Welcome to the Blender community. If we want to make a texture that is high enough resolution to work on a body, we would usually use either Substance Painter or Substance Designer, or if you're really in a rush Bitmap2Material. Algorithmic software is, far and away, the best stuff on the market, and you can even get it free if you are a student.

For your purpose, there are two strategies I would consider.

One, you could import your completed model into substance painter and build/use the default smart material to create a convincing skin shader. You will be able to change things like the color, subsurface color, normal intensity, etc, without having to make your own smart material. Be sure to bake out a world position normal and set the projection mode to tri-planar mapping to avoid seams.

The advantages to this approach is that there will be no seams on your mesh, but you will have to be certain the geometry is final, and this step will have to be repeated if you change your model or your unwrap.

Or, you could use noise maps and seamless mathematical functions with Substance Designer to create a seamless texture with whatever resolution you want and map it onto your model with seams.

Every time, professionals will choose the first strategy.

As of now, there is no way to do what you described in Blender.


How to control the two transparent sides using empty?

One way would be to use drivers. This quick setup uses the global-x value of the empties and transferes it to the position of the colorramp sliders.
This is not the most elegant way to do this, because of the usage of global transformation values.


How to make quick menu items permanent in 2.8?

go to the edit->user preferences-> and click save(usually this button will be on bottom left.)
i think this will save the settings. so next time you open blender the settings will be loaded.
i hope it work...


Patches of particles (hair) on a plane following noise

The method I would use to clump the vegetation together is by tweaking the 'radius' value in the particle's children tab. Note that children type must be set to 'Simple'.

This is the most simple and easy way to achieve the 'bush' look, but if you want more freedom and customization possibilities, a density texture is the way to go!

For example: I'm using a cloud texture to control where the hair can grow and where not.

For this example I'm using a cloud texture, but you can obviously paint a texture by hand and gain 100% control.

Make sure to check the influence of your texture:

And assign it in the particle system as well:

A fundamental difference between these methods is that by using a texture, you're actually 'cutting' out portion of your scattered hair. By using the radius option under the children's panel, you control where the hair-particles are going to be scattered. So your amount of particles in the settings will be higher when using a texture.


UVs will always show well in the 3d view, they only come out wrong when rendered as the textures more than likely weren't configured properly.

It looks like your mapping is set to Generated or something else possibly. You can fix this by going to the texture tab and under Mapping, select UV from the Coordinates list.

To be safe, you can also create a uvmap or use the auto-generated one under UV Maps in the Object Data panel and select it in the texture tab under Mapping once you have changed to those coordinates.


Panels and Menus use the same methods to display properties and operators, the main difference is that a pie menu will show properties floating by themselves unless you create a box as a background for them.

To make your own pie menu start with the pie menu template that is included with blender.

To show a colour swatch that will pop-up a colour picker when clicked you use layout.prop() to display the colour property. To show the colour picker itself you can use layout.template_color_picker().

An example pie menu that shows both -

class ColourPie(bpy.types.Menu):
    bl_label = 'Set Colours'
    bl_idname = 'OBJECT_MT_colour_pie'

    def draw(self, context):
        ts = context.tool_settings
        ups = ts.unified_paint_settings
        ptr = ups if ups.use_unified_color else ts.image_paint.brush

        pie = self.layout.menu_pie()
        row = pie.row()
        # add a colour swatch that can popup a colour picker
        row.prop(ptr, 'color')
        box = pie.box()
        #show the colour picker directly
        box.template_color_picker(ptr, 'color', value_slider=True)


Create UI slider for each member in a custom vertex layer (floats)

Layout.prop() supports bpy.props and ID properties only. You can't use it for custom data layers such as bm.verts.layers of the Bmesh module.

You would have to create a (temporary) set of properties for (selected) bm.verts in order to display their custom data. Because there are no proper callbacks to detect changes to the mesh, the only way I see is to use brute force: re-fill a CollectionProperty on every panel redraw with as many elements as there are (selected) vertices. These elements can be displayed without problems, but it's highly inefficient.

It would be much better to have a button the user needs to press to update the template_list() with selected vertices, so that it doesn't happen all the time (i.e. 20x per second when moving the mouse over the panel).

import bpy
import bmesh

class MeshVertLayerList(bpy.types.UIList):
    def draw_item(self, context, layout, data, item, icon, active_data, active_propname):
        if self.layout_type in {'DEFAULT', 'COMPACT'}:
            layout.label(item.name)
            layout.prop(item, "value", text="", emboss=False)

        elif self.layout_type in {'GRID'}:
            layout.alignment = 'CENTER'
            layout.label(text="")

class MESH_OT_vert_layer_add(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_label = "Add Vertex Layer"
    bl_idname = "mesh.vert_layer_add"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return (context.object is not None and
                context.object.type == 'MESH' and
                context.object.mode == 'EDIT')

    def execute(self, context):
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(context.object.data)
        try:
            bm.verts.layers.float['test']
        except KeyError:
            bm.verts.layers.float.new('test')
        else:
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        return {'FINISHED'}

class HelloWorldPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
    bl_label = "Hello World Panel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_hello"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "data"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return (context.object is not None and
                context.object.type == 'MESH' and
                context.object.mode == 'EDIT')

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

        ob = context.object
        me = ob.data
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

        try:
            l = bm.verts.layers.float['test']
        except KeyError:
            layout.label("No custom data layer 'test'.")
            layout.operator("mesh.vert_layer_add")
            return

        wm.mesh_vert_layer.verts.clear()
        for v in bm.verts:
            if v.select:
                item = wm.mesh_vert_layer.verts.add()
                item.name = "Vertex #%i" % v.index
                item.index = v.index
                item.value = v[l]

        layout.template_list("MeshVertLayerList", "", wm.mesh_vert_layer, "verts", wm.mesh_vert_layer, "index")

def upd(self, context):
    try:
        me = context.object.data
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
        bm.verts[self.index][bm.verts.layers.float['test']] = self.value
        bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me, tessface=False, destructive=False)
    except:
        pass

class MeshVertLayerVert(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    value = bpy.props.FloatProperty(update=upd)
    index = bpy.props.IntProperty()

class MeshVertLayer(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    index = bpy.props.IntProperty()
    verts = bpy.props.CollectionProperty(type=MeshVertLayerVert)

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)
    bpy.types.WindowManager.mesh_vert_layer = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=MeshVertLayer)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)
    del bpy.types.WindowManager.mesh_vert_layer

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

As a side note: custom data "propagates" on mesh operations such as extrude.  There's a patch in the making to disable it: https://developer.blender.org/T42865

edit: It's possible to bind an update operator to SELECTMOUSE RELEASE to update the CollectionProperty after a selection change. It will work for right-clicks only however. I'm not sure if it's possible to do the same for modal selection operators such as lasso.

import bpy
import bmesh

class MeshVertLayerList(bpy.types.UIList):
    def draw_item(self, context, layout, data, item, icon, active_data, active_propname):
        if self.layout_type in {'DEFAULT', 'COMPACT'}:
            layout.label(item.name)
            layout.prop(item, "value", text="", emboss=False)

        elif self.layout_type in {'GRID'}:
            layout.alignment = 'CENTER'
            layout.label(text="")

class MESH_OT_vert_prop_update(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_label = "Vertex Properties Update"
    bl_idname = "mesh.vert_prop_update"
    bl_options = {'INTERNAL'}

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return (context.object is not None and
                context.object.type == 'MESH' and
                context.object.mode == 'EDIT')

    def execute(self, context):
        ob = context.object
        me = ob.data
        wm = context.window_manager
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

        try:
            l = bm.verts.layers.float['test']
        except KeyError:
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        wm.mesh_vert_layer.verts.clear()
        for v in bm.verts:
            if v.select:
                item = wm.mesh_vert_layer.verts.add()
                item.name = "Vertex #%i" % v.index
                item.index = v.index
                item.value = v[l]
        return {'FINISHED'}

class MESH_OT_vert_layer_add(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_label = "Add Vertex Layer"
    bl_idname = "mesh.vert_layer_add"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return (context.object is not None and
                context.object.type == 'MESH' and
                context.object.mode == 'EDIT')

    def execute(self, context):
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(context.object.data)
        try:
            bm.verts.layers.float['test']
        except KeyError:
            bm.verts.layers.float.new('test')
        else:
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        return {'FINISHED'}

class HelloWorldPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
    bl_label = "Hello World Panel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_hello"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "data"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return (context.object is not None and
                context.object.type == 'MESH' and
                context.object.mode == 'EDIT')

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        wm = context.window_manager
        layout.template_list("MeshVertLayerList", "", wm.mesh_vert_layer, "verts", wm.mesh_vert_layer, "index")

def upd(self, context):
    try:
        me = context.object.data
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
        bm.verts[self.index][bm.verts.layers.float['test']] = self.value
        bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me, tessface=False, destructive=False)
    except:
        pass

class MeshVertLayerVert(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    value = bpy.props.FloatProperty(update=upd)
    index = bpy.props.IntProperty()

class MeshVertLayer(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    index = bpy.props.IntProperty()
    verts = bpy.props.CollectionProperty(type=MeshVertLayerVert)

addon_keymaps = []

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)
    bpy.types.WindowManager.mesh_vert_layer = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=MeshVertLayer)

    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    km = wm.keyconfigs.addon.keymaps.new(name='Mesh', space_type='EMPTY')

    kmi = km.keymap_items.new(MESH_OT_vert_prop_update.bl_idname, 'SELECTMOUSE', 'RELEASE', any=True)

    addon_keymaps.append((km, kmi))

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)
    del bpy.types.WindowManager.mesh_vert_layer

    for km, kmi in addon_keymaps:
        km.keymap_items.remove(kmi)
    addon_keymaps.clear()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


How can I make scene with multiple gravities going in opposite directions without using a force field?

You can actually achieve this with force fields - providing all your objects have the same mass (or a limited range of masses so that you can have a range of forces - one set for each mass in each direction of simulated "gravity") - similar to the linked answer.

