How can I keep my animation in Orthographic when doing a final animation?

I've figured it out thanks to @Hendriks3D's question.

My Original render settings are set above, but when opening a new window and loading my images, the camera render settings were moved back to 1920 x 1080 which changes the rendered images regardless of original render size.

I just changed them to my 1080 x 1000 and Tadaa!!! it's all correctly shaped again. Thanks @Hendriks3D for pointing me in the right direction.


How can I remove a linked library with Python?

Quite an old thread, but it seems there is finally a solution available.
Newer versions of Blender provide the batch_remove method in the bpy.types.BlendData type.
So you can call:
bpy.data.batch_remove(ids=(my_library,))

my_library is a bpy.types.Library object in this case and no string/name.
Keep in mind that to this date, the documentation states, that this method is considered experimental, but as long as you don't deal with blend file critical data blocks like scenes, it seems you should be fine.


Is there any way to change the location of the left side toolbar (show/hide with T)

It's a bit of a workaround, but as overlays are per viewport, you can split the view and disable the header and overlays on the right like so:

Then drag the left viewport over till the T menu is positioned correctly.

Save this as your sculpting workspace, and you should be all set.


Mute the NLA

Can mute the entire NLA stack using toggle, as shown in image, or via scripting by setting the object's animation data use_nla property. When muted will only evaluate the active action. I call this the one in the "slot", that displays keyframes in action editor / dope sheet.

>>> C.object.animation_data.use_nla
True

>>> C.object.animation_data.use_nla = False
>>> C.object.animation_data.use_nla
False

A muted NLA stack is a convenient way to store actions with an association to their target object, mesh, shape etc.

Note also: NLA tracks can be muted individually via the similar mute button on each track.


Why is the node editor showing different kinds of nodes?

This answer is was for older versions (2.79 and previous)
For blender version 2.8x read this

Without any addons, the Node Editor can be used in three different modes:

You are looking at the cycles material (shader) nodes. The tutorial is using the compositor nodes.
Simply click on the Compositing button in the Node Editor header to switch to the compositor nodes.

Also make sure the Use nodes box is checked.


want to run two actions when pressing a hotkey

The most future-proof way to go about this is to create your own add-on. First create an operator that performs those actions. You can then bind that operator to the keyboard, add it as a button to a panel, add it to a menu, etc.

This is all documented in Blender's documentation.


How to restrict a part of an object getting painted while texturing in blender

Masking using 'Face selection masking for painting' option.

Enable the Face selection masking for painting option. Press A to display the grid and select faces you want to paint using RMB.

Masking using painted stencil.

In Uv/Image Editor add a new image, change its name and set its color to white.

Paint the areas where you want your texture to appear with a black color (create a mask). Save an image. Your mask is ready.

In Slots bookmark of a Tool Shelf check the Mask checkbox, choose the UV map you want to use (the one with the painted stencil displayed). Then select your painted mask image (click on an image icon under the Stencil Image). If you want to inverse the mask click on the b&w square under the Visualisation.

Add a new material and a texture (an image) you want to paint on. Now when you paint in a Texture Paint mode your brush strokes'll apear only in a black areas of your mask.


Assign a different material to objects within dupli_group instances

Unfortunately, I think it is not possible to do exactly what you want to do.

One of the advantages of using an Empty with dupli_group is that you don't have the overhead of storing much in the way of differences (location, rotation, scale).

If you want to alter the group, you will probably have to instantate objects by copying the data from the group.  There's actually a keyboard shortcut to Make Duplicates Real (Ctrl Shift A) that would work for interactive use.  Since you were using python in your original project here is a small python script I wrote that might accomplish your mission:

import bpy

def mission1(group, scn):

    parent = bpy.data.objects.new("parent", None)
    scn.objects.link(parent)

    for obj in group.objects:
        o2 = obj.copy()
        o2.parent = parent
        for i in range(len(o2.material_slots)):
            ms = o2.material_slots[i]
            ms.link = 'OBJECT'
            ms.material = o2.data.materials[i]
        scn.objects.link(o2)

    return parent
#
#

anchor = mission1(bpy.data.groups["Group"], bpy.context.scene)
anchor.location = [2,0,2]

The parent object is not strictly necessary, but it gives you the ability to manipulate the location and orientation of the group very much like the dupli_group empty you were using before.

An important drawback is that once you have instantiated these copies modifications to the group (adding, removing, relocating objects) will not be propagated.


Inserting layout elements in between is not supported and I wouldn't recommend to hack such a feature in with Python.

You can get the filename of the file from which a draw function originates, granted it is a python script:

bpy.types.INFO_MT_file.draw.__code__.co_filename

... then check the code of that file.

Here is an example how to "inject" code:

bl_info = {
    "name": "Menu Insert In-Between",
    "author": "CoDEmanX",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 65, 0),
    "location": "File menu"}

import bpy

def main():
    insert_after = 'layout.menu("INFO_MT_file_open_recent"'
    insert_code = '    layout.operator("object.select_all", text="Some OT")\n'
    bpy_type = "INFO_MT_file"
    bpy_type_class = getattr(bpy.types, bpy_type)
    #module = bpy_type_class.__module__

    filepath = bpy_type_class.draw.__code__.co_filename
    if filepath == "<string>":
        print("Aborting, modifications are active")
        return
    try:
        file = open(filepath, "r")
        lines = file.readlines()
    except:
        print("%s couldn't be accessed, aborting." % filepath)
        return

    line_start = bpy_type_class.draw.__code__.co_firstlineno - 1

    for i in range(line_start, len(lines)):
        line = lines[i]
        if not line[0].isspace() and line.lstrip()[0] not in ("#", "\n", "\r"):
            break

    line_end = i

    # Unindent draw func by one level, since it won't sit inside a class
    lines = [l[4:] for l in lines[line_start:line_end]]

    for i, line in enumerate(lines, 1):
        if insert_after in line:
            print("FOUND INSERT LINE")
            lines.insert(i, insert_code)
            break
    else:
        print("COULDN'T FIND INSERTION POINT")
        return

    # Debug output
    #f = open("D:\\s.txt", "w").writelines(lines)

    l = {}
    exec("".join(lines), {}, l)
    print(l)

    #bpy_type_class.draw.__code__ = code_object # Doesn't work, since a single func is not a module

    bpy_type_class.draw = l['draw'] # exec defined our custom draw() func!

def register():
    print("register menu inbetween adder")
    main()

def unregister():
    print("unregister menu inbetween adder")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

But the problem remains: if a second addon tries to do the same, it will revert what the first did, unless you write a system that solely manages adding stuff.

It is also possible to replace the UILayout type to intercept every draw operation, which also allows to "remove" stuff like operators or properties from interface. The problem is worse here however: if a second script tries to replace the UILayout type, the entire layout system will crash and all elements disappear from UI unless they are drawn by C code alone.

You can find an implementation here:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php?title=Dev:2.5/Py/Scripts/Cookbook/Code_snippets/Interface&oldid=226944#Advanced_Topics


There are 2 spheres on top of each other - one textured, one pink.

To move them apart select 1 vertex in edit-mode and then select all connected to it with CtrlL. This will select only 1 sphere so they can be separated.

You can also hide selected with H and unhide with AltH so you don't have to move the mesh.

Delete the one you don't want(pink probably).

The 2 spheres were there probably because it was a game-engine model with single-sided polygons - so the textured sphere was for outside and the pink for inside surface. The renderer will render surface from both sides and they are z-fighting.


Why does adding a curve modifier move my object to the center of the curve?

Make sure both your object center and curve center positions in the scene are exactly the same before using the modifier.
Also helps some times if the first curve vertex is exactly at the curve center (local coordinate [0,0,0] ), or ideally ata the start vertex of the curve.
Make sure both your object and curve have applied scales [1,1,1] in every axis. If it is not and you apply the scale make sure afterwards the curve radius is reset to zero. Do so by entering Edit Mode, selecting all vertex, right-clicking and pressing Set Curve Radius.
Also ensure both objects have matching rotations.
If you still get unexpected results try inverting the curve direction in Edit Mode by selecting one of its vertex and pressing the Revert button in the 3DView Tool shelf, or right-clicking it and pressing Switch Direction from the context menu.


How can I use a Python script to get the transformation of an object?

Background: The object location (in fact transformation - so location/scale/rotation) is defined by initial values which are used to calculate the final transformation.

initial transform (as set by the user and possibly set by animation FCurves and Drivers).as a tool author, to manipulate data this is what you'll want to access typically
final transform (with parenting, constraints, and rigid body physics applied).when writing exporters or reading, typically this is what you will want to access since its whats displayed in the view (but you can't directly manipulate it)

To get the input location you can simply do:

loc = bpy.context.object.location... or via its matrixbpy.context.object.matrix_local.to_translation()

To get the output transformation you can only do this by accessing the worldspace matrix.

loc = bpy.context.object.matrix_world.to_translation()

You may want to get the loc/rotation/scale, in that case:

loc, rot, scale = bpy.context.object.matrix_world.decompose()

If you want to test the location for example, you can set the cursor position.

from bpy import context
context.scene.cursor_location = context.object.matrix_world.to_translation()

Or you can create a new empty:

import bpy
from bpy import context
obj = bpy.data.objects.new("Empty", None)
context.scene.objects.link(obj)
obj.matrix_world  = context.object.matrix_world

... note, if the matrix contains shear, you wont see this in the empty, for that try the MathVis addons.


How to generate texture image for home interior and how to use it in OpenGL ES?

Blender exports the .obj file correctly I can't see a reason why empty values ",,,," are written in the converted file.

mtllib Musium.mtl
o Plane.275_Plane.229
v 138.827621 -14.357000 -71.175812
v 145.607269 -14.357000 -71.175812
v 138.827621 -14.357000 -123.266418
v 145.607269 -14.357000 -123.266418
vt 0.882195 0.266138
vt 0.983474 0.328281
vt 0.122201 0.759672
vt 0.020922 0.697529

It seems to be a bug/issue in the obj2opengl.pl converter possible it expects optional values which do not occur and therefore it writes empty values (between the commas).

