You can't just "render faster" for the most part, there are really no shortcuts or magical tricks. You can optimize your scene, tweak settings, and adjust parameters. While these can under certain situations make a significant difference, they will most often lead to marginal speedups compared to the total duration of the process. These can add up frame upon frame when rendering long animations, yielding more significant benefits though, but don't expect miracles.
Rendering is by definition slow. It takes time, a lot of time and resources, rendering animations even more so; so be prepared to wait.
As a wise man once said

match your expectations to your hardware, or match your hardware to your expectations.

Time is money, if your are serious about rendering, if work depends on it, if you are making money out of it, or you are interested enough in your hobby invest in better hardware, or if you can't front the cash or prefer not to own it, rent computing power (a render farm, web services etc.).
Rendering speed is mostly a sum of variables like the performance capabilities of the infrastructure (computer, farm, available devices, among others), available resources, desired level of quality and scene complexity. Faster renders always come at a cost of sacrificing either render quality, money, or complexity of the scene.
That being said, for Cycles (and path tracing in general), there are a few setups that are slightly faster to calculate, and additionally there are numerous ways you can optimize your scene so it generates less noise. With less noise you could require less samples to achieve the same level of quality, hence taking less time to calculate, which results in faster rendering.
Generally speaking Cycles likes big and easy to find light sources. Path tracing is sort of like target practice, smaller or harder to reach or hidden lamps produce noisier output that needs more samples and takes longer to render. Things to avoid:

Lights

Very small light sources (spots, point lights or area lights with
small size or radius property)
Lamps hidden behind objects, in crevices or contributing indirect light to a scene
Lights behind or inside glass objects or refractive surfaces

Geometry

Very highly subdivided meshes
Mesh with Subdiv modifiers with adequate subdivisions for the viewport but very high rendering subdivisions value
Hidden or secondary objects with unnecessarily high quality meshes (generally speaking keep subdivisions and mesh density to the absolute minimum required for the desired quality and proportional to the objects importance in the overall scene)
Very dense meshes resulting from sculpting, 3D scans or importing from other CAD software

Shaders and materials

Very complex shaders trees or materials
Unnecessarily large image textures sizes
Lots of glossy materials and reflections (which cause fireflies)
Abusing bump maps
Small objects with emission shaders or illumination

Try searching the internet for "Reduce Cycles noise" or "Optimize Cycles render" and you will find plenty of tips about it like the ones bellow as an example:

How to avoid noisy renders in Cycles?
How to reduce fireflies in Cycles?
Will increasing samples reduce fireflies?
Blender Manual about optimizing scenes and reducing noise
Blender Guru tips about reducing fireflies
Noise reduction techniques YouTube Tutorial
..and more...

Modern versions of Blender now have multiple built-in options for denoising renders, which can cause blurry images and splotches when used incorrectly, but if used properly can help reduce the needed amount of samples save some rendering time. See:

How to properly denoise renderings?
Type of Denoiser built into Blender
Which denoiser is better?


Subsurface modifier has no "render" option

If you enable "Experimental" features (it looks like you have done that)

the subdivision modifier changes a bit and it allows "adaptive" subdivisions. You are not forced to use it though.

To not use the adaptive feature, just use the "Levels:" slider under it: it works exactly as the "Render:" slider works in the non-experimental version.

(you can switch back and forth, the value stays the same)


How to change Parents in my Sliding Menu

No need to use Python. This is more a question of organization.

I'm not sure if I understand your setup correctly. So I want to rephrase it a bit. That way it might help you to find out how to get what you want.

History menu

  ... when you press the History Mode button it makes the empty slide the left menu to the right

Initial the history menu is located left of the screen (collapsed position).
On a "show history" request - the history menu moves from collapsed position to the expand position at the left side of the screen showing as "left menu"

  when you press the back button that is at the bottom of the right menu, it makes you return to the start menu by sliding the left menu to the right

On a "hide history" request - the history menu moves from expand position to collapsed position (where the request is coming from does not matter at that stage)

Implementation option:

play a "showing history menu" action in flipper mode

Now you can play the action by switching the property:

Hint: you see I do not relate on key press here. This allows me to map any event to a request (keyboard button, screen button, joystick button, or even programmatic created event). You will need that later.

Inventory menu

  inventory is the right menu

This can use the same method to be presented:

Initial the inventory menu is located right of the screen (collapsed position).
On a "show inventory" request - the inventory menu moves from collapsed position to the expand position at the right side of the screen showing as "right menu"
On a "hide inventory" request - the inventory menu moves from expand position to collapsed position (where the request is coming from does not matter at that stage)

Implementation option:

play a "showing inventory menu" action in flipper mode
The logic is all the same as of the history menu, just the requests (events) and the action are different.

Goals menu

The same again.

"show goals": move from collapsed position to expand position
"hide goals": move from expanded position to collapsed position

Consolidation

As you want both the history menu as well as the goals menu to use the same collapse and expand position you could use the same action. I suggest to rename it to "showing left menu" or similar.

According to that I suggest to rename the action of the inventory menu to "showing right menu".

This abstracts the specific menu positions from "history, inventory, goals" to "left and right" positions.

Exclusive menus

As you have two left menus (history and goals) right now, you have the wish to show only one of them at the time. This creates a dependency between the menus of the left menu.

So lets analyse this a little bit deeper. What different situations can we think of with left menu?

left menu is collapsed
left menu is expanded and shows history menu
left menu is expanded and shows goals menu

(Note: the left menu never shows goals menu and history menu at the same time.)

Nested menus

Here I suggest to introduce a left menu.

The left menu can have three different states:

collapsed
history
goals

To switch between the different modes you need different requests:

"hide left menu"
"show history in left menu"
"show goals in left menu"

As the single menus already know how to expand and collapse you can trigger that:

on "hide left menu"

request "hide history menu"
request "hide goals menu"

on "show history in left menu"

request "show history menu"
request "hide goals menu"

on "show goals in left menu"

request "hide history menu"
request "show goals menu"

It would be helpful when you "request" by message rather than by keyboard sensor as there is no logic brick that presses keys.

Implementation suggestion

One object acts as left menu and deals with the left menu requests.

Just for completeness here is my implementation of a keyboard UI. I'm sure your will make use of your on screen buttons.

Remarks:

There are several other options to implement such a behavior. This is just one of them.


Those creases are basically the result of there not being enough geometry for the normals to be averaged smoothly over the mesh.

It would be helpful to know what exactly you're doing here. Is this a model you're working on, and can change? Or is this an imported model you're modifying? If this model is the low poly version of a game asset, then those creases could potentially be corrected by a normal map.

If you want smooth normals without resorting to a normal map, you need sufficient geometry to support that. This basically means a loop of faces around hard edges, or in your case holes.


Blender Game not rendering objects correctly

Oh, haha, I guess I figured it out myself. Sorry.

I fixed the problem by selecting GLSL instead of Multitexture in the Properties > Render > Shading menu. Let me show you:


When only you animate frame 1 to 60, it means that it will not start at frame 1 with full speed and it will not end at frame 60 with full speed, butthe motion will get faster in the beginning and slower in the end. Go to Graph Editor and look how the rotation-curve is getting steeper.

To counter that you can start the animation earlier and end later. Or you manipulate the development of the roation in den Graph Editor, making it a constant movement.


Multiple addons using the same name (OS X)

To see what Blender thinks, you need to run Blender from command line.

Open Terminal application
Write cd then hit spacebar and drag&drop your folder with Blender into Terminal window
Enter
In Terminal window write ./blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender
Enter

Then if you open Blender's "User Preferences" tab "Add-ons", Terminal displays all conflict add-ons.

(There is also patch to show these add ons directly in User Preferences window https://developer.blender.org/D791 for better future)


Why does EEVEE not have a displacement option?

Because no one has coded it for Eevee yet. Eevee can't use any of Cycles' displacement system. For best performance at least, it would need a completely new displacement engine based around OpenGL tessellation shaders. No one has gotten around to writing this yet, so for now Eevee just applies displacement nodes as a bump map.


how can I extrude curve shapes onto curve without tapering

It's a known limitation of the current system, there is currently no elegant workaround for this as far as I know.

Either use only separate 2D curves for each segment (rotate them in object mode to their correct positions)
Add extra control vertex close to corners to minimize the tapering distance (clumsy and may not look good)

Or use independent splines inside the same bezier curve for each segments (may cause intersection artifacts under certain circumstances)

Choose the lesser evil for your particular use case.


Try using bevel modifier with weight rather than edge split.

Select the sharp edges and assign mean bevel weight to 1 in side properties panel(n). Then change in bevel modifier bevel limit method to weight. play with width and segments. It works fine in blender, but I don't know in unity. Because of huge ngons in middle


Promblem with creating sharp glossy glossy material for metal drinking bottle

First of all: if you want to have reflections on your bottle you need something in your scene to show in the reflection. as of now, you just have your light source, a grey plane and the ground background. that's not ideal to check how your material reflects things. (read the answer here why those wavy reflections appear).

I'd recommend using an HDRi to light your scene. here you can grab some for free.

Material:
I'd recommend using the principled Shader. it uses Fresnel to make the reflectiveness be dependent on the view angle.

that's a pretty basic setup, but you can work from there. I'd also recommend using a normal- or displacement map to mimic the bumps of your bottle.


How to use scripting to remove fcurve for x and y location channels only?

OK... I somehow find the solution. Blender can figure out xyz channels by array_index of the location. 0->x,1->y,2->z. If I change 0 to 1, then I will get two Y-location channels...


You can use Vertex Paint

Select the cube and toggle Vertex Paint

Set a color from the Tools Panel on the left, then click a vertex to apply. Repeat for every vertex

INTERNAL RENDER

Check Vertex Color Paint in the Material Panel to render Vertex Colors

CYCLES RENDER

In Node Editor: Add > Input > Vertex Colors > select Vertex Color Layer...


Blender Cycles viewport preview adjust resolution

There's an option under Render -> Performance -> Viewport

You can also define a render region with Ctrl + B, to keep your resolution detail but only render a portion of the viewport.


Is there a way to transition between 2 textures?

