TL;DR You need to select vertices on your cloth mesh that you would like to pin and create a vertex group for them. A hook modifier needs to be added to the cloth object with Object set to the sphere and the Vertex Group to the one you just created. In the cloth simulation the Pin Group has to be set to the vertex group as well.

This is a little tutorial for a pinned cloth simulation.

Create a sphere which will be used as collision object.

Add a plane and scale it to the size of the cloth you would like to have

Add a subdivision modifier in the modifier tab and set it to Simple. Increase the Viewport subdivisions and apply the modifier.

Switch to the physics tab and add a cloth simulation to the plane. Make sure to reduce the tension and compression to make the cloth less stiff. You can configure the cloth settings however you like, the options below are just an example. Enable Self Collisions.

Select the sphere and enable Collision in the physics tab.

Play the animation in the timeline. The cloth should wrap around the sphere. Once you reached a frame with a shape that you would like to use as a starting shape, press pause and switch to the modifier tab. Apply the cloth simulation modifier.

Now switch back to the physics tab and create another cloth simulation with the same settings as before.

With the plane selected, switch to edit mode and select the vertices you would like to attach to the sphere during animation.

Go to the object data tab and create a vertex group. Assign the selected vertices with the Assign button.

In the modifier tab, add a Hook modifier to the plane.

Move the Hook modifier to the top using the arrow buttons and set the sphere as object and the vertex group. The modifier ensures that the vertices in the vertex group follow the sphere.

Switch to the physics tab again and set the vertex group as the Pin Group. This will ensure that the vertices stay in place and don't slip.

You can add another subdivision modifier, set shading to smooth until your happy with the resolution. Add it before the Cloth modifier if you want the subdivisions to be included in the simulation.

Now you can animate the sphere. Once you play the animation from the start or bake it, the cloth should stay pinned to the sphere.


Your problem is that phong_ramp doesn't actually internally calculate that factor; as a BSDF, it's a closure, which is a function to be called by the renderer, later, with more data available. So, while it may appear on the surface that it's internally calculating those colors, it's only setting up the material to provide an environment for their calculation during the actual ray-trace render. (OSL is completely ignorant of lighting.)

So, as much as I hate answering questions with a stout negative, no, you can't determine that factor from OSL. (It literally doesn't even exist yet.) However, if you're looking for a reflectance factor, it's fairly easy to calculate on its own. You do have the surface normal N, the incident ray from the viewer I, and while the light data may not be available you can always substitute in a parameter point, or even hard coded point, representing the anticipated light.

The Blinn-Phong algorithm, for all its brilliance, isn't that complicated to understand and is effectively cited in full on Wikipedia. I'm not sure what you're hoping to do with that factor but I wish you luck in doing it and hope this helps! Another thought might be to interpolate eight equidistant points between black and white for the shader, and simply multiply it by a color or other closure color to tune it, but it ultimately depends on what you're aiming for.


Animate Folding/Twisting Arrows of Recycle Pictogram

Well, I forgot that the ribbon turns all the way over after I got this all set up so you can take it from here. Might take you 10, 15 minutes to align the spans. The hidden object "span.001" has all the segments layed out, you just have to rotate them into place using Normal orientation, with respect to Median. Once you have them how you like, bridge them together, make your arrowhead, and rotate the object 3 times about the origin.


Here is a proposition for your topology (a bit different version and more detailed):


Unable to identify frame for cut in VSE - Bug?

You can also generate a timecode file for the clip (it lives in the proxy panel of strip properties), when creating the TC you can choose to NOT render a proxy. The playback of media should be much better. But transcoding to a more simple codec is best (less compression, more real frames).


Report: error Traceback (most recent calls last)

Revert to Factory settings.
Set File > Defaults to "Factory Settings"


Q:Multiple root bones after exporting to UE4

The following helped me` I selected model, bones and create a copy, then I exported a copy of model and this issue was fixed.


You can set the output resolution of the render in the Properties Editor > Render settings > Dimensions Panel:

For a description of each of these settings, see the Manual:

  Resolution:
      The Dimensions section has settings for the size of the rendered images.
      By default the dimensions SizeX and SizeY are 1920×1080 and can be changed by adjusting the X and Y fields. These buttons control the
  overall size of the image.

  Percentage:
       Slider to reduce or increase the size of the rendered image relative to the X/Y values above. This is useful for small test renders that have the same proportions as the final image.

Note you can quickly increase or decrease the resolution while keeping the same aspect ratio by setting the Percentage slider below the resolution settings:

Note that to set the Precentage a value greater than 100% you will have to type the value in directly.

Other methods

Note that it is possible to type a quick python math expression such as 1920*2 directly into the value box: (helpful for quick arithmetic to precisely set values. This works for all value boxes, not just resolution settings)


Your pivot point is set to the 3D Cursor, to change that you either need to press . and select "Median Point" to set it back to blender's default pivot point. or you can find the same options on the top of your 3D viewport as shown below:


A spline created by lightning_curve.splines.new('BEZIER') already has 1 vertex.
So when you add Bezline.bezier_points.add(len(coords)), the spline now has 5 vertices.
When looping:
for i, coord in enumerate(coords):
        x,y,z = coord
        Bezline.bezier_points[i].co = (x, y, z)

you're setting the coordinates of the 4 first and the last stays at (0, 0, 0), which makes the spline appear as closed.


Given the local coordinates of a parented object, how do I get its global coordinates using the Python API?

The formula is

default_cube.matrix_world * sphere.matrix_basis

You can directly get the global coordinates (including constraints) of the sphere from

sphere.matrix_world.translation

See Object.matrix_basis, mathutils.Matrix


Spinning single component around axis without affecting the compounding units

Are you trying to make an animation or just a still image? If you want a still image, I've had a sort of similar situation where I resorted to a simple cheat. I needed to have a guitar string reach up to a tuning peg, and then wrap around it repeatedly.

My solution was to make 2 strings. One string reaches up to where the curve is supposed to begin, then cuts off. Where that string ended, the other string starts.

The other string is made by just creating a single flat circle, positioned right at the end of the first string, whose size and number of vertices was the same as a cross section of the first string.

Its face is perpendicular to the top of the peg, and I positioned it close to the peg. Then I added the screw modifier, chose the peg as the axis object, and messed around with the iterations, steps, and angle settings to create a coil.

The modifier can be a little confusing. If it doesn't seem to wrap exactly around the central rod of the yoyo, make sure that rod has its scale and rotation applied in object mode (ctrl+A). Then make sure the origin of the rode is in the middle of it (ctrl+alt+shift+C). For the string itself, you can reposition the origin (same command) to different spots to control how tight the coil is. If you move the small disc that creates the string up and down in edit mode (well, in my case it's up and down) then the coil gets more compressed. If you tab into edit mode and move it, the entire coil just moves vertically without getting tighter or looser. So to get the modifier to cooperate, you have to pay attention to the position of the origin of everything, and whether you're moving things in edit more or object mode.


I would reccommend a few things:

Start with the bird in an easy rest position:
Right now you have it set so that the wings are in an up position. This can complicate rigging and could result in artifacts when the wings are in the down position.
If automatic weights do not work, you may need to weight paint manually: Automatic weights are designed to be a time saver, but may not work in all instances. It may become necessary for you to paint the weights manually

You may want to watch a few rigging tutorials and try to apply those concepts to this project, as I think there is no one right answer, but rather a set of toolsets that can be applied to each situation depending on the conditions.


You should turn the options: "AV-sync" and "Audio Scrubbing" on. It should help fix your problem.


Scatter Particles after the have been created

Add an appropriate force field, or maybe fields if you want the "centers" of the explosion to be on each individual letter.  Keyframe the strength of the force field to be zero on frame 150, then something higher (say, 10) on frame 151.  Set the force of gravity of the particle system to zero (or zero until frame 151 if you want your explosion to include gravity effects).

Here I have keyframed the explosion to start on frame 101.  So on frame 100 the strength of the field is zero and the particles have not moved:

A few frames later, they have exploded outward:


How to let mirrored half move independently

You must apply mirror modifier before weighting.

The weight is a property of a vertex, the mirror modifier "copies" all vertex attributes, weight included, so - if you don't apply it - it will copy the weights from one side to the other.


This is happening because you have some faces pointing inwards and some pointing outwards. You can tell by turning on Face Orientation and Face Normals in  Overlays:

To fix it, select the whole thing in edit mode and then select Mesh > Normals > Recalculate Outside. You can now bevel as you wish:


First problem

The order of the modifiers is important.

In your example, the quarter is first smoothed by the Subsurf, then duplicated by the Mirror.

If you put the mirror first (with the arrows right to his name), the quarter will be duplicated, then the whole table will be smoothed.

Second problem

You have an edge inside the model, it connects the vertex at the center of the hole, with a vertex above (the center of the table, i think). Removing it should fix the hole.


You may wish to check out the Blender wiki. For instance, it has a series of articles on starting to use Blender for the first time, and it has many articles for specific topics.

Some tutorial websites you may find useful include:

BlenderCookie and their Blender Basics tutorial series
BlenderGuru, offering a tutorials of varying difficulty for specific tasks with general lessons
BlenderDiplom, another similar website

You can also ask for critiques on the BlenderArtists forum.

I would recommend checking the regular contests on websites like BlenderGuru and BlenderCookie. Even if you don't feel qualified to enter, give it your best shot – you may learn something along the way.


Trying to wrap this mesh mask to another mesh

You were on the right track when trying to use the Shrink-wrap modifier. All you need to do Is fiddle with some settings.

All you have to make sure is that you select the "Project" mode and tick both of the "Direction" boxes (this tell blender which normal to project, ticking both is just easy). Then you're going to want to increase the offset just a little bit so your projected mesh doesn't intersect too badly with your head.

I see the mesh you'd like to project looks like its got 3 dimentionality, so if you want to preserve that, I suggest you remake it with splines and add a skin modifier to it.


You can achieve this using Rigid Body Physics and Rigid Body Constraints to form a hinge between the box and each of the flaps.

