Linking render visibility to viewport visibility in 2.81?

I found half of the answer to this problem here:
Why are there non-visible objects in my final render?

You may paste the following code line to the Python Console (at the
bottom of the Scripting view) and hit return, to make the render
visibility match the viewport visibility automatically:
for ob in bpy.context.scene.objects: ob.hide_render = ob.hide

As someone pointed out, in blender 2.8+ you need to adapt the code to:
for ob in bpy.context.scene.objects: ob.hide_render = ob.hide_get()

This will only do it once though and not permanently link the two. If someone knows how to adapt this to link them continuously, that would be great!
EDIT:
I wrote a short add-on that syncs the render ports with the current view ports through the click of a button in the collections panel. You need to click every time you want to synchronise.

Installation
If you are interested, you can download the add-on here:
https://github.com/Nayunis/Blender/blob/master/sync_render_with_view.zip
Just copy the unpacked folder into the blender add-ons folder (something like C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.83\2.83\scripts\addons)
Then you can activate the add-on within blender via:
Edit > Preferences > Add-Ons (in the left menu) and search for "Sync Render with Viewport" and tick the little box to activate it. Now the button should be there.


Armature Bone Global Local coordinates python scripting

Snap active pose bone to 3D cursor.

Using methods outlined in this answer, with a slight change to keep the orientation (rotation) of bone, and set the location to the 3D cursor.  To test run in pose mode with an active pose bone, which is snapped to 3D cursor.

import bpy
from mathutils import Matrix

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
pb = context.active_pose_bone
arm = pb.id_data

locmat = Matrix.Translation(scene.cursor_location)
# create tramslation matrix in pose space
matrix = arm.matrix_world.inverted() * locmat
# set the new translation to bone.
pb.matrix.translation = matrix.translation


How to change default scale of new meshes added to scene

If you change the properties of an object after you add it in the Operator Panel, the values you entered manually should stay until you alter them again manually. Try adding a cube, changing it's size from the panel, delete the cube and then add a new one. The new cube should have the same size as the value you entered for the last one:


How to Create the UV Grid Texture with Python?

Either generate a checkerboard and assign the pixels to a new image data block or just call bpy.ops.image.new() and pass UV_GRID:

One downside of using the operator is that you would have to supply a reliable (unique) name for the image data block otherwise it automatically gets renamed to Untitled.001, Untitled.002... due to Blender's nature of handling data:
import bpy
import secrets

# Generate "unique" name
image_name = secrets.token_hex(5)

# Call the operator
bpy.ops.image.new(
        name=image_name,
        width=1024,
        height=1024,
        color=(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0),
        alpha=True,
        generated_type='UV_GRID', # BLANK, COLOR_GRID
        float=False,
        use_stereo_3d=False,
        tiled=False
    )

# Get the image from data blocks
image = bpy.data.images.get(image_name)

# Display the result
if image:
    bpy.ops.screen.userpref_show('INVOKE_DEFAULT')
    # Change area type
    area = bpy.context.window_manager.windows[-1].screen.areas[0]
    area.type = 'IMAGE_EDITOR'

    # Assign the image
    bpy.context.area.spaces.active.image = image

Related:

Is it possible to create image data and save to a file from a script
How to open an image editor window and display an image file in it?


Python, Bool property without Load UI behaviour?

There is an AddonPreferences example here. It even has a bool property.

Access this property and display it anywhere like this (for example Panel's draw method):

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

    user_preferences = context.user_preferences
    addon_prefs = user_preferences.addons[__name__].preferences

    layout.prop(addon_prefs, "boolean")

    if addon_prefs.boolean:
        layout.label(text="checkbox is on")
    else:
        layout.label(text="checkbox is off")


Baking normals results in blank normal map

I went back through and did everything again except this time I did not apply the multi-resolution modifier as I did before and then baked it without the multi-res option in the bake (having it checked wasn't generating properly) and it worked!
However, perhaps I have a misunderstanding of what this tool does as I'm still confused as to why having applied the modifier prevented it from working? Shouldn't the bake just bake whatever information is present? Or does it only bake based on the difference before what an object is with and without its modifiers?


How to track an unknown number of objects in a multi-module add-on

@batFINGER suggested using a custom object property instead of maintaining a list - which is a good alternative for my use case and avoids bpy.props entirely. Below are implementations written with the help of devtalk.

Adding is fairly straightforward.

# add an object to list
obj["prop_name"] = 1

Getting a list can be done in a couple different ways depending on how unassignment is handled - adjusting the prop's value...

# remove an object from list
obj["prop_name"] = 0
# get list of objects
objs_list = [
    obj for obj in bpy.data.objects
    if "prop_name" in obj and obj["prop_name"] == 1
]

... or deleting it entirely.

# remove an object from list
del obj["prop_name"]

# get list of objects
objs_list = [
    obj for obj in bpy.data.objects
    if "prop_name" in obj
]

Either way, these 'get list' implementations avoid iterating through the full list of objects.


It turns out, all I had to do was click a little drop down menu in the compositing window and push TAB


Easy way to snap then merge a piece at the end of an array

On the Array modifier you can use another object as start or end cap;


How can I make a looping animation when dealing with random particles?

Faking a Looping Particle System

One possibility is to have your particle system use many particles moving very quickly, render it, and then cut off the beginning of the rendered animation in a video editing app. Here is an example:

In this short looping video clip, the starting position of the particles does not match the ending position, so it's not a perfect loop, but by having lots of particles moving quickly, the viewer is much less likely to notice this break in the continuity.

Then again, my computer is very slow, so it's possible the poor quality of playback I get hides the break in continuity -- maybe on a faster computer, it'd be too obvious, I don't know.


Blender render black sharp lines with antialias

At the end I found myself the answer by clicking random buttons and found the answer:
You have to tick the full sample under anti-alias.


How to reduce noise in really dark scene

Unfortunately, there's not a way to get the render less noisy other than increasing the number of samples.  One of the reasons for this is that most of the light in the dark areas is coming from indirect bounces.  There are a few ways to clean it up though.

First, you can use Render Passes:

This allows you to edit individual passes such as Diffuse Indirect to try to blur the noise.  This is pretty effective but it can also smear some detail if you're not careful.  The main problem with this approach is the amount of "noding" you must do to recombine the passes.  The good thing is that you can use Node Groups to make it look nicer [ Can I make a custom node from a group and have that available in other projects? ]

Here's the node tree for this.  It's a lot simpler than it looks.  Basically you just add the direct and indirect pass for each shader and then multiply it by the color pass for that shader.  I made this node tree into a group:

The only purpose of this node group is to combine all the passes into the final image.

Use the Depth and Normal passes to create your Determinator for the Bilateral Blur node like so and feed them into the Node Group above:

At a minimum I usually use one Bilateral Blur node for the Diffuse and Glossy Indirect passes.  This method gives that most control over denoising.

However, in the 2.79 Beta version, there's a new Denoising filter included with Blender that is quite effective: [ https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.79/Cycles ]

It can use your GPU to calculate the denoising of tiles, too.  The problem with this method is that it's processed as it renders.  So if you don't like the options you've chosen, you have to render the entire scene again.  That can get old really fast, especially if you have to wait ten minutes per render.  It also adds significant time to your render but not as much as a comparable amount of samples.  There can also be some artifacting in glossy shaders.  I've found that in really noisy scenes (like the one below) that it can look splotchy.  This can probably be improved with fiddling with the settings.

Here's a quick comparison of these two methods with a piece of a scene I've been working on.  It has bump mapped walls and it's very dark, so it can be really noisy.  In my opinion the Render Pass version looks the best and is much more versatile.  But the Denoiser is easier to use.  This scene was rendered at 800 samples.  I've increased the brightness manually so you can see the noise better:


At 3:22 he renders the scene by pressing F12.

You can render by

Pressing F12.
Pressing Render image in Info header > Render:

Pressing Render in Properties > Render settings > Render:


Array + Subsurf causes undesired pattern

Your source mesh has front and back capping faces, deleting those gets rid of the seams:

However, there's a better way to build this shape. Get rid of the cylinder, and add a bezier or nurbs circle. On the path (not the circle) go down to bevel object, and select the circle from the dropdown, and also check "fill caps"

Not only do you not need to worry about open ends of the path vs seams, but you have total control over the polygon count of the resulting shape. The "resolution" setting on the path controls divisions along the length of the path, and the "resolution" setting on the circle controls the divisions around the tube.


Blender fails to start at all (version 2.80, Windows 10 x64) - why?

same OS + memory 32GB, close down all other non-essential programs that are running in background. I had the same issue, nothing but a black screen for 15-30 secs,, but finally the blender main screen came up. I had to close it, then close some stuff running in the background ( had some downloads going, watching a video, but once I shut those down, it started without issue & didnt stop responding..


How to save each individual "object" in an obj file as separate obj files?

I created a quick scene with a few basic Meshes Joined together to form a single Mesh

In Edit mode I selected everything and pressed P to bring up the Separation menu and selected "By loose parts"

Now in Object mode you can see even the over lapping components are separate Meshes.

From the File->Export menu select Wavefront (.obj)

And check "Selection Only"

I did not look into it, but you may be able to use Python to select each Mesh in turn and call the Export module in a loop.


Objects messed up when I re-open the file

Because you have keyframed Location, Rotation and Scale values.
To see the issue you don't have to reopen file, just move on Timeline to another frame.
After Apply Ctrl+A All Transforms you have to set keyframes again I. Yellow color indicates keyframed value, orange edited/unsaved a change.
What is happening here? When you apply transforms they became to zero and  1 for scale, but unsaved keyframes remember saved value and when you move on timeline or reopen file, they "jump" back, so they are used like twice now.