In order for the force to not fall off over distance (so it doesn't ebb away the further away from the force) you need to ensure the falloff power is 0. The strength of the force falls off based on the distance as Force = strength * distance^power (where ^ is 'raised to the power of' - sometimes written as **) - so a power of 0 results in a constant force, irrespective of distance.

For a force that doesn't repel from a single point, use a 'Plane' force - ensuring that the Z direction of the force object is in the desired direction of the force (it can be useful to change the Empty display of the force to 'Arrows' to be able to see the direction of the force 'empty').

Then all that is required is to place the forces and objects on multiple render layers (since forces only affect those objects on their own layer) - so all objects and the associated force that want to experience one 'direction' of gravity on one layer, the next set on another layer, etc.

This can produce the following result :

Note that this is not 'true' gravity as the force experienced by each object will be affected by its mass. To work around this, you can create a separate force per set of masses (so objects with half the mass should be paired with a force of half the strength) - obviously this will only work if you have a very limited set of masses.

Blend file included


This is done with rounding the mapping vectors.

The resolution for X and Y can be set with value nodes.
It will work for any texture (for 3D texture just copy the rounding nodes into the Z channel) and you have separate controls for X and Y resolutions.

If you also surround the Multi-Round-Divide nodes with Add and Subtract you can change the center point of effect (add and subtract the same number..)


The texture coordinates cannot control the shader mix factor.

An image is not a shader so it shouldn't be connected to a shader mix.

The mix shader shouldn't feed a color to the diffuse shader...

What you need is the Texture coordinates to control how the image texture is mapped. (Ideally you should unwrap the object for proper texture placement and use UV coordinates... but you can use Generated while you learn to unwrap)

The dark and bright areas of the image control how the transparent and diffuse shaders mix.

The color for the diffuse shader determines the color of the clouds.

I suggest you watch the so-called "tutorial" over a few times to familiarize with the steps taken... Nodes do require a certain order as the results will be different depending on how they are connected.


You can randomly distribute points in a circle with a generator. Don't forget to slice the last element since it will be the center of the circle.

Add your empty's position to translate your circle points.

Add your cube, scale it accordingly and apply the transform with CTRL + A. Then instance it and use the previous coordinates.

Add a random array of vectors for the rotation. You can tweak the seed in the node.

Add a vector wiggle node for location. You can tweak the seed and the evolution for a nice wiggle effect. You can also use this node for the rotation to achieve the same effect. Add a float input for the amplitude of the translation.

Add a relevant shader to the base cube :

Now make it wiggle !

Result :

EDIT : Actually I didn't answer the question. You can do the actual rotation several ways. Here's how I would do it :

Create a subprogram and rotate the cubes along the Y axis, then around the Z axis so that they face the center of the circle.

Actual result :


Pose Mode: How to reset transformed armature to its rest position?

Select all the bones, in pose mode with A. Then, hit:

ALT R to reset all rotations,
ALT G to reset all translations,
ALT S to reset all scales.

Or, you can select all bones (A) and hit space. Then search for "clear pose" and select Clear Pose Transforms in the results. Et voilà!
Mac Users Use Option instead of ALT.


i want to achieve a round strip led lights at the bottom inside of a container with glass shader in order to light up the whole glass

If you want to do it all with a shader, you could do something like this. All I did was make some vertical stripes with a Wave texture (I isolated the X and Y and normalized them so there would be 2 "banks" of LED's). All I did after that was make a mask for where the lights will go (vertically) and use that as a mix factor between a Glass Shader and an Emission shader that is colored by the "lights" I made with the Wave Texture.

If you darken the ambient lighting, you can see it lights up the glass. You can increase the light propagation by increasing the roughness of the Glass Shader slightly, you can also increase the IOR - however, the proper IOR for glass is 1.45 - too high a value, and things will start to look unrealistic, especially from certain angles. Find a balance that works best for you.
Lastly, you can increase the emission strength, but also beware that too strong a value may start to "wash out" some of the colors.


I've noticed that this is sort of flaky.  If the bake cache is empty, the current frame is 1, and I click the "play" button, it usually does what you're asking for: it bakes and shows the current state in the 3D View window.  Emptying the cache doesn't always work, though.  One way to quickly clear it is to click the "Pinning" checkbox off and on (or on and off, depending on how you have it set).

[Edit] I saw another post on here that said that playback has to be set to "No Sync" (which I think is the default).


No, you cannot constrain the knife tool to an axis, you can try going into front view or side view and then making your cut using the 45 degree tool you talked about earlier


Blender Render Image not showing nothing

This worked for me. Disable the "Sequencer" checkbox in Output Properties:


The answer is very simple - I had set up "Workbench" to do a test render last night on the animation - and you can't affect the lights in workbench mode. Who knew?
So if this turns up for anyone - now we know.


how to create an object particle that sticks to the top of the mesh selected?

You can gain better control over your particle placement with Weight Painting.
First, select your emitter object and make sure it has a vertex group attached. If there isn't one already there, add one with the plus sign, and if there is one there, consider renaming it to something like "Sprinkles" to make sure it's clear what it's for. You can safely select all before assigning it, because the weight paint will control the particles, not the selected vertices in the group, and we want to make sure all are available to paint on.

Now, enter weight paint mode. I noticed that when I assigned the vertex group, it set it all to "full weight" (red). If this happens for you, there are a few things you can do. Mainly, change the draw mode to subtract and either subtract away some sections you don't want particles on (mainly the edges - blender isn't perfect with particle placement, and will place some "out of bounds" - keep this in mind when painting), or paint it all blue and start again with the draw brush if you want to do it cleanly from scratch.

Paint the areas that should contain the sprinkles (I put most in the center of the "icing"), correcting as necessary by switching brshes.

Now that this is done, assign your particle collection.
NOTE- If the hair particles are all facing inwards (happens sometimes because of solidify modifier), either check the flip normals box on the modifier itself, or select the whole mesh in edit mode and pick mesh > normals > flip.
Now, scroll down to vertex groups, and under Density, select your "Sprinkle" group. This will make the particles appear only on the areas you painted that are not blue, with increasing density towards full red.


Texture painting looks pixelated no matter the size of image.

Your mapping could be improved, as you really should take advantage of a tileable texture for something like a path. Part of your question:

  Iv'e unwrapped one piece onto a 2048x1024 image and tried painting various 2048x2048 concrete textures onto it but they always come out really pixelated. I try painting tiled texture but its very bad looking.

You are using a single image at 2048 x 1024 to try to pump way too many pixels into it - but you only have that one image worth of pixels to do this. If you try to paint them into that, you will get pixelation because your destination image (2048x1024) doesn't have more pixels than the sum of the number of times you are looking to repeat the brush image pixels at full resolution. Better to look at using UV Unwrap - Follow Active and then try to get the main tileable texture to sit appropriately for one face, then the rest will fall in line. You could use a second uv mapping for the second texture to determine dirt, etc.


You can parent objects:

In 3D view, select the objects you want to group. The first objects will be "children" and the last object will be "parent" (the active one).
So in 3D view header go to Object > Parent > Object (Ctrl+P) to unite them.
Done! (just move the parent)

Note that:

a. Child objects will be sub items of the parent in Outliner.

b. You can move/rotate/scale the children independently, but when you do the same with the parent, all children will follow along.

c. To view links in the viewport, enable ~ Relationship Lines ~ in Overlays (2.8).


Select you object. Then, simply Press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+C and when the menu pops up just press O. This resets the origin to the center of the selected object.


Call pie menu operator.
Example using the Text Editor > Templates > Python > UI Menu Pie
template.
Calls itself if clicked on and expands as another pie menu.
Note. Does not auto expand as a pie menu.
import bpy
from bpy.types import Menu

# spawn an edit mode selection pie (run while object is in edit mode to get a valid output)

class VIEW3D_MT_PIE_template(Menu):
    # label is displayed at the center of the pie menu.
    bl_label = "Select Mode"

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

        pie = layout.menu_pie()
        # operator_enum will just spread all available options
        # for the type enum of the operator on the pie
        pie.operator_enum("mesh.select_mode", "type")

        # this one expands as a regular menu
        pie.menu('VIEW3D_MT_PIE_template')

        # this one when pressed expands as a pie menu (of self)
        op = pie.operator("wm.call_menu_pie")
        op.name = 'VIEW3D_MT_PIE_template'

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(VIEW3D_MT_PIE_template)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(VIEW3D_MT_PIE_template)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    bpy.ops.wm.call_menu_pie(name="VIEW3D_MT_PIE_template")


How do I get a mesh data-block with modifiers and shape keys applied in Blender 2.8?

Just tested batFINGER's solutions. It's pretty convoluted and you have to call bm.clear() every time the mesh updates before calling the last two functions. It works but really doesn't feel like the intended way to do things. Digging a bit further I think I found the intended solution:

#We only have to do this once:
ob = bpy.context.active_object #getting the object we want.
dg = bpy.context.evaluated_depsgraph_get() #getting the dependency graph

#This has to be done every time the object updates:
ob = ob.evaluated_get(dg) #this gives us the evaluated version of the object. Aka with all modifiers and deformations applied.
me = ob.to_mesh() #turn it into the mesh data block we want.

Still annoying that we can't pick between preview and render for which version of the modifiers it applies (it seems to always pick preview). If there is a way to do that I would love to know.


Spiral rotation falloff within a particles system

This Answer uses the add-on Animation Nodes. I’m not gonna describe how to download and install it. That’s easily googleable.
We start by adding a Distribute Matrices node and set it to spiral.
That gives us an easy to control list of points on a spiral.
You can search for specific nodes by pressing CTRL + A. Use SHIFT + A to see a sorted list of all available nodes.