Create the box and flaps as separate objects and enable 'Active' Rigid Body Physics to each. For more realistic physics you should also set the Mass on each of the objects appropriately (in the Physics tab in the Tool panel (T) select 'Calculate Mass' and then select Cardboard).

Create Empties to act as the hinges. It's a good idea to use the 'Single Arrow' form of empty as the 'hinge' will act around the Z axis of the empty and the single arrow points along the Z axis (so the arrow will lay along the length of the hinge). Position the empties pointing along the edge between the flap and box where you require the hinge.

Parent each of the flaps and each of the empties to the box. This way, when you move the box around in the scene the hinges and flaps will follow.

Select each hinge empty in turn and in the Physics properties window enable Rigid Body Constraint. Set the Type to 'Hinge', Object 1 to the box, Object 2 to the flap, enable Z Angle limits and set the Lower and Upper limits appropriate to that flap (the angle it's allowed to bend from its initial 'at rest' position. Since the flap is already in the 'closed' position, one of the limits should be 0 degrees to prevent the flap from closing inside the box. The other limit should be a suitable angle to prevent the flap bending too far outside the box (I chose +/-250 degrees (so limits -250,0 for one and 0,250 for the other) so that it would stop at 20 degrees off the side of the box).

Running the rigid body simulation should now produce something like this :


To do this in Cycles, choose cycles render and open node editor.

Create your base material for the football (this should be what it should look like if there wasn't any transparency on it.

Then mix this with a transparent shader, and make any necessary shader tweaks to give it the appearance you're looking for.

The cylinder is positioned inside the sphere, the cube behind it

Please keep in mind that if you prefer to use the Blender Internal Engine, that's perfectly fine, this is just a way to do it using Cycles.


Character Walk Cycle is not working properly

It's a names problem: as you can see the paste function is working for all "central bones", while the lateral ones need to find their side counterparts, and they can recognize them only with the right kind of suffix used for L/R.

For example if you rename your LeftFoot as Foot.L and your RightFoot to Foot.R, everything works properly for these two bones also.

Examples of valid separators:

(nothing): handLeft –> handRight
_ (underscore): hand_L –> hand_R
. (dot): hand.l –> hand.r
- (dash): hand-l –> hand-r
 (space): hand LEFT –> hand RIGHT

The Blender Manual states that also your way, with the complete Left or Right word before the name, should work, but it doesn't: you have to rename all your bones with an end L/R suffix.


How to seperate Blenderkit Assets from Empty

Reasonably sure that Blenderkit uses instanced collections to instance its objects.  You should be able to use Make Instances Real to turn the instance into a real object.
That said, Blenderkit provides a specific way of doing what you want to do, and that's to go into the tool panel for it (N panel on the right, BlenderKit tab) and then in the Selected Model section press Bring to Scene.
Both seem to work although there is some difference in organisation - I believe the BlenderKit specific Bring to Scene recursively adds all of the model parts and materials, wheras Make Instances Real only seems to do one level, but I am not as certain on that.
Either way should hopefully be helpful to you.


My GTX 1060 GPU doesn’t work on Blender 2.9 as OptiX

The Nvidia GTX 1060 is supported for rendering with OptiX (see release notes), but it requires a current graphics driver. Updating it should allow you to select the GPU as OptiX render device for Cycles. The current drivers can be downloaded from Nvidia's website.


How to add linked groups symmetrically around an object

I would suggest Array modifier. You need to turn off the two checkboxes for constant and relative displacement, and place an empty on top of the object you want to duplicate. Then, you change the center of rotation to the 3D cursor, then set the empty as the object in the Array modifier, and move the 3D cursor to the center of your model. Increase the number of array iterations by however many objects you want on the outside, then divide 360 by the number of iterations to find out how much you need to rotate the empty. It's a slightly convoluted way of using the array modifier, but it works for me.

Sometimes there will be a freaky scaling problem when you turn on the array modifier, but it can be fixed by pressing ctrl A --> apply scale.


Objects disappear when looking through camera

I guess this is a clipping distance issue. Select your Camera, go to the Camera Data tab and check the End value of your Clipping Range.

Blender 2.8x

Blender 2.7x


how to snap (align) edge to (with) a vertex in another object

I think it might be that you're not moving the edge under a constraint, so you can't hover over the target without dragging the whole edge down to it.

The 'Active', 'Closest' etc. settings refer to the source of the snap, the moving element. The 'Vertex', 'Face', etc. button next door refers to the target, the still element.

The most intuitive setting, I think, is (source)'Active', (target)'Vertex', used with a selection of source vertices made, one of them active, aiming to align with a target vertex.

So try it that way, with all the vertices of your edge(loop?) selected, using GX, constraining the move, leaving your mouse free to hover over the target vertex, without pulling the selection with it.


You can try to set it up via the network renderer addon. But if that's no option for you you could try different things.
if you use windows
You can control Blender via the command-shell. That means that you can do it with a short batch file as well. You will need 3 batch files for that:
setup-client
this file is optional but it makes things a lot easier. It asks for the parameters like start frame, end frame etc. .write it on the master-computer.
manager
the manager is a short program that distributes single frames to the seperate render clients and uploads the file together with the parameters to an ftp-server (or a public drive). this program normally runs on the master computer as well.
render client
This program starts blender with the parameters submitted by the manager in the GPU rendering mode. An advanced feature would be to make it restart outomaticly if Blender crashes during rendering.
if you use Mac, Linux or Windows
Create an custom addon for Blender that replaces the batch files.


How to keyframe all the objects viewport/render visibility inside the selected collection via python code?

After several moments I just got it, but I know there maybe a cleaner approach
import bpy

for ob in bpy.context.collection.all_objects:

    ob.keyframe_insert(data_path="hide_render")
    ob.keyframe_insert(data_path="hide_viewport")
    if ob.hide_render == True:
        ob.hide_render = False
    else:
        ob.hide_render = True
    if ob.hide_viewport == True:
        ob.hide_viewport = False
    else:
        ob.hide_viewport = True


Addon: run execute() only when button is clicked

You can also add an invoke method and call WindowManager.invoke_props_dialog:

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


a hole keeps forming in my object and i don't know hwo to remove it

You have inner faces, the Subdivision Surface modifier try to smooth them and it gives this hole, so delete these faces:

Also, activate the Mirror "Clipping" option so that when you extrude faces along the axis the vertices stick to the axis and it doesn't create these inner faces:


JackAudio disabled in Blender's OSX official release?

Solved. Blender installer detects missing files related to Jack. I realised this building Blender from the source code. I had to correct the file location of Jack .h files, then it compiled correctly and Jack fully works. This is an issue affecting MacOSX 10.13 + JackOSx 0.92_3. Probably due the fact that Jack is not yet fully supported in newer OSX versions.


How do I get an icon to appear in the label of my custom python node?

So far, the node icon only seams to appear in outliner (like datablocks).
Not very useful.

+The icon you show in the picture is preview button and it's hardcoded. not py

AFAIK you can alter, even in "real time" , the label with draw_label() and also the sockets texts. And of course, the color and size of the node. But not much more.

-

There might be an extreme workaround...

If you really need an image or something else on top of that, so much that you'd design a whole system just for that (instead of making great nodes and addons :D ), you can use OpenGl to draw something on top of the node, or header or whatever area

an example is this (note that the white rectangle could be on top of the self node! whatever the coords you need, you can work out the header area with precision)

and it's about
https://github.com/JacquesLucke/animation_nodes/tree/master/graphics


Make a vertex group for each end of the rope and use a hook modifier to attach it to each car.  As you animate the car to move backward the rope will tighten with the cloth sim.  To release it just set a keyframe to set the object to none making the rop fall.


Blender 2.8 rig not fully updating on render

The problem is caused by collision, if you have multiple collision on a armature it causes this problem. normally the armature should have priority but something gets mixed up there.

As soon as I remove all collisions it worked like expected.


Code Edit for 2.8x, for 2.7x see previous revision.

Some Edits

The collection bpy.data.objects is all objects in a blend file,
whether linked to context scene, another scene or no scene. If not in
the context scene cannot be the context object. Use scene.objects
I put the "convenience variable" context in test scripts, so I can
paste later into panel or operator code where it is passed as a
parameter to most methods, in which case better not to use path addressing from bpy IMO   it gets tedious reading bpy.context.object.data.uv_foo.bar.blah
Add a UV map named "LightMap" if the mesh doesn't already have one.
Blender uses radians not degrees as the native unit of rotation.  This appears to be one of the anomalies.
Remember to select faces to be unwrapped.

Script

import bpy
from math import radians

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
vl = context.view_layer
# deselect all to make sure select one at a time
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

for obj in scene.objects:
    if (obj.type == 'MESH'):
        vl.objects.active = obj
        obj.select_set(True)
        print(obj.name)
        lm =  obj.data.uv_layers.get("LightMap")
        if not lm:
            lm = obj.data.uv_layers.new(name="LightMap")
        lm.active = True
        bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
        bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='SELECT') # for all faces
        bpy.ops.uv.smart_project(angle_limit=66, island_margin = 0.02)
        bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
        obj.select_set(False)

Resultant UVMap "LightMap" on Suzanne, using limit angle radians(66) interpreted as 1.152 degrees

Related

https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/172990/15543


Select all your UVs, hit W and choose Remove Doubles. You can set a threshold distance that should take care of the overlaps. Be careful though, if you have small islands, or large overlaps, it will merge the wrong vertices, so keep the distance as small as possible. Rather do a couple by hand than risking wrongfully merged UVs, because they might be a pain to spot and to fix.
EDIT:
Merging does not work, bc those UV vertices are not doubles. Each triangle seems to be rotated or flipped:

So adjacent vertices on the UV map are not (necessarily) adjacent in your mesh. I'm afraid that thing is busted beyond repair, meaning there was an issue importing the coordinates. Where did the model come from and wich format was it?


You may use a Direct Union option of a BoolTool add on.

Activate it in User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U).

In my case I have four objects with different vertex count. Some of them were sculpted, some of them not.

In Object Mode select all the objects and press Shift+Ctrl+Num+ (or press Spacebar and type 'direct'-->Direct Union).