Open the Video Editor, Add the PNG images to the track
Set your render options for whatever video codec you want to use
set your audio options if applicable and render animation.


mirror not working with armature handles

this addon helpes https://github.com/scaredyfish/orient_bone_shapes it makes the whole process easier.
it makes it so you just select bone and mesh and with a button press it applies the mesh to the bone


Attaching one object to each hand of a Mixamo action

I may be wrong but in my opinion it will be much easier to do the opposite, aka make the hands the children of the shovel, because you can't make the shovel the child of 2 different bones.
You could make the shovel child of one hand (the hand that holds the back of the shovel) and make it track to the other hand (the one in front of the shovel), but you'll constantly have to rotate the hands so that they fit with the shovel angle, while if you do the opposite, aka the shovel controlling the hands, they will always twist correctly.
In that case, and more precisely, make the hand contollers (aka the targets of your arms IK constraints) the children of the shovel. You just need to give a Child Of constraint to both the 2 hand controllers with the shovel as Target:


How to create a hard straight edge while keeping this sphere's shape?

Start off by adding a cube, giving it a subserf with a level of three, and applying it.

Then tab into edit mode, and use the space bar to search for the "to sphere" operation. Use this operation, press 1, and press enter. This takes our cube which was almost spherical, but not quite, and turned it into a perfect sphere.

Then select the middle 16 faces, and inset them a little bit.

Then extrude those faces back, and scale them along the Y axis to 0 to straighten them out.

Then add a subserf modifer and move the edges closest to the outside of the hole, out to sharpen up the edge, and then add some edge loops around hole to create some sharper edges.

Then tab out of edit mode, and admire your finished result!


Havent you entered the edit mode then hid the object and then went back to layout? The object stays hidden in edit mode so does in sculpt but not in layout, you just have to go to layout enter edit mode alt+H to make visible everything and then you can change to sculpt.


It sounds like you need to add an armature and rig it to your mesh.  The various armatures can be posed and animated independently although they share a single armature datablock.  The same with the objects instantiating the mesh.

I found a couple of rigging tutorials by searching for  blender armature rigging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9iL1hmJXrI
http://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/introduction-to-rigging/

And the Humane Rigging series is somewhat legendary

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE211C8C41F1AFBAB

It is entirely possible to place multiple independent meshes under control of a single armature by giving each mesh an armature modifier pointing at the controlling armature.  This still requires assignment of vertex groups, but you would have to do that in a single-mesh situation anyway.

An even simpler system is to give each mesh a "child of" constraint and make it the child of a single bone in the armature.  This is only appropriate if each mesh is a single rigid element, but if your objects are constructed in this way, you do not have to assign vertex groups.

I am not sure what problem you are solving with proxies.  When I am linking assets from external files, I often end clicking Make Local on the Object datablock (storing positions, constraints, modifiers, etc) and the Mesh datablock is still a link to the source .blend.  Changes to the mesh will be reflected in the linking .blend upon next load.  The drawback is that changes to the modifiers and object position would not be.

My suspicion is that blender can accomplish the vast majority of what you want to do, but some of the workflow steps are not covered by the tutorials you have read yet.


Rotate an object along face normal in the bge

Set up the logic bricks as pictured above.

This script will move an object (the cone) to the location of ray.hitPosition and then rotate it to point along the ray.hitNormal using alignAxisToVect().
For this example, the cone is pointing along the positive z axis. If it was along a different axis, I would have to pass in the second parameter to alignAxisToVect().
import bge

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

ray = cont.sensors["Ray"]
cone = scene.objects["Cone"]

if ray.hitObject and cone is not ray.hitObject:
    cone.worldPosition = ray.hitPosition
    cone.alignAxisToVect(ray.hitNormal)

Example gif, showing the cone moving and rotating to match the underlying geometry in the game engine.

Blend File


The my_node.inputs[0] is a node Socket type, and the my_node.inputs[0].links is a read only list of links from this socket, so your first attempt won't work, and you have found the correct way, which is deleting the link from node_tree.links as follows:

 # remove only the desired link
 l = my_node.outputs[0].links[0]
 node_tree.links.remove(l)

To find a link:

output = my_node1.outputs[0]
input  = my_node2.inputs[0]

for l in output.links :
    if l.to_socket == input :
       node_tree.remove(l)

Also you can check for the connected node: if l.to_node == my_node2:

See the DOC page for more details.


How do you animate material transitions (switching mesh object materials in animation)?

Great opportunity for you to start learning how to use nodes then!
Because the only way I know for animating a transition between two materials is with nodes.

In the node editor, add the two shaders you want (Shift + A --> Shader), then from the same menu also add a "Mix Shader". Plug in both shader nodes into the mix shader, and animate the Factor to control the transition between the two.

A value of 0 means only the first shader plugged in takes effect, while a value of 1 shows only the 2nd shader. Any value in between is a mixture of the two.

Here's how to do this in Cycles:

In Blender Internal it's a similar thing, only using the Material nodes and the Mix RGB node (preview during animation isn't as good, but when you pause the animation you see the transition):


Rotate a 2D surface around an axis to generate a 3D volume

yes, it is.
Just build that surface by adding a plane, add a subdivision and move the vertices as you need it.
Then use screw modifier and change screw value and rotation as you need it.
UPDATE:
to you second question in comment: i think, this is only possible with python.
To "quickly" "draw" vertices on a "plane" simply add a plane.

go to edit mode

press 7

Mesh -> merge -> at center

tap E and drag mouse to next point and release mouse

repeat step 5 until you got your shape

2nd possility:
Add Beziercurve

Press 7

Tab -> Edit mode

X -> Vertices

tap on draw in left menu

draw your shape

hit tap

object -> convert -> mesh


Can't paint texture but fill color works

It was up to settings texture mask (even tho I don't know what is this for) was set to black color/image, after removing painting works as it should.


You need to bake a copy of the node in a grayscale (where the value correspondes to the density of your grass), and use it in your particles' textures with the option to influence the density.


Which normal input socket should I use when I have a mix between shaders?

If you want to give the whole material a structured surface, put it into both. In over 90% of all cases, this is probably what you want.

But there are others:

If you want to material to look like the paint or glossy part is smooth and even and below that, there is a bumpy surface (application example: Wood finish in a car interiour), then add the normal map only to the diffuse shader of the shader.

If you want the material to look like it has a smooth general surface but a slightly scratched paint or top layer, it might make sense to only connect it to the glossy shader (probably the less frequently used case).


This addon called Loom is exactly what you need.
It allows you to specify ranges and specific frames that you want to render or skip. It's even possible to render every nth frame.

The addon allows to render single frames, multiple frame ranges as well as subframes, either directly within Blender's UI (as usual) or in a new terminal instance as background process in case you want to continue working while rendering.

From: How to render specific frames of animation


BGE Object List within a specified distance

You can do it this way.

Add near sensor.

Get the list of hit objects.

Script if near sensor look for specific property name

from bge import logic

nearSen = logic.getCurrentController().sensors['Near']
list = nearSen.hitObjectList

or if near sensor not look for specific property name

list = [obj for obj in nearSen.hitObjectList if nearSen.positive and 'property' in obj.getPropertyNames()]

Edit

The objects need to be set to actor so the sensor can detect them.

Download the blend to see how it works.

KX_NearSensor

KX_TouchSensor


I solved it by replacing the Displacement node with Bump node and connect it to Normal node input on BSDF. Here is how my node editor looks like now;


How to unwrap a mesh from view in python. blender 2.8

Use the mesh coords
The issue with your script is you are mixing objects and operators.
Here is the autocomplete of the project from view operator in the console.
>>> bpy.ops.uv.project_from_view(
project_from_view()
bpy.ops.uv.project_from_view(orthographic=False, camera_bounds=True, correct_aspect=True, clip_to_bounds=False, scale_to_bounds=False)
Project the UV vertices of the mesh as seen in current 3D view

Trying with C.object.uv. will throw same error as in question since an object has no property uv.
At issue with operators that use the view is they are designed to be run from within that view (it has context) via a button or menu item. Using in script will often require passing an override context or other dicking around, however for this would simply write the UV directly from the mesh coordinates.
To convert the context object to a mesh
>>> bpy.ops.object.convert(
convert()
bpy.ops.object.convert(target='MESH', keep_original=False, angle=1.22173, thickness=5, seams=False, faces=True, offset=0.01)
Convert selected objects to another type

So with a curve object as context object
>>> bpy.ops.object.convert(target='MESH')
{'FINISHED'}

eg this can be called directly after adding the font object and setting its body text.
Using the mesh coordinates
The UV operator template in Text Editor > Templates > Python > Operator UV  adds a UV that is pretty much an orthogonal projection from above as it uses the x and y vertex coordinate as UV.
Here I've tweaked it to normalize the U and V to 0, 1 range.  To have same aspect would scale by the minimum of the X and Y range.

import bpy
import bmesh
import numpy as np
from mathutils import Matrix

def main(obj):
    me = obj.data
    bm = bmesh.new()
    bm.from_mesh(me)
    #bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
    x, y, z = np.array([v.co for v in bm.verts]).T
    S = Matrix.Diagonal(
        ( 1 / (x.max() - x.min()),
          1 / (y.max() - y.min()))
          )
    uv_layer = bm.loops.layers.uv.verify()

    # adjust uv coordinates
    for face in bm.faces:
        for loop in face.loops:
            loop_uv = loop[uv_layer]
            # use xy position of the vertex as a uv coordinate
            loop_uv.uv = S @ loop.vert.co.xy

    bm.to_mesh(me)
    me.update()

# Test call
main(bpy.context.object)


When rendering fire and smoke the camera will not render the smoke/fire effect, but the viewport will

I can’t believe nobody answered you more quickly.

Cycles doesn’t support smoke/fire with GPU. You can only use CPU. I know, what a bummer. I tried to do a tutorial the other day and it takes hours to render one frame with my 8 thread system…too slow and I can’t afford to by a 28 thread processor. I also tried render farms which are quick and work but one 10 second animation in 2k would have cost $16.

Of course once its in HD you see all sorts of stuff you don’t like so you’ll end up rendering it 5x to get what you want so that would have been $80. Not bad if you have a paying gig, you can factor it into the overall cost of the project.

If you are like me and just dipping your toe into the water, you’ll have to be patient and wait for the blender devs to create GPU support. If you have a real project that pays you can buy hardware (lots of CPU’s) or pay a render farm.

Good Luck.


Split Screen Resolution Problem (Game Engine)

I have that problem too. Try making the focal area larger, although it may be an issue with having two cameras.

Although, the snarky answer would be to restore down the game window.