You may want to consider MixRGB or Mix Shader node to achieve this effect.

In the example gif I provided I plugged two different noise textures into a MixRGB node to blend between them, you could animate the 'Factor' slider using a 'value' node. You can also Change the mix dropdown to another blend type, such as add, multiply, or overlay (similar to blend types in photoshop). The resulting mix is then plugged into the Base Color for the Principled BSDF Material.

Hope this helps.


How to export Blender content in online stores?

When you look at site like TurboSquid you may see that each model has more than one file format. That means you need to export your finished model more than one time with different format each time. That might give you an idea about how to start with uploading. If I were you, I would check some samples from sites like TurboSquid to understand how people exported animation files to begin with.


Can I specify the direction along which Edge Slide follows?

I think what you are attempting can't be done. The direction of the slide isn't following any edge which is why it snaps to the direction that has an edge to actually follow. That suggested a workaround: extrude and scale (shift-Z) to create edges for the slide to follow. I just tried it to test and it allowed numerical entry after setting the slide direction. An easier solution is shown below. Simply snap the cursor to the pivot point you require and scale from the cursor. Hitting S->shift_Z->numerical value:


Composition is not working (no render, no file)

To see result of compositing switch Layer viewer to Composite in Image Editor


Redirect output of bpy.ops.render.render() to variable

It might have worked, if the bpy.ops.render.render() operator was outputting that information through Python. However, since that code is written in C (blender\source\blender\editors\render\render_internal.c), it doesn't care that you've reassigned sys.out in Python.


Blender Render, can't render a background

Assuming Blender Render
Blender has background which can appear in the render.  With the camera selected and shading panel verify that alpha has sky selected.
Under the layers tab you must have Sky selected as well


Why is my texture showing pink in render view when the image path is correct and cycles is the render engine?

Rick Riggs suggestion to pack the image file:

Blender-> File -> External Data -> Automatically pack into .blend

worked like a charm. Once I checked that, the texture was applied to the surface.

For help packing images: Packing Texture Files In a Single Blend File


Blender script: add ALL OBJECT to command?

If I understand correctly, you want show_wire to be True for all objects, not just "Suzanne.001"?

If so, all you need to do is iterate over the objects in the scene with a for loop:

for obj in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    obj.show_wire = True

Hope this helps!


You seem to have a mismatch in types in the assignment of the output variable - you need to include the 'vector' type in the assignment.

ie, instead of :

outV = (vec[0],vec[1],vec[2]);

Change it to :

outV = vector(vec[0],vec[1],vec[2]);

So the final script should be :

shader TestNoise(
    vector vec = (0,0,0),

    output vector outV = (0,0,0)
){
    outV = vector(vec[0],vec[1],vec[2]);

}


How to blend between textures easily using nodes?

Sure there is a simpler setup, you can exploit math nodes to do really cool stuff. What I think you want to do is to blend between all 3 textures but using only 1 animated property:

Here I used colors instead of textures but it is the same thing. You can also expand this setup for more than 3 inputs and still having to animate only 1 value.


Keeping the Camera out of meshes in the BGE

Is there any simple way to have a camera act as a slow parent to an object yet still not go through meshes?

But the answer is ... there is no build-in solution. This is because any solution would be a specific solution to your game. So you need to develop your own feature.

Btw. slow parent does not matter in that situation.

Examples:

Perform a ray test from target to the camera. Set the camera on any hitpoint discovered. This way the camera will be behind blocking objects.
Perform collision test at the sides of the camera's view. Let the camera orbit around the target to avoid blocked views (see FreeView).


For the inner illumination of your drops remember to not make the drops 100% transparent. Look at the difference for value =1 and value=0.95

I don't think that there's any other option than doing this and adding a LOT of samples.. :(

You would have to modify the particles to be dynamic thought the flight, so their shape changes very slightly, so each moment they reflect light in a slightly other direction.
Also, cycles sucks at caustics. Your lightning setup would use refraction for the drops themselves to be lit "from inside", and reflective to get the shimmering effect on the video.


Unwrapping a model "loosely" with each face separate?

The answer is simple: Mark all edges as seams and then unwrap.


Open a new instance of Blender.
Set the project render settings; render size, # of frames, output etc.
Switch to the compositor view.
In the compositor; select use nodes, then with your mouse over the Node editor window press "SHIFT + A" on the keyboard, and select Input -> Image. In the node that appears click Open, then navigate to the directory containing the image sequence you wish to process, and select the frames to use (images should be named as frame numbers i.e. 001.png 002.png etc)

I think this is what you are looking for.


Why is the latest version of Blender not working when I meet the minimum requirements?

atio6axx.dll is AMD graphics card related. It's been addressed before. Are you certain that your graphics card is both up to date with its drivers, and actively still supported for 2.80?


Ok, i managed to actually build it as a Python module.
It might appear strange to ask a question and immediately answer it. But i decided to
share my experience with this process.

In this way it could help someone in the future who struggled the same way as i did.

Now to the process of the solution.

Starting point were the following three sources as follows :

This Question
An Archived Blender Wiki entry
The offical "Build from source" Wiki article

How did i achieve the build ?

I started by following the description provided of the 2. Source; which wasn't really precise in how to handle the source and so on and did not work for me in the end.

After a few failures of this, i went on by just following the 3. Source.

So i did what was stated there :

mkdir ~/blender-git
cd ~/blender-git
git clone https://git.blender.org/blender.git
cd blender
git submodule update --init --recursive
git submodule foreach git checkout master
git submodule foreach git pull --rebase origin master

Afterwards :

cd ~/blender-git
./blender/build_files/build_environment/install_deps.sh

Now I had every bit of blender code and all dependencies installed. Since i did not want blender compiled with UI (as normal programm) i was curious what (described in the next step, step 3, in Source 3.) make in ~/blender-git/blender offered.
So i proceeded with simply calling make help which gave the following (truncated for brevity) output :

Convenience targets provided for building blender, (multiple at once can be used)
* debug     - build a debug binary
* full      - enable all supported dependencies & options
* lite      - disable non essential features for a smaller binary and faster build
* headless  - build without an interface (renderfarm or server automation)
* cycles    - build Cycles standalone only, without Blender
* bpy       - build as a python module which can be loaded from python directly
* deps      - build library dependencies (intended only for platform maintainers)

* config    - run cmake configuration tool to set build options

Note, passing the argument 'BUILD_DIR=path' when calling make will override the
default build dir.
Note, passing the argument 'BUILD_CMAKE_ARGS=args' lets you add cmake arguments.

"Oh Hey, look what we got!" There it was, a make bpy which promised to solve all my problems.

So i executed it and it compiled. But I ended up with the Python module in a, at least for my desires, wrong directory : /usr/local/PYTHON_SITE_PACKAGES-NOTFOUND. I wondered how this happend.

I soon figured out that I had to reconfigure cmake in the new created ~/blender-git/linux_build_bpy via ccmake linux_build_bpy while in ~/blender-git. There i needed to enable the Advanced Settings via pressing t and then editing the Key PYTHON_SITE_PACKAGES from PYTHON_SITE_PACKAGES-NOTFOUND to my desired Path /usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages.

After changing this i had to rebuild the project, which didn't actually rebuild since the changed setting didn't affect the main build process.

Rebuild in ~/blender-git/blender via make bpy.

In the End I also deleted the stuff in /usr/local/PYTHON_SITE_PACKAGES-NOTFOUND.
(Ofc i could've just moved/copied it...)

That's how it worked form me. I hope this is helpful in any kind for anyone in the future.

NOTES:

make bpy might need superuser-rights so do a sudo make bpy and don't worry
about a complete rebuild (it's allready done just linking/copying in the end needs
those rights).
The configuration after the first build might not be needed or can be done before
hand, but i didn't figure out how to do so.
If followed through these steps, and the Python module (strangely a directory
called 2.80 or simmilar number) exists in the desired path but yet you are not able to import the module bpy in any of your scripts, make sure that your desired path is included in your PYTHONPATH Env-variable.


1. Mirror shader as material with mirror reflection (roughness = 0):

To setup a physically correct material we need to base it on real measured values and setup the nodes so it follows the equations how materials behave (PBR setups). The best source for measured values is refractiveindex.info - we get 2 IOR values: N and K.

IOR is a complex number, most people are familiar with the real part (N), but it has also a complex part (K). For non-conductive materials (dielectrics) the complex part is 0 (or very close to it), so this involves metals mostly.

IOR is also dependent on the wavelength of light, so red, green and blue will reflect differently off of the material. This gives metals their characteristic colors and tinting. To use N and K values in a shader, we'll need the Conductive Fresnel node group, here is a GPU  friendly implementation.

So in refractiveindex.info we input 650nm for red, 550nm for green and 450nm for blue and for example we get physically correct gold mirror shader:

It is worth noting that color management also plays significant role how your materials will look. If we enable Filmic and Very High Contrast look we get this, the correct way would be to also setup the lighting for the Filmic color-management (increase light intensities, keep Base Contrast).

Dielectric materials have a diffuse component (unlike metals) and the important part to keep them physically correct is to mix in the reflection through Fresnel. We can also get measured values for IOR, for ceramics it's around 1.8, so here is how a generic setup of mirror reflection on a bathroom tile would look like:

More about this is here: How do I create a reflective white material?

For other materials like wood floor etc. there is just different IOR, the setup is same, unless there is some roughness to the reflection.

For mirror sunglasses shader the effect is made with thin film coating. Measured values for sunglasses are hard to come by, so the artistic approach of mixing shaders through multiple Layer Weight nodes is all there is to it:

There is however an OSL shader available (now also with GPU support) to do the thin-film interference on materials. Use the Thin Film Interference node, don't link the materials, as some of them are not PBR compliant.

2. Mirror shader as a "shader" of mirror object:

Mirror is made from 2 materials: Glass and Silver coated aluminium behind it, so to make physically correct mirror, you will need to model it as such.

It's worth noting that Refractive Caustics option should be turned on to not produce shadow onto the silver plate behind the glass:

For the silver you sample values from refractiveindex.info and you get:

If the mirror is bigger and it's in animation, I suggest putting some slight bump or displacement on it, as nothing is perfectly flat.

