How do i change the pivot point of the "Rotate" text fields in the Transform panel?

When you rotate an object around an origin other than the object's origin, it changes both the object's rotation and location.  As a result, when you set your keyframes, you'll want to use "LocRot" rather than "Rotation."


You can hit Shift+H, this works for all areas of blender which support hiding (editmode, uv-editing, sequencer... etc).

In Blender, if you know the the basic action a key is assigned to such as (hide H), you can try different combinations with Shift, Ctrl or Alt to often perform the inverse.


I assume you are rotating the bone in pose mode, for this you can use the following lines:

import math
import bpy

ob = bpy.data.objects['Armature']
bpy.context.scene.objects.active = ob
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='POSE')

pbone = ob.pose.bones[bname]
# Set rotation mode to Euler XYZ, easier to understand
# than default quaternions
pbone.rotation_mode = 'XYZ'
# select axis in ['X','Y','Z']  <--bone local
axis = 'Z'
angle = 120
pbone.rotation_euler.rotate_axis(axis, math.radians(angle))
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
#insert a keyframe
pbone.keyframe_insert(data_path="rotation_euler" ,frame=1)

the code from this wiki page , it contains useful scripts for batch job


Eyes won't show correctly (Overlapping?) (Transparency Issue?)

Eevee treats transparent objects differently than Cycles. They are sorted from front-to-back per object and do not receive any screen space effects.

This is fast and works fine for many cases, but it is only approximate and gives incorrect results for some object shapes. For more accurate results, enable Alpha Hashed transparency in the material. With a sufficient number of samples to resolve the noise this gives accurate transparency.


Update: Using a model similar to the one in the wikipedia article, I've come up with a complete solution. I also kept my previous attempt included in this post for the comments that refer to it. (Thanks Róbert and gandalf3!)

Follow the instructions below.

Gooch Matte

First, the surface normals from the geometry are combined with a Normal node that manually chooses the direction of the gradient. The dot product of these two vectors is normalized (0 through 1). When dot-product-multiplied against the camera's view vector, the gradient takes on the desired effect. I'm using emission to produce the color and then darkening it down to 10% strength by default (as is described in the paper). The two shaders are added together so that the blue lightens up areas that would otherwise be in complete shadow.

Gooch Glossy

To make a glossy Gooch shader, the Matte is simply added to a Glossy BSDF.


Change color space of image texture node using python?

The colorspace is shown from the image data, it is not a node property.

node_opacity.image.colorspace_settings.name = 'Linear'


How can I make loop cuts the same distance from the edge?

The way I would do that is:

Decide the height of the object, but leave the square shape
Apply two loop cuts
Bevel them
Grab one side
Move it on an axis to get the shape you want


Why is my object pink in Texture Paint mode?

try to add a image texture node in the node editor then select in the node your chosen image.

let me know if it works.


I would suggest using the shear tool to do this.

With the vertices at one end selected go into the side view (shear deforms based on the view) ⎈ Ctrl⎇ Alt⇧ ShiftS and then enter a value of 1 (or -1) to get a 45 degree angle. If your pivot point is set to median then you may need to move the edge sideways to re-align it or you can position the 3D cursor and set the pivot point before shearing.


Load .blend file into Blender as Python Module

I found an answer to my question.

Problem was, that Python misinterpreted the passed argument filename.
Assigning the argument filename as follows fixes the error.

filepath = "path\to\file.blend"
bpy.ops.wm.open_mainfile(filepath=filepath)


How controll RGB node with FloatVectorProperty (Blender 2.8)

The update method

We define a property with bpy.props on a type, (eg bpy.types.Material) to have an update method

def update(self, context):
    ob = self
    id = self.id_data
    ...

where self is the instance of the object type the property is on.

In the case of a property group, as in code below, where the type is a material, then ob will be, for example bpy.data.materials["foo"].slot_setting and id will be the material.  bpy.data.materials["foo"]

Very similarly to this answer the test code below sets all RGB nodes belonging to the material to the value set for RGBA.  For RGBA set the size to 4 on the float vector property.

import bpy
from bpy.props import FloatVectorProperty, PointerProperty

def update_rgb_nodes(self, context):

    mat = self.id_data
    nodes = [n for n in mat.node_tree.nodes
            if isinstance(n, bpy.types.ShaderNodeRGB)]

    for n in nodes:
        n.outputs[0].default_value = self.rgb_controller

class MySet(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):

    rgb_controller: FloatVectorProperty(
            name="Diffuse color",
            subtype='COLOR',
            default=(1, 1, 1, 1),
            size=4,
            min=0, max=1,
            description="color picker",
            update = update_rgb_nodes)

# test rego code
bpy.utils.register_class(MySet)
bpy.types.Material.slot_setting = PointerProperty(type=MySet)

# test draw code in text editor footer

def draw_color(self, context):
    ob = context.object
    ma = ob.active_material
    self.layout.prop(ma.slot_setting, "rgb_controller")

bpy.types.TEXT_HT_footer.append(draw_color)

# test call set active material on active object to red
ob = bpy.context.object
ob.active_material.slot_setting.rgb_controller = (1, 0, 0, 1)


How do I select all vertices in edit mode?

press A twice

If you want a simple horn shape you can use the Data>Geometry>Bevel slider in the Properties of the BezierCurve to give you curve depth. Be sure to set the Shape>Fill to Full, increase the Geometry>Bevel above 0 to give it depth, and increase the Geometry>Resolution to make it more rounded:

You can then press Alt+S to scale the diameter at the vertices.

You could even use a non circular Mesh BezierCurve as Bevel Object, and twist the vertices with Ctrl+T to get a cartoony twisted horn look.


I found the issue is using gdb ... When I changed the debugger to be used cppvsdgp I was able to get it to launch and debug.


running bpy.ops.graph.bake() in the console rises a context error so i changed the context using one of CoDEmanX seggestions as follows :

import bpy

area = bpy.context.area
old_type = area.type

obj = bpy.context.active_object
curves = obj.animation_data.action.fcurves
for curve in curves:
    curve.select = True
    area.type = 'GRAPH_EDITOR'
    bpy.ops.graph.bake()
    area.type = old_type

this will bake all the F-curve of the active object


Adaptive subdivision surface UV reflection problem

After spending hours more, i got what i wanted finally.
only what i did was cut off the area causing problem. ^^
- cut off UV texture
- cut off faces

But i still wonder why.


You can use an "action" and "action constraint" on the armature to do that.

With the armature selected, go to the dope sheet, select the action editor and use the stash button. That will remove the animation from the armature but keep it in memory for later use.

Now, enter pose mode in the armature, select a bone, go to the constraints part, and add an action:

Parameters for the image above:

The empty as target with channel (X location) and location range
The action to apply with its frame range

Once done for one bone, select them all keeping the bone that has the constraint active, then go to the pose menu, constraints then copy constraints to selected bones.

Back in object mode, you can now select and move the empty to trigger the animation.


This could be a math question, but since we are using Blender we could use drivers tools, f-curve tools and empties.
Analysis
Even though the objects center is at XZ (0, 0) the center of the first half rotation is at (1, -1).

We will need the trigonometric functions sinus and cosinus to get points on a circle.

Note that the object center and the center of revolution do not have a distance of 1. We will have to calculate the distance with the pythagorean formula.
Python
a**2 + b**2 = c**2

The are the relations of sinus cosinus and the angle. Since the values only apply to a circle with the radius of 1, we need to multiply if by the actual radius of the circle.

Setting up the drivers

Add an empty. (This is necessary, because of how Blender editing interface works. If the rotation drives the location, Blender 3D Viewport editing rotation control behaves unexpectedly.)

Add a driver to the Y rotation of the cube.Set the empty's Y rotation as the input. Use world space.

Add a driver to the X and Z rotation, use the same settings.

Add the basic trig functions as the expression.
X Loc:    cos(var)
Z Loc:    sin(var)

Our cube now move in a circle based on the empty's rotation.
Refining the expression.
Now we can work on the expressions. The Y rotation is negated (clockwise rotation results in positive values). Let's negate X Loc.
X Loc:    -cos(var)

Our cube revolves in the correct direction.
Next, offset the value to make our cube's center rotate around XZ (1, -1). The first center of revolution.
X Loc:    -cos(var) + 1
Z Loc:    sin(var) - 1

Currently, the cube revolves from 0° to -90°, with an input from 0° to 90°. (Marked red)We need to offset the rotation, resulting in -45° to -135°. That is an eighth of a circle. A circle measure 2 * pi.
1/8 * 2 * pi = pi / 4

Add this to the var in both trig functions.
X Loc:    -cos(var + pi/4) + 1
Z Loc:    sin(var + pi/4) - 1

Now adjust the radius of the circle. Our distance is calculated using the pythagorean formula.

1**2 + 1**2 = c**2
c = sqrt(2)

Multiply the trig calculated offset with the distance c.
X Loc:    -cos(var + pi/4)*sqrt(2) + 1
Z Loc:    sin(var + pi/4)*sqrt(2) - 1

The cube describes the desired rotation perfectly.

Adding a cyclic offset
For the X and Z Location it would be beneficial to have a cyclic input. The span of 0° to 90° from the empty should be repeated. I am going to use the modulo operator to do that.
var%2    ...    rest of var / 2, x in [0, 2[
var%(pi/2)     cyclic for every quarter of a circle, ranging from 0° - 90° (in radians)

The result is cyclic, albeit without an offset.
X Loc:    -cos(var%(pi/2) + pi/4)*sqrt(2) + 1
Z Loc:    sin(var%(pi/2) + pi/4)*sqrt(2) - 1

Finally, let's add the offset to the X Location. Every cycle of 90° we have to add 2 to all X Location values.
First, isolate the cycle of 90° (pi/2) using the floor() function. Then multiply the result by 2.
x = floor(var / (pi/2)) * 2   #
x = floor(2*var / pi)*2       # one step simpler/prettier

Add this to the existing X Loc expression.
X Loc:    -cos(var%(pi/2) + pi/4)*sqrt(2) + 1 + floor(2*var / pi)*2
Z Loc:    sin(var%(pi/2) + pi/4)*sqrt(2) - 1

Getting things more production ready
Add a floor plane on (0, 0, 0). Move plane (0, 0, -1) in edit mode and scale it accordingly.
Lock the X and Z rotations on the empty.
Parent the empty and the cube to the floor plane.
Looking good!