Or you could do it like MarcClintDion commented. But really, make a note of the position of each camera, and slowly move them until you get the results you want.

Also, check if it's only going to fail with width. See if you can't stack the screens on top of each other, and see what effect that has on the width.


Only when the walls are finished with a right click will the checkbox to close under the properties window show up.


Shrinkwrap is probably not the right tool to use in this situation. You're probably going to want the Simple Deform modifier instead.

If you want to construct your hallway using actual geometry, this is the way you're going to want to go. Arrange your panel so that it's centered at the origin, and then just put in the axis that runs along the length of your panel. You want the Bend mode for the modifier. Your initial mesh will have to have enough geometry to accommodate the bend.

After you apply the modifier, you will have to move your panel into place. The potentially hard part will be calculating the angle to feed into the modifier, but blender can help you with that too.

Turn on 'Snap'. Make sure it's set to vertex and enabled for rotation. Position your 3D cursor in the center of the hallway, and set the pivot point to 3D cursor. You can then duplicate a vertex and rotate it (in my case around the y-axis). Snap it to other vertices, and you will see in the top left the amount of rotation to feed into the Simple Deform modifier.

Once you apply the modifier, you can use the Snap tool to move, rotate, and scale the panel into place. I use 3D cursor as the pivot point, and Active Vertex as the Snap element so that I can precisely control what I'm doing:


You'll need to :

import bpy

Then get the object you want :

obj = bpy.context.active_object #The active object
obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube'] #The object by its name

Then for the object information :

obj.location #Object position rotation, scale
obj.rotation
obj.scale

Object faces are in data.polygons :

p = obj.data.polygons[0]
p.select #Indicates if the face is selected
p.normal #The face normal
p.vertices #The vertices indexes

The vertices and their positions :

vIndex = p.vertices[0] #Index of the vertex from the face p
v=obj.data.vertices[vIndex] #The corresponding vertex object
v.co #Its coordinates

It can be a good way to learn how to navigate through the objects hierarchy using the Python console and CtrlSpace for auto completion and discover the object properties (in complement to the documentation) :


How to clean up a mesh in order to export a freestyle vector for a 3D engraved lamp?

Go to the Object Data Properties tab, and under Remesh, set the mode to Quad and click Quadriflow Remesh

Set the target number of faces (I set 20,000 - eventually you will lose an undesired amount of mesh resolution, so don't go too low) and click the Ok button.

The result (at 20,000) looks like this:

The mesh looks even better at 10,000, but you will begin to get some artefacts if you get too low, so I suggest somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 for your final result.


I don´t know how would you fix it and get a perfect bake, to me it seems like an issue due to ray tracing, where more samples are needed, denoise filter and what not. What you could try: Try to find a denoise filter for Photoshop or whatever ur using and apply it to the normal, see if it fixes it. Also what you can try is playing with blur and then using overlay, difference blend modes to try and patch up those holes with something that works. Maybe copy the normal map, offset it by 1-2 pixels right and up, and use difference blender mode to catch a selection of these dots and then reuse the offset texture to patch it up with those normal base on the difference alpha you get.


You may be able to learn the Blender interface while working on your game, but I suspect that this is more of a challenge than you need to take on. If you're totally new to Blender, I think you'll find it salutary to gain some familiarity with the Blender and the Blender interface tools by working through one (or both) of two online courses, one by James Chronsiter at [http://www.cdschools.org/Page/455], with video supplements at [http://4chron.home.comcast.net/~4chron/CDCADTutorials.htm], or alternatively Neil Hirsig's course at [http://gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html]. These will give you a solid introduction to the interface, and some introduction to the BGE.

There are also a number of books available that can help, including free downloads from Wikibooks [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro], and a book by John Blain (a bit out of date, but still using basically the same interface as the current edition), [http://download.blender.org/documentation/pdf/John%20M%20Blain%20-%20An%20Introduction%20To%20Blender%203D%20-%20A%20Book%20For%20Beginners%20%282011%29.pdf]


How to automate rendering of the same object with different textures?

Name your texture files as a sequence if they aren't, like this:

0001
0002
0003
0004
....

In the material editor, choose Image Sequence instead of Single Image and choose all your textures. If you are using using the Node Wrangler addon, you can add them through the add menu, Texture >> Image Sequence.

Set the end frame to the number of texture you have, and render the scene as an animation and you will get your model with different texture for each frame.


Texture paint stops working at shallow angle

You can turn off Occlude and Cull and Normal and then you will not have a problem painting at any angle, but that may or may not be what you are after.


You can select any edge you want to be hard and press Ctrl+E and choose 'Mark Sharp'.

In the example below I have smooth shaded a cube but set the top edge loop to be sharp:

(The result of this is the same as the result from the next technique mentioned, shown in the image below the next few paragraphs)

If you use Autosmooth (as you mentioned) you can leave it like that. If you didn't want to use Autosmooth you could add an Edge Split modifier to handle the smoothing angles.

Below, I have added an Edge Split modifier, unticked the 'Edge Angle' option and ticked the 'Sharp Edges' box:

If you leave the 'Edge Angle' option ticked you can use a combination of the two methods.

As for which formats support sharp edges, according to the 2.69 release notes, both FBX and OBJ formats now support 'Split vertex normals' for exporting sharp edges. The OBJ exporter calls this option 'Smooth Groups'.


How do I bake to specific tiles in a UDIM

Currently blender has no option to bake UDIMs. A workaround for this is to place the uv map you want to bake to the front of the UV tiles. For this create for every tile an image and save it. That is important so blender has the naming schema and you can replace these images with the final bake.

Bake the first image:

Save the bake for later because it will be overwritten.

Now you have to move the UV maps from the second to the first.

Bake again and save the image. Now overwrite the placeholder from step 1 with the same name.

Open the first baked image and in the UV editor press the reload button.


Non-Metallic Surfaces are not receiving Roughness value

Your specularity is set to zero which means it will be a completely diffuse material. Adjusting that value should give you the desired look, unless there is something wrong with the textures.

Specularity set to zero:

Specularity set to one:


Is it possible to make a mesh symmetrical without mirror modifier?

Yes.

It is possible to make a mesh symmetrical without a Mirror Modifier.

Simply set your Pivot Point to be your 3D Cursor, place the 3D Cursor at the center of symmetry, duplicate the geometry to be mirrored (ShiftD), and scale (S) -1 on the axis of symmetry (in this case the X axis X).

You can set the Pivot Point to the 3D Cursor here:

Take this example of half a monkey:

Finally, pressing W and choosing Remove Doubles can get rid of overlapping vertices and weld the mesh halves together.

You'll want to Recalculate Normals after doing this (CtrlN) because the face normals get flipped inside-out in the scaling process.


Blender crashes when rendering at full resolution

This answer probybly depends on the scene, but I found that reducing the tasks Blender has to do helps: For me, this was turning off motion blur (which I will later add in a video editing software). Other approaches could be reducing light bounces or samples.


How do I create a riggable muscle and skin structure for a model I plan to animate?

Something like this:

but on a full body scale?
You're in for a world of pain....
I'd say you're mad, but that's exactly what I'm working on!
Still, you really should get a mesh to work 100% WITHOUT any muscles first - not just to get the hang of it but because if it doesn't work on its own, no amount of extras will fix it.
You'll have to first sculpt and then do another mesh over the original (retopology) manually, giving it excellent flow. Anything less than perfect will give you render artifacts, joints that don't flex properly, and the skin will never flow nicely around the muscles. My biceps animation above is an example of TERRIBLE topology, full of wacky vertexes on the armpit and where the blood vessel deforms the skin. (it was meant to be just a prototype, so I used the native remesher - never again)
After that you'll have to model each and every single muscle, attach it to the rig so it contracts and stretches when the respective bones move (I recommend a mix of bones with Stretch To constraints, and Shape Keys for fine tuning), then make the main mesh act like a skin that stretches over the muscles using the Shrinkwrap modifier.
If you're feeling extra crazy you may even want to delve into Soft Body physics and give your muscles a "squishy" feel when they are thrown around.

That's really ambitious for someone who just started learning but if that's your goal, this is the way to go.


Open a Properties Pane.
Scroll down until you see the "Encoding" dropdown tab.
You'll see Audio Codecs. If "None" is selected, there will be no audio.
Here is an example.


How do I prevent losing contrast when compositing semi-transparent images?

You can get a better result by using the Mix node's Multiply blend mode instead of the Alpha Over node.

Here's the node setup (you first need to create a unified mask to use as a factor for the mix node):


This  is written for Cycles, however the same steps apply for Blender Internal except you do not need the volume mesh. All steps including the shadow mesh and lamps are the same.

I would recommend using a cone shaped mesh set to volume, a mesh that has holes in it to give the beam shadow, and a spot lamp. Start by adding a cone to your scene using Shift+A > Mesh > Cone:

Now move it, scale it, etc. as desired and add a spot lamp using Shift+A > Lamp > Spot and move it to the top of the cone.

Now change the cone material to have a Transparent surface material and a Volume Scatter volume material in the material settings:

Now all you need to do is add the texture to the volume. I do this by adding a plane, subdividing, and then deleting some random vertices:

Now move it into the beam of light, rotate, duplicate, etc. and tweak the lamp settings and position as desired. You should end up with a result like this:

I have included the .Blend file for you to examine and compare with.


The bmesh module

Suggest for working with a mesh use the bmesh module.

Test script. Assumes a face is selected and active in edit mode. For each edge in a face, look at its linked faces, and select if other face.

import bpy
import bmesh

ob = bpy.context.edit_object
me = ob.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
# have a face selcted and active
face = bm.select_history.active

link_faces = [f for e in face.edges
              for f in e.link_faces if f is not face]
# select them
for f in link_faces:
    f.select = True
# update mesh
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)
me.update()

Growing face selection by verts, (uses a set, includes original)

# from verts instead.
link_faces = set(f for v in face.verts
             for f in v.link_faces)
# select them
for f in link_faces:
    f.select = True

To find vert with lowest global z in linked faces. Could grab the minimum. I have started to lean towards sorting, since all or any of the rest may have same min as first.

verts = set(v for f in link_faces for v in f.verts)
# order by global z
mw = ob.matrix_world
sorted_verts = sorted(verts, key=lambda v: (mw * v.co).z)


How to access the Kemap settings Preferences (Spacebar Action, Select Mouse button, etc) with python?