For ordinary mirrors made from flute glass and that are not the object of focus this is fine, but fancier mirrors use heavier glass and sides cut in angles so the diffraction of light is clearly visible.

First thing to mention is that Cycles should not be the weapon of choice to render physically correct glass. Bi-directional renderers do much better job at rendering glass with the perfect tool being spectral renderers that can do diffraction and thin-film correctly. With Cycles be ready to set 50k samples and render whole night even on good HW.

Here are some popular glass types and their respective IOR curves. The exact values are again at refractiveindex.info, for the LASF9 it looks like this:

You can notice the glass came to life with color, there is blue tint on edges and warm tint in middle, with diffraction streaks present.

For even more realism we could add a volume absorption shader as that is also not present in Principled or Glass nodes, but on thin glass plane this is only visible on the edges, so I'd say it depends on what type of frame the mirror is in.

This is all correct for roughness = 0, because otherwise we need to account for it. You can find a Fresnel node that takes roughness into account here and use it in place of the standart Fresnel in the right setup, the Glass node in Cycles is equivalent to it:

You can also use the complex IOR node if you need glass that happens to have some small K value.

The test scene is by Robin Marin


Nothing happens when installing my own addon

Not all keys in bl_info dict are required, you should fill in as many as you can however:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.5/Py/Scripts/Guidelines/Addons

Don't go to User Preferences > Addons > Install from File... and pick __init__.py, it will install that file only. Either

place your entire addon folder in one of Blender's addon directories (e.g. addons folder in bpy.utils.user_resource('SCRIPTS'))
or zip up the folder and Install from File... (which will unzip the folder to addons user dir)


Why my grid texture won't apply to the object?

Choose a Diffuse node instead of Background (which I guess is used for the world):

In Edit mode, select all the face to which you want to assign the material, and in the Material panel, choose the material and click on Assign:


Why is area lighting creating a grainy render?

Problem

In your scene, one of the first things I noticed was that it was inside an enclosed space. Bluriness in enclosed spaces can often be caused by unpowerful lighting.

Solution

I selected the area lamp near the top of the cabin and turned up the Emission Strength to 1000 from 300. I also turned the Max Bounces: to 1024.

I also optimized the .blend file.

I made some adjustments in the Render tab of the Properties panel, namely that I set the Max: and Min: Light Path Bounces to 0 (for faster rendering). I also turned the Filter Glossy: value to 0.7. Additionally, I changed the resolution to just 1920x1080 (1080p; you had it set to 4k which really won't make any difference except causing the rendering to take 4 times as long). Furthermore, I turned the Sampling > Settings: > Clamp Indirect: value to 3.00. I turned the AA render samples to 100. Lastly, I optimized the Tile Size for CPU rendering (Properties panel > Render Tab > Performance Drop Down Menu > Tiles:). If you want it to be optimized for GPU rendering, change each (x/y) from 16 to 256.

On my 8-year-old mac with CPU and not all the image textures, one frame (probably) took a bit under an hour (I didn't wait for it to finish). On my Nvidia 970 4GB STRIX, one frame took just 54 seconds and looked like this:

Final Notes

Here is the fixed up .blend file:

I don't generally offer this (haven't before), but if you can get me a .blend file with all the images included, I will render it for you. 90 frames x 1 min each = about 90 min. --A fellow Blender-using student.


Is there a way to make space between particles?

In the image above are green numbers 1-4

Small Red Plane with two array modifiers. Appears as many red squares.
Array Modifiers applied.  Single Object.  Edit Mode. Separate loose parts.  Now many separate red square objects.  Many different methods can be used to create multiple red squares including Shift-D
Proportional Editing Object Mode.  Moving object planes in XY only.  No distortion.
Join separate planes into one mesh. Space search [Join]. Shrink Wrap Modifier.  Apply Shrink Wrap. Add a single Particle System.

The above steps are Artwork via the proportional edit. This may feel more natural for some Artists. We are saving computer resources by not using Make Real on complex objects.  Your computer, your choice.  Proportional edit can be done in edit mode if rectangle distortion is acceptable.

Create a Second Particle Surface

Second method of creating another surface .  In the image above the dark blue mesh on the left has a particle system with particles overlapping.  On the far right is a mesh with shape originating from the dark blue surface and showing faces and other spacing vertices.  The middle mesh shows a successful particle system with no overlap of particles.  Click image to see detail.

Original Plane Exists.
New Plane.  Loop Cut in Both Directions Coarsely. The more loop cuts you have the more vertex density and more final isolated rectangles you will have. More vertex density allows more flexibility.  This is a technical explanation not.  You have the Artistic freedom.  Place New plane Above Old plane.  Shrink Wrap Modifier is used with new plane with settings suited to your tastes.  Apply Shrink Wrap.  Now new plane has general shape of old with less vertices
New Plane in edit mode.  Face Selection Mode. Median Scale Mode. Select all. Extrude [Individual] Faces from Menu.  No Movement. Accept operation. Scale Small.  Invert Selection. Delete Faces Only.  You should be left with islands of faces as shown above.  Note this a very technical sequence of steps.  No artistic effort.
You can also create spaced grid first and then Shrink Wrap.
Inspect and Test.  If desired manually or randomly select from menu, more faces. Delete faces only.
In object mode you can created many rectangle objects and proportionally move them in object mode then join them to form a mesh.
You can also consider creating rectangle particles.  Particle Pane ... then make Particles real.  Join all particles.  Then delete rectangle to your tastes.  Add back particle system with artistic particles. Not shown ... yet.  My proposed answer time has expired at the moment.
You can also consider weight painting. Not Shown.
Of course I may have left out some steps.  Please excuse those errors.

In the image above are the Shrink Wrap Modifier settings.  In order to get reasonable documentation images the eye visibility setting is inactive.  Documentation and Actual use create a few steps I have omitted without a video.


Ok, it turned out to be an issue with the original object being non-manifold on the example I posted.

When I replaced it with a simple torus (which was manifold) the error occurred again because there was accidentally an edge split modifier as well. When I moved boolean above the edge split, in the modifier panel, the hollow look disappeared.


How do I click to select more than one face a a time?

Just hold the Shift key while selecting, easy as that.


The output of a Musgrave texture is, for each pixel of the texture, a value between 0 (black) and 1 (white). If you plug that into a Add node, you add that value with the second value of the Add node :


You can create shapekeys directly as well as set the position of each vertex for each shapekey without using edit mode or even changing the active object. An object has a shape_key_add method that you should use instead of the operator, one advantage of the object method is that it returns the shapekey it creates, so you don't have to use an index into the array or set the active shapekey, you just work with each shapekey you create.

Each shapekey block has a data property that holds the location of each vertex in the object.

So after creating the mesh object -

verts = obj.data.vertices

sk_basis = obj.shape_key_add('Basis')
sk_basis.interpolation = 'KEY_LINEAR'
obj.data.shape_keys.use_relative = False

# Create 10 sequential deformations
for n in range(10):
    # Create new shape key
    sk = obj.shape_key_add('Deform')
    sk.interpolation = 'KEY_LINEAR'

    # position each vert
    for i in range(len(verts)):
        sk.data[i].co.z *= data[i][2]


I figured it out. The icospheres were not duplicated while in edit mode before trying to sculpt.


It looks like you are trying to use bump maps as normal maps.  If your texture data is black and white you should use it as a bump map.  Normal maps are made up of RGB data that maps to the XYZ components of normal vectors.  They generally look purplish blue.

Plug the output of your noise texture and scratch texture into a mix node, and then plug the output of the mix node into the displacement slot of your material output.

And the result:


When should N-Gons be used, and when shouldn't they?

Honestly in my opinion, NGons should never be present in a final model. Every artist will have slightly different opinions on this but here is my take.

When NGons are okay

On completely flat surfaces.
Hidden areas of models that will never be seen or used for any reason (but this still sloppy and not desirable)
As a temporary holding surface that will later be replaced with clean quads.

When NGons are not okay

On any model that will be exported to another artist or engine
On a model that will deform through animation
On a model with SubD (unless that area is completely flat, and surrounded by a quad-loop)

There's many different reasons for each of the above, but here's a few:

NGons should not be used on deforming models as you want to have absolute control over how the surface is generated and how it appears at render time.
NGons should never be used on a model that is being exported as you don't necessarily know if the importer on the other side will support NGons or if the next artist will treat them as you intended.
NGons should never be used on real-time models as you won't know how they'll be triagulated.

In general, I like to use NGons as a temporary topology block. But I never keep them in my final models.


How can i sharp only an edge as in this video?

Select the edges (in edit mode) you wanna bevel
Press CTRL+B
Move your mouse to set the scale
Scroll your mouse wheel to increase or decrease the no.of cuts


The dialog box size cant show all the letter

Go to 'File > Settings'. Look at the 'Interface' tab, and adjust the Scale. You probably want to adjust it down. Default is 1.00.

Remember to click on 'Save User Settings' after doing it, so the setting is saved until next time.


shadow cather dosent work appropreiated with footage as background

I can't guess method you used but the preferred way to compose render result with background is to use Alpha Over node


How can I extract volume and surface information from objects?

I found that:

import bpy, bmesh
bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=True, rotation=True, scale=True)
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh( bpy.context.object.data )
ref_obj_name     = bpy.context.object.name
volume = float( bm.calc_volume() )
print(volume)

and zawardo for all...


Inset faces individually with thickness falloff

You could do this by converting to a curve, extruding and scaling with proportional editing, then converting back to mesh.

1) Convert to curve

2) In edit mode, select everything and set the tilt to 90°

3) Extrude the curve

4) With linear proportional editing, select a row of vertices and scale the Radius property (Alt+S)

5) Convert back to a mesh


How do i snap to an intersection of the edge when locking an axis?

I don't know if there is a better alternative but you could try multi point snap.

Simply press A while you are snapping to create a snap point. Add multiple points to or near the location you want to snap to to increase the influence of where your vertex will snap. In this case adding a point below and above where the Y axis crosses the edge will give you a close approximation, requires some fiddling to get used to but should be useful.


