, but the material must be on the object being used as the particle instance. I made a test file and I'll post it here. I can confirm this is working 100% on my machine.

File is here --


How do you convert a rotation to use as a value between 0 and 1?

As the rotations are calculated in radians (degrees are shown only as helper), the correct driver formula to get 0.0 - 1.0 range from 0 to 90 degrees is: 2*var/pi.

Check theese answers for more infos.
About driver rotation Degree and Radian


How to select faces while using texture painting in 2.8?

I guess you have this issue on Blender 2.8 because you're using the default Left click select keymap?

First things first:

In order to enable the face selection masking, push down that little button in the viewport header:

Then, in order to select the faces you want to paint on, use the ⎇ Alt LMB. You can also access some selection tools, like Border Select with B, or Circle Select with C.

For more advanced control of selection, you can switch to edit mode, do what you need and switch back to paint mode.


What steps exactly are you taking for this process? Could I suggest using The Boolean modifier? If you don't want to use that you could always use the knife tool or CTRL+R to create edge loops.


Object with faces that intersect adjacent faces

For that particular example, you could merge near vertices:

Select all (A)
Remove doubles (W> Remove doubles)
Increase merge distance (F6> Merge distance) until the adjacent vertices are all merged.

Once you do that, you will still have internal faces. To get rid of them:

Press Interior faces in 3D view > Header > Select to select internal faces.
Delete them (Delete> Faces)


Whats the easiest way to animate a toy house being built from the ground up?

My suggestion would be to use python to animate the individual blocks.

I would pick a landing time based on the z coordinate of the block and a little bit of randomness (but not so much randomness that a block with a different Z coordinate could land before one below it).

http://web.purplefrog.com/~thoth/blender/python-cookbook/sweep-animate-size.html includes some examples of setting keyframes like

    fr = obj_to_frame_f(obj)

    obj.scale =(0,0,0)
    obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='scale', frame=fr-timescale-timescale2)
    obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='scale', frame=fr+timescale+timescale2)
    s = 0.9
    obj.scale=(s,s,s)
    obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='scale', frame=fr-timescale)
    obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='scale', frame=fr+timescale)

Although you'll be animating data_path='location' instead of scale.


Switching render engine in a script without using .context.scene

Update:

I was actually reading that very page you suggested while you were suggesting it, batFINGER - and thank you for validating my suspicions - and used the sample code they offered as a sort of template. Lo and behold: it loads. There is still a long way to go to make it a workable script, but I can see the validity of isolating context-specific behaviour and keeping it from the general code base that doesn't know what context it is going to wake up in (so to speak). So, for the curious:

import sys
import os
import bpy
from bpy.types import Operator
from bpy.props import IntProperty, StringProperty

class MatShaderPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Create shaders for your Poser figure: Panel"""
    bl_label = "Figure Files Util"
    bl_idname = "MATERIALS_PT_shaders"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        obj = context.object
        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text='Figure Name')
        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text="Active object is: " + obj.name)
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(obj, "name")
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(context.scene, 'conf_path')
        row = layout.row()
        row.operator("object.run_script", text='Apply Shaders')

class runScript(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Will run script"""
    # was bl_idname = "object.run_script" - is now:
    bl_idname = "object.run_script"
    bl_label = "Invokes Shader Script"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.active_object is not None

    def execute(self, context):
        filename = 'test_Shaders.py'
        exec(compile(open(filename).read(), filename, 'exec'))

        return {'FINISHED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)
    bpy.types.Scene.conf_path = bpy.props.StringProperty( \
      name="Images Path",
      default="",
      description="Defines the path to your images",
      subtype='DIR_PATH')
    bpy.types.Scene.conf_figure = bpy.props.StringProperty( \
      name="Figure Type",
      default="",
      description="Defines the base mesh name of your figure")

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Not finished yet, but at least I have this question sorted.


Merging characters body parts with a different edge loop count

Here is an example of different topology you could use to transition from the octagonal arms to the three fingers. The four selected faces are the ones to pay most attention to.

Although, a triangle island surrounded all by quads won't hurt you once in a while. "All quads" is an ideal, it's not a set-in-stone rule. If the mesh can deform without trouble when animated, you're okay. But yeah, it's good to find quad solutions when possible.

I should also point out this loop of faces that only serves to aid the mesh definition when subdivided. You would probably want to do away with this in a model that is a low-poly game asset or something. I left it in as a buffer. You can take it or leave it.

Blend file to play with:


Smooth Volume Rendering without Denoise in Cycles

There are two settings that affect this - one is the 'Step Rate' that you have found, the other is the Max Steps - and both have an impact.
It used to be that the two settings behaved individually - and the volume would be rendered with a 'Step Size' and then if the Max Steps was reached the volume would simply be ignored for the rest of that light ray. This was fine in most cases but could produce unexpected results, with the volume effectively "cut off" as soon as the limit was reached. Furthermore, changing the Step Size while leaving the Max Steps unchanged would change how much of the volume was rendered.
Now the Step Size has been replaced with the Step Rate and the Max Steps has been enhanced so as not to cut off the render by automatically generating a 'Step Size' behind the scenes based on both the Max Steps and the Step Rate. This means that reducing the Max Steps will no longer cutoff the volume but will affect the size of the steps - so having Max Steps set too low will limit the effect of more precise Step Rate.
The solution is to increase Max Steps to allow the Step Rate to have more of an effect. This will increase render times since more steps are required to traverse the volume but can produce more detail in your volumetrics.


Maybe deactivate the Manipulate Center Points option?


How can I properly add a subdivision surface to the side of a model? Eevee Blender 2.82a

you could try going into edit mode, selecting the side of the ship, and in the right-click menu select subdivide


Transform panel. Quaternion mode. What is the 4L button good for?

Found it out. A quaternion is made of three axis x, y and z. And the value W, which is a calculated value. Normally this calculated value has no lock since it is a mathematical calculated value. It can be used to retrieve the actual rotation around the defined angle.
The 4L button simply allows you to reveal a lock at the W value too. And that's already it for the functionality of this 4L button.


there is one node in cycles that will solve most of your problems: the principled shader. it is the nearest your will come to the material system of blender render.

theck this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H5W6C_Mbck


how to move some vertices of the same object to a desired x,y,z location?

Another way is to place the 3D cursor manually via the location input fields in n-panel, 3D Cursor tab. Then select your vertices, hit Shift + S (or Mesh -> Snap from the menu), and then "Selection to Cursor".


Why do glossy materials on my object look different to the material preview?

Your mesh has flat faces and the preview is a sphere. The reflections look like a gradient on the sphere because of its curved surface. I am sure if you changed the shape in the preview to a cube it would look similar to how your mesh looks. Maybe you should add a bevel to your mesh to give it a more complex reflection.


Can I pack an archive with Ranchecker in the newer version?

According to your screenshot, you clicked on the button "Create Archive" (which was called "Pack your project" in the previous version I guess).
Reading the logs, it says that a cup9_16_manu.vub archive was created. This is the file that you can upload to the render farm.


Blender Crashes when Switching to Cycles Engine

I needed to enable CUDA and use my NVIDIA GPU in the user settings.

 This is done by:

Opening user preferences under File/User Preferences
Going to the System tab
Scrolling down till you see the option entitled Compute Device
Selecting CUDA instead of None and selecting your GPU from there.

Apparently my CPU integrated is either not compatible, or the drivers are not installed correctly. Regardless, I wanted to use my more powerful GPU anyway.

Refer to this answer for a more in depth explanation on how this is done should you run into any problems.


How can panels be rearranged / order be changed?