I'd do it layer after layer (they must be separate). You simply need to move the upper layer to the side one diameter of the rope per one rotation. Let's say diameter is 10 mm, so each rotation the upper layer moves 10 mm to the right (on your file). Then the next layer the opposite direction.


How to move or resize to fit to certain plane?

I think you should be able to do it with Snap to Mesh functionality in both Object and Edit mode (shift+tab), no need for any "work planes".

Here is the wiki page with a more precise description of the function:
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Manual/3D_interaction/Transform_Control/Snap_to_Mesh


Can't thicken parts, slicers don't recognize said parts

What you are asking for is professional help to make the model printable. The problem with your model is that your 3D Printer (No matter which kind you have) is not able to print that thin clothing. Actually thats not even the real problem. The real problem is that Slic3r or Cura can not know what shape that is because is has no inside. It is just flat. Thats why it doesn't appears when sliced. I dont know if you had a look at some other dressed character figurines, but they have usually quite thick clothing. For example habe a look at models of ballerinas on thingiverse. Thats why you tried Solidify right? But wait there is more! Not only has your object to be manifold (closed) it also needs to be one non-intersecting object to be sliced correctly. Usually when the Remesh Modifier works fine on your mesh its printable. It didn't for you right? Thats because you had intersecting geometry. As I am here writing, I am not writing this to make you go: "Oh thats impossible to do for me", so I have a quick solution for you which might actually work. If it isn't perfect enough, just make it perfekt in sculpt mode. So here is what you need to do:

Make a Proxymesh of your Character in his/her posed position. What that means is: Make a mesh that surrounds your character and is really simple when it comes to the polygons. Around 200 or 300 Faces will work well I think. You should use the Mirror Modifier to make the symmetry perfect if you can (I dont know your Pose)
Add a Subdivision Surface Modifier, a Shrinkwrap Modifier and a Remesh Modifier
Tweak the Settings. Most Important is the Shrinkwrap Modifier. You have to set the mode to either Nearest Surface Point or to Project. In Case you set it to Project, which I think will work much better on your model, you have to make sure negative and maybe positive is checked and none of the X,Y,Z checkboxes are checked. The Modifier will then move the vertices of your mesh along their Normals until they hit the Surface of your model (obviously you have to specify which model in the box Target)
Apply everything, go into Sculpt Mode (use symmetry if you can) and fix everything thats not quite there
Print it!


Solid Faces and Normals in Opposite Directions

I think you're misinterpreting what you're seeing.

I don't see any normals displayed in any of the images you've uploaded. When normals are displayed, they look like this:

I might be misunderstanding you. If so, please clarify.

I suspect that the normals are pointing exactly the direction you expect them to point (away from the visible side of the face). If you just Recalculate Normals -> Outside, it should correct the problem.

If that doesn't work, you should check for non-manifold geometry.


What is this G button function in blender called(happens in Edit mode)?

This is the Edge Slide function. Selecting an edge and pressing G two times will enable this. It allows you to manipulate edges along other edges, scaling then accordingly to maintain the overall shape while moving the edge. An example can be seen below on my mesh:

Hope this helps.

EDIT:
On your video, in the bottom left corner, you can see you have "Vert Slide" enabled. This works similar to Edge Slide.


Having two different wall materials, with graffiti on both

Welcome to Blender Stack Exchange!

The most common way to set this up is to have 2 shaders, one for the wall, and one for the paint.

Then, add a mix shader with both the wall and paint shaders connected. Then, use the alpha output of your image as the factor.

It would look like this:


Curves object's type doesn't have that panel

That panel is available only for Mesh type objects like the cube or the cylinder. Unrwapping is an operation related to faces, polygons, which in the filled and extruded curves are generated "on the fly" and not directly accessible.

Curves are an object type on their own, so you'll need to convert the curve to mesh in order to access those operators.


Keyframes for Light or Materials disappear

What you describe is the way blender works. The only selected option is just more specific than you are expecting. For the keyframes of a value from a node to be displayed the node has to be selected in the node tree as well as the object using the material being selected. So when animating objects and armatures the only selected option works rather well but for animated node values it can just make life difficult.

When not using only selected, you have other filter options to help find what you are working on. The datablock filters let you show just nodes (you want both material and nodes for material nodes). Clicking the magnifying glass shows a text input that lets you filter by channel name, you can also use ⎈ CtrlF and type the search string or clear it out to remove the filter. There is also an option to sort alphabetically but you will find it works on the object names and not each channel name.


Should I in general always unwrap my entire object in one UV map?

A couple of screenshots would go a long way in helping you explain your situation.

I'm going to guess that you have a lot of unnecessary polygons on your models. If you want your game to run smoothly or not require excessive computing power, you're going to want to optimize your models by reducing the vertex/face count.

If you insert a vertex into a side of a quad but don't do anything with it, this is no longer a quad. Extra vertices can cause shading errors and other problems when using modifiers down the line. Removing these extra vertices also helps optimize your model.

As far as the more specific questions about the game asset workflow, try searching up for "Blender game asset creation tutorials." They'll be much clearer.


Like Duane Dibbley is saying you are having the hand on the wrong side.
Try to attach the hand on the other side or enable 'Adjust Edit Cage' in the Mirror modifier:


There is an option to emulate the middle mouse button, you can enable it from the settings in the Input pane.
After enabling the middle mouse button emulation, you should be able to use Alt+Shift along with the left mouse button for panning the view.
See here for mir information.


Using automatic weights when assigning an armature to a mesh will assign weights to the existing mesh at that time, it will not automatically add weights to any modifications made after being applied.

By making changes to your mesh after rigging, you will need to manually weight paint the changes or redo the parenting with automatic weights to the new mesh. By reassigning the armature to the mesh you won't get duplicate armature modifiers or vertex groups, but you will most likely loose any manual adjustments you may have made to weight painting after doing automatic weights.


Why was the visibility of objects in 3d Viewport restricted to a cone form?

Don't know what was that, but I think I fixed it:

View -> Toggle Quad View

... objects visibility was still restricted to lie within that pyramid, but it was visible from 4 different sides
View -> Toggle Quad View (again)

... can see everything now


your "very simple scene" has 2.6 Mio vertices. And if the animation is running in the viewport already very slow...you should think twice before rendering and check what's going on. So decrease your number of vertices e.g. by decreasing your subdivision surface modifier to values 0/0 - because it is not necessary. Then it renders pretty quick.

after setting the values to 0 you got:


How can I cast shadow on background with nodes

Once you have your subject cut out, you can use its alpha channel to make a shadow layer with the compositor:

After the color keying is taken care of, use the Separate RGBA node to get the alpha channel.
Run it through a translate node so you can move the shadow.
The alpha channel will need to be inverted with an invert node.
Multiply the shadow with the background and use the multiply factor to control the opacity of the shadow.
Run the shadow-background and color key results through an alpha over node to put the color keyed result over the background-shadow.


The screens can be be deleted by clicking the X button or added by the + button on the info header , when you create new one you should save the start-up file to keep it for other sessions

To get the the default screens back you have to reset all the user settings to default from File->Load Factory Settings


The short answer is "yes."

The longer answer is "it depends on exactly how you want to do it."

If you can be a bit more specific about what kind of data you're wanting to import, that'd be really helpful. You can get just about anything you want into Blender, but it might be simpler to pre-process it with another application. Knowing what that is and where it comes from will help us to make some recommendations.

If you can be a bit more specific about your intended result, that'd be really helpful. Blender can do real-time 3D as well as feature-film-quality video... and anything in between. More information will make it easier to be more helpful.

As for the best place to start, I would NOT (perhaps surprisingly) recommend studying the Python API. It has a Python API. That's really about all you need to know. It can do anything Python can do, so technically you can literally do almost anything you want with Blender. You might even be able to write an Operating System with it... though I don't know how much help Blender would be in that process.

Generically, the best place to start would be the Blender Manual. Figure out what Blender does and how it does it. Then you will have a much better idea of whether or not you want to use it for your project.

Hope that helps!


Increasing resolution divisions in domain and, in smoke high resolution fixed the problem.

Thanks to Merlin.


i want to turn an open edge loop into a single vertex, how do i do this

Hit ⎇ AltM to merge the selected vertices into one. Or use the menu item Mesh > Vertices > Merge.


How to get a live preview for material library?

When you press Z, you'll see the 4 viewport options (render, solid, wire, and material), select the material option and boom, you'll be able to preview your materials in the 3D viewport. You can also hold Z, hover your mouse the viewport you want to view, then let go of Z (that's a faster way if you are always quickly switching between viewports).


how to smooth zoom in on a movie clip using transform scale in video sequence editor?

Have you tried to do linear interpolation in the graph editor?
Press A to select all, then V> Vector.

Optionally, after the previous steps: Shift+E> Linear extrapolation.


Your issue is, you baked only the "diffuse: color", which is only the raw color that the render engine is supposed to use, in addition to other shading infos, to create the final result. If you want the final result, you need to do another kind of baking.
Now the question is, do you want something static that doesn't react to lights, or do you want to keep your model's surface reactive to its surroundings?
If you want something static, make a "combined" baking. It will bake the final result into one texture file. Be aware though, it really does bake the "final" result. Which includes

little shadows created with the lights bouncing on your bump maps
global illuminations
reflections
subsurface scattering

All will be baked and fixed in stone inside one map and nothing will adapt anymore. It will turn your model into a painted statue.
If however you want to keep your model's material simple yet dynamic as it should to its environment, then you need to basically bake the raw data that should be plugged in a principled shader. Which basically is:

albedo data (raw color without shadows)
metallic data if any
specular
roughness
bump / normal / displacement data

And so on as you need.


Empty mesh after "Mesh from Curve" (Alt+C)

You have to fill your bezier curve before converting it to mesh: Select your curve then go in Properties > Data > Shape > 2D with Fill = Back, for example


How do I create a radial metallic gear material procedurally?

Here I'm converting Generated Coordinates to something like Object Coordinates so this should work on any size of gear.
A Gradient Texture set to Radial gives us this output.

If we feed this into a Noise Texture we get this.

We can mix in a bit of the regular coordinate space to give some irregularity.