How do I reveal the "Diffuse and Transparency" option in Cycles Render for Import as plane (png)?

Those options are gone.

The way to do transparency is to enable Use Alpha

And then choose between diffuse and emission as the shader.


Cell fracture messes up texture UV, doesn't apply material to interior, doesn't take fracture count limit into account

I had the same 'UV-mess-up' issue with the cell fracture addon (2.79). I tried other versions of Blender (2.64 and 2.74), but it gave the same problem. Then I learned that when you enable Debug Boolean in the cell fracture options, the UV's are totally fine!

Now the Debug Boolean option gives each separate chunk a boolean modifier. To apply the modifiers, simply select all the chunks, then Alt + C to convert to mesh.

The only problem is that some chunks don't show up, after applying the cell fracture. But to fix that, before you convert the chunks to a mesh, select the chunks that aren't showing, go to the boolean modifier, and where it says BMesh, click and select Carve, and they show up again.

With the other problems I have not much experience, all I can say is to try different Point Source methods (I find particles to be a useful way).


Why doesn't the timeline speed match reality?

When the timeline is set to "No Sync" (to the right of the playback buttons) Blender will try to display every single frame, even if doing so can take more than 1/24th of a second, therefore it will lag behind. This happens if the scene is too complicated (too many vertices, complex modifiers, rendered view being enabled, etc) for the hardware to handle quickly.

Changing to "Frame Dropping" will tell Blender to skip as many frames as it's needed to catch up with the real time. It will be synced, but be aware that it could be skipping a substantial amount of frames.


How does one set a stretched stencil image back to original scale?

I guess you need to go in the N panel > Tools > Brush Settings > Texture > Click on Reset Transform. It looks like scaling the way you did doesn't affect the Size values, which doesn't seem logical...


Make triangle faces in stead of square faces

Select everything in edit mode with A and press CtrlT
Alternatively, if feel that you might still need to make changes while it has square faces, you can add a Triangulate modifier to the model. This will triangulate the faces, but you can still edit it as if it had square faces. This modifier can be applied or removed any time you like.


This is a solution based on the world position in relation to the object. You can adjust the height by changing the denominator on the math-divide node.


Is there any way to keyframe values within a SimpleDeform modifier?

You can like most other fields in blender. You just need to remember the shortcut i while hovering over the field or simply right-click (on the field) > Add keyframe. The field's color is yellow when a keyframe is set to the current frame, and green when at least one keyframe is set to another frame. Remember to change the current frame in the timeline when you change keyframes.


ok, as @metaphor_set said, makes sense that bevel tool wont work in flat surfaces

  It still needs an angle, because otherwise a bevel doesn't make any sense

so, i go manually:

this measure addon helps a lot (edit>preferences>addons>"measureit")

[Edit] I found a new way to do this with exactly precision:

I used an plane as a knife to obtain a vertex at the intersection of the edge that I wanted to snap and now I can use the bevel tool. Here is the workflow:

[Edit 2] I found a faster way:

Using "Connect Vertex Path" (Ctrl+J) automatically create a new vertex at the intersection of the created edge. Here is the workflow:


It seems you are in solid view mode,
Press N to open the properties panel and change the preview mode to  material or rendered.


Is it possible to get the file path to the .blend file that a linked object came from programmatically?

Yes it is possible:

obj.library.filepath

Additionnally, a not linked object has an empty obj.library.


I have a mirror modifier on and I want an object mirrored but two different parts

Duplicate your object with Shift+D and apply interactive mirror, or Ctrl+M, to the duplicate.


How can I individually scale the voronoi color chunks?

You are absolutely on the right track with the Voronoi textures - Just use 3 ones of different scale to get that random sized pebble effect. Clamp off some of the values with ColorRamps, so it's not too noisy, and when you multiply them together, use one as a mix factor (each time - hard to see on my second multiply node but its there) to reduce the influence of the overlaps.

The last step is to add a simple noise texture to give some color variance to the background:


I can't pose my character with the hair particle system

Check your modifier stack. You most likely have the Armature under the particle system (usually happens when creating something like this). Instead, you will want the armature to be above the particle system so that the hair grows out of the deformed model.


Check this on changing the origin of the imported SVG curves: Change pivot or local origin of an object

I imported the SVG from Illustrator, changed the origin point and added a screw modifier. One thing to note, my imported SVG curve was a closed shape. I deleted a curve segment on the axis I wanted to spin around by selecting the two curve point that made the segment, right-clicked and chose "delete segment".

Here's a file you can see an example.


How can I stretch portion of a model along a plane/axis?

First you have to configure Blender to work with measurements, enable snap, select increment option (if I am not mistaken enable snap is not needed but do it just in case) then select the part that you want and press G, Y, - (if you want to move it to the right, don't add a - symbol, + means right, but you don't need to place + because it's implicit - blender assumes that) then the value that you want to add (1 or 2 for example). For a more thorough explanation, see this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOxN4CHeBPQ


A workaround can be generating all the splines in the same object.

Should be around 1 minute or less from the given information (20K splines of 500 vertices).
Of course here, I've used generated coordinates.

import bpy

n_curves = 20000
n_points = 500

curveData = bpy.data.curves.new('myCurve', type='CURVE')
curveData.dimensions = '3D'
curveData.bevel_resolution = 0
curveData.bevel_depth = 1

for i in range( n_curves ):

    # splines.new adds a new spline inside the data (in the same object)
    polyline = curveData.splines.new(type='POLY')
    polyline.points.add(n_points)

    for n, point in zip( range( n_points ), polyline.points ):
        point.co = (n, 2*i, 0, 1)
        point.radius = 1

# create Object
obj = bpy.data.objects.new('yarn', curveData)
#obj.active_material = mat
bpy.context.scene.collection.objects.link(obj)

Note: I don't think you can use GPU to accelerate things. Even if possible don't think either that could be faster because of I/O needed between Blender's memory and gpu memory. (and there is no 'geometry generation shader').


Motion blur for a spotlight projecting an image

That's a real problem. Motion blur only records the difference in position, rotation, size of faces (all visible objects contain faces). From this it calculates speed vectors and blurs regions accordingly. That means objects will be blurry, even their reflections, while lamps (no faces, not directly visible) will show an unblurred spec.
The same unfortunately goes for animated texture coordinates. There used to be a 'hack' where you would render subframes and combine them, but that multiplies the amount of rendered images by at least 4, usually 8 or more. Let me know if that's an option, then I'll research it again.
Sorry that's not a solution, but it should contain some answers and it was too big to put it in a comment.


If mesh was imported as FBX export to OBJ then import new OBJ mesh into blender file.


Merge Two Objects without Applying Subsurf to Both

Select the mesh with the Subdivision Surface modifier. In the Properties panel > Object modifiers tab > Subdivision Surface modifier, make sure the View: and Render: values are equal. Click the Apply button. The modifier should disappear from the stack. Now select one, then the other, then key Ctrl + J to join them.


1,2 and 3!

I found them by looking in the User Prefs and searching for "mode", got the feeling I will be searching here quite a lot.


Controling the speed of the tube animated with curve

Try using free handles on the corners.

You can set the selected control vertex handle(s) to free with V> Free.

You can also set the keyframe interpolation of the selected fcurves to linear with T> Linear in the graph editor to avoid extra smoothing of the keyframe animation.


How to join my object with its mirror modifier?

Select rim and move them to the center of mirror, until it stops by clipping plane:


You delete custom ID property by:

del pose_bone["ID_prop_name"]


The are three distinct backup systems. The autosave timer and the .blend1, .blend2 files are part of separate systems.

From my answer here:

  There are several backup systems in Blender:

  Temporary files (saved every 2 minutes by default)

  These will be saved in your temporary directory (specified in User
  preferences > File) with a random number as the name.

  You can quickly open an auto saved file by pressing File > Recover
  auto save, then selecting the auto saved file (the modification times
  can be very useful for determining which file to pick):

  You can adjust the interval at which these are saved in
  CtrlAltU User preferences > File >
  Auto save > Timer:

  Temporary quit files (saved on quit)

  These are also saved in your temporary directory, with the name
  quit.blend. You can quickly open it by pressing File > Recover
  last session:

  Persistent save files for reverting accidental/unwanted saves (saved when saving)

  These are saved as .blend1, .blend2, etc. files in the same
  directory as the current .blend. .blend1 will be the file as it was
  the save before your last save, .blend2 will be the save before the
  save before your last save, etc.

  To open these files, navigate to the directory where your file was
  saved and enable backup files in the display filter:

  You can configure the number of these to save in User preferences >
  File:

  Without knowing more about your particular situation (how long it's
  been, has tmp been cleared, how often did you save, etc.), it's hard
  to say which will work best. There's no risk to trying them all, beware that /tmp or \Temp is normally cleared out at some point,
  so get any useful backups out while you can.

On most Linux systems, /tmp is either stored in RAM or cleared on startup, so files will not survive a crash/reboot.
To avoid this, you can set your autosave directory to someplace besides /tmp. See this question for details.

On Windows Temp files are not deleted by default, so your backups should be floating around in there somewhere.


Help with 3D data representation algorythm

An example

import bpy
import bmesh
from random import uniform

mesh  = bpy.data.meshes.new("Mesh")
obj   = bpy.data.objects.new("Mesh", mesh)
scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.objects.link(obj)

bm = bmesh.new()

verts_b = [bm.verts.new((i, 0.0,               0.0)) for i in range(20)]
verts_t = [bm.verts.new((i, 0.0, uniform(1.0, 3.0))) for i in range(20)]

# create edges
# for i in range(19):
#    bm.edges.new((verts_t[i], verts_t[i+1]))

faces = [
    bm.faces.new((
        verts_b[i]  , verts_b[i+1],
        verts_t[i+1], verts_t[i]
    ))
    for i in range(19)
]

result = bmesh.ops.extrude_discrete_faces(
    bm, faces=faces, use_select_history=False)

for f in result['faces']:
    amount = uniform(1.0, 2.0)
    for v in f.verts:
        v.co.y += -amount

bm.to_mesh(mesh)
bm.free()


The default Strenght for the grease pencil is 0.600.