After this operation you'll achieve a joined mesh ready for sculpting.


How do I remove doubled faces? Merge by Distance isn't behaving properly

Revisiting this for continuity. And answering my own question. I continued to have this issue, with doubled faces and inconsistent 'shading' on the faces on further mesh builds, using Extraction E to build a flat (2D) mesh.

There were two problems: Duplicate vertices and Normals direction of the faces.

Because it was a simple mesh I was able to remove the doubled vertices manually. But it can also be solved using the command from the 'Mesh' Drop down: Clean Up > Merge by Distance. Although this doesn't always seem to behave perfectly and may still require some manual work.

This didn't always result in accurately recalculating the normals either. One can recalculate normals from the same Menu 'Mesh' > Normals > Flip, Recalculate, Rotate etc. But to do individual faces they need to be manually selected I believe.

To choose individual faces use Face Select mode 3 and Recalculate or Flip only selected faces.

In all of this I wasn't able to figure out why Blender sometimes (seemingly randomly) flips the normals or duplicates vertices, but with a little diligence they can be adjusted as one is building the mesh.

I hope that helps someone who is encountering a similar problem in their early days getting their head round Blender.


CAELinux is based on Debian, right? If so, these are the commands.

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:thomas-schiex/blender

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install blender

sudo apt-get install nvidia-cuda-toolkit`

Heres a video in case you don't understand some of these.

Source: I've been a Blender guru since 2009. Best program ever created if you ask me!


How create a cube with a rippled surface

You can just extrude your sine surface second time, and then

scale it to 0 in extrude direction S,X(Y or Z), 0

In my gif I also recalculate normals at the end.


Creating model of disc with offset hole for 3D printing

I just had a look at the file and I can see disconnected geometry around the top and bottom rings:

Trying creating it in a similar fashion to this:

Add a circle mesh and select Nothing on fill type.

Tab to go into edit mode.  Select all by pressing A.  Press E to extrude and press Enter without moving the mouse.  Press S to scale in toward the center.  Then select the new hole and offset it by the proper margin.

Select all (A) and extrude again in the Z direction this time.  You now have a hole with faces:

Another way to do this with a little more precision is with the knife tool (you can find tutorials on this forum).  But after you make your cut, and delete the faces, you must Bridge Edge Loops by pressing W:


Odd crease using mirror modifier without subsurf

In the mirror modifier, you can check the mirroring of U/V texture coordinates, that should fix the problem.


Blender 2.72 No Cycles Hair Rendering/Settings Tabs

If you look at the top of your screenshot, you will notice that the render engine is still set to the Blender default, which is Blender Internal. You need to select Cycles as the render engine.

Now all the settings appear as expected.


Can you use two computers to render in Cycles?

If you are rendering a single image

(Alternative solution)

Since you are using Cycles, you can render the same scene on the two computers using half the number of Render samples on each one, then compositing them (in GIMP or in Blender), superimposing one onto the other with 50% opacity.

The two computers must use two different values (like, 0 and 1) for "Seed", otherwise you'll only get the same exact image, with half the shading quality, twice.

Grant Davis in a comment suggests that each instance of blender should output an OpenEXR image, which allows for a finer memory representation of color, so that less information is lost on the way to the final image.

Once the two computers have created their renders and saved as .exr, open a new blender instance and set the render size to the same it was in your scene. Then create your compositing nodes: two image inputs and a mix node.

Here, each image was rendered with full global illumination at 128 samples. You can see the top one when I mute (M) the Mix node. The mixed version has a quality comparable to a 256 samples render.

For animations, Tooniis' solution works fine.


"Toggle Window Fullscreen" Hotkey missing in 2.8?

In the Window menu, right click on "Toggle Window Fullscreen", then select "Assign Shortcut". Press the shortcut you want, and it's done.

Of course, this works with every menu element.


Nothing to export, 0/7 objects selected?

I identified that there is an issue when I import a collada, and then save the file as .blend. When I reopen the .blend file, the collada object is not editable like shown above. How to fix it, I'm still not sure. I had to delete the object and re-import the collada, losing my rigging and uvs.


Strange seams while rendering glass object

I think you simply forgot to turn on smooth shading. See these examples (looks very similar to your issue):

Flat shading

Same geometry with smooth shading (and EdgeSplit modifier)


Blender 2.8 simple approach to overlaying dirt?

Select the plane with the Black and white dirt image and switch its blend mode and shadow mode to "Alpha something", and play with the parameters until you get the look you're looking for.


TL,DR
OpenCL will no longer be supported going forward.
Full Explanation
OpenCL development is stagnant and the implementation insufficient for a properly working render engine.
There are critical bugs and limitations that wont allow for a proper implementation using the API. Developer support is also limited with no significant new work being developed for a long time.
No further developments are expected at this point, and support will be dropped going forward, as stated in the Blender Code Blog about Cycles X

Deprecation
As part of the new architecture, we are removing some functionality.
Most notably:

OpenCL rendering kernels. The combination of the limited Cycles split kernel implementation, driver bugs, and stalled OpenCL standard
has made maintenance too difficult. We can only make the kinds of
bigger changes we are working on now by starting from a clean slate.
We are working with AMD and Intel to get the new kernels working on their GPUs, possibly using different APIs (such as CYCL, HIP,
Metal, …). This will not necessarily be ready for the first release,
the implementation needs to reach a higher quality bar than what is
there now. Long term, supporting all major GPU hardware vendors
remains an important goal, and we think that with this new
architecture we’ll be able to better performance and something
stability. It is just a matter of time until more GPUs are supported
in Cycles X again.

OpenCL for Cycles will be deprecated for the time being. Further developments are expected possibly using different APIs, but no definitive plans are made at the time of writing


You could try by changing the scale

Good Luck


Accidentally pressed F12, and lost rendered image. Is there way to recover it?

Unless you had saved your image to a file, there is no way to get your rendered image back.

Things you can do to prevent this from happening in the future:

Save the rendered image to a file:

In the UV/Image editor's menu use Image->Save As Image (or F3)

Switch render slots.

There are 8 independent render slots. If you switch to a different one and render again, the images on other render slots will remain unaffected. Note that you'll be increasing memory usage with every render slot, and all of the rendered images will be lost when the file is closed (unless you save them to an external file).


Is There a Way to Change a Prop with an Update Def without Calling the Update Def?

In the example, simply setting a max will do this for us

import bpy

def update_prop(self, context):
    print ("update")
    print(self.variable)

bpy.types.Object.variable  = bpy.props.IntProperty(
    name="variable",
    default=0,
    min=0,
    max=10,
    update=update_prop)

In python console

>>> C.object.variable = 22
update
10

>>> C.object.variable
10

If you wish to set a value and not fire an update, set the id property.  A property defined via bpy.props for example ob.prop is stored as ob["prop"] once set to non default.

May  be better to use a getter / setter method(s)  Internal "get/set" function of property?

def update_prop(self, context):
    print ("update")
    self["variable"] = 4
    print(self.variable)

>>> C.object.variable = 22
update
4

>>> C.object.variable
4

Note this has been answered recenlty, couldn't find that one


How to fix this problem while modeling a sphere from default cube?

There is no problem there. Everything is working as intended. Loop cuts change the resulting form of surface subdivision. If input geometry had no result on subdivision surface modifier, it would be absolutely no good for modelling because you could not make different forms with it. I would suggest looking for the right technique to model what you want to model instead of trying to 'fix' a technique intended for something else.


I believe it can be done. First thing first being setting up the eye material to be visible front side only. (How can I make a material only apply to a side of a plane?)

Next step is constructing a mask from both head and hair using object index passes (How to use an object as a mask?). Using this as a mask for the eyes results that the eyes will become occluded behind other solid objects, like Link's hands.


Textures appear different in object and edit mode

Fixed it. It's because some faces were overlapping. Works fine now.


There is no need to make it separate parts due to scale, but it is probably wise to break something like a spaceship into different parts (depending on the level of detail...more detail = more parts).

If your game engine is Unity (and most likely even if it isn't), you will want to use 1m = 1bu (blender unit) or switch to meters here:

As NoviceInDisguise mentioned in the comments, you may want to adjust the clipping distance in the 3D view if you are working with unusually large or small objects.


Getting msg "could not write image: no such file or directory"

Okay, found out it is not a blender problem but a Windows 10 setting.  I changed the Controlled Folder access in the windows security settings to on and that caused the problem.  Changed to off, and problem disappeared!


Your blend file did not contain the packed font image file, so I replaced the texture with one I googled.
With your plane selected, and switching to edit mode the uv/image editor showed your unwrap as this:

For dynamic text to work you need to enclose the @ symbol in your unwrap like this:

This change makes your blendfile work as intended for me.


Black reflections with Cycle's Glossy Material

I'm not completely sure what's causing this, I suspect it is just how Cycles works and is not strictly a bug - similar to the terminator issue.

In order to work around it, we can modify the surface normals slightly in the material:

From the manual:

  Incoming

  Vector pointing towards the point the shading point is being viewed from.

Thus adding a tiny bit of the Incoming vector will skew the surface normal just enough to hide the artifacts.

Note that changing the surface normal means our reflections will be incorrect - so we need to change it as little as possible, otherwise the reflections of objects and clouds will be noticeably weird.


Bake displacement to alpha channel washing out colour channels

Connect your image node to your Alpha inputs

If Im Looking strictly at the color values and ignoring the alpha, then the value results will be as follows:

And If you are looking to come at this from the polar opposite, then here is the result:


Is it possible to add weight to a new object once I have added weight?

You can adjust the vertex weights at any time, either by using Weight Paint mode or manually adjusting the weights, weight painting is just a nice gui approach to setting vertex group weight values to vertices.

In your case you most likely want to use a parent constraint to allow you to turn on/off the parenting of the entire object on demand. With rigid objects that don't deform you only need to parent the object to a bone so that it moves with your character.

By keyframing the influence slider you can control when the object is parented to the hand and when it is left behind.

If you are using the game engine then you may want to use a parent actuator to enable/disable the parent relationship. In this case you probably want to set an empty to be a child of the hand bone and then enable parenting to the empty as you can't turn on parenting to an individual bone.