And here I've used this output to drive the base color between two shades of brown, the roughness, and a Bump Node.  I've also used a bit of regular ol' anisotropy.

And since these are generated coordinates based on a bounding box around your mesh, you can easily use this on any size of gear.


How to use Snap to assemble objects together

This is no solution how this all will completely come together, just some hints how things work to maybe achieve it.
First of all, Absolute Grid Snap, you can find it in the Snapping dropdown menu.

To use snapping, you have to enable Snap (the magnet to the left of the Snapping options. This way snapping is used whenever you move the object (or rotate or scale if you checked that, too). If you don't want permanent snapping, disable the magnet and hold Ctrl when moving objects for temporary snapping.
Now, in Object Mode the origin point is snapping to the grid (if Absolute Grid Snapping is enabled), for example X=1, X=2, X=3 etc. or to to full increments of Blender units relative to the starting point of the movement (e.g. move 1m, 2m, 3m).
Now to position your elements where you want them with Grid Snapping you have to make sure that their origin points are positioned so that this might work and that the objects' dimensions are maybe full increments of the grid as well.
Another way would be setting the Snapping to vertices, edges or faces and try if this works better for you. With vertices enabled, one corner vertex of a cube snaps to another corner vertex of a cube, no matter where their origins are or how they are positioned on the grid.
The only problem with this is that (at least I) sometimes don't know how to tell Blender which vertex I like to snap to which other. By the way, if you limit movement say to X direction, you can make vertices snap to line up with another on X, but not fall together in the exact same position.


Why my volume nodes not working in blender?

Eevee is still limited, you can't use volumetrics for other shapes than cubes, plus keep in mind that you need to increase the Sampling to get a better result. Also play with the Volumetrics > Tile Size, lower looks better, and Samples:

That said, you have new objects, ShiftA > Volume > Empty that allow you to create custom volumetric shapes. Once created, give it a modifier > Mesh to Volume, in your scene select an object as Object of your modifier, then hide the object, and you have your custom volumetric:


This is because you modified the mesh in some way after changing the physics Type. To fix, just simply apply the scale on the object, you can quickly do this with CtrlA > Scale or from the 3d view header choose Object > Apply > Scale.


You have to pass your parameters as keyword arguments. See api docs

The correct call should be bpy.ops.wm.save_as_mainfile(filepath=your_path)


How can I get Sculptris textures to work in Blender?

For textures, there are more problems; the actual UV texture maps Scultptris makes are a cacophony of random shards that are stitched together only by the object mapping code Sculptris provides.

This is a problem for Blender, which expects textures to be a more unified 'wrapper' (as you know).
The means, by using the above technique, your texture ceases to be a single smooth surface and instead shows its true form- disjointed shards.

I have two possible solutions;

1- tested and very successful- but a little work intensive.
In short, you flatten the (original) Sculptris model, take a screenshot and use photoshop to put the pieces together.
You don't need to do much re-fitting to the UV map IF you specifically use 'squash' type modifiers that simultaneously flattens the object while spreading it out- often these coincidentally mostly fit the flattened UV map already, at least on simplified objects. It will require a bit of 'hiding' or temporarily deleting vertices so you can squash the surfaces to get some flat angles, so keep in mind as the complexity of the object increases, so does this conversion process.

2- Untested.
It could be possible to bake the original's texture onto a lower poly 'fake' copy positioned over it, but I haven't tried it. If my theory is correct, this should essentially convert the half-pregnant Sculptris texture into a nice, flat Blender one, provided you made the necessary seams on the object to bake onto.

I should point out that at the end of production, you will want to have NO SCULPTRIS files, and everything converted into a Blender UV map, to be applied strictly to BLENDER objects.

I hope this helps, and good luck!


Transform object to put two faces into same plane (Blender 2.8)

If you don't mind, or want to, align the left object's local axes to one of its faces,then you can use a method like this one

However, if you want to retain the left object's local axis orientation with respect to its mesh, you can hand over the job of alignment to an intermediate parent object.

In Edit Mode, select the face you want to align. ShiftS Cursor to selected, ShiftNumpad 7 align the view to the face.
Back in Object Mode, ShiftA with 'Align to View' checked, create a helper cube, centered and correctly oriented:

If you like, at this stage, you could rotate the helper 180 around its Y or X, in Object Mode, so its Z is pointing into the face to be aligned.

CtrlP and 'Keep Transform', make the new helper parent to the left object.
In Edit Mode, select the target face on the right object, and create a Custom Orientation from it. (2.79, Ctrl Alt Space, 2.8, Header, Transform Orientation dropdown, '+').
Make sure it's in use for the next step.

With the helper selected, Header > Object menu > Transform > 'Align to Custom Orientation'. Now the objects' rotations are aligned...

... you can send the cursor to wherever you would like to snap the left object's face to, and snap the helper to the cursor..

..before AltP un-parenting the left object with 'Keep transform', and deleting the helper.


Is it possible to separate part of a joined mesh corresponding to it's assigned material?

Select a vertex/edge/face that has the material you want to separate, then press P and choose the Material option. This will separate any faces that have that material into a new object, and you only have to select one.


Unwrapping all objects inside of the same UV space

well, after my short experience with blender i do believe UV unwrapping every single object would allow for more customisation.

You would be able to make better use of Textures and Maps (Normal, specular, etc.) while keeping a reasonable amount of control.

Furthermore, applying one UV Map to the whole room would certainly be messy. You would lose sight of what's what very quickly.

BTW I'm a beginner myself, so pls don't hate.

EDIT: Don't Game Engines also differentiate between objects (except maybe for complete static rooms etc.) ?


Environmental Texture (HDRI Background) not Rendering in Cycles

If you replace your diffuse shader with a background shader it should work.


How does Manhattan and Euclidean distance combine to control grease pencil input?

On this picture from Wikipedia green is Euclidean distance , rest - Manhattan distances. If the square was 10 by 10, then  Mathattan distance is 20, Euclidean sqrt(200), so around 14. So Euclidean distance  will be the real distance the mouse traveled, Manhattan - the number of pixels it travelled. Although it seems Blender uses the number of pixels per axis (probably taking maximum rather than summing them). In this case Manhattan distance will be 10.


how to merge faces to make the final face subdividable

1/ is the face you are starting from
2/ is the result you have with a subdivision
3/ shows 1 triangulated (the inner geometry of the 1 ngon)
4/ the result that is obtained applying a subdivision to 3

You may proceed with a shape composed of 3 squares or rectangles, like this below :

1/ no more ngons but 3 quads
2/ the result after a subdivision


Start blender from a terminal.  And see if any errors show up.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.79/render/workflows/command_line.html
Platforms
How to actually execute Blender from the command line depends on the platform and where you have installed Blender. Here are basic instructions for the different platforms.
Linux
Open a terminal, then go to the directory where Blender is installed, and run Blender like this:
cd <blender installation directory>
./blender

If you have Blender installed in your PATH (usually when Blender is installed through a distribution package), you can simply run:
blender

macOS
Open the terminal application, go to the directory where Blender is installed, and run the executable within the app bundle, with commands like this:
cd /Applications/Blender
./blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender

If you need to do this often, you can make an alias so that typing just blender in the terminal works. For that you can run a command like this in the terminal (with the appropriate path).
echo "alias blender=/Applications/Blender/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender" >> ~/.bash_profile

If you then open a new terminal, the following command will work:
blender
MS-Windows
Open the Command Prompt, go to the directory where Blender is installed, and then run Blender:
cd c:\<blender installation directory>
blender

You can also add the Blender folder to your system PATH so that do you do not have to cd to it each time.
You can also try to reset user preferences (this will reset blender to stock)
https://www.katsbits.com/codex/userpref/


use the CPU
she will be faster,
leave the video card just for video,
blender works best with CPU


Confusion over animations in the Dope Sheet and NLA Editor

The action that will be played will be the priority one on the NLA, i.e. the one on top track, except:

1: If you've selected a strip in the NLA and pressed tab to edit its action in the Dopesheet/Action Editor. To come back to the normal NLA running, press tab again on the NLA (or press the X button on the right of the action name in the Dopesheet/Action Editor).
2: If you've loaded an animation in the Dopesheet/Action Editor mode from the dropdown menu. To come back to the normal NLA running, press the X button on the right of the action name.

But be careful: If the animation you've selected misses keyframes for some of its bones, these bones may be playing some inexplicable keyframes, actually coming from other NLA strips below your one or from previous animation. To prevent this to happen you can press the star icon of your track or mute the others. But the best thing to do is to keyframe your whole armature in Pose mode, at the beginning of each action, to make sure that no bone will inherit pose from another action, unless you have a good reason not to.

Also, about NLA strips: If you want the keyframes of an animation strip to continue to influence the armature even after the end of the strip length, choose the Hold option in the Extrapolation dropdown menu of the Properties panel of the NLA (activate with N > Animations > Active Strip.

About actions: Don't forget to press the F button on the right of the action name, in the Dopesheet/Action Editor mode. This way you're sure this action won't be deleted when you'll reopen your file, even if it's not used anywhere.

About your foot hobbling, it happens in the middle of your action, frame 20 when the left foot is forward. To fix it, go in Pose mode, select all the bones at frame 0 (or at least the leg bones), ctrlC, come to frame 20, where the pose is supposed to be inverted, select all your bones and press shiftctrlV, then i to keyframe the pose. It works.


Speed up I/O when using cached simulations

ok, although this is not an answer to your question, but i think it is important that you understand what is going on in fluid/smoke simulations.
First there is the domain, in which the whole simulation is going on. So every piece of smoke of fluid must be inside of this.
It "normally" makes no sense to move or animate the domain at all (from my point of view). So why are you animating the domain?
Inside the domain you can use inflows or geometry, which is the "real" smoke or fluid which then will be animated inside the domain.
You can imagine the domain as something, which is the world of fluids and all fluids can only live inside of that.
So my first advice: do not animate or move the domain at all. I never made it and maybe i am wrong - but i don't think it is a good idea to move it at all.
Move the inflows or your fluid inside the domain.
Maybe just changing this will solve your lagging problems. If not, just update your .blend file without moving the domain or explain me, what do you want to achieve by moving the domain?


few hotkeys not working and doing something else

It sounds like you have Emulate Numpad turned on, toggle it and see if that clears up the hotkeys for you.