To draw dark strokes set it to 1
Additionally you can use an opacity modifier to make existing strokes darker.
Read:
Edit Grease Pencil Strength?


I think the link @Computer Guy provided solves the problem, but as the link-only answers may become invalid I post a step by step solution how to do it (which uses the Wireframe Modifier, dupliverts/particle system and Camera DOF).

Create a mesh you want (in my case I use a poor Suzanne again :)) and triangulate it with Ctrl+T. You don't need to do it though if you want to have a quad based wire.

With the object selected go to the Modifiers header and give it a Wireframe Modifier. Set its thickness as you like.

Select your mesh and give it an Emission shader in a Node Editor (material). Set its Strenght value as you like. Also set the World color to pure black.

Now select your mesh, press Shift+S-->Cursor to Selected. Add a Sphere there (make sure it shares the same origin point as your mesh). Scale it as you want then press Ctrl+A-->Rot&Scale to apply transformations to it.

Now select newly added Sphere, then your mesh and press Ctrl+P-->Set Parent To-->Object. Select your mesh in Object Mode and go to the Object header-->Duplication panel and press the Verts button.
NOTE: You may achieve the similar result using the Particle System, but I won't cover it now (maybe I'll edit my answer to explain it later).

Set a material of a Sphere as pictured below (mix an Emission and Transparent shaders). Play with the Factor of a Mix Shader to fit the reference.

With your mesh selected in the Object Mode press Shift+Ctrl+A to make the duplicated Spheres a real/editable objects.

Finally select your Camera, go to the Camera Data header-->Depth of Field panel. Use a dropper icon to select one of the spheres that is closest to the camera and increase the camera's Radius size a bit. It'll blur the background as in the reference you provided.


Cannot save object renderability in a scene?

The objects in scene "5.2" won't let you change their options because the whole scene which they are part of is linked. This can be detected by small white sign with an arrow just next to the linked object or any datablock:

It's all about the linking data in Blender. The library is a .blend file located somewhere else (but Blender knows where it is as it can read the data from that file) where that data is stored. To edit those objects you can either:

edit those objects only from the file they were created in.
make a local copy of the objects.

The first way assumes you will continously switch between the different .blend files - change some options in the main .blend (where the object / group / some other useful data is stored), then return back to .blend where objects are imported to (e.g. for rendering), change their locations, etc., etc.
However the structure will be organized - all the data will be stored in its own files and only uneditable entities will be stored in the working file (which is sometimes preferred).
This may be possible with using some addons, like Edit Linked Library and so on. For more info refer to How can I modify the mesh of a linked character?

The second way will let you edit any mesh or object, change it properties, edit everything about it - but full editable copies of these objects will be present in every file, with all the consequences (every file will occupy much more space; meshes might get changes assumed for one project which is undesired for another project etc).
See Change linked object to appended? and Kind of "soft link" of objects between scenes?


Blender wrongly thinks I clicks a scale-cage manipulator that closest to camera - which is not the closest to mouse

This is due to Perspective view.
I seems that closer control points have larger "active area" around them. because reasons...?
In Orthographic view, the active area around all points is the same :).

Active areas highlighted. When cursor is in 'active area' it changes from a cross ✛ into arrows ✥

This doesn't make much sense from the UI standpoint, the 'active area' shouldn't change due to perspective.
 It would also be nice if the 'active' point was highlighted when the cursor gets close enough.

Possible solution:
Suggest improvements on devtalk.blender.org or rightclickselect.com and wait until they're implemented.


Compatibility with macOS Big Sur (macOS 11)

I'm using Blender 2.90.1 on MacBook Pro 2013 Retina with the latest macOS Big Sur. No issue so far. Would love for Blender to support Metal though. Fingers crossed.


You have your Light Paths set to 0 Bounces in the Render tab. Try changing all these settings back to their default. I did and this is how it rendered.


Is it possible to rotate and move a face in one simultaneous motion?

I strongly recommend user253751 suggestion. You should build this with a curve instead. You can do this in many different ways, but probably the best for you is using the curve's own extrusion properties. here is a little info on how to make curves 3D, but there's more in the curve editing chapter as a whole, which I recommend reading from beginning to end. Hope this helps!


I am not sure what exactly the  problem is but this is my guess.
You need to decrease the mass of the flag. By default it is quite heavy.

Final Result

http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=68256


Why does my model tear apart at its vertices when attempting to pose?

As indicated in my comment, your problem seems to be loose geometry.  I found I could clean it up fairly easily by selecting all vertices of your mesh in Edit mode, then choosing Mesh-->Clean Up-->Remove Doubles and specifying a "Merge Distance" of .06.  I can't tell whether that took out details of your mesh that you wanted to keep, but this resulted in a mesh without loose parts.  Re-parenting the mesh to the armature with automatic weights made everything work as expected.  You could try playing with the Merge Distance of the "Remove Doubles" command if parts of your mesh are getting oversimplified.


I tried to use Bob's script on Blender 2.80, but since a lot of stuff in the Python API changed the script doesn't work anymore.
I adapted it to the new version, you may check it here:
https://github.com/ArthurHDRodrigues/collection_blender_script/blob/master/mobius.py
'''
This is a adaptation(to run in Blender 2.80) of Bob's
script to generate a mobius strip

You may find the original one here:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/82480/how-to-make-a-mobius-strip
'''
import bpy
from math import *
from mathutils import *

def mobius_mesh(resolution, major_radius, minor_radius, thick):

    verts = []
    faces = []

    for i in range(resolution):

        theta = 2*pi * i/resolution
        phi = pi * i/resolution

        rot1 = Matrix.Rotation(phi, 3, [0,1,0])
        rot2 = Matrix.Rotation(theta, 3, [0,0,1])
        c1 = Vector([major_radius, 0, 0])

        V_0 = Vector((-thick / 2, 0, minor_radius)) @ rot1[0]
        print(V_0)
        v1 = apply(rot2,c1 +  apply(rot1,Vector((-thick / 2, 0, minor_radius))))
        v2 = apply(rot2,(c1 + apply(rot1,Vector((thick / 2, 0, minor_radius)))))
        v3 = apply(rot2,(c1 + apply(rot1,Vector((thick / 2, 0, -minor_radius)))))
        v4 = apply(rot2,(c1 + apply(rot1,Vector((-thick / 2, 0, -minor_radius)))))

        i1 = len(verts)
        verts.extend([v1,v2,v3,v4])

        if i+1<resolution:
            ia = i1+4
            ib = i1+5
            ic = i1+6
            id = i1+7
        else:
            ia = 2
            ib = 3
            ic = 0
            id = 1

        # faces.append( [i1+j for j in range(4) ])
        faces.append( [i1,i1+1,ib,ia])
        faces.append( [i1+1,i1+2,ic,ib])
        faces.append( [i1+2,i1+3,id,ic])
        faces.append( [i1+3,i1,ia,id])

    mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new("mobius")
    mesh.from_pydata(verts, [], faces)

    for p in mesh.polygons:
        p.use_smooth=True

    return mesh

def apply(matrix,vector):
    '''
    matrix,vector -> vector

    this function receives a matrix and a vector and returns
    the vector obtained by multipling both of them
    '''
    V_0 = vector @ matrix[0]
    V_1 = vector @ matrix[1]
    V_2 = vector @ matrix[2]

    return Vector((V_0,V_1,V_2))

def mission1(scn, resolution, major_radius, minor_radius, thick):

    me = mobius_mesh(resolution, major_radius, minor_radius, thick)

    ob = bpy.data.objects.new("Mesh", me)

    #me.from_pydata(vertex_list, edge_list, [])
    #me.update()
    bpy.context.collection.objects.link(ob)

mission1(bpy.context.scene, 36, 5, 3, 0.1)


Exporting weight and bone elements to a text file

While the answer is in Blender's API docs, the relationships aren't clearly spelt out so you need to "get" some of the relationships to know how it fits together.

An armature can get confusing, there are EditBones that define the armature that you see in edit mode. Then you have PoseBones that are used when posing the bones in an animation.

You access EditBones through bpy.data.armatures['Armature'].edit_bones or while the armature is in edit mode with object.data.edit_bones, while you will find PoseBones in object.pose.bones.

While an EditBone does have a matrix property that combines the location and rotation of the bone, it relies mostly on the head, tail and roll properties of each bone and doesn't keep any rotation properties. The PoseBones use the head as the origin and then the rotation_mode to determine whether the rotation_euler, rotation_axis_angle or the rotation_quaternion property is used.

Both EditBones and PoseBones have a children property to list any children the bone may have.

An object has a list of it's vertex_groups and each vertex group has an index number.

A mesh object's data includes a list of it's vertices and each of these vertices has a groups property that lists the groups that the vertex is associated with. This list contains the group index (which matches the vertex group index above) and the weight used for each group. The group weight is the same value you edit using weight painting.

When an armature deforms a mesh it finds vertices that use a group with the same name as the bone and uses the weight to define how much to influence the vertex.

So while looping through the armature bones, using the bone name you can get the vertex group index for the bone, then get the vertices it influences.

import bpy

arm = bpy.data.objects['Armature']
obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']

obj_verts = obj.data.vertices
obj_group_names = [g.name for g in obj.vertex_groups]

for bone in arm.pose.bones:
    if bone.name not in obj_group_names:
        continue

    gidx = obj.vertex_groups[bone.name].index

    bone_verts = [v for v in obj_verts if gidx in [g.group for g in v.groups]]

    for v in bone_verts:
        w = v.groups[gidx].weight
        print('Vertex',v.index,'has a weight of',w,'for bone',bone.name)


NLA editor gets tangled all up in Blender 2.75?

The NLA editor is complex I strongly recommend read the documentation. I will show how I cleanup the references to an action.