We don't have any geometry yet, so I added a 3D viewer node to see the result in the viewport.
We now need to add our arrow object to the Scene. I just added a simple cone, a more arrow-like shape will also work (it doesn't really matter). To use the same values as I, make sure your arrow points up (in +z direction).
Distribution
We now need the following nodes:
Object Instancer
Here we can select our arrow object. Connect the Vectors output from the spiral node to the instances input of the Instanced. AN automatically creates a Get Length node for us. We can now control the instances with the amount-slider of the spiral node.
Compose Matrix
We take the positions of each point of the Spline for now, compose Matrices and translate our objects with these.
Object Matrix Output

Tangent Rotation
New Nodes:
Spline From Points
We don't actually draw the spline as an object. But now that we have the spline, we have simple access to the tangents and can even distribute our objects more evenly.
Evaluate Spline
Use uniform to distribute the arrows evenly or resolution, to use the initial points.
Make sure to click the little arrow next to the drop down menu so the node works on multiple points instead of a single value. Connect the get length node to the amount input.
Connect the locations output to the translation input of the compose matrix node and the tangent output via a Direction to Rotation node to the rotations input.

Rotation Falloff
New Nodes:
Point Distance Falloff
Creates a falloff for the rotation in relation to the origin 0/0/0. You can controll the size and width of the falloff here.
Evaluate Falloff
This checks, how much every arrow is affected by the falloff depending on its location. Make sure to check the list icon.
Invert Falloff
Float Math
Multiply the Strength of the falloff with an angle of 90deg.
Combine Euler
Set to degrees
Euler Math
combine the tangent rotation with the falloff rotation.

That's it. You can play arround with the values in the Distribute Matrices and the Point Distance Falloff Nodes to finetune the result you need.
Edit
Concentric circles
Creating the same effect with concentric circles instead of a spiral is a bit more complicated. The spiral redistribute note in combination with the evaluate spline node does a lot of work for us: creates the vector list, handles the amount and the spacing of our objects, delivers useable tangents.
The only node that has some kind of built in concentric circle function is the circle mesh node. And with it we can create something like this:

A better apporoach is to create a loop to create individual circle splines. Its a bit more work, but not that bad. I'll just screenshot my nodetree for now. I'll add some description later if you have problems understanding whats goning on.
The Loop:

The loop addet to our old node tree:

The final result:


Blender using wrong GPU for 3D View (This is not about Rendering)

What you want to do is control which GPU the OpenGL context is created on. Luckily the latest Nvidia Driver has a way to do that.

Open the Nvidia Control Panel, and navigate to this setting:


What is an efficient way to rig a character made of 2 meshes?

After you have created the rig have you tried parenting the same portion of the mesh on both objects to the same bones? This should correct any issues you are having with rigging. You could join then meshes together as well but it makes little difference on the end result.


Since one must be in edit mode to select a face, and one can only have one object active at a time, it is outside of the design parameters of Blender to be able to select faces on multiple objects at once.

This is not to say that you cannot apply the same material to faces on different object, you just have to select each object in turn (in object mode), switch to edit mode, and select the desired face(s), and apply the desired material.


What are the limitations of Blender for Mac?

The feature support should be the same as any other system. The official MacOSX releases will be built using the available third party libraries which includes the newer features using opensubdiv, openvdb and alembic.
As with other platforms, cuda support is better than opencl. This will depend on what mac you have as newer macs now have AMD and Intel video cards. While technically a hardware issue, the hardware is tied to MacOSX. For Cycles rendering this could lead to render farms being more popular for mac users.
anyway newer macOS users should consider that blender DOES NOT SUPPORT METAL and since Apple is discontinuing OpenCL, reading this statement on blender official website can make you sad when it comes to use GPU rendering specially in cycles render engine:

GPU rendering is only supported on Windows and Linux; macOS is
currently not supported.

... and because of some technical issues (some of these issues mentioned here) it's hard to say that they are going to support Metal (at least soon)


Why is Network Render creating .exr's instead of .png's?

According to this bug report:

  "the problem is that even if you have PNG selected in the blend to be
  rendered, if you use the 'Download render results from Network', they
  will always come back as layered .exr files. You only get them as PNGs
  when you press 'get animation' button."

Have you tried the Get Animation button instead?

Or, according to this page:

  If you just need PNG then in the network render properties, under
  client tab you should choose 'animation on network' rather than 'send
  job to network'. Both will render in EXR file but with 'animation on
  network' option, it'll deliver the png (or whatever format you choose)
  to specified folder.

I would say, if you set your Render output folder path to "//something", which means relative to the blend file, with the output type as PNG, and then initiated the job by choosing Animation on Network, and then when complete, retrieve the frames with the Get Animation button, it should bring back PNG files.


Cycles - transparent background still renders background color through glass?

Under Render>Film you can check 'Transparent' and afterwards 'Transparent Glass'. It may be possible that you are using a blender version, which doesn't have this option. If you aren't bound to any particular version I suggest downloading a Daily Build from https://builder.blender.org/download/

I tried with MixShader (Transparend BSDF and Glass BSDF) and just Glass BDSF, both of them work for me.

The cubes are actually transparent, but it of course then must take some background here in the stackexchange.

Edit, because question was edited:

Enable 'Transparent'
Enable 'Transparent Glass'
Disable 'Transparent'

This way 'Transparent Glass' is enabled without making the background transparent (Imgur has problems with BSE so direct link: https://imgur.com/a/2TSKsfe)


How can I control the intensity of the light when using volumetric scattering?

I agree with some of the things you want to add.

add the white (or black, or grey) chimney smoke. I think that would make it cooler and a tad bit more realistic.
fix UV
smog is cool, but first find a reference image of what you want the smog to look like from above (very very last bullet below... keep reading)

However:

don't add trees, (unless you can make them almost perfectly indistinguishable from a real life tree)
don't use the first image

Things you need to work on:

Add more detail to the building right in front of the camera. This is an immediate giveaway that your scene looks fake. find whatever building you were trying to model and make sure that your building looks just like it from up close.
A lot of your textures aren't great. The building in the bottom center has a really depressing texture so when you look at it, it looks like the building is falling apart or something (if that was your goal, its not a bad texture). Make sure to bump map all your textures (but don't overdo it), and make all your windows at glossy so that your houses don't look like they are made of paper.
Rather than changing the sun's settings, try moving it around some. If the scene is back lit, you won't have to worry as much about the textures because you can do some post processing to make your buildings silhouettes.
Try using depth of field, (maybe just a little bit) so that the building closest is a little bit out of focus. This will reduce its sharpness so that you don't have to make it as realistic.
And finally, find a reference image so that you know what you want, and can gauge your success.

Besides all of these, I quite like your composition. Keep it up!


The Viewport color of your object and the diffuse color of your material are separate things in blender.
You can set the viewport color of your material separately.

Expand the Settings tab under your Material settings and change the viewport color:

A quick side note: the viewport color doesn't affect the render result in any way. its primary function is to structure your scene.


Texture Painting is not working on ONE file only, other files work fine

I found the solution. Maybe it is a bug that is causing the problem or i may have done something wrong, but you can fix it by just copying whole mesh to new file. And it works!


Why does my add-on work from the 'Add' menu in the header but not from Shift+A?

The menu is in the header region

Put together this for prior version of this question. Can also get the region 3d view from space_data.region_3d or area.spaces.active.region_3d

When invoked from the header the region will be the header.

import bpy
from bpy_extras import view3d_utils
from mathutils import Vector

bl_info = {
"name": "Test Addon",
"category": "Object",
"version": (0, 0, 1),
"blender": (2, 80, 0),}

def get_v(context, event):
    scene = context.scene
    area = context.area
    region = area.regions[-1] # or search for region.type == 'WINDOW'
    space = area.spaces.active
    rv3d = space.region_3d
    print(context.region.type, rv3d == context.region_data) # See Output
    coord = event.mouse_region_x, event.mouse_region_y

    print(region, rv3d, coord)

class OBJECT_OT_my_addon(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "object.my_addon"
    bl_label = "My Addon Name"
    bl_options = {"REGISTER", "UNDO"}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
      print(get_v(context, event))
      return {'FINISHED'}

def menu_func(self, context):
    self.layout.operator_context = 'INVOKE_DEFAULT'
    self.layout.operator("object.my_addon")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(OBJECT_OT_my_addon)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_add.append(menu_func)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(OBJECT_OT_my_addon)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_add.remove(menu_func)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

The See Output print above from header menu

HEADER False

and from shiftA menu

WINDOW True

To sum up, only use context.region_data if you are sure you are in the 3D view window. Python console code, a is a view3d area

>>> a.type
'VIEW_3D'

>>> for r in a.regions:
...     r.type
...
'TOOL_HEADER'
'HEADER'
'TOOLS'
'UI'
'WINDOW'

Another method would be to use 'INVOKE_REGION_WIN' as the operator context, to make sure the 'WINDOW' region is used.


Issue with IK armature messing up when I try to shrink my model

Go to object mode TAB, select your armature, and press CTRL + A to apply scale if you didn't do it before.
Hope that solves your problem :)


How to smooth Edges between two boolean-joined Meshes?

Honestly, I can only think of manually adjusting the verts to fit, or merge them. For merging verts, just select the edge loops on both parts, click on the merge icon on the bottom, and say S (scale) Z (locking z axis) 0. A way to use both methods, is to select a bottom vert on the top object, and the adjacent top vert on the bottom object, and say S, 0. Kinda tedious though.

Hope this helps.


That could be due to the object's origin is far off (when you move/edit the size in edit mode and not in object mode, the origin stays in the same place and can cause some artifacts like this), you can always take the vertices that don't align, press G to grab them, then Z to pull them only on the Z axis, now you can snap them on the vertices on the other side:


Why is nothing appearing when using the 'Face Set' feature in Sculpt mode?

You have to go the the modifiers tab and then click the small monitor icon. This will hide (not delete) the subdivision surface modifier. This will then show you the UV Face Sets


What are the Cycles specific Viewport Display settings in the material tab good for?

If your 3D Viewport Shading mode is set to "Material Preview", then these settings become relevant. For example, if you have a glass material and set the Blend mode to "Opaque", it is not transparent (just like in the render settings for Eevee).
You can change Eevee settings there, without switching render engines.