The panel list can be re-arranged by dragging the top-right corner of each panel (the little triangle-like area with three small backslashes), then drop it after moving up or down.


How to make a (photorealistic) material similar to tomato placenta and inner circle similar to this?

Hmmmm, as far as I understand,

the real thing does not have a solid 1/0 boundary between the liquid and the solid part
all surfaces have a lot of microbumps.

So what I can think of here is that you can try taking two different levels of noise textures, and using the one with larger scale value for the solid part and the one with the smaller scale for the gooey/liquid part of the tomato.

Also, try blending in the borders between the two, make it so that the boundary of hard part is more like a slope like the ocean shore rather than a straight-up vertical fall like the well.

And yeah, that's really it, the shine added by the correct displacement map would do most of the heavy lifting. Ofcourse you can do this manually with a fractal subdivision if you want.


imported .dae and .fbx, I cannot see this textures on rendered view

The world node setup is for the world background, not the buildings. Prove a screenshot of the building material setup by changing the pulldown in the Shaders Editor from "World" to "Object."

Right now, I'd say you deleted almost all the nodes for the materials for your city model, and all you've got is the empty material output. The solid view has its own color assignments that are independent of node setups or even the render engine, so that's why that color is maintained in solid view.

Further node materials explanation: A general material node flow goes:

Texture coordinates (defaults to generated or UV if not present). Outputs a vector into...
Texture. Images are the usual, but can also be procedural textures like "noise" or "checker." Outputs color and alpha into...
Shader. Principled BSDF is the all-purpose tune-to-need shader, but Diffuse BSDF is a good choice for a simple surface. Outputs BSDF instructions into...
Material Output.

While piping the color directly into "Material Output" is possible, it only works as of 2.80 where Blender tries to work around one output being piped into a different output type. Check out the colors and labels on the node inputs and outputs. In this case, blender is using the color like it is being fed into an "Emission" shader node (the simplest of all shaders, and Cycle's specialty because it can be used in Cycles to create truly glowing meshes).
The world material is similar to object materials, except you usually don't need coordinates for that, and you want to use "Environment Texture" so it will map properly. The world material makes a lit background as you can see with your trees.
Volume materials fill things with smoky looking stuff. Use it on the world for a universal fog, but be warned that in Cycles it will block out the sun and any world background you might have, because it extends infinitely into space.
"Emission" shader can work in volumes, which is handy for making space rays :-D


Matrices store rotations as quaternions (to_euler is only a method converting them), so if you get your data from a matrix, you know you lost information about the number of rotations. I don't think there's a way to read the euler values.
However, because 360° range is quite big, as long as your object is rotating slower than 180° per frame (or per simulation step, if you know how to access data in simulation process), you can remember previous rotation, get current rotation, and check the difference. A big (> 180°) difference suggests wrapping occurred, so you can unwrap the value, and add the difference to a variable that stores the real rotation.
rotation = deg(rotating_object.matrix_world.to_euler()[0])
difference = rotation - prev_rotation
if abs(difference) > 180:
    difference += 360 if prev_rotation > 0 else -360

real_rotation += difference
prev_rotation = rotation

Full code:
"""
Type in console:
mod = D.texts['drawhandler.py'].as_module()
mod.register()
"""

import bpy
from math import degrees as deg

view_handler = None
objects = bpy.data.objects
c = objects['Cylinder']
t = objects['Text']
prev_rotation = 0
real_rotation = 0

def callback():
    global prev_rotation
    global real_rotation

    rotation = deg(c.matrix_world.to_euler()[0])
    difference = rotation - prev_rotation
    if abs(difference) > 180:
        # rotation += 360 if prev_rotation > 0 else -360
        # difference = rotation - prev_rotation
        # shortcut:
        difference += 360 if prev_rotation > 0 else -360

    real_rotation += difference
    prev_rotation = rotation

    t.data.body = str(int(real_rotation))

def register():
    global view_handler
    view_handler = bpy.types.SpaceView3D.draw_handler_add(callback, (), 'WINDOW', 'PRE_VIEW')

def unregister():
    bpy.types.SpaceView3D.draw_handler_remove(view_handler, 'WINDOW')  # remove handler added on end of register() function

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

You probably want to use a driver instead of a dirty draw handler.


Splines Animated by Sound - Animation Nodes

The working solution was to use BOTH the Sound From Sequence and Sound Spectrum nodes in place of the Evaluate Sound node. Since AN no longer requires baking to animate a mesh to sound, the Bake Sound node I could just delete entirely. Step 1 remained the same, and here's a shot of the updated Step 2:


How do I properly set up Subsurface Scattering for a human skeleton for Cycles?

Under the green label on the right with Principled BSDF turn up Subsurface for subsurface scattering; also adjust the Subsurface color. You can also increase the Subsurface Radius very slightly.

According to the following answers: Principled BSDF subsurface scattering values for skin material the bones should probably have a subsurface value of less than 0.1. How accurate that looks mostly will depend on the lighting and your own ability to reference an image.

Because subsurface scattering varies depending on the distance from the edge of perceived light, along with the distance traveled through the mesh, I don't believe you need to map its value.


How to stop blender from recalculating normals?

I created a Blender add-on for this exact purpose called TiNA which allows you to easily transfer normals between objects. TiNA basically turns the somewhat overwhelming Data Transfer Modifier into a set of more comprehensible operations.
There's a special branch for those using Blender 2.80 beta.

 Hotkey           | Operation
------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------
 Alt+N            | Transfer Normals from selection to active object
 Shift+Alt+N      | Transfer Normals from active object to all other selected objects
 Ctrl+Shift+Alt+N | Clear Custom Normals data for entire selection
 Alt+W            | Wrap Normals

In your case you could transfer the normals from an unsplit duplicate by selecting all objects, and - with the unsplit duplicate as your active object - hitting Shift+Alt+N.


Rigid Body Problem, Active objects stay rigid, its not working

The little balls are inside the big cube? That's not going to work with default settings. You either need to model the floor, walls and ceiling as separate objects, or set the cube's rigid body shape to mesh. While you're at it, set the balls' shape to sphere and choose good values for mass and bounciness.


Generated rig controls dont control the bones

Those bones are the bones of the Meta Rig. Once you generate they are not used anymore. There are other bones that are hidden in the control rig. Unhide layer 29,30,31 and you'll see them.


It looks like you have overlays turned off. You can turn them back on in the top right corner of the viewport, next to the Viewport Shading menu. Hope this helps!


Fire Not Showing In Rendered view or LookDev but in other views Eevee

Can you post a screenshot of your fire material nodes? And do you have Volumetrics enabled for Cycles and EEVEE?


I am running an eGPU on Linux and I can confirm the speed is on par with other systems. My setup is a Dell XPS 13 (9370) with a Quad Core i7 (8550U) and a Razer Core X eGPU enclosure with a Radeon RX 580. To give you some numbers, the BMW scene renders in a little over 262 seconds. Here is the result of my render:
https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/3b842bbd-ed59-4352-a1f1-f6ef10a25864/
That's below the median time for that scene (266 seconds) on systems with the same configuration (BMW + Linux + OpenCL + RX 580 + Blender 2.90):
https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/query/?device_name=Radeon%20RX%20580&device_type=OPENCL&os=Linux&benchmark=bmw27&blender_version=2.90
From the OpenData results we can't distinguish eGPU's from dGPU's, but I think desktop setups are far more common than eGPU setups. On my machine, rendering on the GPU is about 2.5 x faster, which is what I measure most of the time. As a reference, the same scene renders in 663 seconds on the CPU. Here is my result:
https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/fffb4aed-f259-40d8-b307-827f1580c919/
I also tested with combined GPU + CPU render but the result is more or less the same as the GPU alone, often even slower. That's because the CPU is more efficient rendering small tiles (64 x 64 px) while the GPU prefers larger tiles. So if you increase the tile size, the CPU will negatively influence the result. While with smaller tile sizes, the GPU will not work at its full capacity.
On the elementary OS StackExchange, I've outlined my setup:
https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/questions/26197/can-i-use-an-egpu-with-elementary-os-and-if-so-how-do-i-set-it-up/26198
I've never used Manjaro, so I'm not sure how it will translate.