Search the source
With Developer Extras turned on hover over the enum and  choose edit source
This will open up (for me)  scripts/keyconfigs/blender.py
    # General settings.
    col = layout.column()
    col.row().prop(self, "select_mouse", text="Select with Mouse Button", expand=True)
    col.row().prop(self, "spacebar_action", text="Spacebar Action", expand=True)
    if is_select_left:
        col.row().prop(self, "gizmo_action", text="Activate Gizmo Event", expand=True)

Notice there is a generic property update method load(self, context)
def load():
    from sys import platform
    from bpy import context
    from bl_keymap_utils.io import keyconfig_init_from_data

    prefs = context.preferences
    kc = context.window_manager.keyconfigs.new(IDNAME)
    kc_prefs = kc.preferences

Ok then to the python console
>>> C.preferences.keymap.active_keyconfig
'blender'

>>> C.window_manager.keyconfigs['blender'].preferences['spacebar_action'] = 2

will set to the third option.  The item that matches that number is available enum definition of the the Prefs class.


It should be left click. But, on the splash screen (screen when you open 2.8 with the galaxy picture at the top) you can change it. Mine was in right click for some reason, but I switched it. Or, you could go to user preferences (hotkey: “ctrl + ,”).

Another solution is switching the tool. In the viewport, check if your tool is the ‘select’ tool. Then you can select.

Hope it helps.


General system specs for large scenes in blender

Blender's website has a page dedicated to this, it is now dated a few years but is still useful (was updated for 2.6).

http://archive.blender.org/features-gallery/requirements/index.html

If you are considering building a PC for 3D, anything from Average and up should suffice for fairly complex scenes.

  Minimal specs for Hardware

  32 bits, Dual Core CPU with at least 2 GHZ, and SSE2 support.
  2 GB RAM
  24 bits 1280x768 display
  Mouse or trackpad
  OpenGL Graphics Card with 256 MB RAM

  Average specs for Hardware

  64 bits, Quad Core CPU
  8 GB RAM
  Full HD Display with 24 bit color
  Mouse or trackpad
  OpenGL Graphics Card with 1 GB RAM

  Production specs for Hardware

  64 bits, Dual 8 Core CPU
  16 GB RAM
  Two times Full HD Display with 24 bit color
  Mouse + tablet
  Dual OpenGL Graphics Cards, quality brand with 3 GB RAM

Also related: What are the best graphics cards for cycles? and How important is a GPU for modeling?


The fluid sim stores its cache data in a separate file sequence, with the path specified on the domain object. You'll want to send your brother both your .blend file, and this cache sequence. He may need to adjust the path to the cache in the .blend file depending on where he places them.


I'm not sure why you want to do this, so I don't know if my answer is relevant, but here goes.

You could

save your file
make sure everything in every layer is deselected
Display only the layer you want to export
Select everything in it
With Shift held down click on all the other layers to display them too.
Invert the selection, with Control I, and press delete
Export the file normally. It only has the objects in that layer left.

Edit:

To answer your question in the comments - Select Only option is found in the left column of the page you're on after you click on Export as Wavefront Obj file.


There is currently no way to do what you want from blender.
You can however set CYCLES_OPENCL_TEST to "GPU" and see only devices in blender that claim to be a GPU.


Make sure your hardware meets the minimum requirements for running Blender 2.80. The section about GPU requirements is particularly important.

  Supported Graphics Cards

  These requirements are for basic Blender operation, rendering using
  the GPU requires slightly different requirements. Always make sure to
  install the latest drivers from the graphics card manufacturer
  website.

  NVIDIA: GeForce 200 and newer, Quadro Tesla architecture and newer, with NVIDIA drivers (list of all GeForce and Quadro GPUs)
  AMD: GCN 1st gen and newer (list of all AMD GPUs)
  Intel: Haswell and newer (list of all Intel GPUs)
  macOS: version 10.12 or newer with supported hardware

If your hardware meets the minimum requirements, you're likely having issues with your graphics driver and it has to be updated.


How to introspectively modify nodes from Python

Blender data does not have a __dict__ because it doesn't persistently store a Python object for all data. That would be very memory inefficient.

Set value for built-in and user defined properties of the node type:

setattr(node, property_name, property_value)

Set node input socket value:

node.inputs[socket_name].default_value = socket_value

For properties for one specific node you can use the method mentioned in the other answer:

node[property_name] = property_value


Mirror modifyer not mirroring the movement of an object

Sounds like you're in object mode. Check that. It should get closer if you move the eyeball in edit mode.


when i use a text object i see text in the background that is not suppose to be there. what am i doing wrong that causes extra text to appear?

Sounds like you have a second text object there.


How to make a waxy, deep-sea-fish material?

I had these eyeballs floating around, and I decided to try to make a deep sea fish material with them since the iris texture kind of somewhat a little bit resembles a deep sea fish's skin.  Anyway, here's what I got

Basically, I started out with an iris image texture (which you would substitute for a deep sea fish skin texture) and then I threw together some shaders that I thought looked good.  The main shader that you'll need to use is the Subsurface Scattering shader.  I also recommend checking out this awesome tutorial on all the others (well, including the Subserface one).

For the first fish, it looks like you would start out with a pretty basic texture which you'd have to paint or unwrap around the entire model.  Then you would set the color output of the texture node to the color input of the Subsurface Scattering.  That node will be your main node as there is a huge amount of subsurface scattering in the picture meaning a high "scale" and probably a large radius (especially for the red, 1st, channel).  You might also want to add in a translucent shader if it looks good.  It also seems that the chin has a different material.  It looks at least more diffuse if not a different texture altogether.

The second fish looks like it has a translucent blue texture masked over by a harder, glossy texture that looks like a broken layer of gold on the fish's skin.  I don't quite know how you would achieve that effect other than creating a shell mesh to cover the skin.  Maybe you could figure something out with texture paint of something (can you paint materials?  If so, that would work).

The main thing is having a good starting texture, having a general idea of what look you're trying to get, and experimenting with different shaders both alone adn mixed into the rest of the material to see how it contributes, whether good, bad, or not at all.


Transfer the Object Data from the Active object to the Selected object before you transfer the UV maps.

Object Mode: Object > Make Links > Object Data

Object Mode: Object > Make Links > Transfer UV Maps

This will retain any vertex groups on the original object if rigging has been set up etc.

This is useful for creating symmetric UV maps.

Duplicate object, delete half of new object, add Mirror modifier, Tick the 'U' under textures in mirror modifier, create UV, apply mirror, transfer object data, transfer UV maps.

Object Data: An entity in the scene with location, scale, rotation. Used by scenes & groups.

Blender Manual: Data-Blocks


How can I scale object to fit another object that shares the same shape but are diffrent size.

I got a solution for you, but, depending on object type, it might take longer times to complete as it's not automated.

You take one of the vertices of the outer ring(the inner ones that you want to match up). Than you hold down SHIFT key and select it's corresponding vertex where you want it to be placed(on the inner ring). After than press Alt + M and choose "At Last" option. This way the vertex will be automatically placed at it's desired position and the duplicate vertices will be removed too. Now you can repeat the same process for the rest of the vertex pairs.

I hope this helps! :)


Switching between pan and orbit while holding MMB

Got to File > User Preferences > Input > 3D View > View 3D Rotate Modal and add a new key combination

Set it to Switch to Move and add any key combination you like.

I did not succeed settings it to work with the Shift key though, it seems to not like "modifier keys" on their own, but most other combinations will probably work.


My animation has no keyframes but still moves?

You have 2 armatures, Track Controller (with only one bone, on the left of the machine), and Armature, which is all the machine bones.

Your Dopesheet is in Action Editor mode, it will only display the keyframes relative to the selected armature.

When we open the file, Track Controller is selected, and as it has no action, no keyframes are displayed.

On the contrary, we can see that Armature is animated. It's normal because an action has been assigned to it, and if we select this armature, all the keyframes of this action will be displayed on the Dopesheet.

If you want to close the action playing for a selected object, press the X button on the right of the action name. It won't be played anymore by the armature but it will still be selectable in the dropdown menu if you want it back.

When you close your file, every action will be saved as long as it has at least one user (one object or armature using it) or if you've assigned it a fake user (press the F button on the right of the action name if you want to give an action a fake user). Fake user is a way to make sure that the action you've created will be saved even if it doesn't have any user yet.

About le leap to the side: your bones come back to their rest pose as soon as you come back to Edit mode. If you select all these bones in Pose mode and press altG they will combe back to the same pose.


Following path cause a lose of rotation axis

This strange behavior is called gimbal lock. It is caused by the interdependency of the three rotation axes.
When the middle axis (Y in the case of XYZ rotation) is set to any value which results in a ±90° rotation, the first axis is aligned with the last. At this point, a change to the first or last axial rotation can only rotate around the last axis (Z in the case of XYZ).
A good example can be seen in this gif by Peyman Massoudi:

Notice how the red X ring is rotated to the blue Z ring.
The solution is to use axis-angle, quaternion or a different rotation order (e.g. XZY, ZXY, YZX,...) to rotate the object.


Identifying the source of unexpected lighting differences

Many of the objects have custom split normals data that need to be removed. This is fairly common with objects imported from other software, and is good to check when running into any shading issues with imported objects that aren't simply resolved.
To fix, simply go to Object Data>Geometry Data>Clear Custom Split Normals for each problem object. To speed up the process, you could use ⇧ Shift + R after selecting the next tooth to repeat the last operator. See the gif below for an example:


The modifier for cloth physics exists only in Blender — there is no way to export it to any format I'm aware of. You can either set up a new physics simulation in a physics engine compatible three.js (which may give different results!) or bake your animation.
For workflows to "bake" the animation, see Cloth Bake: Save frames in timeline as shape key? and https://blenderartists.org/t/export-bezier-curve-animation-as-gltf-and-or-fbx/1151423/4.