How does the Projected (2D) mode of the Proportional Editing works?

To explain it, here's an example of Connected mode. I'm pulling one vertex on the right side view of the image. Notice the effect on the left screen: it works like the standard mode for proportional editing, the vertices within the influence circle will be transformed proportionally.

On Projected 2D mode, doing the same action results in a transformation of all the vertices aligned on the view and within the circle.


How to Create a Vinyl Plastic Toy Shader?

Creating a Plastic Material in Blender Cycles

So I've been through the linked C4D tutorial and have adapted (where possible) the Octane setup that EJ uses to create the materials for the Apple caricature model. This is the result of my Cycles node setup:

Essentially, as EJ states, the plastic appearance of the material revolves around the subtle grungy roughness and bump texture applied to the surface. Although he uses a custom finger-prints grunge map to create a more worn surface texture, I have used a distorted Noise Texture node to achieve a similar, procedural effect.  Below is my node-setup for the material:

To begin, a Principled BSDF shader is added and connected to the Material Output node, and a desirable colour is chosen. From this, the first Noise Texture is thrown through a Color Ramp node and overlaid over a Roughness value, defined with the Value node. The purpose of this is to allow you to tweak the overall roughness of the plastic material and have it respond normally, yet with the texture intensity reacting procedurally on top. It's a subtle effect, but really goes a long way in adding realism (even if the even result is a stylized character!).
The second Noise Texture generates a much more defined and uniform pattern that is a lot smaller, and helps to add the subtle surface bumps on the plastic (shown in the close-up images) that would be created in the real world forming process. This texture is connected to a Bump node and then to the Normal input of the original Principled BSDF shader.

And that's about it! It's a fairly simple shader, however the combinations of nodes used, as well as the flexibility of the Principled BSDF shader, allow for different layered variations to be easily created and adapted to your needs. I've also uploaded my .blend file which you can download and play about with.


How to load a render from cloud-servis into compositor with passes?

You have to render into OpenEXR  Multilayer (.EXR) output format to keep passes in saved file.
(PNG can't store these layers / passes.)

To see Backdrop you have to connect Viewer node.
(with Node Wrangler addon enabled, press Ctrl+Shift)


Blender bakes based on the objects and their surface, it has nothing to do with the camera or the visibility. If you want to exclude parts from your bake, the only quick fix I see is to duplicate your object, scale all the UVs you don't want to one px and re-bake.


How to pan UV map with mouse movement in UV Editor

You can pan around the UV Editor(and any other 2D view) with the Middle Mouse Button.


scn = bpy.context.scene
wd = scn.world
envnt = bpy.data.worlds[wd.name].node_tree
map_node = envnt.nodes['Mapping']
map_node.inputs['Rotation'].default_value.x = <x value of rotation>
map_node.inputs['Rotation'].default_value.y = <y value of rotation>
map_node.inputs['Rotation'].default_value.z = <z value of rotation>
map_node.inputs['Rotation'].keyframe_insert("default_value", frame=<frame number>)


Create the rope using a string of vertices controlled by a Soft Body simulation and pin the ends to provide some control. Give the 'rope' thickness by adding Skin and Subdivision Surface modifiers and use the Collision bounds of the other objects in the scene to control the thickness to match. This is very similar to How to get the physics engine to wraps a string around the moving part of a motor constraint? but using two control points to control the ends (rather than bonding one end only to a rotating spindle).

Start with a string of vertices - the easiest way of creating this is to add a Path (Add/Curve/Path) and Convert to Mesh (Object/Convert To.../Mesh). Position and sub-divide the mesh so as to space the vertices a similar distance apart to the desired eventual rope thickness (this helps with self-collision as well as controlling the overall behaviour of the 'rope').

To be able to control the rope we need to pin the ends to something (empties) to act as handles. Moving the handles positions the end of the rope. To achieve this, go into Edit mode (Tab) and select just the end vertices of the path.

On the Mesh properties panel, add a new Vertex Group and click Assign so that the 'end' vertices are part of that group. At this point you can rename the group (double-click its name) to something meaningful like 'Pin'.

Select each 'end' vertex in turn, press Ctrl+H to bring up the Hook menu and select Hook to New Object. This will create an Empty at each end of the path.

In Object mode, select the path and add Soft Body Physics in the Physics properties. In the Soft Body Goal settings set the Goal Strength Default to 1.0 and the Goal Settings Stiffness to maximum (0.999). Set the Vertex Group to the 'Pin' vertex group created earlier.

In the Modifiers panel ensure the Hook modifiers are 'above' the Soft Body modifier.

Now, run the simulation and you should have a soft body string connecting the two empties. Moving the empties should affect the string.

To give the rope some thickness, add a Skin modifier and a Subdivision Surface modifier for smoothness. To control the thickness of the rope you can select the vertices in Edit mode and adjust the Radius X and Radius Y properties in the Properties panel (N).

For collision with surfaces, the actual collision occurs with the inner 'core' of vertices of the Soft Body (rather than its Skin), so adjust the Outer collision bounds to match the thickness of the 'rope' to compensate. To prevent the rope from cutting through sharp edges, enable 'Edges' collision in the Soft Body Edges properties panel.

Care needs to be taken with the collision to ensure the collision 'zones' from each surface do not 'leak out' of the opposite side of the mesh. See soft body collision considerations for further detail.

For self-collision, enable the Soft Body Self Collision settings and adjust the Ball Size to suit the thickness of the rope (this controls the 'size' of each vertex in relation to the length of it's connected edges - hence why spacing the vertices close to the thickness of the eventual rope is helpful).

Moving the empties along a path will now 'drag' the rope and this can produce the following results :

Blend file included

You can calm the softbody simulation to stop it wiggling around so much by adjusting the soft body parameters - for example, by increasing the damping or, in this case, increasing the Friction :

This takes some of the energy out of the motion of the rope, damping down its movement :

To texture the rope you can use Generated coordinates. The Generated coordinates are distorted to match the animation, following the motion. For example, consider the following material :

This uses the Generated X coordinate to determine the distance along the rope and uses the Maths Arctangent to convert the Y/Z coordinates into the angle around the circumference of the rope. These are combined and passed into Color Ramp nodes to generate the twists around the rope. This can then be used to generate a Normal using the Bump node and/or passed into the Displacement socket of the material to use the (experimental) True Displacement feature to displace the surface.

This can produce the following result :

Blend file including displacement

(Note : Blend file has soft body Edge colllision and self collision disabled to drastically increase speed of simulation - re-enable by clicking Edges in Soft Body Edges properties and re-enable Soft Body Self Collision)


What are these white dots around my wheel?

Those are particles, you added a particle system.

Duarte Farrajota Ramos, 2020

To remove it ...

select the object
go to the Properties Area
go to the Particle Settings
click on the "-" symbol to remove the particle system.


Looks like your space is set to world instead of local for your "copy rotation" constraint. I would also recommend changing the bone roll of the fingers bones to bend along the x axis.

Then tweak the amount of influence for the bones with the constraints applied.


Can I make & Export an animated FBX mesh WITHOUT a skeleton / armature?

you cant export animation without skeleton, you can use Mr Mannequins Tools plugin for blender if animation is not correct


Make sure your metarig's legs are set up correctly.
The only bend allowed in an IK chain is the one to indicate in which way it should bend. If you do it wrong, Blender will orient your IK wrong.
Also check your bones' orient.
As you can see below, I just shifted the metarig knees on the side and it generated the same way as yours.


How do I make a free form tail animation?

Parent an UV-sphere to the dog (?...sorry) sized and positioned that way, that
its "north pole" touches the end of the dog and its south pole is just a little
further away from the dog as the tip of its tail. Or in other words: The diameter
of the sphere is roughly a little longer than the dogs tail.
Parent the sphere to the armature in object mode.
Vertex parent an empty to the "south pole vertex" of the sphere.
Attach an IK-solver to the tail and as target insert the empty.
Adjust the chain length accordingly.
Add a softbody simulation to the sphere.
Make the north pole the goal for pinning the sphere at a stiffniss of "1".
Play with the other parameters of the softbody simulation.
By the way: When jumping around from one frame to a totally different frame
the cache of the softbody simulation can get corrupted and blender not alway notice
that ... which leads to very weird results or none at all.
The easiest way to clear the cache is to set the number of the last stored from
before the number of the first frame temporarily.
Don't forget to set both values to the length of your animation at least.


Way to detect if a valid GPU device is available from Python

A bit of ferreting around yielded this:
import bpy
import _cycles

cycles_preferences = bpy.context.preferences.addons['cycles'].preferences
cuda_devices, opencl_devices = cycles_preferences.get_devices()
for device in cuda_devices:
    if device.use == True:
        print("Device -", device.name, "is", device.use)

Basically, it will iterate through the available devices in the "cuda_devices" (you can iterate "opencl_devices" too) and "device.use" will be true if it is active. So if anything returns True you know a valid rendering device is active.
You can adapt it to suit your application.


GPU rendering for Cycles on MAC PRO (late 2013)

The original graphics cards that came with the mac pro's aren't up to much so I'd expect the cpu to render faster. However if like me you want to stick with the mac pro you can get an nvidia card and use their web drivers.

I think there are many PC cards you can put in there (you'll just lose the boot screen). I got a GTX 980 from Mac Vid Cards which is awesome to render on. Sometimes I get a CUDA error but generally a restart of blender fixes that.

Another option that I use is Ray Pump. You need to pay but it's really cheap. They've been down for maintenance but I assume they'll be back up soon.


In add-on script, how to automatically rewrite string in the bottom statusbar on each edge select/deselect in edit mode

I only answer the second one for you since it is a little bit hard to find. But it is actually very useful in many case.

status_text_set(string)

status_text_set(text) in bpy.types.WorkSpace(ID):

  classmethod status_text_set(text)

  Set the status bar text, typically key shortcuts for modal operators

  Parameters:    text (string) – Text, New string for the status bar, None clears the text

So we can bpy.types.WorkSpace.status_text_set("hello world") to set the status bar, cool.

Or since context got an workspace as well, use context.workspace.status_text_set("foo") will be a better idea when using in operator or function which has it own context. - @batFINGER

Important

Clear the content by assign it a None, or it will keep showing there until next function call. You should consider clear it after you leave your operator.