I would recommend to write your own exporter, to get started you could use the code I posted here: How do we access Vert, Norm and UV data then print to a text file using Blender/Python?


I don't know if it's possible, haven't found any mechanism to link texture value to bone transformation. But we can make random flailing movement by adding Noise modifier to the bone's rotation f-curve. From the manual entry on F-Curve Modifiers, this modifier

Modifies the curve with a noise formula. This is useful for creating
subtle or extreme randomness to animated movements, like camera shake.

If applied to the bone's rotation in at least one axis, it could create the effect you wanted:


How can I make vertex colours into a UV map image?

First, switch to blender render engine temporarily to bake out the vertex colors to an image (I won't go into the details of how to bake as there are tons of tuts out there for that).

Edit the resulting image in Gimp.

Then setup an image texture in BI and enable bake to vertex color, then bake in "Textures" mode.


Instead of cutting each plank (which you can do, depending on the level of realism that you want to give to your object) you could use your image to create a bump map, so that it creates a bit of 3D feeling:

Seam your object:

Unwrap:

Create a height map from your current wood plank picture, with a soft like Crazy Bump or with a site like this one :

Create this kind of node setup, plug the Bump node into the Normal input socket of the Principled BSDF:

Here is what it gives:

Once you've done that you can still create additional edge loops and move the planks the way you want, or even extrude, cut holes, etc:


Good day Oliver,
Try adding Gravity (9.8 m/s2) under the FIELD WEIGHTS Tab of the Soft-Body section (located probably at the end)
Also Uncheck the GOAL option to release your object from hanging around and fall down with the specified Gravity and Mass.


How would I integrate a texture with a particle 'carpet'?

It's quite simple to do using object coordinates.
Make a material for your particles and the rug that uses "object" for the texture coordinate, and set the object at the bottom of the node to your rug mesh (or an empty if you prefer). Then just adjust the scale until it looks the way you need.
Attached is an image that uses the same principle to map an image to an array of cubes.

In this example, the array of cubes is all one object (named cube), but this method works with any number of separate objects as well. Since setting an object in the Texture coordinates node sets that object as the source to do the mapping from. Just make sure the origin of the object is where you need it to be. You'll also have to play around with the texture scale to get it exactly how you need. But if you have the rug mesh and the particles using the same material and coordinates, they won't get out of sync.
Lastly, if you have a separate object be the source, moving the objects with the material won't move the texture, so the object will move, but the texture won't. Kind of like "unmoving plaid" if you've seen that effect before. But as long as the source moves with the textured object, you won't have that problem.


Rendering a cube as png file using Blender's Python API

Please invest time into researching about the Blender API and Python interface, before asking questions!

image = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(radius=1, location = (0,0,0))

This line does not make any sense at all. primitive_cube_add is an operation, which returns a status set. In this case it returns {FINISHED}. {FINISHED} is most definitely not a python object with a  save_render method.

To tackle the problem requires several steps.

Avoid using ops.
Create the cube.
Avoid using ops.
Create a camera, only cameras can render images.
Avoid using ops.
Create a light, otherwise your unlit cube is going to be black.
Render an image (this can only by done with bpy.ops).

First import the necessary modules. Store the current scene inside a variable, that way we can access it later on.

import bpy
import mathutils

scene = bpy.context.scene

A method for creating the cube is found here. I have blatantly copied it. We will have to import the bmesh module.

# Create the cube
mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new('cube')
ob = bpy.data.objects.new('cube', mesh)

scene.objects.link(ob)

import bmesh
bm = bmesh.new()
bmesh.ops.create_cube(bm, size=1.0)
bm.to_mesh(mesh)
bm.free()

Creating the light need a lamp data-block and an object block as well. light.location changes the position of the lamp object. If it is at (0, 0, 0), it will not affect the result, because it will be stuck inside the cube.

# Create a light
light_data = bpy.data.lamps.new('light', type='POINT')
light = bpy.data.objects.new('light', light_data)
scene.objects.link(light)
light.location = mathutils.Vector((3, -4.2, 5))

The camera has to be repositioned and reoriented.

# Create the camera
cam_data = bpy.data.cameras.new('camera')
cam = bpy.data.objects.new('camera', cam_data)
scene.objects.link(cam)
scene.camera = cam

cam.location = mathutils.Vector((6, -3, 5))
cam.rotation_euler = mathutils.Euler((0.9, 0.0, 1.1))

Set the render settings of the current scene, and render it. write_still is necessary if you want the result to be written to the filepath. There will be no visual feedback during the render process.

# render settings
scene.render.image_settings.file_format = 'PNG'
scene.render.filepath = "F:/image.png"
bpy.ops.render.render(write_still = 1)

I'd post a result image, but it's just the default cube.


There is object named Plane.002 which is visible in rendering but not viewport. That's the culprit.

Hide it from render and you will get the same result in viewport and render.


mutiple camera rendering script code error

Cannot run bpy.ops.text.run_script() from the console.
Operators prefixed bpy.ops.text. are designed to run in the context of the text editor. (eg press the run script button in the text editor)  In which case the script to run is the one that you are looking at and is assigned to that areas space data
>>> C.screen.areas[3].type
'TEXT_EDITOR'

>>> C.screen.areas[3].spaces.active.text
bpy.data.texts['Text.001']

Hence when translated to english the error you are seeing is
>>> bpy.ops.text.run_script(
run_script()
bpy.ops.text.run_script()
Run active script
>>> bpy.ops.text.run_script()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/home/batfinger/blender-git/xxx/bin/2.91/scripts/modules/bpy/ops.py", line 202, in __call__
    ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw)
RuntimeError: Operator bpy.ops.text.run_script.poll() failed, context is incorrect

https://blender.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&q=%5bpython%5d%20incorrect%20context
Run the script from the text editor, or paste it into python console to run from console. [Note to self. Find link for run script in console addon]


Make sure "Scene World" is checked in the Viewport Shading options menu.


What you can do is parent the rotated camera to an unrotated empty using Ctrl+P. Now you can animate or manipulate the empty and the camera will follow it exactly, while retaining it's rotation.


Or you can use your head object directly.

Select faces, go to Data Properties > add Vertex Group > Assign
Add Particle system and under Vertex Groups > Density > choose created Group
(now particle will grouw from this red faces)

To let them grow only on one side, move Particle modifier above Mirror modifier in stack


Is there a way to snap face to the cursor without all its vertices collapsing to a point?

You are very close.

The selection mode makes no difference.
All you have to do is press ShiftS > Selection to Cursor (Offset).

Or you could Press the Offset button in the tool options (that option is there whether you use "Selection to Cursor" or "Selection to Cursor (Offset)").


I presume, you want to flatten the mesh, to do this select all the faces and press S + Y + 0.

This should give you the flat plane you are looking for.

In future when modelling, you can replace "Y" with any axis and also when extruding planes, be sure that in the side view the face/edge is flat so that you can extrude worry free in the appropriate orthographic view.


How to get same texture on both side in render?

I will tell the trick. Delete the material and create it again if it is simple. If it was complex, then create a new material that is different from the material you want. Next, go to edit mode and select all the faces by pressing shift and selecting all the faces. Go to materials and click on the bluish metal material, or any material you want. Make sure the faces are selected. Below the materials, you will find assign option. Click on that. It will be assigned to the whole object, even the backside. I have used this trick a lot of times and it works perfectly and it will be rendered. For this to work, you have to make sure though that even the faces on the backside are selected. Hope it helps.
Cheers,
Aster17


Modeling from reference; how to not get messed up?

You can select only the geometry you want to edit and press ShiftH to Hide everything else but the selection.

From the Top View this looks unmanageable:

So we go to Side View, select only the vertices we need, and hide everything else. (ShiftH)

Of course the top view also shows just the vertices that we have left visible. Much easier to manage:

You can then reveal the hidden geometry again when you're done editing by pressing AltH

Extra tips

Although pressing ShiftH will hide everything but your selection, pressing just H will hide the selection and leave everything else as-is. Un-hiding is the same (AltH) no matter which Hide method you have used.

This also works in Object Mode. You can hide and reveal objects in the same way.


what @ZargulTheWizard is trying politely saying to you is that your Blender knowledge could be a little bit more advanced. You are assuming too much with too less knowledge.
"A common object type used in a 3D scene is a mesh." (from Blender docs). A mesh consists of vertices (points), edges (connections between points) and faces.
"face
A closed set of edges, in which a triangle face has three edges, and a quad face has four edges. A polygon is a coplanar set of faces. In systems that support multi-sided faces, polygons and faces are equivalent. However, most rendering hardware supports only 3- or 4-sided faces, so polygons are represented as multiple faces. Mathematically a polygonal mesh may be considered an unstructured grid, or undirected graph, with additional properties of geometry, shape and topology." (from wikipedia)
With "F"

you can create an edge between two selected vertices
you can create a single(!) face between more than two selected vertices

Answer to your assumption: "I would expect to see something new in my Scene Collection, nope. When I pop over to the Shading pane, nothing new to see, in fact, the disappearance of the geometry is the only indication that something (who knows what) happened.":
But if you created edges or faces, you just change the mesh of an object, you do not create new objects at all which you could see in the outliner (scene collection).
If you just see points as in your last posted picture you just have vertices. Nobody ever would then press "F" to create one single face because that are way too many vertices and it would look like shit.
Next to your sentence:
"In the Modeling pane I've selected the first part of the model that I want to isolate and I believe I want to create a Surface so that it can then be shaded."
-> in the picture you posted to that you already have a surface (which is called faces in Blender -> try to use the right terms, else there will be lots of misunderstandings). You can "see" the faces by the gray color. The dots are the vertices and the "lines" are the edges.
Hopefully this helps you a bit. Maybe you should watch some beginner tutorials like here...
they are free:
https://www.blender.org/support/tutorials/


How to get to the Material tab of the properties window?

Select an object and make it active. Either click on it in the 3D View, or select it from the Outliner

If nothing is selected, or if the active selected object doesn't support materials (for example a lamp, empty or camera etc) no material tab will be displayed.