I think it will work if you do it like...
mesh.vertex_colors.new(name='layer0',do_init=False)
mesh.vertex_colors.new(name='layer1',do_init=False)
mesh.vertex_colors.new(name='layer2',do_init=False)
mesh.vertex_colors.new(name='layer3',do_init=False)

vertex_color_layer0 = mesh.vertex_colors['layer0']
vertex_color_layer1 = mesh.vertex_colors['layer1']
vertex_color_layer2 = mesh.vertex_colors['layer2']
vertex_color_layer3 = mesh.vertex_colors['layer3']

for i, c in enumerate(data.colors):
    vertex_color_layer0.data[i].color = (c[3],c[3],c[3],c[3])
    vertex_color_layer1.data[i].color = (c[0],c[0],c[0],c[0])
    vertex_color_layer2.data[i].color = (c[1],c[1],c[1],c[1])
    vertex_color_layer3.data[i].color = (c[2],c[2],c[2],c[2])


Constrain vertex positions to moving objects?

You can constrain each individual vertices of your polygon to the joints of your mechanism instead of moving the mesh origin. No need to move the mesh origin.

You can do it using the Hook modifier. Create one Vertex group for each vertices of your polygon, then, using the Hook modifier, constrain each of those group to one of the joint of your mechanism, using whatever mesh that makes up the joint that you think would show the best result.

Alternatively, you can use some Empty, constrain them to the center of the joints, then Hook each Vertex group to one of the Empty.


You are using Eevee, the pointiness output only works in cycles atm.

Workaround for Edge Highlighting:
There is a way to get the same or similar result "pointiness" gives you. The function is called "dirty vertex colors" and its avaiable in the vertex paint mode.

You can play around with the settings here, depending on the mesh of yours some work better, others do not, but you can probably find a tutorial for that.

Note: Booth Pointiness and Dirty Vertex Colors are dependent on the Geometry-Resolution, i've just added a Bevel modifier with 3 Segments and applied it.
Another method of doing this, would be, to bake your pointiness colors as a texture and use them in your eevee shader.


Well, when I applied location, rotation, and scale - cell fracture worked perfectly. It was hard to find the answer via google lol.


matrix_basis only supports valid transform matrices - not a specialist, but by the look of it your m looks more like a shearing one?

Note that internally, there is no matrix_basis at all, Blender only stores translation/rotation/scaling separately, and converts them to/from RNA's matrix_basis. So if a matrix cannot be represented by a translation, rotation and scaling, then you cannot expect it to work.


Your character needs some way to count how many walls he has successfully passed. You can do this by making the character count when he passes above or below a wall - because the game ends when he goes through a wall.
Before we can fix the problem, we need a simple game.
Setup
I'll start by adding sun lamps, and a ground.

          Ground Plane                 Main Shadow Lamp     Even Lighting
You may be wondering what "Even Lighting" is. It is what I call a setup where you have a few low power sun lamps, one pointing in each direction, elimination no-light zones and harsh shadows. The main Shadow lamp is positioned so it can cast it's shadow on the entire plane.
Set your main sun lamp to only cast a shadow in its own layer.

This is important for when you add the top plane. Depending on your game setting, the top plane could be a sky, a tunnel roof, the inside of a building, really anything you want it to be.
Add a plane to be the top of the world, on a different layer. This is so the shadow lamp will not effect your sky plane, and as a result, the sky will not block all the light.

Now we need a character. You could use something as pretty as a mech or a jet fighter, or you could just use a cube. Modeling is usually the funnest part. I'll be using a cube here, because I need to leave something fun for you to do.
Add a camera and position it however you want. Parent it to a cube

Important: paint the cube blue.

This is an important step, because the awesomeness of your game could be compromised if the cube is not blue. Trust me- I've tried.
You can use whatever logic you want on the cube to make it jump, or fly, depending on the setting of your game. If your game is a gun running along the ground and jumping over objects, you may want something as simple as this:

However, I'm going to make this cube into a flying spaceship, so I will use this logic setup:

This logic setup limits the distance the cube can fly, so he can not fly below the bottom plane, or above the top plane. I'm also going to do the opposite to the camera. (this is optional)
We need to copy the logic from the cube, to the camera.

Now, we need to modify the logic on the camera.

Now, the camera will move half as fast as the cube. (camera is parented to the cube so the camera already moved with the cube.) (+1) + (-.5) = .5
Now, the camera will move up and down half as fast as the cube

This provides a more awesome view of the cube.
Now we need a wall to emit. We also need a collision object for the cube to detect. this will be how the cube knows when it has successfully passed a wall.

The green cube has this logic

The green cube has these physics properties.

The wall cube has exactly the same physics properties and logic, except that the wall cube does not have the Boolean property PassedAnotherWall. Instead, it has the Boolean property Wall.
Now we Finally get to the wall emitter. This is what generates the level as you are playing.
I have four empties. one of them (Wall Control Empty) controls the other three. The other three empties are named Top, Middle and Bottom. You can probably guess which is which. This is the collapsed logic that randomly adds the walls.

This is what it looks like expanded.

Basically, this logic setup works as follows:
Every 75 logic ticks, it randomly selects one of the wall sections that will not be added. every time a wall piece is added, the collision detector cube is also added. Both the wall and the collision detector cubes contain the logic to move past the player, appearing like the player is moving.
We need to test this.

YAY it works!!!!
now we need to make the player cube respond to the wall pieces.

All we need now is a display to show how many walls the layer has successfully gotten by.
Add a text object and parent it to the camera. it should be positioned in a nice spot in front of the camera.

We first need to change the font, because the default font will not display in the game engine.

Now we can add a little logic and everything should work happily.

YAY!!!
there is only one more thing we should change. you can still see the green cube, which should be invisible. Also - I did not press Escape to exit the game engine - I hit a wall, and it exited automatically.

Final Test

It Works!!! Yay!!!
If you had any trouble following that, feel free to explore, take apart, reverse engineer, or base your game off of the Blend file.


How do I attach a skirt with a cloth modifier to the cg cookie flex rig?

Found the problem, I needed to parent to bone instead of parent to object.


"stitched" style panorama in Blender? (NOT equirectangular)

If you want a spherical perspective as your link suggests, then fisheye equisolid is the type of camera you want to use. You can find it by activating the Cycles render engine, then selecting Panoramic in the Camera type and then Fisheye Equisolid in the panorama type.

You can also do it the "post-prod" way by first rendering using a rectilinear camera (called "Perspective" in Blender) because it renders faster and has a 1 on 1 correspondence with your viewport, and then use the "Lens distortion" node in the compositor. However, this one gives an elliptical distortion if your image is a rectangle (just like a Fisheye Equidistant camera). You'd have to set up a node tree to get the real spherical distortion. It could be done using a displacement node; some gradient textures and some math nodes, but you may get some subtle sub-pixel artifacts due to discontinuities in the gradient texture node.
My web search didn't give me any result for someone who already set up a node tree for that particular projection but maybe I missed it.


Is it possible to work on the same blender file at the same time on 2 computers?