How to get the name of the property that has a bad driver in Python?

Just like keyframes look at data_path and array_index

data_path is the path from the owner of the driver, array index if it is an array type, eg 0, 1, 2 for x, y, z locations.

Example Y Euler rotation of pose bone "shin.L", from the context object in python console.

>>> for d in C.object.animation_data.drivers:
...     d.data_path, d.array_index
...
('pose.bones["shin.L"].rotation_euler', 1)

>>> C.object.pose.bones['shin.L'].rotation_euler[1]
2.0

>>> C.object.pose.bones['shin.L'].rotation_euler.y
2.0

Note for booleans unnecessary to test equality to True/False  ,

if not d.driver.is_valid:


Why cant I see the loop cut line on one side of the mirrored shape

There are two options to display the result of the modifier in edit mode:

(form the Blender Manual)

Box
Displays the modified geometry in edit mode, as well as the original geometry which you can edit.
Triangle
When enabled, the final modified geometry will be shown in edit mode and can be edited directly.

Enabling the triangle will allow you to "adjust edit cage to modifier result" :


Python, blender and weird rotate behaviour after restoring matrix

In order to use the Matrix class you can either use import mathutils and mathutils.Matrix() to initialize an instance or from mathutils import Matrix and then Matrix().

import bpy
import mathutils

view_matrix = mathutils.Matrix(([0.9077774286270142, -0.4194521903991699, -6.8628960292471675e-09, 1.434309720993042],
                                [0.3097465932369232, 0.6703528165817261, 0.6743027567863464, 0.9151758551597595],
                                [-0.28283774852752686, -0.6121168732643127, 0.738455057144165, -0.902187168598175],
                                [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0]))

for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        for space in area.spaces:
            if space.type == 'VIEW_3D':
                v3d = space.region_3d
                v3d.view_matrix = view_matrix
                v3d.view_perspective = 'ORTHO'
                break


Snap one (active) vertex in a selected curve + move all vertices in curve by snap amount?

In this example, 'Snap With' is set to 'Active' and 'Snap To' is set to 'Vertex'.
The snap has been set to 'Project onto Self', and set to work in translation, rotation, and scale.
The Pivot has been set to '3D Cursor'.. although of course, that wouldn't matter if you were just translating..

In the illustration, the active vertex starts off as the one at the bottom, and is then switched to the one at the other end.
When you move, rotate, (or scale) the active vertex, the other selected vertices will follow.
Note: the rotation has to be constrained to an axis to work.


Edges won't join / UV unwrap issue Blender 2.8

You may find that you get better results when UV unwrapping your model if you use the Conformal method.


Bake Panel in Render Properties doesn't pop up

Upgrade blender.

Cycles baking was first added in blender v2.71 and you are using 2.70. The current blender version is 2.78c.

Baking is available in 2.70 if you switch the render engine to blender render, but using that will depend on the material setup you are trying to bake.


How can I set edges to a specific length with the keyboard?

No, you just cannot set the edge length by typing a number. I don't know why Blender does not add this feature, it's just stupid.

--Edit--

Just found an Add-on
https://developer.blender.org/T39999  After putting the .py file into your addons folder you can just use Shift-Alt-E to set the edge length


All cameras looking the same way despite being directed another way

The camera you refer to, isn't the active one. Press Ctrl+0 to set the selected camera in the viewport as 'active' or make it the actual scene camera under Properties > Scene > Camera, which is basically the same.

Tip: The triangle on top of the 'active camera' is filled up with a solid color.

Manual: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/3dview/navigate/camera_view.html


Vertex parent disappears when joining meshes?

If you've the possibility to place the button close to (or just on) a mesh vertex, you can report the bones influences of this vertex to the button.
Here is a magnificent example with a very beautiful dress and no less beautiful buttons:

To do that, once your dress is rigged (and again the button can be placed where a dress vertex is), select the button vertices, and shift select (as active) the dress vertex:

Vertical green stroke indicates the weights of the dress vertex (active).
Use the copy button to report these weights.
The button may deform a bit, but as you want all in one mesh, I think you can't avoid it.
A test case:


How to render from Eevee in Blender 2.8?

While the pre-release builds of 2.80 were setup with Alt-F12 as the render shortcut, the final 2.80 release returned to using F12 to render an image and ⎈ CtrlF12 to render an animation.

You can find each render option in the render menu at the top left of blenders window.

The render buttons previously found with the render settings are no longer there in 2.80, although it is possible to replace them with an addon.


Weight colors not affecting strength of bones!

Weight painting (or assigning) makes comparison between at least two assignement, with an automatic normalization of values:
take two vertices (let we call them A and B) and two bones (boneC and boneD):

if you assign to the boneC vertex group a weight for A 1.0 and for B 0.5, and to the boneD vertex group no weights, then you move the boneC in pose mode, A and B will move exactly with it.

In the same situation let's now assign a weight of 1.0 for both A and B to the boneD vertex group: now move the bone C, 4 BlenderUnits toward left: A will move 2 BU left, while B will move 1.33333 BU only.

Consider that, in case of single wieght assignement, even a value of 0.0001 is infinitely greater than 0.0, so it will be treated in the same way as a 1.0 assignement.


Turning a complex 3d object into a 2d contour

One possible way to achieve this is by acquiring a "skeleton" of your mesh. This is a destructive process, if you require the original mesh intact make these steps in a copy of the original.

In Edit Mode erase all faces but leaving edges by pressing X > Only Faces option.

Optionally Scale you object to zero in the desired axis or custom direction (if you don't want any of the orthogonal axis).

Add a new plane or flat mesh to your scene aligned with the desired projection direction, in such way that it stays behind the mesh you want to outline.

Select the outlining mesh, then Shif-select the plane object so it becomes the active object, while still leaving the outlining mesh selected.

Align the view to the desired projection direction, also ake sure you have a orthographic projection view (as opposed to perspective) this is important as it will determine the accuracy of the obtained outline scale and size. Enter Edit Mode in the plane object, then use Knife Project operator from the space bar menu to "imprint" the mesh onto the plane.

Select the major faces surrounding your newly obtained outline, press Ctrl + i to invert the selection and erase everything else.

You now have an outline of your mesh. Do some cleanup, like Remove Doubles and convert to a curve if that is what you desire.

Optionally try the SVG Output script for direct to vector exporting.


Creating B/W Material Texture Masks in Photoshop (and GIMP)

Using Black and White (B/W) Texture Masks allow you to assign different types of materials to different parts of an object's surface via a 2D Image Texture, rather than selecting which faces and vertices of a Mesh you want a specific Material to apply to, and assigning it to them in that way. This gives you the benefit of a much higher degree of accuracy and customisability, which you wouldn't normally have when manually assigning materials.

There are several ways you can do this, such as using Procedural Noise Textures inside of Blender, however for more customisation and for trickier textures I've found that using External software like Photoshop or GIMP to produce the best results in a short amount of time! :)

This is essentially the process we'll be taking here. Starting with the Original Texture, we'll create a B/W Texture Mask, and then use it when adding a basic Diffuse/Emission Material to an object inside of Blender.

Creating a Mask Using Photoshop

1. Begin by opening up the base texture in Photoshop.

2. Add in 2 New layers above the base texture, for sake of clarity I've called them 'Black Background' and 'White Foreground'. :)

3. Using the Magic Wand selection tool from the Toolshelf on the right, and with this Base Layer selected (and unlocked), click the area of colour that you want a new material to be assigned to in Blender. In this case we'll select the Orange Lava colour. If the results are not how you want, press Ctrl+D to deselect the selection, adjust the Tolerance, and check Anti-Alias, before reselecting. This will help Photoshop refine and find all of the orange colour up to the edges of the Lava, and the selection will be smooth and non-jittery. You can also Grow the selection slightly if need be by going Select > Modify > Expand.

4. With the marching ant selection still active, select the 'White Foreground' layer, and grab the Brush tool from the toolshelf. Change the Foreground Colour to White and paint across the area inside of the ant selection. You shouldn't be able to see any of the Orange colour inside of the selection after painting.

5. Change the Foreground Colour to Black and hit Ctrl+D to deselect the ant selection. Select the 'Black Background' layer and grab the Paint Bucket Tool from the toolshelf. Use the tool to make this entire layer black.

And there you have it, the B/W Texture Mask created in Photoshop. Save it out as a .PNG and you'll be ready to skip down to the Blender section below! :D

Creating a Mask using GIMP

The steps in GIMP are essentially the same as in Photoshop, however there are slight differences in some of the tools have different names, and hotkeys are varied.

1. Begin by importing the Base Texture and adding in the 2 Layers above it as we did in Photoshop.

2. With the Base Texture layer selected, grab the Magic Wand tool, check Antialiasing and adjust the Threshold as necessary to so that all of the Orange Lava colour is selected when clicked. Adjusting this process is actually slightly easier in GIMP than Photoshop, as you do not need to deselect the marching ants selection each time, after adjusting the tolerance, you can simply re-click for an instant update! :)

3. With the Foreground Colour set to white, and the 'White Foreground' layer selected, use the Paintbrush Tool to fill in the ants selection completely.

4. Finally press Ctrl+Shift+A to deselect the ant selection. Change the Foreground Colour to Black and with the 'Black Background Layer' selected, use the Paint Bucket Tool to fill it with a solid black.

And there you have the very (far too ;) ) similar way of creating the B/W Texture Mask using GIMP. GIMP's way of saving is a bit more of a hassle than Photoshop's- you have to export it as a .PNG, rather than saving and changing the file type. Go File > Export to do this! :)

Using the Texture Mask to Affect Materials Inside of Blender

Whichever software you used to get here, you now have the original Base Texture, as well as the B/W Texture Mask. Read on to find out how to use these in Blender... ;)

1. Jumping into Blender, for the sake of demonstration, I've set up a simple Sun Lamp and Orthographic Camera scene, and imported the Base Texture by using Shift+A > Mesh > Images as Planes. This will add the Texture into a simple material applied to the plain, with an Image Texture node plugged into a Diffuse BSDF. You can preview how this looks in Textured or Rendered Viewport Mode.