Most Images are encoded form 0 (black) to 1 (white).

The Z pass, being the distance from the camera to every given pixel, will contain values larger than 1, that's why it can't be enclosed in a regular image format. OpenEXR will contain the information perfectly, not only preserving the correct values but keeping it linear.

You are right in that the Z pass information cannot be visualized unless is normalized, ie. converting the lower and higher values to 0 and 1 respectively, and remapping everything in between. But the Z pass was not designed to be visualized...

So do yourself a favor and DO NOT MAP THE Z PASS INFORMATION using a Map Value node or Normalize node in order to save it as a "visual" representation, you'll end up distorting, compressing and ultimately loosing the accuracy of the Z-Depth information.

Instead, bring the Z pass intact into After Effects in a 32bit linear container (OpenEXR or OpenEXR multilayer). Make sure you enable the Z Buffer.

How do you set up your scene in After Effects to use the Z pass for 3D channels?
The use of the Z pass might vary depending on what you are intending to do with it.

If you must use it as visual information you could use the 3D EXtractoR and assign the color channels to use the Z information and set black and white points:

For more info on how to use Z depth... please ask in a site devoted
to After Effects...

Now, dealing with the second part of your question, on how to exprot the focus point. You can set up an empty to track focus in blender. Then you'd need to export the blender scene using this plugin: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Import-Export/Adobe_After_Effects. That will create a .jsx script that can be run in After Effects. The script will create a 3D composition with a camera and Null Objcts that correspond with the origin of the objects on the blender scene. You would then need to create some expression in After Effects to use null object that corresponds to the empty on the blender scene, and have the null control the focus point in the After Effects composition.... again, something to ask somewhere else...

More information on OpenEXR here: http://www.openexr.com/TechnicalIntroduction.pdf


Prediction of linear RGB color in Vertex Paint

Change render properties -> view transform -> to "Standard"


Try to adjust in properties panel the start clip.Should solve the problem. Or you can try to turn your modifiers off in the viewport to sea the lines more clearly.


Problem, when I redraw on a grease pencil layer new strokes doesn't appear above old stroke

Enter Edit Strokes mode, and in tool panel you will find this menu:

It orders selected strokes inside layer.


How to instance geometry rather than Objects?

I found Felipe del Rio's solution on developer.blender.org: https://developer.blender.org/project/view/121/
Felipe uses the Grid primitive, which gives you a 2d array option. No 'chaining' required.
I'll wait for further developments to see if instancing geometry becomes an option.


Un-hiding faces and double sided textures

In BI both sides of a face should be textured by default in the render.

If you mean in the viewport, you can switch the viewport shading to Textured in 3D view > Header and set the shading to GLSL in 3D view > Properties region (N) > Shading. Also make sure that Backface Culling is disabled in the same panel.

Note that you will need to add lamps to the scene, or enable temporarily Shadeless in Properties > Material > Shading.
Shadeless is good for editing purposes where you want to see the texture everywhere (no shadows or shading). Note that this will affect the final render, so remember to disable it when you are done.

For unhiding faces, press AltH, or 3D view > Header > Mesh > Show/Hide > Show hidden in edit mode.


As you want to use the same event for both opening and closing I suggest to implement a state machine.

State machine

The states are at least:

Closed,
Opened

The transitions are:

Closed:

on space: transit to Opened

Opened:

on space: transit to Closed

Entry Actions:

Closed:

play closing action

Opened:

play closing action

Implementations

Flipper

We use a boolean property as current state. Call it "opened". When True it means status Open, when False it means status Closed.

Property: "opened"
Type: Boolean
Value: unchecked

Transition logic

Property Sensor -> AND -> Action Actuator

Property Sensor
Mode: equal
Property: opened
Value: False

I assume you want to play the same animation reverse on closing

Action Actuator
Mode: Flipper
Action: opening animation

What will happen?

When opened is False, the sensor does nothing and the door remains as it is (closed).
When the property opened turns True, the sensor triggers the AND controller which activates the action actuator. The action actuator begins to open the door till it is completely open.

When the property opened turns False, the sensor triggers the AND controller which deactivates the action actuator. The action actuator begins to play the opening animation reverse -> closing the door till it is closed.

Event logic

Now you need a way to switch the property.

keyboard sensor -> AND -> Property actuator

Keyboard sensor
Key: space

Property Actuator
Mode: toggle
Property: opened

What it does: when you press space the sensor will trigger the AND which will activate the Property actuator. The property actuator will toggle the property opened (from True to False and False to True).

This will be the event on the above Transition logic, which will play the according animation.

Remarks

There are other ways to implement door logic. This is just a sample.


Look at the objects children
Instead of looking for objects with that parent, loop over that objects children.  All objects in a blend are in bpy.data.objects which may or may not be linked to a collection in the context scene.  Recommend working from scene rather than data, when applicable.
If the armature object "Armature" is in the scene iterate over its children.
import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene
ob = scene.objects.get("Armature")

if ob:
    for c in ob.children:
        print(c.name, c.type)

To iterate over all objects in scene
for o in context.scene.objects:
    if o.parent == ob:
        print(o.name, o.type)

Do not confuse an object ss being the parent of its data.
The default armature object named "Armature"

The object (yellow with my theme)
>>> C.object
bpy.data.objects['Armature']

has the data part (green)
>>> C.object.data
bpy.data.armatures['Armature']


This is off the Blender topic and rather belongs to https://video.stackexchange.com

How you want to use your video should drive what format and quality you need.

If you are comfortable with command line tools, I suggest ffmpeg  (https://www.ffmpeg.org). The dead simple answer is ffmpeg -i "input.avi" "output.mp4" though this will reencode it and you will loose some quality. If the video stream inside your AVI is h.264 or other MP4 compatible encoding, you can rewrap without quality loss using ffmpeg -i "input.avi" -c:v copy -c:a copy "output.mp4".


Why do grey faces appear on inset faces after using the knife tool?

It looks like the inset face has some bad geometry. The right-most edge might not actually be a boundary for the face. Try deleting the face & remaking it.

If that doesn't work, breaking up the N-gon into quads might help.


How can I control node values without input inside a group node?

This issue was discussed in Controlling ColorRamp nodes with Group Inputs post but as Blender workflow get simplified and I wasn't able to find this post druging googling I decided to add another answer.

Right click on source and choose "copy as New Driver" then go to the target and "Paste Driver". You can use any group node silder as a Driver.


Blender 2.80 object won't show in render (.blend attached)

Your object has been flagged not to render

Use the Filter drop down to show the options

Now enable Render on your object.

This is catching a lot of people out in 2.8.


Toggle orthographic views opposite sides

It is script chenge view to the opposite

import bpy
from bpy_extras import view3d_utils
from mathutils import Vector

def getView(self, context, event):
    region = context.region
    rv3d = context.region_data
    #coord = event.mouse_region_x, event.mouse_region_y
    #view_vector = view3d_utils.region_2d_to_vector_3d(region, rv3d, coord)
    return rv3d.view_rotation * Vector((0.0, 0.0, -1.0))

def findView(self, context, event):
    vector = getView(self, context, event)
    if vector == Vector((0.0, 1.0, 0.0)):
        bpy.ops.view3d.viewnumpad(type='BACK', align_active=False)
    elif vector == Vector((0.0, -1.0, 0.0)):
        bpy.ops.view3d.viewnumpad(type='FRONT', align_active=False)
    elif vector == Vector((1.0, 0.0, 0.0)):
        bpy.ops.view3d.viewnumpad(type='RIGHT', align_active=False)
    elif vector == Vector((-1.0, 0.0, 0.0)):
        bpy.ops.view3d.viewnumpad(type='LEFT', align_active=False)
    elif vector == Vector((0.0, 0.0, 1.0)):
        bpy.ops.view3d.viewnumpad(type='TOP', align_active=False)
    elif vector == Vector((0.0, 0.0, -1.0)):
        bpy.ops.view3d.viewnumpad(type='BOTTOM', align_active=False)

class ModalOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """swich view to opposite"""
    bl_idname = "object.modal_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Modal Operator"

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        findView(self, context, event)
        return {'FINISHED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(ModalOperator)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ModalOperator)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Main page of blender.org only shows the latest stable release.

For the previous versions of 2.79 check out this link http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.79/

You can find more previous versions here

http://download.blender.org/release/


To get expected result, you need to first select the object, then CtrlA > Scale, to apply the scale. (I'm not sure why, and it seems not being documented, but it works this way)


There are 6 different logos on the 2.8 splash screen. What is the meaning of them?

Those are the icons for the different levels of donation subscriptions:
https://fund.blender.org/

Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Titanium, Diamond


Deform Helix Around Spline in Animation Nodes

All you have to do is change the basis of the parametric equation to the tangent, normal, and cotangent of the spline. The cotangent is computed by crossing the normal and the tangent vectors.

Note that the samples vectors are not normalized.


How can I halt and start again without mesh moving while it is stopped?

I got it figured out. I just had to go and reset some of my previous location keys. That's all.


Normal map baked from multires looks bad (seams and general wrongness)

problem #1 is that there are not enough seams.  If you can't make the UV islands out of real paper and still be able to wrap it around a real model; then you are going to have problems trying to do this with computer art.

The texture will be stretched to the point where some parts of it will have a high resolution and some parts may be low enough that all you will see in that area are pixelated artifacts.

After adding a texture, you can change the type for visualization purposes.  The texture for the next few steps is a checker texture that allows you to see if the UV's are mapping to the model well.

It's a good idea to repeatedly toggle the SubDivide UV's option for the generative modifier to make sure nothing weird is going on here.  OpenSubD is supposed to correct this issue but it has not been implemented yet. ;)

Also, you can toggle the modifiers visibility on and off to look for potential problems that should be corrected.

In the following .gif animation, there is some minor distortion when the modifier's settings are toggled.