There would ultimately be the issue of version control.  If you and your friend were working on the same material, object, at the same time, how would the program decide whose edit to accept?

There are helps to version control out there like GitHub where a user "checks out" a part of a software project to edit.  While that user is editing, no other user may write to the file, but they can still read from the original file.

With Blender, as far as I understand it, everything (except texture and dependencies) is contained in one solitary .blend file.  That means whoever has it checked out is preventing the other from editing.

Three things I can think of that might help you with this:

1.) You may use something like LogMeIn or another similar software that would allow you and your friend to have access to the same Desktop via a network/Internet connection.  You would be virtually sharing the same computer and program, but your friend could be in another city/state.

2.) Blender has a nice Append function built in that's accessible from the File menu.  If you could have a central location for storing the .blend file, each of you could "append" objects from that file to your own individual Blender sessions on your respective computers (provided you were working on different objects... i.e. version control), edit them, and then later append them back into the original .blend file.  Of course you would need to collaborate to determine who's working on what and when you would append to the original file.

3.) You could have separate .blend files in a central location, maybe for different objects.  You can then use the Link option to incorporate them into the same master file but edit them individually: https://docs.blender.org/manual/de/dev/data_system/linked_libraries.html
 Again, you'd need to implement VC.

There may be an add-on of some sort that I don't know about that would allow you to do this more easily


Use Object Mode and Edit Mode in the 3D View

No, there isn't currently. If you create two 3D Views, they will still be linked. When you enter into Edit Mode in one of them, the other one wil also.

Multiple 3D Views are mainly used for viewing diffirent angles at the same time.


Is there a way to search and replace in Blender?

I'm not aware of a simple way to replace edges automatically. The direct approach to this seems to be to loop over the edges and to generate the geometry manually.

With the add-on Animation Nodes I was able to create a setup that replaces all edges of an object with some template profile. Selectively replacing edges based on some condition determined by the coordinates (e.g. replace all edges which are longer than…) is also doable. I was not able to figure out selectively replacing them by criteria like whether the edge is selected or if the edge is marked as seam or sharp.

The new profile could either be oriented along some global axis or an axis dependent on the two vertices' normals. It's also possible to use conditions like “point the profile towards global Z, but point it along the normals if the edge points in Z direction.”

Generating the new edges works fine and this process will also generate any faces that may appear in the template profile. But reusing some faces of the original mesh (without using all of the old vertices and edges of it as well) is more problematic. AN only exposes edges and polygons by index and I assume simply deleting edge indices will lead to errors.

Here is the node setup that I used…

…and the blend file as I guess nobody wants to copy the wiring:


Changing an objects origin just changes its location

Changing the origin point wont move the object, it changes where the object is "attached to".

Lets say you wanted to pick up a cup, you can pick it up by the handle, you can pick it up by the tip, you can pick it up by lots of ways. Wherever your skin touches the cup, thats the "origin point".

What are you trying to do with the grass? You can upload the .blend here
http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/


Blender 2.77 no longer orbits around the z axis when using scroll wheel or numpad 6, 4?

That's a new feature:

  The View3D NumPad4/6 keys have no more a 'turntable' type of rotation, but (as all other rotating numpad keys) use a view axis (the vertical one, see T47263 and rBfe0ca82b232d).

As it caused some confusion, the developers for now reverted this new behaviour in 2.77a, so you should just update.


How to bake ambient occlusion into vertex colors?

Quick overview of the bake process & preview in Blender Render

How to bake the ambient occlusion into vertex colors

Select the object and make sure the object has a vertex color layer assigned in Object Data > Vertex Colors. If not, create one by clicking the plus button.

Navigate to the Render tab > Bake. Select Bake Mode: Ambient Occlusion and Bake to Vertex Color

Select the object and hit Bake

Blender Render material setup to see the vertex colors

Select the object's material and enable these:

Shading > Shadeless

Options > Vertex Color Paint

Switch to viewport shading to Material

Optionally, if you want to see your texture blended with vertex colors, you can go to Texture tab > Influence and set the Blend: Multiply

Cycles material setup to see the vertex colors

To add vertex colors into node tree, use Attribute node with the name corresponding to the object's vertex color layer name (it is named Col by default).
In the example below, you can see a simple shadeless material where vertex colors and an image texture are combined:


There are several ways to do this in Blender. The first and maybe easiest is to click (at the top bar of the program) the little icon with two left cubes, and a tall right one. This will open a bar with different window layouts. Click the one that says "UV Editing." This will give a layout similar to what you want.

Your other option is to manually customize the layout to better fit your preference. To do what you want, look at the top right of the 3D Viewport window for three small lines. Click and hold down that button, and drag to the left. Now, you'll have two windows where the viewport used to be. In the left one (in the bottom left of the window), click the little icon showing a 3D cube. In the window that pops up, select "UV/Image Editor."

Now when you render, the render should show in the UV window instead of the viewport!


Hair too rigid unable to get rid of right angle structure

You might want to add more control points to the hair particles. The goal is the add some extra control points near the scalp/head so hair can bend nicely there.

To do so, make sure Selection Mode: Point is active to see the points. Select all roots by using the menu. Then select the next points via the menu (Select → Select More or hit Ctrl + NumPad +). Now you add another control point for each hair particle with Particle → Subdivide.
Extend the selection before subdivision or repeat the steps when you need more control points. The selection can also help you to comb or puff only the parts of the hair strands you want.
To see the effect you need to increase the number of path steps for the hair. There are 3 settings for this. One in the tool options for the Particle Edit mode. Then for the final Render and one more for the Viewport Display. The default values are 2 or 3, often too low to bend the hair properly.


How do I make a script to set object index for every object?

A simple way to do this would be:

import bpy

pi = 0
for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    obj.pass_index = pi
    pi += 1


Creating Wind/Dust storm effect animations with cycles?

Firstly, I would like to mention that the plane looks amazing :D

For the propeller, you could use motion blur and rotate the blade extremely fast. You could also simply download a photo from the internet and rotate it every few frames.

The dust/wind, that is going to be more complicated...

You will need to create a plane and give it a particle simulation. Disable the gravity and give it some Brownian for more effect. Stretch the particles for motion blur (or just enable it under Render Settings).

For added effect, Create a massive cube and give it a Volume Scatter node for the Volume, whilst disabling the Surface node.

Since I had nothing better to do, I created a .blend ;)

Didn't focus on the material that much...


Particle Settings - Noob - Blenderguru Tutorial

From a Youtube comment:

Johnathan Burkhardt
1 day ago
I had the same problem!  If you go to Particles > Render > Collection  there is a checkbox for "Pick Random."  I clicked that and it fixed the problem!

Sorry guys, I knew it was a noob problem.


How to get input from RFID reader in Blender Game Engine?

This may be a problem with the frequent changing of frames (including logic events) in the game engine. Using the subprocess module to start a new process outside of the game engine main loop may solve the problem.

For example, this is what I used to retrieve data from an HTTP server and communicate what I had fetched back to the game engine.

import bge
import subprocess

gD = bge.logic.globalDict

if gD['OS'] == 'Linux':
    saa = subprocess.Popen(gD['ModulePath']+'RetrieveFormData.py', shell=False, stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
    goa = saa.communicate(bytes(gD['ServerIP']+','+gD['InstallationPath'],'utf-8'))
if gD['OS'] == 'Windows':
    saa = subprocess.Popen([sys.executable,gD['ModulePath']+'RetrieveFormData.py'], shell=False, stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
    goa = saa.communicate(bytes(gD['ServerIP']+','+gD['InstallationPath'],'utf-8'))

I hope this provided you with a clue if nothing more.