All actions in the file are saved in bpy.data.actions

for a in bpy.data.actions:
    print(a.name)

The action associated directly with your object, the one I'd call "in the slot"

action = object.animation_data.action

To set it to another action named "anotheraction"

object.animation_data.action = bpy.data.actions.get("anotheraction")

If there is no action named anotheraction it will set it to None.  If there is no animation data on the object you will need to call

object.animation_data_create()

beforehand.

Note: can also have actions on any strip in the strips collection of an nla track in the animation_data.nla_tracks collection of your object.


Generate square "skin" around a line for icon solidifying

There seems to be some sort of screwiness that goes on in the mesh when you create it from vertices. To combat this, after I traced the image using vertices, I converted it to a poly curve (Alt+C). I set the curve extrude function to "0.1".

Then I converted the curve back into a mesh (Alt+C) again, and Removed Doubles in edit mode.

When I added the Solidify modifier this time it worked perfectly as long as "Even Thickness" was checked.

Here is my finished product. The blend file is included below, feel free to use it for your project.


It's annoying that, in Edit Mode, Blender's Snap To : Increment doesn't have a Snap With option, otherwise this would be more intuitive.
In this case, if you have the shipped add-on  '3D View: Pie Menus' activated with the 'Origins' option, you can quickly set the origin of your object to the vertices of the desired mirror-plane from Edit Mode, and the mirrored half will jump to the original. Then you can AltG reset the object back to World 0.
But personally, rather than puzzle over each case, for more CAD-like snapping, my habit is to create temporary snap targets.

With snapping nearly always set to To : Vertex and With : Active, and the pivot set to 3D Cursor:

ShiftDX duplicate a single vertex..
SX0 scale the vertex to 0
Select the source vertex, (it will stay active), and L all the connected ones
GX Move the selected vertices, snapping to the temporary target
Delete, or merge, the target.

I wouldn't claim this is necessarily the quickest for this case, but the method is quite general. You can leave your pivot and snap settings as they are over most operations, and the sequence goes into muscle-memory.


Unfortunately I don't have enough points to make this a comment, but the answer to this question is entirely subjective. "Tacky" "flat" and "look nice" could mean many different things to different people.
A visual reference to what you've tried that's not working and a hint of what it is that you're trying to accomplish would be a better starting point...

Some suggestions: It does help to have some atmospheric fog. Objects close to the camera should be sharper than those far away. You're always looking at the horizon through the humidity and other particles in the air, therfore count on some distortion caused by refraction or dispersion. In a landscape think of the horizon line as the brightest value, and make it fall at a strong point in your composition.
The horizon is so very far away, use the depth of field to blur it and bring the elements in the foreground in focus.
The sky is never as single color, but a subtle canvas of different tonalities. Use gradients and textures on it too.
You should look into the the vast history of painting (the subject has been dealt with since the renaissance).
Pick up a book or two on perspective and composition. There's been rivers of ink written about this...


The answer to this was much less complicated than I thought! No need for messing around with the texture nodes.
I just set the origin of the plane to one of the corners, then applied the Simple Deform modifier with bend around the z axis. Here is the output... S/o @JachymMichal for the suggestion


Why is GPU rendering is so slow compared to the CPU?

Both your CPU and your GPU are quite good. Have a look at blenchmark. Your CPU is right up there and comparable to good GPUs. So it's not to be expected that the difference in render times will be huge. However, to optimise render times for CPU/GPU you should use the auto-tile add-on from user preferences. Just activate this addon and render times will be optimised.


Change selection color of active element in a group

Here I am 5 years later with the same question. IM currelntly using Blender 2.91 and eventhough I looked I wasnt able to find the option. BUT If you go into preferences and click on THEME, instead of searching for the specific place where the SELECTION color is (if there is any), just change the Theme entirely. I took "MAYA theme" and it works great. older selection is green and child selection becomes white.


Can I upload / share my Blender animations?

The copyright on artwork created with Blender is owned by the creator of the artwork.  Nothing in the Blender license agreement infringes on the moral rights of the artist.

This means you are free to publish, distribute, licence, exhibit or otherwise diseminate your art as you see fit.

See the Your Artwork section of Blender license page:

  All your artwork – images or movie files – including the .blend files
  and other data files Blender can write, is free for you to use as you
  like.

  That means that Blender can be used commercially by artists, by
  studios to make animation films or vfx, by game artists to work on
  commercial games, by scientists for research, and by students in
  educational institutions.


Cannot merge or slide accidentally opened windows

Managed to find a way with a lot of trial and error. The grab and slide worked eventually after selecting different combinations of windows. Cheers


How can I fix this normal map shading issue?

Your problem is the UV unwrap. If you look at your texture in textured view, you will see a zig-zag seam in the mapping. Your staff, unfortunately, has a very irregular topology so it will be hard to unwrap properly.
2 solutions. The easy one first, but it will only work from certain angles.

Position your camera, look through it at the model, select the model, go into edit mode, press U and select project from view. Quick and dirty

Or use projection paint to manually clone the texture onto your object. In edit mode press U -> smart UV project. And then do what's called projection painting, there are lots of tuts about that, e.g. here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQy5jn9dWrs


This is actually very simple, since OBJ files carry their own UV maps. After importing the model, create materials for it like you normally would if you had made the model in Blender and already created the UV map, then import your textures into the materials manually with Image Texture nodes.


Customizing a shortcut for the UV Editor no longer works in 2.8+

The shortcut has to be created in the correct category otherwise it won't work. For the UV Editor that is: Image > UV Editor > UV Editor (Global)


How to I combine 2 curve points to create a mesh

Assuming you just want a plane the same shape as your current mesh:

In Edit mode, select Edge mode. Click one edge and shift-click the opposite one to create the outer edge. 'P' to separate the selection then go back to Object mode, select the edge, and back to Edit mode. 'A' to select all and 'F' to Fill. You then have a plane the shape of your original object.


File format to exporting to After Effects?

Bringing an animation into AE can be done in at least two primary ways: As an animation file -- avi, mov, etc -- or as a series of images -- 001.jpg, 002.jpg, 0003.jpg.

Blender allows you to render your animations in either way: You can select to render a complete and finished mov file, for example, or you can tell Blender to output each frame independently in many different file formats (JPG, PNG, TGA, etc.).

The "right" way depends upon what you want to do in AE, but outputting your animation as individual series of files gives you the ability to apply AE edits and effects to specific image sequences.... You can output image series for shadow, AO, gloss, difuse, depth, transparency, etc as individual files -- so each single frame of your animation will be output as 1, 2, 3 or many more distinct files. This gives you incredible control, and AE makes is as easy to import an image sequence as it does an mov.

When you then render in AE, it will assemble your shadow, AO, gloss, difuse, depth and so on into a single animation and apply your effects and edits as created in AE.

You can also use single still images in AE to add titles, lower thirds and other content... whether you are importing an mov file or a series of images, a single image an easy way to get a lower third.

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/preparing-importing-still-images.html

Fastest way to export files multiple passes into folders?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z_o8cvkE38


When you create a new layout in the Themes tab in the User preferences, then a xml file gets created in the Blender app data folder. At Windows 7 it's

C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.77\scripts\presets\interface_theme

Let's say you added a new preset and named it mytheme, then you will find a mytheme.xml in the above folder.

You can grab this xml file, and other users can then install this xml file as a new theme with the Install Theme button in the Themes tab in the User Preferences.


Background Image vs Reference Image - What are the pros and cons of these methods?

To view through the selected camera press numpad 0.
To align the Reference image with the camera view, select the Reference image, then in the header menu > Object > Transform > Align to Transform Orientation then in the Operator box choose Orientation > View.
Reference and Background are empties, they won't be rendered, they are used as references to model an object, liked the former Background in 2.79.
Actually they are exactly the same objects, except that the default settings in the Properties panel > Object Data are not the same, by default Background will only be seen in orthographic view and it is set to have its back transparent (but you can switch off these 2 options or switch them on for a Reference image).
What's the difference? I guess it all depends on what settings make you comfortable to work with. The Background version works a bit more like the former Background in 2.79, it makes the image more discrete and transparent in your scene, and if you enable its Only Axis Aligned you'll see it only in perpendicular views, which is very convenient.


First you need to jump over the the Node Editor view, then select Shader Nodes and World.  Also make sure Use Nodes is checked.

Then add a Noise Texture node and a Color Ramp node.  Plug the Fac of the noise texture into the Color Ramp, and the Color of the Color Ramp into the Color of the default Background shader.

You can then adjust the Color Ramp and Noise Texture how you would like to create the desired starry effect.

Noise Texture Scale.  This controls the size and amount of stars.  Higher scale means more, smaller stars; smaller scale means less, larger stars.
Noise Texture Detail.  This will adjust the shape and variation in brightness in the stars.  Higher value will mean more irregularly shaped stars, but there will be a greater variation in the brightness of the stars.
Color Ramp Swatches.  Adjusting the color swatches on the Color Ramp will change the size and shape of the stars.  The farther apart the swatches are the bigger and more irregularly shaped the stars will be.

Shown above are the settings I used to create the below render.


How can I blend two textures together using Cycles?

From your nodes setup, it looks like you're trying to mix the original shader with nothing. While this is technically possible it is not the cleanest way to do things.

You don't actually have to create a new shader and use the mix shader to mix two textures. There is a node called MixRGB which can mix two textures, without creating a new shader each time.

There are a few ways to mix a dirty texture onto another texture. Here are a few:

The most basic setup is just a basic mix:

If you change the mix type you can get a few different effects:

Overlay

Multiply

Darken

However, it looks like you want more control over what values are being effected (you're using a color ramp). So you can use the texture as the color ramp and as the texture itself (ignore the MixRGB on the bottom. That just makes it blue so it's easier to see):


Blender Game animation recording: specific recording

You could try setting the record_animation property to False for the ball object:

cont = GameLogic.getCurrentController()
cont.owner.record_animation = False


duplicate mesh error in blender animation nodes2.1

You can use the Random List node instead, which populates the a list of arbitrary length with elements. Then you use the Transform Mesh node to transform the meshes based on the transforms as follows:


Accidentally set shortcut for vertex select to left mouse. How do I undo this?