Put your camera in the same layer as your character (the hidden one), so it will be added when your character spawns.
In the camera, add an Always > AND > Scene (Set Camera), so the character camera will be set when it's added to the scene. The object field in the actuator should be kept empty to refer to self.

Fixed file:


How to make Kurzgesagt style smoke (translucent moving circles that don't overlap)

Create a material combining two voronoi textures! Tune the circle size with the Less than value, also play with the Voronoi scale and the texture coordinate etc. Use the clamp to overlap circles.

Here is a simple plane with such a material:


What value should I increase to reduce noise for subsurface scattering, volume scatter, etc.?

You can switch to branched path tracing and use its subsample controls. Increasing subsurface sample level will improve noise for SSS, volumes for volume scatter effects Note that volume samples only affect indirect light, meaning the noise that comes from volume bounces being > 0. For other volume noise, adjust lamp sampling values.

See this question for general info about branched path: What is branched path tracing and how is it useful?

I normally recommend using the "square samples" option with branched path, as it allows you to work with simpler values when juggling all the subsample counts. "square samples" just, well, squares all the values being used for sample counts. So "4" samples becomes 4*4=16 samples. The reason for this is the more samples you have, the more samples you need to add to get a noticeable difference. By adjust sample counts in increments of squares, you ensure you're always getting a statistically significant addition for each sample level.


I add an answer to post pictures, here.

I checked your mesh, both shapes have some problems that could make boolean troubles... eg:

maybe try to fix those weird shapes...


Can't merge vertices or create faces with edges

You have to join the meshes together first. Select an object, and then shift select all the other objects you want joined, and right click and press Join.
If you encounter another circumstance like this and they are joined, do what Christopher said and use the Knife tool.


AN: how to get update event from sockets?

A node should not react to changes of the value of a socket. What you are trying to do is not possible. You cannot create an event handler yourself that is executed when the eg the boolean input socket changes.

Also run2 is not a property of the node. This is why self.run2 raises an error. The final value of run2 is passed into the execute function. It my differ from the value of the socket (when the value comes from another node via a link).

The propertyChanged and executionCodeChanged event handlers are mostly used by the Auto Execution system. When propertyChanged is called the tree will execute (only if Property Changed is activated in the Auto Execution panel).

The executionCodeChanged event on the other side triggers a new generation of the execution code. Furthermore the new execution code will be executed if Tree Changed is activated in the Auto Execution panel.

The keepNodeState decorator stores the current values and links to a node in the beginning of the function execution and sets them back on the newly created sockets when the real function ends. This makes it much easier to update sockets without having to care about all the details every time.

When you create/move/remove sockets the treeChanged event is called automatically. It does pretty much the same as executionCodeChanged. This is why I don't have to call executionCodeChanged again after I changed the sockets.


How do I make a translucent/transparent material on eevee?

ive followed multiple tutorials but they all result in my objects looking shiny, any help?

So your question is actually how to make a material not shiny.
If you have looked up tutorials, you probably have found already so I will make it simple and pretend you use a principled shader from which you obtain the transparency effect by playing with its transmission and/or alpha settings.
The first obvious sources of any shininess in a material are the specular and metallic settings. They are the ones that make the surface reflect light, so turning them off if the first step.
The second source can be the transmission itself. As transmission is emulating physical light transmission, it refracts light, meaning the light rays going through are deflected at each environment change, which can make you see stuff in a "weird" way, as when looking through a glass or a filled cup of water.
You can tweak that by playing with the Roughness and Transmission Roughness, though if you want no refraction at all you should just turn Transmission off and use the Alpha only; thus making your material not following the laws of physics, but you need what you need anyway.


"No Animation Data In Buffer To Paste" Error

I figured it out I had to have my mouse over the view screen.
I had my mouse over the dope sheet


How to animate fire without the fire freezing

I apparently needed to adjust the start and end frame of the fire from thedomains smoke cache


The part you are missing is creating a material, assigning a shader to it and  using your texture as color.

This will create a node setup on for the material>

Adding a mapping node will allow you to control size and placement of the texture:


Strange lines displayed in Edit mode after importing SVGs into blender

The lines, that you see are "normals" and shows radius, twisting and direction of curve.

You can do following:

1) change radius. For example if you press Ctrl+A in object mode(radius multiplied by object scale), when A(to select all), W -> Set curve radius in edit mode, it will reset radius to 1. Or change radius of selected points in  N-panel:

2) Also you can turn off displaying normals, or make them small. You can find this settings in N-panel (in edit mode):

3) Also, 2D-curve doesn't show normals. You can switch the type in curve settings


Unable to edit individual objects made by the Array modifier

This is intended functionality - it is supposed to work like that. An array modifier makes an array of a single object so if you change that object, all the array is supposed to change as well.

You can apply the modifier and edit the generated geometry as you wish or if you wish to have multiple objects you can duplicate them with Shift+d. If you perform the transforms with the duplicate operator(move or scale or rotate the object right after pressing Shift+d before confirming it) you can then repeat the action with Shift+r to make an array quickly.

I assume that by 'edit' you mean going into edit mode and changing the geometry. You can still influence, deform or even change the geometry of parts of the object that is generated with the Array modifier by using other modifiers without editing the actual original object:


.. Loads of ways to do it.. but one option..

Assuming your mug is circular, Z-up..

Set Pivot to '3D Cursor' and Snap to 'Active', 'Vertex', affecting rotation

Select a good circle in your mug, which will yield its XY center
ShiftS > 'Cursor To Selected'

Select a region of faces you can copy to patch the hole
In Vertex Mode, select a suitable vertex to snap to, and make it active

ShiftDRZ duplicate and rotate the patch, and snap it into place.

After AltM merge > 'By Proximity'.. repair done.


You might have to check "Volumetric" under the render settings on the right.


You UV map is distorted.
Simply unwrap your roof again and it will work.

Apply scale and rotation of your roof (Object > Apply > Rotation & Scale)
Go UV > Smart UV Project > Conformal
Use Mapping node to scale and rotate the texture


How to add faces to underside of a model

Thanks all. I managed to sort and print the model with copying the top part of the model, extruding then scaling global Z to scale 0. Much appreciate everyones comments. Thanks again.


Changing object position on one key frame changes the rest of the frames as well

If you have placed a keyframe only on the "Feet" Bone try to add the frame one and two for the entire leg (Loc,Rot) it should work. If not, try to check the amount of rotation the bone deal with between these two frames, if it's too high it could cause bad moves between frames !


My object is coming out as gray despite its assigned color being white. Other objects don't have this issue. What am I missing?

Update: Looking at your blend, the maximum draw type of your triangle is set to solid, for it to be drawn correctly you need to set it to textured. It can be found under the object tab (orange cube icon).

You need to change the actual material colours to affect the render. These can be found under the surface heading on the materials tab rather than the settings heading, or in the node editor.

The viewport colours you are changing are just that, colours used in the viewport to differentiate between objects, and have no affect on the render.


Blender 2.81 Eevee lights clipping through objects when using volume shader

Seems like Eevee sometimes really has some troubles with volumetric lighting. As they say here: https://developer.blender.org/T71208

I think this was a side effect of a previous bug (in 2.80). basically, the volumes were all shifted 1 voxel further from the camera. This was fixed but now this light leaking is just a side effect of the volume texture being low res.
There is little we can do to fix it. The workaround is to give more precision to the volume (increase samples in volumetric settings) and the shadow maps.

this is a sort of precision error.
This probably won't be fixed anytime soon.
Unless a new groundbreaking volumetric lighting approach is discovered, which is... quite unlikely? You can attempt to alleviate this by making the volumetric lighting texture more fine. This will however use more VRAM so be careful

I hope it will help.
These few quite similar cases may be helpful too:

https://developer.blender.org/T61654
https://blenderartists.org/t/why-spot-light-coming-throught-the-mesh/1227943
EEVEE 2.8 : the light goes through the egdes of a simple cube?


How to control mesh curvature using an armature

You can use a few objects for this...

Here is the objects involved

Pick one of the circle meshes as the target mesh.

Use the other three remaining circular meshes as the "theoretical children".

Apply the Copy Scale Constraint to all three of these children.

Use these settings for the constraint on all three children.

Arrange the mesh objects as shown.

Here's a demo of the magic.

Appended The Working Blend File Using Drivers + Demo Animation of how to use it


SVG Render (Freestyle) resulting in lots of open paths

Looks like there is one operations in Adobe Illustrator that "OUTLINE" the whole line art illustration. So that should be ok. But I think Blender output of SVG is a bit dodgy.


How can I join meshes that are separated by dotted lines?

You can easily do this by first enabling Vertex Snapping

select the edges/vertices that you want to join.

Hold Control and move it along the Z.

Then, select all the vertices, you want to join, or simply press A to select them all. Press W and select remove doubles. This will join them so it is a connected mesh.


How to deactivate User Persp (Local) view?

To go back to Global perspective view, go to View -> "View Global/Local". The hotkey is Numpad /. You probably pressed this when you accidentally switched to local view. This also works for otho view as well, from global to local and back. (Just to add it in, here's a YouTube video explaining how it can be used to un-clutter your scene for easier editing.)


Planetary Gears: How to rig for rigid body physics engine?

You have already done the most part of the job.

Connect the gray cylinder (the bottom one) to each of the pink cylinder with a constraint of type hinge.
The created empties (empties added by the previous constraints) need to be aligned on the center of the system (Z axis) as the pink cylinders need to rotate around this axis
Set all the pink cylinders to active as they need to move
Set the yellow gear to passive as it needs to stay in place


No splitter widget in new separate window

The reason you cannot split the windows is because you have one of your part of the User Interface maximized.

Once you go out of this maximization via pressing the "Back to previous" in the info header or by pressing Shift Space you can change your UI and create new windows.

Some other shortcuts to manipulate the User Interface.