2. To begin, we'll mix together the Diffuse BSDF shader, with an Emission shader, via a Mix Shader Node. We can set the Emission Strength to 3.000.

3. Finally, add in another Image Texture node and open up the B/W Texture Mask. Plug the Colour output of this node into the Fac input of the Mix Shader. This will make all of the Black Values of the Mask correspond to the Top Mix Shader Input, and the White Values of the Mask correspond to the Bottom Mix Shader Input. If anything funky happens just add an Invert node, or flip the top and bottom Mix Shader inputs! :)

And we've reached the conclusion! A VERY simple end node setup for an insanely useful, and widely applicable process! :D

Hope it helps!! :)


GPU Compute crashes while rendering but rendered mode works fine

The viewport render is designed to give you an approximation of the scene taking some shortcuts, usually renders using lower samples and using less subdivisions (depending on how the modifiers are set) and ignoring some other features that are only available on the final render. The idea behind this is to give you a more responsive interface.

More on this topic on this link

When you render using F12 you are using a lot more resources. If your scene's complexity exceeds the capabilities of your GPU, the render will fail is that simple.

Memory usage in afterburner might not reflect the real vRAM usage for the scene.

Your options are to simplify your scene (or break in smaller, renderable pieces to be composited together later) or to render using CPU.


BGE: How can I activate an actuator multiple times during a script?

yeah that is an issue when using Logic Nodes. I think some of them can only be activated once per frame.
There is however a solution to your problem and its this:

import bge

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
own = cont.owner
scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()

own.worldPosition = [4,0,0]
scene.addObject('NameOfTheObjectToAdd', own)
own.worldPosition = [-4,0,0]
scene.addObject('NameOfTheObjectToAdd', own)


how do i rig and animate a tree in blender without using "Sapling" addon ?

Shift A: add an Armature (new bone). Then, in edit mode E extrude all the bones you need and move their junctions following the shape of the tree (in the properties panel you can enable the "X rays" view to see your bones also if they are inside the tree).
If you want precision bones placement: select an edge loop, Shift S "Cursor to selected", select the bones junction, Shift S "selection to cursor".

Then in object mode select the tree, shift select the armature, Ctrl P parent "with automatic weights".

Select the armature, switch to pose mode and animate.
In the modifier stack set the subsurf modifier after the armature modifier.


That's interesting. Iv'e used stable 2.79 and looks like back then it automatically added Displacement node between shader input and map output, and 2.79+ doesn't do that. After adding it manually everything started to work how it supposed to. Even with old preferences. Yay!


This type of effect is not possible using cycles directly,instead we can approximate it using post production technique.

Using a node tree like this:


Let's suppose you have a plan floor like this:

And you have imported your 2D geometry in Blender with your plugin:

Depending on what your plugin is capable of, you have to work a bit on the imported objects, maybe: merging, separing, removing doubles...

Than you can start extruding your 2D geometry. I suggest you to import also the elevation, if provided, in order to have quicker access on extruding values.

There are many ways in wich you can optimize the extrusion process (merge object, thickness modifier, curve extrusion,...) but all depend in which way your plugin get the 2D information out.

In my case I ony had the profile, so I had to create faces

and then extrude them:

continue till you are satisfied with your modeling by translating, extruding, adding objects.... with the help of the snaps.

Add a floor plane, a light, maybe textures and render...


You need to set the Snap Element to Face:


Missing polygon when baking in Cycle render

Got it. my body's normal was inverted. Didn't realise that was the problem until I baked the texture on a transparent image - showing the polygons as black.


Action Constraint is being animated for some reason

Because you've pushed the action in the NLA, open the NLA window and remove the strip, your object won't be animated anymore.


Linux KDE Debian 10 Buster Install - Blender 2.80 Exec Format Error

linux do not use .EXE extensions to run applications, and do not use binaries very often if they are not necessary, you wrong to download blender because I do not download it from LINUX, blender org identifies your system and your generals from your pc, it is quite intrusive, and gives you the right version for your pc and system

and this would be the manual way to get blender for debian 64 bits

NOTE:
DEBIAN & UBUNTU they have blender maintainers check both distributions pages and you can install the DEB file for your system

use este enlace

Install Blender on your Linux distribution

DEBIAN BLENDER 2.8


So what you can do to convert it to a curve:

Go in Edit mode, as it is triangulate, select all and untriangulate with AltJ:

Also, you have ripped edges so AltM to merge by distance:

Select an edge loop, separate with P:

Go into the Object menu to convert the mesh to curve:

To simplify the curve, you can enable the Simplify Curves addon, then in Edit mode press ShiftA > Curve Simplify, in the Operator box choose an Error value of 1 and Output > Bezier, it's going to create a simplified version of your curve:

Press V if you ever want to switch from Automatic handles to Aligned:

Now you can do whatever you want with this curve:


Generate multiple renders of same scene, each at a different resolution?

You could also render the maximum size and then plug some Scale nodes into the compositor followed by File Output nodes. That way you only have to render once, and the smaller resolutions will be generated by the big one. (set the Scale node to Absolute and choose the size in the X and Y fields below)


I did a few things to this file before sending it back to you.

As moonboots said, it wouldn't be a good practice to have so many armatures. So I consolidated them all into one. This required renaming all of the bones, to avoid naming conflicts, so all bone names are now unique. This also means I needed to rename the vertex groups accordingly so that existing skin deformations would be preserved. This will make things easier by allowing you to access all bones directly whenever you're in Pose Mode.
The bone rolls for your peel joints were very much not aligned, which creates a problem for anyone trying to select them all and rotate along one common axis. They are now aligned: rotating along the local Z will unwrap the peels in an appropriate (away from the apple) direction. This was achieved by going into Edit Mode, selecting the base bone for a given peel chain, adjusting the Bone Roll value for it until it lines up as being tangentially aligned with the curved surface of the apple, then select all the bones in the same chain, while adding this newly tweaked bone to the selection last. Then press Shift + n to bring up the Recalculate Roll menu, and choose the option called Active Bone. All the other bones will snap to have the same orientation as the base bone.
After realigning the axes, I needed to recreate your Peel open action, since the keyframe data had originally been set on channels which were now not correct for the new bone orientations. It still takes up the same number of frames. The only difference is that now it makes use of all of the bones in each peel chain (all of them rotate now, as part of the action), instead of only the base one.
The Stem rot action was also recreated, but I didn't really know what it was supposed to do. It's action only contains a single rotation, 90 degrees in the Global Z, because that's what it looked like your video showed. I used the Axis Angle rotation method so that it can be rotated and keyframed on one channel only, even though the bone is at an angle relative to worldspace.
All of your Peel bone joints were changed from Quaternion rotation method to Euler ZXY. My understanding is that Quaternions are not necessary unless you have 3-axis rotations, and I'm assuming your peel animations won't use more than two. I chose Z first in the Euler rotation order because it's my understanding that the first axis should correspond to the local axis you want to ensure is always consistently available. But my understanding on this is limited.
The NLA Editor has two clips in it--one for each of your actions--that are exactly fifteen frames long and, given what I know of your project, work as intended. There was never anything wrong with the actions as far as they themselves went. But there were things wrong elsewhere, as moonboots explained. Finally, various unnecessary nodes here and there were deleted or renamed to help clean things up.

Note: I don't know what the role of the seed-looking eye things is supposed to be, but they were originally parented directly to the armature object. When merging the armatures, they broke, and so I had to decide how they were to be parented, but didn't know what would be best for them. I parented them to specific bones in the peel chains nearest to them. They seem to work as they did before. I just wanted to make you aware of this change, as well as why it was made.

By the way, this file was surprisingly large at almost 16 meg. This is due to you having packed your textures into the Blend file, which isn't strictly necessary for showcasing a problem with a rig. What you could have done was unpack the textures before sending this file. File > External Data > Unpack All into Files. Simply realize that not everyone who might like to help has fast computers/internet connections.

You helped me see that I made a mistake in the file I sent back. It appears that you still have two armatures, one called "Controller", which I had intended to be the only one, and one underneath it called "Armature", which contains all of your peel bones. To fix this, first make sure your 3D cursor is at the worldspace origin. Then, In Object Mode, select the armature named "Armature", go into Edit Mode, and press Shift + a to add a new bone at the 3D cursor location. Give it a name, like "Base Bone."  While still in Edit Mode, select each of the base bones for your peels one at a time (do not select the children peel bones), select also the stem bone, and finally select the Base Bone (make sure it is selected last), and press Ctrl + p to bring up the Parenting menu, and choose Keep Offset. Do this also for the Stem bone and the two smaller upper peel bones, so that they all are parented to the Base Bone. Now  all bones will move with the base bone. Next, go into Object Mode and select the "Armature" armature first, then the "Controller" Armature, and press Alt + p to bring up the Unparent menu, then choose Clear Parent and Keep Transformation. This unparents the "Armature" armature from the "Controller" armature, but by using the "Keep Transformation" option, you ensure that it stays in its new location afterwards. Now, in Object Mode, delete the armature called "Controller." You now have one armature called "Armature" that has a base bone that moves everything. More importantly, none of your actions are broken.

But there is still one more issue. In Pose Mode, the peel mesh objects follow the controller bone, but neither the apple base mesh, nor the smaller seed part objects, follows it. This is because they are not parented or bound to anything. Parenting is probably simpler than binding. But because your mesh parts are only directly accessible in Object mode, and your bones in Pose Mode, multi-selecting these two sorts of things can be a bit tricky to understand at first. Start by selecting your Apple base mesh in Object Mode, then, while still in Object Mode, select the armature. Now, go into Pose Mode, and select your Base Bone. Now, Ctrl + p, and choose the Parenting option Bone. In the Make Parent options panel that pops up in the bottom left of the viewport, expand it to make sure the Keep Transform checkbox is checked. Your apple base mesh is now parented to your Base Bone. But you will notice that your peel meshes now have double transformations. This is because your peel meshes were already parented to your apple base mesh before we started. Unparent them from the apple base mesh. You only want them parented to the Base Bone. Now follow these parenting steps for the apple core and central seeds. You can leave the two topmost seeds alone, because they're only parented to the top two small peel bone chains.