If you didn't after saved user preferences, it's not permanent, just close and reopen blender.

If you did it, open user preferences, then switch to "input" panel.

Then open "3d view" > "mesh" and at the bottom of the expanded list find "select mode" with "mouse" listbox value and "left mouse" setting shown.

Click on the "x" button. Done (save now the user preferences).


Proper context attribute for a hotkey to toggle mesh display overlays?

The mesh is the data part of the active object hence,

active_object.data.show_edge_crease

or perhaps since it is the edit object:

edit_object.data.show_edge_crease

Sliding down the info area header at the top to reveal the messages gives you the context paths.

As for part ii) of your question adding an "add shortcut" menu, sounds like a good idea.  This can be "hacked" by overriding say the edit translations operator in the menu.


Black lines/shadow in Cycles f12 render but not in viewport render?

If the number of subdivisions for view and render is not the same you'll get different results when using the subsurf modifier.

Make those values the same.

Additionally, you might need to enable smooth shading.


Import SVG option doesn't appear on the import menu

Enable the Import-Export SVG add-on in the user preferences


I want to make a Final year engineering project in Blender. What is the scope of Blender?

Blender can be used for geometry creation and visualization. The geometry can be manually entered or imported and manipulated using Python. Using Python, blender can interact with data in the real world. The cycles rendering engine implements ray tracing and can replicate optical behavior. There are several built in simulators, however they are intended for animation, not engineering. There are two different fluid simulators (Lattice-Boltzmann and SPH). There is a solid body simulator that includes mechanical constraints. The scripting capabilities make it straight forward to couple other simulations to Blender. Since Blender is open source you can access the source code and extend the built in simulators. From these basic capabilities many different engineering things can be done. The list below shows some places to look for ideas. Good luck!

Visualization

Scientific Visualization in Blender
Post process CFD data
Create and visualize "computational cell biology"
Astronomical data
Plotting data
Plotting functions

Image processing
Augmented reality
Particle Tracking  Velocimetry
Real-time sensor visualization
Psychology testing
Engineering
Robotics,more
Real-time audio spectrum visualization
3D Printing
Automotive design at Tata
Dental appliance design
Design a fixture for spinal surgery
Aerodynamic geometry case preparation for CFD
CFD visualization
Industrial fire simulation
Simulation sensor imaging
Thermal radiation shielding design
Structure solar radiation simulation
Simulate soil optical properties, more
Synthetic aperture radar simulation
... and lots more


draw_handler on top of Rendered shading mode

Ok, I'm an idiot.

For future googlers, if you're using POST_PIXEL it should draw on top of all shading modes no problem.

The reason it wasn't working for me was because, hiding in my code, I had:

if context.space_data.shading.type == 'RENDERED':
    return

i.e. at some point in the past I deliberately prevented it from drawing on top of rendered shading mode, probably to be consistent with other overlays in Blender 2.7.


What's the best way to do an IK rig for a stick figure?

If you struggled with that tutorial, you might have a hard time with Rigify too, idk (Rigify is worth learning though, imo).  But Blender has a built in Auto IK Feature; so you just add some bones, parent your mesh to the armature, then turn on the check box for "auto IK".  You need to be in Pose Mode to see the option in the tools area, where ever the heck that is now, lol.  GL OP  (tools is the screwdriver/wrench icon in the properties panel, I think)


ATOM : setup blender python environment in my IDE

First of all you'll need to make sure, that Atom knows how to lint and autocomplete python-code (there should be plenty of packages to achieve that).

Test your auto-completion and package access with common packages (e.g. os). Make sure it works as desired.

If so, the only thing left to do is to get Blender into your python environment. You can either

compile Blender as a python package yourself and add it to the site-packages folder of your python installation
or use pip to install the bpy package, that should add Blender as a precompiled module (I don't know, how well it's been maintained though).


How can I Import Houdini Pyro VDB Cache data to Blender

Moving a pyro vdb (or any vdb for that matter) from Houdini to Blender 2.9, is fairly straightforward if your pyro sim is set up with a convert vdb and file cache sop.
Here is the end of the Houdini node tree for the pyro vdb shown below:

The convert vdb sop instructs houdini to convert your pyro into a vdb sequence(change it to vdb, as it defaults to volume,) it should look like so in the parameters--> , and the file cache will save it to disk at the output. (be sure to change cache to output to .vdb from .bgeo or you may run into problems on export)

Alternatively, (and for a more efficient way)you may  use a Pyro-Post-Process sop in place of the convert vdb sop. This will allow to do the conversion to vdb and tell houdini to save  the vdb as 16 bit float instead of 32 bit (default).

The parameters of the pyro-post-process should look like this:

Inside of Blender, add a volume object in the scene, Shift+A Volume >Import OpenVBD and select your sequence wherever it was saved to. Blender should now read the vdb sequence exported from houdini without any problems.


Object's attribute that says if object is still or moves?

Here is a simple setup with script that displays the velocity vector of the active object and an indicator of that vector's length: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/31772

If you run the modal operator and start the playback, you'll see how velocity changes, but that it never settles to completely zero. Thus, use some epsilon (tolerance value), such as
min and max out of 30 samples from diff vector lengths < 0.1
(use a collections.deque(maxlen=30) for that, it's a capped array)

At the core of the script, I access Object.matrix_world.translation to get the current location in 3D world. Note that you need to .copy() this vector if you want to store the start vector, otherwise it will be an alias and the difference therefore zero.

It could be made a bit more efficient if one used an app handler (frame_change_post).


Yeah, it can get to be that large at that resolution. Since 1 cache file (at that resolution) can be around 15MB to 20MB it only takes 800 frames to be 16GB.


Mirror and Subdivision modifier in 2.7 vs. 2.9

Simply enable the 'On Cage' option of the Subdivision Modifier.
It's the first icon on the left :).


Python: Create a plane from selected vertex

A second draft would be

import bpy
import bmesh

def coordinates_for_new_plane():
    obj = bpy.context.active_object
    if bpy.context.mode != 'EDIT_MESH':
        raise BaseException("should be in edit mode")
    bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(obj.data)
    (v1, v2) = [v.co for v in bm.verts if v.select]
    new_coords = [
        [v1.x, v1.y - 100, v1.z + 10],
        [v1.x, v1.y - 100, v1.z - 10],
        [v2.x, v2.y + 100, v2.z - 10],
        [v2.x, v2.y + 100, v2.z + 10],
    ]
    return bm, new_coords, obj

def mission2():

    bm, new_coords, obj = coordinates_for_new_plane()

    name = "platypus"
    mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new(name)

    faces = []
    faces.append( [0,1,2,3])

    mesh.from_pydata(new_coords, [], faces)

    o2 = bpy.data.objects.new(name, mesh)

    scn = bpy.context.scene

    scn.objects.link(o2)

    o2.location = obj.location
    o2.rotation_euler = obj.rotation_euler
    o2.rotation_quaternion = obj.rotation_quaternion
    o2.scale = obj.scale

#
#
#

mission2()

The original code which adds geometry to the original object can be found as mission1() in my cookbook at http://web.purplefrog.com/~thoth/blender/python-cookbook/add-plane-from-selected-vertices.html .


No light or transparency through glass and water objects using various transparent materials

The issue was that the 'Simplify' checkbox was checked, under Properties > Scene, at the bottom.


Can I increase the frame rate of an animation while keeping it the same length?

Beneath the Frame Rate dropdown in the render panel, there is a time remapping section. Set the old mapping to 24 and the new to 30. For more in-depth info, see here: http://www.ffnn.nl/pages/articles/media/blender-tips-and-tricks.php


I have had success with this method:

I'm using Blender 2.78 with python 3.5. And I installed latest vtk through homebrew.

import sys
sys.path.append("/usr/local/Cellar/vtk/7.1.1/lib/python3.6/site-packages")
import vtk

No problem, and https://github.com/cwant/VTKBlender module has been updated, so you might want to check that out


You may want to reconsider your modeling method as it produces lots of unnecessary geometry, face intersections, and fragmented mesh with no flow.

There is no easy one-button press to clean it up quickly, but you could try the new Edit Mode Boolean operations in Blender 2.77.

By selecting one of your "shards" (a complete chunk of connected faces or geometry) and pressing Space bar and Searching for Intersect or Boolean you could let blender try and detect all intersections and cut geometry accordingly. You can then easily erase all surplus geometry by hand and repeat operation for all remaining independent chunks.


I need blender render to use freestyle but I can't use my gpu because of blender render, is there a work around?

Blender render uses the CPU only, it's not set up to use a GPU, thus using a GPU will not make it any faster.

Based off your question, I'm assuming your GPU is significantly more powerful than your CPU. I would suggest, as was mentioned above, that Cycles would be the way to go. The freestyle settings are still available in Cycles, the panel with the settings is just located a bit higher up in the properties panel, and will be disabled by default. To enable freestyle in cycles, go to the render tab, and about two-thirds of the way down enable freestyle. Then all of the settings will again be visible in the render layers tab, and they should all be the same as in Blender Render.

You can speed up Cycles significantly, as well as achieve a better non-realistic result by turning the bounces down to 0 in the light paths panel. What makes cycles realistic is how it calculates light bouncing off objects. Turning this off will make it both less realistic (more like Blender Render) as well as a whole lot faster.

Another thing is that when using freestyle, you usually don't want any kind of shading. Blender Render has the shadeless option, but cycles doesn't. A quick workaround is to use an emission shader, and in the object tab in the properties panel, down at the bottom, uncheck the Diffuse and Glossy boxes in the Cycles Settings Panel. This will make light emitted from the object not interact with any other objects in your scene.

When using emission shaders, you don't need many samples. In fact, a single sample works fine.

So to recap:

-Use Cycles

-Set bounces to 0 in the light paths panel in the render tab of the properties panel

-Use emission shaders as your materials

-Uncheck the Diffuse and Glossy boxes in the Cycles Settings panel of the Object tab of the Properties panel

-Set samples to 1

The results of this speak for themselves.