If you see any obvious stretching when toggling a Sub-Division modifier, you can sometimes correct this by adding a control loop near the area that is being affected.
The following animation shows the difference before and after a control loop is added to the wrist area.

The ears have no seams along the sharp edges which flow along a curve.  This area will be distorted.

Uv islands should have at least a few pixels between them and if you zoom the UV Image Editor in and out, you should be able to see a clear distinction between the UV Islands for all distances that the model may be viewed at.
If the edges appear to be in the same place visually, then texture Mip-Mapping will shows artifacts along the seams when the model is zoomed in and out of the 3D Viewport.
The various UV Islands will bleed color into one another at the seams.  Normal maps will exaggerate these errors.

A Margin of 0.01 is a good place to start.  This factor depends on how many Islands there are and how big the texture is and the models position relative to the view position, scale, etc...

There are settings for both Blender Internal and Cycles that must be set when using normal maps. In BI, the Image Sampling Normal Field must be set.  In Cycles, the texture node should be changed to Non-Color.  The normal map will look broken if you forget this step.

Here's the final result.(Right-click the image and choose 'View Image' to see the larger version.)

The following link shows a turntable animation hosted on Vimeo.  (I get an invalid certificate warning from this link.  Vimeo should be safe I think?, could be a mistake)

https://vimeo.com/123225350

Here is the .blend file.  http://www.pasteall.org/blend/35226

And some further reading on the topic.  How can I bake textures on uneven goemetry without tearing and stretching


You can use a Rigid Body simulation to make your letters fall and bounce without having to animate them by hand - the problem is how to arrange so that they end up at the desired final positions when they come to rest. This can be achieved by Baking the simulation into keyframes and then adjusting the start position so that they end in the desired orientation.

Firstly start by creating your mesh - one way to achieve this is to create a Text object and use the 'Convert to Mesh' option to create the mesh (the objects need to be in Mesh format in order to be able to animate as rigid bodies).

Create the text object :

Convert to mesh by selecting the text object, pressing Alt+C and selecting 'Mesh from Curve/.../Text'.

Give the text some depth by either Extruding in Edit mode or by adding a Solidify modifier and clicking Apply.

Next, separate the individual letters by selecting everything in Edit mode, pressing P and selecting 'By Loose Parts', then select all of your letters in Object mode, select Set Origin (in the Tool shelf (T) or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C) and select Origin to Geometry.

Finally, in the Physics tab set the selected objects to Active rigid body.

Make the floor a Passive rigid body to it will interact with the letters, position them above the floor, run the simulation, and they should fall and bounce.

Note : If any of the letters come to rest on the wrong 'face' you can adjust the simulation by moving the 'origin' further back into the object - this will make it's centre of gravity further back, resulting in it tending to be at rest on its 'back' face - this can be achieved in Edit mode by simply selecting all vertices and using Grap (G) and moving them forward in relation to the origin. Alternatively, just slightly adjust its start orientation and re-run the simulation and repeat until you get them falling in the correct orientation. If they collide, move them appart from the other letters to avoid collisions.

Now, to adjust the positions of each 'fall' we need to bake the simulation into keyframes - select Bake to Keyframes in the Physics toolshelf :

Once baked the simulation will no longer change. Run the animation to the end when all letters are at rest and adjust the positions by either adjusting the 'Delta' transform settings (this is applied after the keyframes so can 'offset' the location and rotation) or by adding an Empty at the same location as the 'at rest' point, parenting it to the letter, then moving the empty to the desired final resting place. Repeat this for each individual letter.

Finally, you can get more variation by delaying the animation on various letters (by moving the F-curve to the right in the Graph Editor) so as to give a more 'random' fall :


How best to make a clip of a burning house?

Feasible to do this on footage, with caveats. A few quick and ridiculous thoughts:

A pretty decent estimation of the scene referred transform for your footage. Absolutely mandatory, otherwise it is the nasty After Effects Hacks-All-The-Way-Down approach.
Good deal of reference photos of the house in question. You'd be needing these for the texturing, lighting, and supplementing the geometry I'd suspect.
A very compelling fire sim.

If the goal is absolute mimesis, most should be able to deduce that using photogrammetry techniques coupled with real footage is going to be infinitely more plausible than any from-scratch approach.

That said, no easy task by a long shot, but likely only feasible using real world footage coupled with CGI.


How can I blend a matcap material with a texture

Ok, so I've found an acceptable workaround thanks to Gandalf3's comment to the question, which references another question that asks how regular materials can be made to work like a matcap. Here is how I set up my material to get both a texture using the main UV map, and camera dependent shading, by blending it with a matcap.

These steps assume you have already created a material and assigned a texture to it in the first (top) texture slot. Also, make sure you are using the GLSL display mode ('n' to open display panel, then select from the 'Shading' section) and are viewing in textured mode ('alt + z'). You needn't have any lights in your scene for this to work.

Check the material's 'Shadeless' parameter. We don't want lighting, because the matcap will be assigned to provide a faked lighting effect that is dependent on the surface normal relative to the camera.

Add a new texture in slot 2 (below slot 1) and assign a matcap texture. You can find some matcap textures here: https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-blender/trunk/blender/release/datafiles/matcaps/

Set the coordinates of the matcap to 'Normal' in the 'Mapping' section of the texture properties. If you look in the viewport now, it will appear like a regular matcap in shaded mode.
The matcap needs to be blended with the texture, so set the 'Blend' parameter in the 'Influence' section to 'Multiply'.

If you have done this correctly, when you move the camera around, the matcap should provide some kind of lighting to the model, allowing you to see the shape of the model with the texture applied much more clearly. Note that you may need to adjust the matcap to make the lighting effect more obvious. I used the default Blender matcap (mc01.jpg from the link above) and increased the contrast in an image editor to get darker shading.


A simple setting to do that can be (have added empty at the spot location so that we can see them through the grid):

In this setting, all lamps have the same node tree.

But few conditions to make it work:

The grid origin is a bottom left corner, seeing it from top (3D cursor location in the image below): we want the position to map from 0,0.
The base grid dimension is 1x1 (here it is scaled as you want but the base mesh is one by one): we want the dimensions to fit 1x1 UvMap

The UV map orientation corresponds to the object base orientation (rotating the UV map was needed, starting from your file):

The default 'object' output from the texture coordinates is 'world to object', so the vector transform node is not needed here. The input is 0>1 without this node, because the lamp position is converted to the grid position in its inner coordinates which is 0>1 (as the base grid is 0>1 without scaling).

Though, if you want the grid to have its own inner dimensions different from 1x1, you can add the following, where the 'value' node has the grid dimension (without scaling):


Increase number of Loop Cuts - Apple Magic Mouse

You can use the keyboard (both the top row and the numpad work) to type the number of cuts.

The current number of cuts is displayed in the Header, where you can also see the result of modal numinput expressions (modal numinput will be added in 2.7, and is already in development versions):


How to turn off or 'uncheck' Render->Lock Interface

I don't know why you can't disable the option by just clicking on the box, but you can always use the python command for most operations in blender.
In the python console (Shift + F4) type:
bpy.context.scene.render.use_lock_interface = True

and press Enter.


How do I add a texture when Importing from OBJ scan?

Go to material, and activate "use nodes"
then on "color", click and select "image texture"

then at left of "open", click and select your texture  then at right of "object mode" change viewport shading to "material" or "texture"


Modify degree of Bezier interpolation between keyframes for animating an object

This can be achieved by right clicking the timeline and choosing the option "Interpolation mode".

To the right are all the interpolations that are available. In your case since you do not want the Bezier interpolation, you can choose Linear interpolation which interpolates with constant speed. There are bunch of other interpolation modes too if you want to try them out (check image).


Shrinkwrap projection seems to ignore part of target mesh

Here is your topology:

It doesn't allow your object to bend and stick to the shape, an edge can't bend at its middle if there's no vertex. Instead, create this topology:

And it will work:

How to fill:

Delete the current topology and select the inner circle:

Extrude inwards with E:

Press CtrlR to create edge loops, press + to add more:


I have found my own way to solve my problem, I do not know if it is the best way.

Here is the result:


Geometry nodes Controle point scale with z position

Well, you just need the fresh build of 2.93 alpha.

You can find Attribute separate XYZ here.


You can select a copy of an object and add a Copy Scale constraint with the original object as a target.

Duplicated objects will have that constraint. To copy this constraint to existing objects, select them, make sure the object with the constraint is active, and press Ctrl + C, then B


Link faces of an icosphere for modeling a geodesic dome

I don't know an efficient way to achieve a complex geodesic dome with Blender's modelling tools, but it is feasible with the Animation Nodes add-on.

If you can differentiate between the dome's polygons, e.g. based on the polygons' area, and manage to determine the polygons' orientation, e.g. based on the lengths of their sides, you can generate a replica of the original dome with the faces replaced by other meshes.

The Blender file should work with 2v and 3v geodesic spheres. More subdivisions would require modifications to the script that differentiates between the faces.
And (at least for the 3v sphere) you only end up with a closed sphere if you start with a 20 sided icosphere and add subdivisions (one or two cuts) manually in edit mode.


Blender closes on "loading" complex geometry and entering/leaving local view

I want to confirm that it was one object in the whole file that caused all this trouble, once I managed to locate it and delete it, the problem doesn't happen anymore.

@Duarte Farrajota Ramos, I tried to get the object to another file, but it will crash when I "paste" it on a new document and I can't append the file, I can't even go to edit mode, but I ended up deleting everything else and keep only that object.

Layer 1 has the original object, layer 2 has it in the "new" location and rotation and layer 3 has the faulty object, which was edited somehow. This geometry is "junk" and it's supposed to be deleted regardless, I don't think I'd bother to edit this geometry, since the original file had a lot of useless geometry for the purposes of real time rendering.

Thank you very much, I narrowed it down due to your input.

Cheers

-John

Blend File Download


How to convert my game to a newer version?