Keyframed object jumps instantly from one keyframe to next or not at all

Your plane is a rigid body.

You need to check this button to allow it to be animated :

Edit : when you append it into another file, this file does not contains a rigid body world (see in the 'scene' panel). That's why the animation works in that case.


Ok, so i didn't realize, but you have to add another shader such as the diffuse bsdf shader before you can plug anything into the mix shader, if you dont, then the mix shader wont render


How to imitate Ambient Occlusion in Cycles?

The future

There is a very easy way for versions of Blender compiled after last June: not just Blender 2.8 but also Blender 2.79's "latest builds" that you can download from the Blender Builder («These builds are not as stable as releases, use at your own risk.»).

The Ambient Occlusion node

This is the effect of the Ambient Occlusion input on a Emission Shader node: the plane looks entirely flat without AO, despite having a complex geometry (there is no other source of shadows; in fact, the scene has no lights apart from the plane itself). Cavities become evident with AO:

It can be made dependent on the local object only by ticking "Only Local".

Where to use it

You should use a MixRGB node in the Multiply mode to darken whatever color input you have with the "blacks" coming from the AO socket of the Ambient Occlusion node.

More on the Ambient Occlusion node

...in this video from the Blender Developers.

The past

There was a very preliminary "node based" solution also in the stable release, but the old Ambient Occlusion node outputs an Emission-like BSDF (), not a Color () or a Fac (). This makes it basically impossible to add your AO on top of other shaders.

It also doesn't have parameters!

It is basically only good for baking textures, or for shadeless visualizations.


Position the inflow as desired. In an Inflow section set X and Z to non-zero values(Z to -1) and see if it works.


The scene does not split for logic editing

When the cursor is in position to split the area, it should change to a cross.

If you have trouble dragging the corner, try  RMB on the edge of the editor and choosing split area.

To make clicking on the edge easier, you can change the line width to thick in the preferences.

Also of note is that in 2.80 the ability to split an area from the corners can be turned off.


When it comes to game assets there is one general simple rule. Use as many polygons as necessary and as little polygons as possible. No exception.

It's not only the amount of polygons but also the amount of vertices that matter. On top of that you also have to take the amount of UV islands for texturing (that means no "Smart UV Projection" or other fancy UV shortcut nonsense).

Also, don't assume the performance hit by the size of the object (in terms of screen space) in your finished game, neither the CPU nor the GPU care about that. They only care about the complexity as I described it above.

Continuous planks and bars (like in your fist example) through other meshes are the way to go, as long as they stay at the same position at their entry and exit points.


Seems like driver related dependency graph issues are common and often go unanswered on StackExchange.
I figured out a workaround:

Modified the driver script to only set a boolean variable to note that a change happened. The driver script also saves what data was changed by the driver.
Added a depsgraph_update_post handler script that does the actual mesh changes (see sample code above).

This approach fixed the problem as it appears that mesh changes made in the update_post of the dependency graph gets updated properly in the 3D view.
Takeaway: Don't modify meshes directly in a driver script because the dependency graph doesn't update it properly until after edit mode.


How to create a mesh programmatically, without bmesh?


You're experiencing a sorting problem due to Alpha Blend. Changing the Blend Mode to Alpha Hashed in the material properties should fix this issue. If you have to use Alpha Blend make sure that Show Backside is disabled.

Sorting Problem
When writing to the color buffer using transparent blend modes, the order in which the color blending happens is important as it can change the final output color. As of now Eevee does not support per-fragment (pixel) sorting or per-triangle sorting. Only per-object sorting is available and is automatically done on all transparent surfaces based on object origin.


How can I make this airfoil/wing with the help of a Bezier curve without having to turn it into a mesh in Blender 2.79b?

Unfortunately you cannot model complex shapes in Blender using curves(with handles) only without any add-ons. It is possible to use NURBS, but NURBS surface curves do not have handles on their points.

There is however an add-on Animation Nodes that provides more procedural modelling functionality and you could construct a surface out of curve splines using loft function. This way you could keep the curves and their handles that influence the shape of the surface. These would be the nodes needed:


Mesh goes dark blue after applying auto smooth, happens when i flip normals

You don't need to Flip Normal Directions, you can just adjust Offset in Solidify modifier tab. This method will allow you too choose which side you want to "extrude" or you can even have it in the middle (0 value).

Also you can check Flip Normals in Solidify modifier options, if you by mistake have flipped normals - this one will help you to make them right.


Animate objects created from a grid-mesh / plane

The principle is to use two "simple deform" modifiers:

one animated from a circle, bent -360°, (for the torus) to a half circle, bent 180°, for the sphere
the second to bend around the previous by 360° to give it the volume (torus or sphere)

The base grid is parallel to front view and centered to avoid the usage of empties in the bend modifiers.

Though, we also want here to join correctly the uneven grid borders (top to bottom and left to right):

which means we have to bend more than 360° to join them. And doing so, the mesh won't be a perfect sphere at the end.
So we need to compensate that. This is done with a "cast (to sphere) modifier" centered on an empty placed at the center of the sphere. This modifier is also animated so that its influence is null when the shape is a torus.
That gives us this setting:

Simple deform around X animated from -380° (*) to 180°
Simple deform around Z at 369° (*)
Cast (to sphere) modifier animated from 0 to 0.5
Weld to get ride of duplicate vertices
Wireframe

(* these values are tuned to that border overlap correctly and weld modifier works on them)


Get properties from different scripts in game engine?

Properties belong to game objects rather than Python code.

You write a property with myGameObject[propertyName] = value

example:

hitObject = sensor.hitObject
hitObject["detected"] = True

You read a property with value = myGameObject[propertyName].

example:

hitObject = sensor.hitObject
wasAlreadyDetected = hitObject["detected"]

I hope it helps


In blender 2.9, a Shadow terminator offset parameter has been added under Object Properties \ Shading. It is set to 0 by default, increasing its value fixes the problem.
Thanks to this, it is not necessary anymore to increase poly count by adding subdivisions.
Demo and explanations in this video.


How disable/enable an Output File Node from python?

You can set the mute flag of the Node to True.

import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene
compositing_node_tree = scene.node_tree
compositing_node_tree.nodes['File Output'].mute = True

Alternatively you can just call the bpy.ops.node.mute_toggle() operator within the compositor.


Is it possible to change image texture after Render?

First, check version of blend4web:

Before 17.08:

//load modules:
var m_tex       = require("textures");
var m_scenes    = require("scenes");

//get object
var obj = m_scenes.get_object_by_name("_object_name_");

//change texture in object
m_tex.change_image(obj, "_texture_name_", "_image_URL_" );

After 17.08:

var m_scenes  = require("scenes");
var m_tex = require("textures");

var obj = m_scenes.get_object_by_name("_object_name_");
var image = new Image();
image.onload = function() {
    m_tex.replace_image(obj, "_texture_name_", image);
}
image.src = "_image_URL_";

Where:

_object_name_ is the name of your plane in Blender:

_texture_name_ is the name of texture data block  in Blender:

_image_URL_ url of your image in web.

More information:

https://www.blend4web.com/api_doc/module-textures.html#.replace_image

Live example:

https://www.blend4web.com/apps/code_snippets/code_snippets.html?scene=change_image


Do I need to download anything else to get grease pencil working in blender 2.8 build?

2.8 Grease Pencil Branch is not the same as the builder.blender.org 2.8 branch builds, as you need to compile the separate gpencil branch yourself.


How to get matching voronoi texture in 2.8?

I would reccomend ignoring the other setting until you need them and just use the basic functions


How do you add beveled circled to flat planes?

plate_with_beveled_holes

Welcome!  I believe I understand your question.  Please see above link.

The idea here is to think about the mirror modifier.  As such, I started with a plane situated in the upper right quadrant (in Top View).
Then, add some extra geometry to your plane (it helps with the hole that's coming).

Pick a vertex and snap your 3D cursor there, so you can add a Circle.

Select the circle, then the plane, then go into Edit Mode.  Pick Knife Project to cut a hole on the plane.  The Circle can now be deleted.

Deleting the faces inside the circle leaves you with a hole!  Extrude the plane a bit, then select the edges of the hole and Ctrl-B to bevel it.

Now for the Mirror Modifier.  The key to understanding this modifier is that it mirrors around the Origin.  That's why you see me placing the 3D cursor and changing the object's Origin- I'm controlling where the mirroring happens.

Good luck!


Your objects are in other layers than the active layer.

Prsss the ` (grave, or back tick)   Key to make all layers visible.

If the objects are not rendering either check your render layers


Try this. Select the armature before running it (but the mode shouldn't matter this time).
import bpy
ob = bpy.context.active_object
assert ob.type == 'ARMATURE'
assert ob.animation_data and ob.animation_data.action
action = ob.animation_data.action
for fc in [*action.fcurves]:
    if fc.data_path == "scale":
        action.fcurves.remove(fc)
ob.scale = [0.011] * 3


Can't find a control for size under physics in the particles panel

OK...So I unchecked "Advanced" button under Particles panel and discovered "size" and "random size" controls were nested under "Render" in the same panel. I think that's how it is in my version 2.79 of blender.


Blender’s compositor has despeckle and other filtering tools that you can use on imported images. In fact you can apply these across the frames of an entire animation sequence.


You could have no lights in the file (and in the layer).


Hair particle system converted into mesh doesn't render

It's because there are no faces to show, just edges and vertices. Select your converted hair and press Alt + C and select convert to: Mesh to curve.

Then in curve option go to Geometry tab, find bevel and add depth to the curve.

The disadvantage of this method is that the tip and the root are the same width.


"Search for unknown operator" On Start-Up After Removing Module and Shortcuts

Search for "SCREEN_OT_set_screen" (literally, a text search) in your startup files. On Windows they're located in C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\config\.
The files are "userpref.blend" and "startup.blend", you can open them with a text editor.

First, backup these files to somewhere safe.

Delete all the text starting from and including the first "DATA" word right before the first occurrence of your operator name, until the next "DATA" word after the last occurrence, but don't delete this last "DATA" word as it's the start of a neighbor entry.
Then save and try opening Blender. Save your user preferences and startup file from within Blender, just to make sure.