You press Shift+s to set your Cursor "to origin", then you can press once again Shift+s and select "to Cursor" which will snap your selected object to the cursor, which you previously set back to origin.

To make new objects aligned to the center x, y and z axis, which is essentially at origin, just set the cursor back to origin. Thus new objects will be created there.

For completeness sake, setting the cursor to origin can also be done with the Shift+c shortcut, which avoids the pie-menu.


You can just enter an amount when some operator is called.

First you'll have to set your units:

Then, if you choose Metric, you can press, for instance, E (Extrude), and then press, for instance 2, to extrude the selected vertices, and move then by 2 meters.


Try put the images inside a folder and then find your file, make sure you didnt rename them, then open the folder inside blender menu and click find missing files


How to use the stereoscopic 3D Side-By-Side view?

To launch fullscreen mode press AltF11.

In the Info Area, go to Window > Toggle Fullscreen.

A search in the Blender Documentation also display the menu location and keyboard shortcut.


Yeah, just download the new version from the blender website. If you're using for example linux and a package manager, then the package manager will update blender automatically* for you, though depending on your distro it may take quite a while from the release date till this update gets pushed through. So it's always best to just grab the latest version from the blender website.


Transparent background not working with smoke domain

There is a chance that this is because your smoke material's density is too low and the pixels of your render only have rgb values but no alpha value, which is why the smoke can only be seen if transparent is turned off.
You can check to see if this is the case by unchecking use alpha in the composite node, and see if there is any color.


How do I use dynamic paint to control hair density?

Pre-bake the dynamic paint. Generate a group on the final frame.
Pre-paking simulations is the key to what you´re looking for. Blender manual mentions this but doesn´t cite any practical examples.


Use these arrows to reorder them to your liking. They will spawn in that order (if pick random is not checked ofc):

If you need to do this on hundreds of objects do it witch python:

import bpy

# change the active item to be moved (the blue highlighted row in upper image)
bpy.data.particles["ParticleSettings"].active_dupliweight_index = 1

# move it up or down:
bpy.ops.particle.dupliob_move_up()
bpy.ops.particle.dupliob_move_down()


Why can't I see the FBX version to which I want to export to?

Blender 2.79b

Blender 2.79.7 didn't have this feature. You need to update to a more recent version of Blender. A more recent version can be installed along-side your current Blender version. The UI option for the export in 2.79b is depicted in the following image:

Blender 2.8x

Blender 2.80 and later only support the FBX 7.x binary format. The FBX ASCII format was removed in commit 7f50cbf2b6bf0675e4a178cbb19aca90f39bd374. Exporter options can be found in the sidebar of the file browser. In case they aren't displayed by default,  click on the gear icon to toggle the visibility of the sidebar.


For a base mesh I would use Sphere (12 segments), upper part scaled on Z in Edit mode. If you don't like curvature, scale Z to 0, select centre vertex and with enabled Proportional Editing O (and chosen desired curvature) move up on Z axis.

For spiral enable addon Extra Curve Objects. Add new object Spiral and tweek parametrs in properties. Add Shrinkwrapp modifier > Target your "base" mesh.

Add Plane, Scale it down into thickness os spiral shape, add Array > Fit Curve, Curve > Spiral, Shrinkwrap > Sphere, Solidify, alternatively Bevel modifiers (see screen).

Thorns - I choose hand modelling, just apply Array and Curve modifiers, disable Shrinkwrap and extrude a few vertices for thorns. In screen I used move vertices, dont do that :)

Tip: just by selecting inner side and Scale you can get wide of spiral thinner at centre and thicker on outer side of shield.

For 3D print you will need manifold object. Blender has an add-on 3D Print Tool that can help to show problems. To get it right seems to me better extend spiral ornament and cover whole shield with shrinkwrap - like retopology, so you get nice wire for print.
When I tried to Merge by Boolean or Remesh it comes with a lot of issues.

Another way

For 3D print would be ideal to start with Curve profile of shield. Add Screw modifier to create shield and use Simple Deform > Twist modifier to create spiral topo. Like that you will get shield shape with Spiral wire so simple extrude of one loop can does the job, but I wasnt able to create spiral in shape from your image. But you can try your luck with that.

Mesh is quite dense so I just pushed vertices up here. You can also create Shape Key before you start, like that you can create more designs on shield or you can any time to get back into clean surface.


How to grab both front and back faces in sculpt mode

I also wish there was a way to make things easier, because you can’t always use edit mode. You can in fact manipulate back facing vertices if you zoom in inside the model.


Did you bake the physics when your animation length was at 250?

If so, free all bakes, change a value, then bake again (and make sure you have the dynamic length of the bake set long enough). [You must change a value to reset Blender's built-in caching, and make sure it starts from scratch. You may then change it back.]

Here is an example of setting the length for a cloth simulation.


Exporting overlapping material to gltf format

The glTF exporter in Blender won't use materials that aren't assigned, and as mentioned in the comment above, only one material may be assigned per face.
But, glTF also has a relatively new extension called KHR_materials_variants that allows certain viewers to automatically swap between materials on an asset.  Check out the announcement of that extension which includes an embedded demo.

I haven't tried this myself yet, but you may also want to take a look at a Blender glTF material variants plugin which is in early devlopment by one of the ThreeJS/Hubs contributors.  It actually plugs in to the existing glTF addon, creating some new Blender UI for assigning multiple materials, while still making use of the official Khronos glTF exporter for the final result.
There's also a glTF Meld Tool.  I haven't tried this either, but this tool is said to take glTFs with identical geometry, where only the materials are different, and automatically meld them into a single glTF with KHR_materials_variants applied to it.


How to change a character's pose without stretching any body parts?

You need to select an IK target (can be moved without stretch), while you appeared to select an FK target (should only be Rotated, can stretch the character if Moved).  You can disable FK or Stretch Layers to avoid these when doing IK manipulation.


Weird problem: Render time increases frame-by-frame

I think I've found the culprit: Through reverse-engineering, removal of geometry and exclusion of certain RenderLayers, I could determine that the increase in render time was caused by Curve objects (Bezier Circles). Once I'd converted those to regular meshes and did a re-render, the problem disappeared.


Use location and rotation 0,0,0 for all exported meshes

Im not entirely sure on what youre trying to do but I'm assuming you want to import a 3d file and move it to a specific location and rotate it?
I think your problem may be:
MeshObject = ob_for_convert.to_mesh()

What I usually use is:
block = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]

Then we can move the location and rotation:
block.location = (1,1,1)
block.rotation_euler = (0,45,0)

Some code I wrote that does what I think you want it to do (or similar):
import bpy

file_loc = 'file/dir/object.obj'
imported_object = bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath=file_loc)

bpy.ops.object.duplicate()

block = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]

block.location = (1,1,1)
block.rotation_euler = (0,45,0)


Output ob.matrix_world.translation as a Vector in Animation Nodes

Use the Object Attribute Input node to get any attribute of an object:

In this case, the Object Matrix Input node can be used. You can decompose the output matrix to get the required vector.


That is called a reroute node.

Hold RMB (LMB in 2.7x) and Shift while dragging your cursor over the noodle(s) to create one.

Note that its only use is making node setups less tangled and easier to work with, it  doesn't affect the result of the node setup at all.


Just faced the same issue, check the constraints loading order, if you also have copy rotation on that lagging bone, make sure it's on top of the damped track constraints.


Assigning shortcut for Alt + Ctrl + C doesn't work

⎈ Ctrl⎇ AltC isn't working as another shortcut is assigned to it and is used before the set origin shortcut - it will clear constraints, so you probably didn't notice anything happening.

If you untick the Clear Object Constraints shortcut you will be able to use ⎈ Ctrl⎇ AltC.

As shown above there are several groups that a shortcut may belong to, blender goes through each group and uses the first match found. Fairly sure the search order is the same as what is displayed in the input preferences. You can have some duplication as some groups will not match the current context, for example the clear Pose Constraints shortcut will not match unless you are posing an armature.


I am MZNZCDR working on fsx addon, so I also encountered this problem. Here's how to avoid this error:

intialize the fsx tool.
put friend name anyone then click to GUID button to assign it with ASCII code.
check all model you made that it has a material assigned.
for animation all the animation must be verified after the assigning animation.

After completion of all checks you will find there's no error in export to mdl with animation.x file.

Try these guide lines then call me if it further tease you.


Generate photorealistic image from STEP files with blender

Simple in 5 steps:

1- Convert the CAD data into a format that can be imported by blender.

2- Switch to cycles render engine.

3- Create realistic materials, assign them to your objects and light the scene in a realistic way.

4- Render.

5- The most important step: Forget about magic buttons that will do all of the previous 4 steps for you, this will require you to do some work and learn how to use the software.


Can right click select everything under the cursor, instead of just one thing?

On the buttons of the bottom bar is "limit selection to visible".

Turn this off and your selection will go through and selevt everything behind the box/lasso/etc selection area


list slicing seems disabled in python scripting

So, Blender use Vector to describe all vector-like value in its own API, it is not only tuple but a well defined class with methods. Check the newest API here: Blender 2.80 API(or latest)

You will need to create Vector by yourself, don't wish Blender will get over-ridden parameter from tuples and other format:

So in your code:

middleNode = ((p1.x+p2.x)/2,(p1.y+p2.y)/2,(p1.z+p2.z)/2) # type: tuple(float,float,float)
v1 = v1[:i] + middleNode + v1[i:] # <---- this one won't work

Your are asking python to stick a list of Vector to a tuple, not even a list, it will break. You can actually list it like v1[:i] + [middleNode,] to make python think its OK. But, the list is not all Vector but a tuple inserted between your list:

Python allow you to put any data inside a list and tuple, even they are not all same type.

So you should make your middleNode = Vector((x,y,x)) and wrap it into a list and concat them like before.


How to select all strips in a channel via python?

Set strip.select to True if strip.channel is "active channel".