Shift+Space, Ctrl+Up,Ctrl Down: Maximize Window under mouse
Ctrl+Left, Ctrl+Right: go to previous/next Layout


How to use bevel node without joining objects?

As long as these objects are not connected in the Edit Mode, Blender cannot understand the correct way to bevel the intersection.
Below I shared a .blend file where I connected a cylinder and a cube in the edit mode. For more understanding on how to do that, I recommend this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4F6Q6h2-ao


I don't know how to do it with a bmesh, but it's easy with a regular mesh since mesh.loops[i].vertex_index is writable.
import bpy

ob = bpy.context.object
assert ob.type == 'MESH'

# If in edit mode, switch to object mode and switch back at the end
was_in_edit_mode = False
if ob.mode == 'EDIT':
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
    was_in_edit_mode = True

me = ob.data

for poly in me.polygons:
    if not poly.select:
        continue

    # Get loops for this poly
    # Loop = corner of a poly
    loop_start = poly.loop_start
    loop_end = loop_start + poly.loop_total
    loops = [me.loops[loopi] for loopi in range(loop_start, loop_end)]

    # Get vertex indices for each loop
    vidxs = [loop.vertex_index for loop in loops]

    # Shift
    vidxs = vidxs[1:] + vidxs[0:1]

    # Write back
    for i, loop in enumerate(loops):
        loop.vertex_index = vidxs[i]

# Not sure if you need this
me.update()

if was_in_edit_mode:
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')


Not sure what is happening, but I do know that you do not have to select EVERY edge.  If you just grab each corner edge, you can hit delete and select vertices from the drop-down.  This will result with the other edges being deleted as well.


Rigid body fixed constraints looks like springs

Try increasing the number of constraint iterations and simulation steps in Properties > Scene > Rigid body world:

10 iterations and 60 steps:

100 iterations and 120 steps:


How to disable checkered alpha pattern in Viewport?

One option, as Jachym Michal pointed out, is to adjust the color of the checkerboard to match the one from the background. This answer is meant to provide more detailed instructions in case somebody else wants to try this approach but doesn't find the theme settings. Please note that this will adjust the look of the transparent checkerboard pattern in all areas of Blender.
The background color for the 3D View in the default theme is #393939 (gamma corrected). This value can be found in the theme preferences (Edit > Preferences > Themes) under the name Gradient High/Off (3D Viewport > Theme Space > Gradient Colors).
The color settings for the checkboard pattern can be found in User Interface > Transparent Checkerboard and are called Primary Color and Secondary Color. Setting both of these to #393939 will make it indistinguishable from the regular background.


Blender 2.8 can no longer import module from Textblock

Solved: there was an API change. Thanks to @alyawn for posting the solution here

This is how it works now:

something = bpy.data.texts['something.py'].as_module()


Blender rendered animation is not smooth

It sounds like you are using the BlenderPlayer to play back your render. I think that's a tool that is meant to play games made with Blender. Using that tool (from Render>Play rendered animation), I get a lag, too. BlenderPlayer can be used for a preview of what the animation looks like, but it is unable to read image data fast enough to give you a smooth animation.

To get a smooth animation, you can encode it as a video clip. The second half of this video tutorial explains how you can do that right inside Blender. Other tools can be used for this, too.

Does the frame rate affect how smooth an animation is?

Normally, animations are rendered at either 24 or 30 fps and look smooth most of the time. Smaller frame rates might make your animation look blocky, but you don't need more than that, usually. If you have a lot of movement in your scene, you can use motion blur to make it look smoother. As far as I know, movies don't usually use frame rates higher than 30 - some games use 60 fps though.


Rendered image is blank, or white, or shows as a text file in the filebrowser

Windows (and other operating systems) doesn't know what to do with files that have no file extension.
Just rename the file and the extension that corresponds with the file format (in this case .png,), so that the OS understands it is dealing with an image (or video) file and uses the appropriate program to open such file.
In the future enable the File Extensions box on the output so that you get the name with a .png (or .exr or .jpg or mp4 or whatever) extension.


Foreground Render washes out background Photo

I used the Node Editor and added the Emission shader between the Image Texture and the Material Output. I set the Emission shader to 0.85 this seemed to give the right balance of light to offset the lighting that I was using and mostly restored the colours in the background image.

I'll add some more lighting to match the image lighting better, adjust the Field of view, camera distance etc to get the focus looking right and match the image blur.

Many thanks for the advice.


Note: I assume you want to randomize the vertex positions of a mesh object.

Displace modifier

One solution, that will work on any mesh is to use the 'Displace' modifier.

Add a 'Displace' modifier to the mesh object you want to add noise to. Set 'Direction' to 'Z' and add a texture (use the big new button).

Open the texture tab, and change the type of the texture to 'Noise' (if you want uniform noise, use clouds with small scale instead).

Play around with the 'Strength' property of the modifier, until you get the needed result (Circled in the first image).

Randomize tool

Alternatively, you can use the 'Randomize' Mesh editing tool if all your normals are on ±Z (e.g. a grid). To do this, make sure that you set the 'normal' option to 1.0 (boxed on the image below).


Has the "Use Alpa" option for textures been changed?

still on 2.76? Could something be happened to your installed copy UI somehow, using python? I re-downloaded a fresh 2.76b today from http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.76/

and there is the option, there (here using a png image with transparency):


Vertex snapping with axis constraint (like in 3ds Max)

Snapping system in Blender leaves a lot to be desired in terms of precision modelling at the moment, unfortunately.

One possible solution is to use the Tiny CAD addon (bundled with Blender by default) that has some CAD like intersection tools to create vertex at desired edge intersections.

Here is a workaround for your specific illustrated case without resorting to addons.

Move the vertex vertically until it lines up with the desired snap target, regardless of edge direction, then move it to the side so it forms a convex shape in relation to the two end vertex from said edge.

Select both ends and press J to create a straight edge running between them.

You can now either delete the extraneous vertex, or use the merge tool at Alt + M > At Last to merge the undesired vertex into place.


Which tool can best extrude two angles from the same face?

Use your image as a background image. You could begin with the ridges of your two half-moons, then expand, connect the vertices, move up the faces, etc...


Why this simple polygon-to-star does not work in a particular document

Because you have the "individual origins" set as transform pivot point.
Change it to "median point"


Here are a few things you could try:

  select the vertices you want to smooth, right click, select "Smooth Vertices"
  apply the subdivision modifier -> this will make the model have more faces

      For more reading here is the  Blender Subdivision Modifier Manual

  You could shade smooth, in order to do this:

        Go to Object data properties > Normals > check the box and select the degree of angle you would like to be auto smoothed
        select the model and go to mesh > normals > recalculate outside
        finally, go to mesh > shading > smooth faces

I hope one of these helps, good luck with it.


There is no hard edge built in to the wipe effect. Only blur width. You could make a  black bar .PNG then use the Transform effect to rotate it at the same time. You could use this addon http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?280731-VSE-Transform-tool it makes interacting withe the VSE transforms much easier.


BGE: How to make an object leave [skid]marks on another object

The best way to do this (and I tested) would be to have your trigger object (tires) rigged with an Edit object actuator set to add object : Activate upon a collision with ground or a sharp turn (Make sure True level triggering is on).

Set the time to 30, and the target object to be a plane textured like a portion or you tires tread. Alpha channel turn down.

I got good effects with a rolling monkey head, so hey; why not a car?


Proper way to maximize reuse of assets within scenes

It looks linking is what you want, you will have to use the link option. You can find this under File→Link. Although it sounds as though you already pondered this method. After some quick testing it does seem that all the mesh and material data is transferred.
For advise on keeping all the objects organized, keep all the objects you want referenced in a library file and just link from that to keep from going through all the objects you don't need to reference. Also, name your objects properly. Navigating through the .blend structure is easy when you know which folder you need to go to. For whole objects, after you select File→Link, go to your library blend file and select Object→'Objectname'.
Use Alt+D to duplicate the linked object in your level files if you don't want to get another linked object. If you use Shift+D, only the material will update in my experience.


It turns out, my pen tablet has the option to switch from Add to Substract, to do the opposite of what the brush was doing.
Whenever this happened was because I had it in substract mode, I didn't realize this because, in previous versions of Blender, Shift to smooth always smoothed stuff, but not anymore it seems.


The problem is due to the color correction that is by default applied to the Image Texture (the Color/Non-Color Data option.

A PNG image is stored in sRGB format. This includes a conversion of each color channel to make better use of the available range of 8-bit values for display on screen. The Color/Non-Color Data option of the Image Texture node allows you to convert for this, using the 'RAW' data when set to 'Non-Color Data' or the values converted from sRGB when set to 'Color'.

When you use the 'texture(...)' call in OSL, Cycles returns the unconverted values directly from the image - ie, it is as if you have set the 'Non-Color Data' option in the Image Texture node.

In order to correct for this you need to add some additional code to the OSL shader to include the sRGB to RGB conversion :

shader myshader(
vector Vector = P,
output color Color = color(0,0,0),
output color ColorRGB = color(0,0,0)
)
{
    //Replace this path with the path to your image
    Color = texture("c:/users/rich/Desktop/map.png", Vector[0], 1.0-Vector[1]);

    //Conversion as defined in http://entropymine.com/imageworsener/srgbformula/
    for (int c = 0; c<3; c++)
    {
        if (Color[c] <= 0.0031308)
        {
            ColorRGB[c] = Color[c] / 12.92;
        }
        else
        {
            ColorRGB[c] = pow((Color[c]+0.055)/1.055,2.4);
        }
    }

}

This is using the formula for conversion as defined at http://entropymine.com/imageworsener/srgbformula/. Also, see Wikipedia sRGB for additional background and information regarding sRGB.

The above OSL code should create a node with a Vector input and two Color outputs (Color and ColorRGB). The Color output produces the color data directly from the texture image (ie, it will still be in sRGB - as if you have selected 'Non-Color Data') while the ColorRGB output provides the converted values (as if you had selected 'Color' on the Image Texture node).


Missing dynamic transform snapping in 2.8?