F-curves: Generating transformation matrix

Found the answer on this page:

https://www.gregslabaugh.net/publications/euler.pdf

So, basically, compute the 3x3 rotation matrix using the formula on that page, and then add the translation coefficients to make it a 4x4 matrix.

Rotation matrix = Rz(φ)Ry(θ)Rx(ψ):
cosθcosφ, sinψsinθcosφ−cosψsinφ, cosψsinθcosφ+sinψsinφ,
cosθsinφ, sinψsinθsinφ+cosψcosφ, cosψsinθsinφ−sinψcosφ,
−sinθ, sinψcosθ, cosψcosθ


How would one make noise into fractal noise in cycles?

A hacky way I can think to do this would be to create a series of Voronoi texures, and combine them in a way that each iteration is a portion of the size of the previous (in this example each iteration of the texture would be one half than the previous one). Then combine the textures using an RGB node in multiply mode to bring all of them together into a single texture:

(click on the image to enlarge)

Though I'm sure that some of the very smart folks that actually know how to write scripts, can come up with something more reasonable.


Fluid simulation using imported .stl files does not function properly

The problem that you are having is that your fluid is not a high enough resolution. Try changing the resolution slider in your fluid physics tab up to 100 or 150.


which is best for blender rendering cpu or gpu

I’d go pure cpu for now, it’s quite easy to max a gpu’s 4-6gb ram cap

Whilst you can upgrade normal system ram

Plus cpu’s Are closing the gap substantially on GPUs in blender

To put it into perspective:
Amd’s Threadripper 1950x £800 can render a scene at 90% the speed of a gp100 Nvidia gpu (£4000 card 16gb cap) but if the scene gets over that 16gn limit then and wins hands down

Check this http://download.blender.org/institute/benchmark/latest_snapshot.html


How can I change the centre of rotation of objects during an animation?

Add multiple Child Of constraints and animate their influences as desired. But for the example usage above that's not required, merely disable the unwanted Location and Rotation transforms as shown:


Getting Error "CUDA binary kernel for this graphics card compute capability (8.6) not found"

Official builds of Blender currently use CUDA Toolkit 10, but support for Ampere GPUs was added in CUDA Toolkit 11. If you're compiling Blender yourself, you can use CUDA Toolkit 11, but it's not officially supported yet.


How do I access a custom transform orientation by name in Blender 2.8?

Helper method to get the custom orientation by name from the slots.

Can currently find no way with python to get a list of scene orientations in 2.8. Without I see no way around using a  try except clause.

Here is a "dirty" little script that sets the queried orientation to active if it exists:  Returns the custom orientation from slot 0 then switches back to current.

The operator needs to be run in the context of the 3d view. I used the area type swapping techinique to do this.  Not sure why this is the case either, as it appears to set the orientation scene wide, not per space.  Can you tell I don't use custom orientations much lol

import bpy

def get_co(name, context=bpy.context):
    scene = context.scene
    slots = scene.transform_orientation_slots
    old_co = slots[0].type
    context.area.type = 'VIEW_3D'
    try:
        bpy.ops.transform.select_orientation(orientation=name)
        co = slots[0].custom_orientation
    except:
        co = None
    # should be ok and exist
    bpy.ops.transform.select_orientation(orientation=old_co)
    context.area.type = 'TEXT_EDITOR'
    return co

co = get_co("xxx")
if co:
    print(co.matrix)

Thought it would work same as material slots where the slot's material name doubles as the slot name, it appears to be the slot "type" in this instance.

Neither of the following methods work, as a custom orientation, although you can define many, only inhabits slot 0 if set as default (selected).

import bpy

def get_co(name, scene=bpy.context.scene):
    slots = scene.transform_orientation_slots
    for s in slots:
        if s.type == name:
            return s.custom_orientation
    return None

co = get_co("xxxxx")
if co:
    print(co.matrix)

Similarly looking at custom orientation name

import bpy

def get_co(name, scene=bpy.context.scene):
    slots = scene.transform_orientation_slots
    for s in slots:
        if s.custom_orientation and s.custom_orientation.name == name:
            return s.custom_orientation
    return None

co = get_co("xxxxx")
if co:
    print(co.matrix.to_euler())


Height Map: how to deleted unwanted faces?

for 2.79 :in Edit Mode, hit numpad 5 to go to ortho view and hit either numpad 1 or 3 to get to perfect sideview then hit CTRL+tab and hit E to make Edge Selection then hit B to start the box selection tool hit X and select faces to deleted unwanted faces


time at the corner of the animation node editor?

The time at the corner is the total execution time of the node tree. It is usually measured in milliseconds.

Increase the number of divisions in your grid node and you will notice that the time increases because more processing is required.


Where are the instructions for installing the 2.71 Release Candidate?

In that folder you unzipped, just double click on the blender.exe file.  There is no need to "install" blender like you are thinking. Blender runs straight from the unzipped folder.


How can I make different particles follow many curves in same scene?

For slower particle speed change the lifetime value of the particle system to a larger value.
For faster particle speed change the lifetime value of the particle system to a smaller value.
The setting is in the particles settings emissions panel
So the length of a curve and the lifetime combine to create speed
The arrow in the Blender screen capture below shows the setting with an arrow

A previous answer regarding multiple Curve Guides ..

How to isolate emitted particles to a specific Curve Guide?

I am addressing two different topics since I cannot tell how many different concept questions are in the Blender question above.


OK, found out (in this video) in the UV image editor displaying your painted texture, menu image/Save as image (F3). That's it, save the file, your multi-texture is packed.

NB: If you paint the image again, repeat the steps but end with image/Reload image (Alt-s)


If you had internal GPU and dedicated GPU then something is wrong while detecting the GPU.
Disabling and re-enabling the dedicated GPU would solve the issue.

I hope this helps you


I figured it out. I needed to increase both sampling and resolution. Depending on the complexity of your mesh, you may not need as high a resolution. Attached are the screenshots for the settings I used. Note - these settings apply to EEVEE render.


Extract object properties from animation for each frame

I haven't tested your code, but if everything else works, you will be fine after replacing
location = obj.location

with
location = obj.location @ obj.matrix_world


Modelling pillow with cloth simulation model floating

Sure, for the newbies like me having the same issues having the model falling or floating when trying to use the clothing modifier/physics don't use a force field. If you have watched the tutorials on Youtube they always say to insert a force field in the middle of the model that has the clothing physics but in 2.8 you don't have to. I don't know if its the same case with 2.79b. Maybe I was doing it wrong but in 2.8 you only have to play around with the clothing physics settings and values. I tried without the forcefield and my model doesn't move anymore LOL. So the only settings I enable and play around are STIFFNESS and SHAPE.

I enable the SEWING option so my model gets sewn in the middle. The magic happens underneath STIFFNESS. I don't really know exactly how it works but changing these values will make the object you are trying to model have different forms. I can't give exact numbers because it always gives a different form when you change the values. The settings I play around the most are TENSION, COMPRESSION and BENDING.You can play around with SHEAR but for me changing the value to a lower or higher number will cause my model to like implode or something. BUT you have to keep TENSION and COMPRESSION to closer values or it will cause the same thing as SHEAR does. Like I said I was playing with these values so I don't know if Im right lol

These values that you input will go hand to hand with the subdivisions applied on the object. So playing around with subdivisions and the settings will give you different forms. IF you think the results of the form of your model looks boring you can always edit some of the faces by dragging the points with PROPORTIONAL SCALING with SMOOTH enabled.

Here are the cushions I modeled:

After applying the clothing modifier I use PROPORTIONAL EDITING with SMOOTHING to get closer to the shape I wanted. Maybe you guys can use the same thing. I'm pretty sure experienced people might know an easier way... Sculpting is a good option but I wanted to  learn how to use the clothing physics.

The only thing I would say is play around and have fun. You never know what you might discover. I hope this is helpful to someone out there and if you recommend another way please let me know!


Python: Store rotation / normal in bezier curve point?

Bezier curve objects can store a property called tilt.
It is basically a per point rotation value or normal that controls it's twisting on a per.vertex basis.

It can be set through the UI in edit mode under the Properties Shelf > Transform > Tilt or through the Python API with bpy.types.BezierSplinePoint.tilt

As far asI know curves don't support arbitrary data layers per vertex like BMesh does, but I may be wrong.


Why/how does tile size effect performance?

The difference and why there are different optimal bucket sizes comes from the size and design of on chip cache/memory of cpu or gpu.

The gpu has a massive amount of cores. But they are dumb and cannot do much logic. They have a big data throughput though - so that's why is good to give them a big chunk of data. There will be a lot of parallelization done on that data and each core will do it's dumb thing over and over again till it's done. The parallelization happens internally in gpu, so in reality you would have to assign like 2x2 or 4x4 tile to each of those little cores, but you would have 3000 of those tiles. But since they share cache/vram, you assign a big tile to them. Therefore the more CUDA cores, the bigger tile. It's worth noting that Kepler, Maxwell or Pascall cuda cores are not equal, so it's best to test the ideal tile size between generations.

When mixing different gpus (if you must), it's generally best to go with the tile size of the least powerfull one. Many commercial renderers divide the last tile into smaller ones, so the cores/gpus that are finished can still render. This does not happen yet with Cycles, so it might happen that the last tile can end up as a job for the slowest gpu, and if the tile is too big, the rest of gpus will wait too long for the next frame doing nothing.
The cpu has low amount of cores, but comparably to gpu's cores they are super-powerful. Each such core can operate on a bigger chunk of data, and since individual cores do not share cache, you have that many tiles as you have cores (actually threads). Each core has approx 4-16MB of cache and that reflects the optimal tile size.


You need to enable "Contact Shadows" on your lights. Select all your area lamps, go in the properties editor, light tab, and in the Shadow panel, hold ⎇ Alt and check the "Contact Shadows" subpanel.


Command for creating an object of custom size

Yes, you can use radius

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location=(0.0, 0.0, 0.0), radius=2)

See the documentation for more details.

radius in this case is the half of the cubes edge length, so

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location=(0.0, 0.0, 0.0), radius=edgelen/2)

would build a cube with edge length of edgelen.

Answer uses the Python API of Blender 2.72


Switch to Texture Paint mode and use the Save All Images button.  It will save any images that have been altered so long as they have already been previously saved.