Blender NLA Doc

First you need to clean up the reference by deleting the tracks (start icon), select the  Plane.002 ActionStrip and the NlaTrack Action and press X to delete it (be sure to only select the ActionStrip and the NLATrack), Repeat the process for Plane.001 and Plane ActionStrip

Next select the ActionStrip Plane.002 and delete the Action by hold Shift+(press the icon) X. This will delete the reference to the Action. Repeat the same for Plane.001 and Plane ActionStrip

Note how Blender will warning you about the 0 references and that the Action will not be saved at the top most bar (or status bar near the windows title)

Finally save and re-open the file:

I can only summarize that you can save an Action an apply that Action to another object Note how I apply Skate -> Skate.001Action ActionStrip to Plane.002 object. The number 2 next to the action indicate that the ActionStrip have two references. the NLA does a lot more things.


Try this setup:

I only changed the diffuse color and the white handle on the color ramp. I also had a downwards facing sun lamp. Which, mind you, will ruin the shadow catcher if you rotate it beyond a certain point, you can play around with that and try to compensate those two values I changed to your own scene.


Imported PNG shows black instead of transparency in the background

The image you uploaded contains no alpha channel.

You can check the alpha channel for the image using the channel display switches at the bottom of the UV/Image editor window

Blender will not magically create an alpha channel for you, if the image contains none.

A half-ass solution (without getting into editing in an image editing app, or sourcing an image with a proper alpha channel), is to use the black and white representation of the image itself as a mask to control the mix between an emission and a transparent shader, so that the white pixels of the image will be emissive and the black ones transparent.


How do I extrude an imported svg along the z axis without clipping the original shapes?

This sort of thing can happen when your object has a very extreme scale.

To fix it, apply the scale with ⎈ CtrlA> Apply Scale.

When you scale an object in object mode the mesh data is not changed, but it will be distorted according to the scale in a non-destructive way (like a modifier). Since your object was scaled up by such a huge amount, it caused some distortion; probably due to precision error.


sculpting horizontal crease on a cube shape

You need to apply the scale and it seems to work fine:


How to make water flow from the certain areas of an object?

It's better to use a special object to be the emitter, by duplicating the part of the mesh you need the fluid to emitt from Shift + D your selection in edit mode, then  P and choose "Selection" to separate the mesh to a new object, assign the particles to the new object, position your vertices were you want the water to emitt.
You can use "Vertices" option instead of "Faces" in the Particles Tab parameters, Under "Emission" panel > "Emit From:". Remember to uncheck the "Emitter" check box if you don't want the emitting object to show in render.

Edit: Adding images for better explanation.


How can I change an objects scale, and rotation using an Empty?

One way I found that gets a similar effect, is using hair particles to emit triangles:

Add a sphere as an emitter mesh:

Add a plane and merge (AltM) two vertices to create a single tri:

Set the Particle settings for the sphere to hair, select the tri as object in Particle settings > Render, disable Emitter so the emitter mesh is not rendered, and enable Rotation in Render.

Now rotating the tri causes the particles to rotate as well:

Force fields will also effect the hair particles, so you can get effects with them too.

Duplifaces

This can also be achieved with duplifaces:

Parent the tri to an icosphere
Select the sphere, and enable Duplifaces in Properties > Object panel > Duplication > Faces
(Optional) Enable Scale and tweak scale settings.
You can apply the dupli objects with Ctrl+Shift+A (With the sphere selected)
Add a constraint to one of the now separate triangle objects (you might want to make these a Group with Ctrl+G so you can select them all easily with Shift+G > Group)
You can then constrain each tri individually, select them all with the constrained tri active (yellow) and object > constraints > copy constraints to selected objects:

Note that with Duplifaces the trick of rotating the original tri still works, but force fields do not.


I have found a fix to my problem, posted picture just incase someone else has the same problem with a character. I basically added bones to areas that what distorting more than I cared for. The rig is complex (blenders own rig) but I like it. I tried resizing bones and adding sub dividing bones that only caused more problems. So I finally thought adding to breast bones and placing them in areas that caused to much mesh deform. I also did the same for torso and made two sub bones from it. also from the torso bone a stomach bone. stomach does not deform at all any more when animating but I can use it manually if I want.


Is there a faster way to select objects?

In Blender, selection and deselection operations are included in the undo stack. This means you can use Ctrl+Z to undo any time you incorrectly select or deselect something.

The developers tie so many operations to keyboard shortcuts because it's a lot more time efficient for users that are familiar with them. Most operations can still be accessed through menus, and nearly all of them can be accessed by searching with F3 (or the spacebar in older versions.) You can see (and change) all keyboard shortcuts by going to 'Edit > Preferences' and clicking 'Keymap' on the left side.


Pointing a bone towards an axis (in pose mode)

While you ask for a way without constraints, I think you will need to use one, at least temporarily, to get the bone positioned.

Align an empty to the head of the bone.
Move the empty on the global axis you want to align to.
Add a TrackTo constraint to the bone and set the empty as the target.

Now that the bone is pointing the direction you want, you can use ⎈ CtrlA->Apply Visual Transform to Pose and delete the constraint.

You can also use I->Visual Rotation to keyframe the values used after constraints have been applied to the bone.


Cant add loop cuts after few extrusions and bevels

During knife cut you can use the Ctrl key to cut at the middle of an edge.

This is true also for the edges just created by the knife itself:

During this knife cut, you have some information in the bottom bar (as for other operators).


There are two different symmetry options while using wheight paint:
Symmetry 1 mirrors the strokes along X axis in the active vertex group.
Symmetry 2 mirrors the strokes on two vertex groups which have the same name and suffix like .l .r, .L .R, .left .right, and similar (check Blender manual for a list of valid suffix).


Create a mesh/object which fills another mesh/object

Indeed as you mentioned, you could use fluids sim for this, it is it's main purpose after all.

However fluid simulations come with a bunch of problems of third own attached. They are complex, computationally expensive, consume lots of hard drive space (cache), especially if you aim for high quality, and they certainly can cause a lot of artifacts and glitches that you will have to deal with.

If you need no animation it is certainly overkill. In your case, if you nave everything modeled already I would say all you need is to duplicate your meshes, deal with the intersection areas, invert their normals and you will have a perfect fluid filling your can with a minimal amount of work.

Have in mind however that it is not advised to have coincident faces and overlapping geometry.

In most cases, the way computer graphics work, you need not model the fluids surfaces that are in contact with other opaque surfaces or objects, only the "transparent" ones that are either in contact with air or other transparent surfaces (like glass, ice, etc).

So depending on what you want to do with oyur model you may not need to model the fluids surface that is in contact with your cans.

Check this good tutorial about rendering a glass of water, it contains valuable information about the issue and may help you reach what you need

http://adaptivesamples.com/2013/10/19/fluid-in-a-glass/


Questions about Displacement and modeling

Answers found by myself.
1. there are duplicated vertices because I hit E and did not do anything then hit E again.
2. Aged donut because I forgot to give subsurface to the donut.

I hope this can help anyone who has the same problems. It is just so much to learn.


As it happens, I've been working with subgroups in terrain myself, probably for a different game and game engine than you are. Here's how I would proceed. Broadly speaking, my custom is to analyze the terrain object I am working with and to create subgroups from sets of vertices which share common properties. Examples of such properties include what the selected vertices represent. For example, all roads in a section might be assigned to the same subgroup of vertices. All watercourses (rivers, streams, &c by whatever name known) might be assigned to a different subgroup. All bodies of water, from puddles, through ponds and lakes to seas and oceans, might be assigned to a third. I also use density of vertices (when projected to the base plane) as criteria, so that a mountain might be assigned to its own subgroup (or sometimes more than one, if required by the density of vertices.

Just doing the basic math, you have 263,169 verts, and the maximum limit per section is 65,536 verts, you will need at least five subgroups (263/65 is greater than 4). Unless there are other considerations in the game engine that would force otherwise, I'd create groups which share common characteristics. For example, relatively smooth areas have few verts, and mountains have many. This image

shows the subgroups I would define in the case of your terrain object. I might be inclined to stretch the number of subgroups to 6 of more, if I need to separate out roads easily, and if the mountain in the upper right has too many vertices. In the case of the mountain, if I had to separate that into two subgroups, I'd cut into a bottom and a top subgroup, as indicated by the dashed line.

As top exactly how I would define the vertices would depend upon the details of the game engine. I would certainly define vertex groups to make it easy to select (or deselect) one or more of the subgroups at a time, but I suspect that the subgroups would need to be made into separate objects which are exported to the game object as part of a single scene. This will depend upon the details of implementation of the import process for the game engine.

Disclaimer: upon seeing your actual mesh I might make different choices for the subgroups I'd use.


how to show all layers with hotkey (emulate numpad enabled)

First check that you aren't in local view as this disables the 3Dview layers. When in local view you won't see the layer buttons in the 3Dview header and if you have the view name at the top of the viewport you will see (local) there.

You can find the shortcut settings in the Input Preferences, if you enter layers into the search box you will see a list of actions involving layers with the shortcut keys, clicking the key will allow you to change the shortcut used and then you can click Save User Settings to enable that shortcut each time you start blender.


Visualy screen looks like you have enabled Use Curves in sub panel of Color Management with some adjustment there.

BTW When I see missing navigation icons in your screen, there can be graphic card issue ...


Create a simple mesh composed of only one edge progressing along the X or Y axis.

Add a Screw modifier to it, adjust properties as desired, mainly the Steps for smoothness, Screw for height, and Iterations for number of turns.

To assign different colors to your mesh you will have to apply the modifier though, then create multiple Material Slots, assign them to the desired faces, then create your colors as desired.


Figured it was the issue with a setting in the software I use to stream my work. Check if you have got anything like "Multi-Adapt-Compatibility" activated on the selected Blender source in that program. Deactivate it. Restart both programs and check if it works.


Is it possible to have an object ignore a certain light source but still be affected by others?

This way is  more about having a light ignore the object, than having the object ignore the light. If you're prepared to use OSL and CPU rendering, (which may slow things down too much for you), you can use this little OSL script in a lamp's shader, which returns the index of the object it's lighting directly, for each ray sample.

#include "stdosl.h"

shader LitObjectIDX(
         output float ObjectIdx = 0.0
)
{

    if (trace(P,I)){
        getmessage("trace", "object:index", ObjectIdx);
    }
}

In the Render panel, enable CPU rendering, and OSL.