Update 3 Oct 2018: the behaviour is going to change

«Yes! This has been reported and it will be worked on soon»
— Pablo Vazquez (a Blender developer) in the comments to this video

Well, technically also in 2.8 the snap uses the grid being displayed. It's just that the grid no longer changes its refinement when changing zoom level: the smaller grid lines only get dimmer and dimmer but are still there.

(no matter how much I zoom out, there is always a grid refinement level as fine as my cubes)
Anyway, I agree with you that when the "centimeters" have gotten too dim to be useful to all intent and purposes, the "decimeters" should become the "main" snapping increment and so on.


Your .gif doesn't look like it, but if you are following the following procedure:

Select bones
Copy pose
Paste x-flipped pose

Then, you may have a whole mess of mismatched rolls, so:

Select armature and switch to edit mode
Select all bones
Press alt-R to clear roll, or select from the menu Armature/Bone Roll/Clear Roll


Without seing your shader setup, it is difficult to provide a definitive answer, but I will try based on what you have provided so far.

In the shading tab, add a new node for texture coordinates and wire it into the
normal of your image texture.

Blender needs to know how to apply the image, you have specified UV unwrwap, so you need to tell the shader where to get that information.


Accidentally made 3D viewport take up entire screen

Thank god, I figured it out. All I had to do was control leftArrow or rightArrow to switch to a different workspace preset and it eventually brought me back to the preset I was on when I messed it up.


How can I make a non-handwriting text appearing like if someone writes it?

This is how I did it (this may not be the best solution).

Bevel factor works with non-cyclic curves. So you need to do this one character at a time.

Create the text object of the character
convert to curve (alt + c)
uncheck cyclic (U) option in curve object data
Extrude the unconnected node to have a closing edge manually
increase depth to a non-zero value

Now you should be able to control the curve length with bevel factor.


How would I wrap a texture around a cylinder without it looking off?

This is because your texture is not "seamless" mainly due to the reflective shine in the middle:

You need a seamless texture and then bake the shine on it if you need it on the texture.
Something like these: https://naldzgraphics.net/free-seamless-metal-textures/
But since you said it was for a game, you'd have to make sure the textures are allowed for use in games and not just personal use.
Alternatively, you could look into "Procedurally Generated Textures" there are lots of tutorials on it. This is a great way to generate seamless textures without the worry of copyright.


You've enabled the Locations option, disable it:


Object Properties > Viewport Display > Display As Wire

You might want to check "All Edges" too to draw coplanar edges (edges lying on the same plane)

With python

import bpy
ob = bpy.context.object
ob.display_type = 'WIRE'
ob.show_all_edges = True


Ultra realistic excrement material needed

What you showed is not only a material, it's a heavy subdivided geometry with possible displacement applied to it.

1 - This looks like a separate geometry. Not part of the material aspect.

2 - This is part of the material, a bump or normal map.

My best point for you to go is sculpting, it will reproduce a organic model and you can easily reproduce these bumps you see.

For the material aspect, if you want to go for realism, Principled BSDF is great to simulate real gloss and light information.

I tried a simple material to show you what I mean:

You can see that with some adjustments you can achieve your goal, but then again, this is a heavily detailed object, it is not just a material.


There's something with the new version of Blender that requires you to Bake Data in the Smoke domain to start producing smoke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN6ClIdL8yw&feature=youtu.be

Playing with the fuel value, might help to choose how much fire you want.


How to merge external images together in script?

Finally, I managed to combine image parts together with looping nested arrays. Although the script itself is not the most beautiful... I mark this answer to correct now, but if somebody is doing better that works in this context, I'll change it.

So here is "monster" that I've used in this case:

# First I need to order rendered part names correctly
rendered_images_ordered = []
for y in range(parts_count, 0, -1):
    for x in range(parts_count):
        rendered_images_ordered.append(rendered_images[(y-1)+(x*parts_count)])

# Then I grab pixel data from all parts
part_pixels = []
for image in rendered_images_ordered:
    filepath = os.path.join(scene.render_settings.render_folder, image)
    filepath = os.path.realpath(bpy.path.abspath(filepath))
    loaded_pixels = list(bpy.data.images.load(filepath, check_existing=False).pixels)
    part_pixels.append([loaded_pixels[ipx:ipx+4] for ipx in range(0, len(loaded_pixels), 4)])

# And finally loop all pixels together to final image
final_image_pixels = []
for i in range(parts_count, 0, -1):
    for row in range(part_height):
        part_switch = -1
        px_counter = -1
        for col in range(final_image_width):
            if col % part_width == 0:
                part_switch += 1
                px_counter = 0
            if i-1 == 0:
                px_arr = i-1 + part_switch
            else:
                px_arr = ((i-1) * parts_count) + part_switch
            target_pixel = row * part_width + px_counter
            final_image_pixels.append(part_pixels[px_arr][target_pixel])
            px_counter += 1

# And then save output image
output_image = bpy.data.images.new(final_image_name, alpha=True, width=final_image_width, height=final_image_height)
output_image.alpha_mode = 'STRAIGHT'
output_image.pixels = final_image_pixels
output_image.filepath_raw = final_image_filepath
output_image.file_format = scene.render.image_settings.file_format
output_image.save()

Result:

If you want to investigate more about where I use this loop check here. This is part of RenderFart blender addon. I hope my answer or addon is helpful for someone...


AFAIK the only use for "Mark Sharp" is the edge split modifier.

Technically "Mark Sharp" simply sets the mark where the modifier later has to do its job. If you don't apply the modifier, you can still add geometry with "snap onto itself" and "Automatically merge vertices" activated without having to manually edge-split the sharp edges later again.


This orange dot is the origin of the object which will be visible in all modes (Object, edit and pose(armatures) modes), so it's not the vertex, as shown below:

If you press A to select all vertices then you will find the vertices highlighted as shown below:

You can select 1 vertex using RightClick then move it using G as shown below:

The edges are blue because they are marked. There are five types of markings you can apply to edges. The following is the basic colour scheme:

Red - UV seam
Pink - Edge crease
Blue - Sharp edge
Green - Freestyle edge
Orange - Bevel weight

To clear the mark edges yourself from Edit Mode, go to the Edge menu (Ctrl+E) then choose Clear Sharp as shown below:

Then edges will be orange again as normal as shown below:


Smoothly connect two objects (Cylinder+Plane)

TOPOLOGY

It's always better to work with simple topology, so you don't fall into a troubles with next step in modelling. So I would recommend ...

ad Cylinder 6 sides and Cylinder 12 sides, position them and use Boolean Modifier > Union

to get a same amount of vertices, select loop of hexagon, Subdivide (W) it, select both parts of top surface and delete them, select both loops and search for Bridge

version BEVEL

now you can select loop to Bevel (cmd+B), under Adjust last operation (F9) choose Percentage and set 100%

version BRIDGE

instead of beveling you can select subdivided hexagon edge directly and circle and search Bridge, adjust setup again under Adjust last operation (F9) like seen on screen

For any version - SMOOTH surface

smoothing surface - Subdivision surface Modifier, to sharp edges select them and set Creas (Shift+E) = 1, Set Smooth shading and under Object Data properties > Normals > enable Auto Smooth with Angle like 13 (in this case)

to model hole (tube) you can anytime in a process a) delete face and use Solidify Modifier or b) select face Extrude (E) Scale (S) to make thickness of pipe and extrude again with move inside (before extrude change Transform Orientation > Normals)


How to remove "Add Object" menu entry from Add (Shift A) Mesh, after running script "Addon Add Object"?

If you run from the main thread,  via the text editor the "addon" is only registered (the if __name__ == "__main__"  bit).  Doing this is for testing purposes, and is not meant to be  a way to run addons.
To remove, go to python console and type in the following:
bpy.ops.script.reload()

Or via the menu Blender > System > Reload Scripts
the shortcut for which prior to 2.8 is F8
When an addon is enabled, it is imported as a module and the register method is called. When addon is disabled the module's unregister method is called.
Addons are designed to be enabled and registered via the addons in user prefs, or by putting in scripts folder, or by making it a registered script in the text editor.
Related: unregistering a class
Using the py console.
For single file scripts like above can also emulate them being a module (as if they were imported like an addon) from the python console.
For example if the text block has name "add_object.py" then can "import" it as a module via
>>> add_object = D.texts['add_object.py'].as_module()

call its register method
>>> add_object.register()

and its unregister method, which will remove the draw method from the menu.
>>> add_object.unregister()
>>>


Cannot figure out rigid bodies. Can anyone help?

I got it to work. Some how removing the default rigid body world and applying a new one did the trick, along with unchecking the animated box for the object being pushed.


For simple channel switching, use the separate RGB node. That will give you access to individual channels.

To turn green into blue, and blue into green, just switch the channels so that the the green channel output goes to the blue input of a Combine RGB node, and the blue channel goes to the green input.

(click on the image to display in full screen)

Colors that have values in more than one channel will of course be affected.

For more selective changes you need to do some channel math and use masks to limit the transformation ...

To turn yellow into red:

Yellow is composed of green and red, so add those channels (using a mix RGB will allow you to choose the right amount of each channel information), then subtract blue channel, and plug the result to a color ramp to further isolate tones. The idea is to generate a black and white image (a mask) that contains only the area of the color range that you want to affect.

Use the mask, to combine other colors in an RGB mix node. This is done by plugging the output of the channel processing to the Fac input of a color mix node. This example shows how the isolated yellow square mask is used to add red just to that section, without affecting other colors:

A slightly different approach would be to use the mask to affect the original image through a Hue Saturation Value node. The mask should be plugged to the Fac input of the node. Again, changes on the HSV values would only affect the area determined by the mask.

To do several corrections, create multiple masks and use them to mix other colors or control HSV adjustments.  As an example: yellow turned into red, green into blue and blue into green.

The compositor has more intuitive and powerful tools to do selective shifts using the Color>Hue Correct node.

In Hue mode you can select a narrow band of color and turn it into a different hue.


How do I properly set up a spotlight cone?

In order for the spot lamp to be blocked by other objects, you must set the Step to at least 1:


Blender python default function not recognized?