Blender 2.8 API, python, set active object

Use the view_layer
Set ViewLayer.active to any object in view layer or None
context.view_layer.objects.active = ob

Note selecting has also changed from ob.select = True to
ob.select_set(True)

which together will emulate the general case  UI state of having the context object  both active and selected.


Random Text Grid Generator in Animation Node?

Generate a list of all possible texts. (We can skip this if the texts are completely random)
Create a random list of the same length as the vertices in the grid.
Instance n number of text objects where n is the length of the vertices list.
Set the texts to the text objects.
Position the objects.


You setup event triggers using game engine logic bricks within the Logic Editor window

There are several sensors available, collision and near would work. (Touch appears to have disappeared from recent versions) These sensors can then run python scripts or initiate other actions using available actuators.

A search on youtube for blender game engine tutorial will bring up several options to show you the basics of using the game engine.


You have to try to unwrap it correctly because if the UVs are stretched like that
it isn't going to work. You can try the minimize stretch feature for that


Perspective Flatten Geometry by Shrinkwrap

bpy_extras.object_utils.world_to_camera_view

Use the world to camera view method to map to image coordinates, similar to a UV with 0, 0 the bottom left hand corner, 1, 1 the top right hand corner.

The z component is mapped to 0 and the width scaled such that the projection image has width 1.

Using the half angle tangent of the camera angle, moving such that the width is one, maps the projection onto the rostrum (face or whatever it's called) of the camera.

>>> from bpy_extras.object_utils import world_to_camera_view
>>> world_to_camera_view(
world_to_camera_view(scene, obj, coord)
Returns the camera space coords for a 3d point.
(also known as: normalized device coordinates - NDC).
Where (0, 0) is the bottom left and (1, 1)
is the top right of the camera frame.
values outside 0-1 are also supported.
A negative 'z' value means the point is behind the camera.
Takes shift-x/y, lens angle and sensor size into account
as well as perspective/ortho projections.
:arg scene: Scene to use for frame size.
:type scene: :class:`bpy.types.Scene`
:arg obj: Camera object.
:type obj: :class:`bpy.types.Object`
:arg coord: World space location.
:type coord: :class:`mathutils.Vector`
:return: a vector where X and Y map to the view plane and
   Z is the depth on the view axis.
:rtype: :class:`mathutils.Vector`

To use the script below select whichever mesh objects you wish to project onto the scene camera plane.

import bpy

from bpy import context
from mathutils import Matrix, Vector
from math import tan, radians
from bpy_extras.object_utils import world_to_camera_view as w2cv

def tocam(scene, obs):
    cam = scene.camera
    cam_vec = cam.matrix_world.to_3x3() @ Vector((0, 0, -1))
    R = cam_vec.to_track_quat('-Z', 'Y').to_matrix().to_4x4()

    s = Vector((1, (scene.render.resolution_y / scene.render.resolution_x), 1, 1))
    # scale based on resolution
    S = Matrix.Diagonal(s)
    # translate such that origin is middle point of image (and hence cam)
    T = Matrix.Translation((-0.5, -0.5, 0))

    for ob in obs:
        ob.data.transform(ob.matrix_world)
        ob.matrix_world = Matrix()
        for v in ob.data.vertices:
            vec = w2cv(scene, cam, v.co)
            v.co = vec.x, vec.y, 0

        ob.data.transform(S @ T)

        ob.matrix_world = R
        angle_x = cam.data.angle_x
        x = (0.5 /  tan(angle_x / 2)) * cam_vec.normalized()
        ob.matrix_world.translation = cam.matrix_world.translation + x
        if cam.data.type == 'ORTHO':
            ob.scale *= cam.data.ortho_scale

bpy.ops.object.duplicate()
tocam(context.scene, context.selected_objects)

EDIT: fix for ortho camera.


So you need to know the basics of UV unwrapping .

UV unwrapping

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2-FfB9kRmE

You also need to know how to texture , You dont need to texture it , you can also use materials but it isnt the best idea if you arent using it only for rendering :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thYHF0282cE

Also be sure to look at lots of references and watch how other people do it :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3r2T7xU9Kw

there is also Clone painting , Shown in this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4ngVoGIj1Q

And since you are beginner you might want to take a look at  basic texturing :

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


You need to create a UV map, it is the best way in this case.

Simply select the front faces of your model in the 3D view and press U to unwrap, then select the back faces of your model and unwrap again.

Or select everything and press U to choose Smart UV Project.


Twisted Cylinder (Hyperboloid of one sheet)

I think this solves the issue with moonbots answer. Use the TinyCAD addon to create vertices at the edge itersections

EDIT steps:

rotate top face 90 degrees (R, Z, 90)
duplicate (Shift-D) and mirror along any axis (e.g. Ctrl-M, X)
press W and select TinyCAD ⯈ XALL
press F to fill faces
press W and select Remove Doubles


Matcap stands for Material Capture.

In short: They are fake materials which are intended to help you during the modeling process.

Sometimes using a Matcap instead of the solid shading material in the viewport helps you to spot irregularities in your geometry. If you choose a Matcap similar to the material you have in mind for your final render, it might also help to check if a model will "work" visually.

See how the edges and creases show up more prominent when using the matcap?

You can't use them as a final material for your renderings, though.


Mirror without deleting or adding new material

I assume you mean that you edited the Rig. In that case you can do this:

In the tool shelf: Vertical Options Tab enable X-Mirror
In your Armature, in Edit Mode: select all bones which you have modified (similar like in the image)
press "g" followed by RETURN will instantly adjust the other side of your rig.

Note: This works only if the Rig's symmetry plane is YZ (character looks along Y axis) and when the Bones are named according to Blender's naming conventions, see http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Rigging/Armatures/Editing/Properties


Keyframing start and end of smoke simulation

If you are using the mesh as the flow source,  then animate the Density of the Flow object.

Hover over the field and press I to add a keyframe. Or RMB  on the field and choose Insert Keyframe.
If you are using a emitter particle system, then use the start and end time of the particle system.


It appears, that there is a relative deformation applied to the mesh after the shapekey.

This is likely to be caused by a deforming modifier, like an armature modifier. Modifiers are applied after shapekeys. To properly view your shapekey in object mode you can

turn of (the armature) modifier
reset the armature to rest pose with the Rest Position button

The armature will be unposable as long as this button is activated.
reset the transformations of the armature, by

showing all armature layers
selecting all bones in pose mode (A)
Removing keyframes which would prevent the bones from being reset.
clearing their transformations with ⎇ AltG (Translation), ⎇ AltR (Rotation) and ⎇ AltS (scale).


How to simulate particle so bigger particles will fall faster than smaller ones

If you don't want a real world physics involved You can do that easily with Particle Texture.

Let assume that you want the particles to move downwards (-Z) emitted from a Plane.
Set the particle system Field Weights - > Gravity to 0
Set the direction of the particles to Normal : -3
Optionally, set the all the particles to be emitted from the Start frame
Set the size of the particles to some value. You don't need to randomize the size with the Random option at this point.
With the Emitter object selected go to Texture tab in Properties editor. Make sure you're in Particles Textures .
Create a new Texture.
Make the new texture to be of Type: Clouds and for Basis chose Cell Noise. Let Coordinates be Generated.
And finally in Influence deselect all and turn on Size in General and Velocity in Physics.

In this way the color of the texture will control the size and velocity of the particle by it's initial location. Lighter values will increase the size and velocity. Darker values will do the opposite.