Test Script with  active_channel = 1. Note I've simply set the active strip to None if it is not in the desired "active channel".  Change this to suit.

import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

active_channel = 1

sed = scene.sequence_editor
# if active strip isn't in active_channel set to None.
if getattr(sed.active_strip, "channel", -1) != active_channel:
    sed.active_strip = None

sequences = sed.sequences_all
# select all strips in active channel
for strip in sequences:
    strip.select = strip.channel == active_channel


Armature Deformations 'Squishing' Solid Objects

This is caused by the non-zero weighting of the root bone.

Select the root bone while in weight paint mode to check.

You can get rid of it by selecting the door, and remove the 'root' vertex group in the properties panel, object data tab.


Does Camera.view_frame() return the correct size of near clip plane?

There's a utility function world_to_camera_view(), which makes it really easy to select the view frustum:

import bpy
import bmesh
from bpy_extras.object_utils import world_to_camera_view

def main(self, context):
    sce = context.scene
    cam = sce.camera
    ob = context.object
    me = ob.data
    mat = ob.matrix_world

    if not me.is_editmode:
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

    bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

    if not self.extend:
        bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='DESELECT')

    for v in bm.verts:
        x, y, z = world_to_camera_view(sce, cam, mat * v.co)
        if (0.0 <= x <= 1.0 and
            0.0 <= y <= 1.0 and
            (not self.clip or cam.data.clip_start < z < cam.data.clip_end)):
            v.select = True

    bm.select_flush(True)

class MESH_OT_select_view_frustum(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Select geometry in view frustum (uses active object and scene camera)"""
    bl_idname = "mesh.select_view_frustum"
    bl_label = "Select View Frustum"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    clip = bpy.props.BoolProperty(
        name="Clip",
        description="Take camera near and far clipping distances into account",
        default=True
    )

    extend = bpy.props.BoolProperty(
        name="Extend",
        description="Extend the current selection",
        default=False
    )

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

    def execute(self, context):
        main(self, context)
        return {'FINISHED'}

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Some commands require a specific context. For instance, to use the view3d commands you must switch to the VIEW_3D context first. This should do it:

import bpy
#switch context
previous_context = bpy.context.area.type
bpy.context.area.type = 'VIEW_3D'

#do stuff
bpy.ops.view3d.snap_cursor_to_selected()
bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CURSOR')
bpy.ops.view3d.snap_cursor_to_center()
bpy.ops.view3d.snap_selected_to_cursor(use_offset=False)
bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()

#restore previous context
bpy.context.area.type = previous_context


Script:

import bpy
import math

def test_fn2(pose_bone):
    rig = pose_bone.id_data
    mat = rig.matrix_world @ pose_bone.matrix
    vec = mat.col[1].normalized()
    angle = math.degrees(math.acos(vec[2]))
    return angle

bpy.app.driver_namespace["test_fn2"] = test_fn2

Settings:

Turn on register in Text Editor. And Auto Run Python Scripts in User Preferences if you need.

Expression: test_fn2(bones["Bone"])/45

Additions:
Original script has two mistakes.
1. Transformation matrix for converting to world space is

object.matrix_world @ pose_bone.matrix

2. Vector myvec needs to be normalized.


Quick Explosion: How to give shrapnels hitboxes

You can't fix that with QuickExplosion.

Since its based on particles, only particle as point (placed in centre of each piece) collides. Maximum you can get is spherical boundary so they stay more above surface, but they will still rotate and boundary will be the same size for all shards = some will levitate some still partialy under surface.
From this answer it seems you can make it better.

To make it work properly you will need to use Rigid Body simulation for shards done with Fracture Cell addon or beter via Fracture modifier (that is not include officially in 2.8x for now).

Some older tips you can find here


how to animate a gradient moving over an object

This can be achieved by animating the Location in the Mapping node, and adding a few math nodes between the Separate XYZ node and the ColorRamp node, like this:

The ColorRamp uses values between 0 and 1, and if you input anything outside this range, it gets clamped (i.e. anything greater than 1 becomes 1, and anything less than 0 becomes 0). These math nodes make sure you get a value in the expected range.

The Modulo node with the lower value set to 1, basically preserves only what comes after the decimal point, i.e. 1.5, 2.5, 3.5 and so on all become 0.5, and -1.5, -2.5, -3.5 and so on all become -0.5. So this gives us a value in the range -1 to 1.

The Less Than node with the lower value set to 0 outputs 1 if the upper input is below 0 and 0 if it's equal to or greater than 0.

The Add node simply adds the output from the Modulo and the Less Than nodes, thus fixing negative values. So now we have a value in the expected range.

To animate, hold the mouse pointer over the Location properties in the mapping node, and either press I or right click and select Insert Keyframes or Insert Single Keyframe. The former adds keyframes to all three location properties and the latter adds a keyframe to the one the mouse pointer is on. Move the timeline a number of frames, change the appropriate location value(s) and add keyframes again. Repeat as many times as needed.
N.B. The nodes above only affect the Z location. It can easily be changed to either the X or Y location, by using the corresponding output from the Separate XYZ.


My scale bar in transform is in orange color

you have set a keyframe to scale. This happens e.g. if you press 'I' when the cursor is above the scale.
If you want to delete the keyframe(s), select your object which has the keyframes,  hover the cursor over the keyframe panel and tap 'X' and then delete all keyframes.


p2or: When Developer Extras is disabled, the properties should not show up... so artists won't see them (usually).

Answer by p2or. Leaving this here until he returns and posts this as an answer. To sum it up, there is no reason to hide these properties because they are not shown to users unless Developer Extras is enabled.


The subdivision modifier won't produce good results with triangles in the geometry. (Carlo mentioned this answer, which showcases how the modifier works on topology.)

To solve this, use quads only.

Delete the center vertice, select the edge loop and do the Grid Fill operation.

Recreate the sperical shape. Set the Cursor as Pivot (.). Place it in the imaginary center of the spherical shape. Select the flat grid geometry and press ⇧ Shift⎇ AltS to scale to sphere.


Here's something that works for this:
Make sure you have saved the .blend file, and have baked your fluid simulation completely. (This isn't required but is optimal.)
Once ready, set the offset amount. Negative (one for each frame ahead) postpones the simulation one frame. Positive makes the simulation a frame earlier.
Here are some pictures:

Offset -15 frame one:

Frame 15 offset -15:

Hope this helps!


When you add the skin texture?Before or after retopology?

Textures always after the mesh is ready.

And maybe as a tip, if you work with mirror modifier, then texture can be plied to half and mirrored(so drawing half the face gets a mirrored face), but if you like asymetric face futures (ea scars) then first apply the mirror then do your texture.


This was done in Vers 2..77a.  As far as I can tell the physics and particles engines in 2.8+ are much the same so all should work as described.  I believe it's the interface that's been changed.  (Blend file is below)

Details -

A single note was added - a plane, with an array modifier to make it a stack of 6.  The modifier was applied so it's a stack of planes but now a single mesh'd object.
Frankly I see this step as a waste of time unless an audience or player can actually see it's a single plane in lieu of.

The ATM's slot has a curve->path added and perpendicular to it so it curves up and out from the slot, something like a launch ramp.

The curve's ATM end is well back behind the slot so the notes won't show initially.   It's outside end is curved up so the notes will be angled at around 45 to 60 degrees.

A curve modifier is used and the note stack is animated along it's X axis.  The stack travels along and up the curve over about a half second.  (You could use a path constraint as an alternative)

The stack of notes, whilst a single object still consists of 6 planes so the whole thing was duplicated and de-animated, it's inherited physics also switched off so we have six faces from which to emit 6 notes as particles.  i.e. a particle emitter.
A single plane would do just as well, but emit from the face so the particles are launched from the center.

At the frame after the stack's curve-travel ceases, the emitter starts emitting the 6 notes over some 3 frames, and tweaked so they're traveling at much the same angle and direction as the stack.

The particles use a "Particle Object". (found in layer 9)  That's just a plane, textured to look like currency and shapekeyed over a few frames so it curls a bit after ejection.  (Cloth physics didn't want to work in this case)

Because particles are fond of penetrating surfaces they're supposed to bounce off, an invisible collision surface (an invisible plane) is placed above the visible shelf.  The shelf therefore normally wouldn't need physics.

The original note stack can be switched to invisible once the particles take over.

From there it's a matter of tweaking the emitter so the notes behave as required.  Some experimentation might be needed.


I can't paint on my meshes? I need help setting up texture paint on the Image Editor/ 3D Viewport

You've opened a completely black Texture Mask so you can't paint anything, just close it.


How do I create and set the depth of a cube in blender 2.80?

If you are using the Edit Mode "Add Cube" tool, you should get handles that you can use to modify your cube visually:

After creating the cube (by dragging the left mouse button), orbit around the cube by holding down the MMB middle mouse button, then just grab a face and pull it in the desired direction. I'm not aware of a way to use these handles with exact numbers.

However, if you want to create a new cube and set its dimensions, I suggest adding it in Object Mode with Add > Mesh > Cube. In the "number" panel (N) you will be able to set its dimensions precisely.


Doubled image while projecting video on surface

Perhaps you forgot to unwrap the mesh.

Tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tovu1A0LxeQ

In edit mode Unwrap your plane.  Select all vertices before you Unwrap.
Your UV Mapping appears incorrect.
Perform the UV Map again.  Have exactly 1 UV Map.

The time required for this is 88 seconds or less.

BSE and famous video websites have information on the topics of

Blender UV Map and Blender Unwrap.

By searching you can find a tutorial on those topics if necessary.


How do I append an object so it is still correctly connected to its armature?

I foundt out that using the group appending was the key to this problem .


In Armature Modifier panel enable both Display modifier in Edit Mode and Adjust edit cage to modifier result buttons.


How to access data related to individual particles?

As Sambler said, Animation Nodes is your best option. Here are some examples:

Controlling the size of individual particles based on time (They get bigger as time passes):

Controlling the rotation of individual particles based on a random vector.

Wiggling the size of instances cube:


Have a look at the blender manual here.

You can also simply use SPH particles and move the emitter :

the particle settings can be improved to look more like a fluid but that's the basics.