Normally, I make sure everything is savable by preparing the textures in the folder on the hard-drive and then drag and drop them into the materials. This is quick and Blender will have a location to save them to when you use the image save button.


Quad Junctions. Why are some not working the same as identical looking one nearby?

In case anyone reads this in future with a similar confusion. The answer was that I had used 'F' to fill between the two vertices next to my knife cuts. But I didnt realise this didn't turn the one face into two. All I had to do was then delete them faces and make two there using the new edges. (hope that helps)


How to change text color with animation nodes?

You may use the Character Properties Output node as follows:


Keeping rotation values within a range of 0 to 360°

Modulo's partner in crime.

Alternatively to modulus could use its partner in crime div. a // (2 * pi) is how many integer multiples of 2pi the value is, eg if a = -3 * pi / 2 we get -1. If we subtract -1 multiples of 2pi  from a we get pi / 2.

a - a // (2 * pi) * 2 * pi


How do I make my game music keep playing between scenes?

Add a manager scene, where stuff should happen independently from other scenes. You can set and remove scenes, but the manager should be kept as it is.
On the manager scene, add an object that receives messages, and each message sets a property named song to a integer number. You know, if a message sensor looking for song_1 message is activated, sets the property song to 1, and so on.
On the same object, make a logic to play each song (on loop stop mode) according to its property number. You know, if property song is 1, play song_1.ogg, and so on.
On each level, make an object send a message at startup to change the song. For example, Always > AND > Message with the subject song_1, and so on according to the level.

If everything went well, when a level restarts and the song is already playing, it shouldn't restart the song, and when the property song changes the object will stop the previous song and start the new one according to the logic.

Using this method of a manager scene also helps to keep everything on only one place, instead of looking for each scene to change the song or whatever.


Sometimes an NPR  surface effect, or half-toning, etc. is best achieved by using a Shader to RGB node in EEVEE, or the Blender Internal renderer, either of which can feed the light-response of a surface (as a color) back into the rendering pipeline for further manipulation. This can't be done directly in Cycles, where shaders don't produce definite colors on their own - they are functions determining what to do with (possibly a large number of) incoming samples of light.

If you want this kind of non-physical feedback from Cycles, you can do it indirectly, by baking the colors resulting from shading into a texture before using the texture in another material in another render, or by using the colors resulting from shading in compositing. But that can be expensive, in processing time, and your time.

Here's a simple example using Blender Internal:

The sphere has a couple of mixed textures influencing its normal. The effect of the normal on the lit surface is then put through a color ramp, with this result, after a Freestyle outline is added:


This time I'm adding screenshots :)

Once you have your model assigned the 3 materials

1: Select the Head material.

2: In the UV/Image editor, create a new image for the head to bake to.

3: In the Node editor add a New Image node and select the Head image as reference.

Repeat for the other 2 materials.

Note: It is very important that you leave the Image node selected (highlighted) for each material. If an Image node is not selected then that material will not be baked !

4: Select all of the mesh.

5: When you have your baking options setup hit the Bake button. All 3 materials will be baked, each to its own image.

When the baking is finished only one of the three will be visible in the UV/image editor.

6: Go to the UV/Image editor and one by one select each of the three images and save them some where for later use.


To repair this kind of damage I would select all and press X (Delete) to start from scratch.

Very similar result you can get easier without booleans and with clean topology by shrinkwraped edges over your terrain.

Add plane, slice it by Ctrl+R with value of desired amounth of cuts
Select one short edge, search for Select Similar > Lenght and delete them (X)
Subdivide all long edges in amount of desired detail
Rotate in desired angle of Z axis
Add Shrink Wrap modifier with Projection type, Target your terrain, Z axis, Positive, Apply
Select all vertices, Extrude (E) in Z axis, move below terrain level, Scale in Z to 0
Add Solidify modifier to get thickness

Simplified sketch of proces

Hires model (1000 slices)


How can I make elbows and knees on this without distorting the texture?

First of all you have to transform the tris in quads, or you'll not be able to make loopcuts.

Than make loopcuts in the elbow position with Ctrl+R

What is important is to check the Correct UVs option in the command option panel. This will prevent distortion while working with the new edgeloops.

Same thing when you slide them


Library Override links broken, how to fix?

Most external files can be quickly resolved by using File -> External Data -> Find Missing Files, there's options in that submenu for changing the path behavior per .blend.
Linked Libraries are slightly different, they can be re-linked using the Outliner, by switching the Display Mode to "Blender File" and then right-clicking the broken library to Relocate.
This may preserve the Library Override and it's data, but the feature is still being actively improved, so some datablocks may be reset to their linked state.


How to display different layers in each 3D View?

Disable lock layers to scene in 3D view > Header to use local layers:

Then each 3D view can have it's own visible layers.


How to prevent users from firing weapons really fast?

This method explains how to achieve this result using only logic bricks.

First enable TRUE level triggering.
Then assign the number of ticks it requires before proceeding to the next action.

This should easily work in your case.


I found the problem. You need to bake 32 bit image (and save in 16 bit PNG for example)


I turns out that I just need to click on "self" on the modifer, no idea why it's not checked by default:

EDIT: as pointed out in the comment, the problem may be instead that the shape had double vertices (created when I turned the cylinder into a cone by scaling one side). Therefore, it may also be enough to remove doubles vertices (Edit mode > Mesh > Merge > By distance), thanks!


Bevel works on one side but not the other

Aand I found the answer by looking up a separate question I had (why were my planes different colors):

The normals weren't consistent, so I guess it was trying to bevel on the reverse side. I selected the whole model and used Make Normals Consistent, and then beveling works fine.


Move an object on an irregular plane with python

There's something wrong with the ray_cast, which messes up on a few casts. But I think this could clear up if placed in a modal operator.

I believe the script from this answer achieves what you want.

The result looks very similiar to your gif.

Convert the collision geometry to a bmesh, apply the transformation matrix and get a bvhtree from the transformed bmesh.
Cast a ray from above the Cube's location straight downwards (0, 0, -1) and check if it intersects with the bvhtree.
Create a keyframe.

import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils.bvhtree import BVHTree
import mathutils

# the epsilon value for the BVHTree calculations
EPSILON = 0.0000001

# maximum ray distance XY plane
MAXIMUM_Z = 1000

# make sure you have a Camera and an Empty named like this
landscape = bpy.data.objects["Landscape"]
cube = bpy.data.objects["Cube"]

# create the BVHTrees from a bmesh of the "sticky" object
# the bmesh conversion makes it easy to apply the individual objects transformation matrices
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_object(landscape, bpy.context.scene)
bmesh.ops.transform(bm, matrix=landscape.matrix_world, verts=bm.verts)
tree = BVHTree.FromBMesh(bm, epsilon=EPSILON)

# the main method for setting the new z position
def reposition_z(scene = bpy.context.scene):

    # create a direction vector, which points downwards and
    # a origin for the raycast
    dir = mathutils.Vector((0, 0, -1))
    origin = mathutils.Vector((*cube.location[:2], MAXIMUM_Z - EPSILON))

    # if there is a hit, move the cube to that location
    loc, no, i, d = tree.ray_cast(origin, dir)
    if d is not None:
        # assign the cube's location
        cube.location = loc

# remove all handlers, then create a new one with the reposition_z function
post_handlers= bpy.app.handlers.scene_update_post
[post_handlers.remove(h) for h in post_handlers if h.__name__ == "reposition_z"]
post_handlers.append(reposition_z)

Setting a keyframe could look like.

for i in range(start, end):
    bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].frame_set(i)
    reposition_z()
    cube.keyframe_insert(data_path = 'location')


How do I make these green lines in edit mode the default color?

I found the solution by looking for any buttons that said edge while in edit mode on this specific object. lol

This is how I got rid of the green outline on this object in edit mode.


Why is it making the same material for two different objects?

Select the first object, and in the material panel, click on the + button (surrounded by a pink frame in the picture) to create a first material (named Material.001) and change its diffuse color.

Select the second object, and in the material panel, press again the + button to create a second material (named Material.002) and change its diffuse color.

Each object should have a different color.


How can I convert a node made material into an image texture?

The method of creating textures is called Texture Baking. Different kinds of textures (normal map, specular map, albedo map, etc.) take different sources, from which you 'bake' the texture - it can be surface normals, materials, lights, etc.
How do I bake a texture using Cycles bake
Not every material can be easily baked into single image without visual loss.
Many materials have properties like refraction, surface normals, roughness and many others, which rely and change with lighting. Usually you need to bake several textures from a single material to be able to re-create it in other app's shader system.
You might need textures like:

albedo
normals
transparency
emission
sub surface scattering color
and others..

plus if the shader system is modern PBR based engine, you will also need:

roughness
metalness

and if it's specular based, you will need:

specular
glossiness

Cycles materials can have very complicated node networks, so what I recommend is to build your material using the new Principled BSDF shader, and when you are satisfied with the result, bake all the inputs of this shader one by one into textures with 1st method (to not do this manually you can also search for addons that bake textures for specific engines, like this Unreal texture baker):

1st method - bake as Emit pass - anything that goes in, you get exactly out:

pass through emit shader

fool-proof method for any RGB, B&W, Value or Vector shader input.

2nd method - render the surface into a texture - it's like rendering into UV space instead of Camera space:

You can choose to bake with direct, indirect (bounce) or both lighting and to include or exclude different render passes (diffuse, glossy,..).
This is useful when the other app's shader engine is not that powerful and you would like to bake lighting, shadow or other information into the texture(s).

3rd method - You can choose each pass from 2nd method as a separate Bake Type option. It's the same as Combined and leaving only that one pass enabled. There is however an extra option to bake Color only without any lighting taken into account:

4th method - Bake Type: Shadow. Bakes shadows, but only in B&W. For colored bounced shadows the surface has to be baked twice as type: Combined - with light source on and off - and then the result obtained with difference of those 2 textures.

5th method - Type: Environment - bakes environment lighting into texture

6th method - Type: Normal - bakes normal map. Depends only on geometry in the scene. Rendering samples do not influence this baking process.