If you mean you want to change its Z position throughout the animation, you can do it with the Graph Editor:

Select your object, open the Graph Editor.
Unfold the LocRotScale of the object and lock everything except the Z Location.
Select the curve and move it up 2 units with G, Y and 2 (Y is the up axis of the Graph Editor).
Now your object is 2 units up on the Z axis.

Now, about your second question: "If some of my z positions are not 1, but a different value, is there a way to set them all at once, rather than shift them all by the same value?"

Trick to align several vertices on the same axis:

Select the vertice that is your Y reference, and ctrl G to move your green cursor up to this vertice
Select the vertices you want to align on the same Y position.
shift S > Cursor Value.

Better trick suggested by Mr Zak:

Select the vertice #1 which is the Y position reference.
ctrl G to make the cursor move to the vertice position.
Select the 2D Cursor as the Pivot Point.
Select all the vertices you want to snap to the Y position.
Scale down to zero with S Y 0


It's not too bad. I couldn't say about the texture because your picture is too dark. But about the proportions I would say:

Lengthen the forehead
Shorten the chin
Scale down and spread the ears
Scale down and rise the nose up
Scale up the mouth and thicken the lower lip
Make the neck straight
...

To compare you could overlay your photo with your mesh, either in Blender or Photoshop.


How do I create a smooth slope to join 2 planes of different elevation?

To create such a slope is fairly simple.
Create a row of verities at the top and bottom of the slope. Make sure that the rows have the same amount of verities. Then you can bridge the gap.

If you want to create a bulge/indent, add a few edge loops running down the slope. next using proportional editing o, drag the center edge loop up or down. Using these techniques you can mold you slope. I would recommend sculpting for fine tuning.


How do you get the vertex manipulator to show up in Blender 2.90?

Activate the Move tool in the Toolbar :

Each tool have a specific manipulator.


The type Sequences does not contain effect_strip_add , that's part of the sequences operators(bpy.ops). The correct way to add a strip(i.e. effect) is by using:

sequences.new_effect(name, type, channel, frame_start, frame_end=0, seq1=None, seq2=None, seq3=None)


How would I rig this mechanism to have the same movements as shown in the video?

Start from the first half of the mech: a wheel that's driving a two part arm. Put the head of a bone exactly in every center of rotation of all joints (use Shift S, selection to cursor and cursor to selected, for precise placements).
 Starting from the bone that drives the force A, B is simply son of A and acts as target for the IK bone chain C,D. E is simply son of D (keep offset), and it will be the IK target of the 2nd part IK chain.

Part 2 is simply another IK Chain, bone E is target for the IK chain F,G,H,I. The only difference is that every bone of the chain has locked the rotation axis that in real world would be constrained by its rigid nature.

Which axis to constraint it depends by the bone roll (you can set it in edit mode). A good habit is to rotate the roll so that the main rotation is along positive X Axis, and you can turn on axis visualization to help understanding which axis to lock.

I added on the end a third IK chain (L,M) form bone E head to bone H tail, just to drive the rotation of the smaller part of the piston, because it was getting a big rotation out of its natural axis (in your video this longitudinal extra rotation is absorbed by imprecision of the joints).


Blender Eevee lighting Rendering - Flashes of light in animation

I just ran into what may be the same issue rendering out some of my scenes with eevvee.  See screen shot.  I did a bit of investigation and where I have a stack of point lights in a complicated mesh every now and then I'll get that flash.  If I turned off bloom it stopped, looking at the rendered image it would have a few super white pixels for some reason that bloom was really blooming on causing the flashes.
I added a clamp value to the bloom (20 in my case worked) and it stops that happening.
To re-render the affected scenes without redoing the whole thing I tweaked my command line batch render as below just to re-render the affected frames.
"--path to your blender install--\blender.exe" -b  "P.Scene4.Cut1.blend" -f 2,5,36,51,52,53,70,75,77,78,104,105,114,119,137,149,169,174,186,221,232,233,241,246,247,250,252,259,266,276,277,280,283
Perhaps you issue is different but check bloom clamp, 0 is the default and that means no clamp at all.


How to make a material for a candy cane?

The biggest difference between your render and the picture is that the picture has a ton of things (esp. lights) to reflect all around, while yours has only one lamp and its specular highlight. Add an HDR image to the background and your render will look lightyears better.

See tip 3 here for examples:

http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/making-better-materials/

See this site for some free, quality HDRs:

https://hdrihaven.com

One other thing is that in the picture there is a little gap between the red and white whereas yours cuts cleanly. Perhaps add an extremely thin black line there, or use the striping as a bumpmap.


Weird mesh deformation for hollow object

As Monolith said, it means than some other bones have influence on this part of the mesh.

The easiest way to fix it is to select this part of the mesh in Edit mode, then go in the Properties panel > Data > Vertex Groups, and in the menu on the right of the vertex groups list, click on Remove From All Groups so that the vertices you've selected won't be part of any group anymore, and won't be controlled by any bone.

Now keep the vertices selected, in the vertex groups list select the group these vertices are supposed to be part of (i.e. group that has the name of the head bone) and click on the Assign Button.

Or to assign you can also switch your armature to Pose mode, select the object, switch to Weight Paint mode, select the head bone (it should be blueish), then paint with the brush (Mix option).


Apply collision event only on a specific mesh

I found out by enabling the 'Invert' button, it's working like a key release event.

So I createdstrong text
another sensor keyboard event on up key
while Invert enabled linked to my 'Stop' logic block

and it works fine.


First I would make sure your hand bone is aligned with the hand mesh's axis of rotation. It's a little hard to tell from the screenshots.

It is likely that bone envelope weights/automatic weights will parent the hand to more than just the hand bone, as they are designed for smooth deformations of non-rigid characters.

Painting this minifig's weights is actually much easier! You can do it in edit mode.
If you go into the Object Data tab of the Properties window, there should be a section that lists vertex groups. These correspond to the bones of your armature, if you've created automatic bone weights. When in edit mode, you can assign the bone weight values here directly.

I would start by using automatic weights, then going through each item in the vertex weights list, removing all vertices from that bone group (to remove the unwanted bone influence you're getting), and then assigning only the vertices you want.

This is a much faster way for rigid parts that are 100% influenced by only one bone. For smoothly deformed things like skin, weight painting is better.

You can also separate the parts and parent them as objects to the bones of your skeleton.


How do you animate more than one Rigify rig in a single scene?

As Rigify is based on Blender's internal drivers, constraints, and scripts, it's not directly exportable to Unity, so you should think of it as a Blender instrument.
The common workflow is to program the animation into Blender, using two different Rigify rigs (use the advanced options, near to the generate rig button, to give an unique name to every rig).
When the animation is finished you can turn on the Deforming bones layer only, select all deforming bones (bone layer 29, counting from 00 to 31, all bones have the "DEF-" suffix), and in pose mode go to the menu pose > animation > bake action (turn on all the preferences), so that a copy of the rig, maden of deforming bones only, with baked action, can be directly exported to Unity.
Usually we use two rigs for two characters, but if you really want a single action, at this stage you can join (Ctrl J) the two only deforming bones rigs: all bones names and animation channels will update adding the .001 suffix to the joined copy.


Example using custom node template.

Test code, put together with the custom nodes template for 2.8. Recommend that scripting now in 2.8 will save time going forward

Using Set up methods in the property group have a method to draw, and set and get from another object that shares the same pointer.

The draw method simply iterates and draws a basic prop layout for each property in way of example.  I've added a list of chosen props. Begs for a nicely formatted method.