Download the the most recent version of blender or the version of blender of your choice and simply run the file. Blender doesn't necessarily convert files except for the fact that you can import/export them. Right now i am running Blender v2.74.5 and if I want to use a 2.6x blender file I can the only thing that will probably be different is the interface differences. So you may not have any idea how/what they set the settings/options to.


Is there any marker I can set to see halfway of a mesh? I want to place another object right over

Here's a very little known, even less used special feature: Snapping average.
It sets a mean location for any point you hit A while hovering over.

Enable snapping of the proper type. Hit G and move the object to a vertex and hit A. Repeat this process for all the other vertices that you need the average of.


Why can I not import an .mp3 file through Python scripting?

I just tested your file with one of my own .mp3s and found two problems:

The path contains backslashes. This is standard in Windows, but has special meaning in many programming languages. The backslash means that the following character should not be interpreted as a normal character but as a control character (like \n stands for new-line and \a will make a beeping sound). Your path contains a \0 which (at least in C) is interpreted as 'End of String'. This messes up your path: When the string ends there, the file is actualy a folder and has no extension. Thus it can not be recognized as a supported audio format.
There are two possible solutions:

Replace all backslashes with forward slashes / and make a Unix-style path
Replace them with double backslashes \\. The first backslash removes the special meaning of the second backslash and makes it a normal character again.

You wrote true instead of True (with a capital letter) in line 37. This is a minor issue, but causes an error when you run the script ;)

After that your script runs fine.

EDIT :
I just found another mehtod to use string literals with backslashes. If you write

mypath = r"C:\Path\To\Some\File.mp3"

the r in front of the string literal tells python that this is a so-called raw string literal. This will preserve the backslashes and not use them to create control characters.


Border Select. How to disable the selection of closest vertex to the frame?

You can try and change the 3D View > Activate/Select mouse action to Release instead of Press or Any that way when you click near a vertex it won't have any effect until you actually release the button.

Have in mind that this may cause a opposite side effect of selecting the vertex near where you end the selection border, if not well setup


If you move the Mix slider in the glare node to 1.000 it will only show the glare on a black background, you can then save the image.


X-ray material based on inner object's position?

Here is the result of my mathematical approach:

And the nodes for the outer object:

The value nodes on the far left are driven by the positions of the target (inner) object (top three) and camera (bottom three).

And here are the contents of the Norm node group, which returns the norm (i.e. magnitude) of the input vector:

The basic idea of my approach is to take the ray vector (from the camera to the sampled point on the mesh) and extend it to the inner object, then test how far this extended ray vector is away from the center of the inner object and use that information to adjust the outer object accordingly.  (In my example I reduced the IOR and made the glass lighter to make the inner object more visible.)

See below for a more thorough look at the math.

The only downside here is that the "hole" in the outer mesh will not be the exact shape of the inner object since I am basically approximating the inner object to be a sphere.

And here's the .blend:

The Math

Note, this answer is already fairly long and defining all the mathematical terms and concepts I am using here would make it much longer.  So to understand this section you should have decent precalculus grasp of vector math.  If you don't understand this part fully you can still just copy my nodes, or feel free to open a chat room with me and I would be more than happy to explain whatever you want.

Call the camera's position $\vec{C} = (Cx,Cy,Cz)$.
Call the center of the target (inner) object $\vec{T} = (Tx,Ty,Tz)$.
Call the sampled point on the outer object $\vec{P} = (Px,Py,Pz)$.
Call the radius of the inner object $R$.
The vector of the incoming ray is $\vec{CP}$, for simplicity I will call it $\vec{r}$.

The idea now is to determine if $\vec{r}$ is aiming towards the inner object.  To do this, normalize $\vec{r}$ and multiply it by the norm of $\vec{CT}$.  This will result in a new vector $\vec{r}^{\,\prime}$ in the same direction as $\vec{r}$ and length as $\vec{CT}$.

The last step is to determine if $\vec{r}^{\,\prime}$ intersects the inner object. This is pretty simple, just take the difference $\vec{r}^{\,\prime}-\vec{CT}$ to make a new vector $\vec{D}$.

This gives the final formula for the distance to compare to $R$:

$$
\left\vert\left\vert \vec{D} \right\vert\right\vert = \left\vert\left\vert \frac{\vec{r}}{\left\vert\left\vert \vec{r} \right\vert\right\vert} - \vec{CT} \right\vert\right\vert
$$

The node layout is just this formula, then sent through an RGB Curves node to tweak the falloff (the Add node right after the RGB Curves adds 0, it's purpose is to clamp the value to $[0,1]$), then used to mix the two glass shaders.  The Less Than math node at the very bottom compares the norms of $\vec{CT}$ and $\vec{r}$ (not $\vec{r}^{\,\prime}$) to apply the effect only in front of the target object.

Ping me in chat if you have any questions about the nodes or the math, I'm happy to explain further there if needed!


select multiple bones from different armatures

For your first question: You can in 2.8, to do so you need to disable the Lock Object Modes option.

Edit: About your second question, I quote you: "You can select bones from different armatures and then add them at the same selection set. Although unfortunately the selection set will only be visible in one of the armatures and not in all of them"


How to save a scene setup with a named label (multiple renders from single file)?

Two ways that come to mind.

Separate Collection for each setup. Uses the same render settings.
Different Scene for each setup. You can set up different render settings for each scene.

Using Collections. One click to enable, second click to set camera as active.

Using Scenes. Change your setup and active camera with one click.


You'll have to compile blender from source if you want to write your own.

Once you have the source code, most tooltip text is defined somewhere in /source/blender/makesrna/intern/.

If you don't want to compile blender yourself, you can write your suggestions here.


You need to reset the transform of your bones in Pose mode.
To do this, select the rig and enter pose mode. You should see it when clicking on "Object Mode" in the top left of the screenshot:

After entering Pose Mode, make sure all bones are selected by hitting A.
Then, go to Pose -> Clear Transform -> All

After clearing the transform on the bones, they will appear in the same way as they did in Edit mode.


Unfortunately, it's not possible to realize shading effects from Cycles BSDF node trees in the viewport via OpenGL. You must use the Viewport render mode or do a full render to the frame buffer to realize the shader effects that you've set up.

At this point, you're pretty much limited to image textures, ambient occlusion, DOF, and shadeless mode for viewport view when not in render mode. I suppose you could technically bake your cycles shaders to a texture image, and then apply it to the mesh for viewing in the viewport, but that seems counterproductive.


Material Overrides for view layers (per object)

Actually Blender is pretty great at Render Layers:

you have collections which is kind of like a supercharged group (one object can be in multiple collections, collections can be instanced in other scenes, like Maya's references)
you have view layers, which can contain collections can set which passes to render, to override materials etc. (this is render engine specific, I'm referring to Cycles here, Eevee doesn't support that)

You can read more about it in the Blender manual on view layers


If the parameters that varies can be keyframed, you can do something like that :

add keys for your frame color on frames 1 to 5
add keys for your wood on frames 5, 10, 15 (5*n 3 times)
add keys for your size on frames 15, 30, 45, 60 ,90 (15*n 6 times)

In the Graph editor, make all your channels cyclic extrapolation, and all your keys constant interpolation.

Select a picture format as render output (not a video format), and render a 90 frames animation : you will get 90 different pictures.


How create a desert like this in Blender?

For youre purpose you could use the Landscape add-on (Preferences -> Add-ons -> Categories/Add mesh -> ANT Landscape) or the Ocean generator in Blender. The Ocean modifier might work the best because you want such sharp dune cresps and a desert is very similar to an ocean cause it is influenced by wind just like oceans. Add a plane to the scene and add the ocean modifier. Play around with the settings until you are satisfied. Use the "Choppine" slider to sharpen the cresps and the scale to adjust the height of the dunes. Leave the Resolution at a value around 10. You don't want to much detail in that scene. Now you have got the basic shape of the desert.

The secret to make it looks very realistic is the texturing. I don't know how far you are in that but you will definitely need a so called "bump map" for the shape of the small grooves on the dune slope.


Bevel

Easiest way for your particular case is probably to use the Bevel operator (other softwares sometime call this operation Charmfer) you can find in the Edge section of the Mesh sub-menu.

Other possible ways could be to use SubSurf modifier with proper crease or take advantage of capped&extruded curves, but for the example you bring in, these kind of approaches don't look particularly helpful.

You can find an in-depth explanation of the usage the the Blender reference manual's page, but basically you should:

enter edit mode
select the eges you would like to bevel
run the command from the menu or press Crtl+B
adjust the size with the mouse cursor
increase the number of segments with the mousewheel
click to confirm

You can change the parameters even in the panel of the toolshelf on the lower left (or in the pop up menu you can call with F6).


Cycles - Normal maps seam when baking HighPoly->LowPoly

In your last image there is the problem - you are connecting normal map texture directly into the vector slot.

Please connect it through the Normal Map node (Shift+A > Vector > Normal Map):


Your object doesn't render because it is disabled for rendering in the outliner.
Use the camera icon to enable.


Ok I figured out how to render smoke OR fire. (But not both)

You have to type "density" or "flame" in the "Density Float PrimVar".

However this leads me to other questions. (Like how to change the density, and have the flame and smoke render together).


Why does turning off Auto Smooth removes blotches?

I sometimes had effects like this because custom split normals data was imported and got distorted somehow. AutoSmooth only seems to work reliably if this data is deleted, try the button in the Mesh Data section to clear custom split normals data:


Can't access "High Resolution" option in Physics Properties

Welcome to Blender Stack Exchange!

The "High Resolution" option no longer exists.

In recent updates to Blender, the fluid simulation tools (which is what handles liquids, smoke, fire, and anything else fluid) have been completely replaced. This happened in Blender 2.82. The new system uses something called MantaFlow, so any tutorials that use 2.82 or later, or specifically say MantaFlow, should be more relevant.

If you want to continue with that tutorial, I would just manually increase the resolution, which is all that the old "High Resolution" option did I believe.


How To Make A Solid Object Drop To The Ground Like It Was Liquid

No you can't.