In the Properties > Object > Relations panel, assign a Pass Index to the objects you're interested in discriminating. In this example, there are two cubes - the one on the left has an index of 10, the one on the right, 20. They both have plain white BSDF materials.

One spotlight, shaded with the node tree shown on the left, is lighting the scene. With this set-up, it lights the left cube pink and the right cube green.(You could use the objects' indices in any way you choose, including ignoring all objects within a range of ID's)

EDIT in response to comments:

Yes you can have more than two colors, because you can do anything you like with the Object IDs. In this example, the objects have IDs of 2,4,6,8 and 10 respectively, and the plane they're sitting on has an ID of 12.

Here, I've got rid of the  bounced diffuse light the clunky way, by simply going to the Properties > Cycles Settings of all the objects except the plane, and unchecking the 'Diffuse' ray visibility in each of them. That means they make no bounced diffuse contribution to the lighting in the scene at all.

If you wanted more control than that, you could use a combination of the Light Path node with the OSL node given here, in the shading of the objects, to specify which other objects received a diffuse contribution from them, and how. (That would be treating the objects in much the same way as we have treated the lamps in this answer. From the point of view of their diffuse, light-scattering rays, objects are lamps ... sort of.)

For the use of the Light Path node, and getting your head around reverse ray-tracing, I think this is a nice tutorial.


How do I animate the shrink/fatten value on a beveled curve?

You could animate a Taper Curve, using shape-keys or hooks. but perhaps a more direct way would be to activate the Animall  included Add-On.


Proper way would be to keyframe visibility on a bunch of duplicate objects or Dupligroups.

You get the benefit of instancing and reduced memory usage, you can also group multiple objects together and instance through an empty.

If you don't require such complexity, all objects are the same and in a single mesh, then you can get away with simply animating an Array modifier.


Increase object quality for 3d print export?

The lower resolution looking mesh may have the same number of faces, but they are coplanar, so it looks like they are all one. You need to use some sort of smoothing operation to get the faces to be at different angles relative to eachother.


What happens to linked objects when you choose to pack external data

No, at least in my test, nothing bad happens to the linked files. Linking still works and the textures get packed nicely.

For this kind of stuff it's fast and useful to just make test blends with cubes and spheres to toy around with in order to find out what happens.


Is it possible to add modifiers dynamically with animation nodes?

The only way to do this is by using scripting, there are three important points to take into consideration when making this:

Make sure not to add the modifier if it was already added in a previous execution.
Output the input object and plug it into the attribute output node, making sure you are not editing a modifier before it gets added.
The modifier name should never be an empty text because then blender will automatically add a name and our first test will fail, so we should set a fallback value.

Making sure we got those three points right, we can write a code like this:

modifierName = modifierName if modifierName != "" else "Fallback"
if not modifierName in object.modifiers:
    object.modifiers.new(modifierName, 'ARRAY')
outObject = object


Is there any way to modify transform widget thickness?

if you mean to change the gizmo size you can do it through Preferences --> Viewport --> Gizmo Size


What is the technical reason that Blender cannot use OpenCL on AMD graphics cards?

NVidia hardware and compilers support true function calls, which is important for complex kernels. It seems that AMD hardware or compilers do not support them, or not to the same extent.

To see why this is a problem, consider this example. There are 5 places where the shading nodes are executed, and there are 20 places in the shading nodes where perlin noise is used. Because no true function calls are supported, the compiler must copy the perlin noise code 100x. You can see how this would make the final code size blow up and cause issues for the compiler.

Note that V-Ray RT at this time also does not support running their full OpenCL kernel on AMD (only an older and simpler version), and Luxrender with OpenCL is also running into kernel size issues when adding more features. So that's a good indication kernel size is the main issue here.


How can I create a non-self-intersecting mesh from a line mesh?

Not sure about the overlap issue, but if you add a Subdivision Surface modifier then you should get circular instead of square extrusions.


Why do my hair particles disappear when physics is set to None

Different particle systems:
A "regular particle system" is of type Emitter and spawns particles which hava a size, different modes of display (object instancing etc) and move according to the selected form of physics simulation.
A Hair particle system is not identical to that, since Hair particles require a different set of information; they have a root connecting them to the emitter and are path objects, which can be physically simulated as well - this is what the Hair Dynamics option is for.
As long as you don't enable Hair Dynamics, your particles shouldn't move or collide, regardless of the selected Physics option.
Hair particles require a velocity. Tweaking it will result in a different size, which should correlate to your observation regarding timesteps: changing the speed by which time passes changes all velocities. A hair particle with a velocity of zero has a length of zero, so setting the Physics type to "None" is a bad idea; it means we are creating particles without speed and therefor without length.


You could do it with several arrays of cylinder that you use as booleans. Give your cylinder as many vertices as you want (16, 32...). Use the floor topology to precisely set the offset value of the array:

Once you apply, shade smooth the object, and auto-smooth:


The question might be better explained with: Remove the parent from the steering with ALT  P and you will see it works. Why does the parenting disrupt the pivot point?
Update: If you add a child of constraint to the steering (uncheck the scaling) it adds the parent and behaves as expected without problems.


I think the simplest way to get this effect would be to use the wireframe modifier.

However, if you want an effect closer to what you have there you will need to make each "muscle" its own object and use a couple of modifiers to create them.

Firstly create a cylinder and scale it to the length of the muscle. Apply the scale with CTRL+A. Then TAB into edit mode, Hit A to select everything, the G followed by X to offset the cylinder from the center. Use CTRL+R to create some loop cuts. if done correctly you should have something that looks like this.

Tab back into Object mode and use a simple deform modifier set to bend on the y-axis to get an adjustable bend angle.

After offsetting and bending our bar we will need to make the full muscle. To do this first create an empty object, place it at the origin of your bar. Then add an array modifier to the bar. Once added deselect relative offset and select object offset, then choose the empty object as the target. Then rotate the empty on the Z axis to set the angle of repeats, and use the count to pick how many "wires" to wrap in a circle.

Finally, some of the muscles in your sample have a twist to them.
We can achieve this by adding one more Simple deform modifier and setting it to twist about the Z-axis. Then voila!

There you have your muscle. Duplicate the object, move them around, and change some settings to make the rest of your model.


This is the procedure to have your file working OK: select the rig and delete it. Select the Metarig and press Ctrl A "Apply all transform".
In the Rigify properties enable "advanced options", delete target rig and target UI and choose new (with a new name) as destination.
Press Generate rig.
Hide the Metarig.
Select the mesh, shift select the new rig (the order of selection is important), choose "with automatic weights" option.
The advanced option is necessary only if you generate a bad rig (wrong unapplied scale) and later you try to generate a new one: some conflict can arise between old rig (even if deleted) and new one.


When exporting to Unity, my model's mesh is messed up. I've tried normalizing, but that doesn't seem to work

Try to flip normals before exporting. In edit mode, select all faces and press ctrl+N


How to get Blender's version number from Python?

bpy.app.version_string
Test using the python console:
>>> bpy.app.version_string
'2.83.2'

Usage within a script file:
import bpy
print(bpy.app.version_string)

which will print the actual version to the system console window:
2.83.2

bpy.app.version
If you're looking to compare version numbers, it's easier to do this using bpy.app.version which will always be a tuple of 3 ints, (major, minor, subversion), eg: (2, 76, 0)
So you can compare the version number with regular comparison.
if (2, 76, 0) > bpy.app.version:
    print("Your Blender version is too old!")


I used particles with refraction shader, with random rotation in Global Y axis.

The particles were rectangular planes, and their material used the "Object info > Random" value to randomize what each particle does.

I used Math > Multiply and Modulo to vary the randomized value into multiple different values to change the IOR for Refract shaders, optionally use some stretched noise texture for bump-map to add extra horizontal stripes.

It uses an orthogonal camera that looks down at a textured plane - whatever you put as a texture on that plane will be the source image or video.

Result: https://youtu.be/m-h_f6KX-dw


Rendering applies weird squares over my model

You have this in your compositor;

It's showing up at the end because it's the last thing to be rendered and composited in.


I have noticed that blender will render with some slight effects with Eevee.
If you use Eevee. Try changing under the render tab go down to film and change filter size to a lower number.
This might bring sharpness up to where you need it.

Let me know if that helps?
Cycles too has glossy which causes renders to blur slightly.
This might be the antialising your speaking of!

Just for kicks. Try rendering with cycles.
Or. Try opening older blender 2.79 and render with cycles.
2.79 has blender render might be what you need. A more simple render.


Running a blender script on linux hosting

I'd start with running the script with test parameters directly from the terminal on your server using SSH. If you get the expected results from the terminal, then something with the way you're executing the script in PHP is the problem.

You might also see output that you wouldn't through your PHP script (blender spews out various output to the standard output and error streams).

Also, if your script imports from other scripts or addons, you need to include them using another pair of command line params in your script:

blender -b --addons addon1,addon2,script3 -P yourscript.py

Make sure to list all the addons and scripts after the --addons in one string without spaces (the entire comma separated list is one command line parameter).

You don't need to list standard blender or python libraries in the --addons list (bpy, bge, os, math, mathutils, etc), but if you're importing any of blender's addons, or any custom addons or libraries of your own you must include them.

Addons and script files listed in the --addons list must be present in one of the paths available to the blender script. If you're not sure what's included, save this little script locally on your server and run this it from the terminal on your server:

import sys
print( sys.path )

Assuming you saved this as "print_path.py":

>> blender -b -P print_path.py

You can either copy or create a symbolic link to these libraries and addons in one of the blender $PATH folders to make them available to your blender script.


My grease pencil colours go different colours in render mode

I would hazard a guess that you've filled the character using vertex colour instead of material colour. Blender automatically sets the default vertex colour to that delightful shade of green you're seeing.
Vertex colour is only visible in Material Preview and Rendered view so it's likely you were in Solid view and may have set this accidently?
If you're not sure what I'm talking about,  if you look at your first screenshot about midway at the top of the tool panel you'll see the offending green colour as the selected Vertex colour material. The settings pictured suggest the tool is set up to use material colour (the globe Icon) but it's probably likely when filling it was set the vertex colour?
To remedy you could go through and use vertex paint mode to recolour every point or just refill making sure the mode is set to material (globe turned on!).
Great drawing by the way! I hope that resolves your problem.
Matt


Baking multiple objects to keyframes resets their orientation by their origins

I found the answer.