The operator requires context.node  this has been added to the context at where the operator is displayed in custom node UI, the context member is set to the node, which is self in the node code.  For the N panel draw, the context active node is used instead.

    def draw_buttons(self, context, layout):
        box = layout.box()
        box.context_pointer_set("node", self)
        op = box.operator("node.configure")  # XXX

The config properties are drawn using. box is any layout element defined, could be self.layout or self.layout.column() etc.

        self.config.draw(box, context)

Note could flag to use self.node instead of self above  would display the node values directly.  Contemplating using this but inverting the operator to revert if cancelled, and make props live so one can dynamically dick around and only save when happy.

The node values are loaded on invoke using CustomNodeConfig.getfrom and set on execute with CustomNodeConfig.setfrom

Note It appears the config pointer will not register on the operator if it has an ID type pointer as a member.

from nodeitems_utils import NodeCategory, NodeItem
import nodeitems_utils
import bpy
from bpy.types import NodeTree, Node, NodeSocket

class CustomNodeConfig(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    __props = ["x", "my_enum_prop"]
    x: bpy.props.FloatProperty(name="X factor")
    my_items = (
        ('DOWN', "Down", "Where your feet are"),
        ('UP', "Up", "Where your head should be"),
        ('LEFT', "Left", "Not right"),
        ('RIGHT', "Right", "Not left"),
    )

    my_enum_prop: bpy.props.EnumProperty(
        name="Direction",
        description="Just an example",
        items=my_items,
        default='UP',
    )

    def getfrom(self, node):
        for p in node.__props:
            setattr(self, p, getattr(node, p))

    def setfrom(self, node):
        for p in self.__props:
            setattr(node, p, getattr(self, p))

    def draw(self, layout, context):
        layout.label(text="Settings...")
        for p in self.__props:
            layout.prop(self, p)

class NODE_OT_configure(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_label = "Configure"
    bl_idname = "node.configure"
    node = None
    config: bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=CustomNodeConfig)

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        self.node = context.node
        if self.node:
            self.config.getfrom(self.node.config)
        return context.window_manager.invoke_props_dialog(self)

    def execute(self, context):

        if self.node:

            self.config.setfrom(self.node.config)
        # Copy config -> node_ref.conf
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def draw(self, context):
        if self.node:
            self.layout.label(text="%s" % (repr(self.node.id_data)))
            self.layout.label(text="%s" % (self.node.name))
        self.config.draw(self.layout, context)

class MyCustomTree(NodeTree):
    '''A custom node tree type that will show up in the node editor header'''
    bl_idname = 'CustomTreeType'
    bl_label = "Custom Node Tree"
    bl_icon = 'NODETREE'

class MyCustomTreeNode:
    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, ntree):
        return ntree.bl_idname == 'CustomTreeType'

class MyCustomNode(Node, MyCustomTreeNode):
    '''A custom node'''
    bl_idname = 'CustomNodeType'
    bl_label = "Custom Node"
    bl_icon = 'SOUND'

    my_string_prop: bpy.props.StringProperty()
    my_float_prop: bpy.props.FloatProperty(default=3.1415926)
    config: bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=CustomNodeConfig)

    def init(self, context):
        self.inputs.new('NodeSocketFloat', "World")
        self.outputs.new('NodeSocketFloat', "How")

    def copy(self, node):
        print("Copying from node ", node)

    def free(self):
        print("Removing node ", self, ", Goodbye!")

    def draw_buttons(self, context, layout):
        box = layout.box()
        box.context_pointer_set("node", self)
        op = box.operator("node.configure")  # XXX
        self.config.draw(box, context)
        layout.label(text="Node settings")
        layout.prop(self, "my_float_prop")

    def draw_buttons_ext(self, context, layout):
        box = layout.box()
        box.context_pointer_set("node", context.active_node)
        op = box.operator("node.configure")
        self.config.draw(box, context)
        layout.prop(self, "my_float_prop")
        layout.prop(self, "my_string_prop")

    def draw_label(self):
        return "I am a custom node"

class MyNodeCategory(NodeCategory):
    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.space_data.tree_type == 'CustomTreeType'

# all categories in a list
node_categories = [
    # identifier, label, items list
    MyNodeCategory(
        'SOMENODES',
        "Some Nodes",
        items=[
            # our basic node
            NodeItem("CustomNodeType"),
        ]),
]

classes = (
    CustomNodeConfig,
    NODE_OT_configure,
    MyCustomTree,
    MyCustomNode,
)

def register():
    from bpy.utils import register_class
    for cls in classes:
        register_class(cls)

    nodeitems_utils.register_node_categories('CUSTOM_NODES', node_categories)

def unregister():
    nodeitems_utils.unregister_node_categories('CUSTOM_NODES')

    from bpy.utils import unregister_class
    for cls in reversed(classes):
        unregister_class(cls)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Just solved it. You need to install the add on. Go to Edit -> Preferences, type extra in the search box at Add-ons submenu, select both add-ons and install them. Just like this:


Mirror modifier. Mirrored half is not aligned, but rotated

What you are seeing is caused by not applied transforms, specifically rotation. Since the mirror modifier mirrors along the local axis by default, it is not mirroring as desired. What you can do is apply the rotation using Ctrl+A > Rotation. This will set the local axis orientation the same as the global axis, and should solve your issue.


How can I create an animation with a transparent background in the Material viewport?

There are three ways to render images or animations with a transparent background.

Using OpenGL render :

Make sure that you set the Alpha mode to Transparent in the Render > OpenGL Render Options > Alpha Mode which is located in the info header.

Using Blender Render :

Make sure that you have set the Alpha to Transparent in the Shading option under the Render tab in the Properties panel.

Using Cycles render :

Make sure that you the Transparency ticked on in the Film option under the Render tab.


what are these scribble controls called?

I believe what you are calling 'scribbles' are the 'custom bone shapes'. Instead of animating the actual bones of the armature, which can be fiddly, it can sometimes be easier to add a custom shape which represents the bone.

These might be shaped to represent the feature of the armature that they control; a bone that controls an eyebrow might be replaced with a custom bone shape that is in the shape of an eyebrow, for example.

Custom bones can be set in the display panel of the 'Bone' tab in the 'Properties' area:

When a mesh is selected as the custom bone shape, the bone it represents will be hidden. The custom bone shape can then be moved or rotated in the same way the original bone could have been.


Shadow Catcher is Lighter than Rest of Scene

I came across this thread when searching for a solution to the same exact problem as the OP. I tried various fixes, included the "simplified" node set up mentioned above by cegaton. Nothing worked.

The node setup posted by bmanner is the same node setup I get when I use a shadow catcher plane in Blender 2.79b (Mac version). I'm a rank beginner with nodes, so reducing the three "inputs" down to the two shown in the fix was not working for me.

Through all the playing around, however, I did find a very simple fix. By checking the "clamp" checkbox in both of the "add" nodes, everything renders properly. The shadow catcher no longer brightens everything it touches. No other aspect of the scene seems to be affected in the render. No idea why or how this works, but it does.

I realize this is an old thread. Since I haven't seen this solution anywhere else, I figured this would be a good place to mention it. The OP's screen shot is attached, with the boxes noted. I hope this helps someone.