Here is a cylinder rendered with the default cycles settings, with an emission shader, the lamp deleted, and freestyle enabled:

This took just over 5 seconds to render with my CPU, and 3.2 seconds with my GPU. The optimized version looked like this:

The freestyle lines are more jagged, but there may be ways to smooth them out while using a single sample. Alternatively, you could add a few more samples, which would sacrifice a few fractions of a second for a smoother result. This image rendered in 0.08 seconds on my CPU, and 0.47 seconds on my GPU (it's normal for extremely simple scenes to take longer on a GPU).

You may have to play around a bit to find a happy medium of smoothness and speed (10 samples gave a smooth result in this case at .6 seconds on my CPU), but ultimately you should be able to get good quality images with cycles very fast.


What is the best workflow to import entire complex scenes from Cinema 4D to blender?

FBX or Alembic will provide you with similar level of support - Static geometry import is the only thing that will be fully OK.

Animation would be supported on a rather simple and limited level (for FBX, objects and rigs animations, and shapekeys; Alembic features a fully baked animation on both object and geometry levels).

Shading support would at best be very basic (FBX supports basic shading/texturing, similar to fixed pipeline of old OpenGL e.g., afaik Alembic does not handle shaders at all?).

More scene-level things (like world) would be totally lost.

So in a word, think you should either wait for Cycles to be supported by C4D, or use whatever renderer you have currently with C4D.

A complete accurate scene export between 3D apps is (and probably will remain) pretty much impossible, unless you have the means to develop your own tools (as big studios do for their own production pipeline) - and even then, they usually only convert a subset of data betweens their apps…


The bullet-proof method of using the Texture Atlas add-on works (at least for me) as follows:

UV-unwrap and texture every object.
Select all the objects you want to create the Texture Atlas for.
Go to "Properties Panel - Render - Texture Atlas" and click the "+"-icon to create a new Texture Atlas.

Select a reasonable image resolution, select "No_Unwrap" and then "ManualUnwrap".

In the UV/Image Editor, go to "Menu - UV - Average Island Scale" (this provides uniform texture spaces for all the objects), then "Menu - UV - Pack Islands".

Move around all UV islands, until satisfied.
Select "FinishManualUnwrap".
Bake the textures from every object individually to the new Texture Atlas.


How can I block in colors quickly with grease pencil tool?

A grease pencil stroke has two colours, one for stroke and one for fill, the default setup has the fill opacity set to 0.0 so it is transparent. A palette is used to define the two colours to use. The current palette selection - the one highlighted - is used when you draw a stroke. Changing a palette setting will change all strokes using that palette.

By creating multiple palette entries you can quickly select a different option before each stroke.

The current grease pencil system uses layers and palettes. Each stroke can use a different palette choice and you can have multiple strokes on each layer.

The version used in the video (2.77) was made before the palettes were added, that is why there are two colours for each layer and only the one colour setting can be used per layer. The process is still the same, just that now you select the palette instead of the layer to choose a different colour setting.


After filling you might want to triangulate faces CtrlT). Fix the topology by moving vertices. Then you can dissolve unwanted faces (press Space, write dissolve, select "dissolve faces").

Another way (the easier and faster way) is to build an extra cube, and with the boolean modifier, you perfectly cut the face of your model by the face of that extra cube.

To fix the current topology, you might also try to "mark sharp" some of the edges, and or, to bevel or create extra loopcuts near areas you want to be sharper. That way the subdivision modifier won't round up as much on those areas.


Simple fix->
Make your subsurface modifier first in your modifiers panel instead of mirror. This should do the trick.
Just click the button on the top of the mirror mod, and it will move to the top.


What?

You seem to be editing a shape key (also known by some as a morph target) that has zero weight. You can find shape keys in Properties > Object Data > Shapekeys. A shape key - grossly simplifying - is a snapshot of the arrangement of vertices in a mesh. With shape keys it's possible to interpolate between different states of the mesh.

How to fix?

The active shape key is the one that is being modified by the sculpting, but it may have weight zero and thus not be reflected onto the mesh. To pick which key is being edited, simply select it from the list. While sculpting you may wish to activate the pin icon: it will mute all but the active key. Just remember to deactivate it when you start rigging if you want to avoid surprises.

Why is this a thing?

Deforming a character with bones alone often leads to unsightly wrinkles. To combat this, many character rigs (including those made by Makehuman) are designed with shape keys that make the folding of elbows and  knees more natural and that are triggered automatically by bone motion. Another related use is driving creasing in clothing or bulging muscles. Shape keys (here the name morph target is somewhat more fitting) can also be used to drive radical but gradual transformations from one character to another.


Go to render settings, find metadata panel and uncheck Stamp output


Mantaflow fluid does not take the shape of a sphere (Blender 2.8)

The container/domain will always use the bounding box of the object (the cube/rectangle that enclose the object), you can see it by changing the object display to Bounds:

If you want to have the liquid stay in a shape that's not a rectangular box, you have to use a separate object set to Effector to act as a container.

For example, if you want the sphere to act as the walls of a container:

Duplicate it
Set the fluid type to Effector
Go into edit mode, and flip the normals so that they face inwards.
Back inside the simulation settings, set Is Planar, and turn up the Surface Thickness until things stop leaking

Put your flow source inside the sphere.
Bake
???
Profit!

You should get something looking like this:

Here's the blend file:


How come my skeleton no longer works after mirroring it's mesh?

Further to sambler's answer - the Mirror modifier has the option to mirror vertex groups, which helps significantly in avoiding this problem in the first place. For this to work, however, your groups need to be named with a suffix indicating what side of the figure they're on.

Vertex groups for left-side should end in the suffix .L, vertex groups for right-side should end in the suffix .R. This is not configurable, which irritates me :)

Both sets of groups need to exist, even if you don't have any vertexes in one half of them before adding the mirror modifier. The modifier won't create needed groups. This would also be a good feature.

I do plan on trying to tackle both those irritants once I wrap my head around more of how the internals work.


UV Unwraps incorrectly despite applying scale

The generated layout is representative of the seams you marked on the mesh.

Since you only have one seam ring around the lower cap of the cylinder, Blender generates one UV islands from the lower cap and another from the rest of the mesh, which is the cylinders main part (or perimeter), and the upper cap - together in one island.

I normally prefer to mark both caps and then to add another seam on one of the vertical edges of the perimeter, so that the layout of the perimeter will be in the shape of a(n easily textured) rectangle, rather than a circle:

To reproduce this mark the seems as seen in the image (in Edit Mode --> Edge Selection Mode, select seam edges and mark seams via AltE --> Mark Seam.

Then select all edges (A), then UV unrwap via U --> Unrwap.


Remove Drivers

You may have somehow added a driver to that value (e.g typing #frame in the field).

  Drivers can use properties, numbers, transformations, and scripts, to control the values of properties.

By assinging a driver to the Samples quantity, you are basically telling Blender to pick the value from somwhere else (e.g. scripted expressions,...).The manual inputs will be overrided till the driver is present.

To delete a driver, right click on the field and choose the option from the pop-up menù.


How can i create this slightly bumpy wall?

You can mix a couple of layers of noise to produce a range of effects around the one you've posted.  Try this node group and mess around with the sliders.


For what its used dyntopo and why this artist did two sculptings (dyntopo and multiresolution sculpting)?

Multires sculpting is more traditional for a production (e.g. cinema) pipeline because it uses quads (much safer & easier to work with). Multires is superior to SubSurf modifier for sculpting because Multires stores topography data at each tier, whereas Subsurf discards data when subdivision value is decreased.

Multires is much less efficient because every single face is being subdivided (2 > 4 > 8 > 16 ect) across the entire mesh. Poly count gets out of hand VERY quickly.

DYNATOPO is a technology originally created (I think?) by Pixologic for Zbrush, integrated with Blender 3-4 years ago as I recall. While in sculpt mode, enabling Dynatopo TRIANGULATES your mesh (divides 4-vertex faces into 3-vertex faces by splitting them in half). Tri's are capable of MANIFOLD subdivision, meaning some areas can be more detail-dense than others, thereby allowing you to create detail in areas that need it while leaving flat areas with a relatively low poly count. Changing your mesh from QUADS to TRIS is destructive, and often requires retopology (painstakingly rebuilding the mesh with a tool like RetopoFlow).

So there's your answer. I won't give you a link to good sculpting brushes—you'll have to do your own footwork, but Jim (James) Morren is an expert on the subject. Look for what tools he's created or recommended.


How do I make the spacebar menu display nodes in the Node Editor?

I'm not sure if the node search by name is on default on the Spacebar. However you can assign it any shortcut you want.

By default, you can access the search by pressing ⇧ ShiftA > and then selecting Search. Your presented searchbar will show up and show the nodes as results.

(I consider it possible, that the makers of the tutorials you mention, simply pressed clicked the search option too fast for a frame to capture.)
If you wish to add an even more direct shortcut to this functionality, go to the User Preferences ⎈ Ctrl⎇ AltU. Scroll down to the Node Editor and add a new shortcut. Assign a key combination to it and enter node.add_search into the identifier field.


It could have multiple sources, two of them I could think of at the moment is that you have:

more than one material in the Material Slots, and you're editing one that is not assigned
more than one UV Map on the object, and the one which is currently renderable is empty

To check the material assignment, you can use the Material Tab like this:

To check the UV Maps, you can use the Mesh Data Tab, UV Maps section:

Regarding the UV map, the one with the camera icon behind is the one that is sent down the material tree when you plug the UV output socket somewhere. To choose a different UV Map you can use the dedicated UV Map node:

EDIT: One more option
This happens frequently: There is a difference between Texture Preview and Material Preview. Material Preview tries to replicate the look of the final material as close as possible, so it tries to evaluate the whole node tree. Texture Preview on the other end was designed more for texturing game assets, where mapping nodes would not be so important (I guess). Texture Preview shows you what the selected texture node in the node tree would look like if the image was mapped onto the UV space without any mapping happening. See this little explanation here:


two major things to control:

did you bake the meshes? (you need to bake data to simulate the fluid and then bake mesh to create the water shapes)
did you create a new material for the "liquid domain"? (default one generated by quick effect is not good for eevee) check for "water shader nodes in eevee" tutorials


Is blender the right tool for my simulated 3D environment?