That error indicates that no objects are selected when the operator is run.

The for loop you show should prevent that, so you must have another copy of that (or another) operator call, or you are trying the one line by itself to get the error.


How Can I Preserve UV Maps for Multiple Objects?

You can use data transfert.

Let's take an exemple with a sphere and a icosphere.

The sphere is unwrapped. And we want to unwrap the icosphere similarly.

Place the icosphere at the same position. Select the icosphere and select also the sphere (in this order).

Now click on "data" from the "data transfer" section of the "tools panel". The choose "UVs".

You will directly obtain this :

You can also play with the severall options of the data transfer operator (if needed). Particularly, you can choose the UV map you want (the face you are talking about in your question) as source layer.

Note that finding the good parameters may take time depending of your models.


How to uv unwrap the handle of my mesh separately?

Your handle isn't entirely cut from the mug.
There are seams on only three edges, one is still connected.

Disable the Subdivision modifier to see the edges better.

This is one of many ways to unwrap a mug handle.
Notice the seams separating it from the rest of the mug


Why is my object look so weird in rendered mode?

This issue is called z-fighting. That means, that you have overlapping geometry. Most likely, you have objects in your scene, that are invisible for viewport rendering (the eye icon in the outliner), but visible for rendered view (the camera icon).


How to lock elbow rotation (forward kinematics)

You can use bone constraints to limit bones rotations (and other things) in pose mode:

Here is the wiki on rotation limiting.
The settings depend on actual bone setup and what the bone roll values are. Sometimes the bone roll needs to be also adjusted.

This will allow only rotation in local Z axis:

The range of motion can also be adjusted by setting the angle limits for appropriate axises.


Tris may or may not be problematic depending on your model :).

These are some ways to reduce two loops into one.
Including 2-level Subdivision, so you can see the resulting geometry.

Further Reading:
Topologyguides.com


How do I disable physics for multiple objects at once?

Just found out the (obvious)solution. Select all the objects with physics - go to object[top left]> Rigid body> Remove.


How to make a Dithering effect in blender?

I assume you are referring to this kind of dithering:

  Dither is an intentionally applied form of noise used to randomize quantization error, preventing large-scale patterns such as color banding in images. Dither is routinely used in processing of both digital audio and digital video data, and is often one of the last stages of audio production to compact disc.

Basically, it's used to break up bands that appear when you have too few colors in your image. For example, the image on the left is without dithering, the image on the right is with dithering:

You can turn up the amount of dithering noise in Render settings > Post processing, however this is really only meant for removing banding artifacts which sometimes occur in certain lighting setups (without reducing the number of colors).

For example (click on image for full size):

Note that blender can output full floating point deep color EXR images, so unless you plan on reducing the number of colors later (in which case you would want to dither the image when you reduce the colors), I'm not sure that more dithering would really do anything more than what the render settings option already does (breaking up subtle banding artifacts).


Finding Vertices, Edges, Faces, and Tris using Python

You can access the polygons of a mesh, then calculate the triangles from the number of vertices per polygon.

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.scene.objects.active
data = obj.data

# FACES, TRIANGLES
total_triangles = 0

for face in data.polygons:
    vertices = face.vertices
    triangles = len(vertices) - 2
    total_triangles += triangles

print(total_triangles)

# VERTICES
vertices = []
for vertex in data.vertices:
    pos = [vertex.co[0], vertex.co[1], vertex.co[2]]
    vertices.append(pos)

print(vertices)

# EDGES
edges = []
for edge in data.edges:
    edges.append([edge.vertices[0], edge.vertices[1]])

print(edges)


How do you pan zoom rotate the viewport while drawing with the grease pencil tool?

What works for me using a wacom tablet is to enable "emulate 3 button mouse".
That way I can draw with one hand, and with the other I press Ctr+Alt and press and move the sytuls to Zoom in or out.
To rotate press Alt and press on the stylus.
To pan press Alt+Shift and move by pressing the stylus.
Pressing Ctrl will let you erase without changing the tool.
To roll the view you need to create a new keyboard binding so that you can use Ctrl+Shift and the scroll wheel on the mouse.
Read: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/15051/92768


This may work (not quite knowing the context):

!apt-get install python-opengl -y

!apt install xvfb -y

!pip install pyvirtualdisplay

!pip install piglet

from pyvirtualdisplay import Display
Display().start()

And you may not need piglet and xvfb, I have yet to test.

Source:
Answer by Shrawan Agrawal
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50107530/how-to-render-openai-gym-in-google-colab


Is Blender suitable, or perhaps overkill, for making 2d graphic of water flowing in pipe?

Yes it's possible to create a 2D graphic like this in Blender. Perhaps it's a bit much, but Blender is pretty easy to use for this kind of stuff. Here's an animation I whipped up in Blender of something like what I think you're describing:

Simply switch the render engine to cycles in a new scene, align the camera to front view (NUMPAD 1 and then ctrl-alt-NUMPAD 0) and add in shapes such as planes and make sure to use emission materials for everything. Use the displace modifier with a texture and keyframe the size values at frames 0 and 70 to be 0.25 and 0.7.


Removing superfluous vertices in a large mesh

I have tried to mimic your scene and this worked quite well for me... so maybe it is worth to try:

EDIT: It looks like this method works only for a simple model like in my example, if it is more complex scene, you need to divide it into smaller parts otherwise the Remesh modifier does not reconstruct the model properly.

Join all blocks into one mesh
Add Remesh modifier, untick Remove Disconnected Pieces and play with the Octree Depth to get the initial shapes
Add Decimate modifier - planar
Apply modifiers

Then just apply that last modifier (the gif was too big to upload so I had to cut it there).

The result should look like this:


Can Windows Blender load a project from a WSL2 filesystem file?

As recommended by @AllenSimpson, the simplest answer is to create a Windows symlink:
mklink /d c:\wsl2-home \\wsl$\Ubuntu-20.04\home\me and then in Blender you can open c:/wsl2-home/scene.blend as usual.


Vector component in Python cannot exceed 10 radians

I think the easy answer is just replace your actual rotation statements with an if statement that says something like the following:

up_pressed:

if armature.channels['Bone'].rotation_euler.y < 2*math.pi:
    armature.channels['Bone'].rotation_euler.y = currentAngle + increment
else:
    armature.channels['Bone'].rotation_euler.y = 0

down_pressed:

if armature.channels['Bone'].rotation_euler.y > 0:
    armature.channels['Bone'].rotation_euler.y = currentAngle - increment
else:
    armature.channels['Bone'].rotation_euler.y = 2*math.pi


Where does python output go in the game engine?

That's simple. Go to Window > Toggle System Console

Result:


Marvelous designer alembic export and textures

Yes, you can do that, I tested it today. The important trick is to make sure that you import the OBJ with the option to "preserve vertex order" under geometry drop down on the right side in 2.92 - the default in Blender import is a split. You can then assign then either an MDD cache, a PC2 cache (both exportable from MD) via the mesh cache modifier. Or you can assign an Alembic cache (the .abc file) via the Mesh Sequence modifier (instead of importing the Alembic - which creates the basic untextured mesh for you I assume).
In all circumstances you have to change some of the axis information depending on how you exported from MD (e.g. in mesh cache, Y-up and Z-forward, and mirror X... worked for me). With the Alembic you might have to rotate the object as such instead as the modifier does not support axis changes.
Note that in PC2 it might also be that you have to change the FPS impact on the timeline as well in the modifier.
And make sure you export from MD in scale for meters - else your mesh is not the right size (but you can scale I guess).
What does not work for me for some reason is FBX from MD back into Blender with animation. Not sure why this is messed up.


Here is a way to do it:

Select the edge that you want as axis.
Press ctrl alt spacebar to record this axis as one of your Transform Orientation axis. Keep this axis selected in the Transform Orientation dropdown menu.
Put your 3D Cursor on the selected edge with a shift S > Cursor To Selected.
Select 3D Cursor in the Pivot dropdown menu
Rotate your pyramid with R Y Y (or X X, depending of its name in the new Orientation Axis) and press the amount of degrees.
To delete the orientation axis you don't need any more, in the 3D view press N to get the right menu and go to the Transform Orientations tab.


eighth of a sphere with extremely high face count

Well this all sounds highly suspicious and unnecessary, but if you must.

Start with a Bezier Circle object.
After adding it enter edit mode and change all handle types to either Free or Aligned.

Afterwards erase the necessary vertex so only one quarter remains.

Once done add a Screw modifier to it and change the axis to $Y$, and adjust the angle to 90º.

You can now non destructively adjust the Subdivison levels on both directions, either from the Screw Modifier steps parameter or from the curve resolution..

You can maintain a lower level for both for viewport display purposes so it doesn't slow down to much, and higher levels for final rendering.

Edit:

You can achieve a similar result as above replacing the bezier curve circle by a single vertex mesh, then using two screw modifiers on different axis, overcoming the limits of curve resolution.

This has the added benefit of yielding a mesh base object (which is more flexible and better supported) and it is easier to control since all parameters can be controlled from the modifier stack


In the Blender wiki article it says

  The voxels are stored in a flat z/y/x grid of floats.

That means that the coordinates of every density is defined by its position in the file. I guess that your original data set is sorted that way too. For example:

xx yy zz dd
-----------
12 20 00 dd
12 20 01 dd
12 20 02 dd
...
12 21 00 dd
12 21 01 dd
...

In this case the coordinates are redundant because they can be easily deduced from the position in the list. Thus the coordinates can be omitted.

Also the file format doesn't use ASCII characters. It is a binary file and simply stores numbers. Every number can be interpreted as an ASCII character. The character for 64 is @. But in this case this is irrelevant.


How to scale in Edit Mode after scaling to Zero

After pressing S in Edit Mode, I immediately press Esc and set the Scale parameters in the Resize Panel


Tau weapon. Can't get a proper circle on the weapon

Two methods. Method 1 is to make the two elements comprising the weapon as separate meshes neither of which affects the other.  Method 2 is to create Tse circular mesh, and choose two points on the circumference from which to extrude the horizontal element.