For anyone not familiar with Render passes this might be confusing. This is how the passes work and how they are combined into the final render:

More on this and image used is here: Cycles Passes

Since you uploaded your .blend file, I can show you the steps in a practical way.
If you want a rectangular output like in your Jupiter example, we need to redo your UV unwrap. Left is how it is now, right is what we need:

Unfortunately a sphere geometry cannot be unwrapped like that, but a warped plane can. The more geometry towards the poles, the better it will be:
Rectangular plane into a sphere
Download the file attached, append the plane, unwrap it to the whole UV space (unwrap from top - Project from View (Bounds)), move to frame 60, apply all the modifiers and scale the sphere to your liking. Since your material is procedural, it will look on this new sphere the same (left original, right fixed UVs):

As a side note, there is an issue with the material. There are black lakes, that behave like a sharp mirror. These areas will likely generate artifacts when trying to bake some information from them:

Now comes the baking. Every equirectangular texture has to have a ratio of 2:1 (like in the Jupiter example), so I will create a new texture for baking with dimensions 2048x1024, color black (does not matter), no alpha channel.
Since I don't know how you want to use this sphere in the other application, I will go through several baking options and results:

Bake everything. Type: Combined, all passes and lights enabled. The resulting texture:

As you can see, the light is baked in, so is the darkness. If you view this texture on the sphere, you get exactly what you would render from the camera:

To fix the darkness, we can delete the light, light the sphere from all directions with the environment, and do the same bake again:

Now when we add this texture to a sphere and we light it with a lamp, we get this:

The lighting will behave correctly, but the material not. We lost the specularity and roughness information. The oceans are no longer shiny, everything behaves the same.

I guess the previous one is what you wanted. But if you would like to create all the diffuse, roughness, normal from displacement, etc. textures for some game engine for example, it is best to bake it from the Principled BSDF shader (very easy to get PBR textures). Luckily I was able to optimize your material - turns out it is just a glossy shader and some redundant nodes, you can delete them:

From this we have 3 inputs - glossy color (specular), glossy roughness (by inverting it we get glossiness) and displacement. First two bake using 1st method through Emission shader and Type: Emit option:
Specular:

Glossiness (in Blender Internal this is called Hardness):

For the normal map select Type: Normal and let the displacement be connected to the Material Output Node as is. But add a diffuse as shader, else it won't work (don't ask me why:) :

Normal:

Albedo texture is black, there is no diffuse component.
Now when using these 3 textures this works much better and closer to how the Cycles material behaves:


Is there a way to adjust the color of a texture paint I have painted onto the model?

You can do a lot inside your shader node tree with the Color Mix nodes and other things - here I added a few procedural textures on top of the image texture I used on all of the parts using Box Mapping with Vertex Color multiplied - you can see I did some color manipulation there too.


Consider a Curve Modifier and Array.
Similar to winding cable around a spindle.

Curve Above.

Mesh Component Selected.  Modifiers Array and Curve.


Making an emission shader which does NOT cast light

That's easily solved. Find a tab in the emitter's Object Properties called "Cycles Settings".

There's a bunch of things there that you can tell Cycles not to do when it munches through the object. The interesting checkbox in this case is : Diffuse. That tells cycles: ignore diffuse reflection rays for this object.


broken script to bake keyframes from driver controlled shape keys

Just some syntactic errors (missing indents, etc.). Should work like this:

import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
object = context.object

frame = scene.frame_start

while frame <= scene.frame_end:
    scene.frame_set(frame)
    for fcurve in object.data.shape_keys.animation_data.drivers.values():
        object.data.shape_keys.keyframe_insert(fcurve.data_path)
    frame = frame + 1


How do I show shading for test renderings

Ambient Occlusion can be enabled for the Viewport, which can help visualize distances between objects, you can even turn it up if you need:


No such composite node exists (I am assuming you want it for that pane, but most of these are in Material and Texture too). Here are all the different types of composite nodes in Blender.

Types of Composite Nodes
This section is organized by type of nodes, which are grouped based on
similar functions:

Input - Adds something to the node map, such as an image or a value.
Output - Displays the result in progress as a small image.
Color - Manipulates the colors of an image.
Vector - Manipulate the intensities and reflections of an image
Filters - Process the image to enhance it, working on adjacent pixels.
Converters - Separate the image into its component video, or convert formats.
Mattes - Generating mattes to mask off areas of an image.
Distortion - Changing the shape of the image.
Groups - User-defined groups of nodes.

At most you can change the name of the label.


Game Engine: Disable/Enable Keyboard/Mouse input

There is no settings that disables all sensors, or all sensors of a certain kind (at least I do not know). You can disable sensors individually when you use blender (not when your game session is running):


Is It Possible To Change Camera Interpolation?

You should be able to set a new interpolation per Key. The interpolation will then be effective until a new key sets a new interpolation.

Not an expert animator but I would stay with bezier and use the different handle types for this instead. It's less confusing and gives full control.


How to I rig a bone to the origin of an object?

You can use snapping and the 3d cursor to do this. With the object selected,use Shift-S and choose 'snap cursor to selected'. Once you have the cursor at the obj origin, you can select your bone and enter edit mode, and then select just the end (tail) or tip (head) and Shift- S choosing 'selection to cursor'. Incidentally, if your cursor is already at the origin of your object before you generate the bone, you might find it already orients where you wanted it to begin with.


Click the button to the left of the object origin button. This should make it so the objects move away from each other without affecting the size.

For Blender 2.8.x it can be found under the Options popover above the 3D View:


What is this blur/antialiasing effect in the game engine?

This is related to mipmap settings, you can change in user preferences > systems > mipmap

But this only work inside blender.

In game (standalone) you need a script.

from bge import render

render.setMipmapping(0)

related: Python API


How to automatically adjust the levels of a grayscale

Sure just grab a Normalise node from the Vector node category.

And you can apply this to colour images by separating out the value component.
In this example I have intentionally underexposed the source using a colour curve node. You can compare the results in the split viewer node.

A useful application would be to smooth out exposure of time-lapse recordings. Where lighting conditions and therefore exposure, change radical during a recording.


Expand box/UI/drop down in AddonPreferences to show more user preferences

Right guys, thanks for he pointers, batFINGER pointed me in the right direction, I did look at the link brockmann posted and have seen that link on my quest travels. I don't know if I've found the right direction as I've used WM for the toggle but had in my head that all when hovered would point back to preferences! BUT I've got the look that I was looking for, I was after changing the icons ref toggle state but cant get anything to work but happy as it is, achieved my goal, thanks for the help, here is my code/effort:-
import bpy

preference.py file that gets imported from _init.py
from bpy.props import ( StringProperty,
BoolProperty,
FloatProperty,
)
from bpy.types import (AddonPreferences,
)
class AddonPreferences use (bl_idname = package) if multiple file.
class PREFS_PT_MyPrefs(AddonPreferences):
bl_idname = package
# prop listings strings
some_folder = StringProperty(
    name="Assets Folder",
    subtype='DIR_PATH',
    )

# prop listings bools
bpy.types.WindowManager.prop_toggle1 = bpy.props.BoolProperty()
bpy.types.WindowManager.prop_toggle2 = bpy.props.BoolProperty()

# prop listings float
test_ing = bpy.props.FloatProperty(default=1.0)

# user prefs panel
def draw(self, context):
    layout = self.layout

    # prop 1
    wm = context.window_manager

    box = layout.box()
    box.prop(wm, 'prop_toggle1', icon='TEXTURE', text='HEADER', expand=False, emboss=True)

    if wm.prop_toggle1:
        box.prop(self, "test_ing", text='TESTING')

    # prop 2
    box = layout.box()
    box.prop(wm, 'prop_toggle2', icon='FILE' , text='HEADER', expand=False, emboss=True)

    if wm.prop_toggle2:
        box.prop(self, "some_folder", text='TESTING')

    # keep adding prop toggles!!!
    # Class registered on __init__.py file


You can uncheck "Receive" in the Shadow Section for the material of the earth.

Alternatively for the fire, you could uncheck the 'Cast' checkbox.
Whatever works for your situation.


What are the keyboard shortcut for Knife Tool and Reroute Node for the Node Wrangler for Blender 2.8?

As far as I can tell nothing has changed, the node wrangler works just fine.

Make sure the addon is enabled in the system preferences, it is not enabled by default. If you use it constantly make sure you save the preferences to make enable the addon permanently.

Then cut while pressing ⎈ Ctrl.

To reroute use ⇧ Shift and move the mouse across the connection.

To do lazy connect use ⎈ Ctrl
+⇧ Shift


Rendering one pass only to avoid unnecessary computations in Cycles

Cycles works by tracing many light paths through your scene and gathering information (depth, normals, color, etc) from the interactions of those paths with stuff in the scene. Simply ignoring the color information won't give you any significant performance gain.

All you can do1 is limit the number of paths you have to trace as much as possible; set the bounces to 1 and the samples as low as you care to go. You probably still want a few samples in order to retain a bit of anti-aliasing (16 should be plenty). If you have lots of motion blur or DoF (or any other situation where a path straight out of the camera will not always give the same value), then you may need more.

1: Without switching to a different engine which might better suit your needs, that is.


Animating multiple instances of a single armature within a single animation

Yes you could do that. The easiest way to do this is by actually duplicating your model and armature attached to it. So you will have ArmatureA (using ModelA) and ArmatureB (using ModelA).

They both need to physically exist in your scene. I usually tend to place them right behind the cameras, so every group/instance/reference/dupli object/particle or animation track that will reference them will not get them rendered accidentally.

So now you go to the NLA, Select ArmatureA and do animation in the graph editor. On the NLA save the animation clip.

Now, when you want to apply that animation to ArmatureB,  it will accept it only after you freeze the clip (it's like making a new fake user material or a new + material). Once you have created (frozen) your NLA track, on the property name of the stored track, select your ArmatureB. Now it should move.


Audio to affect Material noise / texture values

Go to the Shader Editor, with your mouse over the value you want to
animate press I.
With your object selected open a Graph Editor and
expand the options (left) until you see your keyframe and select it.
With your mouse still over the graph open the tool menu. (Either
Space, or F3 depending on your settings) and type Bake Sound, you
will see the option I posted. Click that, locate your sound file and
play with the options on the left.

It will replace your keyframe with a curve that you cannot edit after baking, if you want to change it, you'll have to bake again.


First Person Camera In Blender Game Engine

no need for a script to get mouse movements use the logic bricks :