But you can animate the visibility of objects so that on impact the original object is hidden and a replacement becomes visible. Object transparency is another property you may want to animate to ease the transition.

The render visibility is shown as a camera in the outliner, with the mouse over the camera for the object press I to insert a keyframe for the value. The same can be done for other values like transparency in BI materials or Cycles nodes.

You may also want to render two sequences and mix the two together to get more control over how and when they replace each other.


Change UserPreferencesFilePaths using Python

import bpy
from bpy import context
path = "/somepath"
context.user_preferences.filepaths.script_directory = path


This functionality still not supported. And will not in the near future - see developers answer here https://developer.blender.org/T52154

But you can "Bake" scene objects into OSL script and query object parameters in material nodes later. There is even addon for that:
https://github.com/IPv6/kristallum/blob/master/blender/addons/sceneFeatBaker_v01.py

It creates text block with OSL shader (or replace existing one), that can find object location, dimensions, orientation, etc during render by name and/or name prefix. For direct use in material nodes


You have a (large scale) copy of the axe head in your scene that is hidden in the viewport but not in the render. Activate the restrictions toggles by clicking on the filter icon in the outliner, most importantly the Disable in Renders toggle (camera icon).

Toggled the viewport visibility (eye icon) to show the hidden axe head

Hide in Viewport, Disable in Viewports and Disable in Renders can be used to hide it an object both in viewports and renders.


Problem with Fresnel Artifacts in PBR Shader

For the glitchy normals when not using a bump/normal map: When you have a loose shader node with no connection to the normal inputs, Cycles defaults to the mesh normal to avoid shading artifacts. However, when the shader normal is connected to a group input, this doesn't happen. So the shader evaluation normal instead gets initialized to whatever the group input socket default was. You can fix this by connecting the Geometry node's "normal" output to where your normal map would go (if you had one). This just explicitly tells Cycles to use the mesh normal.


I'm not sure if this accomplishes what you want but,

In the render tab, under "frame rate:" choose "custom".
Then you will get 2 more options

FPS
Framerate base

In FPS input 100, and in Framerate base input 0.1.
It should now say "Custom (1000)" in your framerate settings.


What draws the Constraint menu completely?

From the code in  startup/bl_ui/properties_constraints.py .
ConstraintsButtonsPanel class has a draw method defined for each constraint type, for example TRACK_TO

class ConstraintButtonsPanel:
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "constraint"

    # ....
    def TRACK_TO(self, context, layout, con):
        self.target_template(layout, con)

        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text="To:")
        row.prop(con, "track_axis", expand=True)

        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(con, "up_axis", text="Up")
        row.prop(con, "use_target_z")

        self.space_template(layout, con)

#....
class OBJECT_PT_constraints(ConstraintButtonsPanel, Panel):

Notice the OBJECT_PT_constraints class inherits the ConstraintButtonsPanel class, giving it all the attributes defined therein.

ConstraintsButtonsPanel.TRACK_TO is the layout code for a track-to constraint, without this, the line (when con.type == 'TRACK_TO')

getattr(self, con.type)(context, box, con)

will result in the error

AttributeError: 'Constratints' object has no attribute 'TRACK_TO'

A quick fix would be to import the ConstraintsButtonsPanel class and use it in the getattr(...) call, like so

import bpy

from bl_ui.properties_constraint import ConstraintButtonsPanel

class Constratints(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Constratints"
    bl_idname = "Constratints"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'
    bl_category = "Modeling Toolbox"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.object and context.object.data

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
  #      con = DATA_PT_constraints(context)
        ob = context.object

        layout = self.layout
        row = layout.row()

        row.operator_menu_enum("object.constraint_add", "type", text="Add Object Constraint")
        for con in ob.constraints:
            box = layout.template_constraint(con)
            if box:
                getattr(ConstraintButtonsPanel, con.type)(ConstraintButtonsPanel, context, box, con)
                #getattr(self, con.type)(context, box, con)

bpy.utils.register_class(Constratints)


given that bendy-bones are specific to Blender, they aren't supported out of the box on Sketchfab. It may be worth posting this question to the forums at Sketchfab. Perhaps another Blender artist there has tried something similar?

https://forum.sketchfab.com/c/support/blender

Paul
Artist Evangelist, Sketchfab


Where can I find the dimensions of an object?

Press N to bring up the Properties Panel of the 3D View, the Dimensions are listed below Scale in the Transform panel (bottom right):


Copy object from hidden layer with Python

Just use copy()  then link to the scene:

obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube'] #object you want to copy
dupe = obj.copy() # copy object
bpy.context.scene.objects.link(dupe) #links the copy yo the scene


Instead of parenting your object to the path, you can use a "follow path" constraint.

Set the offset value to the frame number you want your object to follow the path and in the same frame set a keyframe to put the object in the 0,0,0 location. Push the button animate path in the constraint tab, and set the timing of the path in the curve's property panel, "path animation" tab.

A the end of the animation set some keyframes to animate the influence of the follow path constraint, so you will be able to freely animate your object.


Extrude Region (Vertex Normals) Extruding faces individually

Most likely you have the pivot center set to "individual origins." This causes each face to extrude along its own normal axis.

However, this wouldn't normally cause the problem you are having. The only reason it is causing it in this case is because you have duplicate geometry. This is most likely because of failed attempts at extrusion. DO NOT just right click and assume the extrude ended. It actually duplicated everything and "extruded", but didn't move anything, and kept it all where it was. So now there are two vertices where there was one. Just undo after you have one you don't like. That's the easiest safe way to get rid of an extrude. You can see this in my example scene, extruding to identical meshes, except one I "canceled" one extrude between each face. This means there is duplicate geometry on the upper object.

By simply dragging the face out you can see what I mean by extra geometry. You could see by the little dot in the middle of the edge that there was another face taking up "zero space", right on top of itself. When I pull away the main face it stretches the extra face out so you can see it. This unselected extra face is what's causing your problem.


Difficulty with multiple overlaying textures on one material

There are several choices to make multiples bumps on one object.

Make it via the different shaders.
Not relevant in your case because Chocofur fabric shaders don't have input for normals/bumps, so you would need to modify all shaders.
Make it via different materials.
Would need more work at this step.
Make it in the material by combining several bumps maps.
The picture explain it well I think:


Use cycles to bake textures for a physically based engine

If Diffuse Bake type is set to color, the output will be albedo, assuming you haven't included an AO map in the node path. However if you choose either direct or indirect, the output will be a diffuse map since it is color fused with light and shadow.


The white vertex is the active selection, and the orange vertex is not active.


Baked normal maps getting altered on save

The problem was solved by checking the "Save as render" option on the Save Image page.


2.8's Grease Pencil: Is it possible to scale several frames at the same time?

Multiframe editing

Make sure to have both the Dope Sheet and the Viewport visible, then

in the Viewport, Tab into Edit mode
in the Dope Sheet, box select (B) the keyframes you want to be affected (they will turn yellow):

in the Viewport, make sure that the button next to "Multiframe" () is selected in the top bar
Make your edits

As of today, you won't be able to preview the effect on the other keyframes (except the current frame) while editing. But going back into object mode will reveal that the edit has taken place for all of them.


How to keep cloth from stretching infinitely?

Under the Stiffness tab in the cloth settings, turn up the Structural slider, that should fix it.
The Bending Model under Physical Properties must be set to Linear, otherwise, the slider will not show up.


How to make simple Lambert in blender Open Shading Language?

You can't actually access the Lamp location directly within OSL (see Getting a light vector in OSL for Blender) but you can feed a Vector representing the lamp location into the shader to use in the calculation. The Vector can be captured directly from the Lamp location by using Drivers so that moving the lamp automatically affects the shading.

Here the Combine XYZ node has been setup with Drivers (right-click and Add Driver and then set up the driver to set each value to Lamp X Location, Y Location, Z Location). The Subtract Vector Maths node creates a vector by subtracting the Position of the point on the surface and the Normalize ensures it's of length 1. The result is passed into the OSL node to represent the direction of the Lamp.

Since the lamp location is captured using Drivers, moving the lamp automatically updates the Combine XYZ node to represent the new lamp location.

For multiple lamps you would need to add multiple Combine XYZ nodes, each driver by the respective lamp, and each passed into the OSL node on a new input to include in your calculation.


Why do I lose my selection when switching to the 'Paint' mode of the UV Editor?

The Face Selection Masking in the the 3d view header is only available in the 3D View in Texture paint -  the UV Image Editor in Paint mode does not respect this restriction. If you use the UV Image Editor for the face selection, and then tab to Texture paint mode in 3d view you can then turn on Face Selection masking and see the focused selection ready to paint - and it will only deliver paint in that face plus whatever bleed amount you have set in the Options tab in the toolbar.

For now, the best option is to use the fill brush in the 3d view with the face selection masking. Because of this, I added the vertex group selectionint the Texture Paint Plus addon version Spirou4d and I have been changing. Texture Paint Plus CDMJ fork I have a video on it as well.youtube video on selection masking

I haven't found a way to be in edit mode and in texture paint mode yet, so for now the keeping the selections in sync won't work while painting.


How do I Delete geometry? Separate objects are one piece?

If you want to have the objects separated go to edit mode instead of object mode, then select one mesh pressing "L" while your mouse is over the mesh you want to select, then press "P" to separate the selected mesh into a new object.

When you're in edit mode it doesn´t matter if you add a new cube or cilinder it will be part of the same object you were editing on first place.