Texture-less/colourless .obj file when opened

Obj files do not store color/texture information. However, it can contain a reference to an *.mtl file.

You can check the obj file content and look if it contains a reference to an mtl file - which itself stores the colors of points/textures
Or maybe you can use another format when exporting (ply does store color information for each point for example).


IK - can you prioritise position targeting over rotation?

What you're describing sounds like an IK arm done wrong. When done right, an IK arm will allow you to translate the hand, rotate the elbow into position, and rotate the hand into the right orientation. I've included an example file to demonstrate.

Axis Alignment

When you make a bone chain for IK, it is best to create them on a single plane (x,y plane) to keep them all lined up. An IK constraint is dependent on the angles between bones, so having bones misaligned will spell disaster for the solver. In my demo file, enable axis display in the armature properties and go into a right-side orthographic view. You should see all the X and Z axes aligned to the global axes. Y axis does not matter in this particular instance.

This axis alignment matters because the solver calculates the best position for the intermediate bones based on the angle between arm.up and arm.low (in the demo file). It tries to get the bones as close to their original angle difference as possible. If the axes are misaligned, this is unpredictable and easily breaks.

Pole Target

There are multiple elements that play into the pole target's functionality, too. The first and most obvious is the need for a target in the first place. This allows you to manually adjust the position of the elbow after positioning the hand. In the IK constraint settings, there are settings for target object, target bone, pole target object and pole target bone. In my demo the target is the pole.target bone, visualized as a pyramid in the viewport.

In order for a pole target to work, you need to have some sort of angle between the intermediate bones. In my demo file, select arm.up and go into edit mode. Open the properties (N) and look at the difference between the Y value of the tip and base of that bone. This one centimeter difference (could be less, actually) creates an angle on the bone's Z axis between arm.up and arm.low. This angle gives the pole target a starting point on its math. It uses this angle to determine the direction the bone chain will point during calculation.

Hand Transforms

This last piece will get your hand to orient in the right direction. In the IK solver, there are two options for the IK weight: position and rotation. By default, position is selected and has full weight, and rotation is disabled with zero weight. Leave these the way they are. Enabling rotation behaves unexpectedly and unpredictably. We solve this with a copy rotation constraint. Select ik.target, then shift-select hand.ik. Add a copy rotations constraint. This adds a constraint to hand.ik with a target bone of ik.target. At the bottom of the constraint options, you have an option to change the space. This means the transform coordinates of the object. By default, they are set to world space <-> world space, which is what we want in this case. This copies the exact world orientation of the ik.target bone into hand.ik.

Conclusion

By now, your arm IK should be aligned, safe and predictable to handle, allow translation of the hand, allow manual control of the elbow and allow manual rotation of the hand independently from the arm. This is a proper IK setup. Obviously, every case will be different in its specifics, but this is the idea.

I will edit this answer with one more piece of information when I get back to the computer.


How to animate paper tissue pulled out from a box?

There is the final animation of the paper tissue flying out of the container.
Paper tissue flying out the container
There is the set up.


Why does moving the UV map not move the texture on the model?

You didn't assign that particular UV map to any material.
Use the UV map node for that.

The Texture Coordinate node only connects the Active UV map (with the camera icon).
To assign a specific UV map, use the UV Map node.


Those mapping settings will only appear if you are NOT using nodes to define your material in Blender Internal. Uncheck the button marked in red on the material tab to get the settings back as they are in the first screenshot:

It makes sense, as you would - when using nodes - drop in a mapping node to the node graph to do the same thing. That's why the panels (and many other options) disappear.
Edit
Regarding the HDRI, the ability to show an HDRI directly in the Viewport has been added to Blender in 2.77, you can get the latest release (currently 2.77a) on the Blender website: http://www.blender.org. If you want the HDRI to also reflect on the objects, you'll need a development build from https://builder.blender.org/download/
Here is a screenshot taken from Blender 2.77a:

and this is the same scene in the current development build:


How do I make a game with multiple levels?

A blend file can contain multiple scenes, each game level is created in its own scene. The scene actuator then changes the current scene in a game.


How to make a bone follow location of two bones at same time?

You can achieve this, by creating a copy location constraint for the bone, which has to be between the controlers.

  The Copy Location constraint forces its owner to have the same
  location as its target.

Given are the three bones: footA, footB, torso (which has to be between footA and footB).

Make sure the torso bone isn't connected to another bone. It can have a parent though.

  Note that if you use such a constraint on a connected bone, it will
  have no effect, as it is the parent’s tip which controls the position
  of your owner bone’s root.

Add a Copy Location Constraint to torso. Set the Target to footA.
Add a Copy Location Constraint to torso. Set the Target to footB. Lower the Influence slider to 0.5 on this constraint.

The torso bone will move to footA with the first constraint. Then, with an Influence of 0.5, the torso bone will move halfway towards footB.

This can also be done for the rotation with Copy Rotation Constraints.


Mirror modifier mirrors the object in its local space. If the object is rotated its local axes differ from the scene's global axes. If you have an object and want to make its local rotation match the scene you need to apply rotation by hitting ctrl+a -> Rotation:


The best solution so far is to apply the mask texture to the hair material. This can to not work smoothly with animations, but ok for still renders

Here is the video titorial on how to manage it

Hope that things will become better with the upcoming hair node system


Are there any restrictions on model file-formats? (OBJ, 3DS, PLY... etc)

There are no legal restrictions for using any of the file types that Blender natively imports or exports.

OBJ is open source are unpatented, so its use is not restricted in any way. The other model formats that Blender supports natively are similarly unrestricted.

This is an EXCELLENT question, and one that is asked by creators far too infrequently.

It's uncommon for file type usage to be restricted, though implementing (in code) certain codecs or algorithms can require licensing. Even patenting the codec or algorithm is uncommon because it only discourages your competitors from adopting it, if they have to pay licensing fees to implement in import and export script. You might be thinking of the MP3 codec that is patented by Fraunhofer IIS and Thomson. Even in that case, making a file of that type does not require a license, but being able to make a file does. This is why Audacity doesn't support MP3s natively. Audacity would have to pay a licensing fee (or some other royalty) for the ability to use implement those algorithms. Then they wouldn't be able to afford to release it for free, anymore.

The fact that Blender is free, means that they aren't paying any licensing fees, which means there aren't any licensed algorithms (assuming they're doing what they're supposed to be doing).


Mesh deformation after armature parenting

Your rig is not in its "rest pose". To set the current pose as the rest pose press Ctrl+A then apply as rest pose

Checkout this answer for more details:


How can I improve the quality of a voronoi style mesh

Here is example of mesh voronoi, but we can handle surface and solid shape voronoi also.


How to colorize (tint) a texture on one side of an object

Download grey plaster texture, enable Node Wrangler add-on in Blender settings, select the object, go to Shading tab, select Principled BSDF node and press Ctrl + Shift + T - a Blender File View window should open, navigate to your texture files and select them all. Node Wrangler add-on will now automatically setup your nodes.

The reason why I suggested redoing what you've already did, is that by using not just a color information, but also normals and roughness, you're able to completely remove the texture color, by disconnecting "Base Color" Image Texture > Color from Principled BSDF > Base Color and then override it with a color of your choice:

you can still see the texture of the wall, just like you could see a fat stain on a flat wall with uniform color, because the stain will be more shiny, as well as the normal information fakes depth, which also changes color.
But let's say you want to operate only on the color, you can then use a Hue Saturation Value node to change color information:

This, however, will not work on grey textures and it seems you have a grey texture. You can simply use Mix node to mix two colors - the base color, and a color with which you want to tint. However, in the default, "Mix" mode, the more of your own color you add, the more you "cover" original color, up to a point where at 100% you can no longer see the texture, and you indeed are going for a strong color. Try different modes, e.g. Overlay or Darken, Lighten...

As for limiting the effect to just one side, you could take normal information and convert it to binary 0/1 by using something like Math: less than node:

I added a Math: Multiply node, to have a factor of 90% instead of 100% for the chosen wall.
Let's join all techniques together and we get this:

the blue on the other walls coming from the fact that after applying Displacement, some parts of the geometry now face (roughly) the same direction as our chosen wall. Increase the "threshold" of Math: Greater than to fix that (or just remove the displacement):

Using 100% Mix (an equivalent of disconnecting the node and just setting the color directly in Principled BSDF) instead of 90% Overlay, and very strong Normal Map is probably what you're after:

Keep in mind you could make the process simpler (though more time consuming with many columns) by assigning different material to chosen wall:
Add different materials to different parts of a mesh?
Or make it harder (but less time consuming!) by having one material for all columns, but randomizing the colors:
Cycles Random material with alpha texture
What is the easiest way to have a material randomize the Image textures it uses?


If your image has a transparent alpha channel (which I assume) use the alpha output of your image node as the mix factor of whatever you want your leaf to be and a transparent shader (shader mix node).
If not, there should be a black and white image in the leaf textures, use its color channels to mix the two.


just click on object mode and go up to sculpt mode


Can't select bone in pose mode and object together

You don't need to have them selected together to enable weight painting for that particular bone. To have the settings for weight-painting a certain bone's affect on an object, you must select that bone in pose mode, and then just select the object the bone is controlling. There is no need to select them at the same time, as this can not be done in pose mode.


Nevermind, I'm an idiot and had proportional editing on. :)


I thought you should never use triangles?

Almost undoubtedly the mesh would have been modeled using quads since it is better to work with. However, any mesh is actually converted to triangles at the lowest level for rendering. By ripping the model out of the game you are picking up the mesh in a form that has already been optimised for maximum efficiency in the game - ie, already converted to tris so the game engine does not have to deal with the more complicated quad-based geometry.


Rescaling a baked F-curve to values between 0 and 1

I've partially solved this by using some external programs.

First I edited the audio in Audacity, to get a curve shape I was happy with. I won't go in to the detailed workflow, as this would be beyond the scope of this site. What I did was basically applying a series of compression, normalization and amplification filters.