First, the steps that caused the problem:

After breaking the object using the cell fracture addon, I needed the physics of all the 700 pieces to be driven by an animation (they where parented to a cube which has keyframes to make everything "fall" in one piece).
Then I keyframed the physics of one piece (1), but there where like 700 objects that I wanted to have that same behavior so to copy those keyframes I read that I just needed to link the animation data as I did (2).
How I found the problem:

An action was shared linked by 757 objects (3).
Solution:

So I selected my group of pieces, hit U to unlink the animation data (4) and then I baked the animation and everythig was almost fine. I didn't knew why but I simply had to unparent all the shards.


Shrinkwrap addon conflicting with curve bevel

I think you may be over complicating

Shrinkwrap modifier is used to project one flat surface over the another, not really very fit for complex animation, nor projecting non-sheet-like objects with volume.

Also curve objects are not really very fit for deformations (a least not in the Z axis), they will inevitably lead to artifacts due to their triangulated nature, lack of proper subdivisions, and non quad based topology.

You should use a base mesh object instead, which also widens the choice of modifiers available, and possibly use a Wave modifier instead, unless you need a very specific or precise wave shape.

Only then on top of the Wave deformation modifier (or whichever other you choose) apply a Solidify to add thickness and a Bevel to chamfer or fillet the corners.

That way you will guarantee that the thickness and bevels are not distorted as much by the Wave, nor squashed by the Shrinkwrap.

You may optionally add a Subdivision modifier set to Simple on top of the stack, so you get a smoother mesh with less bevel distortions


What is the easiest way to have a material randomize the Image textures it uses?

As long as all the books are separate objects, we can use the Random output of the Object Info node.

That gives us a random value (per object) ranging from 0 to 1 (black to white):

All we need to do then is tell it to use different materials for different value ranges. I'm sure there are many ways to do this, but here's the first I could think of:

We can add two math nodes with the operations on Greater Than and Less Than, setting the bottom socket values to encapsulate a certain range (e.g: between 0.1 and 0.3) and plugging the Random output into the top sockets. Then multiply the two math nodes and you'll have a mask showing white on the books where the random value is between that range:

Then we can connect that mask to the Fac of a MixRGB node, and thus the first socket of the mix node would be the original colour, and the second socket would be whatever colour/texture you want to show in the value range.

Since you'll be using that same node set-up over and over again for each texture, it's a good place to turn it into a node group:

And thus by chaining a few of these groups together, you can easily randomise the colours/textures of objects with that material:


How Can I Rotate a Bone by More Than 360 Degrees?

As Markus von Broady says, "It's impossible to go outside of 360 degrees range in quaternion".
So open the N panel, choose Euler instead of Quaternion and enter the value you want on the rotation axis you want.


Are OBJ files exported from Blender different?

A problem blender has in comparison with most other software is its axis differences. Blender uses +Z up, +Y forward, +X right, whereas most others are different. Maya, for example, uses +Z backward, +Y up, +X right; C4D uses +Z forward, +Y up, +X right... It's a mess.

In the export settings, you can set which axes are up and forward. By default, they follow the convention that allows them to import into Maya properly, ie -Z forward, +Y up.

After Effects may be different. I believe +Z is coming towards you and +Y is up. The point here is that you might need to experiment with the axis export settings to get the proper orientation of your object in AE.

Key point to remember is that from the front camera view, forward is going away from you, right is right, up is up. A quick and easy way to test these settings is to just use Suzanne as a test model. She's light and easily recognizable, much more so than a cube. Once you get her to export right, just use those settings for your other objects.


Blender 2.8 Animation, Bake Action, is it broken?

After tinkering with this here's how I work with Baking Actions:
Once you have all your edits layered as NLA tracks and you are ready to bake down to one replace layer:
Make sure that the New layers under the Animation Data tab on the right of NLA editor is set to Replace.
In pose mode, Select all the Controls of our rig, or all bones.
go to Pose > Animation >Bake Action.
In the settings use "Selected Controls" it is way faster.
Also make sure Visual Keying is on
Remove constraints if you are trying to bake animation onto a constrained object. otherwise you can leave it checked off.
When you run the Bake Action script you should get a flattened replace track of your baked animation.
If you are having issues with this, feel free to ask for clarification !


Weird intersection or gap when I solidify

It looks to me like you don't have manifold(closed) geometry. you might have 2 vertices right on top of each other which makes it look like its manifold even though it isn't.

Try going into edit mode, hit A to select everything, then from the mesh menu select cleanup, and then merge by distance. you might have to play with the distance setting.


How to make an object bounce with physics

Seems like an old thread, I was trying to bounce a ball on a plane. There is bounciness property on rigid body. Changing it to more than 0 on both the bodies, result in a bounce


Simple Panel script is not appearing on 3d view

You are missing one underscore under the registration above the last line in __main__
It reads
if __name__ == "__main_":
    register()

but is supposed to read
if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


I exported the file as an STL into Cura, and I saw your problem. The way I fixed it was by adding a solidify modifier to both of the meshes. You don't need to add a lot of thickness, but you do need some (I added 0.02 m).
Let me know if it works.


Make a frame, cause modifier frame fails

draw the shape you want out in  Photoshop or paint then go into blender and try to box model the shape, the wire frame modifier will just turn your edges into shapes.


Read csv file (converted from excel) and set variables x,y,z etc as the cell values

import csv

def read_csv(file_name='your_file.csv'): # use \\ instead of \ in filepath
    with open(file_name) as csv_file:
        file = csv.reader(csv_file)
        return [i for i in file]

csvFileArray = read_csv()
row = csvFileArray[2]  # first row
x, y, z, l, m, n, p, q, r = row[1], row[2], row[3], row[4], row[5], row[6], row[7], row[8], row[9]

x = float(x)
y = float(y)
z = float(z)
l = float(l)
m = float(m)
n = float(n)
p = float(p)
q = float(q)
r = float(r)

```


Extra Keyboard Shortcuts for Porportional Editing?

Will the falloff pie menu meet your requirement?
It should be ShiftO by default:

You can search the shortcut in preference with keyword falloff:


did you check if your proxy picker is the same version as the one in the the auto rig pro addon folder?  I updated the Mike rig to play with it, and used the proxy picker that come with the Mike rig and I had the same problem


If you have a cut in there, you should have separate Mesh Islands.

Hovering your mouse over the island of choice and pressing L will select the Linked Faces. You can look in the Operator Panel for additional options that will limit the selection, like Seams, for instance.

Alternatively, select just one element and hit Ctrl + L to select the linked faces, regardless of where your mouse is at that moment.


Applying transforms automatically before I export an FBX?

They should be separate objects. Right now, by your explanation, blender sees it as one mesh.

  different mesh separate inside the same object

They are not different mesh. Blender sees it as one mesh when grouped as object.

In edit mode, select one plane at a time and hit P. Choose selection option. Now it's a separate object you can apply loc,rot,scale to.


overlapping edges made that error.

Try selecting it and scale it down.
you can use the uv sync selection as your help in selection.

also try to change your seam to a better suited position.


Soldify modifier leaves gap instead of thickness?

Since your mesh is just vertices and edges, the solidify modifier faithfully maintains the lack of faces. Therefore you will likely want to use 'Grid Fill' to fill in the shape with quads, or manually do so by selecting three connected edges on your loop and pressing 'f' to fill them in with a face (automatically creating the edge necessary to form a closed shape) and then repeating that process with using the new edge. Note that grid fill requires there to be an even number of verts, so try adding a new one if it causes an issue.


Is there a way to visualize border edges of meshes?

Did you mean check non-manifold?

Type select non manifold in search-bar (F3 or Space) in verts select mode(edit mode) when selecting nothing.

It will help you to select something not manifold including separated holes


Image Planes in Eevee Appearing at Incorrect Depths

This has a rather simple solution.

You need to set the material blend mode to Opaque.
When using Images as planes addon, it's set to Alpha blend by default.


How to resolve data_path when inserting keyframe in my situation?

You need .pose in your path, like this:

bpy.data.objects["Rig"].pose.bones['RThigh'].keyframe_insert(data_path='location')

This is because the Edit bones and the Pose bones have separate data while sharing some common attributes.


How to create fire with mantaflow, I can only generate smoke not fire

All you have to do is set the Type of the Flow Object to 'Fire' or 'Smoke and Fire' which basically adds a new volume (field) to the simulation (in addition to the temperature) for calculating the flames:


How to select part of a mesh by using a helper plane?

1. Lasso Select:

You can use Lasso Select with Ctrl + LMB.

Here a related Post for types of selection.

Limit selection to visible should be disabled to select all vertices in the Lasso area.

Image by iKlsR♦ answer

2. Object as Camera:

This solution involves a 2nd Object which is perpendecular to the Plane and use it as a Camera. That makes it easier for a Border Selection and the 3D Cursor is used for the orientation.

Position the Plane at the desired Location.
Dublicate the Plane with Shift + D in Object Mode
Rotate the duplicated Plane by 90° around the local X-axis. R + 2xX + 90
Translate the rotated Plane along the local Z-axis with G + 2xZ.

Select the first Plane and press Shift + S > Cursor to Selected.
Select the second Plane and press Ctrl + Numpad 0 to make the Plane the active Camera.
Select your Object, toggle to Edit Mode and Border Select B the desired Vertices. The 3D Cursor helps where to stop with the selection.

Vertices selection successfully


How can I mark the seams to UV unwrap a torus?

There are many ways to unwrap a torus (or any mesh). A lot of it depends on your needs and the kind of projection you are after.

One way is to mark one seam that splits the torus horizontally and one that does it vertically:

Then select one of the faces where the seams meet

and press A to deselect and A again to select all faces. That way you will have all of the faces selected but will also have an active face.

Press U to unwrap and select follow active quads

The result should look like this:

Form there on you can scale, assign a texture, etc.