Blender Animation Nodes Particle Information

Rotation data is stored as unit quaternions in Particle data as stated in the API. And since it is a bpy_prop_collection, it allows fast access through the foreach_get function. So, we initialize a quaternion list with length equal to the number of particles using this expression:

QuaternionList(length = len(system.particles))

Then foreach_get is used to copy the quaternion data from the particles to the initialized list using this expression:

(system.particles.foreach_get("rotation", quaternions.asMemoryView()), quaternions)[1]

The creation of the tuple and sampling of the second element is just to make sure quaternions are actually returned from the expression node. So the node tree is as follows:

You can now convert this to Eulers using the Convert Rotation Type Node and use it as you wish. The output list, however, is not masked based on the alive status of the particles, meaning all particles are output even if they are dead or aren't born yet. To mask it, we can first get the alive_state of each particle, to do this we can use a list comprehension (since foreach_get doesn't support string data, and alive_state is either "DEAD", "UNBORN", "ALIVE" or "DYING"):

[particle.alive_state for particle in system.particles]

But we actually want a boolean that tells us whether or not this particle should be kept, and we can do this by some if and logic statements. For instance, to get the particles that are alive or unborn, we can write:

[particle.alive_state == "ALIVE" or particle.alive_state == "UNBORN" for particle in system.particles]

We can then use the Mask List Node to mask the quaternion list based on this boolean list:


I'm trying to cut a hole into a mesh with the Boolean tool, but it just results in a deformed mesh

There are two things going on here.  Your extruded circle is still visible, so it is hiding the hole. If you go into the outliner and press the eye to hide it, it will disappear leaving your hole.  (You didn't need to extrude a circle, you could have used a cylinder.
Here's an example:

Now I hide the cylinder in the outliner
and the hole is obvious
Be warnedThe cylinder will still show up in a render. You need to also click the 'camera' icon to keep it from being rendered.
The second thing is a lot harder to deal with, but basically by creating the hole, you've given your object "bad" topology.  There are entire courses on how to fix topology so I can't solve your problem in a single example.
One quick thing you can try is selecting your object, setting it to smooth shading, and then in the Normals property select autosmooth.


Using the compositor, you can use an Alpha Over node with the top socket set to 0 alpha and plug your main image into the bottom socket. This puts the 0 alpha under the image, and then using the image with the white in it as a mix factor for the alpha over node. To get the result I think you wanted, I inverted the color of the image used as a mask. Notice that since the image I used had a slight gradient of white in it, the black was not pure and so the image left has a slight transparency to it.
I also wanted to point out I saved the image result from the 'Viewer' output in the UV Image Editor, and then brought it back in as an image node to confirm that it had a definite alpha. Might need some cleanup with a dilate/erode node, but this gets you there.


Maintaining local pivot point when importing FBX to Unreal Engine 4

You can have some infos about importing from Blender to Unreal Engine 4 from this page: https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Static_Mesh_from_Blender#Pivot_Points

As you can read, you should place the origin where you want your pivot point to be. For example, for a basic hinged door, you should do .

I'm not sure if you said you did not want to do something like this, but it seems like there's no way to do it.


How to adjust the edge sharpness for the subdivision surface (in edit mode)?

Use Edge Crease (⇧ Shift+E)

Quote from the blender manual

  This edge property, a value between (0.0 to 1.0), is used by the Subdivision Surface Modifier to control the sharpness of the edges in the subdivided mesh. This operator enters an interactive mode (a bit like transform tools), where by moving the mouse (or typing a value with the keyboard) you can set the (average) crease value of selected edges. A negative value will subtract from the actual crease value, if present. To clear the crease edge property, enter a value of -1.


Pack external files - with photoshop files?

a bit late, but I think the best solution is to save those PSDs as TIFFs.
TIFF is apparently supported by Blender for Packing. And you can still place your .ai files in a TIFF file.
I am having the same issue right now, and all PSDs were't packed and appeared pink.
But all TIFFs are still there. So I think that should be a good workaround I think.


SLERP (Spherical Linear-Interpolate) between two vectors from Python

Blender 2.71 (or any recent build) has Vector.slerp (spherical linear interpolation) which accepts values outside 0-1

So you can do:

a = Vector((1, 0, 0))
b = Vector((0, 1, 0))
c = a.slerp(b, 0.5)  # half way

To over rotate 10% do:

c = a.slerp(b, 1.1)

Note, this feature is not included in a stable release yet (but 2.71 will include it).


Cuda error, Out of memory while I have 4GB of GPU

You don't have 4GB available to render by using 2 GPUS with 2GB each: you have only 2GB.

If you look at the specs for the card on the Nvidia Webstite It states clearly that

The memory configuration is: 4096 MB....(2048 MB per GPU) GDDR5

The memory used multiple GPUs is not added or shared, but each one uses its own pool of vRAM.

The same is true when using multiple cards on the same machine, and on top of that, the memory available to render in cycles is limited by the amount on the smallest of the cards. (For example if you have a 4 GB card and a 2GB one, you would only be able to use 2GB).

Keep in mind also that if any of the cards is plugged to a monitor, or multiple ones, there will be even less vRAM available. All other apps and windows that are open will use some of the resources of your machine.


When they're one object, you need to use UV mapping. When they're
separate, it'll work right away :). – Jachym Michal 30 mins ago

Making the planes separate objects was the solution (or working with UVs).


In cycles you can use the backfacing information on the Geometry node to control a transparent shader.


Using HDR Image makes real world scale architectual model float

The HDRI is rendered at infinite distance. When trees appear too large then this is because the panorama was taken at a close distance to the trees. What you could do is either set the background to transparent and composite with one of the backplates provided with the HDRI (this allows some cheating with the scaling during compositing) or chose an HDRI with realistic dimension that depicts a place with enough free space to actually build a house. For example this one.


bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].render.image_settings.file_format = 'JPEG'
bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].render.filepath = './'
bpy.ops.render.render(animation = False)
img = bpy.data.images[0]
img.save_render('wynik.jpg')


Select whole hierarchy from different parents at the same time

I found the solution so others can benefit from this as well.
After the las line just add:
for obj in selected:
    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj
    bpy.ops.object.select_grouped(extend=True, type='CHILDREN_RECURSIVE')
    bpy.ops.object.parent_clear(type='CLEAR_KEEP_TRANSFORM')


Mirror and Subdivision Surface is causing a problem

You have an inner face, delete it. Also, enable the Clipping option of the Mirror modifier.


Particles don't collide with collision object?

You could add small slices to a plane as emitter vertex group.

Add a wind force field to blow the particles up

Compare the results of the Kill Particles checkbox from the settings of your collision object. When you don't kill them they will be deflected. Make sure the particles cannot escape through holes in your model.

.blend


You can use compositing to output a Hi-res file and a scaled low-res file


From an already created mesh, you can relatively easily add plates using this modifiers stack:

Subdivision surface with "simple" option so that corner are not rounded but only in order to add more geometry so that the plates can bind

Shrinkwrap to the base model. The preferred options should be here mode: "project", cull faces: "none", direction: "negative" and the wanted offset from the plane surface

Solidify in order to have rims joining the plates to the base mesh

Edge split to sharpen the previous modifier

As you can see in the gif above, this allow to model the plate with few geometry. But the technics is not perfect: it is sometimes difficult to keep straight edges.
You can also pile several meshes with the same modifiers stack (as visible on the right part above).

PS: I'm aware that this won't solve all the needed work to obtain a finalized plane model...


Bump map connected to Glossy shader Normal input causes line artifact in render

In short, adding all those values together is making bump values that are larger than the reasonable range.

The add nodes don't do anything magical. They are doing exactly what it sounds like ;-) They're adding numbers together. In the case of bump, full normal distortion is 1 (tallest value), no normal distortion is 0 (shallowest value).

50% grey plus 50% grey is 100% white, which is full bump distortion. 75% grey plus 75% grey is.... a color that Blender doesn't know what to do with... which is a bump distortion that Blender doesn't know what to do with.

Those add nodes shouldn't have anything to do with color. You can't necessarily expect that the color you want is also exactly the bump value that you want. You should manipulate the color of your shader seperately from the bump of your shader, even if you have to input the same image twice.

I hope this helps!


Vertex coordinate monitoring during Transform

If you want to bring a vertex of one mesh to a particular vertex of another mesh do this:

select the first object, switch to edit mode, deselect all vertices and select the one to which you want to bring the other vertex.
Switch to object mode
Similarly select the other object and repeat the above steps to selecting the node you want to be moved
Execute the following script replacing the name 'Cube1' with the reference object and 'Cube2' with the object whose vertex you want to move:

import bpy
obj1 = bpy.data.objects['Cube1']
obj2 = bpy.data.objects['Cube2']
co = obj1.matrix_world * [v for v in obj1.data.vertices if v.select == True][0].co
[v for v in obj2.data.vertices if v.select == True][0].co = obj2.matrix_world.inverted() * co


How to move a curve that has an array without distortion

I figured it out! You have to press tab on the curve to go into edit mode, select all the points, then move it where you want it.


Textures are missing, but only when I render

You might move your textures or renamed it
So u just replace it in same location or use external data/find missing files feature
When u want to  email it just some one just pack all textures by this feature external data/pack all files


You have entered into the local view by mistake pressing Numpad / key (slash). Press Numpad / again to exit Local view.


How do you fill in a space between two objects and leave the middle open?

If you have the circles as separate objects, first you need to join them into one mesh by selecting both and using CTRL+J shortcut.

Then switch to edit mode, select both circles, then hit CTRL+E and select Bridge Edge Loops from the menu.


You can loop a section by using the Action actuator and setting the start and end frames to only those that are part of the running state. You can also use the "Blendin" options to blend between states.
You can do this for as many states as you want, though it would be preferred to have separate "actions" (in the action editor) for each state, such as running, idle, etc.


There are 2 possible reasons:

Flipped normals
The repair of this is simple: select "bad" object, enter edit mode, press tab, and select all vertex A and recalculate normals, ctrl N.

Something bad in options
The easiest repair is just wipe the options. (file -> load factory settings)


How do I apply hook modifier to shape keys?

Used a combination of bones and weight painting and the hook modifier to make the eyelash follow the eyelid. More idiot proof way is to just join the eyelash to the main body mesh via different vertex groups and go to edit mode to create the shape key as usual


Multiple objects doing the same animation in the BGE

I usually parent the object to an empty and place the empty at the base location.