Secondly I resampled the audio to 32-bit floating point, as it seems Blender doesn't correctly map 16-bit integers to values between 0 and 1. For this I used SoX.

sox <infile> -b 32 -e floating-point <outfile>

(I could do both with either program, but I find SoX to be better at resampling and Audacity more intuitive, as I can see the changes directly affecting the shape of the curve).

Then, in Blender, I created an object (in this case an icosphere) and added a keyframe (in this case to the Z location) at frame 1.
Then, in the graph editor, Key > Bake Sound to F-curves

Experiment with the different settings. I used an attack time of 0 and left the others to their defaults. Increasing the attack time may make the curve smoother, but it may also introduce clipping below 1.0, if the curve starts decaying before the attack time has passed. Likewise the release time may introduce clipping above 0.0, if the curve turns upwards before the release time has passed.

Here's what I got

The animation gets a bit jumpy. This is mainly caused by resampling the audio to the framerate (e.g. resampling from 44100 samples/second from a CD source to 25 samples/second for a PAL DVD).


Why does the texture appear like this after adding a planet map texture to a UV Sphere?

When creating the UV Sphere, tick Generate UVs in the left toolbar so the sphere is correctly unwrapped for applying that Earth texture.


How to interactively add vertices based on custom input fields?

Have a look into the Operator Mesh Add template that comes with Blender.

First of all, you would have to figure out how to create a mesh which is nicely explained in create mesh then add vertices to it in python, then declare an Operator ideally along with a FloatVectorProperty for the actual location and add that code from before to its execute method.
The following code is based on Operator Mesh Add template, adds a menu entry to the Mesh menu (ShiftA) as this is the prefered way of adding a new object to the scene. If bl_options are set to 'UNDO' the properties of the operator will be displayed in the bottom left of the 3d Viewport (location in this case) which allows the user to set the parameter interactively while adding the vertex:

import bpy
import bmesh

class MESH_OT_addVertex(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Add a simple vertex object"""
    bl_idname = "mesh.primitive_vertex_add"
    bl_label = "Add Vertex"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    location: bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(
        name="Location",
        default = (0,0,1))

    def execute(self, context):

        # Create a new mesh based on the given location
        # https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/61893/
        # https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/23088/
        mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new("Vertex")
        bm = bmesh.new()
        bm.verts.new(self.location)
        bm.to_mesh(mesh)
        mesh.update()

        # Create new object and link object to the active collection
        # https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/145715/
        obj = bpy.data.objects.new("MyVetexObject", mesh)
        context.collection.objects.link(obj)

        # Make the object the active one and select it
        # https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/126581/
        context.view_layer.objects.active = obj
        obj.select_set(True)

        return {'FINISHED'}

def menu_func(self, context):
    self.layout.separator()
    self.layout.operator(MESH_OT_addVertex.bl_idname, icon='DOT')

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(MESH_OT_addVertex)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_mesh_add.append(menu_func)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(MESH_OT_addVertex)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_mesh_add.remove(menu_func)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    # test call
    #bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_vertex_add()

If you would like to place the operator onto a panel, register your panel, add the Layout.operator() call to the draw() method of the panel class and pass its bl_idname:

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

    row = layout.row()
    row.operator(MESH_OT_addVertex.bl_idname)
    ...

In case there is a serious reason to display the coords on your panel as well, I'd suggest register a new FloatVectorProperty property per scene (bpy.types.Scene) and pass the values to the Operator within the draw method of the panel class:
def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(MESH_OT_addVertex)
    ...

    bpy.types.Scene.mytool_location = bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(
        name="Location",
        default = (0,0,0)
        )

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

    del bpy.types.Scene.mytool_location

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

    layout.prop(scene, "mytool_location")
    op = layout.operator(MESH_OT_addVertex.bl_idname)
    op.location = scene.mytool_location
    ...

Further reading

How to create a custom UI?
How to pass multiple operator properties via UI layout?


The Fix: If you don't need the non-uniform object-level scale for animation, CtrlA > Apply the scale of your object.
Why that's a fix isn't obvious .. your object is scaled equally in X and Y, (though not  in Z). I would have thought normals would be transformed consistently.. it's strange that normals of adjacent faces which previously were equal, are not equal after after this scaling transform. I think we would have to dig into that calculation to figure it out.
The object has an Edge Split modifier with a threshold angle. You can sharpen the object all round by increasing the smoothing threshold in there. (The non-uniform scale makes the face-angles vary around the circumference, even though they all measure the same in object-space, so the effect progresses around the circle, rather than happening all at once)
Edge Split prevents normal interpolation across edges by duplicating them .. it's almost a legacy feature in this context. Probably better to use Auto Smooth, which splits the vertex-per-face normals, rather than the faces themselves. (You can increase the smoothing threshold angle in there, too, for a fix, but the right fix is to apply the scale, unless you need it the way it is.)


Baking to an image using cycles with two sets of existing uvs

For Cycles baking, the Vector input of the texture being baked to has no effect(for now).  You must select the bake target UV's using the following dialogue.

It's one of those controversial design decisions but I do believe that python can access this input socket so scripters can programmatically choose the UV Coordinates.  I have not tried this though so I could be totally wrong about how that works.


Mix an volumetric environment with a particle system:

density of volume scattering will determine the amount of microscopic dust particles that create light rays
particle system will add visible dust

Points to keep in mind:

create the light super-bright and scatter density tiny - that way the small particles get enough light.
give the particles translucent shader or a bit mixed-in emission if they are too dark
the particles need to appear small on camera so they blend with the light-shafts (smaller the better). Particles should be also random in size.

A closeup of such out-of-focus dust:

the black border is there to fight the white page background

Settings (depends on scene size, light distance and camera):

scatter density: 0.003
used light: Point, strength: 5000
particles: 1M
particle size: 0.015, random size: 100%
icosphere scale: 0.1


Dope Sheet copy/paste buffer keyframes problem

I think it's a problem of name, don't use "left" or "right", you need to recall all the XXX Left with XXX L or XXX_L or XXX.L, and also make sure all your bones are selected in the 3D view before you ctrl C > ctrl shift V.

About the left fingers: If Blender can't find any bone with R, it can't mirror the right to the left, so give the suffix R to the right fingers.


Blender 2.8 Python , Bevel from shape not working

A friend helped me fix it.

Solution:

Change bpy.context.object.data.bevel_object = bpy.data.objects["Coil_Circle"]

To bpy.data.objects['Coil_Curve'].data.bevel_object = bpy.data.objects["Coil_Circle"]

Because now it will correctly reference the curve we made


grab brush? on UV editor change radius Blender 2.8

I just answered my own question. You tap the F key or, hold Shift and tap F.

This may seem really obvious but, I am coming from using the brush in Autodesk Mudbox where the keys are B and M and you just hold them down.


No "full global illumination" option in light path settings in Cycles?

you accidentally deleted the preset. Just hit the plus sign and set it to the below settings and label it full global illumination.


Animate a character by using a recorded video

You can do this by using a Microsoft Kinnect and the NiMate software. The app captures your movement in the camera and converts it to mocap data you can import into Blender and apply to a rigged armature for your character.

https://ni-mate.com


I just copied my entire scene onto a new blender file and everything was fixed.


The reason for this is because you have two edges selected, meaning your total selection has some height. Scaling by default will scale along each axis by the same percentage, thus it flattens some. To not scale on the Z axis, simply scale only on the X and Y axes. To do so, press S then Shift+Z to disable scaling on the z axis.


How would I go about making water shoot out of a pipe rather than just flow out?

If you don't need a physically accurate simulation or continuity with the water coming out of the pipe you could fake it with particles instead.

Use a particle system on an emitter placed at the end of the tube (a simple plane should suffice).

Add a Metaball object as particle object, adjust size and resolution as desired. You can then control how far the water jet shoots by controlling the Velocity > Normal property of the particle system.


Can't use Radeon GPU to render in cycles (R9 270)

R9 270 is actually GCN 1.0 architecture and is not supported after Blender 2.78c.

If you look at the wikipedia chart for the Radeon 200 series products, you'll see that the 270 is actually a GCN 1.0 hardware. Which was dropped from Cycles in Blender 2.78c.


You could triangulate the face, poke it, or merge the vertices together. Also if you want the shape to be rounder, use the loop tools addon to make it a circle.


Try using the VSE proxy function, Blender will render lower resolution media for all strips that have proxy turned on correctly. You also have to convert all the strips as Blender can't play mixed proxy/not proxy media.

To do this, in the timeline of the sequence editor press N. Scroll down a bit and tick the box labelled Proxy/Timecode. Change the options to suit your needs.

Then, click on Strip > Rebuild Proxy and Timecode indicies.

Finally, to have playback use these proxies, in the playback window press N, and then change the Proxy render size to make the size of your proxies.


To follow up on @rob's comment:

Create a single coil. You could do this by extracting some edges from a divided cuboid:

Then dissolve the vertex in the long edge, and scale the coil to shape in Edit Mode, and CtrlShiftB bevel the vertices in its corners, before converting to a curve.

Create a profile curve to sweep along the coil, and a long curve for the line of the zip as a whole.
Assign the profile curve to the coil curve as its Bevel Object (in the coil's Data > Geometry panel)
Give the coil an Array modifier. (It will have to be a constant offset, adjusted by hand, to get the profile's vertices to merge)
Give the array a Curve modifier, to sweep it down the zip line.

You can CtrlT adjust the twist of the coil's vertices .. you may have to do that to its ends to get them to marry at the joints of the array. And you can AltS adjust the radius of the coil's vertices to vary its thickness along its length

If you assign the modifiers to AltD instances of the various curves, you will have easy access to them for editing while their copies show the effect of the modifiers.


Rigging a complex character with clothes

If you want to make something to deform like absolutely solid thing, you need to maintain the vertex weights of this part assigned to one single bone, and only this bone. That may lead to further problems though. Generally, skinning such "sandwich" chars as yours is always a pain in a butt, and you'll probably have to be ready to agree with some clipping in any case...