Here's the Blend file :


How do I enable cloth sewing for this imported SVG?

Check these settings:

you also need to add a new vertex group to define what should be "sewed"

once done, play the simulation (play button, spacebar or shift-spacebar).


You can just add the x and y subdivisions argument:

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_grid_add(x_subdivisions=640, y_subdivisions=480, radius=1, view_align=False, enter_editmode=False, location=(0, 0, 0), layers=(True, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False))


Unity fbx export has resulted in a destroyed looking mesh

All you need to do is invert normals to right direction.

In edit mode:
Easiest way is select all faces by "A" > recalculate by "CTRL+N". This work in most cases. Usally does not work in non-closed/un-manifold meshes

Second way is manually select normals which you need invert and press "SPACE" > start typing "flip normals" > "Enter".


Appearance and disappearance of an object in an animation

You can set the transparency of the object to none in the object material panel and keyframe it. Then turn transparency to full in another part of the timeline and keyframe it.


I fixed this by clearing custom normals.


Alternate between user input and automation in one-step script

Macro Operators are a way to achieve this (see script below, this does pretty much what you describe). They allow you to concatenate modal and non-modal operators.

Note that adding an object and deleting it right away repeatedly can lead to a lot of 0-user objects accumulating in bpy.data.

import bpy
from bpy.types import Operator, Macro
from bpy.props import *

class TranslateCursorMacro(Macro):
    """Overall macro for combining move and cursor operators"""
    bl_idname = "object.translate_cursor_macro"
    bl_label = "Translate Cursor"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        if not context.active_object:
            return False
        return True

def _find_prev_object(ptr):
    for ob in bpy.data.objects:
        if str(ob.as_pointer()) == ptr:
            return ob

class RememberObject(Operator):
    """Store active object"""
    bl_idname = "object.remember_object"
    bl_label = "Remember Object"

    def execute(self, context):
        # XXX This is not super nice, but we don't have real
        # properties shared between macro component operators.
        # In an addon this might be stored as a module-level
        # python variable. Store as string because integer is
        # only 32 bit and may truncate 64 bit pointer.
        context.scene["_prev_object"] = str(context.active_object.as_pointer())
        return {'FINISHED'}

class DeleteNoQuestionsObject(Operator):
    """Delete object without asking"""
    bl_idname = "object.delete_no_questions"
    bl_label = "Delete Object"

    def execute(self, context):
        # XXX The usual bpy.ops operator opens a popup
        # when invoke. Use this wrapper to avoid that.
        bpy.ops.object.delete('EXEC_DEFAULT')
        return {'FINISHED'}

class SelectPreviousObject(Operator):
    """Select previous object"""
    bl_idname = "object.select_previous_object"
    bl_label = "Select Previous Object"

    def execute(self, context):
        ptr = context.scene.get("_prev_object", None)
        if ptr is None:
            return {'CANCELLED'}
        del context.scene["_prev_object"] # cleanup
        ob = _find_prev_object(ptr)
        if not ob:
            self.report({"WARNING"}, "Previous object not found")
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        for tob in bpy.data.objects:
            tob.select = (tob == ob)
        context.scene.objects.active = ob
        return {'FINISHED'}

bpy.utils.register_class(TranslateCursorMacro)
bpy.utils.register_class(RememberObject)
bpy.utils.register_class(DeleteNoQuestionsObject)
bpy.utils.register_class(SelectPreviousObject)

TranslateCursorMacro.define("OBJECT_OT_remember_object")
TranslateCursorMacro.define("MESH_OT_primitive_uv_sphere_add")
TranslateCursorMacro.define("TRANSFORM_OT_translate")
TranslateCursorMacro.define("VIEW3D_OT_snap_cursor_to_active")
TranslateCursorMacro.define("OBJECT_OT_delete_no_questions")
TranslateCursorMacro.define("OBJECT_OT_select_previous_object")


I usually have two swords. One on the ground an one in the hand.

Why two?

Because they have complete different purposes. The one in the hand should damage whatever it touches. It should provide feedback and so on. The one on the ground should be pickable.

In general you split your operation of picking into several parts:

Move your character into a defined position and
orientation relative to the sword to be picked up. (several frames)
Animate your character until it grabs the sword. (several frames)
Remove the sword on the ground, show/add the grab in the hand
(incl. parenting). (one frame)
Animate your character to lift up the sword.(several frames)

In your version I guess you parent the sword when performing 3. This will work pretty good, when the timing and setup is very precise. It will result in incorrect parenting when there is inaccuracy of any kind.

The above solution gives you a fallback. As you explicitly add the sword to the hand, you can ensure it is always right. The inaccuracy will result in animation jumps (the sword suddenly jumps into the hand) but the followup situation remains correct.

My way to create precise animations:

Create the animation with the sword in the hand. Let the character bow down to grab. At the contact keyframe the sword should lay flat at the ground. This is the important pose. You can copy the sword to create the sword on ground (or you place it in a matching pose). The relative position and orientation between sword and character needs to be preserved.

From there you can animate the lift up animation till the desired standing animation (with the sword).

Have a look at this video to see this method in action. The character walks to a predefined spot and turns towards a predefined direction (1). Then it plays bowing down (2). Followed by an item exchange (3). Finally the character stands up with the item (4).


How can I control the speed of a fluid simulation?

Well, there is no way to do exactly what you want, but these are the basics.

First of all, ignore the comments about start values and such for the domain. The only thing that matters is inflow velocity. To begin the inflow at frame 100, go to frame 99, and in the inflow settings uncheck "enabled" and key frame it. Then go to frame 100 and check "enabled" and key frame it. Now the inflow will start at frame 100.

Then you have to play around with the settings for inflow velocity until you get what you want.

As for the basic domain settings, if you want 10 seconds of animation, the start value should be 0 and the end value should be 10. Speed should be 1.


My render is black and all of the fixes I have seen do not work

It's not the donut - it's the material you are using. Whenever I choose other material the scene renders just fine, but with material nomber 3 and 6 everything goes black.
It has to do something with the nodes you are using because when "Use nodes" is checked - it's black and when it's not checked it's normal.

My advice is not to use these materials - make a new one. You can even make the same nodes but don't capy and paste them - folow Andrew's tutorial.


Baked normal map from high poly bad corners

Let's start with vertext normals of smooth and solid shaded mesh:

Now see this diagram how baking works and projects the high-poly to lowpoly:

In each corner of your domino piece you see 3 corners baked, because of Repeated details. You can fix this by making the lowpoly domino shade smooth - that way there will be only 1 vertex normal in each corner, so you won't get overlaps and multiple projections:

If you want your domino silhouette to look better, you will have to add mode polygons. See: How can a Normal Map affect the look of a model?

There is also very comprehensive wiki about normals which might help: Polycount Normal map (the pictures are from there).


Blender Rigging process. Is skinning a must?

When you press Ctrl P and select With Automatic weights, blender sets up all the vertex groups for each bone. Blender uses the mesh closest to the bone for each vertex group.

In some cases With Automatic weights will work very well, if you have good bone placement. Other times you will have to tweak each bone's weight (the vertex group).

The unity tutorial talks about skinning specific bones to use with unity's Mecanim.


How to adjust a specular map's strength?

You cannot directly set the value - it is generated by the connected *.PNG file.

However, you can make the effect stronger or weaker.
Add math node in front of it and set it to multiply.
This works for most situations.

Just like this:

Important Note:
Avoid connecting textures into specular input, if you’re going for physically accurate result.
Use metalness texture instead and connect it to metalness input. And keep the default specular value of 0,5.
(CG Cookie explained it best: https://youtu.be/mrNMpqdNchY?t=244)

If something ain’t clear, let me know. Specular input is kinda weird, I don’t want to overwhelm you.

Hope this helps.


Add a brick texture. Set "Offset" to 0. Set "Bias" to 1. Set the height and the width to the same value. Select the colors by "Color2" and "Mortar". Use "Scale" to Scale.


Can't change shapekey values on a linked mesh?

You could use a combination of an armature and drivers. After you link in your object you make a proxy of the armature which allows you to pose the armature in the new file and still get updates from the source file.

Once you have the shapekeys setup, create an armature and add a bone to be used as the controller. Go back to the object and in the shapekey list right click on the shapekey value you want to drive (or select the key and right click on the value underneath) and select Add Driver.

To define the driver you switch the graph editor to display drivers and show the properties sidebar by pressing N. You may need to click the value name in the list for the driver details to show.

Then you can choose the armature and the bone and have one of it's transform values used as the value for the shapekey value. In this example I am using the x location of a bone called DriveKey1 to control Key 1. Now as I move the bone along the x axis the shapekey is turned on/off.

I also chose Sum Values for the driver type. Scripted expression can give you more control but also can be disabled through blender's auto execution setting. Using Sum Values gets around this.

With the option to set custom bone shapes and use constraints to limit movement, it is rather easy to create a clear visual controller that you may have seen with some rigged characters.

Tutorials on rigging a face often show this technique when setting up mouth and eye controls.


How can I create a normal map that points 90 degrees upward from a flat surface?

Normal maps are not necessarily for adding detail but to change the way light falls on the surface. Here is a quick example of changed normal map without changing the detail using the Normal node:

Here is an alternative with the normal map generated dynamically by calculating the direction between the object and the light (Can I refer to another object's properties from a Cycles node shader? Drivers? If so, how?):

Watch this excellent tutorial by
Zacharias Reinhardt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtUS8QTsVZA&index=4&list=PLGodxM8aVtUfH9_xv4OdMM4xvBGZpggoA

in a nutshell, you have to

create your full object with material first
render it in ortho on a square plane
generate normal map and color texture for this square projection
use the normal and color textures as material for your "cross billboard"

To get a proper shadow is more complicated but can be achieved as per the great trick of part 2 of the video by Zacharias Reinhardt!


Adding more than one character using ManuelBastioniLab

I just tried it in a new .blend file, It is possible but I had to "Finalize" the first character created, and the second one was still editable.
Have you tried to create a .blend file per character and append them in a main scene file ? This way you can still play individually with your character and have full control of your scene.