I suggest you to "explode" the geometry and then bake,
explode means; you take everything apart so there is a margin between they, you have to do this for every pass except the ambient occlusion pass

-separate the pieces when there is a weird angle(not sure of this last pàrt)

Supplementary:
this video shows the process done in maya and substance painter, but its the same for blender
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fY3LEnoRxU&t=7s


That image was created with a bunch of overlapping transparent planes which were created by extruding parts of a circle:

Add a circle (Shift+A> Mesh > Circle. Note that you may want to increase the Vertices in the redo menu for a smother curve.) Then delete some of the vertices so you only have part of a circle:

Extrude (E) and cancel the transform to leave the extruded vertices where they are (Esc). Then scale along the normals with AltS so you have this shape:

Repeat steps 1 and 2 varying the amount of vertices you delete from the circle until you have several different sizes. Then duplicate (ShiftD) rotate (R) them around (make sure you move them slightly on the Z axis to avoid Z-fighting) so you have something like this:

Duplicate and rotate the entire bunch a couple times for good measure (again moving on the Z-axis) and add a couple circles for effect:

Add a material for additive blending (see How to get additive blending in cycles?):

Insert a rotation keyframe for all of them (press I> Rotation to insert a keyframe on the selected objects), then go to a later frame and run Randomize Transform (Space> Search > Randomize Transform). In the Redo menu at the bottom of the Tool shelf (N in the 3D view), Enable Randomize Rotation and set the Z to 180. Then insert another Rotation keyframe.

Result:
animated gif http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=65211
blendfile


How to add a hdr world background to its own layer?

The way I did this was to do a dummy run render of the camera's motion within the environment on an empty scene layer, with the environment set to be "visible" to camera, and saved this as a file of PNG's.  Then set up your scene proper, set the film to "transparent", check "use environment" on your render layers, and set the environment itself not to be visible to the camera.  Finally, in the compositor, bring the environment back in as an image (set to image sequence), and alpha over the rest of your scene.


Animation Nodes: How to create splines between a particle system and an object based on distance?

It is very easy to do with Animation Nodes by using the KDTree node.
Method:

First construct the KDTree from the position of the particles. Then, use the Find Points in a Radius node to find the points/particles (shown by red color) within a radius from the Vector which is the position of the object (in this case is a Sphere).

Now, to make splines from the Sphere for each red-points/particles, we have to use the Loop node, with which we create a vector list from the sphere's position and each red-points position. Then use the Spline From Points node to create the splines from the previously created vector list, and the Curve Object Output node generates the Curve Object.

Blend File:


Bake Texture from procedural Shader to multiple Objects from Array

I'm afraid the Array modifier needs to be applied before any texture baking.
Or it will only bake the original tile - which is not what you want.

Another solution:
Use Object or UV coordinates for both your textures

the Noise Texture uses Generated coordinates, when it's not
connected to anything
but Generated coordinates change when you apply the Array modifier
use Object coordinates instead, for both textures, and they will stay the same


How to add a ground for a model that is used as a displacement modifier?

use an image to control the displacement:

Generate an image that controls an alpha channel for texturing

Use that image to combine different materials:


If turning the layer opacity down doesn't fix it, make sure you have only the top layer (in Gimp) set to subtract. The bottom should be normal.

However, I don't think that's your problem. I think you are just using the musgrave and wave from Gimp, which has a different seed value (and maybe a different algorithm). Plug the texture directly into an emission shader set to strength of 1, and render that. Then do so for the other texture. Be sure to save both rendered images!
Now load them into Gimp as layers.

I hope this helps. Because I don't have the files, I can't think of anything else.


One way to do this is with the Boolean Modifier.
First select your cutouts in edit mode and press P.
Choose Separate by Selection. Then Extrude them trough your contour object.

Then Subdivide the edges on both sides of your cutout objects and subdivide then by 2.
(this is optional)

Select the new vertices, press G twice and move them next to your cutout objects. (also optional)

Then Alt select an edge of your contour object and press F (better to press F then to go by the menu; picture a bit misleading)

Now select your contour object (which is now a plane) and add a Boolean Modifier.
Properties window > Modifier Properties tab > Add Modifier. Then choose Boolean.
Then as Object choose your cut out object and click Apply. If you have multiple separate cutout objects repeat it for every one of them.

Then hide or delete your cutout objects. And you're done.

EDIT:
Don't want to use boolean?
Make sure all geometry is part of a single object.
In Edit Mode, use F to create edges between vertices, around your cutout geometry.
Use Subdivide to have the surrounding geometry have an equal number of vertices as the cutout geometry.
Press Ctrl + E (or click the Edge button), and select Bridge Edge Loops.

If not careful, created edges between vertices can cross the cutout geometry area if they happen to be aligned that way.

Also an unequal amount of vertices can cause problems.


Mesh bisect with fill doesn't place triangles for the cut surface

The "Bisect" function did generate a surface at the cut area, though it's an N-gon, STL-export seems to not offer an option to triangulate N-gons automatically.

Solution:

You can select the cut surface in Edit mode with Face selection and then use "Triangulate Faces" in the "Face" Menu Ctrl+F. Or use the direct shortcut, in this case Ctrl+T.

Here an example:

This should do the trick.


Why does my render always turn pink on the 10th frame?

I had alot of big specular/bump maps in my scene. I decided to unhook those in the node editor and just try using diffuse (the ones that arnt being seen by the camera). It seems that optimizing the scene by either removing texture maps that arnt in view, or reducing the texture size will stop the pink from showing up after a number of frames.


Possible to move an object from one .blend to another one?

Open the file into which you want to import the object. Then, click File > Append (or ShiftF1). Choose the original .blend file, where the object is located. When you have chosen a file, you will have to choose what to import. In this case, click "Mesh". Then, select the mesh that you want to import.


How to set distance of Freestyle line rendering?

The Distance modifier scope is to control the line's thickness with its distance from camera. The main parameters are four:

Range Min: the distance of the camera's nearest object from the camera itself
Range Max: the distance of the camera's fartest object from the camera itself
Value Min: the bottom value of the graph
Value Max: the top value of the graph

The values

Notice that I'm talking about the graph and not the resulting thickness (that is the curve itself) because I would like to suggest that is not a good idea to set a Max value lower than the Min value.

The values should be defined in order to set up the graph (if you choose Linear insead of Curve you are just forcing the curve to be straight, but the concept is the same), then you can tweak the curve to get the desired result.

The range

To quickly get the correct Range Min&Max value you can use the built-in function Fill range by selection. Basilcally you'll just have to pick two object, push the button and you'll automatically have the fields filled up.

Once the four parameters are set up, you can focus on defining the curve. In your case you should draw a top to down strahight curve to get higher values at the beginning of the range and lower at its the end as shown in the image above.

If you would like to use the Linear option, you should activate the invert option in order to flip the straight curve.

Conclusions:

Start from filling the four parametrs with appropriate values.

In your case you left the default Range parameters (0-1000). I can't see the scale of your model, but I can guess that they are not appropriate. Give it a check.

Start from using very different Min Max values (e.g 1-50) to see the effect clearly and then lower them once you are sure that all works...

...and make sure the modifier is ENABLED FOR RENDER or you'll not see any of its cool effects! :)


How would I create a stripe on top of a brick texture?

Use two brick textures. The trick is thinking of one that can be used as a mask to mix the original texture with some other color, the white elements will be one texture, the black elements will be a color (or a different texture if plugged to the other socket of a mix color node).

On the second brick texture play with scale Mortar size and Brick, until you get a black and white pattern. This pattern (or mask) will be used to determine what parts of the object get the small bricks.
Evaluate the results by plugging the output to the shader you will use, but using the Fac output instead of color.

Then use that same Fac output to control the color on a color mix node.

Additionally, you can use a mapping node to set the texture's scale on $X$ to zero so that you are left only with horizontal stripes.


Ahh, I solved it. Exporting as .obj file to Gazebo solves the issue


Upper mesh has intersecting faces

By solving the intersection with a remodeling, and after triangulating the lower mesh, you should obtain a similar result:


It seems that you can enable to orbit with the view with the trackpad by going to Edit>Preferences>Keymap and switching the upper setting to Blender 27X template or Blender template.