Blender is capable of doing what you describe.

One major hurdle with this system is going to be the viewing client. If you need to output a stream over the network, your simulation will need to render to python socket. Probably most easily done in BGE. possible.  Then you'll also need an adaptor to make that a usable video stream. (If you were trying to open it in VLC or iTunes type app)

Another option might be to build your clients with BGE also, then you could use a Multiplayer framework to let people login to the running simulation.


Select your object and delete everything but one "segment". Then use one of these ways to create a circular array of it.

Then editing just one segment will affect all others. It will also result in a lighter model, and future changes will be much easier.

To actually split the edge select it and then use Bevel in edit mode. It depends on the topology of your mesh but from what I can see, it looks like it should do what you intend.


Blender 2.8: Very hard to see selected vertices & edges in edit mode

Since the edge edit mode in your screenshot is displayed with default line width, you may want to check the overlay's option in the 3D View panel header bar.

After entering the edit mode, Mesh Edit Mode options will appear in there. Without the center checkbox been checked, the line display in edge mode will be slightly bigger then normal to make difference from face mode.

And for vertex mode,
you can change directly in Setting >> Themes >> 3D View >> Certex Size, but the line width won't change either.

An alternative way is changing Setting >> Interface >> Line Width to thic, making literally everything bigger than usual. Which might not be the best solution.


Can not edit only a part of my object in edit mode blender: 2.90.1

while you may think there is one single object, I suspect there are child objects, expecially since your object is named Cylinder.002 (implying there might be other Cylinder objects.  Try expanding the Cylinder.002 object to reveal the children.

Be sure to exit the Edit mode of the parent before trying to select another object.
Also, you can recover File: Recover from a previous session or Auto Save.


Update values of objects for python script?

It's not working because closest_point_on_mesh expects its parameter p in Object Space, not in World Space. That is, the p's coordinates should be measured along the local axes of obj, taking into account obj's axes'location, rotation, and scale. closest_point_on_mesh also returns the location and normal of the closest point in the Object Space of obj.

So long as master is not transformed, its Object Space is the same as World Space, and isInside will work. But it will always compare the position of p to where master was before it was transformed. In order to measure p in master's space, we have to apply the inverse transformation to p as the one that was applied to master.. If you like, we pull master back to the world origin, and maintain the same relative position (rotation, scale) of p to master as it had before we pulled it back.

import bpy
import mathutils

def world_to_obj(point,obj):
    mat_obj_xform = obj.matrix_world
    mat_to_local = obj.matrix_world.inverted()
    return mat_to_local * point

def is_inside(point, obj):
    p = world_to_obj(point, obj)
    hit, hit_location, normal_at_location, face_index = obj.closest_point_on_mesh(p)
    ray = hit_location - p
    dotproduct = ray.dot(normal_at_location)
    return (dotproduct > 0.0)

green = bpy.data.materials.get("GREEN")
if green is None:
    green = bpy.data.materials.new(name="GREEN")
    green.diffuse_color = (0.0, 1.0, 0.0)

red = bpy.data.materials.get("RED")
if red is None:
    red = bpy.data.materials.new(name="RED")
    red.diffuse_color = (1.0, 0.0, 0.0)

master = bpy.data.objects['Master']
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern='Cube.*')

for cube in bpy.context.selected_objects:

    if is_inside(cube.location, master):
    #inside
        if cube.data.materials:
            cube.data.materials[0] = green
        else:
            ob.data.materials.append(green)
    else:
    #outside
        if cube.data.materials:
            cube.data.materials[0] = red
        else:
            cube.data.materials.append(red)

Forgive the long-winded variable names and grubby code.. I meant them to be a bit more explanatory. (I've also stopped the repeat creation of materials.)


Xrg have made a very nice tutorial serie about texture painting. However it's not focused on PBR (for that you probably need to look at Substance Painter).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR7Axe2hbz8&list=PLNHJ5gduZOiWXtbeiZZi3q082bclOHQY4
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7ALfRw6I5I


Print total rendering time after a long script of several image renders?

I think your question is a bit incomplete but usually the time module is used, then

import bpy , time

def yourFunction(self,context):

    start = time.time()
    ####your script
    ####
    ####
    stop = time.time()

    result = stop-start

    print("Your time is :"+"{:05.2f}".format(result)+" Seconds")

note "{:05.2f}".format(result) It is used to format the seconds by approximating the cent


As long as you're in Object or Pose Mode, you can also use the 'Manipulate Center Points' feature. You can activate it with this button:

When it is active, the rotation and scale tools work differently. They only affect the location of objects, not their size or orientation any more. Remember to uncheck this feature before proceeding!


This is apparently an AMD GPU problem.  Similar issues have been found apparently.  My condolences to anyone else out there on Team Red.
https://developer.blender.org/T77095
https://devtalk.blender.org/t/blender-2-83-crashing-on-amd-gpu/13641
Thanks to Rich and Christopher for the speedy and helpful replies!


Hotkey for toggling between vertex/edge/face select modes in Edit Mode?

I believe its Ctr + tab then choose from the menu that pops up.


What About this one?
http://devlog-martinsh.blogspot.com.es/search/label/DoF

or
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aehC81cYrjY

regards


Your question is a duplicate of:

Best practices for learning Blender

You might also check:

https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=blender+best+practices&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Avoiding_Headaches_Early_On:_Good_3D_Modeling_Practices


What are the hotkeys to navigate the timeline?

→ 1 frame forward
← 1 frame backward

Shift+→ end frame
Shift+← start frame

↑ next keyframe
↓ previous keyframe

⎈ Ctrl⇧ Shift→ next marker
⎈ Ctrl⇧ Shift←  previous marker

Shift+↑ 10 frames forward
Shift+↓ 10 frames back


Particle velocities not working as expected

Feeding the velocity into a Math or a Color Ramp node will be averaging the X,Y,Z values of the vector and this can produce unexpected results - especially where you have a mix of positive and negative values.

Instead, you can use a Vector math Dot Product node to determine the magnitude of the Velocity by passing the Velocity into both inputs of the Dot Product (which will give the magnitude of the velocity, squared) and raising to the power of 0.5 (to square root it - to get the speed) and using this Value output as a scalar representing speed. This can then be passed through a Math node to scale it and on to a Color Ramp to generate a colour based on the speed.


How to use "Reference" information from Blender manual?

It is a path in the GUI. Look in the Properties Editor (on the right by default), in the Scene tab, under Gravity.


Is there a way to intensify the colours of an image?

Use the Hue/Saturation node. Increasing the Saturation will increase the color intensity.

Note that there are other factors that could be resulting in a washed out render. Also this is a Cycles specific answer.


Cannot rotate a camera on a motion path that is targeted to an empty.

Based on the description of @batFINGER, I was able to perform the steps to allow for camera rotation during the animation.

Setup:

empty for tracking (target)
empty for camera (dolly)
camera
BezierCircle (path)

Constrains:

for the camera empty:

follow path "BezierCircle" (don't forget to click "animate path")
Track to "empty for tracking" (make sure to set -Z and Y)

for the camera itself

constraint: child of "empty for camera"

This should now have the camera tracking the "empty for tracking"

go to camera view and select your camera: it is still possible to rotate the camera


Dragging center point of cube won't drag all edges to corners with it

The problem is that your faces are non-planar (read this) and therefore need to be converted to triangles to be displayed (Blender will do this without telling us).

Showing us the render wires, make the triangulation apparent.

It is possible to trick Blender into triangulating the nonplanar quads in a different order.

Remove the faces in question and recreate them with triangles.

Select the adjacent faces in the correct order and join them with ⎇ AltJ.

Note, that the correct order is dependant on the vertex index which can be shown only with debug options enabled.

But this is not useful. If you want the area to have an edge explicitly define it with the correct topology.

In the reference video, the same behaviour occurs.


Breast texture in manuelbastioni is black

In order to solve your problem permanently you have to edit preferences.py file in /home/your_home_folder/.config/blender/2.81/scripts/addons/MB-Lab-1_7_5 folder:

from:

  use_censors = bpy.props.BoolProperty(
        name='censors',
        description="Use censors to cover genitals and breasts",
        default=True
    )

to

  use_censors = bpy.props.BoolProperty(
        name='censors',
        description="Use censors to cover genitals and breasts",
        default=False
    )

hope this helps


You can use a second Offset Matrix node with rotation mode to achieve the desired result.

The rotation itself is calculated with the Direction to Rotation node, like you assumed.
The direction has to be calculated from the already translated planes, otherwise the vectors would be incorrect. You can get them with a Decompose Matrix node from the first Offset Matrix.


What is the difference between Active Strip and Selected Strip?

Most Blender operators, Interface action "work" on active object (eg. the RHS information tab, apply modifier); Selected objects... are just been selected.
Selecting — Blender Manual
If a method, operator can handle multiple objects at once, it might uses selected objects. Otherwise, active object will be chosen. Back to the 2.79 time, selecting multiple object and go in edit mode will only go in edit mode for the active object. Now it uses selected objects and active object in Blender 2.80.
So if a job/operator need to work on something, and there should be only one instance that being handled at a time. Active object will provide only 1 object or None, make it easy to deal with. And the User Interface will always make active object different, letting the user know which object are going to be deal with. So the word active.
And, surprisingly "active object can be not selected" after you deselected it. Which mean active object is the "last object you interact with".


Can I transfer an already made UV to another object?

You can select the two objects, and link their UV maps.

Select the "target" object
Select the "source" object (this needs to be the active object)
CtrlL, "Transfer UV maps"


Issue with parenting tracked nulls to get Orientation for mesh

I found a solution to my problem.
The issue was that I added a Track to constraint to the mesh targetting the hand point therefore creating unpredictable spinning.
Therefore, after removing the constraint from the mesh, I just parent with the mesh to the bone with Automatic Weights, so the mesh will uniquely follow the bone and nothing else.
I keyframed the X Rotation of the bone to match the footage as best as possible.
Hope anyone will find this useful!


How to specify the size of a text box in a panel?

Remove the property name of the text box (name = "",) and add a row.label(text="Some Parameter: ") above your row.prop(scene "Parameter Op String Box") in your panel build.